There’s a lever on the back for this compression mechanism that you manually press down and a separate button to open the dustbin at the bottom. You can use the compression lever when it’s both closed and open. It did help compress the hair and dust while I was vacuuming, helping me see if I had really filled the bin, though at a certain point it doesn’t compress much more. It was helpful to push debris out if needed too, versus the times I’ve had to stick my hand in both the Dyson and Shark to get the stuck hair and dust out. Dyson has this same feature on the Piston Animal V16, which is due out this year, so I’ll be curious to see which mechanism is better engineered.

Bendable Winner: Shark

If you’re looking for a vacuum that can bend to reach under furniture, I prefer the Shark to the Bosch. Both have a similar mechanism and feel, but the Bosch tended to push debris around when I was using it with an active bend, while the Shark managed to vacuum up debris I couldn’t get with the Bosch without lifting it and placing it on top of that particular debris (in this case, rogue cat kibble).

Accessory Winner: Dyson

Dyson pulls ahead because the Dyson Gen5 Detect comes with three attachments and two heads. You’ll get a Motorbar head, a Fluffy Optic head, a hair tool, a combination tool, and a dusting and crevice tool that’s actually built into the stick tube. I love that it’s built into the vacuum so that it’s one less separate attachment to carry around, and it makes me more likely to use it.

But Bosch does well in this area, too. You’ll get an upholstery nozzle, a furniture brush, and a crevice nozzle. It’s one more attachment than you’ll get with Shark, and Bosch also includes a wall mount that you can wire the charging cord into for storage and charging, and you can mount two attachments on it. But I will say, I like that Shark includes a simple tote bag to store the attachments in. The rest of my attachments are in plastic bags for each vacuum, and keeping track of attachments is the most annoying part of a cordless vacuum.

Build Winner: Tie

Photograph: Nena Farrell

All three of these vacuums have a good build quality, but each one feels like it focuses on something different. Bosch feels the lightest of the three and stands up the easiest on its own, but all three do need something to lean against to stay upright. The Dyson is the worst at this; it also needs a ledge or table wedged under the canister, or it’ll roll forward and tip over. The Bosch has a sleek black look and a colorful LED screen that will show you a picture of carpet or hardwood depending on what mode it’s vacuuming in. The vacuum head itself feels like the lightest plastic of the bunch, though.

Brandon Herrera, a prominent gun influencer with over 4 million followers on YouTube, said in a video posted this week that while it was unfortunate that Pretti died, ultimately the fault was his own.

“Pretti didn’t deserve to die, but it also wasn’t just a baseless execution,” Herrera said, adding without evidence that Pretti’s purpose was to disrupt ICE operations. “If you’re interfering with arrests and things like that, that’s a crime. If you get in the fucking officer’s way, that will probably be escalated to physical force, whether it’s arresting you or just getting you the fuck out of the way, which then can lead to a tussle, which, if you’re armed, can lead to a fatal shooting.” He described the situation as “lawful but awful.”

Herrera was joined in the video by former police officer and fellow gun influencer Cody Garrett, known online as Donut Operator.

Both men took the opportunity to deride immigrants, with Herrera saying “every news outlet is going to jump onto this because it’s current thing and they’re going to ignore the 12 drunk drivers who killed you know, American citizens yesterday that were all illegals or H-1Bs or whatever.”

Herrera also referenced his “friend” Kyle Rittenhouse, who has become central to much of the debate about the shooting.

On August 25, 2020, Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, traveled from his home in Illinois to a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, brandishing an AR-15-style rifle, claiming he was there to protect local businesses. He killed two people and shot another in the arm that night.

Critics of ICE’s actions in Minneapolis quickly highlighted what they saw as the hypocrisy of the right’s defense of Rittenhouse and attacks on Pretti.

“Kyle Rittenhouse was a conservative hero for walking into a protest actually brandishing a weapon, but this guy who had a legal permit to carry and already had had his gun removed is to some people an instigator, when he was actually going to help a woman,” Jessica Tarlov, a Democratic strategist, said on Fox News this week.

Rittenhouse also waded into the debate, writing on X: “The correct way to approach law enforcement when armed,” above a picture of himself with his hands up in front of police after he killed two people. He added in another post that “ICE messed up.”

