Alphabet's life sciences business Verily is restructuring and raising money as a new corporate entity. Verily announced that with its $300 million investment round, it will change from an LLC to a corporation and rename itself Verily Health Inc. As a result, Alphabet now has a minority stake rather than a controlling one in the business. Similar to every other tech business, this chapter for Verily will be focused on AI. From research to care, our customers need solutions that bring the best of ..

California, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York are leading a group of 20 other states in suing the US Environmental Protection Agency for renouncing its ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, The New York Times reports . The lawsuit specifically argues that the EPA's decision to rescind a 2009 study that determined greenhouse gases are dangerous to public health was illegal. The study, which is the source of what's called the "Endangerment Finding," was one of several justifications ..

Amazon has acquired Rivr, a startup focused on autonomous robotics. Rivr is based in Zurich and was valued at $110 million in a funding round from August 2024, which both Amazon and its CEO's Bezos Expeditions participated in. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. Rivr's robots have four legs and wheels that allow it to maneuver on stairs and other potentially uneven surfaces. The company just released its second generation of the robot. The purchase will likely further ..

DoorDash has launched a new option for its gig economy workers to earn some extra cash. The delivery service introduced Tasks , which it describes as "short activities Dashers can complete between deliveries or in their own time." It gives taking pictures of restaurant dishes or recording video of unscripted conversations in languages other than English as examples. These materials will be used to train artificial intelligence and robotics models. A representative from DoorDash told Bloomberg ..

Google is testing a version of its Gemini app for macOS, Bloomberg reports . The app would bring the AI assistant to uncharted territory, and in more direct competition with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude , both of which offer standalone Mac apps. Gemini remains accessible through the web, and it sounds like the macOS app offers the same set of features, with the ability to respond to prompts, search the web and generate text, images and code. The major differentiator of the Mac app ..

Google has detailed how users will be able to sideload apps from unverified developers once it implements its more restrictive policy towards downloading software on Android. The company originally planned to require all developers to be "verified" to distribute on Android, but softened its stance in November 2025 to allow carveouts for Android power-users and hobbyist developers. For the average Android users, the ability to sideload apps will now be locked behind a multi-step one-time ..

The Steam Spring Sale is underway and as usual, there's plenty of good stuff to add to your library. The seasonal discounts will run through Thursday, March 26 at 1PM ET. If there's anything you've been waiting to buy, it's worth checking to see if it's on sale now, because huge chunks of the Steam catalog are at least a little bit off. Recent releases don't usually receive big price cuts during Steam sales, but you can save at least a couple bucks on several 2025 hits this time. The excellent ..

A little more than a year after ditching third-party fact checkers and rolling back much of its proactive content moderation, the company says it will further "transform" its approach by drastically reducing the number of human moderators in favor of AI-based systems. The company says the change will happen "over the next few years," and will allow the company to catch more issues faster than its current approach. Meta didn't say how much of its contract workforce might be cut as it makes this ..

The FBI has confirmed to the Senate it is once again buying data which can be used to track the locations of US citizens. That may have surprised the people who thought the precedent in Carpenter v. United States prohibited it. But while that case examined if it was legal for law enforcement to obtain location data from mobile networks without a warrant, here the FBI and other agencies have found a way to skirt the Fourth Amendment entirely. Over the last few years, they have taken to just ..

Stranger Things fans will soon have permanent access to the Upside Down, as a full DVD set is now available to preorder . Stranger Things: The Complete Series comes in Blu-Ray and 4K UHD editions. This collection includes all five seasons of the hit show, which totals 25 discs. It'll be available at brick- and-mortar and online retailers beginning on July 28. Prices range from $200 to $260, depending on the media type and edition. Return to Hawkins this July with STRANGER THINGS: THE COMPLETE ..

