When songwriter Patrick Irwin moved to Nashville last year, he was entering a lottery. Each day hundreds of sessions take place where writers create a song demo to pitch to a publisher. Publishers then share those songs with labels and managers, who may share those songs with the artists. Even if a major country star records ("cuts") the song, it still takes a stroke of luck for that song to become a No. 1 hit. The odds of winning are extremely low. Recently, Irwin was in a room where his cowriters Sam Fink and Duane Deerweater tried something new. Instead of booking studio time or calling a "track guy" to produce a demo, one cowriter open …Read the full story at The Verge.

While the tools you’d rely on in marketing look nothing like the ones you’d use in finance (and the list keeps going for every other field), there's one category of tool every professional finds themselves opening almost daily: spreadsheets. And while there are now a bunch of options out there, Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets remain the default.

The European Union has launched a formal investigation into Meta over antitrust concerns with AI restrictions in WhatsApp. The probe aims to “prevent any possible irreparable harm to competition in the AI space” according to the EU, and follows Meta announcing changes to WhatsApp’s terms for businesses in October that will prohibit companies from using the platform’s API to distribute third-party AI chatbots.“As a result of the new policy, competing AI providers may be blocked from reaching their customers through WhatsApp,” says the European Commission’s announcement. “On the other hand, Meta’s own AI service ‘Meta AI’ would remain accessible to users on the platform.”The updated WhatsApp policy went into effect on October 15 for AI providers that don’t already have services on the platform, and will apply to existing AI providers on WhatsApp starting January 15th, 2026. OpenAI and Microsoft responded to the policy changes earlier this year by announcing that ChatGPT and Copilot would be removed from the platform.The investigation will assess whether Meta violated the EU laws that “prohibit the abuse of a dominant position” to make it harder for smaller providers to compete with its own services. There is no deadline for the investigation. If Meta is ruled to have breached the bloc’s antitrust rules, it may face fines up to 10 percent of the company’s global annual revenue, working out at $16.45 billion (per Meta’s 2024 earnings).“AI markets are booming in Europe and beyond,” European competition commissioner Teresa Ribera said in the announcement. “We must ensure European citizens and businesses can benefit fully from this technological revolution and act to prevent dominant digital incumbents from abusing their power to crowd out innovative competitors.”

If you're into SBCs, you have probably pushed your Raspberry Pi to the limit with countless DIY projects. A Raspberry Pi is a powerful microprocessor that can replace entire appliances and become the core of your smart home. An Arduino microcontroller, on the other hand, might not be as powerful, but it's perfectly suited to simpler yet equally helpful projects. An inexpensive Arduino board can actually solve tons of real home problems, from bolstering your home security and watering your plants to feeding your pets. You just need to be comfortable with a bit of coding and breadboarding, and the world is your oyster.

Google is a company that has an app for almost everything, pretty much like Microsoft. It offers the same suite of office apps as Sheets, Docs, Slides, and more. Google Drive takes the place of OneDrive, Google Cloud is an Azure alternative, and Gemini easily beats Copilot on the AI front. Google has always been an all-in-one company, but for the longest time, it didn’t have an IDE. I was always surprised that the search giant never built anything to go up against VS Code or newer forks like Cursor. Turns out they finally did, with something called Antigravity. Google describes it as “an agentic development platform, evolving the IDE into the agent-first era”. I tested these big claims, and it turns out they actually hold up.

iPhone 17 Pro models have been left in the dark. | Image: The Verge iPhone 17 Pro users have fewer ways to take photographs in low-light conditions compared to those using older iPhone models. Specifically, the option to select Night mode when taking snaps in Portrait mode — which gives the camera app an artsy depth-of-field effect — isn’t supported on iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max devices, per a support guide on Apple’s website.The support page, seen via 9to5Mac, includes a list of models that are compatible with various Night mode features. While Night mode is still available for the standard Photo mode, selfies, and time-lapse videos on iPhone 17 Pro devices, the model isn’t included in the compatibility list for Portrait mode. Here’s the full list of compatible models:iPhone 16 Pro / Pro MaxiPhone 15 Pro / Pro MaxiPhone 14 Pro / Pro MaxiPhone 13 Pro / Pro MaxiPhone 12 Pro / Pro MaxiPhone 17 Pro users on Reddit reported that the feature wasn’t there last month. My colleague Tom Warren also says that Night Mode is missing from the Portrait mode on his own iPhone 17 Pro — something he thought “was a bug.” Apple hasn’t explained why it removed the feature on its latest Pro models, or if it will be added in the future.We have reached out to Apple for comment.iPhone 17 Pro users can still take Night mode photos and videos across other camera modes. Portrait mode users who enjoy the sharper subject focus and blurring background effects will be missing out, however, making low-light photography feel like a downgraded experience on Apple’s current flagship phone.

Many people still think the RAM speed that's mentioned on the box is what they get when they finish building their PC and boot it for the first time. After all, when you install a kit that proudly advertises 6400MT/s, it's only natural to expect your system to recognize and use that frequency automatically. But the moment you open Task Manager or head into the BIOS and notice a much lower number, the confusion sets in. It almost feels like you've got a faulty RAM kit or your motherboard isn't detecting it correctly.

Following the recent retirement of former COO Jeff Williams, AI chief John Giannandrea stepping down, and the departure of head of design Alan Dye for Meta, Apple announced Thursday that environmental and policy lead Lisa Jackson is retiring and that Jennifer Newstead will replace Kate Adams as the company’s general counsel after Adams retires “late next year.”Jackson, technically “vice president for Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives,” will retire in “late January 2026,” Apple says. Newstead, who is currently Meta’s chief legal officer, will take over Apple’s general counsel role on March 1st, 2026, from Adams, who has been Apple’s general counsel since 2017.With Jackson’s retirement and Newstead coming on board, Apple is also making some organizational shifts and shifting some responsibilities to Williams’ COO replacement, Sabih Khan. As described by Apple:The Government Affairs organization will transition to Adams, who will oversee the team until her retirement late next year, after which it will be led by Newstead. Newstead’s title will become senior vice president, General Counsel and Government Affairs, reflecting the combining of the two organizations. The Environment and Social Initiatives teams will report to Apple chief operating officer Sabih Khan.Before joining Apple in 2013, Jackson led the EPA for part of President Obama’s time in office. Apple promoted Jackson to be policy lead in 2015. Adams came to Apple in 2017 after 14 years at Honeywell, according to Apple’s website.

If you haven't heard already, Zorin OS 18 celebrated one million downloads in the space of a month, with 78% of those downloads coming from Windows machines. That's a cool 780,000 downloads originating from a Windows machine, and it was a cool insight as to how people in Microsoft's ecosystem are beginning to poke a toe into the open-world side of things.

So you've already checked out your Spotify Wrapped, and you've realised you've listened to that one song way more times than you thought you had. But what did the past year look like for yourself, your gaming static, and all those Discord servers you're a part of? Well, now you can check out your Discord Checkpoint and see what you got up to, for better or for worse.

Every now and then, the gaming industry coughs up a relic from a bygone era. Something that instantly drags you back to the wild west days of PC gaming, when discovery felt organic, and passion alone could get a project noticed.

If you've been following the smart home space lately, you've probably noticed that the protocol wars are... complicated. You've got Zigbee devices that need a coordinator, Thread devices that need a border router, Wi-Fi devices that clog up your network, and now Matter is supposed to tie it all together. It's a mess, and picking the right protocol for your DIY projects can feel like choosing sides in a battle you don't fully understand. Enter the ESP32-C6, a $5-ish microcontroller that says "why not all of them?"