IT General

3D printing fixes for broken items is one of the simple pleasures of owning a printer. Why pay over the odds or wait for replacement bits of plastic to arrive when you can just make your own?

The prospective merger between entertainment giants Paramount and Warner Bros. has been officially delayed, prolonging the drama over what is proving to be an extremely controversial business decision.

Twelve states, led by California, and the Writers' Guild of America have filed a lawsuit to block the $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. by Paramount Skydance, citing antitrust concerns, and a recent court order, voluntarily agreed to by Paramount, will see the merger delayed until either June 2027 or five days after the judge's ruling, whichever comes first. 

Amusingly, though, both sides of the case are claiming the delay as a victory. New York Attorney General Letitia James released a statement on Friday describing the delay as a "critical victory in our efforts to uphold the law and protect the film and television industry." At the same time, California Attorney General Rob Bonta characterized the delay as a "tremendous win" and "great news for audiences, movie theaters, and the many people who write, build, and create the art, news, and entertainment so many of us enjoy." 

But a Paramount spokesperson told Variety that the company was also viewing the agreement as a victory: "Today’s agreement is a significant win because the result is exactly what we have sought from the outset: a direct path to a trial based on the evidence. This is the fastest and clearest way to prove that this transaction is good for competition, good for consumers, and good for creators, a conclusion dozens of competition authorities around the world have already reached."

Any time two massive corporate entities merge, antitrust concerns arise. After all, LAMagazine has estimated that the two companies combine for roughly 34 percent of combined streaming viewership, which would give them significant control over industry practices. Concerned critics, who have mobilized behind the hashtag #BlockTheMerger, allege that this acquisition jeopardizes everything from fair hiring and wage standards to the artistic freedoms of creators, and it will be the job of the courts to assess these claims. But there's another angle adding fuel to the fire: politics.

Paramount CEO David Ellison, son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, is perceived to be sympathetic to President Donald Trump, whose own Justice Department approved the merger back in June. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery owns CNN, the media network most critical of the President, whom Trump has singled out for criticism and name-calling on numerous occasions.  

Since David Ellison took over Paramount, the company has been accused of purging unfriendly CBS staffers and skewing coverage of the President in a favorable direction, as well as "spineless capitulation" in agreeing to a $16-million settlement with the President in his lawsuit against 60 Minutes. 

In addition to the typical antitrust concerns, this merger also raises serious issues about freedom of the press, as more and more newsrooms end up in the hands of an ever-smaller number of media conglomerates. In other words, expect to hear a lot more about this deal in the near future.

When you're trying to get perfect audio at home, it's really easy to spend a ton of money upgrading your main speakers. You might think that a bigger unit or a higher price tag automatically equals better sound quality. That common assumption is honestly the biggest mistake people make in modern home audio setups.

When the format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray raged in the mid-2000s, plenty of early adopters and digital archivists bet on the format that ultimately lost. Their reasoning wasn't nostalgia or brand loyalty, but it came down to three practical advantages.

Thermal paste seems to be awfully simple on the surface, and yet, it somehow generates endless arguments. Dot sizes, application patterns, curing times, replacement schedules, and whether one wrong drop can destroy your entire PC ... I've seen it all.

Most people toss old remotes into a junk drawer the moment they upgrade their streaming device, and there they sit. However, the Amazon Fire TV remote is worth pulling back out because it pairs over Bluetooth instead of infrared, which means your phone, tablet, and PC can all recognize it as a standard input device. That one detail opens up more uses than you'd expect from something that used to just control your television.

One of the world's leading generative AI companies, with products licensed by tech powerhouses like Meta, has just announced its acquisition of one of the most popular astrology apps — and we didn't have that on our Bingo cards in 2026.

Banu Guler, founder and CEO of Co-Star Astrology, took to X recently to announce her company's acquisition by AI lab Midjourney, best known for making the generative AI tools used by popular services like Discord and Facebook. And because, on its surface, this is an odd acquisition to say the least, Guler went into some detail about the shared origins of these two companies:

In a nod to the general public's fear of artificial intelligence (a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 71% of Americans worry that their job will be replaced by AI), Guler took pains to distinguish the Co-Star/Midjourney partnership by pointing to the shared interests she has with Midjourney founder David Holz as well as his lab's commitment to "beauty, imagination, and supporting human thriving with technology." 

