The Chancellor is trying to use this moment as a launching pad for a wider attempt to gee up consumer and business confidence. Read...

The viral OpenClaw AI tool has already spawned dozens of imitators on GitHub and has spurred pivots from major AI players like Meta. Now Perplexity is throwing its hat into the personal AI agent arena, with a new tool that can put teams of sub-agents under your command. Unveiled on Wednesday, Computer is being billed as a “general-purpose digital worker that operates the same interfaces you do”–or, as chief Perplexity business officer Dmitry Shevelenko calls it, a “massively multi-model orchestration system.” Sounds like a lot of buzz words, but the bottom line is that Perplexity Computer is yet another agentic AI tool that can actually go out and do things. That puts it in the same category as Meta’s Manus AI and–of course–OpenClaw, the open-source AI tool that kicked off the recent “personal AI agent” craze just a matter of weeks ago. Work on Computer, which is currently available only to Perplexity Max users, began just last month as an “internal experiment,” Shevelenko wrote on LinkedIn. He attributed Computer’s speedy development to the fact that “work that would take weeks for a team was getting done overnight while we slept.” Computer is powered by a variety of different AI models, with Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 running the “core reasoning engine,” Gemini handling deep research projects, Nano Banana creating images, Veo 3.1 crafting videos, Grok helping with “speed in lightweight tasks,” and ChatGPT 5.2 for “long-context recall and wide search.” Like OpenClaw, Perplexity Computer can be set loose on a project–anything from building a web-based dashboard or an app to creating a PowerPoint deck or an animated GIF–and it will devise a plan and eventually deliver a finished product, delegating sub-agents to toil on specific tasks, such as finding API keys, coding, or conducting secondary research. Unlike OpenClaw, Computer (which I’ve yet to try for myself) doesn’t live on your personal hardware. Instead, the Perplexity tool sits in the cloud and performs its work in a walled garden, interacting with outside services via a wide array of integrations. That’s a good thing if you’re worried about AI agents running amok on your system, but it also means Computer is bound by its sandbox, whereas OpenClaw can–if you let it–work directly on your devices. Another key difference is that you communicate with Perplexity Computer via the Perplexity app, whereas OpenClaw and now Manus AI offer chat via commonly used social messaging apps like WhatsApp, Discord, and Telegram.  Perplexity’s Sheveleno noted that he and his team “originally talked to [Computer] via Slack, since it felt more like a digital worker than just an agent,” but eventually decided that it’s “more like a computer, [so] we decided to name it, rebuild it, and launch it as a public product.” Read...

The retailer began expanding into housebuilding in 2020 but it is scrapping those plans to focus on retail instead. Read...

Microsoft users are tough. Gamers are tougher. No one complains more about the direction of a franchise than a customer who just dropped $60 or more on a new PC or Xbox game, only to find it riddled with bugs or a lifeless upgrade. Both sets of traditionally Microsoft customers are currently heading for the door. Why? They feel betrayed. Microsoft has gutted the loyalty programs designed to keep them happy, lifelong customers. But a new leadership team could right these wrongs by refocusing on two programs that have kept them happy: Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft Rewards. Here’s what’s going on. In the last few days, Microsoft’s Xbox leadership has shifted, as Asha Sharma has displaced both Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond as the next leaders of the division. Separately, Microsoft has quietly raised the redemption value of its Microsoft Rewards points. The price of “rewards” like gift cards for Amazon, DoorDash, and Xbox have gone up, diluting their value. The answer, I think, is both obvious and novel: drastically lower the price of Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription services, but only within the Rewards points framework. Why not take your most loyal customers and reward them for engaging with your platform while placing the burden of any price increases on less committed customers? Microsoft Rewards offers easy ways to accumulate Rewards points. It may sound hokey, but it can pay for Microsoft gaming subscriptions and other perks. The solution is right in front of you, Microsoft If you’re unfamiliar with Microsoft Rewards, it’s Microsoft’s loyalty program that’s been around for years. Search on Bing, earn Rewards points. Play a PC game using Xbox Game Pass, ditto: You can earn more points for playing Game Pass games on subsequent days or playing on PC, the cloud, and more. Even better, it’s totally free. I’ve argued before that it doesn’t require that much of a commitment, but it’s also true that Microsoft has made it increasingly harder to trade in Rewards points for something useful. Not only have the values gone up, but Rewards points now can only be used to purchase Xbox gift cards for gaming. You can’t trade in Rewards points directly for a Game Pass subscription. Game Pass today covers both the PC and Xbox. In October, Microsoft also raised the price of Game Pass Ultimate by a whopping 50 percent ($29.99 per month). It has all turned off legions of loyal customers, including PCWorld staffers. (I have points stored up, so I’m still in the program for now.) Here’s what I would do. First, roll back the decision that prevented Rewards loyalists from buying Game Pass subscriptions directly with Rewards points. That was simply a dumb hurdle that pissed people off. Secondly, I’d lower the price of Xbox Game Pass subscriptions and dramatically so — but only when redeemed with Rewards points. Even with lower-cost tiers, Xbox Game Pass still isn’t cheap.Microsoft There’s nothing wrong with buying goodwill You can pay for Game Pass and Microsoft’s other gift cards with cash. But the only way that you can earn Rewards points is by interacting with Microsoft services. Yes, “paying” users with Microsoft scrip for searching and playing games and the like is bribery of a sort, but it’s no worse than a big social-media presence buying followers. I’ve gone back and forth about whether I prefer Bing Search over Google and then vice versa, but for most searches they’re pretty close — and Bing has backed down on AI summaries replacing real search results, at least on the web. Before Microsoft mucked up its Rewards exchange program, you could exchange 35,000 Rewards points for three months of Game Pass Ultimate. Now, 1,000 Rewards points buys you $1 Xbox credit, and Xbox Ultimate costs $29.99 per month, or nearly $90 for a three-month subscription. That’s insane. Think about this, though, Microsoft. Return to the 35,000-point offer for a three-month Ultimate subscription while keeping the $29.99/mo cash price. I’m not arguing that other gift cards need to be changed. It’s currently 10,500 points for a $10 Amazon gift card, and maybe it’s fine to leave it that way. But reducing the Microsoft point price for a Microsoft subscription sends the correct message, which is that Microsoft will reward Microsoft loyalists. I mean, let’s face it. Asha Sharma has moved from Microsoft’s Core AI business to Xbox. If there’s any business that understands spending (gobs of) cash to fund users, it’s the AI token business. Allowing Microsoft fans to partake in a little of that for playing games and searching and more just makes sense. And if people whine, “But that makes me use Bing!“– well, they don’t have to. There’s been talk about whether Sharma is a gamer, or whether the “everything is an Xbox” strategy was a smart idea. No one’s quite sure what a next-gen console might look like, or how it might be priced, with memory and storage in such short supply. Is Xbox just a PC running Windows or something different? All good questions. New leadership, however, is a chance to right past wrongs. And funneling users back into Xbox while easing the pain on their wallets simply seems like a smart idea. Read...

