The Govee smart lamp brightened up my room, and then my life | I knew things were not quite right when I had to throw a towel over a broken Ikea lamp to block out its light. How did I get here? I cover fancy and capable tech for a living, and yet, it took me two years to get rid of a pair of old, b…
Xbox’s weirdest studio is on a roll | For a while there, it seemed like Double Fine might be struggling under the Microsoft corporate umbrella. The game studio led by Tim Schafer is beloved for offbeat titles like Brütal Legend and Broken Age, but after being acquired by Microsoft in 2019, its only…
Facing AI and a tough job market, gen Z turns to entrepreneurship: ‘I have to prove myself’ | As AI erases the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder, some gen Z workers skip the entry level to become their own CEOs When Ashley Terrell graduated from the University of Hawaii in 2024, she planned to f…
The most exciting laptop I’ve seen in forever | Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 125, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, send me cereal recommendations, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've b…
Sho Miyake answers life’s greatest questions | Acclaimed Japanese director Sho Miyake has arrived in the States. He's brought with him two feature films: Small, Slow But Steady and Two Seasons, Two Strangers, a pair of naturalistic portraits that deal with the uneasy human desire to relate to other…
Best Apps for Focus (2026): Focus Friend, Forest, Focus Traveller | Distractions? What distractions? Here are our recommendations for apps that help you stay focused on the task at hand.
Companies with Mythos access urge joint defence of infrastructure | Cyber security chiefs warn rollout of new tool will need close co-ordination between governments and businesses
The US gets the worst phones | Apple and Samsung dominate the US phone market, and they've done so for years. Together with Google, they've shaped our sense of what a smartphone is and what it can do, pushing the boundaries of mobile photography, software, and processing power. But over the last fe…
Discord Sleuths Gained Unauthorized Access to Anthropic’s Mythos | Plus: Spy firms tap into a global telecom weakness to track targets, 500,000 UK health records go up for sale on Alibaba, Apple patches a revealing notification bug, and more.
‘Saros’ Shows Off the PS5’s DualSense Tricks | The new game from the creators of Returnal goes all-in on the PlayStation’s haptics and 3D audio. Maybe it will catch on with other game developers.
Defence stocks give back gains as investors buy rumour but sell war | Production bottlenecks and uncertainty over US munitions funding weigh on stock prices for weapons makers
The Online Civil War About ‘Michael’ Is a Battle Over Truth | Fans want to reclaim the music and myth of Michael Jackson in the new biopic while critics call for accountability. Who’s right?
Ace the Ping-Pong Robot Can Whup Your Ass | Ace can read the trajectory of a ball, adjust the racket angle, and respond with strokes that keep the exchange alive with real players.
Thousands of EV Car Leases Are Ending Soon, Giving Buyers a More Affordable Option | The leases on hundreds of thousands of battery-powered cars and trucks will end in the next three years, and many will end up on used-car lots.
Altra Promo Codes: Get 20% Off Plus Free Shipping | Score big savings on Altra Running shoes with up to 50% off sale styles, 20% off select models, 10% off your first order when you sign up, plus free standard delivery on every purchase.
What the AI ‘jobpocalypse’ narrative misses | Whether or not new technologies can perform a task is only a tiny part of the picture
From Anthropic’s Mythos to the Birkin bag, scarcity sells | The idea that Mythos is too hot to handle ought to be good for the company’s valuation
The incredible double life of a spyware salesman turned spy | He built a booming business selling spy gadgets to the paranoid and the powerful. Behind the scenes he was wiring his own world
Five easy-to-fix buys that might last you forever | Repair-friendly suitcases, watches, laptops and more
Lachy Groom to back India startup Pronto at a $200M valuation, sources say | This round, should it occur, would double the house-help startup's valuation in a matter of weeks.
Investors push for higher yield on $14bn of Oracle-backed data centre debt | Huge bond offering comes amid concerns over tech giant’s debt load and recent flood of AI-related issuance
The viral manifesto of 'anti-woke' tech boss with NHS and defence contracts | The boss of the controversial tech company with UK government contracts published a 22-point plan on the future of the West.
