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You Don't Need Animations

When done right, animations make an interface feel predictable, faster, and more enjoyable to use. They help you and your product stand out. But they can also do the opposite. They can make an interface feel unpredictable, slow, and annoying. They can even make your users lose trust in your product. So how do you know when and how to animate to improve the experience? Step one is making sure your animations have a purpose. Purposeful animations Before you start animating, ask yourself: what

This new Withings smartwatch can tell you when you're getting sick

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET key takeaways Withings has unveiled its Vitality Indicator. The feature can notify users ahead of illness. The feature arrives in tandem with the ScanWatch 2. Tech brands are betting big on the ability to spot health strain before symptoms arrive. The latest feature in Withings' newest smartwatch is no different. Withings' Vitality Indicator, available on its new ScanWatch 2, monitors a user's vitals, like their heart rate variabi

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 Are the Catchiest Songs of All Time, According to AI

Catchy songs have been around as long as there's been music, but what makes a song stick in our minds is still a mystery. I recently chaperoned the all-night graduation party at my daughter's high school. After hanging out at an all-games-and-rides-free arcade until 2 a.m., we took the graduates on chartered buses to a private all-ages nightclub in downtown Seattle. It boasted free unlimited fountain soda and snacks, a photo booth with props, a trivia contest, glow necklaces and, best of all, a

What If OpenDocument Used SQLite?

Small. Fast. Reliable. Choose any three. Home Menu About Documentation Download License Support Purchase Search About Documentation Download Support Purchase Search Documentation Search Changelog What If OpenDocument Used SQLite? Introduction Suppose the OpenDocument file format, and specifically the "ODP" OpenDocument Presentation format, were built around SQLite. Benefits would include: Smaller documents Faster File/Save times Faster startup times Less memory used Document

The number of mis-issued 1.1.1.1 certificates grows. Here’s the latest.

Wednesday’s discovery of three mis-issued TLS certificates for Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 encrypted DNS lookup service generated intense interest and concern among Internet security practitioners. The revelation raised the possibility that an unknown entity had obtained the cryptographic equivalent of a skeleton key that could be used to surreptitiously decrypt millions of users’ DNS queries that were encrypted through DNS over TLS or DNS over HTTPS. From there, the scammers could have read queries or

Who Owns ‘Telepathy’?

Elon Musk’s neural implant startup Neuralink has been trying to trademark two product names: Telepathy and Telekinesis. Musk has previously claimed that his company will be able to give people “superpowers,” so the desire to take ownership over these special abilities makes sense. Unfortunately for Neuralink, patent applications for Telepathy and Telekinesis have already been filed by a different business. Wired reports that a lucid dreaming startup (who knew there was such a thing?) called Pro

Tech companies pledge to ready Americans for an AI-dominated world

First Lady Melania Trump hosted a meeting of the White House’s AI education task force where several CEOs touted their commitments. President Donald Trump is expected to host tech CEOs in the Rose Garden later on Thursday, with an invite list that includes Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, The Hill reported . Google said it would allocate $150 million of the $1 billion it already pledged toward education and job training to “grants to support AI education and di

Neuralink’s Bid to Trademark ‘Telepathy’ and ‘Telekinesis’ Faces Legal Issues

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected Neuralink’s attempt to trademark the product names Telepathy and Telekinesis, citing pending applications by another person for the same trademarks. Neuralink, the brain implant company co-founded by Elon Musk, filed to trademark the names in March. But in letters sent to Neuralink in August, the trademark office is refusing to allow the applications to move forward. It says Wesley Berry, a computer scientist and co-founder of tech star

Israeli Startups Cato, Aim Ink Deal as Nations Clamor for More AI

Israeli startup Cato Networks, a leader in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) cybersecurity, has made its first buy for an undisclosed price in AI-focused startup Aim Security. The deal is the latest move by an Israeli firm to add cybersecurity and artificial intelligence to its toolbox, while finding major financial backers to take it the next steps strategically. “AI transformation is by far the biggest tsunami that I’ve seen in terms of impact on the enterprise, in terms of velocity and in t