The claim that Pretti was to blame was repeated in private Facebook groups run by armed militias, according to data shared with WIRED by the Tech Transparency Project, as well as on extremist Telegram channels.

“I’m sorry for him and his family,” one member of a Facebook group called American Patriots wrote. “My question though, why did he go to these riots armed with a gun and extra magazines if he wasn’t planning on using them?”

Some extremist groups, such as the far-right Boogaloo movement, have been highly critical of the administration’s comments on being armed at a protest.

“To the ‘dont bring a gun to a protest’ crowd, fuck you,” one member of a private Boogaloo group wrote on Facebook this week. “To the fucking turn coats thinking disarming is the answer and dont think it would happen to you as well, fuck you. To the federal government who I’ve watched murder citizens just for saying no to them, fuck you. Shall not be infringed.”

It was November 12, 2016, four days after Donald Trump won his first presidential election. Aside from a few outliers (looking at you, Peter Thiel), almost everyone in the tech world was shocked and appalled. At a conference I attended that Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it was “a pretty crazy idea” to think that his company had anything to do with the outcome. The following Saturday, I was leaving my favorite breakfast place in downtown Palo Alto when I ran into Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. We knew each other, but at that point, I had never really sat down with him to do a deep interview. But this was a moment when raw emotions were triggering all sorts of conversations, even between journalists and famously cautious executives. We ended up talking for what must have been 20 minutes.

I won’t go into the particulars of a private conversation. But it will surprise no one to hear what was mutually understood on that streetcorner: We were two people stunned at what had happened and shared the same unspoken belief that it was not good.

I have thought back to that day many times, certainly last year when Cook gifted President Trump a glitzy Apple sculpture with a 24k gold base, and most recently this past weekend when he attended a White House screening of the $40 million vanity documentary about Melania Trump. The event, which also included Amazon CEO Andy Jassy (whose company funded the project) and AMD CEO Lisa Su, took place only hours after the Trump administration’s masked army in Minneapolis put 10 bullets into 37-year-old Department of Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Also, a snowstorm was coming, which would have provided a good excuse to miss an event that might very well haunt its attendees for the rest of their lives. But there was Cook, feting a competitor’s media product, looking sharp in a tuxedo, and posing with the movie’s director, who hadn’t worked since he was accused of sexual misconduct or harassment by half a dozen women. (He has denied the allegations.)

Cook’s presence reflects the behavior of many of his peers in the trillion-dollar tech CEO club, all of whom run businesses highly vulnerable to the president’s potential ire. During Trump’s first term, CEOs of companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google straddled a tightrope between objecting to policies that violated their company’s values and cooperating with the federal government. In the past year, however, their default strategy, executed with varying degrees of enthusiasm, has been to lavishly flatter the president and cut deals where Trump can claim wins. These executives have also funneled millions toward Trump’s inauguration, his future presidential library, and the humongous ballroom that he is building to replace the demolished East Wing of the White House. In return, the corporate leaders hoped to blunt the impact of tariffs and avoid onerous regulations.

This behavior disappointed a lot of people, including me. When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, he was seen as a civic hero, but now he is molding the opinion pages of that venerable institution into that of a White House cheerleader. Zuckerberg once cofounded a group that advocated for immigration reform and penned an op-ed bemoaning the uncertain future of a young entrepreneur he was coaching who happened to be undocumented. Last year, Zuckerberg formally cut ties with the group, but by then he had already positioned himself as a Trump toady.

When Googlers protested Trump’s immigration policies during his first term, cofounder Sergey Brin joined their march. “I wouldn’t be where I am today or have any kind of the life that I have today if this was not a brave country that really stood out and spoke for liberty,” said Brin, whose family had escaped Russia when he was 6. Today, families like his are being pulled out of their cars and classrooms, sent to detention centers, and flown out of the country. Brin and fellow cofounder Larry Page built their search engine on the kind of government grant that the Trump administration no longer supports. Nonetheless, Brin is a Trump supporter. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, himself an immigrant, oversaw Google’s $22 million contribution to the White House ballroom and was among tech grandees flattering Trump at a September White House dinner where CEOs competed to see who could pander to Trump the most insincerely. Another immigrant, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, once slammed Trump’s first-term policies as “cruel and abusive.” In 2025, he was among those offering hosannas to the president.