Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) is pressing OpenAI about its move to bring ads to ChatGPT, and is asking several other companies whether they have similar plans. In letters to the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Snap, and xAI, Markey writes that embedding ads into AI chatbots "raises significant concerns for consumer protection, privacy, and the safety of young users."OpenAI will start testing ads for free ChatGPT users in the coming weeks, and they'll appear in the form of "sponsored" products and services at the bottom of conversations with the chatbot. The company says it will surface ads relevant to your chat, though it won't …Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft Outlook has been the default choice for anyone needing a heavy-duty desktop email client, but in 2026, the bloat has finally become too much to ignore. The Windows app is essentially a RAM-hungry web wrapper, while the Mac version feels slow and resource-intensive.

A judge is questioning whether Epic Games and Google are settling their long-running antitrust fight partly because of a previously unannounced partnership involving the Unreal Engine, Fortnite, and Android. In a hearing in San Francisco today, the court revealed that Epic and Google have struck a new deal that apparently includes "joint product development, joint marketing commitment, joint partnerships." California District Judge James Donato expressed concerns that the agreement - which he indicated would involve Epic "helping Google market Android" and Google newly "using Epic's core technology" - could have led Epic to soften its demand …Read the full story at The Verge.

Vimeo is laying off employees around the globe just months after the Italian software company Bending Spoons acquired the platform for $1.38 billion, as reported earlier by Business Insider. Even though it's not clear how many people were laid off, Dave Brown, Vimeo's former brand VP, says in a post on LinkedIn that "a large portion of the company" was impacted.Other former employees echo this statement in posts online, with one video engineer saying "almost everyone" at the company was laid off, "including the entire video team." Another software engineer says he was laid off along with "a gigantic amount of the company." Bending Spoons s …Read the full story at The Verge.

Security and surveillance systems used to be something you'd have to order and have set up. But now, there are plenty of different options to go with that you can install yourself with not much work.

Ever since I’ve discovered AFFiNE, it has become my go-to place for taking and managing my notes. And I use it for both personal and work purposes, including reading materials, novel drafts, research, outlines, project planning, and so on. I’ve already been pairing my AFFiNE notes with NotebookLM for getting quick summaries and insights. However, it wasn’t until recently that I got a bit more serious about funneling my studying materials from AFFiNE into NotebookLM.

You never forget your first laptop, do you? Back in 2020, a $200 laptop was my first, which I got during the pandemic since half my degree hung in the balance. Even back in 2020, it was capable of doing just the basics — word processing, browsing in Chrome, and, of course, some onboard graphics processing that helped me play pre-2005 classics.

Developing apps for Windows is hard. There are a lot of elements to consider, rules to obey, and standards to adopt before you even get started with making the app itself. Fortunately, it seems like Microsoft understands this, as it is constantly releasing new tools and features that remove the roadblocks preventing people from launching their own Windows apps.

As a recent convert to PC gaming from the close-off, simple world of consoles, I've grown to appreciate the Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE), both on my ROG Xbox Ally X and my gaming PC. It's far from perfect, but it strips back a lot of things tied to PC gaming that I just don't want to deal with all the time, and makes it far easier for console players to easily jump ship, especially when it comes to the Xbox Ally X.

Tesla is finally doing unsupervised robotaxi trips in Austin, Texas, according to a video posted on X. Elon Musk reposted the video, congratulating Tesla's AI team for the milestone. For months, Tesla's robotaxis in Austin and San Francisco have included safety monitors with access to a kill switch in case of emergency - a fallback that Waymo currently doesn't need for its commercial robotaxi service. The safety monitor sits in the passenger seat in Austin and in the driver seat in San Francisco. Neither service is fully open to the public yet, relying instead on customer waitlists.Musk has said that the human monitors are only there bec …Read the full story at The Verge.

On paper, high-availability sounds like a neat little trick for Proxmox users. Being able to access your LXCs and VMs even if the underlying host goes down is pretty handy, especially when you’re running a DNS server, firewall, and other mission-critical services on your nodes. Plus, Proxmox’s HA provisions can migrate your virtual guests to other nodes automatically without requiring any manual input whatsoever.

Nintendo’s Talking Flower interactive toy will launch in March. | Image: Nintendo After sharing a brief look at its new Talking Flower during a Nintendo Direct showcase last September that generated more questions than answers, Nintendo has finally revealed more details about what the interactive toy actually does and how much it costs. It shares some functionality with Nintendo's Alarmo alarm clock, but the Talking Flower seems more like a talkative companion for fans of Super Mario Bros. Wonder.First and foremost, as the name implies, the Talking Flower will just randomly speak a couple of times every hour when left alone, with phrases like "sometimes it's nice to space out," and "is it weird for flowers to talk?" A s …Read the full story at The Verge.