Thanks to Magzter, I found TechLife News – and it’s worth your time

My last post here was about how I’ve always been a magazine fan, an offshoot of my news junkie roots. And about how I found an interesting one at the grocery store called, I kid you not, “How to Hack Your Life with Chat GPT.”

So in these digital days, I subscribe to Magzter, which offers a pretty great array of magazines (and newspapers) I read on my Nook tablet.

But I’ve really come to love one magazine there you’ll never find on a newsstand.

It’s called TechLife News, and it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty great.

It has some of the same AI/tech news you’ll find elsewhere, but many other unique articles in its weekly 200-plus pages (yep, it uses big photos/graphics to illustrate articles, but it’s pretty meaty)!

At times, it gets very Apple-centric, and for a longtime Windows guy (I have the Version 1.0 manuals in my computer/tech museum, near my stuffed Y2K bug, my Walkman, etc.) who does use a Mac at work, it’s not my main topic of interest.

But here’s a link to the latest cover story, “Anthropic CEO Unsure if AI Models are Conscious,” that hits points I’ve not read anywhere else – and I get a lot of AI newsletters, Medium articles etc.

https://www.magzter.com/share/mag/7185/2357850/48

“Users may great AI as if it has feelings or awareness, regardless of its underlying architecture,” it says.

“This dynamic introduces ethical questions about transparency and design. Should AI systems be built to avoid appearing sentient? Should they explicitly clarify their lack of consciousness in certain contexts?”

Whoa. That so invites going down the rabbit hole of that topic itself.

But that’s not the point of this post – it’s about this super, weekly compendium of tech and AI-related news, in a super-comfortable magazine style. Deep articles that respect your intelligence and avoid sounding like everyone else’s breathless prose.

I had Perplexity go look, and sure enough, it’s not available as a stand-alone magazine (or related website). You have to subscribe to some service like Magzter Zinio Unlimited, Flipster or see if it’s available through your local library.

Speaking of rabbit holes, I did go down a related one – the magazine’s masthead, to find the editors, both to give them a shout-out and along with the kudos… well, as a guy living at the intersection of AI and journalism, I thought maybe I could write for them some time;-)

It’s interestingly weird (or weirdly interesting) that the articles themselves don’t have bylines. Even Perplexity couldn’t find anything out about the company behind it, beyond the listed publisher name, Mindfield Digital.

Some or most or all of the pieces may be AI-assisted or even AI-written.

But I don’t care.

I just want to enjoy reading well-written pieces on a variety of interesting tech things, and… this week’s edition ranges from articles on driverless delivery vehicles being tested in Tokyo, ExxonMobil moving its legal home to Texas, that Google Maps overhaul, that new MacBook Neo (of course) and a study that finds teens spend ONE-THIRD of their day on smartphones.

And lots more! You get the gist.

Yes, Flipboard lets you customize and read a lot about any topic under the sun, linking to the sources. But this digital mag is apparently all staff-written or assisted, and the style is consistently great! Very deep and interesting, but not a regurgitated press release or corporate suck-up.

It reminds me of the good ol’ days of phone-book-sized Byte, Computer Shopper and PC Magazine. (But without all the ads, just content!)

Here’s Mr. Perplexity’s review summary: “In an era drowned in AI‑generated tech filler, TechLife News somehow lands on the right side of the line—using whatever tools they use to produce something that still feels curated, purposeful, and weirdly human.”

So even if I can’t find the humans and/or machines that do it, I at least want to give Mindfield Digital a big THANK YOU for someone who wants to believe magazines are sticking around, and not just as $14.99 ‘Special Editions’ at the supermarket.