Why Roomba Died + Tech Predictions for 2026 + A Hard Forkin’ Xmas Song
This week, iRobot, the pioneering American robotics company behind the Roomba, filed for bankruptcy and announced that it would be taken over by its Chinese creditor. Colin Angle, a co-founder and a f...
19 Dec 20251h 3min
Australia Kicks Kids Off Social Media + Is the A.I. Water Issue Fake? + Hard Fork Wrapped
This week, Australia implemented the most aggressive social media ban in a democracy to date, kicking children under 16 off 10 of the most popular social platforms. We discuss how the platforms lost t...
12 Dec 20251h 9min
OpenAI Calls a ‘Code Red’ + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
It’s A.I. model rollout season in Silicon Valley, and OpenAI appears to be feeling the pressure. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, sent a memo to staff on Monday declaring a “code red” effort...
5 Dec 202558min
Hard Fork’s 50 Most Iconic Technologies of 2025
Last year we debuted Hard Fork’s 100 Most Iconic Technologies list, in which we ranked the technologies from across all of history that best define life as we know it. To our surprise, it became one o...
28 Nov 20251h 16min
The Interview: How Wikipedia Is Responding to the Culture Wars
Last month our colleague Lulu Garcia-Navarro had a conversation with Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales about the challenges the site is facing — including by right-wing influencers who claim it is bi...
25 Nov 202546min
We Asked Roblox’s C.E.O. About Child Safety. It Got Tense.
Roblox's popularity has exploded among kids since the pandemic. Today Roblox has more than 150 million daily active users, and functions as one of the primary online gathering places for preteens. But...
21 Nov 202540min
Google's Gemini 3 Is Here: A Special Early Look
Google’s much anticipated new large language model Gemini 3 begins rolling out today. We’ll tell you what we learned from an early product briefing and bring you our conversation with Google executive...
18 Nov 202526min
Data Centers in Space + A.I. Policy on the Right + A Gemini History Mystery
This week, we talk about Google’s new plan to build data centers in space. Then, we’re joined by Dean Ball, a former adviser at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Ball worked on ...
14 Nov 20251h 11min
