Author: Geek Planet

No sense burying the lead. After Bowman points at the Monolith, he becomes a giant floating baby in space. The character is referred to as Star Child. I am not calling him that. Bowman is Space Baby, period. If this is my “the emperor has no clothes moment,” then so be it. The idea of a floating baby with a force field around it is ridiculous. I don’t care that this movie is a classic. I don’t care that Stanley Kubrick made it. This is nonsense.             The ludicrous visual aside, it’s nonsensical from a narrative standpoint. The idea here…

Smartphone price hikes have been widely predicted for months, but 2026 is now shaping up to be the year those warnings turn into reality. Analysts, leaks, and supply chain reports have all been pointing out how this year will be uniquely bold and worrisome for phone buyers. Now, Nothing CEO Carl Pei has laid out why smartphone prices are rising and why there may be no easy way around it. In a long post on X, Pei said the smartphone industry is facing a shift it has not seen in more than a decade, and it all comes down to…

Absolutist, Prohibitionist, and Luddite? Oh, My! Source link

This Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s more likely shoppers turn to ChatGPT to help with their holiday wish lists. Over the past year, AI platforms have gone mainstream with more users using them to research products, compare brands, hunt for deals and even automate purchasing.The changes in how people shop online has caused marketers to reconsider their SEO strategies to maintain brand visibility in the new zero-click search landscape. As this year’s holiday shopping season gets underway, it could prove to be a major inflection point in determining if AI search can be a tool from discovery to conversion. …

Lenovo is gearing up for a massive 2026, and if the latest leaks are anything to go by, the ThinkPad lineup is about to get its most ambitious makeover in years. According to exclusive info shared with Windows Latest, Lenovo plans to use CES 2026 to show off a new fleet of laptops powered by Intel’s next-gen Panther Lake chips, along with a retail version of that wild “auto-twisting” laptop we first saw as a concept last year. From experimental concepts to consumer hardware The word is that Lenovo isn’t playing around with the 2026 ThinkPad range – they are…

New evidence found in iOS 26.3 beta 2 suggests that end-to-end encryption for RCS messages is nearing reality, nearly a year after Apple first announced its support for the feature. For iPhone users who chat with Android users, this could be a meaningful privacy upgrade. Apple currently supports RCS for richer cross-platform messaging, a feature that arrived with iOS 18. However, those chats still lack the same level of protection as iMessage. That means photos, videos, and texts sent over RCS are not encrypted end-to-end. The latest beta hints that Apple is finally laying the groundwork to change that, bringing…

Ahead of its expected launch in February 2026, the Galaxy S26 Ultra, along with the Galaxy S26 Plus, has been spotted on a popular benchmark database. I’m talking about Geekbench, which lists entries for the “SM-S948U” and the “SM-S942U,” both of which are believed to be the U.S. versions of the Ultra and the Plus models. As shared by the renowned tipster Ice Universe on X, the model number “SM-S48U” belongs to the Galaxy S26 Ultra. The variant that underwent the CPU test featured 12GB of RAM and ran on Android 16. What’s interesting is that it featured an underclocked…

Turmoil from tariffs and pressure on margins are forcing some brands to play it safer this Cyber Week. While some companies are touting “bigger than ever” discounts for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, others are dialing back deals from the year before. The bag brand Caraa, for instance, is offering 25% off most of its selection, versus 30% off in 2024. Mercado Famous, a charcuterie brand under the same ownership, is also going down to 25%, from 30%. Petite Plume, a pajama and home brand, is offering 20% off almost everything, after offering 25% off last year. Black Friday and Cyber…

Google is finally testing a new feature that lets users change the username of their Gmail address. As mentioned in the recently updated support documentation, Google has begun rolling out an experimental feature that allows users to modify the first part of their email address, i.e., the one that comes before “@gmail.com.” The rollout has started quietly (there’s no official blog post or update), with India as the company’s first test market. Early sightings suggest that the feature is based on the Google account settings rather than Gmail. Finally, a fix for your embarrassing Gmail address While the experimental feature…

Call it an untraditional apology tour. In the days leading up to Black Friday, brands like Tower 28, JVN Hair and Material Kitchen have taken to social media to ask followers for forgiveness and to say “sorry.” The catch: They’re apologizing for their products being too good. “To everyone who started using Meltdown and suddenly stopped cancelling plans because of a breakout — we owe you an apology,” Blume Skincare wrote on Instagram earlier this month. “Our Drying Lotion is causing breakouts to pack their bags and leave overnight, which has reportedly caused shock, awe, and an unreasonable amount of compliments,” Mario Badescu said. “We are truly sorry…