Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee says that although headline economic indicators look solid, persistent price pressures, tariffs, and Middle East conflict make this one of the riskiest inflation environments he's encountered. He also addressed how new Fed leadership under Kevin Warsh is reshaping internal dynamics, and described himself as a 'grim optimist' on artificial intelligence, noting the technology's results still lag its hype.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research found that water droplets sliding down smooth surfaces such as glass, leaves, and Teflon-coated copper accumulate an electric charge. When these charged droplets reached copper plates coated with Teflon, they burrowed through the coating and pitted the metal beneath, an effect not seen when water simply dripped straight onto the plates without first sliding across another surface. The findings, published in Nature, also help explain why water moves more slowly than expected across seemingly frictionless smooth surfaces.
EDB contends that as enterprises deploy autonomous AI agents capable of acting without human approval, traditional guardrails built into agent instructions or monitoring layers are insufficient to stop unauthorized actions. Instead, the company argues that governance rules must be enforced directly at the operational data layer, in real time, since agents create risk precisely by touching, querying and transforming data.
A longtime business leader with more than 30 years of cross-industry, international experience is offering career advice focused on human capabilities rather than technical tools. Drawing on decades of managing global teams through growth and disruption, and mentoring employees at all career stages, the leader argues that interpersonal and adaptive skills remain essential even as AI tools become more widespread.
Android System Intelligence (ASI) is a system component baked into Android that powers on-device smart features like Now Playing and Live Caption, and it cannot be uninstalled like a regular app, though many manufacturers let users disable it in Settings. Android Authority found in January 2026 that turning ASI off does not break core phone functions, but it does disable the AI-driven contextual features that rely on it. Google has not published a full list of what stops working per device, leaving some uncertainty for users who disable it entirely.
Meta has settled a lawsuit brought by attorneys general from nearly every US state accusing the company of designing Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to minors and misleading the public about platform safety. As part of the deal, Meta will pay $18 billion toward child online safety and youth mental health programs while rolling out new teen protections, including a two-hour daily usage cap and blocked access between midnight and 6 a.m.
Meta has reached an $18 billion settlement with attorneys general from 52 US states, territories and DC over claims it deliberately designed Instagram to be addictive to teenagers. As part of the deal, Meta will fund youth safety programs and roll out new default restrictions for under-18 users across Instagram and Facebook, including a combined two-hour daily time limit and a midnight-to-6am blackout period.
ZDNET published a curated list of Linux distributions suited for people switching from Windows in 2026, deliberately excluding Linux Mint. Zorin OS tops the list for its Windows-like interface options and a feature that detects when a user tries to install a .exe or .msi file and suggests an open-source alternative from its app store.
Meta shelved a broader round of layoffs tied to its 'Project OT' restructuring effort, which aimed to replace larger teams with AI agents and smaller staff groups. Internal data showed AI-generated code volume jumped 220%, but actual product improvements reaching users grew only 36%, while security incidents rose 40% and time spent fixing them climbed 70%.
OpenAI announced it will begin showing advertisements to users of ChatGPT's Free and Go subscription plans in India, starting with roughly 50 brands via partnerships with ad agencies WPP and Omnicom. The company plans to launch a self-serve ad manager next month, requiring a minimum daily budget of about ₹725 ($7.60) for marketers to run campaigns.
Bentley let Ars Technica ride in a camouflaged prototype of the Torcal, its debut battery-electric model, shorter than the Bentayga but similarly spacious inside. The SUV shares underlying engineering with the Porsche Cayenne EV and targets roughly 300 miles of EPA range with 400 kW DC fast-charging, producing over 850 PS and more than 1,000 Nm of torque.
Companies are consuming AI tokens at explosive rates, with Google processing over 3.2 quadrillion tokens monthly—seven times last year's volume—while Uber exhausted its entire 2026 AI budget by April. Industry voices are proposing nutrition-label-style disclosures that let employees compare a prompt's computational cost against its actual value before using it.
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