Tech Now | Alasdair Keane visits the underground insect farm turning food waste into animal feed.
Steve Ballmer blasts founder he backed who pleaded guilty to fraud: ‘I was duped and feel silly’ | Steve Ballmer wrote a fiery letter in the sentencing of disgraced founder Joseph Sanberg documenting all the harm that's befalling him as an investor.
OpenAI boss 'deeply sorry' for not telling police of mass shooting suspect's account | Sam Altman on Thursday wrote a brief letter of apology to the people of Tumbler Ridge, Canada in the wake of a January mass shooting.
Palantir is reportedly helping the IRS investigate financial crimes | The IRS has used Palantir's software since at least 2018, The Intercept reports.
Cohere acquires, merges with Germany-based startup to create a ‘transatlantic AI powerhouse’ | Cohere, the Canada-based AI company that makes AI tools for businesses in regulated industries, announced Friday it would merge with Aleph Alpha, a German company that also builds AI systems for businesse…
Two college kids raise a $5.1 million pre-seed to build an AI social network in iMessage | Series, a social networking app that's grown popular on college campuses, announced a $5.1 million pre-seed round from some big names in tech.
Meta’s loss is Thinking Machines’ gain | Meta has been poaching talent from Thinking Machines Lab. But it's a two-way street.
Amazon-backed nuclear developer X-energy surges 27% in trading debut | Company taps rising demand for electricity from data centres to power AI boom
Microsoft will let you pause Windows Updates indefinitely, 35 days at a time | Windows users will no longer be forced to run automatic updates in the middle of a game or a busy day. Microsoft is rolling out some long-awaited changes to Windows Update to users on its Dev and Experimental Windows Ins…
New Phishing Scam: Fake Invitations | Hackers are spoofing Paperless Post, Evite and Punchbowl to creep into your hard drive.
X-energy stock pops 27% on first day of trading following upsized IPO | Investors flocked to nuclear power startup X-energy in its first day of public trading on the Nasdaq.
Alex Jones has uncovered another massive conspiracy | Alex Jones may soon lose Infowars, the digital perch that he's used for decades to traffic in conspiracy theories, to The Onion, the satirical newspaper. But not before he's uncovered something truly dastardly: comedian Tim Heidecker's past (pub…
ComfyUI hits $500M valuation as creators seek more control over AI-generated media | ComfyUI, whose tools give creators more control over AI image, video, and audio generation, just raised $30 million.
X launches stand-alone XChat app on iOS | X's new app promises private chats, disappearing messages, audio and video calls, and more.
The person who allegedly leaked Paramount’s new Avatar movie has been arrested | Following Paramount Skydance's move to launch an investigation into how its upcoming Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender animated feature leaked onto the internet, a suspect has been taken into custody by police. The Strai…
Give Mom Warm Coffee All Year Long With This Ember Smart Mug Deal | If an Ember mug is at the top of Mom’s wish list, this sale is worth checking out.
Google to invest up to $40B in Anthropic in cash and compute | Google plans up to $40B investment in Anthropic as AI rivals race to secure massive compute capacity, following the limited release of its powerful, cybersecurity-focused Mythos model.
What Are Prediction Markets, and Why Are They Causing Controversy? | The indictment of a soldier who bet on the U.S. operation to capture President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela put renewed focus on a new way to gamble, and a new way to cheat.
Google to invest up to $40bn in Anthropic | Search giant increases its financial support to help the AI lab add computing power to run its models
Beatbot Pool-Cleaning Robots Are on Sale for a Limited Time | Get ready for summer with discounts on the best robot pool cleaners we’ve tested.
