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Social media apps: Better child protection, paid storage, ad-free subscriptions

Today brings a little flurry of social media app news, including better child protection measures in Meta’s AI chatbot; an expansion of ad-free subscriptions for Facebook and Instagram; and Snapchat starting to charge storage fees for higher volumes of Memories … Better child protection measures Both Meta and OpenAI have acknowledged that AI chatbots need stronger child protection measures. OpenAI The New York Times recently reported that ChatGPT encouraged a suicidal teen to hide a noose in

Material You who? Chrome for Android could get its own color theming

Andy Walker / Android Authority TL;DR Google is testing new customization features for Chrome on Android. In addition to the Material You theming options, Google is evaluating the option for a separate color palette in Chrome. These features are currently being tested alongside the option to apply an image as a background. Ever since the rollout of Google’s Material You theme a few years ago, Chrome has been among the apps that seamlessly adapt to the system-wide color palette. However, with

The 3 Best Coffee Subscription Deals for National Coffee Day 2025

It's September 29, the day that America celebrates its least guilty vice and addiction, known in the streets as “java” or “joe.” That's right, it's National Coffee Day—the day that thousands of people burn $2 worth of gas waiting in a drive-thru to get a free $2 cup of coffee from Dunkin'. Or how about this instead? Get free or cheap coffee without leaving your house, like a civilized person in the age of the internet. Take advantage of online coffee subscription deals instead. WIRED has long

Handy – Free open-source speech-to-text app written in Rust

Video Transcript CJ: Hello, I'm CJ and I want to show you Handy. Handy is an open source speech-to-text application that you can run on your own computer. Simply press a keyboard shortcut, speak, and release, and Handy will paste whatever you said into the text field you're typing into. Let's take a look at the settings menu for Handy, and it's really simple. You have a push-to-talk mode that you can enable, this is enabled by default so you press and hold the keys or alternatively you can tur

You can now buy Beats Solo Buds, Studio 4, and Studio Pro in these new colors, sort of

Following a leak earlier this month, Beats has launched a few new color options for the Beats Solo Buds, Beats Studio Pro, and Beats Solo 4. But depending on where you live, you might not be able to get them. Here’s why. Retail-exclusive in the UK, US, and Australia As spotted by MacRumors, Beats appears to have made a few partnerships with select retailers around the world to offer new color options across its line. In Australia, for instance, users can find the new Matte Ivory Beats Solo Bu

Process Tracing Projects

This page is editable! Feel free to add similar projects, with good descriptions Note: I haven't tried most of these projects; I use the more basic mechanisms at Process Tracing Tips and Tools Projects Cool Demo with Linux kernel netlink interface Not Open Source Nice Visualizations

Meta announces paid subscriptions for both Instagram and Facebook in the UK

Facebook and Instagram users in the UK will soon be offered paid subscriptions that remove ads. In the coming weeks, those over the age of 18 can pay £3 ($4) per month on the web, or £4 ($5) per month when using Meta’s iOS or Android apps. If you're wondering why the mobile version is more expensive, Meta blames that on fees levied by Apple and Google in their respective app stores. A no-ads subscription will apply to any Facebook and Instagram account added to a Meta Accounts Center , which is

Instagram’s ‘pay or consent’ approach to ads is coming to UK after being rejected in EU

Robert Hart is a London-based reporter at The Verge covering all things AI and Senior Tarbell Fellow. Previously, he wrote about health, science and tech for Forbes. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Meta is bringing its “pay or consent” ad model to the UK after months of wrangling with regulators over the controversial policy. The update will force Instagram and Facebook users to pick between being served up personalized ads or shelling ou

ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in encrypted apps

The European Union wants to force tech companies to scan your private messages & images, even in your favorite encrypted apps. The 🇪🇺 European Union is advancing legislation that could fundamentally change how we communicate online. ChatControl would require all messaging platforms to automatically scan their users’ private messages and images. Yes, even encrypted ones like Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. No, you can’t opt out. This isn’t just another privacy policy update you can ignore. If p

How to upgrade your 'incompatible' Windows 10 PC to Windows 11 - for free today

BrasilNut1/iStock/Getty Images Plus Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Most PCs from the last 15 years can run Windows 11, even if they fail compatability. PCs sold with Windows 10 can usually upgrade after a quick registry edit. On older or unusually configured PCs, a third-party utility gets the job done. On Oct. 14, 2025, Microsoft will stop delivering security updates to your Windows 10 PC unless you enroll that PC in the Extended Security Updat

