Latest Tech News

Stay updated with the latest in technology, AI, cybersecurity, and more

Filtered by: sing Clear Filter

The Economy Is So Off the Rails That They’re Trying to Figure Out How to Make Ads Specifically Targeted at AI Bots

As artificial intelligence ruins the economy and takes over the world, Google is quietly working to change the advertising game in a mind-bending way. As Semafor reports, AI has so utterly altered the way search engine advertising works that Google is now being forced to rewrite the script it forged itself. Chief among its new directives: creating a new ecosystem where advertisers compete for the attention of AI agents rather than humans — a shift predicted at the very beginning of this year b

Can AI save teachers from a crushing workload? There's new evidence it might

Deagreez/Getty A Gallup poll published Wednesday found that 30% of teachers are using AI weekly -- and that it's saving them "six weeks a year." According to data from the 2024 to 2025 school year, 60% of K-12 teachers reported using some kind of AI tool in their work, most commonly to create worksheets or activities, personalize material to students' needs, and prep lessons. The study did not specify which AI tools teachers were using, referring to "chatbots, adaptive learning systems, or oth

Using AI saves teachers 'six weeks per year,' Gallup poll finds - but at what cost?

J Studios/Getty Images A Gallup poll published Wednesday found that 30% of teachers are using AI weekly -- and that it's saving them "six weeks a year." According to data from the 2024 to 2025 school year, 60% of K-12 teachers reported using some kind of AI tool in their work, most commonly to create worksheets or activities, personalize material to students' needs, and prep lessons. The study did not specify which AI tools teachers were using, referring to "chatbots, adaptive learning systems

Calculating the Fibonacci numbers on GPU

Calculating the fibonacci numbers on GPU 21 Jun, 2025 In this blogpost we will show how to perform very fast calculation of the Fibonacci sequence using GPU programming. In this blogpost we will employ Thrust an NVIDIA library which uses concepts from modern C++ to make GPU programming easy. Introduction Scan is one of the fundamental examples for parallelizable algorithms. If you are interested in the foundations of the algorithm I refer you to a previous blogpost where I implemented scan i

OpenAI hires team behind AI recommendation startup Crossing Minds

Crossing Minds, a startup that provides AI recommendation systems to e-commerce businesses, said on Thursday that its team is joining OpenAI. The startup was backed by Index Ventures, Shopify, Plug and Play, and Radical Ventures, and had raised more than $13.5 million across multiple rounds, according to Crunchbase. Crossing Minds largely worked with e-commerce companies to improve their personalization and recommendation systems. The company claims it studies customers’ on-site behavior data

45-hour voyage in replica canoe tests Paleolithic migration theory

Earlier this week, we reported on a Swedish archaeologist who spent the last three years sailing the fjords in a replica boat similar to those the Vikings may have used. Not to be outdone, Japanese researchers have followed suit, building their own seaworthy dugout canoe with Paleolithic-era tools to cross between Taiwan and Yonaguni Island, where one of the world’s strongest ocean currents, the Kuroshio, remains active. They presented their findings in two new papers published in the journal S

Some bits on malloc(0) in C being allowed to return NULL

You're using a tool with a too-generic User-Agent You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace, the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately whatever you're using to do so has a HTTP User-Agent header value that is too generic or otherwise excessively suspicious. Unfortunately, as of early 2025 there's a plague of high volume crawlers (apparently in part to gather data for LLM training) that behave like this. To reduce th

Reddit CEO pledges site will remain “written by humans and voted on by humans”

Reddit is in an “arms race” to protect its devoted online communities from a surge in artificial intelligence-generated content, with the authenticity of its vast repository of human interaction increasingly valuable in training new AI-powered search tools. Chief executive Steve Huffman told the Financial Times that Reddit had “20 years of conversation about everything,” leaving the company with a lucrative resource of personal interaction. This has allowed it to strike multimillion dollar par

Structured Output with LangChain and Llamafile

2 minutes read This article shows how one can teach Llamafile to handle structured outputs like JSON. If you’re already familiar with LangChain, you’ll know that popular models like OpenAI include their own implementations of with_structured_output. Using it is straightforward: All we need is to derive a new class from Pydantic’s BaseModel. The rest happens transparently. You don’t need to teach the LLM anything. Using Llamafile This isn’t currently possible with Llamafile, which I’m using i

