Weekly output: Mozilla Firefox CEO, AI crawlers vs. publishers and creators, teenage AI chatbot use, Android Live Emergency Video, PCMag’s best tech bought in 2025, World App

Somehow I’m down to the last full workweek of the year–and yet my writing and gift shopping seem to have more than a week’s worth of work remaining.

12/8/2025: Mozilla is doing a delicate dance with AI, Fast Company

I spoke with Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers at a Web Summit event for the second time this year. One thing Firefox’s management no longer needs to worry about, unlike when I met with Chambers at Web Summit Qatar in February: the threat of Google being forced to stop paying browser developers to keep its search engine as the default.

12/9/2025: AI Platforms Are Paying (Some) Big Publishers, Leaving Smaller Ones Behind, PCMag

This post began with me taking notes from a Web Summit panel featuring Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince talking about that Internet infrastructure company’s Pay Per Crawl initiative to push AI providers to pay Web publishers for access to their content, then I did some follow-up reporting that included setting up Cloudflare’s AI Crawl Control bot-blocking filter on this blog, and then I had to update the post the morning it was published after the European Commission opened an investigation into how Google runs its AI Overview search feature.

12/9/2025: 28% of Teens Use Chatbots Daily. You Can Probably Guess Which One They Like Best, PCMag

The latest survey by the Pew Research Center surfaced some interesting statistics about how much teenagers use AI chatbots and which ones they use the most.

12/10/2025: Need Help? Android Phones Can Now Share Live Video With 911 Dispatchers, PCMag

Google is shipping this feature a year after Apple did, but its emergency live video implementation works on far more devices than Apple’s.

12/11/2025: The Best Tech PCMag Editors Bought in 2025, PCMag

I wrote a short graf lauding the compact, quick-charging (and Wirecutter-endorsed) USB-C charger that I bought after losing the considerably bulkier model that came with my laptop.

12/13/2025: App That Verifies Your Existence Adds Encrypted Messaging, PCMag

Tools for Humanity announced an update to its World App that adds an end-to-end-encrypted chat feature and expands its cryptocurrency tools. I took advantage of this news peg to try out the app’s ability to verify a “World ID” by scanning the NFC tag on my U.S. passport; that did not go well at all for me.

12/15/2025: Updated to add the PCMag best-tech package that I forgot to check for on Sunday.

#AIChatbot #AIOverview #AISearch #ChatGPT #Firefox #GoogleZero #Mozilla #PayPerCrawl #PewResearchCenter #ToolsForHumanity #WebSummit #WorldApp #WorldID

Should you trust Tools for Humanity’s iris-scanning orb?

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://techcrunch.com/video/should-you-trust-tools-for-humanitys-iris-scanning-orb/

Ironic tt a #machine is needed to verify tt we are #human! Techbros love claiming legal compliance know'g laws play catchup🧐

#ToolsforHumanity explains it is not gathering personal data
"the company's #eyescanning #Orb is a purpose-built camera to verify an individual's unique "humanness".. "The #Worldproject ensures compliance with all relevant, applicable Thai #laws & we continue to have constructive dialogues with relevant #regulators in #Thailand to ensure the same."
https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/general/3098316/tools-for-humanity-explains-it-is-not-gathering-personal-data

"Sam Altman’s iris-scanning, identify-verification technology startup says it will begin expanding to the US starting May 1 and will launch a phone-like hardware device by next year. Those changes—and a promised World-branded debit card—signal the company’s ambitions to develop a “super app”—a goal shared by Elon Musk.

Altman and Alex Blania, a German physics researcher, announced at an event in San Francisco Wednesday evening that their venture-backed company, Tools for Humanity, is updating its “World” products to include a new, smaller, eye-scanning orb. The device-and-app combo scans people’s irises, creates a unique user ID, stores that information on the blockchain, and uses it as a form of identity verification. If enough people adopt the app globally, the thinking goes, it could ostensibly thwart scammers.

