Eight things we learned from WhatsApp vs. NSO Group spyware lawsuit
On May 6, WhatsApp scored a major victory against NSO Group when a jury ordered the infamous spyware maker to pay more than $167 million in damages to the Meta-owned company.
The ruling concluded a legal battle spanning more than five years, which started in October 2019 when WhatsApp accused NSO
White House investigating how Trump’s chief of staff’s phone was hacked
The White House is investigating after one or more people reportedly accessed the contacts from the personal phone of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and used the information to contact other top officials and impersonate her.
Wiles reportedly told people that her phone was hacked. T
X’s new DM feature, XChat, is rolling out in beta
X’s new DM feature, XChat, has begun rolling out to beta testers. Some X users who pay for the platform’s subscription product have reported that they can access XChat, while reverse engineer Nima Owji confirmed to technewss that the new messaging system appears to be ready to ship.
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Gemini will now automatically summarize your long emails unless you opt out
Google’s AI assistant, Gemini, is gaining a more prominent place in your inbox with the launch of email summary cards, which will appear at the top of your emails. The company announced Thursday that users no longer have to tap an option to summarize an email with AI. Instead, the AI will now
Report: Elon Musk’s drug use ramped up during the 2024 presidential campaign
Elon Musk reportedly increased his drug use during the 2024 presidential campaign in which he donated around $270 million to help elect Donald Trump, according to sources who spoke to The New York Times.
The Times reports that over the course of last year, his drug consumption went beyond recreati
US imposes new rules to curb semiconductor design software sales to China
It appears the Trump administration has imposed new export controls on chip design software as it seeks to further undermine China’s ability to make and use advanced AI chips.
Siemens EDA, Cadence Design Systems, and Synopsys all confirmed that they have received notices from the U.S. Comme
Grocery platform Misfits Market acquires The Rounds to further its mission of reducing food waste
Misfits Market, the online platform that delivers imperfect groceries to help minimize waste, announced the acquisition of household restocking service The Rounds on Friday.
As a result of the deal, Misfits Market plans to take on over 250 items from The Rounds' inventory. This allows the comp
Grammarly secures $1B in nondilutive funding from General Catalyst
Grammarly has secured a $1 billion commitment from General Catalyst. The 16-year-old writing assistant startup will use the new funds for its sales and marketing efforts, freeing up existing capital to make strategic acquisitions.
Unlike a traditional venture round, General Catalyst will not recei
Tinder tests letting users set a ‘height preference’
Tinder is leaning into dating apps’ reputation for superficiality with the launch of a new feature that lets paid subscribers add their height preferences to their profiles.
After a Reddit user posted a photo of the new height setting in the Tinder app, a company spokesperson confirmed to Te
Perplexity’s new tool can generate spreadsheets, dashboards, and more
Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine gunning for Google, on Thursday released Perplexity Labs, a tool for subscribers to Perplexity’s $20-per-month Pro plan that can craft reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and more.
Perplexity Labs is available on the web, iOS, and Android, and coming s
In a victory for Palmer Luckey, Meta and Anduril work on mixed reality headsets for the military
On Thursday, Anduril and Meta announced news that feels like a fairy tale ending for Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey. The two companies are working together to build extended reality (XR) devices for the U.S. military, Anduril announced in a blog post.
“I am glad to be working with Meta once ag
DeepSeek’s distilled new R1 AI model can run on a single GPU
DeepSeek’s updated R1 reasoning AI model might be getting the bulk of the AI community’s attention this week. But the Chinese AI lab also released a smaller, “distilled” version of its new R1, DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B, that DeepSeek claims beats comparably sized models on c
US government sanctions tech company involved in cyber scams
The U.S. government imposed sanctions on Funnull, a company accused of providing infrastructure for cybercriminals running “pig butchering” crypto scams that have led to $200 million in losses for American victims.
On Thursday, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control anno
Tesla pleads for Senate to spare its booming energy business
Tesla is a business built, in part, on government regulations and incentives, from a Department of Energy loan guarantee in 2009 to the regulatory credits it sells to other automakers, which have driven a third of its $32 billion in profits since 2012.
Now, the company's energy business —&