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Slack bolsters search with AI, adds transcriptions and summaries for huddles

As the race to bake in AI features into productivity apps intensifies, Slack is bolstering search on its app with AI features, adding transcription and summaries for huddles, and a way to see recaps of channels and threads. Using AI, Slack now lets you search across channels as well as connected apps (like Google Drive, Salesforce and Teams) to surface relevant files and conversations. This feature will be available on Slack’s Business and Enterprise plans. Image Credits: Slack The company is

Don’t be duped: Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile’s cheapest plans aren’t worth it

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority Recently, my cousin asked me whether Verizon’s myPlan Unlimited Welcome was better than his legacy plan, prompted by a promotional email he received. At first glance, the new plan looked cheaper and similar in features. But upon closer examination, his legacy plan had notable advantages, especially higher-priority data and a few other perks. Truthfully, none of the entry-level postpaid plans from Verizon, T-Mobile, or AT&T offer great value in 2025. There ar

The password manager I recommend most has its own VPN and long list of features

ZDNET's key takeaways Dashlane is a premium password manager that costs $60 annually for an individual, or $90/year for a family subscription up to 10 users. It offers seamless credential storage with privacy- and security-focused extras like dark web monitoring and a premium subscription to Hotspot Shield's VPN The platform is pricey for password management alone, so if you don't need a VPN, you may want to look elsewhere. View now at Dashlane The best password managers make it easy to save

A Top Engineer Reveals OpenAI’s Culture of Secrets and Chaos

Calvin French-Owen only worked at OpenAI for a year, but he saw more in twelve months than most engineers do in a lifetime. As a successful founder turned employee, he joined the world’s leading artificial intelligence company in May 2024 and left in June 2025. What he walked into was not a typical corporate tech job. It was a startup strapped to a rocket ship, powered by GPUs, Slack notifications, and a culture of secrecy that makes Apple look like an open book. “The first thing to know about

Roblox introduces new safeguards for teens, including age estimation tech

Roblox announced Thursday that it’s launching new safeguards for people who are between the ages of 13 and 18. The company is introducing “Trusted Connections” to allows these users to connect more freely with people they know, alongside age estimation technology, more privacy tools, and insights for parents of teens. Roblox has come under fire in recent years for how it handles child safety. In April, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier issued a subpoena to Roblox in response to reports th

TSMC forecasts 38% jump in third-quarter revenue after results beat on AI chip demand

A motorcycle is seen near a building of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company, in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on April 16, 2025. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company on Thursday reported a near 61% year-on-year rise in second-quarter profit, beating estimates, as demand for artificial intelligence chips stays strong. The world's largest contract chip manufacturer expects third-quarter revenue

Squarespace Promo Codes: 50% Off | July 2025

Squarespace helps small businesses and regular Joe Schmoes to get software help to build their own websites (for both personal and business), even including the commerce side of things with point of sale, inventory, and customer data features (both online or in person). In the age where literally everything is digitized and accessed through the World Wide Web, having an online presence is the most important thing you can do for your business or brand’s growth. Creating a website can be difficult

Microsoft is saving millions with AI and laying off thousands - where do we go from here?

Drew Angerer/Getty Images Last week, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft shared internally that it had saved $500 million in call center costs, thanks to AI -- shortly after the company laid 9,000 people off, the third round in a series of layoffs totaling 15,000. What does this mean for the tech industry -- and job security for humans -- at large? Also: 60% of managers use AI to make decisions now, including whom to promote and fire - does yours? Microsoft's layoffs, despite huge profits Acc

I was wrong about robots.txt

Recently, I wrote an article about my journey in learning about robots.txt and its implications on the data rights in regards to what I write in my blog. I was confident that I wanted to ban all the crawlers from my website. Turned out there was an unintended consequence that I did not account for. My LinkedIn posts became broken# Ever since I changed my robots.txt file, I started seeing that my LinkedIn posts no longer had the preview of the article available. I was not sure what the issue wa

Coinbase steps into consumer market with stablecoin-powered 'everything app' that goes beyond trading

Coinbase unveiled Wednesday an "everything app" designed to bring more people into the crypto economy. The "Base App," which replaces Coinbase Wallet, will combine wallet, trading and payment functions as well as social media, messaging and support for mini apps – all running on the company's homegrown public blockchain network Base, which is built on Ethereum . So-called super apps like WeChat and Alipay – which bundle several different services and functionalities into a single mobile app –

