Author: Geek Planet

While AI chatbots have been used for good and evil, they were built to serve as a handy tool. And AI companions were supposed to be a harmless little extension of this chatbot culture. But that illusion is falling apart fast. A growing body of reporting and research suggests teens are not just chatting with these bots for fun. They are turning to them for friendship, emotional support, roleplay, and even romance. So what started as a novelty is quickly feeling like a social experiment gone wrong. What do the surveys say? The figures in reports aren’t modest anymore. A…

Mini PCs have gotten genuinely capable over the last couple of years, but most of them still ask you to accept meaningful connectivity compromises to get into a compact chassis. The GEEKOM A7 MAX doesn’t make that trade. It’s down to $699 at Amazon, a $250 saving off its $949 list price, and it pairs a Ryzen 9 7940HS with dual USB4 ports, dual 2.5G LAN, and DDR5 memory in a package that takes up less desk space than most monitors. What you’re getting The AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS is an 8-core, 16-thread processor that boosts up to 5.2GHz, which…

Apple is reportedly preparing one of the more surprising changes to iOS in years: support for third-party wireless casting systems as alternatives to AirPlay. According to a Bloomberg report by Mark Gurman, iOS 27 will allow users in the European Union to choose services like Google Cast as their default option for streaming videos, photos, and audio from iPhones and iPads to TVs, speakers, and other connected devices. The move is said to be part of Apple’s ongoing efforts to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), a sweeping regulation designed to limit the control large tech companies…

Indoor wireless is hitting limits as more devices crowd the same spectrum. Streaming, video calls, and smart home gear are pushing networks harder while power use rises. A new class of laser chips offers a different path by moving data onto light. Researchers built a chip-scale optical link that delivers ultra-fast indoor connections with lower energy use. Instead of broadcasting signals widely, it sends data through controlled infrared beams, opening more usable capacity while avoiding interference in dense spaces. At the core is a chip with 25 microscopic lasers, each carrying its own stream. Working in parallel, they push throughput…

Google just dropped a new iOS app today with no official announcement. The app, first spotted by 9to5Google, is called Google AI Edge Eloquent. It is an offline-first voice dictation tool that transcribes your speech in real time, automatically strips filler words, and delivers clean, polished text. Google Eloquent is completely free without any subscription or usage cap. How does Google AI Edge Eloquent work? You just have to open the app, hit record, and start talking. A live waveform tracks your voice as a real-time transcription appears on screen. When you stop, the app automatically processes everything. Filler words…

Apple may finally be preparing the kind of dramatic iPhone redesign fans have been waiting years for. Fresh leaks surrounding the company’s rumored 20th anniversary iPhone — currently being referred to online as the “iPhone XX” or “iPhone 20” — suggest Apple is working on a device that looks radically different from today’s flat-edged iPhones. And honestly, some of these early renders look like the closest thing yet to the futuristic iPhone people imagined a decade ago. According to emerging supply chain chatter, Apple is testing a heavily curved “quad-curved” display that wraps around all four sides of the phone.…

 An In Depth Look at the Forrest Scene Part 1 In the previous review, I talked about the final event—the pool party—which led to Monica eventually leaving David in the forest with Teddy. I mentioned one of the obvious problems with the sequence—the lack of attempts made to fix David before abandoning him—but I only alluded to the main issue because the subject is surprisingly complicated. The forest scene itself is just shy of three minutes, and the actors both do a wonderful job selling the scene, but in the end, I couldn’t buy it. This scene is meant to bring the audience to tears,…

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 11 is getting a new “Feature Flags” system, giving users more control over experimental features in the operating system. The upcoming addition, spotted in recent Insider builds, introduces a dedicated settings page where users can manually enable or disable features – similar to how flags work in Google Chrome. Until now, Windows 11 relied on a Controlled Feature Rollout (CFR) system, where updates were gradually released to a limited number of users in phases. This meant that even Windows Insiders – who sign up specifically to test new features – often had to wait or…

In my Galaxy S26 review, I briefly mentioned that Good Lock is a pilgrimage every Samsung user should undertake. One UI is jam-packed with features, which don’t always feel coherent, but the software design seems deliberate. Samsung’s custom skin has been among my favorites due to its strong identity, and one of its best hidden tricks is Good Lock. Good Lock is one of those Samsung features that can be weirdly easy to ignore. There’s no shiny demo at the start of the setup process, sitting as a separate app that you’ll have to download. But oddly enough, it is…

AI coding tools were supposed to make software development faster and easier. They did, but maybe a little too well. People are writing code faster than ever before, and this has created a whole new set of problems for companies. According to The New York Times, one financial services company started using Cursor, an AI coding tool, and went from producing 25,000 to 250,000 lines of code per month. That sounds like a win, but it created a backlog of one million lines of unreviewed code.  “The sheer amount of code being delivered, and the increase in vulnerabilities, is something…