Ubisoft is ceasing game development at its studio, Red Storm Entertainment, best known for its work on the Tom Clancys series. While the studio is set to remain open, 105 people will be laid off, a Ubisoft source told GamesIndustry.biz . Those who survive the cull will reportedly continue to work on the Snowdrop engine, used in many of Ubisofts tentpole games over the last decade, including Star Wars Outlaws and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora more recently. Red Storm had been working on an ..

Meta is backtracking on its plans to shut down the VR version of its metaverse. The company now plans to support Horizon Worlds in VR for the "foreseeable future," though users shouldn't expect new games, CTO Andrew Bosworth said in an update. "We will keep Horizon Worlds working in VR for existing games, to support the fans who've reached out," Bosworth said in a post on Instagram. "For people who already have games they like that they're using in Horizon Worlds, [they] will be able to ..

The Switch 2 ports keep on coming. This time it's Kena: Bridge of Spirits , the award-winning 2021 title from Ember Lab. Previously announced for spring 2026 , the visually striking title now has an official release date of March 26. Kena: Bridge of Spirits won Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game at The Game Awards 2021. It's already available for PS5 / PS4 , PC ( Steam and Epic ) and Xbox Series X/S and One . You play as Kena, a young spirit guide on a quest to a sacred mountain ..

Rivian and Uber have entered into a major partnership , with the former to provide the latter with 50,000 robotaxis in a deal worth $1.25 billion in funding. This starts with Uber purchasing 10,000 Rivian R2 robotaxis, which will be deployed in San Francisco and Miami by 2028. If all goes well, Uber will scoop up 40,000 more robotaxis by 2030. The company plans to scale the initiative to 25 major cities by 2031. The full $1.25 billion investment is contingent on several autonomous milestones, ..

Google and cybersecurity companies Lookout and iVerify have detailed a new hacking technique that potentially puts a significant portion of iPhone users in danger, just by visiting the wrong web page. The hack is called "DarkSword" and it currently targets iOS 18 releases between iOS 18.4 and iOS 18.6.2. For its part, an Apple spokesperson told Engadget that the company had patched the underlying vulnerabilities in iOS versions 15 through 26 last year; the company also issued an emergency ..

Poncle could be about to ruin the planets productivity all over again now that Vampire Crawlers has a release date for PC and consoles. The dungeon-crawling roguelike deckbuilder which is a Vampire Survivors spinoff is coming to Steam, Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and Nintendo Switch on April 21. Itll cost $10. Alternatively, youll be able to check it out via Xbox Game Pass on day one. Vampire Crawlers is on the way to iOS and Android as well. However, youll have to wait until sometime later this ..

Amazons next-generation smart assistant has entered its Early Access program in the UK, marking Alexa+s European debut following rollouts in the US, Canada and Mexico. Starting March 19, invitations to start using the smarter, more conversational Alexa will be sent out to "hundreds of thousands" of willing participants, Amazon said in a press release , adding that Alexa is the most popular voice assistant in the UK. As well as its more natural communication, agentic capabilities, contextual ..

Nothing takes a different tack with its phone series. For the second time in a row, its midrange entry-level A-series smartphones debuted ahead of its next flagship device. The company has even warned that we wont be getting the Nothing Phone 4 until next year. Until then, the Phone 4a Pro is here to make an impact, with a more restrained design, a less obtrusive camera bump and specs that beat out last years Nothing Phone 3 all for $499 . In 2026, Nothing is truly aiming to dethrone the Pixel ..

UKs Ofcom has fined 4chan a total of 520,000 ($690,000) over the websites failure to comply with the rules of Online Safety Act 2023 . The biggest chunk of the amount came from 4chans failure to ensure children cannot encounter pornographic content on its website by implementing an effective age check mechanism. For that violation, the website has received a penalty of 450,000 ($598,000) and an order to apply an age check system by April 2. It carries a daily rate penalty of 500 ($664) until ..

During a Senate hearing, FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that his agency has bought information that could be used to track individuals' movement and location. "We do purchase commercially available information thats consistent with the Constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and it has led to some valuable intelligence for us," he said. Law enforcement is required to obtain a warrant in order to get location data from cell service providers following the ..