The FCC plans to ban Chinese technology in undersea cables

The Federal Communication Commission plans to vote on new rules that will ban the use of Chinese technology in undersea cables, according to a press release from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. The proposed rules will apply to any company on the FCC's existing list of entities that pose "an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States." Besides "prohibiting the use of 'covered' equipment," the FCC's new rules will also limit the ability for Chinese companies to receive a license t

'Gentle parenting' my smartphone addiction

On a recent weekday, I sent an Instagram message to a friend of mine, an art adviser in New York named Stephen Truax, to gossip about an exhibition. Instead of messaging me back in the app, he texted me to say that he’d blocked Instagram on his smartphone during daytime working hours. Impressed, I asked him how he was accomplishing such a feat. Truax said he was using Opal, an app that makes your smartphone a little more like a so-called dumbphone, without requiring you to trade in your device a

Topics: app new opal said time

Games Workshop Removes Gendered Language From ‘Horus Heresy’ Rulebooks

Games Workshop’s ongoing, fraught relationship with conservative elements of its Warhammer fanbase has led to increasing flashpoints whenever the miniatures maker has attempted to diversify the worldbuilding of its beloved tabletop game. But one lingering back-and-forth among fans simmering long before Games Workshop found itself in the crossfires of the culture war has been brought into light again thanks to the latest edition of one of its games: whether or not a female Space Marine could exis

New Research Shows Data Breaches Keep Coming. Here's How to Protect Yourself

The personal data of Americans continues to be under threat from cybercriminals looking to steal it for their own financial gain, according to a new report from the Identity Theft Resource Center. The nonprofit group, which focuses on helping victims of identity theft, said Wednesday that 1,732 data compromises were reported for the first six months of this year, resulting in 165.7 million victim notifications. The number of reported compromises represents an 11% increase from the same period

Here's How to Watch All the 'Jurassic Park' and 'Jurassic World' Movies Streaming at Home

I first saw Jurassic Park one fateful day during middle school when my teacher rolled in a cart topped with a CRT television, popped in a VHS tape and pressed play. I was instantly hooked and I've since watched the film countless times, including on a 2013 trip to see it in 3D on the big screen at my AMC theater. Jurassic World: Rebirth hit cinemas on July 2, and I've been rewatching the entire series to get in the mood. With run times ranging from 1 hour and 32 minutes for Jurassic Park III to

OpenAI says it will use Google's cloud for ChatGPT

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks to members of the media as he arrives at a lodge for the Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference on July 8, 2025 in Sun Valley, Idaho. OpenAI said Wednesday that it expects to use Google's cloud infrastructure for its popular ChatGPT artificial intelligence assistant. The reach for additional capacity aligns with OpenAI's desire for more computing power to meet heavy demand after initially relying exclusively on Microsoft for cloud capacity. The two companies' relations

Intel's retreat is unlike anything it's done before in Oregon

Intel's campus in Aloha was the company's first Oregon site -- and its first manufacturing facility outside California -- when it opened in the 1970s. Mike Rogoway/The Oregonian Over the five decades Intel has operated in Oregon, its local footprint had moved in just one direction: Upward. From a single factory in Aloha that opened in 1976, the chipmaker grew into the state’s largest corporate employer and one of Oregon’s primary economic engines. Intel spent billions of dollars every year to

Tesla's change in bylaws to limit shareholder lawsuits slammed by New York state officials

In May, Tesla changed its corporate bylaws in a way that would require investors to own 3% of the stock, today worth about $30 billion, in order to file a derivative lawsuit against the company for breach of fiduciary duties. Authorities in New York State are now asking Tesla to delete the bylaw entirely. Overseers of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which owns about 0.1% of Tesla's shares, submitted a formal proxy proposal and letter to the company on July 11, and shared it with CNBC

OpenAI Engineer Quits, Says Company Is Pure Chaos Inside

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is setting a breakneck pace with his company, rolling out feature after feature to keep the multibillion-dollar gravy train steaming ahead. And that kind of drum beat, especially paired with ChatGPT's meteoric rise, is bound to cause plenty of chaos behind the scenes. In a blog post, former OpenAI engineer Calvin French-Owen, who helped build the company's new coding agent Codex, said there "wasn't any personal drama in my decision to leave" — but he did recap his experie