LinkedIn takes on hiring scams with recruiter verification

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. LinkedIn is trying to help put a stop to recruitment scams by requiring anyone with a recruitment-related job title to verify their place of employment. Executives will have to go through the same process, while company page verification is now rolling out more widely too. Existing recru

A Labubu Rave Offers a Salve for the Darkest Timeline

Inside the cavern of Catch One nightclub on the last Friday in August, neon laser beams shower the dance floor and bodies sway in devotional harmony, as ravers from every corner of Los Angeles flock to deliver an offering at the altar of Labubu. Everyone is here. The true believers and truly curious, the trend chasers, the nightlife purists, the wannabe influencers, the party crashers, and those who simply want to be seen. It’s a celebration of Labubu, the furry Ewok-like collectible that, in

Roblox will require age verification for all users to access communication features

Roblox announced that it aims to roll out age estimation technology to all of its users by the end of 2025. Users on the gaming and social network will have to confirm their age in order to access communication features within the platform under the new policy. Roblox initially rolled out an age verification option to teen accounts in July as part of an effort to keep users younger than 13 from accessing select chat features. In addition to confirming ages for individual accounts, Roblox also s

Mis-issued certificates for 1.1.1.1 DNS service pose a threat to the Internet

People in Internet security circles are sounding the alarm over the issuance of three TLS certificates for 1.1.1.1, a widely used DNS service from content delivery network Cloudflare and the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) Internet registry. The certificates, issued in May, can be used to decrypt domain lookup queries encrypted through DNS over HTTPS, a protocol that provides end-to-end encryption when end-user devices seek the IP address of a particular domain they want to acce

They know where you are: Cybersecurity and the shadow world of geolocation

Tony Soprano knew. When one of his follow poker players in season 5, episode 4 of The Sopranos asks Tony how he likes his new Cadillac Escalade, the fictional mobster responds, “I love it. After I pulled out that global positioning [system].” OK, his language was a little more spicy than “system,” but the point is that Tony knew the dangers of being trackable. The rest of us might not have the same concerns Tony had about being findable just about anywhere, but we should all realize how danger

AI Can't Dance. But It Says These Are the Catchiest Songs of All Time

Catchy songs have been around as long as there's been music, but it's still a mystery makes a song stick in our minds. I recently chaperoned the all-night graduation party at my daughter's high school. After hanging out at an all-games-and-rides-free arcade until 2 a.m., we took the graduates on chartered buses to a private all-ages nightclub in downtown Seattle. It boasted free unlimited fountain soda and snacks, a photo booth with props, a trivia contest, glow necklaces and, best of all, a da

I'm ditching passwords for passkeys for one reason - and it's not what you think

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Adoption of passkeys is fragmented across sites and devices. Users still need passwords for recovery and new device setup. Phishing protection makes passkeys worth adding, despite confusion. OK. Fine. I've finally decided to embrace passkeys. But why does it feel so icky? As you probably know, passkeys are the tech industry's answer to The Password Problem. Unlike password data, which

Indices, not Pointers

Indices, not Pointers There is a pattern I’ve learned while using Zig which I’ve never seen used in any other language. It’s an extremely simple trick which - when applied to a data structure - reduces memory usage, reduces memory allocations, speeds up accesses, makes freeing instantaneous, and generally makes everything much, much faster. The trick is to use indices, not pointers. This is something I learned from a talk by Andrew Kelley (Zig’s creator) on data-oriented design. It’s used in Z

OpenAI starts building out its app team

is The Verge’s senior AI reporter. An AI beat reporter for more than five years, her work has also appeared in CNBC, MIT Technology Review, Wired UK, and other outlets. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. OpenAI has started to build out its Applications team under Fidji Simo, its new CEO of Applications, who left her former position as Instacart’s CEO to start in the executive role on August 18th. On Tuesday, the company confirmed it’s shuffl

