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Your Next Car Might Cost More: Industry Insiders Explain Tariff-Driven Price Increases and How to Offset Costs

It's not just iPhones and TVs. President Donald Trump's tariff policies might be driving up the cost of electric vehicles and combustion cars, too. EVs, in fact, might be especially vulnerable to the new tariffs that target China (a major exporter of critical metals) and the steel industry. China already has a near monopoly on critical minerals and rare earth metals used to manufacture cars, and these tariffs have given China reason to use that as leverage over the United States. That's accordi

Google Discover adds AI summaries, threatening publishers with further traffic declines

As publishers fret about decreased traffic from Google, the search giant has begun rolling out AI summaries in Discover, the main news feed inside Google’s search app on iOS and Android. Now, instead of seeing a headline from a major publication, users will see multiple news publishers’ logos in the top-left corner, followed by an AI-generated summary that cites those sources. The app warns that these summaries are generated with AI, “which can make mistakes.” Image Credits:Google The feature

Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab is worth $12B in seed round

Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by OpenAI’s former chief technology officer Mira Murati, officially closed a $2 billion seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz on Monday, a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. The deal, which includes participation from NVIDIA, Accel, ServiceNow, CISCO, AMD, and Jane Street, values the startup at $12 billion, the spokesperson said. Several outlets reported in June that Thinking Machines Lab was close to closing this $2B funding round at a $10 bill

AMD to resume MI308 AI chip exports to China

Lisa Su, chair and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices Inc., during the AMD Advancing AI event in San Jose, California, on Dec. 6, 2023. Advanced Micro Devices said Tuesday that it will soon restart shipments of its MI308 artificial intelligence chips to China. The stock climbed 7% following the news. The company said Tuesday that the U.S. Commerce Department plans to resume reviewing its license applications to send the products to the world's second-largest economy. AMD said it plans to start ship

Elon Musk Is Moving Money Between His Companies in a Sketchy Way

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced over the weekend that shareholders of his EV maker Tesla will vote on whether to invest in his own artificial intelligence firm xAI. In other words, the mercurial billionaire is orchestrating a potentially massive shift in funds to prop up his cash-burning — and gas-burning — AI startup, the flagship product of which is the troubled chatbot Grok. In March, Musk merged xAI with his social media platform X, which had previously seen an advertiser exodus triggered by

Users Immediately Find Grok's Anime Waifu Persona Has Hidden "Full Gooner Mode"

Elon Musk's hate speech-spewing AI chatbot Grok, which recently gave itself the nickname "MechaHitler," didn't exactly fit into the gender binary — but you have to admit that its edgelord persona had a certain masculine energy. Well, scratch that: Musk has officially swapped Grok's gender into... a goth anime waifu? We wish we were kidding. The mercurial CEO's xAI startup announced that its Nazi-loving assistant will now be able to take on several personas, including a lingerie- and corset-wea

Topics: ai ani anime gender musk

AirPods Pro 3 are rumored to borrow a new feature from Beats

AirPods Pro 3 are one of Apple’s most highly anticipated new products. Even though launch timing for the new AirPods is still uncertain, rumors around features have been a little more solid, including a new feature that’s expected to be borrowed directly from Beats: heart rate monitoring. Heart rate monitoring coming to AirPods Pro 3, following Powerbeats Pro 2 Apple has long offered AirPods integration with health-related software features. For example, the iPhone’s Health app can show you da

NotebookLM now lets you chat with expert guides from top publishers, and Shakespeare - here's how

Google / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Google announced Monday that it is expanding the repertoire of NotebookLM, its AI-powered note-taking and research platform, to include the works of some prominent publishing names. Also: NotebookLM now lets you share your notebooks with anyone with a single link. Here's how The company is collaborating with a cohort of scientists, nonprofits, authors, and news publishers to deliver a series of featured notebooks for NotebookLM users. These notebooks cove

This handy AI voice recorder has changed the way I work (and it's easy to use)

ZDNET's key takeaways Plaud Note is available now on Amazon.com for $159 This device and app combo lifts your note-taking to a new level of efficiency and effectiveness The Plaud Note device does require a paid subscription for the AI features. $159 at Amazon In the world of voice recording apps and devices, it's mostly the same old thing: Click or tap Record, start speaking, stop speaking, and click Save. Some voice recording apps will do basic transcripts (the Pixel Recording app does an im

Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Chatbots Are Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries

Generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok have exploded in popularity as AI becomes mainstream. These tools don’t have the ability to make new scientific discoveries on their own, but billionaires are convinced that AI is on the cusp of doing just that. And the latest episode of the All-In podcast helps explain why these guys think AI is extremely close to revolutionizing scientific knowledge. Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber who no longer works at the company,

Uber is close to completing its quest to become the ultimate robotaxi app

is transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State. Uber just announced a deal today with the company that runs one of the largest robotaxi fleets in China, as the ridehail giant nears its goal of becoming the world’s ultimate autonomous vehicle clearinghouse. Uber and Baidu said they are teaming up to deploy robotaxis in countries outside the US and China, with an initial

Research leaders urge tech industry to monitor AI’s ‘thoughts’

AI researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, as well as a broad coalition of companies and nonprofit groups, are calling for deeper investigation into techniques for monitoring the so-called thoughts of AI reasoning models in a position paper published Tuesday. A key feature of AI reasoning models, such as OpenAI’s o3 and DeepSeek’s R1, are their chains-of-thought or CoTs — an externalized process in which AI models work through problems, similar to how humans use a scratch pad to wo

Ukrainian hackers claim to have destroyed servers of Russian drone maker

Ukrainian hacktivist group BO Team has claimed to have hacked into the network of Russian drone maker Gaskar Group and disrupted its operations. In a post on its Telegram channel, BO Team announced the breach, saying it carried out the attack along with the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, another hacktivist group that operates in Ukraine, as well as Ukraine’s military intelligence. The three groups, according to a machine translation of the announcement, “carried out large-scale work to seize the en

The Hidden Costs of AI: How Small Inefficiencies Stack Up

AI is having a major impact on society, from consumer technologies to driving businesses. But among all these large language models and deep neural networks, there are lurking inefficiencies that most people aren’t taking into account. Wasted computational power, hidden costs, the environmental footprint, and more. Whether these inefficiencies are big or small, they all add up. With 58% of companies planning on increasing their investments in AI this year, it’s essential these decision-makers k

Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Is Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries

Generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok have exploded in popularity as AI becomes mainstream. These tools don’t have the ability to make new scientific discoveries on their own, but billionaires are convinced that AI is on the cusp of doing just that. And the latest episode of the All-In podcast helps explain why these guys think AI is extremely close to revolutionizing scientific knowledge. Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber who no longer works at the company,

Uber’s latest robotaxi partner is China’s Baidu

Uber has struck another deal with a robotaxi provider, and this time it’s with Chinese tech giant Baidu. The two companies announced Tuesday that they have agreed to a “multi-year strategic partnership to deploy thousands of Baidu’s Apollo Go autonomous vehicles (AVs) on the Uber platform” in multiple markets outside the U.S. and mainland China. Those deployments will start in Asia and the Middle East later this year, the companies said. Uber has been on a tear of AV partnerships lately as it

Coreweave stock pops after company announces $6 billion AI data center in Pennsylvania

CoreWeave Inc. signage in Times Square in New York, US, on Friday, May 9, 2025. Coreweave stock climbed more than 9% on Tuesday after the company announced a $6 billion artificial intelligence data center project in Pennsylvania. The commitment includes an initial 100 megawatt data center built in Lancaster, a city about 70 miles west of Philadelphia. The data center will be able to expand to 300 MW. "The demand for high-performance AI compute is relentless," said CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrat

Google's AI Refuses to Even Play Chess Against 1977 Atari, After Hearing What It Did to Other Cutting-Edge AIs

The thing that AI models apparently fear the most? A game console released nearly fifty years ago. We are referring, of course, to the inimitable Atari 2600. Last month, the iconic system embarrassed the AI industry after it absolutely rinsed ChatGPT at a simple game of chess. It was a clash between a machine released in 1977, with 128 bytes of RAM, and a cutting-edge large language model with trillions of parameters, powered by however many thousands of graphics cards and billions of dollars

Building community and clean air solutions

Darren Riley: Hi. Thanks for having me. Megan: Thank you ever so much for being with us. To get us started, let's just talk a bit about JustAir. How did the idea for the company come about, and what does your company do as well? Darren: Yeah, absolutely. The real thesis of JustAir, is really a combination of one, my personal experience but also my professional experience. On the professional side, background in software engineering, graduated from Carnegie Mellon University, but I was always f

