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Outset raises $17M to replace human interviewers with AI agents for enterprise research

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more Outset, a San Francisco startup that uses artificial intelligence to conduct market research interviews, has raised $17 million in Series A funding to accelerate adoption of its AI-moderated research platform among Fortune 500 enterprises. The round, led by venture capital firm 8VC with participation from Future Back Ventures by Bain & Com

Why humanoid robots need their own safety rules

“If Digit’s going to walk out into an aisle in front of you, you don’t want to be surprised by that,” he says. The robot could use voice commands, but audio alone is not practical for a loud industrial setting. It could be even more confusing if you have multiple robots in the same space—which one is trying to get your attention? There’s also a psychological effect that differentiates humanoids from other kinds of robots, says Prather. We naturally anthropomorphize robots that look like us, whi

The Download: Amsterdam’s welfare AI experiment, and making humanoid robots safer

Amsterdam thought it was on the right track. City officials in the welfare department believed they could build technology that would prevent fraud while protecting citizens’ rights. They followed these emerging best practices and invested a vast amount of time and money in a project that eventually processed live welfare applications. But in their pilot, they found that the system they’d developed was still not fair and effective. Why? Lighthouse Reports, MIT Technology Review, and the Dutch n

Android 16 introduces Advanced Protection mode to fortify your phone against threats

From harmful apps to insecure connections, there are all kinds of risks you’re exposed to. Thankfully, Android features a range of security settings to keep your device and data protected from these threats. To take this protection even further, Google is rolling out an Advanced Protection mode with Android 16 . Today, Android 16 is coming to eligible devices, and with it, Advanced Protection mode. As Android 16 beta users are aware, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this feature, but now it

Pixel VIPs widget is here to help you stay connected to your most important people

TL;DR Google has officially launched the Pixel VIPs widget for devices from Pixel 6 onward via the June Pixel Feature Drop. The home screen widget displays key updates like last calls, WhatsApp messages, locations, and birthdays for up to eight chosen contacts. VIP contacts can also bypass Do Not Disturb settings. Google has been working on a new Pixel VIPs widget for the Google Contacts app for a while now. Last month, we got a good idea about how Pixel VIPs would work, and earlier this week

Google Messages is finally getting group chat icon customization and RCS tags for contacts

TL;DR Google has finally announced that custom icon support for RCS group chats will soon be available in Google Messages. The company has also confirmed that Google Messages will soon allow users to snooze chats. In addition, the messaging app will clearly label contacts with RCS enabled. Although Google has been working on adding custom icon support to RCS group chats in Google Messages for quite some time, the feature has yet to reach users. We first spotted references to the feature in a

Android 16 now lets you customize keyboard shortcuts — Here’s how it works

Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority TL;DR Android 16 adds the ability to customize keyboard shortcuts. This feature first went live in Android 16 Beta 2. While you can’t assign custom key combinations to every available shortcut, you can customize many of them. Update, June 10, 2025 (2:24 PM ET): Google announced today that it is launching custom keyboard shortcuts in Android so you can “create your own combination of hotkeys.” This feature is already available in Android 16 for the Pixel Tab

Google experiments with ditching the Favorites tab in the Phone app for a simpler layout

TL;DR Google is testing the removal of the Favorites tab in the Phone app. Favorite contacts appear as a horizontal row at the top of the Recents tab in the new layout. The frequent contacts section no longer has a place in this redesign. Google is testing a significant change to its dialer app, and it could mark the end of a familiar tab. On at least some Pixel 8 Pro devices running version 178.0.765584175-publicbeta of the Google Phone app, the standalone Favorites tab has been removed. Ins

9to5Mac Daily: June 9, 2025 – Liquid Glass, iOS 29, more

Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players. Sponsored by iMazing: iMazing 3 is a comprehensive platform for Apple device management with complete device control for backup management, data transfer capabilities, and much more. Try it now. New episodes of 9to5Mac Daily are recorded every weekday. Subscribe to ou