AI data centre emissions vastly underestimated, UK admits | New projections raise forecasts of climate impact by up to 136 times
BMW is one step closer to selling you a color-changing car | At CES 2022, BMW debuted its BMW iX Flow concept car that could dynamically change its appearance using the same grayscale E Ink panels found in e-readers like the Kindle. It was followed by the BMW i Vision Dee concept and the BMW i5 Flo…
Intel shares surge on AI boom to surpass dotcom bubble high | CEO says US chipmaker has made ‘fundamental’ changes after year-long turnaround
Google’s handsome Pixel Watch 4 is on sale for $40 off in both size configurations | Spring has sprung, as they say, and to mark the occasion, Google is running a spring-centric promo until Sunday, April 26th. The limited-time discounts apply to a number of Google’s first-party devices, from the Pi…
AI-Designed Drugs by a DeepMind Spinoff Are Headed to Human Trials | Isomorphic Labs president Max Jaderberg said at WIRED Health in London that the startup has built a “broad and exciting pipeline of new medicines.”
TikTok and Visa launch debit card to speed payouts to UK creators | Creator card is designed for people making money through TikTok Live, some of whom complain of payment delays TikTok and Visa have launched a debit card for content creators in the UK which they say will allow people to quickly acc…
Designer Baby Companies Are in Turmoil | Bootstrap Bio and Manhattan Genomics, which were pursuing human embryo editing to prevent serious disease, have shut down.
The Apple juggernaut and the AI roadblock | John Ternus will face innovation challenges that Tim Cook never had to
Stockpickers: Elixirr International, M&C Saatchi, Associated British Foods | Our experts discuss which companies to buy, sell or hold this week
Officials hugely underestimated impact of AI datacentres on UK carbon emissions | Revised figures increase fears about energy-intensive datacentres worsening climate emergency The UK government vastly underestimated the climate impact of artificial intelligence, it has emerged, after officials rais…
Meta to Lay Off 10 Percent of Work Force in A.I. Push | The layoffs affect about 8,000 employees, with Meta also planning to close 6,000 open roles, as the company focuses on artificial intelligence.
Marked-up Mac minis flood eBay amid shortages driven by AI | Apple’s sold-out Mac mini is spawning marked-up eBay listings as demand surges for the compact desktop, now favored for running local AI models and tools.
UK Biobank says security checks not imposed because of ‘harms’ to research | Access to the database has been paused after data breach under pressure from ministers
‘Look, no hands’: China chases the driverless dream at Beijing car show | As domestic sales slow, manufacturers are investing in AI and seeking growth in technology and in overseas markets At the world’s biggest car fair, which opened in Beijing on Friday, there were hundreds of manufacturers, more…
A.I. Start-Ups From Canada and Germany Merge to Take On Silicon Valley | Cohere is acquiring Aleph Alpha in a deal aimed at customers uneasy about the dominance of American companies in artificial intelligence.
The Latest Push to Extend Key US Spy Powers Is Still a Mess | A US surveillance program that lets the FBI view Americans’ communications without a warrant is up for renewal. A new bill aims to address mounting lawmaker concerns—with smoke and mirrors.
Nuclear startup X-energy raises $1B in data center-driven IPO | Amazon-backed X-energy was able to raise around 20% more money in its IPO as demand for nuclear power surges.
Apple's Next CEO Needs to Launch a Killer AI Product | Tim Cook was a great CEO, but he didn’t crack AI. It’s job number 1 for John Ternus.
UK cyber chiefs say it's time to ditch passwords for passkeys - what are they? | Passwords have long been the default way we secure accounts online but the NCSC has said passkeys are a better option.
Another spyware maker caught distributing fake Android snooping apps | Researchers have found a new case where government authorities used a fake Android app to plant spyware on a target’s phone. The company that allegedly developed the spyware was not previously known to sell this type of software.
