As the second phase of the Google ad tech trial was winding down, Judge Leonie Brinkema was still hoping that Google and the Justice Department would take the decision out of her hands. "My favorite phrase is 'Let's settle this case,'" she told attorneys for both sides shortly before adjourning the courtroom after more than 10 days of trial in the remedies case. Brinkema ruled in April that Google had illegally monopolized the market for publisher ad servers and ad exchanges, and illegally tied its products together to make it difficult for customers to move to competitors' options. As it turns out, that ruling might have been the easy par …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Ring is a fantastic horror film that still gives me the chills. I can easily recall the movie’s iconic poster, which features a white ring on a black background and a creepy title font — I didn’t see the movie until years after it first released, but even the thought of it frightened me. So I’m very confused as to why Instagram picked a similar vibe for the debut of Instagram Rings, a new “award” that’s intended to celebrate creators and creativity.Instagram has assembled a panel of judges, which includes Spike Lee, Marc Jacobs, Marques Brownlee, and, uh, Instagram head Adam Mosseri, to “nominate their favorite creators and vote for who they think deserves a spot on the final list.” The creators that win get a real, physical ring, and on their Instagram profile, they’ll get a special golden ring that appears around their profile picture, will be able to customize their profile backdrop color, and can “put their own twist” on the like button, according to Meta. The first winners will be announced “soon.” (A promotional video includes an October 16th date without context, so I’m presuming that’s when they’ll be revealed).But there are still a lot of questions about the awards themselves. What is the criteria for the award? How many people will be honored? Is this a one-time thing, or something Instagram plans to do on a regular basis? How long will creators keep the perks on their profiles? Meta says the award celebrates “those who aren’t afraid to take creative chances and do it their way.” What does that even mean? It’s weird that Meta isn’t spelling any of this out.And the promotional art for Instagram Rings is perhaps the strangest part of all, because it seems to be very inspired by The Ring for a reason that I can’t figure out except for the fact that they both involve rings. Like this banner artwork:And this image of the judges:And this official video about Rings:Introducing Rings: an award from Instagram that’s all about celebrating those who aren’t afraid to take creative chances and do it their way. pic.twitter.com/fnRgq0j51i— Instagram (@instagram) October 6, 2025Look, I know I might be caring about these similarities too much. But The Ring has a way of sticking with you that makes this Instagram campaign stand out for reasons that it probably shouldn’t.Update, October 6th: After publication, Instagram spokesperson Katrina Estrella said that Instagram Rings will honor 25 winners, that Instagram hopes to do the program annually, and that the winners will have access to the features on their profiles until the next round of winners. But Estrella didn’t explain why the promotional material looks like the art for The Ring.

Feeling overproductive at work? Google Japan’s new concept keyboard gives you a chance to slow down. | Image: YouTube / Google Japan Following an April Fools’ Day prank in 2021 that had a delayed reveal as a result of the pandemic, Google Japan has been cooking up weird and wonderful keyboard concepts year after year. Its latest creation seems straight out of an alternate dimension where touch-tone technology never replaced rotary phones, and that functionality eventually found its way into other devices.Instead of keys, the Gboard Dial Version keyboard features various alphanumeric characters and functions laid out beneath a series of nine dials of various sizes, including one just for the return key. To type a specific character, you stick your finger in its corresponding hole and then rotate the dial until you reach its limit. When you release it, the dial rotates back.Rotary phones used a technique called pulse dialing, where a spring-loaded dial generated a series of electrical pulses as it rotated back to its home position. The phone company would decode those pulses to determine what number was being dialed. Google Japan’s Gboard Dial Version trades pulse dialing for modern sensors that translate each dial’s rotational movements into USB signals.And similar to the phones of yesteryear that ended a call when you physically hung them up, the dial keyboard’s designers created an accompanying stand that turns off your webcam during a video call when you place your mouse atop it.As with Google Japan’s past creations that have included a cylindrical keyboard in the shape of a Japanese Yunomi tea cup and a 65-inch-long monstrosity with all the keys of a QWERTY keyboard arranged in one long strip, the Dial Version isn’t available for sale. But if you really want to obliterate your typing speed, you’re welcome to build your own. Google has open-sourced its design, and you can find all the files needed to DIY one, including 3D printer models, PCB designs, and a parts list, available for download on GitHub.

If you've got an older gaming desktop or laptop, and you're looking to pick up some new hardware, it might be time to consider a new form factor. Computer hardware is more expensive than ever, and the budget market for hardware is grim. Whether you're looking for individual upgrade components or full systems, staying on a tight budget is difficult.

