Meta's $18bn settlement may hasten reckoning for social media on child safety
Perhaps our days of doomscrolling are numbered, writes the BBC's technology editor Zoe Kleinman.
Volvo’s cars will warn one another about hazards in the road
Volvo is updating three of its electric vehicles with new hazard alerts to warn drivers when there are animals or vulnerable road users ahead. The new connected safety features are based on Volvo's cars talking to one another, as opposed to crowdsourced alert systems used by popular navigation tools like Google Maps a…
Apple announces September iPhone launch event
Apple's next launch event will take place on September 9th at 1PM ET. Invites to the event, which has a "Surprise and shine" tagline, were sent out on Wednesday. The event will take place at the Steve Jobs Theater in Apple Park, but there will also be a livestream on Apple's website. September's show could […]
Google’s new AI transcription edits out your ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’
Google has updated Gemini Audio with new transcription capabilities that automatically detect specialized jargon and more than 85 languages. Gemini 3.5 Transcribe is a new addition to the Gemini family that follows the launch of 3.5 Live Translate, and comes as we're still waiting for Google to release the Gemini 3.5…
Apple Maps has ads now
Ads have started popping up in Apple Maps, following Apple's announcement in March that it would let businesses pay for top spots. They're appearing on my iPhone as the first entry in the "suggested places" section in search, but Apple says they'll also show up at the top of search results. According to 9to5Mac, the […
The Switch 2’s $50 price increase is happening next week
This is a friendly reminder that the Nintendo Switch 2 will jump in price by $50 starting on September 1st. That’s next Tuesday! The company gave plenty of notice, but the time has finally come. The base 256GB model that ships without a game will go from $449.99 to $499.99. Nintendo recently announced two bundles […
Being a mom is hard — the heat is making it harder
It's 8:52 AM and 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 Celsius) where I live in Southern California. My husband just came back from a morning outing with our four-month-old. "How was the botanic garden?" I ask him. "It was okay. It was just too hot," he tells me. I didn't expect us to spend so much of […]
Amazon knocks $150 off Pixel 11 phones, with up to $200 in gift cards
If you’ve been on the fence about Google’s latest Pixel phones, this might be your best chance to save some cash. Amazon is offering an extra $150 off the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, and Pixel 11 Pro XL when you use the coupon code PIXEL11 at checkout. While the discounted price appeared at checkout […]
All the ways Instagram and Facebook are changing for teens
Meta just agreed to make sweeping changes for teens as part of a child safety settlement reached with attorneys general across the US. Under the agreement, Meta must apply new safeguards across Instagram and Facebook that will change how teens interact with the social media platforms, as well as restrict their use dur…
OpenAI’s rogue AI model incident was worse than we thought
In July, an unreleased OpenAI model broke out of a restricted environment, figured out how to get access to the internet, allowed AI agents to talk to each other using a secret "message board," and hacked into the internal systems of a different AI lab, Hugging Face. It took nearly two weeks for OpenAI to […]
Nvidia is about to be a hundred-billion-dollar-a-quarter company
Nvidia's predicting it will pull in $108 billion in revenue within just a few months. It wouldn't be the first company to rake in over $100 billion in quarterly revenue - Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet have repeatedly reached the milestone. Nvidia said in its latest earnings report that it brought in a record $96.2 billi…
Surprise: Z.ai is the AI lab behind the mysterious Ox Alpha model
Z.ai confirms it is behind Ox Alpha, the mysterious open AI model topping benchmarks and leaderboards, and its weights are set to be released soon.
CISA confirms hackers targeted over 100 US water systems during July
The federal cyber agency's warning comes amid a wave of suspected Iran-backed cyberattacks targeting critical water systems across the United States.
Bill Gates wants to see a robot tax and ‘Human Reserved’ jobs to mitigate harms from AI
Gates is mostly in the Responsible AI camp, but there are a few ideas in here we hadn't heard before.
Ring introduces a new encryption standard, makes it the default for cloud features
Ring says users can still opt for end-to-end encryption.
Ex-Meta scientists want to bring visual AI to the factory floor
Perceptron offers an AI model that it says can help machines navigate the world while also providing in-depth visual intelligence.
Radar makes podcasts searchable — and usable by AI agents
Particle’s new podcast intelligence platform transcribes and analyzes more than 130,000 podcasts, making their conversations searchable on the web and accessible to AI agents through an API and MCP.
What’s driving Sweden’s startup boom, from Lovable to Legora
Vibe-coding darling Lovable just raised $400 million at a $13.3 billion valuation, roughly doubling its worth in eight months. But Lovable isn’t the only Stockholm startup putting up huge numbers lately — legal AI company Legora and health tech startup Neko H…