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Threads expands Insights with detailed analytics, discovery breakdown, more

Today, Threads announced a new batch of analytics upgrades as part of its push to let creators better understand how their posts are doing on and off the platform. Here’s what’s new. Threads continues its push to win over creators Up until now, Threads’ Insights offered basic metrics like views, replies, new followers, and external links performance, along with a weekly recap and some light engagement tips. Starting today, the platform will offer a broader set of analytics tools so creators c

New UK law would ban ransomware payments by publicly funded orgs

The British government has announced plans to move forward with a law that would bar public organizations from paying off ransomware attackers. The proposed legislation would add schools, town councils, National Health Service (NHS) hospitals and critical infrastructure managers to a ban which already applies to the national government. The logic behind banning payments is simple. If cybercriminals know a ransomware attack against a UK school or hospital won't get them paid, they'll look somewh

Lumma infostealer malware returns after law enforcement disruption

The Lumma infostealer malware operation is gradually resuming activities following a massive law enforcement operation in May, which resulted in the seizure of 2,300 domains and parts of its infrastructure. Although the Lumma malware-as-a-service (MaaS) platform suffered significant disruption from the law enforcement action, as confirmed by early June reports on infostealer activity, it didn't shut down. The operators immediately acknowledged the situation on XSS forums, but claimed that thei

Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

Annie Chen first noticed she was unusually short of breath in 2017, while running to catch the bus home to New Jersey from her job in Manhattan. She told her primary care doctor, thinking of her father, who died of lung cancer at 71. But her doctor told her not to worry — her father was a heavy smoker, and Ms. Chen had never smoked. She continued to have difficulty breathing, but it wasn’t until two years later that a doctor ordered an X-ray, and Ms. Chen was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer.

Firebender (YC W24) Is Hiring

Firebender processes tens of billions of tokens per day for the thousands of concurrent coding agents, and auto complete model. Every month hundreds of millions of lines of code are added to codebases of companies ranging from startups to fortune 500. Building a great coding agent is likely the most valuable technical challenges to solve right now, and we’re already making great progress on this. If this challenge excites you, let’s talk. Responsibilities Build/iterate on agentic evaluation,

Subliminal learning: Models transmit behaviors via hidden signals in data

Alex Cloud*1, Minh Le*1, July 22, 2025 James Chua2, Jan Betley2, Anna Sztyber-Betley3, Jacob Hilton4, Samuel Marks5, Owain Evans2,6 *Equal contribution; author order chosen randomly 1Anthropic Fellows Program; 2Truthful AI; 3Warsaw University of Technology; 4Alignment Research Center; 5Anthropic; 6UC Berkeley Anthropic Fellows Program;Truthful AI;Warsaw University of Technology;Alignment Research Center;Anthropic;UC Berkeley tl;dr We study subliminal learning, a surprising phenomenon where lan

‘I Got You Guys Out of So Much Trouble’: Trump Signs Stablecoin Crypto Bill

The self-diagnosed “very stable genius” has, fittingly, signed into law the GENIUS Act, which introduces (very loose, industry-friendly) regulations for the operation of stablecoins—cryptocurrencies pegged to assets like the US dollar. During the press conference and signing ceremony for the bill, Trump got quite transparent about his relationship with the crypto community, telling them, “I got you guys out of so much trouble.” Trump’s comments, made over the weekend, show quite the prescience,

Can Cortisol Supplements Reduce Your Stress Levels? Here's What the Experts Say

Cortisol was discovered in the mid-20th century, but in the last year or so, this naturally occurring hormone has entered the limelight of social media. You can find videos on TikTok discussing "cortisol face" with millions of views and several Reddit threads of users trying to regulate their cortisol levels. While cortisol supplements can be the right choice in some situations, it's essential to understand the myriad factors that come into play. To help you understand how this hormone works in

YouTube’s latest experiment makes comments feel more like Reddit, if that sounds like an improvement