The Information reported that an AI agent within Meta took unauthorized action that led to an employee creating a security breach at the social company last week. According to the publication, an employee used an in-house agentic AI to analyze a query from a second employee on an internal forum. The AI agent posted a response to the second employee with advice even though the first person did not direct it to do so. The second employee took the agent's recommended action, sparking a domino ..

Google and cybersecurity companies Lookout and iVerify have detailed a new hacking technique that potentially puts a significant portion of iPhone users in danger, just by visiting the wrong web page. The hack is called "DarkSword" and since it specifically targets several different versions of iOS 18, it could affect "close to a quarter of iPhones," Wired writes. DarkSword is a "fileless" hack that leverages a collection of exploits to access sensitive data when an iPhone visits an infected ..

The White House has been promising a set of national rules to guide artificial intelligence since late last year, and today Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) fired the first volley. The senator shared a discussion draft for codifying the executive order signed by President Donald Trump in December calling for an AI bill. Her stated goal is a policy that "protects children, creators, conservatives and communities from harm." Blackburn has called for tougher policies for AI safety, and one of the ..

A recent change in how the US Postal Service handles shipping partners appears to have forced Amazon to make alternative plans. The company reportedly plans to cut the number of packages it ships through USPS by at least two-thirds later this year. It says the decision came after USPS ended negotiations at the eleventh hour in favor of a new bidding process. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon plans to reduce the shipments it hands off to USPS. Last year, the company ..

Update, 4:05PM ET: A few hours after this story was published, Google reached out to retract the news. The company provided Engadget with the following statement: "Search Live has not rolled out globally to all users. It remains available in the US and India, with testing currently underway in additional markets. We apologize for the earlier miscommunication." Given that the company says it is testing in more markets, it seems entirely possible that the global Search Live release will happen ..

NASA and ESA have released new images from the Hubble Space Telescope of a comet breaking up as it exits the solar system, captured as part of study recently published in the journal Icarus . The images are notable not only because they offer a more detailed view of the inside of a comet, which could offer new information about the early days of the universe, but also because they were taken by accident. Photographing K1, or "Comet C/2025 K1" as it's officially known, wasn't the original ..

Perplexity's Comet AI browser is now available as a standalone app for iPhone users. The tool initially debuted last summer on PCs, but cost $200 a month . The new app is free, as is the recently-released Android version . Comet is an AI-powered browser, which has become a hot product category throughout the past year or so . This is basically a web browser combined with a chatbot that can perform some tasks on a user's behalf. Like related tools, people can ask it to summarize a webpage or ..

Chalk up a win for creative artists against AI companies. On Wednesday, the UK government abandoned its previous position on copyrighted works. Its currently working on a data bill that, if unaltered, would have allowed AI companies like Google and OpenAI to train models on copyrighted materials without consent. Artists and other copyright holders would only have been offered a mere opt-out clause. After significant backlash , the UK backed off from that position. "We have listened," Technology ..

Microsoft is rolling out a number of Xbox Series X S updates to those on its Xbox Insiders program, and one of them has been requested by the community for years. Youll soon be able to disable the Quick Resume feature for specific games, meaning they'll boot up fresh each time you launch them. As a reminder, Quick Resume is a feature that Microsoft introduced with its current generation of consoles. It lets you suspend a number of games simultaneously so theyre running in the background even ..

Double Fine is following up on Keeper one of our favorite games of 2025 with Kiln , a multiplayer online pottery party brawler. The game was showcased during Xboxs Developer Direct stream in January and now it has a release date. Its coming to Xbox Series X/S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, PlayStation 5 and Steam on April 23. Xbox said Kiln will be Handheld Optimized from the jump. In Kiln , you'll use a virtual pottery wheel to shape a piece of clay into a vessel and then decorate it. The size and ..