CarPlay in iOS 26: Liquid Glass, app widgets, refreshed apps

Turns out you don’t need an Aston Martin to have a new CarPlay experience in 2025. That’s because iOS 26 brings a fresh coat of paint and some new features to CarPlay for everyone. Liquid Glass design The most obvious change is essentially a new theme that mirrors Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language used on iPhone. In CarPlay, Liquid Glass is present from app appearance options to buttons and other interface elements. CarPlay icons now support these appearance modes: Default, Dark, and C

macOS 26: Spotlight gets actions, clipboard manager, custom shortcuts, more

After years of incremental tweaks, Spotlight is taking center stage in macOS Tahoe 26, in what Apple calls its biggest update ever. Here’s everything that’s new. With this release, Apple wants to evolve Spotlight from a simple file and app launcher into a fully-fledged productivity layer across macOS, much like Alfred and Raycast users have used for years. A faster, more relevant Spotlight Spotlight now aims to be the fastest way to browse and interact with content on your Mac. It uses on-dev

9to5Mac Daily: June 10, 2025 – iPadOS 26, watchOS 26, more

Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players. Sponsored by iMazing: iMazing 3 is a comprehensive platform for Apple device management with complete device control for backup management, data transfer capabilities, and much more. Try it now. New episodes of 9to5Mac Daily are recorded every weekday. Subscribe to ou

TestFlight adds managed background assets, faster macOS app installs on Apple Silicon

Apple’s TestFlight app for distributing pre-release software has been updated with new features and performance gains. Apple released TestFlight version 3.9 today, introducing managed background asset testing and a speed boost for beta app installation on recent Macs. Introduction of managed background assets (self-hosted assets) and Apple-hosted background assets for testing Faster installation of macOS apps on Apple Silicon Stability improvements and bug fixes Apple announced Background A

iOS 26: Apple will expand family tools with smarter child account setup, age-based app filters, more

Apple today announced a sweeping set of updates aimed at helping parents protect kids and teens online, as part of its broader push to make Apple platforms safer, more transparent, and more age-aware. Here’s what’s coming. The new features, many of which land with iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, visionOS 26, and tvOS 26 this fall, expand on existing parental controls and introduce smarter ways to manage Child Accounts, share age ranges with apps, and limit risky interactions. He

9to5Mac Daily: June 11, 2025 – New AirPods features and more

Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players. Sponsored by iMazing: iMazing 3 is a comprehensive platform for Apple device management with complete device control for backup management, data transfer capabilities, and much more. Try it now. New episodes of 9to5Mac Daily are recorded every weekday. Subscribe to ou

Engadget Podcast: Breaking down the highlights of WWDC 2025

We're joined by friends from Wired and The Washington Post. In this special episode, recorded live in Cupertino, Cherlynn and Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham are joined by the Washington Post's Chris Velazco and Wired's Julian Chokkattu to discuss Apple's announcements at WWDC 2025. Though the announcements were all over the place and felt difficult to judge until they roll out to devices, our guests and hosts agree that they felt more meaningful than past WWDCs. Credits Hosts: Cherlynn Low and

NASA is shutting down some official social media accounts, including the Curiosity rover's handle

NASA is shutting down several social media accounts run by the Science Mission Directorate, including the official Mars Curiosity Rover account on X. The organization says it made the decision in order to "make its work more accessible to the public, avoiding the potential for oversaturation or confusion." The "social media consolidation project" is concentrated in part on X, where there are dozens NASA accounts affiliated with specific missions and areas of research. So far 29 accounts are bei

Show HN: S3mini – Tiny and fast S3-compatible client, no-deps, edge-ready

s3mini is an ultra-lightweight Typescript client (~14 KB minified, ≈15 % more ops/s) for S3-compatible object storage. It runs on Node, Bun, Cloudflare Workers, and other edge platforms. It has been tested on Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces, and MinIO. (No Browser support!) [github] [issues] [npm] Dev: Performance tests was done on local Minio instance. Your results may vary depending on environment and network conditions, so take it with a grain of salt. The library support

The curious case of shell commands, or how "this bug is required by POSIX" (2021)

About the fatal perils and traps of many modern tools that handle "shell commands" as passed through system(3) or sh -c . Or, how by the end of 2020, we still haven't given up on shell's equivalent "SQL building", or how shell's equivalent "SQL injection" still thrives in our engineering world... Plus a glibc bug, then a Linux man pages bug, then a POSIX specification bug... If you appreciate the insights shared in this article and you or your company are facing technical challenges or seeking

How I Program with Agents

How I program with Agents 2025-06-08 This is the second part of my ongoing self-education in how to adapt my programming experience to a world with computers that talk. The first part, How I program with LLMs, covered ways LLMs can be adapted into our existing tools (basically, autocomplete) and how careful prompting can replace traditional web search. Now I want to talk about the harder, and more rewarding act of using agents to program. Define Agent It is worthwhile starting with a definit