Trump administration moves to count crypto as a federal mortgage asset

In a landmark shift for the U.S. housing finance system, the Federal Housing Finance Agency has issued a directive ordering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to formally consider cryptocurrency as an asset in single-family mortgage loan risk assessments. The move, signed by FHFA Director William J. Pulte on Wednesday, signals a new era of crypto integration into traditional financial infrastructure — this time within the core of American home lending. The order directs both housing finance giants to

More Americans Are Using ChatGPT, but a Surprising Number Say They Haven't Heard of It

About a third of American adults say they've used the generative AI tool ChatGPT, while one in five say they've never heard of it, according to new survey results from the Pew Research Center. The 34% who say they've used the gen AI tool from OpenAI include 58% of adults under 30, the largest share among any age cohort. The share of ChatGPT users drops with age: 41% of those 30 to 49, 25% of those 50 to 64 and 10% of those 65 and older. There's also a correlation with education; among adults wi

Lots More Americans Are Using ChatGPT, but a Surprising Number Say They Haven't Heard of It

About a third of American adults say they've used the generative AI tool ChatGPT, while one in five say they've never heard of it, according to new survey results from the Pew Research Center. The 34% who say they've used the gen AI tool from OpenAI include 58% of adults under 30, the largest share among any age cohort. The share of ChatGPT users drops with age: 41% of those 30 to 49, 25% of those 50 to 64 and 10% of those 65 and older. There's also a correlation with education; among adults wi

Trump’s FTC announces merger condition that prohibits advertising boycotts

The Federal Trade Commission is approving a merger of big advertising agencies after extracting an agreement that the combined firm won't lead or participate in any advertising boycotts based on political or ideological viewpoints. The merger condition is a new strategy in the Republican-controlled FTC's fight against alleged advertising boycotts, which could help Elon Musk's X social network and President Trump's own Truth Social platform. The FTC proposal surfaced in a news report earlier thi

Web Translator API

Experimental: This is an experimental technology Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production. The Translator interface of the Translator and Language Detector APIs contains all the associated translation functionality, including checking AI model availability, creating a new Translator instance, using it to create a translation, and more.

My "Are you presuming most people are stupid?" test

Sometimes when people talk about a problem in society, they strongly imply that most people are stupid. This is wrong. Most people aren’t super knowledgeable about a lot of specific facts about the world (only half of Americans can name the 3 branches of government) but they’re intelligent when it comes to their own lives and the areas they work and spend time in. We should expect the average person to struggle with factual questions about abstract ideas and far-off events, but not so much abou

Your Bitcoin Might Soon Get You a Mortgage—No, Really

In a move that should send a chill down the spine of anyone who remembers 2008, the man now in charge of regulating a huge chunk of the U.S. housing market wants to see if your crypto holdings—like Bitcoin or Solana—should count when Americans apply for a mortgage. That’s right: your dog-themed coin stash might one day help you buy a house. Bill Pulte, the new director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), announced the plan on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “We will study t

Andreessen Horowitz Backs AI Startup Whose Motto Is ‘Cheat at Everything’

By now, it’s well established that one of AI’s biggest accomplishments is to help Americans cheat at life. Students are using it to cheat on their homework, teachers are using it to cheat at grading homework, sad and horny men are using it to cheat themselves out of having a girlfriend, actors are using it to cheat at ethnic accents, and some lawyers are even using it to cheat on legal filings. Given all the cheating that’s been happening, it just makes sense that a company would come along that

Marble Blast

Overview Roll your marble through a rich cartoon landscape of moving platforms and dangerous hazards. Along the way find power ups to increase your speed, jumping ability or flight power, and use them to collect the hidden gems and race to the finish for the fastest time. Basic Controls The marble can be moved forward, back, left and right by pressing , , and , respectively. Pressing causes the marble to jump, and pressing uses whatever powerup you currently have available. All movement is

JLab’s new party speaker puts a light show in your pocket

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. JLab has announced a new Party line of wireless speakers that continues an industry trend of adding animated RGB lighting to anything that plays music. That even includes the new budget-minded JLab Pop Party speaker — which is small enough to squeeze into a pocket but still features customizable LEDs. The $19.99 Pop Party is the lightest and che

Largest Wildlife Bridge Spanning 10 Lanes of CA 101 Is Nearly Complete

Get The Drive’s daily newsletter The latest car news, reviews, and features. Email address Sign Up Thank you! Terms of Service & Privacy Policy. Three years after construction began, it’s time to dump dirt on the project. Specifically, 6,000 cubic yards of a “super” soil followed by the planting of 5,000 native flora. I’m talking about the world’s largest wildlife crossing, which has reached another construction milestone as the bridge nears completion. This prepared soil is the beginning of t

The music industry is building the tech to hunt down AI songs

The music industry’s nightmare came true in 2023, and it sounded a lot like Drake. “Heart on My Sleeve,” a convincingly fake duet between Drake and The Weeknd, racked up millions of streams before anyone could explain who made it or where it came from. The track didn’t just go viral — it broke the illusion that anyone was in control. In the scramble to respond, a new category of infrastructure is quietly taking shape that’s built not to stop generative music outright, but to make it traceable.