Joe Maring / Android Authority TL;DR YouTube is rolling out Reddit-style comment threading to Premium subscribers on Android and iOS. The experiment has been updated so the main comment is threaded to subsequent replies. Threaded comments will remain available until August 14. YouTube’s comments section is going to look a little different for Premium subscribers. The company is rolling out an experiment inspired by Reddit. Earlier this year, YouTube began testing a new threaded comment UI f

Walmart is selling the latest Apple Pencil Pro for the exact same price as the older Apple Pencil 2nd Gen

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Gluten Could Be Wrongly Blamed for Americans’ Stomach Troubles

For many of us, gluten is a dietary villain, capable of causing all sorts of gastrointestinal troubles. Research out this week looks to complicate that narrative, however, finding that people are sometimes wrongly blaming gluten for triggering their symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. Scientists at McMaster University in Canada conducted the study, a small, randomized trial of IBS patients. People became sicker just as often after eating food containing gluten or wheat as they did after eatin

DuckDuckGo Is Hoping to Win Over AI-Hating Searchers

Are you tired of AI-generated images cluttering your search results? Lucky for you, there’s a way out of the slop, and it starts with forgetting about Google. DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine and web browser, recently rolled out a new feature that allows users to hide images made with AI from their search results. You can try it yourself right now by running a search on the DuckDuckGo search engine and going to the images tab. You’ll now see a new drop-down menu option titled “AI

OpenAI agreed to pay Oracle $30B a year for data center services

OpenAI was the company that signed a $30 billion per year deal with Oracle for data center services, disclosed last month, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Now, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has confirmed the details of the contract (but not the dollar amount) in an X post on Tuesday and in a company blog post. To recap, on June 30, Oracle disclosed in an SEC filing that it had signed a cloud deal that would generate $30 billion a year in revenue. However, the company didn’t say who it was w

Leaked Slack Messages Show CEO of "Ethical AI" Startup Anthropic Saying It's Okay to Benefit Dictators

In the so-called "constitution" for its chatbot Claude, AI company Anthropic claims that it's committed to principles based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, instructing its chatbot to prioritize freedom, equality, freedom of thought, and adequate standards of living in its responses. Anthropic has long attempted to distinguish itself as putting safety first. The firm was founded by former OpenAI members, with a commitment to advancing AI ethically and responsibly. But four years o

Blip: Peer-to-peer massive file sharing

Really fast. Blip’s fast relay supports multi-gigabit speeds, even over long distances where other services slow down. Because there are no separate “upload” and “download” steps, sending with Blip can be at least twice as fast as many other services. The recipient will start receiving right away rather than having to wait for you to finish uploading. Now, Blip might seem like magic, but it can’t break the laws of physics! Performance will be affected by the upload speed of the sender’s intern

This Weird Haptic VR Glove Evokes One of Nintendo’s Most Iconic Flops

VR is an exciting area for many reasons, but I personally love it because it’s still a new enough niche to get really strange. That means all sorts of passion projects from lesser-known developers, 3D-printed accessories, and whatever the hell this is actually wind up seeing the light of day. Relatedly, it also means Sharp might, for real, produce this ridiculous haptic VR glove that evokes Nintendo’s most iconic and infamous flops. YO. Sharp has made a haptic vr controller! Also the first imag

460,000 Student Loan Borrowers Seeking Lower Payments Will Be Denied. What to Do If You're One of Them

The Department of Education will deny nearly half a million student loan borrowers who applied for the lowest repayment plan based on their income. Getty Image/Zooey Liao/CNET Nearly half a million federal student loan borrowers who applied for lower monthly payments will be denied by the Department of Education. Based on internal documents obtained by Politico, the department is rejecting 460,000 student loan borrowers who selected the lowest payment option based on their income. For most app

