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ChatGPT’s new branching feature is a good reminder that AI chatbots aren’t people

On Thursday, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT users can now branch conversations into multiple parallel threads, serving as a useful reminder that AI chatbots aren't people with fixed viewpoints but rather malleable tools you can rewind and redirect. The company released the feature for all logged-in web users following years of user requests for the capability. The feature works by letting users hover over any message in a ChatGPT conversation, click "More actions," and select "Branch in new chat

Sonos' latest sale knocks 20 percent off the Era 300 speaker

The back-to-school season isn't only a good time to save on things like a new laptop. Case in point: Sonos' latest sale. Whether you want to upgrade the sound in your dorm room or home office, you can save up to 20 percent on Sonos speakers and soundbars right now. One of the best discounts is $90 off the Era 300. The same price is available on Amazon, as are some more deals on Sonos products. Sonos debuted the Era 300 in 2023 as its main spatial audio offering, and we found it to have excellen

This YouTube TV trick saved me $66 on my subscription - here's how

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways A hidden YouTube TV promotion might save you $66. It's only accessible through a web browser, not the mobile app. The promotion saves you $33 a month for two months. If you're a YouTube TV subscriber, you might be able to save $66 thanks to a hidden promotional offer. Late last year, YouTube announced that it was raising its monthly price to $83 a month -- a jump of $10 a month. There

South Korea: 'many' of its nationals detained in ICE raid on GA Hyundai facility

South Korea said Friday that it had expressed “concern and regret” to the U.S. Embassy over an immigration raid on a Hyundai facility in Georgia during which it said “many” South Korean nationals had been detained. “The economic activities of our companies investing in the U.S. and the rights and interests of our nationals must not be unfairly violated,” said Lee Jae-woong, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry of the key U.S. ally, according to the Yonhap news agency. Agents from Immigratio

Ozempic Is an ‘Essential’ Drug, WHO Says as Agency Calls for Cheaper Generics

One of the world’s most sought-after drugs has officially become a vital medication. The World Health Organization has just added semaglutide—the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy—to its list of essential medicines. The WHO’s Model Lists of Essential Medicines is designed to improve affordability and access for the world’s most impactful drugs. Semaglutide and other GLP-1 drugs are among 20 new additions to the list, and it’s clear why. GLP-1s have completely reshaped how clinicians treat

Tamagotchi Paradise trades stressful virtual pet parenting for nature and tranquility

On a random Saturday in August, I became the omnipotent caretaker of a newly formed planet, one born, according to the lore, from humankind's collective love of Tamagotchis past and present. An egg hatched and a planet sprang forth. Then another egg hatched down on the surface of that planet and a critter sprang forth. In the few weeks since, I've raised half a dozen more creatures across three different virtual habitats, slowly but surely turning my planet into a bustling hub of adorable alien

Engadget Podcast: The curious calm before the iPhone 17 storm

We're just days away from Apple's September 9th iPhone 17 event, and the hype seems practically nonexistent. Did the many (many) leaks splash cold water on an enthusiasm, or are we just tired of annual iPhone events? In this episode, Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham joins Devindra to discuss why even the rumored iPhone Air isn't really tingling our gadget geek senses. Also, we dive into the final repercussions of the US. v. Google antitrust trial: Turns out Google doesn’t have to sell Chrome, or gi

Debugging Rustler on Illumos

Welcome to SYSTEM•ILLUMINATION! This is the first illumination I have written and the one that prompted me to start this space. This first session tackles several topics as you join me on the journey I took to debug Rustler misbehaving on OmniOS. I'm a beginner with illumos. This page serves a twofold purpose: to help me document and clarify my learnings as I delve into the illumos/Solaris world. And to shine a bit of light into a system that is fairly obscure and hard to get good info on. Howe

Darth Vader’s Lightsaber Sets New Sale Record at Sci-Fi Movie Auction

How much would you be willing to pay for Darth Vader’s lightsaber from Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi? For at least one lucky fan, the answer was more than $3.65 million. The lightsaber sold for a cool $3,654,000 on Thursday—a record for a Star Wars item sold at auction. It sold as part of the first day lots of Propstore’s Los Angeles Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction and is the only hero lightsaber across the two films “with verifiable screen use ever” to ever come to public a