One of our favorite Ninja air fryers is 36 percent off right now

Engadget has been testing and reviewing consumer tech since 2004. Our stories may include affiliate links; if you buy something through a link, we may earn a commission. Read more about how we evaluate products . Prime Day might have ended last week, but that doesn't mean the sales are over. Amazon still has discounts on some of our favorite items, including our pick for best dual-zone air fryer. Right now, you can get the Ninja DZ401 Foodi Air Fryer for $160, down from $250. The 36 percent di

Cloudflare Starts Blocking Pirate Sites for UK Users

Cloudflare has become the first internet intermediary beyond local residential ISPs, to block access to pirate sites in the UK. Users attempting to access certain pirate sites are greeted with 'Error 451 - Unavailable for Legal Reasons'. In theory, ISP blocking should prevent UK users from even seeing this notice, but a combination of Cloudflare's blocking mechanism and choices made by some VPN users results in a piracy dead end. Internet service providers BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, EE, a

Watch ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ Light a Bunch of Things on Fire in This Exclusive BTS Clip

Here’s an exclusive, fun look behind the scenes of Dean DeBlois’ live-action How to Train Your Dragon, showcasing the stuntwork and visual artistry that went into bringing a beloved animated franchise into the real world. io9 presents a clip from How to Train Your Dragon‘s home release that takes us to Viking training camp. Watch as stars including Mason Thames (The Black Phone) and Nico Parker (The Last of Us) get the hang of dragon riding on their mechanical bull-like dragon stand-ins. There’

Nvidia CEO Meets With Trump and Secures Permission to Sell AI Chips in China Again

It’s been a very busy week for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. After meeting with President Donald Trump and senior officials in Beijing in recent days, Huang has secured a major victory for his AI-chip empire. On Monday, Nvidia announced that the U.S. government will allow it to resume sales of its H20 AI chips in China. The company still needs to secure official licensing approval from the Trump administration, but officials have reportedly assured Nvidia “that licenses will be granted.” The company

Rwazi raises $12M Series A to help companies with consumer insights and intelligence

Joseph Rutakanga spent eight years looking for tools to help companies gather consumer insight data. Eventually, he decided to just build them. Now his startup, called Rwazi, has raised a $12 million Series A led by Bonfire Ventures to help companies with market intelligence and consumer insights. He founded the company in 2021 with co-founder Eric Sewankambo. “There was an abundance of consumer and market-level data for places like the U.S., UK, and a few parts of Western Europe, maybe some t

Perplexity offers free AI tools to students worldwide in partnership with SheerID

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine that competes with Google and ChatGPT, has partnered with identity verification company SheerID to offer up to two years of free premium service to more than 264 million students worldwide, the companies announced Monday. The deal tackles a key challenge for AI companies: providing educational acces

One of the most battery-efficient laptops I've tested this year is also one of the most affordable

ZDNET's key takeaways The base model of Acer's Aspire 14 AI normally retails for $699. It has a fantastic battery and some of the latest hardware: all for a very approachable price point. I suggest opting for the OLED, since the low-end display isn't the best. View now at Amazon View now at Costco more buying choices At Costco, the Acer Aspire 14 AI with an Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU is on sale for $700. Act fast because this deal ends on July 27. I went hands-on with Acer's Aspire Go 15 last ye

Topics: 14 acer ai aspire battery

Micro Adventure – Space Attack (online emulator)

Good luck. This message will be erased from memory in 30 seconds. As a certified member of ACT (the Ad­venture Connection Team) your job, as always, is to defend the cause of good against evil. It won’t be easy, because BRUTE (the Bureau of Random Unlawful Terror and Evil - an international organization bent on wreaking havoc throughout the world) will be fighting you every step of the way. Your computer expertise will be vital to this mission. So turn on your home system. Throughout this adven

A Little-Known Microsoft Program Could Expose the Defense Department to Hackers

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Reporting Highlights Chinese Tech Support: Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel. Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel. Skills Gap: Digital escorts of

Praise and Addiction Fears: Musk’s AI Girlfriend Sparks Fierce Debate

How do you bury a controversy? If you’re Elon Musk, you drop an anime waifu into the middle of a scandal and watch the internet do the rest. Just days after xAI’s chatbot Grok sparked outrage for spouting anti-Semitic rhetoric and praising Adolf Hitler, the billionaire shifted the narrative by unveiling a new feature called Companions, which lets users interact with flirty, customizable AI avatars like Ani, a goth anime girl, and Rudy, a red panda. The feature went instantly viral. While xAI ha