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“Language and Image Minus Cognition”: An Interview with Leif Weatherby

by Robin Manley Leif Weatherby is an Associate Professor of German at New York University, where he directs the Digital Theory Lab. Robin Manley spoke with Dr. Weatherby about his latest book, Language Machines: Cultural AI and the End of Remainder Humanism (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), which argues that Large Language Models (LLMs) have effected a separation of cognition from language and computation in a form that corresponds to earlier structuralist theories. Robin Manley: In the i

My favorite lightweight Windows laptop was already affordable - but now it's $250 off

When I first picked up the Asus Zenbook A14, I thought I was holding an empty prototype. Then it turned on, and the brilliant OLED display proved me wrong. At 2.1 pounds, it's not just one of the lightest laptops I've used; it's also well-balanced -- both physically and in terms of hardware -- and epitomizes the thin, battery-efficient category that's exploded over the last year. Also: The best lightweight laptops of 2025: Expert tested It's my pick for the best lightweight laptop, and was als

Apple begins selling latest M4 MacBook Air models on its refurbished store

Today, Apple has begun selling refurbished configurations of its recently released MacBook Air with M4 chip – with a roughly 15% discount compared to MSRP. This follows the addition of Apple Watch Ultra 2 in Black and M4 Max/M3 Ultra Mac Studio earlier this week. Apple Refurbished Macs are held to a very high quality standard, and more or less look brand new – minus the packaging. All essential components are replaced as part of Apples Refurb program. You even get the same 1 year warranty, and

MacBook Air vs. MacBook Pro: Which MacBook Should I Buy?

If you're having trouble deciding between the cheaper and lighter MacBook Air or spending more for the more powerful MacBook Pro, you've come to the right place. The MacBook Air and Pro don't look all that different from one another, but there are key differences -- from cost and components to performance and battery life -- that you need to know to pick the right one. The 15-inch M4 MacBook Air is the best laptop for most people, but there are some good reasons to spend more for a M4 MacBook P

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The best Chromebooks for students in 2025: Expert tested and reviewed

Let's face it: having a laptop for school is a necessity. But toting around a bulky, slow computer from five years ago is not the vibe. Opting for a Chromebook is a solid choice for students: they're lightweight, fast, and typically cost far less than Windows PCs or Apple MacBooks. Chromebooks run on ChromeOS, a streamlined operating system that integrates with Google Drive, making it easy to navigate to apps like Google Docs, Google Drive, and Gmail so you can stay on task and in touch with te

Google’s latest experiment brings NotebookLM’s best features to Search

TL;DR Audio Overviews emerged as one of Google’s breakout AI hits, synthesizing virtual podcasts with a pair of hosts. After debuting with NotebookLM and spreading to other Google services, the company is experimenting with Audio Overviews in Search. For this initial test, access is limited to the US and only supports English. Forgive us for sounding like a broken record by this point, but Google’s Audio Overviews have easily emerged as one of the company’s most genuinely impressive and usefu

Best MacBook for 2025

The first fork in the road you'll come to when shopping for a MacBook is whether to follow the Air path or head down the Pro road. For people who are looking for an everyday home laptop or a work laptop for running basic office apps, a MacBook Air will suffice. An Air is also a better pick for students on tight budgets. For creative types who need the added processing and graphics muscle of Apple's new M4 Pro and Max chips, a MacBook Pro is worth the added cost. To help you find the right MacBoo

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Ars Technica’s gift guide for Father’s Day: Give dad some cool things

Greetings Arsians! It's time—at least in some parts of the world—to celebrate dads. Father's Day is nearly here, and as there's a custom of gift-giving, many of us will have to choose something. Below, various Ars editors have identified a few things they've bought recently that they think could be great gifts for dads—with the caveat that there are an indefinably large spectrum of variations of what dads are like. Still, we did our best to include a few things that are pretty general, and a few

