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OpenAI tops 400 million users despite DeepSeek's emergence

Brad Lightcap of OpenAI. Courtesy: OpenAI OpenAI appears to be growing quickly despite increasing competition. The San Francisco-based tech company had 400 million weekly active users as of February, up 33% from 300 million in December, the company's chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, told CNBC. These numbers have not been previously reported. Lightcap pointed to the "natural progression" of ChatGPT as it becomes more useful and familiar to a broader group of people. "People hear about it

Elon Searching for Investors Gullible Enough to Pour More Money Into Twitter

In 2022, Elon Musk placed a bid of almost $44 billion to acquire Twitter, which he then tried to worm out of. With his back against the wall after a brief skirmish in the courts, Musk chose to honor his original purchase agreement and take over the platform. Flash forward to the present day, and X-formerly-Twitter has lost upward of 79 percent of its original value after neo-Nazis flocked to the platform and big-name advertisers fled in droves. Now, in a somewhat rare move for the richest man

Samsung’s 2025 Galaxy A mid-rangers are getting ready to make their debut

TL;DR Samsung is expected to introduce a 2025 refresh to its Galaxy A lineup of mid-range phones, including the Galaxy A56, Galaxy A36, and Galaxy A26. Renders have already revealed what these models are likely to look like, and some have started appearing in regulatory database. Now all three models have been spotted on a Samsung service page. What’s Samsung’s biggest selling smartphone? Last year, would that have been the Galaxy S24? Maybe the S24 Ultra? Sure, those can definitely make it i

Mint Mobile vs Visible: Two of the best prepaid carriers, compared

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority If you’re looking for an alternative to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, there are a lot of prepaid carriers available in the US. Some are small independent companies; others belong to telecoms or one of the three major cellular networks. Two of the more popular prepaid carriers are Visible and Mint Mobile. Both are known for offering a lot of value, but there are a lot of differences between the two. In this guide, we compare Mint Mobile vs Visible to help you d

Thinking about getting a new mobile plan? These are the best phone carriers in the US

When you think of U.S. carriers, what comes to mind? For many, it’s Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile — the three biggest networks in the country. But are they really the best carriers? For a lot of people, the answer could be no. Despite their mixed (and largely undeserved) reputation, prepaid services often offer better value and flexibility. In this guide, we’ll jump right in and explore the best carriers in the US market for 2025, whether they run their own networks or operate on an existing netw

YouTube Music just gave its AI playlist maker a revamp

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR A YouTube Music update has turned the “Ask for music any way you like” card into an “Ask for music” carousel. The carousel refreshes throughout the day. There’s a new “Ask any way you like” text field below the carousel. The home feed for the YouTube Music app now looks a little different for Android users. An update has rolled out that changes how “Ask Music” appears in the app. Spotted by 9to5Google, the old “Ask for music any way you like” card t

Roku has a new way to get to your favorite programs faster

Supplied by Roku TL;DR Roku is introducing a personalized row to its live TV guide. The row will present your top 10 TV programs at the top of the guide. This update is rolling out to the US today. Having to scroll through the entire guide just to get to your favorite live TV programs is tedious. Wouldn’t it be great if those programs were at the top of the page so you could get to them immediately? If you watch live TV on Roku, you’ll now be able to do just that. Today, Roku announced it i

Topics: live programs roku row tv

YouTube Premium Lite is coming to the US for the first time, but there’s a catch for music lovers

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR YouTube plans to launch a “Premium Lite” plan. This plan will allow users to watch videos, except for music videos, without ads. Premium Lite will be announced soon for the US, Australia, Germany, and Thailand. Late last year, there were reports of users seeing offers to subscribe to YouTube Premium Lite, a cheaper alternative to Premium that ended in 2023. At the time, a spokesperson for Google told Android Authority that the company was “testing a

Twitch streamers' uploads and highlights can no longer exceed 100 hours

Twitch is putting a cap on how much storage a streamer can take up for their uploads and highlight videos. The streaming service has announced that starting on April 19, all uploads and highlights will count towards a new 100-hour storage limit for each streamer, whether the videos are published or not. To note, the cap doesn't apply to past broadcasts, which are previous livestreams saved to a streamer's account for on-demand viewing, or clips, which are minute-long segments that can be shared

Amazon will take full creative control of the James Bond franchise

Time (and perhaps a large check or two) heals all wounds. Amazon and the longtime producers and custodians of the James Bond movies have finally agreed on a way forward for the series. Amazon MGM Studios will form a joint venture with Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli that will hold the intellectual property rights and ensure they remain co-owners of the franchise. However, Wilson and Broccoli will be stepping back to focus on other projects, with Amazon gaining full creative control. The