Amazon pays $2.5 billion to settle Prime memberships lawsuit

Amazon will pay $2.5 billion to settle claims by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it used dark patterns to trick millions of users into enrolling in its Prime program and made it as difficult as possible to cancel the recurring subscriptions. The settlement requires Amazon to pay a $1 billion civil penalty and provide $1.5 billion in refunds to an estimated 35 million consumers affected by the company's deceptive practices related to Prime enrollment. "The evidence showed that Amaz

Amazon to pay $2.5B in FTC settlement over ‘deceptive’ Prime tactics

Amazon has agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over allegations that it duped users into paying for Prime subscriptions and made it hard to cancel memberships. The company will be required to pay a $1 billion civil penalty and provide $1.5 billion in refunds to an estimated 35 million consumers harmed by the company’s “deceptive Prime enrollment practices,” the FTC says. Amazon is also required to stop its “unlawful enrollment and cancellation

Amazon will pay $2.5 billion to settle the FTC’s Prime lawsuit

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Amazon has agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, which claimed it tricked millions of customers into subscribing to Prime and made it hard to cancel. Under the agreement, Amazon will pay a $1 billion civil penalty, al

AT&T customers will soon get their own AI receptionist to answer calls and block spam

AT&T Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways AT&T's digital receptionist will use AI to screen your calls. The goal is to determine if a call is legitimate or spam. The feature will roll out this year as a test for select AT&T customers. How often do you receive a call from an unknown number and debate whether to answer it? Spam calls continue to plague us all, often making us hesitant to answer our phones unless we know who's calling. Now AT&T is turni

Zoox asks federal regulators for exemption to launch a commercial robotaxi service

In Brief Zoox has asked federal regulators for an exemption that would allow the Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company to commercially deploy its custom-built robotaxis, which lack traditional controls like pedals and a steering wheel. The exemption request was first reported by Bloomberg. A Zoox spokesperson confirmed that it has submitted a petition for a “555 exemption” and continues to work closely with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration through this new exemption process

The vibe is off: OnePlus 15 may feel less premium with haptic downgrade

TL;DR A leak suggests that the OnePlus 15 may have a downgraded haptic motor. The phone will reportedly have an AAC ESA1016 (560mm²) motor. For comparison, the haptic motor on the OnePlus 13 is an AAC CSA+0916 Turbo (602mm²). The pieces of the OnePlus 15 puzzle are slowly coming together, leak after leak. Based on the information we have so far, it looks like the Android flagship will come with at least a few compromises. Adding to that list of compromises is a new leak related to the haptic

CEO Pumping Out Thousands of AI Slop Podcasts Says Her Critics Are “Luddites”

The CEO of a company that’s pumping out thousands of lazily AI-generated podcasts thinks everybody is complaining too much about having AI slop shoved down their throats. Inception Point AI CEO Jeanine Wright told the Hollywood Reporter that “people who are still referring to all AI-generated content as AI slop are probably lazy luddites.” It’s an incendiary comment, likely aimed to provoke a debate. While the billions the AI industry is spending to help students cheat on their homework are co

How HubSpot Scaled AI Adoption

This post is intended to be the first in a series about empowering product, UX, and engineering teams with AI. We’re going to focus on how we’ve approached and scaled the use of AI in the context of writing code. AI has fundamentally transformed how we build software at HubSpot. Over the past two years, we've gone from cautious experimentation to achieving near universal adoption of AI coding tools across our engineering organization. This transformation didn't happen overnight. It required st

I Spent Three Nights Solving Listen Labs Berghain Challenge (and Got #16)

When a cryptic billboard led to the most addictive coding challenge of 2025 Optimization problems are quite literally digital crack cocaine. Once you get a taste of turning 1,200 rejections into 1,150, then 1,000, then watching that number drop digit by agonizing digit - you’re hooked (even when each run takes ~40 minutes). And when Listen Labs accidentally created the most engaging technical challenge of 2025 with their Berghain Challenge, I found myself tumbling down a rabbit hole that would

How to cancel your Disney+ subscription

The inevitable has happened and Disney+ has once again announced that prices will be going up for its streaming service. Whether it's because of the ever-increasing costs or because of the company's recent teetering toward censorship or because you simply aren't using it, you may decide it's time to take a break. Here's everything you need to know about canceling your Disney+ subscription. How to cancel via web or mobile The simplest way to end your Disney+ service is if you're being billed di