Altman has expressed concern about the amount of fakery that new AI tools will enable, including the generative AI tools pioneered by his other startup, OpenAI, which is valued at $300 billion. So the World app, and its hardware component, are Altman’s solution to the problem."

https://www.wired.com/story/sam-altman-orb-eyeball-scan-launch-us/

#IdentityVerification #Biometrics #FacialRecognition #World #ToolsForHumanity #AI #Surveillance #DataProtection

Sam Altman's Worldcoin Starts US Rollout, Bringing Iris Scans, Crypto IDs, and Controversy

#Worldcoin #Crypto #Blockchain #DigitalID #SamAltman #Biometrics #Privacy #WLD #WorldID #TechNews #USLaunch #Cryptocurrency #Verification #ToolsForHumanity

https://winbuzzer.com/2025/05/01/sam-altmans-worldcoin-starts-us-rollout-bringing-iris-scans-crypto-ids-and-controversy-xcxwbn/

Weekly output: Most Innovative Companies (x2), Simbe Robotics, Starlink at the White House, T-Mobile’s 5G speed record, Trump tries to fire FTC Dems, Verizon satellite messaging, Mark Vena podcast, Tools for Humanity

Months of on-and-off work for one of Fast Company’s most involved projects, the annual Most Innovative Companies list, finally yielded published copy this week. You can imagine my relief at that. This coming week should not feature nearly as many bylines for me, in part because I will be out of the office Thursday afternoon for one of the most important rites of spring: the Washington Nationals’ home opener.

3/18/2025: The most innovative companies in manufacturing for 2025, Fast Company

Some of the companies honored in this part of the MIC list were obvious calls, but more involved a lot of back-and-forth deliberation between me and my editors.

3/18/2025: The most innovative companies in robotics and engineering for 2025, Fast Company

I don’t cover the robotics industry all the time, but I spend enough time covering it to feel a little more at home judging what ranks as innovative in that sector.

3/18/2025: These retail robots travel through store aisles, scanning shelves for inventory and insights, Fast Company

Simbe Robotics earned a nod in last year’s MIC list, and this time around we elected to run a separate story about this startup’s work optimizing retail.

3/18/2025: Report: Starlink Tries to Fix White House’s Wi-Fi Woes, PCMag

The New York Times report about a deployment of Starlink broadband at the White House–which should neither be remotely necessary nor provide fiber-competitive speeds–didn’t mention how often Elon Musk has described Starlink as a rural-first solution. But I have those notes and made sure to surface quotes from them in this piece.

3/19/2025: T-Mobile Claims New 5G Download Speed Record, PCMag

My conversation with T-Mobile’s tech president Ulf Ewaldsson at MWC two weeks earlier helped me put this speed test in context.

3/19/2025: Trump Attempts to Fire the FTC’s Democratic Commissioners, PCMag

After I’d filed this report about Trump ignoring established law and a 90-year-old Supreme Court ruling to try to fire Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission, my editor improved it by suggesting I remind readers of the chapter in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 that suggests curbing the FTC’s statutory independence.

3/20/2025: Verizon Opens Non-Emergency Satellite Messaging to Galaxy S25, Pixel 9 Users, PCMag

Because I was swamped Wednesday covering the FTC news, I didn’t get to this news until Thursday–by which time Charter and Comcast had announced that their wireless services, based on resold Verizon capacity, were also getting Skylo satellite roaming for customers with Galaxy S25 and Pixel 9 series phones.

3/20/2025: Ep 108 SmartTechCheck Podcast — Skype, NVIDIA GTC, MWC, BYD “fast charging”, Mark Vena

I spent most of my time in this episode of the podcast talking about what I saw at MWC, but the closing discussion of EV charging let me drop in a reference to The Cannonball Run that amused my fellow cinephiles.

3/21/2025: Bot or Not? To Prove You’re Human, Look Into This 8-Inch Orb, PCMag

Almost a month after I talked to Tools for Humanity’s chief architect Adrian Ludwig at Web Summit Qatar–during which that startup signed up a notable new partner and I developed a deeper understanding of what it’s trying to do with this identity scheme–the piece finally made it online.

#AlvaroBedoya #carrierAggregation #DOGE #ElonMusk #FTC #GalaxyS25 #MarkVena #MIC #MostInnovativeCompanies #Orb #Pixel9 #RebeccaSlaughter #satelliteMessaging #SimbeRobotics #Skylo #Starlink #TMobile #TallyRobot #ToolsForHumanity #verizon #WorldID #WorldNetwork #WorldCoin