And to further reassure Guler's users, most of whom are young and therefore no strangers to tech-induced anxiety, Midjourney used its announcement to reiterate that Guler would retain "complete control" of Co-Star. 

But what does a generative AI company want with an astrology app? 

Because of the company's forays into health, including the development of a full-body ultrasonic scanner, as well as Midjourney Medical, a novel concept that would see the AI company create a series of spas focused around combining older technology (saunas, hot tubs and cold plunges) with the aforementioned ultrasonic scanning technology, it's possible that this is just another step towards a more holistic approach to healthcare, a kind of mind-body-spirit gambit that would cover all our bases. 

As a result of the partnership, Banu Guler will also become Midjourney's new Chief Design Officer, so we should expect to see some of the seamless design touches that made Co-Star such a standout success incorporated into the Midjourney ecosystem.

Google offers a lot of very useful free office apps, including Google Docs, Google Sheets, Gmail, Google Slides, and more. Many beginners fail to take advantage of the integration between these apps, however. Using the power of Google Drive, you can save yourself a lot of busywork and get things done far more quickly.

I don't drive much these days, but it's nice to have Android Auto whenever I have a long drive ahead of me. However, every time I use it, I keep landing on the same conclusion: a cheap USB cable still beats the wireless experience where it counts.

The rise of AI has been both a blessing and a curse for software development. On the one hand, experienced programmers can turbo-charge their productivity. On the other, vibe-coding means anyone can have a go—even if they have little experience.

Back in April, OpenAI released Computer Use as a feature of Codex. I've used it quite a few times over the past handful of months, and it's actually so much more useful than I ever thought it would be.

Streaming has taken over the music industry, and Spotify has come out as the champion—but it's lost a lot of love along the way. I personally want a streaming service that provides a better experience both for me and for artists, one where I still have the option to actually buy music to call my own.

You've likely been sitting on automation potential right in your pocket or attached to your keys. While Apple AirTags started out as a way to find lost luggage or misplaced wallets, they've quietly evolved into the coolest and most versatile Home Assistant accessory out there right now. They are devices that give you precise locations, but they can easily be used in a smart home. Location tracking doesn't have to be as simple as we make it. Using just a cheap tag, you add more features to your home without much effort.

Weather is one of the most searched-for topics on the internet, especially this time of year, with heat waves, monsoons, and tropical storms. And while there are hundreds of ways to watch and track the weather, including dozens of free apps, I still happily pay for a weather app, and here's why.

I used Windows for many years before switching to macOS, and I still regularly use Windows on a laptop and in virtual machines. Switching between the two often makes me wish that my Mac had some of the native features of Windows.

The unibody platform of the original 2006 Honda Ridgeline stood in stark contrast to the standard truck recipe when it was revealed at the 2005 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Although models like the Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz have since come along with their own unibody designs, the Ridgeline has remained perhaps the most notable outlier in the truck segment for two decades and counting.

For a long time, I've recommended an off-the-shelf NAS unit for anyone that wanted networked storage in their home. For a few hundred dollars you could get a device that worked and then add whatever storage you'd like. It wasn't necessarily the most cost-effective way to build the setup, but it was extremely easy.

Ever since the death of Flash, I've not been much of an Adobe fan. There are open-source alternatives to almost all of their Creative Cloud apps that don't lock you into a subscription or require a secondary program to uninstall them. Because of its simple interface, Pinta is one of my favorite image editing apps. It's cleaner and simpler than GIMP, and it does everything I'd use Photoshop for without the associated cost.

The market is stacked with compelling options for anyone considering a 3D printer, but three brands usually float to the top: Bambu Lab, Creality, and Prusa. These aren’t the be-all and end-all of the 3D printing world, but they earned their status for a reason.

It’s fair to say that git is one of the most complicated commands you have installed on your machine. With over 180 subcommands (in version 2.55), it’s also a pretty good bet that there are one or two you’ve never even heard of, let alone tried out.