Tech

Thanks to a widget launched with a new update announced today. I do like the mock trending topics in this image, though the “Bluesky users turn 39” entry hits a little close to home. Let me go stretch while I think about it.

Meta settled the latest set of claims about how its design affected a teen’s mental health, the parties confirm. YouTube and TikTok previously settled, leaving Snap the last defendant standing. Meta spokesperson Liza Crenshaw says settlements like this are common in this process. There’s plenty more left to be tried.

Android Authority spotted code in a beta version of the Android Google app (v17.71.17) referencing the new mode, with the tagline, “Use Gemini Live without an internet connection.” They say the code doesn’t hint at how the local-only Gemini Live mode would work, though, or whether it would support camera and screen-sharing features.

As part of the acquisition, which was disclosed under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, Apple will “make employment offers to and hire certain employees” at Ascend.io, a startup that specializes in agentic data engineering. An update on Ascend.io’s website says the startup is “winding down operations as we prepare for our next great adventure.”

The company already makes spatial reality displays for professional applications like medical imaging, but its new ELF-MN1 will target consumers when it launches in Japan on December 11th for around $343. Powered by a connected smartphone or PC, the 6-inch, 3,840 x 2,160-pixel display uses eye-tracking to create a convincing stereoscopic image that can be viewed at up to a 25-degree angle off the center of the screen.

The strange-looking Signature 27 — an Android flagship poised to rival the S26 Ultra, with a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip and Bang & Olufsen speakers — is nearly here. Motorola says it’ll reveal the rest of the phone next week. Will we find out Graphene’s software support plans then too?

The fanworks platform announced yesterday that it could be down for four weeks, and now we know why. Details about the security incident itself haven’t been shared, but no AO3 data has been deleted, and the site runners currently don’t believe that user account information was stolen, but are “unable to rule it out.”

As reported by Business Insider, Instagram offered some YouTube creators $50,000 to post videos to its new “Features” video format, while others received offers up to $500,000. “We’ve been public about the fact that we are funding Features content directly with some creators right now to support them,” a Meta spokesperson tells Business Insider.

The company launched Jules in December 2024, positioning it as a tool that can complete coding jobs “you don’t want to do.” But now, Jules is shutting down, and Google says it will bring its learnings from the tool into its AI coding platform, Antigravity:

Steve Jobs once said touchscreen laptops were a terrible idea. Now Apple is shipping one. The Verge’s Antonio Di Benedetto tells us all about the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR, how MacOS is changing for touch, why a laptop user might want a touchscreen, and whether MacBook and iPad are destined to become one.

“Our newer businesses, ranging from Grocery to Pharmacy to Amazon Leo to Zoox are progressing encouragingly,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says as part of the company’s Q3 earnings report, which revealed total revenue of $201.9 billion. “There has never been a trillion dollar revenue business, and we may have two of them in the next 5-10 years.”

Polymarket said it paused trading “out of an abundance of caution” after one of its third-party partners was “compromised.” Some users reported that their accounts were drained shortly before the stoppage. “We’ll make this right and are fully reimbursing all affected traders,” Polymarket said.

Three weeks ago, I told you a free mod for a 10-year-old game is one of the best things I’ve ever played in VR. That wasn’t an exaggeration, and now it has multiplayer. Last night, I grappling-hooked and wall-ran and summoned titans from the sky to battle human foes. At 2AM, I still wanted more. Join me?

Fanworks hub Archive of Our Own is no stranger to downtime, but an as-yet-unexplained outage of potentially up to a month — announced on the site’s status page — is going to send a lot of fanfic writers scrambling:

The judge in Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI has set a trial start date of July 19th, 2027, as reported by 9to5Mac.

However, the company has seen “promising results” with its ad experiments, chief business officer Philipp Schindler said on yesterday’s earnings call.

The KB5127936 update includes a cloud rebuild feature that restores the OS and your device drivers from Windows Update when your PC is unable to boot. It requires an internet connection, but spares you from needing to keep a recovery USB drive handy, and doesn’t relying on the integrity of the current installation.

Memory executive Jaejune Kim said in the company’s latest quarterly earnings call that “tight supply conditions” will continue in 2028, driven by demand from AI. As it predicted, Samsung reported record quarterly revenue of 195.3 trillion Korean Won ($146.3 billion), and said its 2027 supply of HBM RAM is already sold out.

In July, the LAPD suspended its use of Flock’s cameras over concerns about how the company was handling its data. Now it’s rolling out hundreds of ALPRs from competitor Axon. The company has so far escaped the backlash Flock faced, but it’ll likely face growing scrutiny as it fills the gaps left by canceled Flock contracts.

After making Large 4 available in a public preview earlier this month, Mistral is now releasing an improved version to everyone, which it says ranks as the “best open-weight model for coding.” The model offers advancements in cybersecurity-related tasks, like creating patches or reproducing vulnerabilities, and is more likely to refuse “malicious cyber requests” compared to other open models, according to Mistral.

Reuters reports that Finnish police said the criminal probe will look into “ambiguities and shortcomings in the drainage and water management at the construction site.” Google also reportedly cleared forests around the data center site near Muhos, Finland before completing required environmental impact assessments.