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Simply the latest news, updated on the hour.

Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 11:21 PM EDT

Tech

AI Summary

  • Elon Musk's xAI is reportedly undergoing significant restructuring, with founders being let go, as the company aims to rebuild its AI coding efforts.
  • AI continues to be a dominant theme, with advancements in agent capabilities like Nyne adding human context, and concerns rising about potential risks, including mass casualty scenarios and job displacement.
  • The tech landscape is seeing shifts in content distribution and creator tools, with platforms like Facebook improving impersonation reporting and YouTube exploring new viewing formats via Channel Surfer.
  • Established tech companies are navigating evolving market dynamics, evidenced by Apple adjusting commission rates in China and Spotify refining user recommendation algorithms, while Digg faces challenges and retools.
  • Hardware and infrastructure are under scrutiny, from potential malware within Steam games and the impact of supply chain disruptions like Qatar's helium shutdown, to new device launches like the Apple MacBook Neo and advancements in autonomous vehicle services from Motional.

TechCrunch


Hacker News


Engadget

  • OpenAI reportedly plans to add Sora video generation to ChatGPT 5 hours ago by Ian Carlos Campbell
    Software, Mobile Apps, Technology & Electronics, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Ian Carlos Campbell

    OpenAI plans to add its Sora video generation model directly into ChatGPT, The Information reports . The standalone Sora app was seen as a smash hit when it launched alongside Sora 2 in September 2025, but interest in the video generation app has fallen in the time since as users ran into limits on the amount and kinds of videos they could create. Adding Sora to the ChatGPT could give the model a second life, and ideally grow the ChatGPT app's weekly active users from the 900 million OpenAI reported in February, to a billion or more. According to The Information,

  • Meta is bringing more international news to its AI 6 hours ago by Karissa Bell
    Social & Online Media, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Karissa Bell

    Meta AI should soon be better at surfacing international news content thanks to a set of new deals with publishers. The company announced new agreements with international outlets and offered additional details on its recent deal with News Corp.  The latest deals bring French newspaper Le Figaro, Spanish media company Prisa and German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung into the fold. Together, along with News Corp, which runs a number of outlets in the UK, these sources should give Meta AI better access to timely info about world events. Meta didn't disclose terms of the deals — The Wall Street Journal previously reported

  • Adobe agrees to pay settlement for making its subscriptions hard to cancel 7 hours ago by Ian Carlos Campbell
    Business, Company Legal & Law Matters, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Ian Carlos Campbell

    Adobe has agreed to pay the US government $75 million to settle its lawsuit over the company's allegedly harmful approach to subscriptions. The suit started in 2024, when the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission filed a joint complaint alleging the company deliberately made it difficult to cancel subscriptions and obscured the frequently expensive "early termination fee" customers have to pay to get out of annual subscriptions that are paid monthly. "While we disagree with the government’s claims and deny any wrongdoing, we are pleased to resolve this matter," Adobe writes. "We have agreed to provide $75 million

  • Nothing updates its AI app with semantic search and a new way to track events 7 hours ago by Ian Carlos Campbell
    Software, Mobile Apps, Technology & Electronics, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Ian Carlos Campbell

    In the mad dash many companies have made to incorporate AI features into their phones, Nothing arrived at one of the better ideas with Essential Space on the Nothing Phone 3a in 2025. The AI-powered app turns screenshots and voice recordings into actionable to-do lists and transcriptions, and now Nothing is rolling out an update to make the app easier to search and capable of recognizing new kinds of content. As part of the update, Essential Space now recognizes "Events," displaying them in their own card with fields for the date, time and location. That means, for example, if you add

  • The MacBook Neo is Apple's most repairable laptop 8 hours ago by Will Shanklin
    Computing, Technology & Electronics, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Will Shanklin

    Apple's cheapest laptop is also its most repairable. iFixit gave the new MacBook Neo a 6/10 repairability score. Although that number would only be mediocre for, say, a game review or final exam grade, it's the MacBook line's highest iFixit score in about 14 years. As always, iFixit goes into great detail about the product's repairability, but a few points stand out. First, the MacBook Neo's battery is screwed down rather than glued — moving it from "this might burn the house down" to "routine repair" territory. The laptop also has a flat disassembly tree. That means its battery, speakers, ports


The Verge

  • States’ anti-monopoly case against Live Nation continues Monday 6 hours ago by Lauren Feiner
    Antitrust, Entertainment, Policy, Report

    The Live Nation-Ticketmaster trial is back on. Dozens of states are expected to move forward with their claims against the company's alleged concert industry monopoly beginning on Monday, following a brief hearing on Friday. The Justice Department and a handful of states have accepted settlements with the company, but the majority of the 40 state and district attorney general plaintiffs - as of now - are continuing their fight in court. The states that are pressing forward withdrew their motion for a mistrial, filed after the DOJ announced its settlement in court Monday, and showed up with new outside counsel to

  • Spotify tests letting users directly customize their Taste Profile 6 hours ago by Terrence O’Brien
    Entertainment, News, Spotify, Streaming

    Less slop please. | Image: Spotify Spotify Premium users in New Zealand will be the first to experience the service's latest personalization feature. The company is letting users view and make changes to their Taste Profile directly. If your algorithm is serving up too much Bieber, you can politely tell the algorithm to ease up. Beta testers will be able to access the feature by tapping on their profile icon and then selecting Taste Profile from the sidebar menu. The Taste Profile tells you not only what artists you frequently listen to, but also identifies trends in your listening habits. In a

  • Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant is coming to current-gen Xbox consoles this year 7 hours ago by Emma Roth
    AI, Gaming, Microsoft, News, Tech, Xbox

    Xbox is getting ready to launch its Gaming Copilot AI assistant on "current-generation consoles" this year, according to a report from GamesRadar. Sonali Yadav, Xbox's product manager for gaming AI, revealed the news during a panel at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), adding that the company will also add the assistant to "more services that players are playing." Microsoft has been working on its gaming-focused Copilot assistant for months now, with the company launching it in beta on the Xbox mobile app, Windows 11, and Xbox Ally handhelds. Players can use their voice to call upon the Gaming Copilot if they

  • Trump Mobile is just one in the crowd of conservative carriers 7 hours ago by Dominic Preston
    Mobile, Policy, Politics, Report, Tech

    Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. This week, I wanted to see how Trump Mobile stacks up to its conservative carrier competition. Trump Mobile isn't unique. I mean, it is in some pretty specific senses - it's not every day the president's family launches a phone company while he's in office - but it's far from the first company to offer a mobile carrier targeted at the conservative crowd. In fact, there's a rich history of smaller networks trying to make their money from patriots, Christians, and Republican voters. Like Trump Mobile, they're all MVNOs

  • Digg’s open beta shuts down after just two months, blaming AI bot spam 7 hours ago by Richard Lawler
    Business, Culture, Entertainment, Internet Culture, News, Reddit, Social Media, Tech

    It's only been a year since Digg founder Kevin Rose, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, and a few others announced the link-sharing site would relaunch, promising a "social discovery built by communities, not by algorithms." Now, two months after opening its Reddit-like platform to the public, Digg is announcing a "hard reset" that's shutting down operations and will "significantly downsize the Digg team." When they announced its relaunch, Rose told The Verge that AI could "remove the janitorial work of moderators and community managers." Now, the new Digg's CEO Justin Mezzell writes in a note pinned to the homepage that, "We knew


Wired


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