Jemalloc Postmortem

Home Published Jun 12, 2025 The jemalloc memory allocator was first conceived in early 2004, and has been in public use for about 20 years now. Thanks to the nature of open source software licensing, jemalloc will remain publicly available indefinitely. But active upstream development has come to an end. This post briefly describes jemalloc’s development phases, each with some success/failure highlights, followed by some retrospective commentary. Phase 0: Lyken In 2004 I began work on the Ly

The best ereader to buy right now

Any ebook reader will let you cram a Beauty and the Beast-sized library’s worth of books in your pocket, but so will your phone. An ebook reader offers a more book-like reading experience, with fewer distractions and less eye strain, and many include extra features, like adjustable frontlighting. Some really are pocketable. Others are waterproof or offer physical page-turning buttons, while a few even let you take notes. I’ve been using ebook readers for nearly a decade, and I’ve gone hands-on

The Sixties Come Back to Life in "Everything Is Now"

The film critic and cultural historian J. Hoberman’s new book, “Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop,” is as jubilantly overstuffed as its subtitle. The book is a startlingly slow read—and I say that with unbridled enthusiasm. I can’t remember the last book I’ve read that contained so much information so tightly packed, or in which the distillation of vast research offered such relentless ricochets of association, connection, and al

The best Chromebook you can buy in 2025

Engadget has been testing and reviewing consumer tech since 2004. Our stories may include affiliate links; if you buy something through a link, we may earn a commission. Read more about how we evaluate products . Whether you’re shopping for a budget-friendly laptop for school or a sleek machine for everyday productivity, the best Chromebooks can offer surprising functionality for the price. Chromebooks have come a long way from their early days as web-only devices. Now, many Chromebook models f

The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers

The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers (Review) 2025-06-11 The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers: From Fast Machines to Fast Codes is a technical and business history of the roughly three-decades when Seymour Cray dominated the development of a class of computer called the “supercomputer”. The book covers the development of the major supercomputer models, the technical decisions and trade-offs involved, and changes to the market. The book ends with SGI’s purchase of Cray’s assets and the tran

Download your Kindle books right now - Amazon is killing this option in a few days

ZDNET Another day. Another cloud service changing the rules on stuff we already bought and paid for. This time, Amazon is removing a feature that's been part of the Kindle experience for more than a decade: downloading files to your computer. Also: The best Kindles of 2025: Expert tested and reviewed I'm not going to bury the lede: You have until Feb. 26, 2025, to download copies of your Kindle books to your computer. After that, Amazon will remove the ability to download books to files you

The $230 MacBook Air Is Real, It’s a Steal, and It’s Flying Off the Shelves

MacBooks are many things — beautifully designed, reliable, sturdy, fast, and powerful among them. Inexpensive, however, is not a word you hear applied to MacBooks often, if ever. Apple is very much a get-what-you-pay-for company, and you pay for quality. Thankfully, there are shortcuts to be found, like the deals StackSocial frequently runs on Grade-A refurbished MacBooks for a fraction of their usual cost. See at StackSocial Here’s one that’s on the extreme side even for StackSocial: A 13.3-i

I built a large language model "from scratch"

A developer's journey through building an LLM from scratch, sharing key insights about tokenization, training, and the learning process of mastering AI fundamentals. Building a large language model from scratch# I’m a machine learning / A.I. hobbyist. The technologies fascinate me, and I can’t seem to learn enough about them. Sebastian Raschka’s book, Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch) caught my eye. I don’t recall how I stumbled on it, but I found it when it was still in early access

Marvel at the Ships, Suits, and Tech of Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17

So how, exactly, do you make a new human? No, sicko. We don’t mean that. We mean in the context of Bong Joon Ho’s latest, Mickey 17. In the film, Robert Pattinson plays Mickey, a human “expendable” who is brought back to life, over and over, after he dies. How does that work? A new book shows you, in more ways than one. Mickey is brought back to life via a human printer, which is exactly what it sounds like. A giant printer that, instead of pieces of paper, prints out humans. It’s one of severa

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