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Reddit is rolling out age verification in the UK

Reddit users in the United Kingdom will now be blocked from accessing “certain mature content” unless they complete the platform’s new age verification process. Reddit announced on Monday that UK users will need to upload a selfie or a photo of their government ID in order to view content that’s restricted for under-18s by the UK Online Safety Act (OSA), including abusive, violent, and sexually explicit materials. The age verification process is performed by Persona, a third-party provider that

Reddit’s UK users must now prove they’re 18 to view adult content

Reddit announced today that it has started verifying UK users' ages before letting them "view certain mature content" in order to comply with the country's Online Safety Act. Reddit said that users "shouldn't need to share personal information to participate in meaningful discussions," but that it will comply with the law by verifying age in a way that protects users' privacy. "Using Reddit has never required disclosing your real world identity, and these updates don't change that," Reddit said

NotebookLM adds featured notebooks from The Economist, The Atlantic, and others

Google is transforming its popular AI-powered research and note-taking assistant, NotebookLM, into more of a destination. The company announced Monday it would add a series of featured notebooks from various authors, publications, researchers, and nonprofits that allow NotebookLM users to explore a wide array of topics from health and life advice to travel tips and financial analysis, and more. The initial collection, which includes notebooks from The Economist, The Atlantic, as well as profess

Reddit’s UK users must now prove they’re 18 to view many types of content

Reddit announced today that it has started verifying UK users' ages before letting them "view certain mature content" in order to comply with the country's Online Safety Act. Reddit said that users "shouldn't need to share personal information to participate in meaningful discussions," but that it will comply with the law by verifying age in a way that protects users' privacy. "Using Reddit has never required disclosing your real world identity, and these updates don't change that," Reddit said

As the browser wars heat up, here are the hottest alternatives to Chrome and Safari in 2025

Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari currently dominate the web browser market, with Chrome holding a significant share due to the tech giant’s ongoing innovations, particularly in integrating generative AI into its search functionalities. However, users seeking alternatives will find a variety of browsers aiming to challenge these industry giants. To help navigate the competitive landscape of the browser wars, we’ve compiled an overview of some of the top alternative browsers available today. Thi

Threads users still barely click links

Two years in, Threads is starting to look more and more like the most viable challenger to X. It passed 350 million monthly users earlier this year and Mark Zuckerberg has predicted it could be Meta's next billion-user app. But Threads still isn't sending much traffic to other websites, which could make the platform less appealing for creators, publishers and others whose businesses depend on non-Meta owned websites. According to Similarweb, a marketing intelligence firm, outbound referral traf

Anthropic’s Claude chatbot can now make and edit your Canva designs

Canva users can now create, edit, and manage their designs by describing their requirements to Anthropic’s Claude AI. The connection is the latest of several integrations that allow Claude users to access third-party tools and services, including Figma, Notion, Stripe, and Prisma, without having to leave their conversation with the AI chatbot. Starting today, Claude users will be able to use natural language prompts to complete design tasks in their linked Canva account, such as creating presen

Topics: ai canva claude mcp users

NotebookLM adds featured notebooks from The Economist, The Atlantic and others

Google is transforming its popular AI-powered research and note-taking assistant, NotebookLM, into more of a destination. The company announced Monday it would add a series of featured notebooks from various authors, publications, researchers, and nonprofits that allow NotebookLM users to explore a wide array of topics from health and life advice to travel tips and financial analysis, and more. The initial collection, which includes notebooks from The Economist, The Atlantic, as well as profess

Discord’s virtual reward, ‘Orbs,’ launches out of beta

After announcing in late May that the platform would be experimenting with a new virtual reward system, Discord is now launching it to the public. The aim of the rewards, called Orbs, is to get people to click on more interactive ads. Users earn Orbs after completing Quests, which involve interacting with ads for products or games to get virtual items. Users can redeem Orbs for digital items in Discord’s Shop, like a three-day Nitro credit, an Orb-themed profile badge, profile effects, avatar d

Microsoft will halt new Office features for Windows 10 in 2026

is a senior editor and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. Microsoft has quietly revealed that it will stop adding new features to Office apps (Microsoft 365) for Windows 10 users in August 2026. While security updates will remain in place for Office apps running on Windows 10 until October 2028, Microsoft will cut off new feature support gradually next year. Microsoft 365 Personal and Family users will stop getting new features on Wi

Google Contacts could soon let you control clutter from third-party apps (Updated: Rolling out)

Adamya Sharma / Android Authority TL;DR Google Contacts could soon allow users to show or hide read-only contacts synced from connected apps. The new feature aims to help users troubleshoot issues like duplicated contacts by revealing otherwise hidden view-only entries. Most users likely won’t need this enabled, but the switch offers better visibility for those who occasionally need it. Update, July 14, 2025 (07:08 AM ET): The ability to show and hide read-only contacts is now rolling out to

Are a few people ruining the internet for the rest of us?