As debate continues over the Government’s proposal, Stuff spoke to rough sleepers and business owners. Read...

The Northen Mariana Islands is open for business and eager to attract private investment to help revive its struggling economy, the governor of the self-governing American territory says. Read...

The new group launched on Wednesday, laying out five areas it said should be the priority to grow the economy and improve outcomes for New Zealanders. Read...

Your laptop has a webcam, but is it any good? It might get the job done, but you deserve a much better webcam that’ll show you in the best possible light in all your Zoom meetings, video calls, online streams, and whatever else you use it for. Get a great one with a 41% discount with this Amazon sale: the Emeet Pixy is now $95 (was $160). This webcam might seem expensive (even on sale!), but it’s a fantastic option if you really want to level up your webcam game. Whether you want to look like a million bucks during work Zoom calls or make the best quality videos for YouTube or Twitch, this webcam is the one. This 4K webcam is the next level up Emeet Pixy 4K AI-Powered Webcam Best Prices Today: $94.99 at Amazon The Emeet Pixy is a dual AI-powered camera with a 4K sensor and a secondary camera that helps optimize autofocus and exposure so you look natural. What makes this thing even better is that it uses intelligent tracking to smoothly follow your movements, featuring a 310-degree pan and 180-degree tilt range, so you’ll always be the center of attention. This webcam also features a 3-microphone array that can filter out background noise, so it’s suitable for podcasts and business meetings, but also for streaming on Twitch or YouTube. Score it with a 41% discount while you can! Deals like this don’t last long. Save 41% on this AI-powered 4K webcamBuy now at Amazon Read...

Microsoft’s gaming business is in a bit of a state right now. Yesterday, Xbox/Microsoft gaming CEO Phil Spencer, a Microsoft veteran of nearly 40 years and an original Xbox team member, resigned… as did his second-in-command, the architect of the “This is an Xbox” marketing push. The incoming executive is Asha Sharma, formerly the head of product development for CoreAI. Uh oh. Spencer was something of a darling for both gamers and the media, but there’s no denying that Xbox has been struggling. The current generation Series X/S is being outsold by the PS5 two-to-one after similar performance over the last decade-plus, and Microsoft seems more interested in getting its huge, expensive collection of properties on other hardware. Things got so bad last year, after the unpopular consoles got an unprecedented mid-cycle price increase, that it was rumored major retailers were dropping Xbox completely. That turned out to be overblown… but suffice it to say, there’s not a lot of reason to buy an Xbox if you have basically any other gaming device right now. So, as a more conventional business leader coming into the gaming space, Sharma will have an uphill battle to revive a floundering brand. It certainly doesn’t help that gamers, already wary of “AI” infecting more and more of their hobby, will be extra critical of someone whose last job was all about LLM. But according to an interview with Variety, Sharma considers herself a “platform builder,” which is certainly something Xbox and Microsoft gaming could use at the moment. In an apparent rebuke of the reportedly unpopular “This is an Xbox” campaign, she remarked that she would oversee a “return to Xbox.” But what about the elephant in the room, the one that’s suspiciously smooth with two trunks and five legs? On the topic of “AI” in gaming, she had this to say: “AI has long been part of gaming and will continue to be […] great stories are created by humans.” She added that she has “no tolerance for bad AI.” Okay. That’s a lot of executive speak, and the intentional obfuscation of game AI (such as NPC behavior, physics simulation, etc.) with the modern use of the term is a big red flag. The qualifier of “bad AI” isn’t exactly comforting, either—there’s a huge amount of wiggle room there. A lot of Windows users would consider Copilot, Microsoft’s flagship consumer and business LLM, to be “bad AI.” Yet that didn’t stop the company from proclaiming it the “best” Windows productivity app. I find it hard to believe that Microsoft won’t lean on LLMs to cut costs, with quality as a far second concern. It’s not as if they’d be the only ones to do that—AI slop is practically filling up the Steam store, and Epic’s perennially annoying CEO seems absolutely in love with the stuff, among many other triple-A bigwigs. Without some more defined terms, I find the statements given to Variety to be pretty meaningless. But Microsoft is desperate to get its gaming business in a better place as it fends off assaults from Sony and Nintendo on the console side and Valve on the PC side. Microsoft is still reportedly hoping to get a new AMD-powered Xbox out within the next few years… but if something doesn’t change, it could go the way of the Dreamcast. Read...

Cordial Homes left behind unhappy customers and contractors. Now, its “silver tongued” director has left the country, and his former business partner has been bankrupted. Read...