Some Jobs Are Too Good to Be True, Especially in a Tough Labor Market

ArtMarie/Getty Images The job market feels tougher than ever right now, despite relatively low unemployment rates. So imagine being one of the 1.6 million Americans hunting for a job for at least six months, then, at long last, you get an unprompted message from a recruiter. You're offered a work-from-home position, making thousands of dollars a day. All you have to do is fill out a form with your personal information or in some cases, pay for a starter business kit. Too good to be true, righ

Marine biologist for a day: Ars goes shark tagging

MIAMI—We were beginning to run out of bait, and the sharks weren't cooperating. Everybody aboard the Research Vessel Garvin had come to Miami for the sharks—to catch them, sample them, and tag them, all in the name of science. People who once wanted to be marine biologists, actual marine biologists, shark enthusiasts, the man who literally wrote the book Why Sharks Matter, and various friends and family had spent much of the day sending fish heads set with hooks over the side of the Garvin. But

Why I love my little round Dell USB-C mobile adapter

Barbara Krasnoff is officially the reviews editor for The Verge, but although she has done a great deal of reviewing in her time, she doesn’t tend to do a lot of it in her current position. “I was originally hired here to write and edit to-do articles,” she explains. “Now, I spend most of my time editing, overseeing various projects, and coaxing staffers to write about their favorite stuff.” Where did you first hear about the Dell mobile adapter? I didn’t actually hear about it — I saw it at a

UK government wants ransomware victims to report breaches so it can carry out ‘targeted disruptions’ against hackers

The U.K. government wants to require victims of ransomware to report if they were breached with the goal of providing law enforcement with information that could help target the cybercriminals responsible. On Tuesday, the U.K.’s interior ministry, the Home Office, published a proposal with the aim of changing the British government’s strategy to counter ransomware. Among the three key proposals is a reporting requirement, which would aid authorities in identifying and disrupting hacking operati

Fighting forever chemicals and startup fatigue

The MEDC also helped us early on create a model in Excel for tracking business financing and forecasting, forecasting our future financial needs, so that we could be proactive instead of reactive to financial limitations. We knew it wasn't going to be inexpensive to design and build a piece of equipment that's the size of two very large refrigerators that had never been built before. That type of financial-forward modeling helped us figure out when we would need to start fundraising and taking i

Nothing just launched a stylish $99 smartwatch - with a reported 13-day battery

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Stop Pretending LLMs Have Feelings Media's Dangerous AI Anthropomorphism Problem

Yesterday, Wall Street Journal subscribers received a push notification that perfectly encapsulates everything wrong with how major media outlets cover “artificial intelligence.” “In a stunning moment of self reflection,” the notification read, “ChatGPT admitted to fueling a man's delusions and acknowledged how dangerous its own behavior can be.” But that’s just… not true. ChatGPT did not have a “stunning moment of self reflection.” It did not "admit" to anything. It cannot “acknowledge” its be

Subliminal Learning: Models Transmit Behaviors via Hidden Signals in Data

Alex Cloud*1, Minh Le*1, July 22, 2025 James Chua2, Jan Betley2, Anna Sztyber-Betley3, Jacob Hilton4, Samuel Marks5, Owain Evans2,6 *Equal contribution; author order chosen randomly 1Anthropic Fellows Program; 2Truthful AI; 3Warsaw University of Technology; 4Alignment Research Center; 5Anthropic; 6UC Berkeley Anthropic Fellows Program;Truthful AI;Warsaw University of Technology;Alignment Research Center;Anthropic;UC Berkeley tl;dr We study subliminal learning, a surprising phenomenon where lan

Microsoft Will Wipe Out Your Passwords on Aug. 1. What to Do Now

Microsoft is getting rid of passwords in less than two weeks. On Aug. 1, the Microsoft Authenticator app will no longer store or manage passwords, which could be a problem for a lot of users. Microsoft Authenticator has been one of the best password managers for years. You were able to save passwords, enable two-factor authentication and auto-fill. This change means that if you're using the Authenticator app as a password manager, you'll need to look for another option soon. At the same time,