Sam Altman Says He's Suddenly Worried Dead Internet Theory Is Coming True

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, creator of the most popular AI chatbot on Earth, says he's starting to worry that "dead internet theory" is coming true. "I never took the dead internet theory that seriously," Altman tweeted in his typical all-lowercase style, "but it seems like there are really a lot of LLM-run twitter accounts now." (LLM meaning large language model, the tech which powers AI chatbots.) He was resoundingly mocked. "You're absolutely right! This observation isn't just smart — it shows

Heap-based buffer overflow in Kernel Streaming

Reading Time: 4 minutes From time to time, while digging through internals during our research, we stumble upon quirks or vulnerabilities that, although not immediately useful for operations or exploitation, are still noteworthy. Rather than letting these findings fade away, we decided to responsibly disclose them to the vendor. One such case is CVE-2025-53149, a heap-based buffer overflow in the Kernel Streaming WOW Thunk Service Driver, which Microsoft patched on August 12, 2025. The vulnera

Data Modeling Guide for Real-Time Analytics with ClickHouse

This article was written as part of my services Querying billions of weather records and getting results in under 200 milliseconds isn’t theory; it’s what real-time analytics solutions provide. Processing streaming IoT data from thousands of sensors while delivering real-time dashboards with no lag is what certain business domains need. That’s what you’ll learn at the end of this guide through building a ClickHouse-modeled analytics use case. You’ll learn how to land data in ClickHouse that is

IFA 2025 Highlight: MAMMOTION’s Tri-Fusion Positioning System takes its robot lawn mowers to the next level

Stephen Schenck / Android Authority Robot mowers may seem like a niche product, but the amount of time you save and the physical labor you avoid from not having to mow your own lawn can’t be stated enough. It started with low-powered devices that would get stuck on slopes and required physical boundaries that were difficult to install. But these robots have evolved exponentially since, with current generation robot mowers able to navigate using virtual boundaries and handle different types of t

The Morning After: reMarkable’s new e-ink device is the size of a notepad

reMarkable is making a move away from its giant e-ink slate. The new Paper Pro Move is a smaller iteration with a 7.3-inch display the same size as a reporter’s notepad. The idea is an eink device you can write and edit on while on the move. Hence the name. Engadget There are some drawbacks, however. With the Move, the only way to write and edit typed text is with the on-screen keyboard. Bigger reMarkable devices can connect to a companion keyboard. Engadget’s Daniel Cooper spent some time wit

OpenAI is reportedly producing its own AI chips starting next year

OpenAI is gearing up to start the mass production of its own AI chips next year to be able to provide the massive computing power its users need and to lessen its reliance on NVIDIA, according to the Financial Times. The company reportedly designed the custom AI chip with US semiconductor maker Broadcom, whose CEO recently announced that it has a new client that put in a whopping $10 billion in orders. It didn't name the client, but the Times' sources confirmed that it was OpenAI, which apparent

WordPress.com review: A heavyweight site builder that makes you work for it

WordPress.com ZDNET's key takeaways WordPress.com gives you a lot, but you won't get the good stuff like plugins and serious SEO tools unless you're on the pricier Business plan The block editor works once you figure it out, but it's nowhere near as beginner-friendly as drag-and-drop builders like Wix or Squarespace It's great for blogs or content-heavy sites, but not the best choice if you're new to building websites or want a cheap way to run an online store. View now at WordPress Follow ZD

The Diffusion Dilemma

On the sun-baked plains of the American Midwest in 1892, a revolution was loudly sputtering to life: the tractor, an engine which signaled the end of the era of animal power and the beginning of the age of machine power. This machine was not just a piece of equipment; the tractor was a manifestation of an exponential shift in energy density, from animal metabolism to coal burning, empowered by discoveries in thermodynamics. But diffusion of the tractor, screeching across the horizon, took much l

SQL Needed Structure

Published 2025-09-04 Here are two pages from the internet movie database: There are two things to note about these pages. The data on the page is presented in a hierarchichal structure. The movie page contains a director, a list of genres, a list of actors, and each actor in the list contains a list of characters they played in the movie. You can't sensibly fit all of this into a single flat structure like a relation. The order of the hierarchy isn't the same on both pages. On one page we hav

Circle to Search adds continuous translation

is a news editor with over a decade’s experience in journalism. He previously worked at Android Police and Tech Advisor. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Google has announced a pretty major upgrade to the convenience of the translation built into Circle to Search on Android, which will now continue translating as the content on-screen changes. Google has slightly undersold the feature with the name “Scroll and translate.” In fact, it will