Chatterbox TTS

Chatterbox TTS _Made with ♥️ by We're excited to introduce Chatterbox, Resemble AI's first production-grade open source TTS model. Licensed under MIT, Chatterbox has been benchmarked against leading closed-source systems like ElevenLabs, and is consistently preferred in side-by-side evaluations. Whether you're working on memes, videos, games, or AI agents, Chatterbox brings your content to life. It's also the first open source TTS model to support emotion exaggeration control, a powerful feat

The New ‘Superman’ Trailer Is Packed With Super Spectacle

Oh, so that’s why the previous Superman trailers were all so similar. Tickets for the highly anticipated DC Studios film are now on sale and to celebrate, Warner Bros. has released its most revealing trailer to date. It’s filled with lots of evil Lex Luthor and even more wild visual effects shots, that showcase action, creations, and more. Presumably, these are all shots that were being finished in the previous months, but are now ready for your eyeballs. Written and directed by James Gunn, Sup

John L. Young, the Guy Who Created Wikileaks Before Wikileaks, Dies at 89

John L. Young, often hailed as an under-recognized hero of the digital age and co-founder of the groundbreaking transparency platform Cryptome, passed away on March 28th in New York City. His death, in relative anonymity, stands in stark contrast to the thunderous revelations that defined his pioneering work. His passing was quietly acknowledged by Archinect, a professional publication for architects, on June 4th: “John L. Young, architect and the co-founder (with his wife Deborah Natsios) of

If You're a Student Loan Borrower Enrolled in Save, Make This Move Now While Your Payments Remain Paused

If you're enrolled in SAVE, make this move while your payments remain on hold. Pla2na/Getty Images/CNET There's been a lot of student loan noise over the past year, but little clarity for borrowers enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education repayment plan. We've witnessed several updates to student loan programs over the past year, from proposed changes to Public Service Loan Forgiveness eligibility to the ramping up of collections efforts on defaulted student loan accounts to a new Republ

U.S. Open 2025: TV Schedule, How to Watch, Stream All the PGA Tour Golf From Anywhere

The 125th US Open takes place this weekend, with Bryson DeChambeau looking to clinch the title for a third time at the Oakmont Country Club in Pittsburgh. Keep reading to find out the best live TV streaming services you can use to watch each day of the tournament live wherever you are in the world, and how to use a VPN if they're not available where you are. The third of the year's majors, sees a 156-man field take on the course's notoriously lightning-fast, sloped greens and its punishing 175

‘Uber for Getting Off Antidepressants’ Launches in the US

Ariella Sharf was first prescribed antidepressants when she was a college student more than a decade ago. When she decided to stop taking them last year, Sharf says she wasn’t sure how to do it safely. She was disappointed when her longtime psychiatrist didn’t help her find a new doctor after she moved across the country, and she thought her primary care physician wasn’t equipped for the task. Sharf decided instead to try Outro Health, a telehealth startup that CEO and cofounder Brandon Goode de

6 Best Organic Sheets (2025), Tested and Reviewed

What to Look for in Organic Sheets Organic means many things. It's often used to confirm that food was grown without toxic pesticides and chemicals, and doesn't have things like growth hormones or GMOs, in order to label it as organic food. For bedding, it should mean both that organic materials were used to make the fabric—no toxic pesticides used in farming, etc.—and that they were produced organically with nontoxic chemicals. You'll want at least two certifications to prove this. Most sheet

My Virtual Avatar No Longer Looks Terrible in the Apple Vision Pro

Remember Apple’s Vision Pro? That's the $3,499 mixed reality headset the company launched early in 2024 that failed to garner much public interest. Apple has steamed ahead with updates for the platform over the past year, and soon there will be a new version upgrade: visionOS 26. (Apple announced at WWDC it was changing the way it named its operating systems to match the following year.) I got a chance to try out a few of the new capabilities, but two stuck out to me more than the others. First

The EPA Wants to Roll Back Emissions Controls on Power Plants

The US Environmental Protection Agency moved to roll back emissions standards for power plants, the second-largest source of CO 2 emissions in the country, on Wednesday, claiming that the American power sector does not “contribute significantly” to air pollution. “The bottom line is that the EPA is trying to get out of the climate change business,” says Ryan Maher, a staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. The announcement comes just days after the National Oceanic and Atmospher