We just got our first trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day , the next big Marvel film. This is the fourth installment led by Tom Holland and follows the multiversal shenanigans of Spider-Man: No Way Home . I'm about to get into some spoilers, for those still working through the MCU catalog. No Way Home ended with the entire world forgetting about the existence of Peter Parker, so this new movie will deal with the fallout from that. His whole support system is gone, though it looks like he ..

Stop me if you've heard this before: Meta has a new program to lure top creator talent to Facebook and it comes with hefty bonus payments. The company is launching a new initiative aimed at popular creators who already have large followings on TikTok, YouTube or Instagram and offering them bonuses up to $3,000 a month just for posting on Facebook. Meta's goal is to draw more top talent to its Content Monetization program, which pays creators based on views and other engagement metrics across ..

Ever since making the jump to the Nintendo Switch, there's something that's bugged me about practically every modern Pokmon game, a feeling that has only intensified after spending countless hours in Pokopia . For titles based in big, open worlds and filled with adorable polygonal characters and lovely music, why is nearly every pokmon still saddled with a call that sounds like a dial-up internet connection? As someone who played Pokmon Red and Blue at launch, I'm very aware that the origin of ..

After letting us drive a prototype around in the snow earlier this month, BMW has fully unveiled its all-new i3 electric vehicle. It's a far cry from the original funky hatch launched way back in 2013, offering more of everything including power, range and space. It also looks like you'd hope a 3-series EV would: a sporty sedan, minus the polarizing grille on the gas-powered M3. The i3 uses BMW's Neue Klasse platform and indeed borrows inspiration from the company's Vision Neue Klasse concept ..

The Pentagon is making plans to have AI companies train versions of their models specifically for military use on classified information, according to the MIT Technology Review . If true, it wouldnt come as a surprise, seeing as the US is aiming to become an AI-first" warfighting force, based on the statement [PDF] released by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth earlier this year. The department is already using AI models in the military: For instance, the US reportedly used Anthropics Claude to ..

There was once a time in which many people couldn't wait to toss their smartphone aside every two years (and sometimes even more frequently) in order to get the latest model as soon as it hit shelves. But that world has faded for the most part now as shoppers demand devices that last for years so they can hold on to them for longer. And when the time finally comes to upgrade, many are being more conscientious about what happens to their old gadgets. You may want to trade in your smartphone or ..

Its hard for most people to justify spending $3,299 on a monitor, but creative pros will gladly do so if it makes their jobs easier. Apples 27-inch 5K Studio Display XDR is aimed straight at those folks and it costs considerably less than the companys previous high-end monitor, the 6K Pro Display XDR . Thanks to the Mini LED IPS panel, the Studio Display XDR has higher brightness and color accuracy than nearly any other monitor on the market. It also has tech that boosts contrast to outperform ..

MindsEye developer Build a Rocket Boy (BARB) has gone through serious drama recently including layoffs and accusations of sabotage . Now, the company is parting ways with its MindsEye co-publisher IOI Partners (the company behind Hitman publisher IO Interactive) and assuming sole publishing responsibilities going forward. It also means that a planned MindsEye and Hitman collaboration will be cancelled, the companies announced in a press release . "IOI Partners involvement with MindsEye comes to ..

The Department of Defense said giving Anthropic continued access to its warfighting infrastructure would introduce unacceptable risk to its supply chains in a court filing submitted in response to the AI companys lawsuit. If youll recall, Anthropic sued the government to challenge the supply chain risk designation it received for refusing to allow its model to be used for mass surveillance and the development of autonomous weapons. In its filing, the department explained that its secretary, ..

Subnautica 2 has weathered the storm and has rescheduled its early access release. IGN reported today that the sequel to the underwater survival game will begin early access on PC and Xbox in May, although a more specific date was not provided. The news comes a day after a judge ruled that former Unknown Worlds Entertainment CEO Ted Gill should be rehired at the game studio. That decision capped off a dramatic year for the team behind Subnautica , which was acquired by Krafton in 2021. The ..