Imagining a language without booleans

Imagining a Language without Booleans Let’s start where I started. Just thinking about if statements. An if with an else can produce a value: // C int x = - 5 ; int abs_x = x > 0 ? x : - x ; # Python x = - 5 abs_x = x if x > 0 else - x // Rust let x = - 5 ; let abs_x = if x > 0 { x } else { - x }; What about an if without an else ? // C int x = - 5 ; int abs_x = x > 0 ? x ; // Syntax error! # Python x = - 5 abs_x = x if x > 0 # Syntax error! // Rust let x = - 5 ; let abs_x = if x > 0 {

Topics: i32 let nil ok option

Show HN: FlyCode – Recover Stripe payments by automatically using backup cards

We built FlyCode after seeing subscription businesses lose ~35% of recurring revenue each year to failed payments — even when customers had other valid cards on file. *The problem:* When a customer's primary card fails, Stripe retries a few times then cancels the subscription. If that customer has a backup card, it isn’t tried. At least 20% of active customers have more than one card on file, which means a lot of preventable churn. *Our solution:* FlyCode automatically identifies if a customer

ChatGPT’s $4.5 subscription is expanding to more countries

Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority TL;DR ChatGPT Go is expanding to one more market. While a wider release is still not in sight, OpenAI notes that the subscription has been very successful since it launched a month ago. OpenAI maintains that it is working to expand access to ChatGPT Go to additional countries and regions. OpenAI is expanding access to ChatGPT Go, its low-cost subscription service to the AI chatbot that costs less than $5. Since its launch, ChatGPT Go has been restricted to t

Your iPhone Could Eke Out More Battery Life Thanks to Adaptive Power in iOS 26

It's like Apple finally listened to what a majority of phone owners have been asking for: longer battery life. The iPhone 17 Pro Max delivers "the best battery life of any phone that CNET has ever tested" according to Managing Editor Patrick Holland in his review, but it's not just due to a physically larger power unit. A new feature in iOS 26 called Adaptive Power contributes to extended battery life in the latest iPhone 17 and iPhone Air models, as well as several earlier Apple iPhones. Curre

The Trump Admin Is Suing Amazon for Tricking People Into Prime Subscriptions. Here’s How That Might Affect You

The Federal Trade Commission is taking Amazon to court this week over the tech giant’s moneymaker Prime subscription program. In a trial set to last for the next month, FTC is claiming that Amazon tricked millions of customers into signing up for a Prime membership and then made it very tough to cancel said subscription. “Millions of consumers accidentally enrolled in Prime without knowledge or consent, but Amazon refused to fix this known problem, described internally by employees as an ‘unsp

Transforming recursion into iteration for LLVM loop optimizations

Abstract Recursive algorithms are a natural and expressive way to traverse complex data structures, but they often miss opportunities for optimization in modern compiler infrastructures like LLVM. This thesis explores a novel technique that temporarily transforms recursive traversals into synthetic loop-like structures, enabling existing loop-specific optimizations to apply, before transforming them back. By extending Clang’s semantic analysis and implementing a custom LLVM transformation pass,

Tell the EU: Don't Break Encryption with "Chat Control"

The European Union is pushing a dangerous surveillance law called “Chat Control” that would force tech companies to scan everyone’s private messages — even those protected by end-to-end encryption. This proposal would force tech companies to use “client-side scanning” — so your private messages, photos, and files could be read before you send them, opening the door for hackers, corporations, and governments to spy on your data. If passed, Chat Control won’t just weaken privacy — it will change

Gizmodo Science Fair: An Experiment to Recreate the Smell of Ancient Mummies

A research team from the University of Ljubljana and the Egyptian Museum of Cairo is a winner of the 2025 Gizmodo Science Fair for reproducing the smell of mummies, offering a new window into Ancient Egyptian life, beliefs, and funerary customs. The question What did mummies smell like during the embalming process, and what can these aromas tell us about Ancient Egyptian customs? The result The recreated aroma blends notes of aged linen, pine resin, and citrus oils, with hints of natural pes

iOS 26: Plan Dinner With Friends With Polls in Messages

Apple released iOS 26 on Sept. 15, a few months after the company announced it at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The update introduces a handful of new features to your iPhone, like a new Liquid Glass design, new ringtones and more. It also introduced a host of new features to Messages, including the ability to create a poll in the messaging app. Group chats can be chaotic, and sometimes it feels like only a few people are talking. Creating a poll in a group chat is a nice way to

Lidar, optical distance and time of flight sensors

A range of approaches exist to directly measure distance as the length of the reflected optical path from laser, to a target where it is reflected, and back to a sensor. These are commonly known by various names, including LIDAR and time of flight sensors, although there is actually overlap in principles between them. The main system types are summarized in the table below. They are principally defined by the following key parameters: Optical distance measurement principle : This is the method