After what seemed like forever, PC cases in the last few years finally saw a growing trend toward smaller form factors. SFF cases had started to become more popular, and case models had some much-needed variety. However, of late, PC cases have begun a bit of a reversal toward larger sizes, and it's not surprising. The needs and preferences of the modern PC builder have inevitably forced manufacturers to prioritize large cases again, taking us back to a time many of us thought we'd never see again.

In a Q&A with reporters Monday at OpenAI’s DevDay event in San Francisco, CEO Sam Altman said the recently-launched ChatGPT Pulse was his “favorite feature we’ve launched in a long time,” and he didn’t rule out including ads in the future.Pulse is OpenAI’s latest personalization play for ChatGPT. It allows the chatbot to learn about a user via their transcripts and connected apps (such as their calendar and email), then research things on their behalf overnight to present them with a daily “pulse” on those topics every morning. That could take the form of daily personalized workout routines, daily language lessons, news roundups, or suggestions for what to order at the restaurant they’re heading to that evening, but whatever it looks like, it’s OpenAI’s hope that users begin their day, every day, with ChatGPT.The company is talking about advertising within Pulse, executives said during the Q&A, but Altman said there were “no current plans” in a concrete way to introduce ads within the feature. But he went on to say that he enjoys Instagram ads — and didn’t rule out introducing that type of relevant ad within Pulse in the future. When the team began building Pulse, they originally planned to roll it out to everyone, but its compute-heavy nature meant they could only roll it out to Pro users, according to the Q&A.“To the degree we can find out cool things to do that actually seem helpful to users … maybe there’s something to do there, but as has been clear, we approach ads with great caution,” Altman said.

Time tracking has always been one of those things that I’ve been meaning to get around to, but never end up doing. Even with dedicated time tracking apps like Toggl Track, I’d open the app, play around with the features, get distracted, then forget about it. The result is a messy trail of half-complete logs that don’t actually help me understand where my time is going. I knew the potential with this app was there, but I just wasn’t doing much with it.

If your workflow has ever been slowed down or disrupted by Windows File Explorer's inability to organize your files adequately, then you might have considered replacing it. It is also possible that you've had to contend with its slow search function or have had difficulty renaming a large batch of files. The list of frustrations can seem endless. But what if you didn't have to ditch it entirely? Well, I have found a better solution using specialized add-ons. These small tools integrate with File Explorer, making it possible to add advanced features and turn it into a hub perfectly suited for your needs. Here are some of the tools that have helped me improve my workflow and actually enjoy using File Explorer.

Home Assistant can be a great way to connect all your smart home devices and even save some money in the process, thanks to the power of automations and integrated entities. But it's not always positive with such a deployment. If you're not careful, you could end up using more energy than you otherwise assumed. The same goes for a house without Home Assistant, which is where power monitoring comes into play. I rely on smart plugs with energy monitoring and realized some surprising things.

On Monday, Google launched a new reward program dedicated specifically to finding bugs in AI products. Google’s list of qualifying bugs includes examples of the kind of rogue actions it’s looking for, like indirectly injecting an AI prompt that causes Google Home to unlock a door, or a data exfiltration prompt injection that summarizes all of someone’s email and sends the summary to the attacker’s own account.The new program clarifies what constitutes an AI bug, breaking them down as issues that use a large language model or a generative AI system to cause harm or take advantage of a security loophole, with rogue actions at the top of the list. This includes modifying someone’s account or data to impede their security or do something unwanted, like one flaw exposed previously that could open smart shutters and turn off the lights using a poisoned Google Calendar event. Bug hunters have already raked in over $430,000 during the two years since the company officially started inviting AI researchers to root out potential avenues to abuse AI features in its products. Simply getting Gemini to hallucinate will not cut it. The company says that issues related to content produced by AI products — such as generating hate speech or copyright-infringing content — should be reported to the feedback channel within the product itself. According to Google, that way its AI safety teams can “diagnose the model’s behavior and implement the necessary long-term, model-wide safety training.”Along with the new AI reward program, Google also announced on Monday an AI agent that patches vulnerable code called CodeMender. The company says it has used to patch “72 security fixes to open source projects” after vetting by a human researcher.  The $20,000 prize is awarded for rooting out rogue actions on Google’s “flagship” products Search, Gemini Apps, and core Workspace applications like Gmail and Drive. Multipliers for report quality and a novelty bonus are also available, which could bring the total amount up to $30,000. The price drops for bugs found on Google’s other products, like Jules or NotebookLM, and for lower-tier abuses, such as stealing secret model parameters.

