Borrowed reading: stories from our extended colleagues

Readers don’t typically care who owns what media property, we realize, but last year, we became part of a broader portfolio, a move that has come with some decided benefits, including what amounts to a bigger extended family with cool cousins. Now, in addition to our TechCrunch channels in Slack, we can talk with the writers and editors of CIO, Computerworld, and PCWorld, among other outlets. We also find ourselves reading more of their work and figured you might like it, too. Here’s a handful of pieces I was just enjoying while watching the Warriors-Clippers game, which, as I type, is a little too close for comfort: Apple recently put a faster chip into the iPad mini and gave it an OLED screen, improving its color reproduction and also allowing it to slim down the display panel, and still, Macworld’s David Price isn’t entirely convinced it matters. In his view, Apple has built the “world’s fanciest horse and cart,” just as a Tesla Roadster with SpaceX thrusters has appeared on the scene in the form of the new foldable iPhone Duo. In short, he sees the mini as a Duo you can’t close. It’s a fun read, one that ends with a surprisingly practical plan to save this product. Google has a new laptop platform, the Googlebook, and Mark Hachman of PCWorld spent time with the Lenovo Googlebook 15 specifically, so you don’t have to. Hachman’s verdict on this one is a hard pass, with cons that include “I hate the keyboard,” which he means so literally that he gave up writing the review on it, “webcam biometrics work sporadically,” and, for good measure, “battery life isn’t great.” (He does like the $479 Chromebook at less than half the price.) If you’ve been wondering whether this is the laptop you’ve been waiting for, wonder no longer! You shared your secrets and insecurities with a chatbot, and now its parent company has gone belly up. In Computerworld, Mike Elgan looks at what happens to your confessions when the AI company that absorbed them announces Chapter 11. (Yes, this is largely centered on Character. Grove was talking about the chip industry, but some would argue that’s solid advice generally.) PCWorld’s Ben Patterson built a security-minded AI agent to keep his data safe, then, surprise, the agent snitched on its own loophole.