Robots, Regulators & Real Talk: The Tech Stories Shaping Your World Today

Happy Friday — and what a week it's been in the tech world. Today's edition sits right at the heart of some genuinely fascinating questions: who holds power in the digital age, and who gets protected? Grab your coffee and let's dig in.

🌟 Top Story

A Robot Monk Named Buddharoid Is Now Answering Life's Hardest Questions — 24/7

A Kyoto temple just deployed an AI-powered robot monk called Buddharoid, trained on Buddhist scriptures via a ChatGPT-based system, to offer round-the-clock spiritual guidance to visitors dealing with anxiety, family struggles, and more. Developed at Kyoto University, the project addresses a very real crisis: nearly 30% of Japan's Buddhist temples could shut down by 2040 due to aging clergy and shrinking communities. Whether you see it as a spiritual lifeline or a philosophical puzzle, this story raises beautiful — and unsettling — questions about faith, technology, and what it means to truly listen.

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⚡ Quick Hits

• Your Living Room Could Power the Internet — Seriously NodeLink's NX1 device taps your home's idle bandwidth and computing power to build a community-owned digital infrastructure, rewarding participants with VPN, ad blocking, and network benefits at no extra cost. 👉 Read More

• Big Tech on Trial: A Woman Speaks Up About What Algorithms Did to Her Childhood A 20-year-old California woman became the first person to testify before a jury in a landmark case against Meta and Google, alleging their platforms were deliberately engineered to hook children — and left her with depression, anxiety, and body image struggles starting at age 9. 👉 Read More

• Japan Just Raided Microsoft — And It's Not Alone Japan's Fair Trade Commission conducted a raid on Microsoft Japan over allegations that the company made it difficult for Azure cloud customers to use competing services, joining regulators in the UK, EU, Brazil, and the US who are all asking similar questions. 👉 Read More

🤖 AI

• Stop Guessing Which Creator Videos Will Actually Sell Billo's CreativeOps platform uses data from over 326,000 video ads and half a billion dollars in tracked purchases to help brands identify which creator content will genuinely convert — before they pour money into it. 👉 Read More

📋 Reviews

• The Resume Upgrade Your Career Might Actually Need in 2026 TechTimes rounds up the top-rated professional resume writing services this year — from budget-friendly options for college grads to executive-level packages with 60-day interview guarantees — and breaks down exactly what to look for. 👉 Read More

📖 Daily Devotional Thought

The story of Buddharoid — a robot trying to offer comfort to anxious, hurting people at all hours — reminds me of Psalm 46:1: "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble." No machine, however advanced, can replace the presence of a God who truly knows us. But it's worth pausing to notice that even in technology, humanity keeps searching for something that listens, something that never sleeps, something that cares. May you find rest today knowing you are already known and loved by the One who never powers down.

Thanks for reading — you're the reason we put this together every morning. If today's edition got you thinking, pass it along to a friend who could use a good conversation starter this weekend.