When I scroll through social media, I often leave demoralized, with the sense that the entire world is on fire and people are inflamed with hatred towards one another. Yet, when I step outside into the streets of New York City to grab a coffee or meet a friend for lunch, it feels downright tranquil. The contrast between the online world and my daily reality has only gotten more jarring. Since my own work is focused on topics such as intergroup conflict, misinformation, technology and climate ch

Programming Affordances That Invite Mistakes

Many of my philosophies in work life, my volunteer life, and my personal life stem from experiences. As a developer, many of those come from being burnt by rough edges or mistakes. Just as health & safety principles come from accidents, my development practices come from bugs, errors, and mistakes. With that in mind, here’s a war-story from my days running an R&D startup when we lost all the data we thought we gathered from a psychology study. I founded an R&D startup that worked closely with

Chrome's hidden X-Browser-Validation header reverse engineered

Chrome X-Browser-Validation Header Reverse Engineering & Generator Chrome recently added a few new headers: "x-browser-channel": "stable", "x-browser-copyright": "Copyright 2025 Google LLC. All rights reserved.", "x-browser-validation": "6h3XF8YcD8syi2FF2BbuE2KllQo=", "x-browser-year": "2025" Apart from one of them, there isn’t much that’s interesting. They’re just bits of client specific information. However, base64 decoding x-browser-validation yields what appears to be a hash whose purpose

Building voice AI that listens to everyone: Transfer learning and synthetic speech in action

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 Have you ever thought about what it is like to use a voice assistant when your own voice does not match what the system expects? AI is not just reshaping how we hear the world; it is transforming who gets to be heard. In the age of conversational AI, accessibility has become a crucial benchmark for innovation. Voice assistants, transcriptio

Grok team apologizes for the chatbot's 'horrific behavior' and blames 'MechaHitler' on a bad update

The team behind Grok has issued a rare apology and explanation of what went wrong after X's chatbot began spewing antisemitic and pro-Nazi rhetoric earlier this week, at one point even calling itself "MechaHitler." In a statement posted on Grok's X account late Friday night, the xAI team said "we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced" and attributed the chatbot's vile responses to a recent update that introduced "deprecated code." This code, according to the statement,

'Starter packs' have played a central role in Bluesky's rapid growth

“Vital onboarding strategy for the emerging social media systems” “Our findings go beyond Bluesky: they point to a new framework for launching successful social platforms,” said Dr Onur Ascigil, Lecturer in Computer Science at Lancaster University and Principal Investigator of the study. “Starter packs are becoming a vital onboarding strategy for the emerging social media systems that are seeking to attract users from dominant platforms.” The researchers believe their findings could help platfo

OpenAI Is About to Release an AI Web Browser

OpenAI is on the verge of releasing its own AI-powered web browser, Reuters reports. Expected to launch in the coming weeks, the browser is being released with audacious ambitions. Per the reporting, it's meant to challenge Google Chrome's broad market dominance, with nearly two-thirds of internet users favoring the web browser, or about three billion people. That won't be easy, needless to say. But OpenAI has the prerequisites to at least put a sizable dent in Google's monopoly. Namely, the o

Experts Warn that People Are Losing Themselves to AI

AI users are spiraling into severe mental health crises after extensive use of OpenAI's ChatGPT and other emotive, anthropomorphic chatbots — and health experts are taking notice. In a recent CBC segment about the phenomenon, primary care physician and CBC contributor Dr. Peter Lin explained that while "ChatGPT psychosis" — as the experience has come to be colloquially known — isn't an official medical diagnosis just yet, he thinks it's on its way. "I think, eventually, it will get there," sai

Some Wear OS owners can’t wait for Gemini, so they’re sideloading now

Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority TL;DR Google Gemini is coming to replace Assistant on Wear OS smartwatches. Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 8 series, which launched earlier this week, introduces Gemini, but updates are coming to existing hardware. Users have discovered that simply sideloading the Gemini APK works on many Wear OS devices. This week’s big news has been all about Samsung’s latest launches, and while the company’s new foldables and smartwatches are debuting with some hot new features,

Google Photos may soon consolidate all creation tools in one colorful new tab (APK teardown)

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR Google Photos could soon get a new tab to give users easier access to the app’s creation tools. We’ve spotted the upcoming Create tab while digging through the latest release, but it’s not live yet. The tab will house the Collage, Highlight Video, Cinematic photo, Animation, and the upcoming Photo to video and Remix tools. Google Photos offers several tools to help users create highlight videos, cinematic photos, collages, and more with their images.