What is a passkey, how does it work and why is it better than a password? | Login method for apps and websites stored on users’ devices provides stronger security and is resistant to phishing and breaches The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has called time on the password – from now on, you sho…
Tim Cook is stepping down. What happens to Apple now? | Tim Cook plans to step down from his CEO role in September, handing the reins to hardware chief John Ternus. Ternus may be inheriting one of the most durable businesses in tech, but he’s also stepping into a very different ecosystemthan the on…
Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga joins stacked StrictlyVC SF lineup for April 30 event | Surprise! StrictlyVC San Francisco, which will kick off this year’s events lineup for TechCrunch on April 30 at the Sentro Filipino Cultural Center, is getting a new addition to its increasingly stacked lineup of…
Nothing introduces an AI-powered dictation tool | Nothing's new on-device dictation tool supports over 100 languages.
Fitness tracker for Fido? Experts split on benefits of pet tech | As sales soar, some say trackers can help animal anxiety or weight loss while others advise leaving diagnoses to the vet Pet health and activity trackers are bounding on to the market but experts are split on whether they are the cat…
DeepSeek previews new AI model that ‘closes the gap’ with frontier models | DeepSeek says both models are more efficient and performant than DeepSeek V3.2 due to architectural improvements, and have almost "closed the gap" with current leading models, both open and closed, on reasoning benchmarks.
How Elon Musk Used SpaceX to Benefit Himself and His Businesses | The rocket maker has been a useful financial tool for Mr. Musk, providing the billionaire with loans and aiding his struggling companies, a Times examination found.
‘Superhighways for child sexual abuse’: California lawmakers seek tougher rules for big tech | Online exploitation ‘inflicting profound trauma on a staggering number of children’, Democrats say Frustrated with what they describe as a lack of accountability from social media companies, two Californi…
Dyson PencilVac Review (2026): Limited but Handy | Dyson’s newest stick vacuum has a fresh, streamlined look and some limitations. But I still keep reaching for it.
In another wild turn for AI chips, Meta signs deal for millions of Amazon AI CPUs | Meta has commandeered a big chunk of Amazon's homegrown CPUs (not GPUs) for AI agentic workloads, signaling that a new kind of chip race has begun.
The Best Cordless Vacuums for Your Whole House (2026) | Clean your house without the constraint of a power cord with these cordless stick vacuums.
Tim Cook’s Legacy + The Future of U.B.I. With Andrew Yang + HatGPT | The highlights, the lowlights, and how Apple changed in the years since Tim Cook took over as chief executive.
VMax New V4 Electric Scooter Review: Unleash the Beast | VMax's new electric scooter has a secret menu that lets you unlock the top speed and engage cruise control.
They Wanted to Join Raya. They’ve Been on the Waiting List for Years | Getting into Raya, the exclusive members-only dating app, has become nearly impossible for some. We met people who have waited as long as two, five, and even seven years to join.
White House accuses China of ‘industrial-scale’ theft of AI technology | Trump official Michael Kratsios says Chinese entities stealing from American labs
Best Merino Wool T-Shirts (2026): Ibex, Icebreaker, Unbound Merino | These merino wool tees are the last shirts you’ll ever wear. I’m wearing one right now.
The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies | The FT’s seventh annual ranking by compound annual revenue growth. Plus: how listed companies overcome obstacles; AI and defence start-ups dominate investment; the US and China in Latin America; and technology shakes up Canadian wealth management
Biobank data incident caused by 'a few bad apples', boss says | Professor Sir Rory Collins said he was "angry" and "upset" about the incident, as both the bank's boss and a participant.
AI and defence companies dominate US growth investment | Investors show ‘insatiable appetite’ for the sectors while others struggle for funding
Innovative tech shakes up wealth management in Canada | Advances in digital tools are bringing services once limited to the ultra-wealthy to more customers
Therapy company mixes emotional and artificial intelligence to top ranking | Grow Therapy heads The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies 2026 list while testing AI’s potential
The companies thriving in turbulent times for IT and software | Innovative businesses in the Americas can do well despite recent upheaval
The FTC Is Ramping Up to Target Transgender Rights | A series of new hires and investigations at the agency appear to focus on penalizing gender-affirming care for minors—and those who speak in favor of it.
