theck1 IT/AI news

Tembo is a playful drum machine that thinks it’s a checkerboard

Terrence O’Brien • March 11, 2026 Checkers? Go? | Image: Alon Daniel / Musical Beings Tembo looks like a toy, but one of those bougie wooden toys you get on Crate & Kids, not some cheap plastic garbage. Despite its appearance, it is a fully functional drum machine and sampler. Rather than a bunch of

I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

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Hayden Field • March 11, 2026 Millions of people are on the job hunt right now – and for many people, landing a job in the AI era feels more intimidating than ever. That’s why the onset of AI avatars running your job interview via one-on-one video call, asking you questions, and analyzing how well

Godzilla Minus One, a very good movie, is $15 on 4K Blu-ray

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Cameron Faulkner • March 11, 2026 I love Godzilla Minus One. Granted, it’s only the second Godzilla movie that I’ve watched, the other being 1998’s terrible Godzilla featuring Matthew Broderick (the soundtrack has bangers, though). While I may not exactly be an expert, this is a good movie, whether you’re a first-time Godzilla viewer or

You can’t replace the battery in Lego’s Smart Bricks — and many of its sensors aren’t available yet

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Sean Hollister • March 11, 2026 The first Lego Smart Brick sets, based on Star Wars, aren’t quite what my kids and I hoped, and I suspect much of that’s down to programming. But the Smart Bricks may also have some technical limitations out of the gate. The first sets don’t ship with a number

How to ditch Ring’s surveillance network

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Jennifer Pattison Tuohy • March 11, 2026 There are lots of options for video doorbells that store footage locally — including these from Eufy, Reolink, SwitchBot, Tapo, and Aqara. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Recently, Ring ran a Super Bowl ad for its Search Party feature showing how it uses AI

Canva’s new editing tool adds layers to AI-generated designs

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Jess Weatherbed • March 11, 2026 Canva introduced a new feature that separates flat image files and AI-generated visuals into layered, fully editable designs. The Magic Layers tool is launching in public beta today in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, allowing design components like objects, text boxes, and other graphics to be selected individually

Alternative app store AltStore PAL is joining the fediverse

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Emma Roth • March 11, 2026 AltStore PAL, the alternative iOS app store available in the European Union and Japan, is joining the social web. In a post on Wednesday, AltStore PAL announced that users across Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky can now interact with apps that developers choose to federate on its explore.alt.store website. Any

OpenAI’s Sora video generator is reportedly coming to ChatGPT

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Stevie Bonifield • March 11, 2026 OpenAI’s Sora video generator could soon become a built-in feature in ChatGPT, as reported by The Information. Sora is currently only available on its website or as a standalone app, which has fallen shy of the popularity of ChatGPT. This update would allow users to access Sora’s video generation

Microsoft’s next Xbox, Project Helix, won’t reach alpha until 2027

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Jay Peters • March 11, 2026 We’re here at the 2026 Game Developers Conference, where Microsoft “VP of Next Generation” Jason Ronald is talking about a topic near and dear to many gamers’ hearts: the future of Xbox. Ronald says the next Xbox, codenamed Project Helix, will have a custom AMD chip with “an order

Microsoft’s ‘Xbox mode’ is coming to every Windows 11 PC

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Sean Hollister • March 11, 2026 Microsoft seems more determined than ever to combine Xbox and Windows – to the point that its next-gen Xbox, codenamed Project Helix, will play PC games too. Today, we learned Helix will go alpha in 2027. But the company isn’t waiting for Helix before it points Windows gamers in