While interviewing Switched on Pop’s Charlie Harding, David Pierce speculates that voice memo demos will become a distinct genre because people just want “lots of different experiences of this same kind of thing.”

And why not? As a songwriter, I’ve always been impressed with how good smartphone voice memos can sound, and who doesn’t have a strong opinion about at least one early demo from their favorite band?

The new Mac Mini’s power button had to go on the bottom because of the Mini’s size, explained Apple’s John Ternus and Greg Joswiak in an ITHome interview.

“You pretty much never use the power button on your Mac,” said one of the execs, according to English text from the article. Touché, but for those who do use it, there are options.

Right now, if you tap the blue arrow while navigating in Google Maps, you get the option to swap it out for blocky, cartoonish vehicle icons.

But Android Police has spotted some new ones — along with choices for colors — seemingly coming in a future iOS version of the app that add more detailed icons resembling vehicles like a high-end sedan or a Rivian truck.

As expected, adding more storage to the new machine isn’t as simple as swapping out the SSD module.

Dosdude runs down the more involved process of replacing the module’s two NAND chips — essentially the same thing he did with a Mac Studio before.

A piece of artwork called “A.I. God. Portrait of Alan Turing,” created in part by AI-equipped robot Ai-Da, went for almost $1.1 million at auction, writes The New York Times.

There was a lot of human involvement, starting with combining the bot’s paintings of parts of Turing’s face:

The works were then photographed and uploaded to a computer that used Ai-Da’s language model to decide on the assembly of a single painting, which was then completed using a 3-D textured printer; studio assistants helped to create a more realistic finished product on the canvas. Ai-Da then added marks and textures to the portrait to complete it.

Say what you will about Apple putting the Mac Mini’s power button on the bottom, but it seems to have activated the maker community in some very fun ways, like this one from Mac developer Gijs Raggers.

I do love an over-the-top solution to a design quirk.

Jerrod Hofferth’s 3D printed miniaturized Mac Pro-style enclosure for the new Mac Mini is just adorable — and practical, for those who can’t abide the Mini’s power button placement and want to do something about it.

As a bonus, the wheels don’t cost $700.

Ben Horowitz has donated a minimum of $7.6 million to fund police purchases. a16z portfolio companies, —such as Skydio, Prepared911, and Flock Safety — benefited.

To me, his blue fur looks a little dull. But I really can’t complain — especially when the creepy live-action Minecraft animals and a photorealistic Simba exist.

At the Jack Dorsey-owned Block, employees were given “stern warnings” not to speak of Jay-Z, according to Fortune. Employees reportedly weren’t told why they couldn’t mention the rapper, who is also on Block’s board.

Block, purchased a majority stake in Jay-Z’s music streaming app Tidal in 2021. Tidal laid off more staff last month, but that may not be the end of this year’s cuts, Fortune reports.

But that’s exactly what streamer EveryGameGuru is doing according Nintendo’s lawsuit against him. The suit alleges that EveryGameGuru streamed pirated Switch games, sometimes before their official release. And when Nintendo issued takedown notices for his channels, he’d create more, going as far as sending an email to the company saying he has thousands of burner channels and that he, “could do this all day.”

That’s the gist of a report from Android Authority. According to leaked documents, Google’s custom chipset isn’t delivering the value the company had hoped for. Overheating is also cited as the top reason for Pixel returns — ouch. As such, Tensor G6 might emphasize lowering production costs and improving thermals over raw performance gains. Sounds like a real hot topic.

Ayaneo has revealed some specs for its next Windows handheld. The Ayaneo 3 will be available with either a seven-inch LCD or OLED HDR display, and an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 or Ryzen 7 8840U processor. The handheld will introduce an extra set of buttons on the back, plus lock switches to reduce the travel of its triggers for FPS players.