OpenAI has launched new integrations that plug controls for other apps directly inside ChatGPT, letting you call them up to make a playlist in Spotify or search for local real estate listings on Zillow without leaving the chatbot.  It’s a bit like the “mini” apps that messaging platforms like Telegram and Discord have embedded inside their platforms, or the extensions that bring controls for music players to your iPhone’s Dynamic Island, but with an AI twist. With the integrations, you can continue talking to ChatGPT while providing instructions about how you’d like it to interact with an app.Several services have already started piloting built-in app interfaces for ChatGPT, and we’ve rounded them up below.SpotifySpotify’s ChatGPT integration lets you link your account to the AI chatbot, and from there, you can do things like search for an artist’s newest album or prompt it to generate a playlist featuring your favorite alternative rock bands. You can also ask Spotify for music or podcast recommendations based on a conversation you’ve had with ChatGPT, and it’ll return a list of tracks that you can tap into and listen to from the Spotify app.Spotify notes that free users can source music from playlists already available in the app, like New Music Friday and Discover Weekly, while Premium users can generate a “fresh and fully personalized selection of tracks.”CanvaThe Canva app in ChatGPT lets you create, preview, and edit your designs directly from the chatbot’s interface. Now, you can call upon Canva from within ChatGPT and ask something like, “Create an Instagram post for our upcoming sale.” From there, Canva in ChatGPT will generate full-screen design previews that you can refine further with prompts to tweak text or fit a specific theme. Once you’re happy with the design, you can take it into Canva to continue editing.FigmaLike ChatGPT’s integration with Canva, Figma’s app can also help make diagrams based on files that you have on your computer, suggest edits to existing charts, as well as brainstorm different ways to visualize certain pieces of information. You can jump into editing the chart or diagram with Figma by selecting the “Edit in Figma” button.ZillowEven Zillow is rolling out a ChatGPT app of its own that taps into its database of real estate listings to find properties that match your preferences. Now, you can ask ChatGPT things like, “What homes can I afford nearby?” or tell it to “Show me homes with a big backyard,” and Zillow’s integration will offer up listings with photos, maps, and pricing.Zillow’s ChatGPT app currently supports rentals and homes for sale by owners and real estate agents, but the company says it plans on adding other features, like new-construction listings and 3D tours, to the integration as well.ExpediaChatGPT has already become a handy tool for trip planning, but now you can take things further with an Expedia integration that lets you ask ChatGPT for specific types of stays, such as a “hotel room in New York for under $400 in November.” The Expedia app will then provide a list of hotels matching that description, along with flight options, a map of your destination, and “dynamic” price and availability information.Booking.com has also launched a similar ChatGPT integration.CourseraCoursera is launching a ChatGPT app that you can use to access videos and information from the online learning platform. You can call upon Coursera to teach you with information about a specific topic, but ChatGPT may also recommend content from the site during your conversations with the AI chatbot.Apps coming soonThere are several other apps that OpenAI has confirmed are coming to ChatGPT, including Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, OpenTable, Target, Peloton, Tripadvisor, and AllTrails. The apps currently aren’t available for users in the European Union. OpenAI will also start allowing a wider range of developers to submit apps of their own later this year, which will appear in a directory that users can browse. The company’s app design guidelines say apps must “feel consistent, useful, and trustworthy while extending ChatGPT in ways that add real value,” with examples that include services for booking a ride, ordering food, checking availability, or tracking deliveries. It notes that developers shouldn’t use apps for long-form content, complex workflows, ads, or “irrelevant messaging.”

Nextcloud is an impressive tool, offering a range of features, including file syncing, calendars, contacts, video calls, and more. Unsurprisingly, some users have shifted from prominent services like Dropbox and Google Drive to Nextcloud's self-hosted platform. However, its sophistication comes at a cost. Running Nextcloud with all its features can put significant pressure on the CPU and RAM resources, especially for users with low-end devices or limited server capacity. The result is often a user experience that feels sluggish and unresponsive. So if you simply want faster performance and are focused on handling basic file and photo storage, using Nextcloud might be akin to using software designed for a large corporation for a small personal library. It's a no-brainer that a more specialized application will be better suited. Below are some self-hosted tools I have found to be suitable alternatives to Nextcloud.