OpenAI acquires product testing startup Statsig and shakes up its leadership team

OpenAI announced in a blog post on Tuesday that it agreed to acquire the product testing startup, Statsig, and bring on its founder and CEO, Vijaye Raji, as the company’s CTO of Applications. OpenAI is paying $1.1 billion for Statsig in an all-stock deal — one of the largest acquisitions ever for the ChatGPT maker — under the company’s current $300 billion valuation, OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood told TechCrunch. The acquisition marks OpenAI’s latest effort to build out its Applications busin

OpenAI shuffles executive roles, acquires Statsig for $1.1 billion

is The Verge’s senior AI reporter. An AI beat reporter for more than five years, her work has also appeared in CNBC, MIT Technology Review, Wired UK, and other outlets. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. OpenAI has started to build out its Applications team under Fidji Simo, its new CEO of Applications, who left her former position as Instacart’s CEO to start in the executive role on August 18th. On Tuesday, the company confirmed it’s shuffl

How to Clean Your Dog's Ears and Clip Your Cat's Nails—Experts Weigh In (2025)

The internet is filled with questions like “How to clean your dog's ears?” to “Do you really need to brush your pet's teeth?” Thanks to the crowdsourcing nature of the web, there's a bevy of instructional TikToks and fellow pet parents engaging in heated debates on everything from what your dog's poop means to how to best clip your cat's nails. With so much information to sift through, I decided to test some pet hygiene products on my cats, chat with experts like vets and groomers, and do a lit

Topics: cat cats dog need skin

Amazon disrupts Russian APT29 hackers targeting Microsoft 365

Researchers have disrupted an operation attributed to the Russian state-sponsored threat group Midnight Blizzard, which sought access to Microsoft 365 accounts and data. Also known as APT29, the hacker group compromised websites in a watering hole campaign to redirect selected targets "to malicious infrastructure designed to trick users into authorizing attacker-controlled devices through Microsoft’s device code authentication flow." The Midnight Blizzard threat actor has been linked to Russia

De-Googling TOTP Authenticator Codes

Back to Articles 1st Sep 2025 In the ongoing effort to extricate myself from Google's services, I've been paring down my usage of their apps on my (admittedly Android) phone. I'm now down to two Google apps I use regularly: Maps (for traffic data) and Authenticator (for TOTP [A] Time-based One Time Password codes). Now, I spend most of my time in a terminal window on MacOS or connected to a Linux machine; it'd be nice if I could get TOTPs on the command-line, and it turns out there's a utilit

Android 16 has an annoying notification bug, but a fix is coming

Google released the stable version of Android 16 back in June, and it brings some welcome features to the platform. Unfortunately, the update has also introduced a peculiar bug for some. A user posted a report on Google’s Issue Tracker back in June, detailing a strange notification issue in Android 16. More specifically, the user and several others found that notifications don’t play any sounds when there’s already a notification in the notification shade. “When testing notifications, we reali

Growing Up on Alcatraz

On a gray May morning — that’s to say a typical San Francisco May morning — in 2014, my mother, my wife, and I convened at Pier 33 to ride to Alcatraz, along with a literal boatload of tourists. But we were on a secret mission. Hours earlier, before leaving the Peninsula, I had opened the box containing my father’s ashes and portioned out perhaps a pint of the coarse, bone-white powder. I’m afraid we hadn’t planned with an eye for ceremony. There were no satin or fine linen sachets; just Ziplo

iOS 26 Beta Brings AI Summaries Back to News Apps, but With a Warning

Apple released the fifth public beta of iOS 26 on Aug. 25, and the beta brings a new Liquid Glass design to the iPhones of developers and beta testers, alongside other updates such as call screening. And developers and beta testers with an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone will see AI notification summaries for news and entertainment apps in the latest beta. Apple disabled AI notification summaries for news and entertainment apps in January. That came a few weeks after the BBC pointed out in De