Author: Geek Planet

As programmatic means of investing in channels spreads further across the media landscape, there remain a few gaps where it’s neither efficient nor even doable. One of those less developed areas is product placement and sponsorship opportunities, which are either unwieldy or downright un-buyable.But Omar Tawakol, CEO of Rembrand, has his eye on a bigger prize — trying to improve advertising within the streaming world. Rembrand uses AI to work with both advertisers and publishers to improve the ad experience — since not everyone can comfortably afford to buy more costly ad-free access to content. Among other things, Rembrand uses…

CES (Consumer Electronics Show) has long served as a key venue for the introduction of new laptops. It also plays an important role in signaling broader industry trends and a sense of direction for the months ahead. CES 2026 is expected to continue that tradition. Early signs suggest next year’s laptops are going to focus on performance gains spread across multiple platforms, form factors, and price tiers. At the center of it all are new mobile CPUs including Intel’s upcoming Core Ultra Series 3 codenamed Panther Lake, AMD’s Gorgon Point including the new Ryzen AI 400 series, and Qualcomm’s second-generation…

This article by David Klinghoffer is republished from Science and Culture Today. We marked last week the death at age 97 of James D. Watson (1928–2025), co-discoverer with Francis Crick of the structure of DNA. Reflecting on his life leads to contradictory responses: a hero of science, whose work led to insights pointing to life’s intelligent design, he was also a bigoted atheist and champion of pseudoscientific racism. The names Watson and Crick are almost as iconic as the DNA double helix that they elucidated in 1953, for which they won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Maurice Wilkins.…

MLB is having a record postseason, and not just because Game 3 of the World Series went on for 18 innings.Game 1 between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers averaged 32.6 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japan, the largest combined audience from those countries since the 2016 World Series, according to MLB. Games 1 and 2 combined for an average of 19.8 million viewers in the US and Canada, up 27% from last year.“Baseball is having a moment,” MLB CMO Uzma Rawn Dowler told Marketing Brew. “We are on fire right now, and it’s not…

One of the perks of my old post was having access to a yacht in FiDi during the summer—yes, for some, that’s called business development. The first time I met Patti, she elbowed her way onto the boat. I had no idea who she was, but she insisted that I didn’t like her, which, of course, made me instantly curious. At the time, I was a bit skeptical of Sphere 3D, especially after the NUMiner announcement. But Patti? She squashed any doubts I had. She was a force—radiating energy, always perfectly dressed, armed with a razor-sharp wit, and unapologetically unfiltered…

A trailer for a new CBS 60-Minute episode shows the novelist Margaret Atwood observing her bestselling book The Handmaid’s Tale going up in flames, with an ominous caption reading: “Margaret Atwood, author of 64 books including “The Handmaid’s Tale,” has seen her work banned for content deemed overly sexual, morally corrupt, and anti-Christian.” According to the CBS write-up on the episode, The Handmaid’s Tale has sold more than $10 million copies, although a number of school districts have chosen not to feature her titles: Atwood’s own works have been subject to edicts and bans. Her works have been banned from…

When Pandora rolled out its first AI-powered service agent earlier this year, the goal wasn’t to showcase cutting-edge technology. It was to survive the peak holiday shopping season without sacrificing the customer experience or margins. The agent, dubbed Clara, launched as a chatbot on the brand’s website in mid-February and now resolves around 60% of customer service inquiries without escalation to a human agent. Pandora’s previous chatbot resolved around 40%. More unexpectedly, a Pandora spokesperson said Clara has contributed to a 10% increase in the company’s net promoter score, measuring how likely customers are to recommend a brand to others.…

In an interesting short essay at The Conversation last month, University of Durham Paul Pettitt observed, Despite the fact that we know that Neanderthals were capable of producing jewellery and using coloured pigments, there has been much objection to the notion that they explored deep caves and left art on the walls. But recent work has confirmed beyond doubt that they did. “Were Neanderthals capable of making art?, October 28, 2025 Why was there “much objection?” Did archaeologists feel that way about the Rosetta Stone? King Tut’s tomb? Not that I’ve heard. Pettitt doesn’t quite spell out the nature of…

When Comscore first began looking into streaming in 2017, the subject was still new enough that the measurement company opted to name its first report on the topic the State of OTT. How the world has changed just eight years later.This year, consumer adoption of CTV streaming continued to grow by leaps and bounds as consumers increasingly subscribe to ad tiers, watch more FAST channels, engage heavily with YouTube, and co-view content, according to Comscore’s annual report, now called State of Streaming.“Streaming is not just a medium, but a mirror of culture,” the report’s authors wrote.Ad-supported expansion: Many of the…

This article is republished from National Review with the permission of the author. The New England Journal of Medicine is again promoting failed progressive public policies. This time, it is “harm reduction.” From “The Erosion of Harm Reduction,” by Joshua Barocas, M.D. (citations omitted): Unlike the targets of many other recent attacks on public health and medicine in the United States, harm reduction is not a formal bureaucracy, but a philosophy and an approach to health care. As defined by the Drug Policy Alliance, it is “a set of ideas and interventions that seek to reduce the harms associated with both drug use and…