A $599 iPhone 16e is a cruel joke

The $599 iPhone 16e is many things, but don't you dare call it a budget phone. I hesitate to even call it "cheap." As a successor to the $429 iPhone SE, it's hard not to see the 16e as a disappointment. Sure, it's $200 less than the vanilla iPhone 16 (which I argued was a great deal at launch), and the 16e also packs in the latest A18 chip with support for Apple Intelligence. But it's no longer a small phone, and it pushes Apple's cheaper iPhone option well beyond $500. That's something we'll li

An iOS update will give iPhone 15 Pro owners Visual Intelligence

Engadget has been testing and reviewing consumer tech since 2004. Our stories may include affiliate links; if you buy something through a link, we may earn a commission. Read more about how we evaluate products . iPhone 15 Pro owners will soon have one less reason to consider upgrading to an iPhone 16 series handset. Visual Intelligence, Apple's equivalent to Google Lens, is coming to the 2023 Pro-series flagships, according to Daring Fireball. Owners of the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro can trigger Vi

Elon Musk wants to 'fix' Community Notes on X

Elon Musk has a problem with Community Notes, the crowdsourced fact-checking feature that started as Birdwatch, and launched at scale after he purchased Twitter. "Unfortunately @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media," Musk posted. "Working to fix this..." Based on the rant his tweet descends in to afterwards, his issue appears to be with how X's Community Notes contributors have been treating misinformation about President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the war in Uk

US healthcare org pays $11M settlement over alleged cybersecurity lapses

Health Net Federal Services (HNFS) and its parent company, Centene Corporation, have agreed to pay $11,253,400 to settle allegations that HNFS falsely certified compliance with cybersecurity requirements under its Defense Health Agency (DHA) TRICARE contract. The U.S. government contracted HNFS to provide managed healthcare support services for TRICARE's North region, covering 22 states. The contract required compliance with cybersecurity standards, specifically 48 C.F.R. § 252.204-7012 and 51

Apiiro unveils free scanner to detect malicious code merges

Security researchers at Apiiro have released two free, open-source tools designed to detect and block malicious code before they are added to software projects to curb supply chain attacks. The two tools consist of a comprehensive ruleset for Semgrep and Opengrep designed to detect malicious code patterns with minimal false positives and PRevent, a GitHub-integrated scanner, that detects and alerts on suspicious code in pull requests (PRs). According to Apiiro's security researcher Matan Gilad

Switching to LED lightbulbs saved me hundreds of dollars - but there are 5 other reasons to do it

Vladimir Sukhachev/Getty Images As a kid, I was inspired by the decorative lighting in my grandparents' finished basement. They had festooned the place with multicolored C9 string lights (aka old-school Christmas lights) from wall to wall, beneath the built-in wet bar, around hanging mirrors, and anywhere else they could add an ambient accent for the parties they hosted down there year-round. Since then, I've festooned every home I've lived in with decorative lighting, whether in a sequestered

This useful Apple Intelligence camera feature is coming to iPhone 15 Pro - here's how it works

ZDNET Apple's Visual Intelligence skill is expanding beyond the iPhone 16. The iPhone 15 Pro will soon get custody of the feature, which digs up details on objects you snap through the camera. In a post published on Wednesday, Daring Fireball's John Gruber said that Apple representatives told him that iPhone 15 Pro (and presumably iPhone 15 Pro Max) owners will be able to use Visual Intelligence on their devices. The company wouldn't reveal exactly when the feature would arrive beyond pointin

You can’t build a moat with AI (redux)

Last spring, we wrote an article called You can’t build a moat with AI. That post argued that prompt engineering, while important, would be difficult to defend over time given how easy it is to experiment with LLMs. As a result, you have to focus on the quality of data your application has access to and your use of that data to differentiate yourself. Everything we said in that post has held true, but the release of models like DeepSeek R1 and o3-mini have brought the concerns about AI applicat

Elon Musk Says He’ll ‘Fix’ Community Notes on X After It Disagreed With Him

Elon Musk is not happy with Community Notes, the crowdsourced fact-checking program that adds notes to correct misinformation on his social media platform X. And the billionaire says he’s now going to “fix” Community Notes so that it agrees with him, claiming without evidence that it’s being manipulated by governments and the media. “Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media. Working to fix this,” Musk tweeted Thursday. Why is Musk upset? It looks

Wheel of Time Reveals the Absolutely Wild Magic Battle That Opens Season 3

The Wheel of Time returns for its third season March 13, and here’s a big sign that Prime Video is as excited for its arrival as fans are: the streamer just shared the first 11 minutes of the premiere, a sequence which happens to contain the most face-melting fight scene the show has ever engaged in. And yes, we saw that climactic season two battle; this brawl, which involves rival Aes Sedai members and some extremely vicious channeling of the One Power, easily kicks its ass. You only have a we