Microsoft 365 Personal is now free for US college students for a year

is a senior editor and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Microsoft is giving away Microsoft 365 Personal subscriptions to all US college students. This subscription gives students free access to Microsoft’s Office apps and the Copilot AI assistant integration for a year, after which the students are eligible for a 50 percent discount to continue

These cool earbuds bring crazy translation smarts for your travels

Supplied by Timekettle TL;DR Timekettle has launched the W4 translation earbuds. These earbuds offer a more conventional earbud design but still offer real-time translation and automatic mode switching. The earbuds go on sale today for $349. Timekettle has made a name for itself thanks to its translation earbuds. Its recent W4 Pro earbuds automatically translate dozens of languages during speech and calls. Now, the company has announced a new pair of buds. The Timekettle W4 AI Interpreter E

Using AI to perceive the universe in greater depth

Our novel Deep Loop Shaping method improves control of gravitational wave observatories, helping astronomers better understand the dynamics and formation of the universe. To help astronomers study the universe’s most powerful processes, our teams have been using AI to stabilize one of the most sensitive observation instruments ever built. In a paper published today in Science, we introduce Deep Loop Shaping, a novel AI method that will unlock next-generation gravitational-wave science. Deep Lo

Building Supabase-Like OAuth Authentication for MCP Servers

I am Jakob, an Engineer at Hypr MCP, where we help companies connect their internal applications to LLM-based workflows with the power of MCP servers. Join our waitlist or book a demo to learn more. In this blog post, I want to show you how and why we built an MCP Server Gateway that acts as a reverse proxy for one or more upstream MCP servers while adding support for the authorization framework provided by the MCP specification. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) has emerged as the de-facto stan

Lenovo's ThinkBook VertiFlex Concept Laptop Has a Swiveling Screen

Lenovo isn't shy about trying new things. Last year, the PC maker teased a concept laptop with a transparent screen. Earlier this year, the ThinkBook Flip concept employed a flexible OLED display that folded over the top of the laptop lid, ready to flip up whenever you needed the extra screen space. At CES 2025, we saw a ThinkBook with a rollable OLED screen that expanded upward automatically at the touch of a button—this one is a real product you can actually buy. Get ready for another whacky

This stand can automatically lift, tilt, and turn your laptop toward you

is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Lenovo’s Smart Motion Concept laptop stand, announced at IFA 2025, automatically raises and lowers itself and turns and tilts to position your laptop at an ergonomic eye level. It’s a lot like an amped-up Apple Center Stage webcam, but the whole lap

Lenovo’s new concept laptop has a rotating screen that’s perfect for doomscrolling

is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021. Lenovo has made laptop screens that roll, flip, and go transparent, and now for IFA 2025 it’s announcing a new concept with a screen that can rotate into portrait mode. The Lenovo ThinkBook VertiFlex Concept is a pretty standard-looking 14-inch productivity laptop, but if you nudge the screen’s edge from its top-right corner, the whole

Timekettle’s new translation earbuds are made for sharing

is a senior reporter who’s been covering and reviewing the latest gadgets and tech since 2006, but has loved all things electronic since he was a kid. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Timekettle has announced a new pair of real-time translation headphones called the W4 AI Interpreter Earbuds. They use bone conduction technology that helps improve accuracy in loud environments. Available now for $349 in navy blue and sandy gold color optio

The Apple iPhone 17 'Awe dropping' event happens next week: Here's what to expect on September 9

We're now less than week away from the Apple's September 9 event, where the company is all but certain to unveil the iPhone 17 line. This year's theme of "Awe dropping," which was featured in Apple's invitations to the media sent on August 26 doesn't reveal much by way of clues, though some think the heat-mapped Apple logo is indicative of better thermal cooling in the new models. But more importantly, we already know how to watch the Apple iPhone 17 event itself: The keynote will be livestreame

I ditched Spotify and set up my own music stack

For years, I relied on Spotify like millions of others. The convenience was undeniable stream anything, anywhere, discover new music through algorithms, and share playlists with friends. But over time, several issues became impossible to ignore: artists getting paid fractions of pennies per stream, fake Artists and ghost Tracks, AI music and impersonation, creepy age verification complicity and the fact that despite paying monthly, I never actually owned anything. So I decided to take back contr