Our 2026 Tech Resolutions + We Answer Your Questions

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Hard Fork 1h 1m 5 speakers 5 chapters transcribed 2 months ago
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Unknown 0:00
It's your day to play. It's your morning to make the most of.
Dani Blum 0:04
It's your way to love.
Unknown 0:05
It's your climate to consider.
Dani Blum 0:08
It's your answer to what should I watch? It's your money to save.
Unknown 0:13
It's your song to analyze line by line. It's your 10 ways to find a little calm. It's your world to understand. The New York Times. Find out more at nytimes.com slash your world.
Casey Newton 0:30
I have a story about technology saving my ass. Let's hear it. So I was on a flight across the country yesterday with my kid, and I made a huge mistake parenting-wise. I did not understand that when you download things off of Netflix to use on a kid's iPad, for example, during a long flight, they expire. They don't stay there forever. Oh, yes. So we got on the plane, and... And I pull out the iPad, which is the only way to take a flight with a three-year-old. If other parents are doing this without it, God bless. God bless. For me, not going to happen. Can't happen. Pull out the iPad, get his little Bluetooth headphones on. I go to Netflix, nothing downloaded. Everything's expired. Oh, no. I'm thinking to myself, this is going to be the longest five hours of my life.
Casey Newton 1:12
Absolutely. Then I learn... via my seatmate that you can now connect your Bluetooth headphones to the TV on the back of the seat in front of you. That finally works? That finally works. And it saved me. And so to the person at United Airlines IT department who figured out how to connect the Bluetooth headphones to the in-seat TV, I salute you. You saved me.
Kevin Roose 1:37
Absolutely. Is that something you could have figured out in 2011? Sure. But look, we've all been busy and you got to it now and that's what matters. And we say thank you, United Airlines. Thank you, United Airlines. Beautiful. I'm Kevin Russo, tech columnist for The New York Times. I'm Casey Noon from Platformer. And this is Hard Fork. This week, 2026 is here, and we're sharing our New Year's tech resolutions. And then we're taking listener questions, Kevin.
Casey Newton 2:06
We'll answer all your questions about AI, space data centers, and whether you should deepfake Santa into your home security footage.
Kevin Roose 2:12
You know, I've been wondering about that.
Kevin Roose 2:20
Well, Casey, it's a new year. It's a new year. Happy 2026 to you and your family, Kevin. Yes. And notice that he didn't say it back.
Casey Newton 2:31
Go on. Happy 2026.
Kevin Roose 2:32
Thank you.
Casey Newton 2:33
Are you supposed to wish people a happy year that just ended or a happy year that's beginning?
Kevin Roose 2:36
I think it's more traditional to wish them a happy new year. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Casey Newton 2:41
Not a lot of happy old year cards flying off the shelves.
Kevin Roose 2:43
Not a lot of happy old year out there, but hey, start a new tradition if you want.
Casey Newton 2:47
Well, happy old year and happy new year. Thank you so much. What a joy it is to get to do this show with you week after week, year after year.
Kevin Roose 2:53
Likewise, my friend.
Casey Newton 2:54
And we have something special today, which is that we are going to do our New Year's tech resolutions, as we do every year, and then we're going to answer some listener questions.
Kevin Roose 3:04
Yes. Yeah, and we truly love doing this. I wish we did it more, to be honest with you, but we have so many great questions from you, our devoted Hardfork listeners, and we thank you for them, and we can't wait to dive into them.
Casey Newton 3:14
So before we set out our new resolutions, let's check in on what we resolved last year at this time. Casey, your resolution last year was to, quote, get medium good at meditation using AI. And I want to ask you how that went.
Kevin Roose 3:30
Well, Kevin, I'm afraid I would have to categorize this one as a major flop. I'm not going to front. When we came into this studio last year to record our resolutions, I had the best of intentions. I had recently begun a meditation practice, and I had found that after I meditated, I could go back to Claude, I was using in this case, to say, hey, I noticed this thing while I was meditating. Give me some guidance maybe for the next time that I do that. And Claude was very good on this front. The thing is, and this is the great mystery of meditation, every single time I did it, I felt very good. However, my instinct to meditate again was non-existent. You know what I mean?

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