What's on Your Mind?

Earlier this week, social media was wowed by images from the streets of Chinese cities showing senior citizens lining up to have OpenClaw, the always-on AI assistant, installed on their laptops, desktops, and other devices. Areas like Shenzhen and Wuxi offered subsidies to try to scale up adoption of the tool and capitalize on its capabilities. An enormous proportion of all OpenClaw instances installed worldwide, as tracked by public dashboards, emanate from China. China is adopting tech at an absolute breakneck pace. A ridiculous amount of people turned up into a public event in Shenzhen today to install the OpenClaw. Some devs who work at Chinese big tech compan…

The mitochondria, perhaps better known as the powerhouses of cells, are emerging as a possible factor in the pains of aging. Some scientists are of the mind that poor mitochondrial health can lead to symptoms and diseases related to aging, like Alzheimer’s and cancer. “The mitochondria just give up earlier than other parts of the cell because of the wear and tear that they’re subjected to,” Pinchas Cohen, dean of USC’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, told The New York Times. “They’re the canary in the coal mine of cellular dysfunction.” It’s true that mitochondria produce energy from the food that we eat. But that’s actually not all that they do. How C…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Here’s the annual U.S. household income needed to purchase the typical valued U.S. home: January 2020: $52,041 January 2021: $52,087 January 2022: $63,111 January 2023: $87,092 January 2024: $93,227 January 2025: $98,900 January 2026: $93,061 While the income needed to buy the median-priced U.S. home is +78.8% higher than it was in January 2020, it’s down -5.9% year over year. Methodology: This Zillow calculation is conservative and assumes a 20% down payment and that the homebuyer spends less than 30% of their monthly inco…

Unless you spend your time in boardrooms and C-suites, there’s a decent chance you’ve never heard of the Future Today Strategy Group (FTSG). There’s also a better than decent chance you’ve encountered its influence. Every year the consulting firm publishes a massive tech trends report that maps emerging threats, white spaces, and opportunities early enough for companies to act on them. Past editions have flagged shifts around synthetic media, digital humans, and generative AI before they entered the mainstream conversation. And some major institutions are clearly paying attention: FTSG’s client list includes Mastercard, Ford, and NASA. Which makes what’s happening ons…

“Overworked and underpaid” has become the modern workplace anthem. The internet is full of advice on how to negotiate harder, “quiet quit,” or jump ship. It’s an easy narrative to embrace: If you feel undervalued, the system must have failed you. That story is comforting. It’s also costly. While genuine exploitation exists, most people stop short of asking the harder, and far more lucrative question: What is my contribution actually worth in the market? Effort Is Not Currency We have a tendency to measure our value by our level of exhaustion. We tally up the stress, the late nights, and the emotional labor. But markets do not pay for perspiration. They pay …

Web browsers love the theme of navigation. Safari is clearly a compass. Chrome appears to be an all-seeing cyborg eye. But Firefox? It’s comparatively unhinged: a wild animal made of flame. It’s like a beast out of Pokémon, Digimon, or Chinese mythology. And now, for the first time, the fox is breaking out of the Firefox logo to become a full-blown corporate mascot ready to protect its customers. In an era when AI companions are quickly becoming commonplace, the fox named Kit is a keen-nosed scout, helping you navigate a world filled with unprecedented surveillance. “Kit is really like your companion for this internet era,” says Amy Bebbington, global head of brand at Moz…

Walking down the street to scavenge for creatures like Snorlax and Squirtle was a regular 2016 activity, as the world was introduced to augmented reality (AR) games thanks to Pokémon Go. But now, 10 years later, images captured by players looking to “catch them all” are helping Niantic Spatial—a spinout of Niantic, the San Francisco–based company behind the game—teach robots to navigate the world more effectively by building a highly accurate Visual Positioning System. “It turns out that getting Pikachu to realistically run around and getting Coco’s robot to safely and accurately move through the world is actually the same problem,” John Hanke, CEO of Niantic Spat…

It’s a familiar feeling: You start a text message, and your phone’s auto-complete function suggests several choices for the next word, ranging from banal to hilarious. “I love …” you, or coffee? Or you’re finishing an email, and merely typing the word “Let” prompts your app to suggest “Let me know if you have any questions” in light gray text. Predictive language technologies have become so routine—baked into smartphones, email services, and chatbots—that we barely notice them anymore. But they raise a difficult question: What happens to a writer’s unique voice when AI routinely completes their thoughts—or generates them altogether from scratch? As the chair of a …