Latest Tech News

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

Filtered by: spend Clear Filter

Worldwide AI spending could hit $1.5 trillion by the end of 2025

Getty Images/BlackJack3D Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Global AI spending has been on an upward trajectory. These expenditures will top $2 trillion in 2026. GenAI smartphones, AI-optimized servers lead spending. The AI boom has triggered widespread interest in AI adoption to optimize business processes and individual workflows. This demand has also been a catalyst for large-scale investments in AI infrastructure to support those goals, and a ne

People Still Spending on Tech Despite Red Flags in July Report

U.S. consumers continued to open their wallets in July, a new study from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed on Friday, underscoring the resilience of household demand even as inflation held above the Federal Reserve’s target. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t wince while doing it. The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the personal-consumption expenditures price index, rose 0.2% on the month and 2.6% from a year earlier. The core measure, which strips out food and energy, advan

Did Nvidia Just Pop an AI Bubble? Here’s What the Market Says

Lukewarm second quarter results from AI powerhouse Nvidia (NVDA) Wednesday have Wall Street bros and the analysts that love them catching all kinds of feelings. Long a bellwether for how the market views AI in general, the largest company in the world carries enough weight in its $1 trillion valuation to move entire indexes, let alone the tech sector. That was especially the case over the last two weeks, when handwringing over what Nvidia would say in its second quarter results on Aug. 27 reac

I Spent over $31,900 on Whiteout Survival – Here's Why I Regret It

Hey everyone, I’ve been debating whether to post this for a long time. It’s not easy admitting this, but after stepping back and looking at the numbers, I feel like I need to share my experience—not for myself, but to warn others who might be heading down the same path. I’m using a throwaway account for obvious reasons, but I feel it’s important to put this out there and hopefully help someone avoid making the same mistakes I did. I started playing Whiteout Survival in December 2023 and played

Grok Offers Bizarre Explanations for Why It Was Deactivated

Grok, Elon Musk's "maximum truth-seeking" chatbot, was briefly suspended on August 11 — and nobody, including the xAI bot, knows what really happened. As flagged by Gizmodo, users reported that the chatbot, which declared itself as "MechaHitler" earlier this year, was back online within half an hour. When it came to, Grok began offering some strange and conflicting reasons as to why it had been shut down. As it stands, Grok has made three overarching claims about its temporary deactivation: th

Elon Musk Can’t Control His AI

With Grok, the months pass, but the story stays the same. The AI chatbot from xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, continues to stir controversy, putting its host platform, X, in an increasingly embarrassing position. Just weeks after a version of Grok was found to be praising Adolf Hitler, the new, supposedly more powerful “SuperGrok” found itself in hot water again on Monday, forcing X to briefly suspend the chatbot for what it vaguely described as “inappropriate posts.” Even El

IPO hopeful Brex scored major win to sell in the EU, plans UK expansion

Financial services provider Brex on Thursday announced that it achieved a major milestone: it is now licensed in the European Union. That means it can now directly issue credit and debit cards and offer its spend management products to any business in all 30 EU countries with “no workarounds required,” as co-founder and CEO Pedro Franceschi wrote in a blog post. While the corporate spend management startup previously supported 60 currencies in 200 countries, it could only sell its products to c

Coffee-shop pitch change helped founder unlock traction for laptop campers

Julia Vidal, co-founder of Badge, began with a simple problem: remote workers often roam the city searching for a workplace that won’t shoo them away. As coffee shops and cafés are increasingly adopting no-laptop policies, she envisioned a startup. What if partnered cafés allowed the reservation of a laptop spot, but just with a minimum spend, so everybody is happy? Basically, AirBnB, for café-based workspaces with proper WiFi. Quick prototype validates demand on the consumer side To test wh

If the AI Bubble Pops, It Could Now Take the Entire Economy With It

AI companies are pouring so much money into AI, experts are starting to warn that it may be propping up the entire US economy. As investor Paul Kedrosky told the Wall Street Journal, spending on AI infrastructure has already eclipsed spending on telecom and internet infrastructure during the dot-com crisis over two decades ago, raising the specter of a massive bubble. Kedrosky also floated the possibility that we haven't really felt the effects of president Donald Trump's tariffs due to the sc

How to make websites that will require lots of your time and energy

Some lessons I’ve learned from experience. 1. Install Stuff Indiscriminately From npm Become totally dependent on others, that’s why they call them “dependencies” after all! Lean in to it. Once your dependencies break — and they will, time breaks all things — then you can spend lots of time and energy (which was your goal from the beginning) ripping out those dependencies and replacing them with new dependencies that will break later. Why rip them out? Because you can’t fix them. You don’t e

AI capex is so big that it's affecting economic statistics

AI capex is so big that it's affecting economic statistics, boosting the economy, and beginning to approach the railroad boom As ever, here is what's ahead: Updates on prior pieces My most recent Rough Notes essay A few things worth reading I previously wrote about the perils of building renovation as a Fed chair, especially given an administration bent on finding a reason to fire you "for cause." As anyone who has renovated anything larger than a dog house knows, no one thinks what you spent

AI CapEx Is Eating the Economy

AI capex is so big that it's affecting economic statistics, boosting the economy, and beginning to approach the railroad boom As ever, here is what's ahead: Updates on prior pieces My most recent Rough Notes essay A few things worth reading I previously wrote about the perils of building renovation as a Fed chair, especially given an administration bent on finding a reason to fire you "for cause." As anyone who has renovated anything larger than a dog house knows, no one thinks what you spent

Nearly Half of Americans Budget Based on Vibes. Should You?

Your feelings about the economy can help you set a smarter money strategy. Massonstock/Getty Images Potential romantic partners. Your next vacation spot. Whether you should leave a party early. A vibe check can help you evaluate lots of things, including your money strategy. A June study by Intuit Credit Karma found that 44% of Americans surveyed have done "vibe-based budgeting." Gen Zers and millennials, in particular, are adjusting their spending and savings habits according to how they feel

Musk backs Sen. Paul's criticism of Trump's megabill in first comment since it passed

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who bombarded President Donald Trump's signature spending bill for weeks, on Friday made his first comments since the legislation passed. Musk backed a post on X by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who said the bill's budget "explodes the deficit" and continues a pattern of "short-term politicking over long-term sustainability." CNBC

US economy shrank 0.5% in the first quarter, worse than earlier estimates

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.5% annual pace from January through March as President Donald Trump’s trade wars disrupted business, the Commerce Department reported Thursday in an unexpected deterioration of earlier estimates. First-quarter growth was weighed down by a surge of imports as U.S. companies, and households, rushed to buy foreign goods before Trump could impose tariffs on them. The Commerce Department previously estimated that the economy fell 0.2% in the first qua

Can No-Buy July Help You Save Money? It Can Do So Much More

Buying only the basics was easier -- and way more fun -- than I ever thought it could be. Jeffrey Hazelwood/CNET No-buy challenges have been around for a while but they're getting a new burst of energy this summer. Social media users are inviting newbies and veterans alike to curb overconsumption and save money with "no-buy July." Also called "low-buy July," the challenge doesn't mean spending no money at all. After all, you can't avoid paying for essentials like housing, food and utilities. B

Career advice, or something like it

My name is Marc Brooker. I've been writing code, reading code, and living vicariously through computers for as long as I can remember. I like to build things that work. I also dabble in machining, welding, cooking and skiing.I'm currently an engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Seattle, where I work on databases, serverless, and serverless databases. Before that, I worked on EC2 and EBS.All opinions are my own. Career advice, or something like it If I could offer you a single piece of care