Top AI Researchers Concerned They’re Losing the Ability to Understand What They’ve Created

Researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta have joined forces to warn about what they're building. In a new position paper, 40 researchers spread across those four companies called for more investigation of AI powered by so-called "chains-of-thought" (CoT), the "thinking out loud" process that advanced "reasoning" models — the current vanguard of consumer-facing AI — use when they're working through a query. As those researchers acknowledge, CoTs add a certain transparency into the inn

'Gentle Parenting' My Smartphone Addiction

On a recent weekday, I sent an Instagram message to a friend of mine, an art adviser in New York named Stephen Truax, to gossip about an exhibition. Instead of messaging me back in the app, he texted me to say that he’d blocked Instagram on his smartphone during daytime working hours. Impressed, I asked him how he was accomplishing such a feat. Truax said he was using Opal, an app that makes your smartphone a little more like a so-called dumbphone, without requiring you to trade in your device a

Topics: app new opal said time

How I lost my backpack with passports and laptop

“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.” I hadn’t lost everything — just my backpack with two passports and my laptop — so I became only a little freer. This story happened three months ago. It is an embarrassing story. It is embarrassing and difficult to tell — but that's exactly why I'm telling it to you. *** Sunday morning. I woke up at a small table in the entrance hall of some house in London — no idea which one, but definitely not mine. The last thing I re

Over Half of Teens Regularly Use AI Companions. Here's Why That's Not Ideal

Is your teen using a chatbot for companionship? If you don't know, you might want to ask. Common Sense Media released a study on Wednesday, in which it found that more than half of pre-adult teenagers regularly use AI companions. Nearly a third of the teens reported that conversations with AI were as satisfying as conversations with actual humans, if not more so. Researchers also found that 33% of teens use AI companions such as Character.AI, Nomi and Replika "for social interaction and relatio

WeTransfer Backtracks on AI File Training After Backlash: What You Need to Know

WeTransfer, the service that allows users to send large files to others, is explaining itself to clients and updating its terms of service after a backlash related to training AI models. The company published a blog post, "WeTransfer Terms of Service -- What's Really Changing," that details more updates the company made to its policies, after users noticed that recent changes seemed to suggest WeTransfer was training AI models on the files users are transferring. In the blog post, the company

Scale AI lays off 200 employees: ‘We ramped up our GenAI capacity too quickly’

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. Scale AI, the AI industry’s chief data dealer, will lay off 14 percent of its workforce, or about 200 employees, just one month after Meta took a multibillion-dollar stake in the company and hired its CEO and other staff. The layoffs include 500 of its global contractors, Scale spokesperson Joe Osborne told The Verge, adding th

The next Pixel event is on August 20

Google will host its next Made by Google event on August 20, the company announced today. In a media invite the search giant shared with Engadget, it promised the event would feature new Pixel phones, watches, buds "and more." At its annual hardware event last year, Google announced the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, Pixel 9 Pro Fold, Pixel Watch 3 and Pixel Buds Pro 2. Between the company's invite and what came out of last year's event, expect a refresh of nearly the entire Pixel line.

Steam now bans games that violate the 'rules and standards' of payment processors and banks

Steam has added a new rule to its guidelines that has resulted in certain games getting banned, according to a report by Automaton . The new clause states that "content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers" is not allowed and could result in removal from the platform. In other words, if credit card companies get mad about something, they could actually have the power to ban a game. The

Reddit is back online after outage

If you were having trouble viewing Reddit today, you weren't alone. Downdetector showed a spike in outages and problems at the site. Reddit acknowledged the problem on Wednesday. At 12:38PM ET, it said the situation had been resolved. Reddit told Engadget that an update was the culprit. "An update we made caused some instability," a company spokesperson said. "We reverted and are seeing Reddit ramp back up." If you tried to visit Reddit this morning, you likely saw a message reading, "Server e

How to turn off Gemini in your Gmail, Docs, Photos, and more - it's easy to opt out

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Are you frustrated by Google's insistence on injecting Gemini into everything? There's a way out. Also: Your Gmail inbox now includes Gemini summaries by default - how to stop them While some users enjoy Google's AI features that seem to roll out every week, others would rather have things the way they were before Gemini. Google somewhat sneakily buries Gemini under a setting called "Smart features," but if you know where to look, there's an option to completely t