Bluesky is adding age verification features for users in the UK

Bluesky users in the UK will soon need to verify their age if they want continued access to direct messages and all of the service's content. The company will begin rolling out age verification features later this month in order to comply with a UK law that requires platforms that offer adult content to confirm users' ages, Bluesky said in an update . The company says it will use Epic games' Kids Web Services to conduct age verification checks, and that people will be able to choose between sev

Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

Part of Bluesky’s mission to create a more open and decentralized social web is helping users feel safe and in control of their experience. We always try to balance safety with privacy, and free expression with civility. To achieve our mission, we also work with governments around the world. In the UK, the Online Safety Act requires that online platforms take specific steps to reduce the risk of children seeing harmful content. Since certain parts of that act come into effect later this month,

Topics: content like ll uk users

The Naya Create modular keyboard is now available for purchase

The Naya Create modular keyboard is now available for general purchase after being an exclusive for Kickstarter backers. It features a split hinge design that lets users adjust each half independently to support a natural wrist posture and to reduce arm pronation. Split designs are not uncommon, as there are several on our list of the best ergonomic keyboards, but the assistive features don't stop there. The columnar-staggered key layout positions have been manufactured to align with natural fi

Bluesky is rolling out age verification in the UK

Bluesky is adding age verification to its platform in the UK as part of efforts to comply with the country’s Online Safety Act. In an update on Thursday, the platform says it will let users verify their age by scanning their face, uploading an ID, or entering a payment card. Bluesky will perform age verification through Kid Web Services (KWS), an Epic Games-owned tool that developers can use to implement age verification and parental controls on their platforms. If users don’t want to verify th

As X loses its CEO, daily usage is down and competition is growing

With the departure of X CEO Linda Yaccarino, which was announced Wednesday, the company that defined text-first social networking faces renewed competition. Year-over-year, the Elon Musk-owned social network has seen its daily active user base decline by roughly 10% as of the second quarter of 2025, according to new data provided by app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. While X’s user base is still 65% larger than Meta’s Threads and 10 times larger than its next-biggest rival, Bluesky, X’s lastin

Microsoft Outlook goes down around the world - here's what we know

NurPhoto / Contributor/Getty If you're having trouble logging in to your email this morning, you're (probably) not fired. A massive outage is affecting Microsoft's Outlook service, leaving many people unable to access their email accounts. Also: How passkeys work: The complete guide to your inevitable passwordless future Reports of problems started shortly before 10 p.m. ET Wednesday, but surged just before 7 a.m. ET. As of 9 a.m., reports were still on the rise, indicating there was no resol

OpenAI’s own web browser could arrive within weeks

OpenAI is said to be almost ready to unleash its own web browser, which could be out in the wild within weeks. According to Reuters sources, the company is aiming to more deeply integrate its services into users’ work and personal lives, and the browser is part of that strategy (as is its push into hardware ). Naturally, the browser is slated to have a ChatGPT-style chatbot baked in. OpenAI is reportedly looking to use the browser to capture more user data — a strategy that has worked out to Go

As Waymo Debuts in Philadelphia, It May Want to Look Into the Time Furious Locals Tore Apart an Adorable Robot

The City of Brotherly Love is known for lots of things: cheesesteaks, the Liberty Bell, Paddy's Pub, and residents who don't take kindly to outsiders messing around in their business. Way back in 2015, Philadelphians' territorial nature briefly became national news when hitchBOT — a child-size hitchhiking robot that relied on the kindness of strangers and had already traversed several entire countries with their help — arrived in Philadelphia and quickly got decapitated by furious locals. The

This Linux distro makes openSUSE accessible to all - even newbies should take a look

Jack Wallen / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET OpenSUSE is a powerful operating system, but I still haven't recommended it to new Linux users. Why? It's too powerful, and it doesn't include essential day-to-day software. That's a shame, because openSUSE is also very reliable, stable, and secure. Fortunately, Antônio Medeiros has created a spin of openSUSE that's more accessible for less-experienced users. That distribution is Linux Kamarada, and it offers the power of openSUSE with the ease of us