‘Opening the hidden door within us’: how Exit 8 took a simple game to purgatory | Genki Kawamura’s eerie new film expands on a haunting video game that leaves players lost in endless subway tunnels. He explains how this makes viewers and players face their worst fears Genki Kawamura is something of…
These AI Thirst Trap Creators Say They’re Misunderstood | A viral red carpet moment shone light on a group of hunky Instagram influencers—and the followers who are too horny to care that they’re not real.
Sam Altman’s Next High-Wire Act: Getting OpenAI to Make More Money | Mr. Altman, who has faced criticism over OpenAI’s direction, has culled company projects and is trying to be more disciplined with strategy.
5 Reasons to Think Twice Before Using ChatGPT—or Any Chatbot—for Financial Advice | As people increasingly rely on AI chatbots for guidance, even on financial matters, a healthy dose of skepticism is critical.
Meta to cut one in 10 jobs after spending billions on AI | The cuts, which employees had been expecting for weeks, will be Meta's largest layoff since 2023.
Saros review – you’ll strafe until your thumbs hurt in this primal alien shooter | PlayStation 5; Housemarque/Sony As a fast-firing spaceman, one minute you’re invincible, the next you’re dead – with every battle like watching a firework show through a kaleidoscope On the planet Carcosa, mangled, b…
Porsche is adding an all-electric Cayenne coupe to its lineup | Porsche will start selling the Cayenne Coupe Electric in late summer.
Grok tells researchers pretending to be delusional ‘drive an iron nail through the mirror while reciting Psalm 91 backwards’ | Elon Musk’s AI chatbot ‘extremely validating’ of delusional inputs and often went further, ‘elaborating new material’, study finds Follow our Australia news live blog for l…
White House memo claims mass AI theft by Chinese firms | A memo from Michael Kratsios says firms, mainly in China, are wrongfully distilling US AI models.
Bob Iger rejoins Thrive Capital as advisor after Disney exit | The former Disney CEO hold a stake in Thrive and has previously held the role of the venture partner at the firm.
From scientist to silk farmer: India's silk industry renewal | Silk production is an increasingly high-tech business in India.
Intel’s Revenues Soar, Aided by A.I. Boom | The chip maker reported a 7 percent rise to $13.6 billion in its latest quarter, more than $1 billion more than Wall Street expected.
OpenAI Unveils Its New, More Powerful GPT-5.5 Model | The maker of ChatGPT is taking a more open approach to cybersecurity than its chief rival, Anthropic.
Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s Epic Fight Heads to Court | A jury trial that is set to start on Monday could shift the course of the A.I. race, with Mr. Musk seeking billions of dollars in damages from Mr. Altman’s OpenAI.
Seeing Fast and Slow: Learning the Flow of Time in Videos | How can we tell whether a video has been sped up or slowed down? How can we generate videos at different speeds? Although videos have been central to modern computer vision research, little attention has been paid to perceiving and control…
When Prompts Override Vision: Prompt-Induced Hallucinations in LVLMs | Despite impressive progress in capabilities of large vision-language models (LVLMs), these systems remain vulnerable to hallucinations, i.e., outputs that are not grounded in the visual input. Prior work has attributed hallucina…
From Research Question to Scientific Workflow: Leveraging Agentic AI for Science Automation | Scientific workflow systems automate execution -- scheduling, fault tolerance, resource management -- but not the semantic translation that precedes it. Scientists still manually convert research questions…
A Scale-Adaptive Framework for Joint Spatiotemporal Super-Resolution with Diffusion Models | Deep-learning video super-resolution has progressed rapidly, but climate applications typically super-resolve (increase resolution) either space or time, and joint spatiotemporal models are often designed f…
GiVA: Gradient-Informed Bases for Vector-Based Adaptation | As model sizes continue to grow, parameter-efficient fine-tuning has emerged as a powerful alternative to full fine-tuning. While LoRA is widely adopted among these methods, recent research has explored vector-based adaptation methods due…
