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Caleb Ecarma looks at Amazon's new Kids Tablets, marketed for children as young as 3, and compares the marketing with pediatric research on screen use. Pediatrician Jenny Radesky criticizes the carry-anywhere handle, the solo-use imagery, and the generative AI story and art features. The piece cites studies linking the use of devices to calm kids with worse emotional regulation, along with Amazon's 2023 FTC settlement over Alexa recordings of children.
A Life Kit episode featuring author Lindsay Owens, who shares tips from her book Gouged on avoiding surveillance pricing — where two shoppers can pay different prices for the same item based on who they are, where they are, and their purchase history.
On StarTalk, computer scientist and VR pioneer Jaron Lanier argues large language models are best understood as a collaboration of people's combined work rather than an autonomous entity, and traces how network effects centralize power online, why VR never found its killer app, and his case for "data dignity" — compensating people for the data that trains AI — as an alternative to behavior-prediction-driven business models.
Louis Rossmann argues that pushback against local surveillance overreach (like Flock ALPR cameras) depends on having local friends willing to show up together, and that rising social isolation is quietly weakening resistance to issues like this.