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As job losses loom, Anthropic launches program to track AI’s economic fallout

Silicon Valley has opined on the promise of generative AI to forge new career paths and economic opportunities – like the newly coveted solo unicorn startup. Banks and analysts have touted AI’s potential to boost GDP. But those gains are unlikely to be distributed equally in the face of what many expect to be widespread AI-related job loss. Amid this backdrop, Anthropic on Friday launched its Economic Futures Program, a new initiative to support research on AI’s impacts on the labor market and

YouTube adds more AI, but not everyone's happy about it

The big picture: Is YouTube becoming harder to navigate as the platform increasingly embraces AI-generated "slop"? As many users start to ask that question, the Alphabet-owned company is doubling down, introducing even more AI-powered features aimed at enhancing search and enabling conversational interactions. Google recently confirmed that two new AI features are coming to YouTube. The company says the updates are aimed at helping users find what they're looking for more quickly and efficientl

Coinbase is the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 in June, and may have even more room to run

People watch as the logo for Coinbase, the biggest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, is displayed on the Nasdaq MarketSite jumbotron at Times Square in New York on April 14, 2021. Coinbase is the top performer in the S&P 500 in June, boosted by positive regulatory updates, product launches and, of course, its very inclusion in the benchmark stock index at the end of May. The crypto exchange's outperformance in the S&P 500 extends back to the April 8 market low, just after President Donald Trump's

As Tesla Crumbles, Elon Musk Just Fired One of His Top Supporters at the Company

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has fired the automaker's vice president of manufacturing and operations Omead Fashar, Forbes reports, amid plummeting sales and public backlash against the company. Fashar was one of Musk's closest confidants and a powerful executive at the company, according to Bloomberg, which reported that Fashar had departed but didn't say that Musk was behind the personnel change. The exact reason for his departure isn't clear, although one can make an educated guess based on the broad

Can AI run a physical shop? Anthropic’s Claude tried and the results were gloriously, hilariously bad

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more Picture this: You give an artificial intelligence complete control over a small shop. Not just the cash register — the whole operation. Pricing, inventory, customer service, supplier negotiations, the works. What could possibly go wrong? New Anthropic research published Friday provides a definitive answer: everything. The AI company’s ass

Kumo’s ‘relational foundation model’ predicts the future your LLM can’t see

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more The generative AI boom has given us powerful language models that can write, summarize and reason over vast amounts of text and other types of data. But when it comes to high-value predictive tasks like predicting customer churn or detecting fraud from structured, relational data, enterprises remain stuck in the world of traditional machin

MacBook Air Diary: iPadOS improvements haven’t tempted me back

I wrote a year ago that I hardly use an iPad any more. With one small exception, that remains the case – but iPadOS 26 did have me revisit the question. That’s because this transforms the device so much that, for the first time, I considered it impossible to argue that the iPad isn’t now a (proper) computer … Why I (almost) stopped using my iPads I said there were five reasons, four of which were that Apple Silicon MacBooks effectively closed the gap between the two device types, and for me t

You can now mute words just on Threads, and even set a 30-day timer

It looks like Meta is finally treating Threads as its own app, rather than just an Instagram sidekick. After rolling out a standalone DMs system, Threads is now getting its own mute lists, along with something new (and very welcome): temporary filters that expire automatically. No Instagram strings attached In a post this week, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced a revamped “Hidden Words” feature for Threads that includes its own independent word filters. Until now, muting a word on Threads

Apple shells out US$350M to acquire yet another office campus it was already leasing

It’s been a good week for Apple’s real estate team. Just days after finalizing a $166.9 million deal for the Cupertino Gate office complex, the company has closed another major acquisition, pushing its South Bay real estate tab to over half a billion dollars in a single week. US$516 million in South Bay acquisitions As reported by SilliconValley.com (via AppleInsider), Apple has just closed a $350 million deal to purchase Mathilda Commons, a two-building 382,500 square feet office campus in Su

Supreme Court upholds Texas's porn site age verification law

The US Supreme Court has upheld a Texas law that could have broad implications for online free speech. The court ruled 6-3 in affirming Texas law HB 1181, which requires websites that host adult content to implement age verification. The nonprofit Free Speech Coalition petitioned the top court in April 2024 to review the law. (The organization represents the adult industry.) Texas was one of many states passing age-verification laws aimed at porn websites. Pornhub has exited 17 states due to si