Verizon told to clarify ambiguous advertising claims after T-Mobile complaint

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR The National Advertising Division (NAD) has recommended that Verizon change its marketing language about satellite texting based on a complaint from T-Mobile. T-Mobile has also challenged Verizon’s claim of being “America’s largest network,” with the watchdog calling Verizon’s advertising “ambiguous.” Verizon has said that it’ll comply with NAD’s recommendations. Verizon is once again under the lens for its inconspicuous advertising claims. This time

My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

How I transformed my old iPhone 8 into a solar-powered Vision OCR server using Apple's native framework and an EcoFlow River 2 Pro. Running 24/7 for months, processing thousands of images while completely off-grid. My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It’s a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server# After running for over a year, my solar-powered iPhone 8 has processed 83,418 OCR requests and 48GB of images using nothing but Apple’s Vision framework and renewable energy. Most people toss their old iPhones i

Some Animal Crossing Lego sets are cheaper than ever

I don’t know about you, but I’ve gotten back into Animal Crossing: New Horizons in a pretty big way since the Switch 2 arrived. I’ve started a new island (the game loads faster and runs better on that console), and I’ve been doing house chores to the relaxing music. The natural progression of my invigorated fandom will likely lead me to buy Lego’s Animal Crossing-themed sets — and what great timing, as some of them are discounted . You can build some of the most iconic landmarks from your islan

WhatsApp’s rollout of ads will change the app forever

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. This week, WhatsApp did something its founders said it would never do: it’s putting advertisements inside the app. It ends WhatsApp’s decade-plus run of offering an ad-free messaging and calling experience. Meta, which acquired WhatsApp in 2014, attempted to justify the decision by saying ads will be sequestered to its “Update” tab, where you’ll se

Meta's All In on AI Creating the Ads You See on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp

Meta is working toward a future where many of the ads you see on Facebook or Instagram are created from scratch by artificial intelligence, and thus more easily targeted specifically to you. Its goal is fully automated AI-powered ad generation by the end of 2026, the Wall Street Journal first reported. Following this initial news, TikTok also announced it's launching AI-powered advertising features on its platform and Meta unveiled that ads are now coming to WhatsApp -- further strengthening the

WhatsApp will start showing ads to users

What just happened? WhatsApp promised a few years ago that advertising would eventually become part of its app experience. Now, the company is starting to deliver on that promise. Privacy, encryption, and safety, however, are still guaranteed, the Meta-owned messaging service states. WhatsApp recently confirmed that advertising is gradually rolling out to a significant portion of its users. According to a new help page, people using the app solely for personal messaging will not see any ads for

Spotify's Daniel Ek leads $694 million investment in defense startup Helsing

Helsing uses AI to analyze large amounts of sensor and weapons system data from the battlefield. European defense technology startup Helsing on Tuesday said that it's raised 600 million euros ($693.6 million) in a bumper new round of funding. The investment was led by Prima Materia, the venture capital firm founded by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and by Shakil Khan, an early investor in the popular music streaming app. Ek is also chairman of Helsing. Existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, A

Spotify’s Daniel Ek just bet bigger on Helsing, Europe’s defense tech darling

When Daniel Ek isn’t busy running Spotify or building his new AI-driven health tech enterprise, he’s making massive bets on the future of European warfare, seemingly. The billionaire, who primarily lives in Stockholm, just led a €600 million investment in Helsing, a four-year-old, Munich-based defense tech company that is now valued at €12 billion, as first reported by the Financial Times and confirmed separately by TechCrunch. The deal makes it one of Europe’s most valuable privately held comp

Your Passwords Are Lazy and Hackers Love It. CNET Survey Finds 49% of US Adults Have Risky Password Habits

It feels like I have a password for everything: my bank account, my Amazon Echo Show and even my Netflix app. With so many different devices and accounts, coming up with unique, strong passwords -- and remembering them -- can be overwhelming. It's tempting to get lazy and use the same password for multiple accounts. It's a relatable move, and it's one scammers are counting on. The risks of using old passwords or including personal information in a new one is a big risk to your data and identity