GoKawiil
Tech News
Nvidia is said to be closing in on a $13 billion acquisition of Hugging Face, the widely used hub for open-weight AI models, following its $6 billion deal with Poolside and Stripe's over $7 billion purchase of OpenRouter. Together the deals mark a surge of major capital flowing into companies built around freely distributed AI models rather than proprietary frontier systems.
OpenAI has enabled ChatGPT and Codex users to connect multiple Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts accounts within the same plugin, rather than being limited to one account per service. Users can add extra accounts through the Plugins sidebar by clicking the gear icon on an already-connected app and completing Google's authorization flow.
An Entrepreneur contributor discovered that AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude were describing his agency using an old homepage message he had already replaced, because directory sites had copied the outdated text and AI engines treated those copies as authoritative. He argues that businesses now effectively have two narratives: the one they actively publish, and the one AI systems generate from scattered, often stale, third-party sources.
Google has released version 5.07 of its Google Health app, adding more flexibility for manually entering workout data, faster and smoother in-app maps, and better tracking of running distance on trails and inclines. The update also refines the weight-tracking graph to highlight major or long-term changes, and fixes a Health Connect bug that caused some Android users' connections to Google Health to drop unexpectedly.
A ZDNET contributor describes tackling a Google Photos library of more than 22,000 photos and videos accumulated since 2016 by breaking the task into manageable daily habits rather than one huge sorting session. The approach relies on features like Google Photos' and Apple Photos' 'On This Day' memory notifications to review small batches of images regularly instead of trying to sort the whole archive at once.
President Trump has signed an executive order directing that Lake Ontario be renamed Lake America, echoing his earlier move to rename the Gulf of Mexico. Major map providers like Apple, Google and Bing may eventually adopt the new name based on federal geographic databases, but MapQuest has publicly declared it will not change its listing, mockingly suggesting users invent their own names for the lake instead.
Meta released another firmware update aimed at preventing users from disabling or covering the LED light that signals when its smart glasses are recording. The update, announced by wearables chief Alex Himel, is meant to more reliably alert bystanders that photos or video are being captured, and Meta says similar updates will keep coming.
A Blink video doorbell owner found that ringing the doorbell only alerted phones and played a sound outside the door, making it useless for a spouse who doesn't carry her phone. To route the alert to existing Google Home mini speakers without paying for subscriptions or exposing a home server to the internet, he built a chain linking the Blink doorbell to an Alexa routine, a Samsung SmartThings virtual light bulb, webhooks, and a small server on a VPS.
Google has updated its Flow AI video studio with a new model, Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash, that adds finer editing controls such as first- and last-frame interpolation and longer scene extensions of up to 40 seconds. The update also lets creators produce cheaper, faster 360p drafts before rendering final output in 1080p or 4K, with video references to help keep characters and visuals consistent.
An Entrepreneur contributor argues that most business owners misuse AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude by treating them as static software rather than trainable assistants. The piece proposes a five-step iterative coaching process—starting with a clear job brief, assigning real tasks, giving specific feedback, auditing changes, and repeating the cycle—to turn generic chatbots into reliable business tools.
Generative AI tools from companies like OpenAI, Google and Meta have made it far easier to produce convincing fake audio, video and images of public figures, fueling a rise in political deepfakes. Doppel's Bobby Ford describes the trend as driven by three factors: greater volume, faster velocity and more vectors such as video, audio and email being exploited by bad actors. The piece cites the 2024 New Hampshire robocall incident, where an AI-generated fake of Joe Biden's voice urged voters to stay home, as an early warning sign for what could happen in the 2026 midterms.
A user found that Google's Calendar app on Android has no way to subscribe to an events calendar from a URL, despite running the latest OS and app version. The workaround required switching to desktop mode in a mobile browser at calendar.google.com, where adding the same calendar link worked instantly and synced back to the app.