Author: News Room
As AI tools continue to rise in popularity, it’s easy to forget the satisfaction of using something that doesn’t need an update or a prompt to help you get things done. I’m talking about tools. They’re simple and rugged, and they don’t make things needlessly complicated. And now that the holidays are approaching, these tools can help you tackle projects you didn’t finish over the summer (or, let’s be real, two summers ago).If you’re shopping for someone who would rather read a repair manual than scroll through a social media feed, you’re in the right place. We’ve rounded up options…
A college student recently told me about the latest tech designed to help students cheat — and it wasn’t ChatGPT. It was an actual, physical gadget marketed in YouTube ads as the workaround to physical, hardcopy tests, which are back in vogue now as AI tears through higher education like a tornado. (One example is AI agents, which are unstoppable cheating machines for online assignments.)But if questions printed on physical sheets of paper seem like the calm eye of the storm, think again, because when there’s a will, there’s a way — or a gadget. In this case, a small…
Adobe is acquiring the digital marketing platform Semrush for around $1.9 billion. In a press release on Wednesday, Adobe says the deal will allow it and Semrush to give marketers insight into how their brands appear across the web.The acquisition builds on Adobe’s existing suite of marketing tools that help businesses manage digital campaigns and analyze web traffic. Adobe has begun incorporating AI into its marketing platform as well, as it now allows brands to generate ads using the technology. It also announced that it’s building an AI agent designed to brainstorm social media campaigns last month.In addition to taking…
TikTok is testing a new control that will let users manage how much AI-generated content appears in their video feed on the app. To help make the filter more effective, the app will also soon start adding invisible watermarks to AI content.The new AI slider will appear along with TikTok’s other content controls under “Manage topics,” which currently allows users to set how much they want to see from content areas including dance, current affairs, and fitness. Just like those sliders, the AI control will allow users to request to see more or less AI material, with two levels in…
I was starting to doubt it would ever happen, but I finally found a regular, helpful use for AI: vanlife travel planner.I’m not a student and I don’t code. I am, however, on day 48 of my van tour through Europe with my wife and dog. We travel without a specific itinerary, chasing the wind and sun while working our 9 to 5 jobs. AI’s mastery of travel planning has made it an unexpected but irreplaceable expert. So much so that we’ve grown increasingly dependent upon the free versions of Gemini and ChatGPT to help choose our next destination.It all…
Meross has announced a new version of its MS600 presence sensor that’s now battery-powered, so installation isn’t limited to places where you can camouflage a power cord.A single CR123A battery powers the new MS605 presence sensor for up to three years. Battery life may be reduced in high-traffic areas if the sensor is activated more frequently. It’s available for preorder now through Meross’ online store and discounted to $34.99 for a limited time.The switch to battery power is made possible by another new feature: support for Matter over the low-power Thread protocol. The MS605’s year-old predecessor was also Matter-compatible, but…
Cloudflare’s bot controls are supposed to help deal with problems like crawlers scraping information to train generative AI. It also recently announced a system that uses Generative AI to build the “AI Labyrinth, a new mitigation approach that uses AI-generated content to slow down, confuse, and waste the resources of AI Crawlers and other bots that don’t respect ‘no crawl’ directives.”However, it says the problems today were due to changes to the permissions system of a database, not the generative AI tech, not DNS, and not what Cloudflare initially suspected, a cyber attack or malicious activity like a “hyper-scale DDoS…
Cloudflare has become the latest web infrastructure giant to collapse in the span of a month, replacing entire sites, including X, ChatGPT, Spotify, Canva, and even the outage-tracking DownDetector, with an error message for hours this morning. It’s the latest in a string of outages that Mehdi Daoudi, CEO and co-founder of the internet performance monitoring platform Catchpoint, says should be a “wake-up call” for companies.“Everybody’s putting all their eggs in one basket, and then they’re surprised when there is a problem,” Daoudi says. “It’s on the company’s side to make sure that they have redundancy and resiliency.”The outage comes…
It’s been over three years since we first caught glimpse of Jeep’s Wrangler-esque Recon EV, named after the automaker’s suspension-lifting package of off-roading options for its popular lineup of SUVs. Jeep originally pegged the Recon’s sales debut for 2023, but that obviously didn’t happen. And since then, there have been further delays, and even rumors that the Recon was DOA.Surprisingly, those rumors turned out to be false. The 2026 Jeep Recon is alive and well, and will go into production in early 2026, with initial launches planned for the US and Canada. Jeep says the Recon will churn out 650…
Black Friday often brings the best Apple deals of the year, but not everyone wants to spend their Thanksgiving weekend shopping online (or in person). Thankfully, if you want to get a head start, you don’t have to wait. As is typical, the early Black Friday deals are already beginning to trickle in, including some of the best deals we’ve seen all year on Apple devices like the latest entry-level AirPods and new M5-powered MacBook Pro. Other Apple gadgets aren’t quite as steeply discounted, but some are discounted enough to be worth considering.If you want to avoid the holiday rush,…
Meta won a landmark antitrust battle with the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday after a federal judge ruled it has not monopolized the social media market at the center of the case.US District Court Judge James Boasberg wrote that Meta had not unfairly cornered a market on “personal social networking,” a category that includes a narrow subset of social media apps including Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. The decision, which can be appealed by the FTC, means Meta will not immediately face demands to undo acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.Boasberg noted that he’d warned the FTC that it faced an “uphill…
Cloudflare, a networking company that provides DDoS protection and internet content delivery services for many companies around the globe, is recovering after a major outage that took down sites across the web. Users weren’t able to access X, ChatGPT, and even the outage-tracking site DownDetector on Tuesday morning, with some sites displaying an error message that said, “Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed.”The disruption, which started at around 6:20AM ET, is linked to a “configuration file that is automatically generated to manage threat traffic,” Cloudflare spokesperson Jackie Dutton tells The Verge. “The file grew beyond an expected size of entries and…