A review of global polling, including a 55-country UNICEF study, finds that outlook on the future varies sharply by country, income and demographics rather than tracking objective economic conditions. Western nations like the US, UK and France show surprisingly bleak expectations for coming decades, sometimes ranking below countries such as Lebanon and Morocco, while many lower-income nations report greater optimism despite facing similar or greater challenges.
Lorne Trottier and Branko Matić founded Matrox in Dorval, Quebec in 1976, combining their surnames to name the company. Their first product, the MTX-1632 video RAM board, generated a 32x16 ASCII display and sold $20,000 worth of orders after a free listing in Electronics magazine, making the fledgling company profitable almost immediately. They quickly followed up with the MTX-256, a raster graphics unit offering 256 by 256 dot resolution.
An essay examines how Japanese woodblock printmakers since the 1880s have depicted telegraph and power lines as symbols of modernity rather than eyesores, contrasting this with Western social media users who frequently mock utility wires as ugly. It highlights a 2021 Nerima Art Museum exhibition, curated by Yosuke Kato, that gathered roughly 130 works from the 1850s to today under the title 'Densen Kaiga' (Electric Wire Paintings), showing wires as a recurring visual motif in Japanese art and anime.
As companies deploy AI agents that autonomously execute multi-step tasks across enterprise systems, existing identity and access controls only confirm authentication at login, not whether an agent's behavior remains safe afterward. The piece argues that once agents are authenticated and acting independently, traditional security tools offer little ongoing visibility into their actions.
A troubleshooting guide explains three distinct ways iPhone users can reset their device when facing software issues: a soft reset (standard restart), a hard reset (forced restart by holding buttons without going through menus), and a full factory reset that erases all data. The guide notes there's long been ambiguity in the tech community over what exactly separates these terms.
Meta reached a settlement with attorneys general from 47 states who had sued the company for allegedly manipulating children's attention through its algorithms. The deal could cost Meta as much as $17 billion, though the company admitted no wrongdoing, and the Wall Street Journal reported it spent over $2 billion on legal defense in a single quarter of 2026 alone.
A developer describes overriding a self-imposed website blocker for 444 minutes and using it as the turning point to rebuild his relationship with distracting apps. Rather than quitting YouTube, Reddit and LinkedIn, which he considers genuinely useful, he redesigned his phone to strip away addictive design cues, including switching the display to grayscale and forcing browser use instead of apps.
Chess.com quietly launched a free educational poker platform called Gambit in May, letting players learn poker and build an Elo-style rating without real-money stakes. The company says it's now developing similar rating systems for other classic games like go, backgammon, and mahjong, using AI-assisted coding to build these platforms faster with smaller teams.
Shailene Woodley has spoken about her experience being cast as Mary Jane Watson in 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2,' a role that was ultimately removed from the finished film. Her scenes were filmed but left on the cutting room floor as the studio shifted the sequel's focus.
The Weather Channel has released a CarPlay version of its Storm Radar app, filling a gap left by Apple Weather, which still isn't supported on CarPlay. The new app shows a live map with radar, clouds, and precipitation layers, plus current conditions and forecasted weather at a driver's destination alongside ETA. The same update also brings new home screen widgets and a redesigned Apple Watch app.
Google Maps has updated its display for U.S. users to show 'Lake Ontario' as 'Lake America,' following a formal change in the U.S. Geographic Names Information System. Canadian users still see 'Lake Ontario,' while users elsewhere see both names listed together. The shift has drawn mockery online, with Ontario's premier posting a billboard reasserting the lake's traditional name and MapQuest declining to follow suit.
Visual effects veteran Phil Tippett, known for pioneering stop-motion and CG creature work across four decades, has stepped away from filmmaking after selling Tippett Studio. The announcement came over the weekend, closing out a career that spanned classic effects films and influential animation techniques.
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