Nemobot Games: Crafting Strategic AI Gaming Agents for Interactive Learning with Large Language Models | This paper introduces a new paradigm for AI game programming, leveraging large language models (LLMs) to extend and operationalize Claude Shannon's taxonomy of game-playing machines. Central to…
A Multi-Stage Warm-Start Deep Learning Framework for Unit Commitment | Maintaining instantaneous balance between electricity supply and demand is critical for reliability and grid instability. System operators achieve this through solving the task of Unit Commitment (UC),ca high dimensional large-s…
TingIS: Real-time Risk Event Discovery from Noisy Customer Incidents at Enterprise Scale | Real-time detection and mitigation of technical anomalies are critical for large-scale cloud-native services, where even minutes of downtime can result in massive financial losses and diminished user trust. W…
A Multimodal Text- and Graph-Based Approach for Open-Domain Event Extraction from Documents | Event extraction is essential for event understanding and analysis. It supports tasks such as document summarization and decision-making in emergency scenarios. However, existing event extraction approache…
Addressing Image Authenticity When Cameras Use Generative AI | The ability of generative AI (GenAI) methods to photorealistically alter camera images has raised awareness about the authenticity of images shared online. Interestingly, images captured directly by our cameras are considered authentic…
Replay-buffer engineering for noise-robust quantum circuit optimization | Deep reinforcement learning (RL) for quantum circuit optimization faces three fundamental bottlenecks: replay buffers that ignore the reliability of temporal-difference (TD) targets, curriculum-based architecture search that…
Transient Turn Injection: Exposing Stateless Multi-Turn Vulnerabilities in Large Language Models | Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into sensitive workflows, raising the stakes for adversarial robustness and safety. This paper introduces Transient Turn Injection(TTI), a new…
Bounding the Black Box: A Statistical Certification Framework for AI Risk Regulation | Artificial intelligence now decides who receives a loan, who is flagged for criminal investigation, and whether an autonomous vehicle brakes in time. Governments have responded: the EU AI Act, the NIST Risk Manag…
TraceScope: Interactive URL Triage via Decoupled Checklist Adjudication | Modern phishing campaigns increasingly evade snapshot-based URL classifiers using interaction gates (e.g., checkbox/slider challenges), delayed content rendering, and logo-less credential harvesters. This shifts URL triage fr…
Modulating Cross-Modal Convergence with Single-Stimulus, Intra-Modal Dispersion | Neural networks exhibit a remarkable degree of representational convergence across diverse architectures, training objectives, and even data modalities. This convergence is predictive of alignment with brain represent…
Alignment has a Fantasia Problem | Modern AI assistants are trained to follow instructions, implicitly assuming that users can clearly articulate their goals and the kind of assistance they need. Decades of behavioral research, however, show that people often engage with AI systems before their goa…
Tool Attention Is All You Need: Dynamic Tool Gating and Lazy Schema Loading for Eliminating the MCP/Tools Tax in Scalable Agentic Workflows | The Model Context Protocol (MCP) has become a common interface for connecting large language model (LLM) agents to external tools, but its reliance on statel…
Divide-then-Diagnose: Weaving Clinician-Inspired Contexts for Ultra-Long Capsule Endoscopy Videos | Capsule endoscopy (CE) enables non-invasive gastrointestinal screening, but current CE research remains largely limited to frame-level classification and detection, leaving video-level analysis under…
Probably Approximately Consensus: On the Learning Theory of Finding Common Ground | A primary goal of online deliberation platforms is to identify ideas that are broadly agreeable to a community of users through their expressed preferences. Yet, consensus elicitation should ideally extend beyond th…
Quotient-Space Diffusion Models | Diffusion-based generative models have reformed generative AI, and have enabled new capabilities in the science domain, for example, generating 3D structures of molecules. Due to the intrinsic problem structure of certain tasks, there is often a symmetry in the sys…