Trump ends trade talks with Canada over a digital services tax

President Donald Trump said the US is ending trade talks with Canada, effective immediately, over a tax on digital services that will impact American tech companies. He also pledged to announce further tariffs on Canada within the next week, adding in a Truth Social post that "they will be paying to do business with the United States of America." Canada's digital services tax (DST) is set to take effect on June 30, though it will be applied retroactively. According to The New York Times , US co

I recommend this Asus laptop to creative professionals and business users alike. Here's why

ZDNET's key takeaways The Asus ProArt P16 is available now, starting at $1,900. It pairs powerful hardware with a suite of customizable options designed for creatives. The deep personalization requires engagement from the user, the huge trackpad won't be everyone's cup of tea, and the ultra-glossy display tends to glare. $1,899.99 at Best Buy Asus' ProArt series consists of sleek laptops with high-end hardware for creatives. At the top of the line is the new AMD-powered ProArt P16, which exud

Best July 4th TV deals 2025: My favorite early sales save you up to $2,800

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

The best iPhone 15 screen protectors of 2025: Expert tested

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

My Lights Run on Bash

My Lights Run on Bash Among the many hobbies that modern nerds pick up, one has recently become incredibly popular: making everything in your house dangerously unreliable by inserting a bunch of software where previously simple wires had sufficed. In this post, I describe how I replaced the wires between my lights and my light switches with some Bash. Bash as critical infrastructure? Am I alright? Do I need to see a psychiatrist? These are all good questions, but let's leave them for another p

Slightly better named character reference tokenization than Chrome, Safari, FF

Slightly better named character reference tokenization than Chrome, Safari, and Firefox 2025-06-26 Note: I am not a 'browser engine' person, nor a 'data structures' person. I'm certain that an even better implementation than what I came up with is very possible. A while back, for no real reason, I tried writing an implementation of a data structure tailored to the specific use case of the Named character reference state of HTML tokenization (here's the link to that experiment). Recently, I to

Behold, a Script for ‘The Batman Part II’

It feels like the only thing we’ve heard about The Batman Part II for years now is that various people are waiting on a script to be delivered. Now, with all the energy of a schoolboy rushing to file homework that was due earlier in the week, Reeves has provided evidence: some words that will potentially be in The Batman Part II exist. Reeves took to social media this afternoon to seemingly confirm that the latest version of his sequel to the 2022 DC film was finally ready to be sent off to Jam

Someone Help Me! I Need These Sonic the Hedgehog Magic: The Gathering Cards

Magic: The Gathering hit a goldmine earlier this month when it released its Final Fantasy set based on one of the most popular video game franchises of all time. Final Fantasy was reportedly the best-selling Magic set before it even released, thanks to extensive preorders. Now Wizards of the Coast is hoping to repeat that success with Secret Lair drops themed around video game icon Sonic the Hedgehog, launching Monday, July 14. Wizards of the Coast/Sega Depending on which century you were born

Chase Sapphire Reserve Launches New $250 Apple Perk. I’m Not Falling for It

Chase/CNET The Chase Sapphire Reserve®* was updated earlier this week and now includes a number of new annual credits and other features, including an Apple Plus and Apple Music membership, valued at $250 annually (ends June 22, 2027). Chase also upped the card's annual fee. It now costs $795 annually, so you'll have to do more legwork to get enough value from the card to cover the cost. That likely means the average credit card user won't even want to consider this as an option. Which is fair

Steam Summer Sale: Snag 4 Major Borderlands Games for Under $25 Before Borderlands 4

If you want to catch up on the Borderlands series before Borderlands 4 comes out on Sept. 12, you won't find a better opportunity than this. Every mainline Borderlands game is steeply discounted for Steam's Summer sale, with many of them in the single digits. You can currently get Borderlands Game of the Year Enhanced, Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 3 for a grand total of $22. The first game represents about half that cost, so if you've already played that one or wan

A New Threads Feature Saves You From Seeing and Posting Spoilers: Here's How It Works