Trump and Musk Double Down on Bogus ‘Stranded’ Starliner Astronauts Narrative

President Donald Trump and his bestest billionaire buddy Elon Musk continue to spread blatant lies about the situation surrounding the two Boeing Starliner astronauts currently aboard the ISS. In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, the pair once again—falsely—said the two astronauts are stranded and in need of rescue, and baselessly pinned the blame on former president Joe Biden. In a transcript of the interview posted to the White House website, Trump made several false claims about

Twitch Announces New Storage Limits, Threatening Gamer Archives

The Internet is forever…until it isn’t. On Wednesday, Twitch announced that it will implement new limits on archived video Highlights and Uploads that users can store on their account. The new rules, set to take effect on April 19, 2025, will set a 100-hour storage limit on saved videos. Any account with more than 100 hours of content will need to manually remove highlights and uploads—including unpublished content that is saved to the channel but not publicly accessible—or be subject to an aut

Can Music Really Help You Sleep? Here's How to Build a Playlist for Deeper Slumber

Music fuels my life. Whether I'm writing, reading, working, running, driving or sitting around the house, music is usually flooding my ears or playing softly in the background. Choosing a song or playlist is the first thing I do in the morning, and if I have my AirPods in, you can count on Spotify playing my favorite podcasts. To me, music is a form of love. It boosts moods, soothes heartache and reaches audiences across language barriers. Music can also help you sleep at night, easing anxiety

Mere weeks after Starship’s breakup, the vehicle may soon fly again

A little over a month after SpaceX's large Starship launch ended in an explosion over several Caribbean islands, the company is preparing its next rocket for a test flight. According to a notice posted by the Federal Aviation Administration, the eighth test flight of the Starship vehicle could take place as early as February 26 from the Starbase launch site in South Texas. The launch window extends from 5:30 pm local time (23:30 UTC) to 7:09 pm (01:09 UTC). Company sources confirmed that this

Twitch’s new storage limits will purge huge swaths of Internet gaming history

Popular Amazon-owned game streaming platform Twitch announced Wednesday that it will be imposing a 100-hour limit on the archived video highlights users can preserve permanently on the site. And while Twitch says that only 0.5 percent of users will be affected by these new limits, gamers are warning that the move threatens to eradicate large swaths of recent gaming history from the Internet. Highlights, in Twitch's own words, are a way for Twitch streamers to "show off your best moments to new

Apple, Lenovo lead losers in laptop repairability analysis

Apple and Lenovo had the lowest laptop repairability scores in an analysis of recently released devices from consumer advocacy group US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund. While Apple's low marks are partially due the difficulty involved in disassembling MacBooks, Lenovo appears to be withholding information from shoppers deemed critical to right-to-repair legislation and accessibility. The report, US PIRG's fourth annual “Failing the Fix” [PDF], calculated repairability score

Small study suggests dark mode doesn’t save much power for very human reasons

If you know how OLED displays work, you know about one of their greatest strengths: Individual pixels can be shut off, offering deeper blacks and power savings. Dark modes, now available on most operating systems, aim to save power by making most backgrounds very dark or black, while also gratifying those who just prefer the look. But what about on the older but still dominant screen technology, LCDs? The BBC is out with a small, interesting study comparing the light and dark modes of one of it

Topics: bbc dark light mode power

Study: Cuttlefish adapt camouflage displays when hunting prey

Crafty cuttlefish employ several different camouflaging displays while hunting their prey, according to a new paper published in the journal Ecology, including mimicking benign ocean objects like a leaf or coral, or flashing dark stripes down their bodies. And individual cuttlefish seem to choose different preferred hunting displays for different environments. It's well-known that cuttlefish and several other cephalopods can rapidly shift the colors in their skin thanks to that skin's unique st

The 3 Best Essential Oil Diffusers (and One to Avoid)

I first learned about Pura from a friend whose house always smelled like a high-end boutique under every circumstance. Cooking project, water leak … no matter what was going on in her house at the time, I only ever smelled berries. I have two cats and a multi-sports-playing tween—I knew I needed this. Now, about 14 months into my Pura journey, I have some thoughts. While most of my time has been with the now discontinued Pura 3, I have also since used the Pura 4 and new large-room Pura Plus, al

Netflix Plans to Spend $1 Billion Making Content in Mexico Over the Next 4 Years

Streaming juggernaut Netflix plans to spend $1 billion on film and TV production in Mexico over the next four years. CEO Ted Sarandos announced the plan Thursday during a press conference with Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum. The injection of capital could fund 20 productions per year, on average. During Thursday's event, Netflix also announced a $2 million investment in Mexico City's Churubusco Studios to improve the facilities. The goal is to strengthen the national film industry. “Our