Social media can accidentally spoil a streaming movie or show for those who haven't yet watched it. Threads, the popular social media platform from Meta, now has a new feature that could save you from spoiling your next watch. The new feature allows users to mark media and text posts as spoilers. If it's a photo, the spoiler will then appear blurred in feeds, and text will be grayed out. Clicking on both types makes the spoiler visible. Netflix and Marvel are the first major studios to use the

The Obsessive Fans Playing God on ‘Love Island’—and Living for the Crash-Outs

Carson Campbell didn’t feel any remorse for his vote, and was even relishing in the chaos it might cause one of Love Island USA’s most contentious cast members of the season. “I love mess and I love reality TV,” the 24-year-old student and content creator says. “I love something with an end goal, when people are working toward a purpose.” As a Love Island USA superfan who live-tweets and recaps every episode on TikTok, Campbell feels personally invested in how the reality dating show unfolds. M

'Persona 5: The Phantom X' Brings The Series To Your Phone—and It's Shockingly Good

Persona games are herculean efforts to finish. A single playthrough of any game in the main series, which includes everything from saving the world to studying for finals, frequently clocks in at around 100 hours. Much of that time is spent building relationships with the game’s characters and world by hanging out with friends, doing mundane tasks like laundry, or finding new parts of the city to explore. It creates a dedication that leaves many players so attached to each game’s cast that they’

OpenAI’s Unreleased AGI Paper Could Complicate Microsoft Negotiations

A small clause inside OpenAI’s contract with Microsoft, once considered a distant hypothetical, has now become a flashpoint in one of the biggest partnerships in tech. The clause states that if OpenAI’s board ever declares it has developed artificial general intelligence (AGI), it would limit Microsoft’s contracted access to the startup’s future technologies. Microsoft, which has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, is now reportedly pushing for the removal of the clause and is considering

Here’s where you can buy microSD Express cards for the Switch 2

is an editor covering deals and commerce. He joined in 2018, and served as commerce editor at Polygon until May 2025. The Nintendo Switch 2 is here, and so you might be in the market for a microSD card to store more games. While all microSD cards look the same, only microSD Express cards will work on the Switch 2 for storing and playing games. The card you used in your original Switch or Switch Lite will only offer very limited functionality if installed into Nintendo’s new handheld, letting yo

Google’s carbon emissions just went up again

Google’s carbon emissions jumped yet again as the company continues to push ahead in AI. The company’s 2025 sustainability report emphasizes that its “ambition-based emissions” grew 11 percent last year to reach 11.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution, marking a 51 percent increase compared to 2019. That puts Google farther away from its goal of slashing planet-heating pollution in half by 2030 compared to a 2019 baseline. But what it calls “ambition-based” emissions excludes certa

Eufy’s Omni C20 mopping robovac is $300 off for a limited time

After a long week, the last thing I want to do is clean my floors (they’re seriously overdue for a cleaning). Busting out the vacuum and mopping can be tiring. That’s why I’m a big fan of robot vacuums, especially ones with built-in mops that can handle all the cleaning on their own. Speaking of, you can pick up the Eufy Robot Vacuum Omni C20 at Amazon and Eufy for $399.98 ($300 off), matching its all-time low. This deal may be around for just a matter of hours. The Omni C20 is one of Eufy’s ne

Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ could mean slower Wi-Fi for you

The Senate version of the budget reconciliation bill, backed by President Donald Trump, removes protections for unlicensed spectrum that broadens the capacity of the 6GHz Wi-Fi band. This could result in slower Wi-Fi speeds. Under the bill, which may be voted on at the end of this week, the FCC would sell off some of that spectrum to mobile carriers such as AT&T, which could use it to improve the speed of their mobile data. The bill includes a provision requiring the FCC to auction 800MHz of sp

Topics: 6ghz band fi spectrum wi

Runway is going to let people generate video games with AI

So far, Runway is known for bringing generative AI to Hollywood. Now, the $3 billion startup is setting its sights on the gaming industry. This week, I was granted access to a new interactive gaming experience that Runway plans to make available to everyone as soon as next week, according to CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela. The consumer-facing product is currently quite barebones, with a chat interface that supports only text and image generation, but Valenzuela says that generated video games are com