• A printed data packet has been sold at auction via Christie’s
• The sale price was $24,600 for a piece of paper that was once secured to a pigeon’s leg
• Pigeon internet began life as an April Fool’s proposal

A printed internet packet intended has been sold at auction for $24,600 (close to £20,800) at Christie’s - and while the lot had a listing of a comparatively modest $4,000 (call it £3,040), it had attracted considerable attention due to the fact that it was deployed via carrier pigeon.

The lot is a rare survivor of a 2001 experiment into the concept of pigeon-powered internet. Initially conceived as an April Fool’s joke, the ruse was embraced by the early Linux community, resulting in a 2001 proof of concept, which employed a racing pigeons.

Sold as part of Christie’s “Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts Including Americana and Science” auction, the tiny scroll came from the collection of American network engineer David Waitzman, to whom it was framed and presented in 2002.

Framed packet

In what might be described as one of the slowest pings in history, Norway’s Bergen Linux User Group (BLUG) ran the live experiment over 3 miles.

Measuring a tiny 41mm by 210mm (that’s 1.61 inches by 8.27 inches), the framed packet would have been tightly rolled and placed in a small message capsule attached to its pigeon’s leg.

The live experiment in 2001 occurred 11 years after Waitzman’s original proposal, entitled “A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers.” The document, labelled RFC 1149, remains online for posterity, and opens with the following passage:

“Avian carriers can provide high delay, low throughput, and low altitude service. The connection topology is limited to a single point-to-point path for each carrier, used with standard carriers, but many carriers can be used without significant interference with each other, outside of early spring.”

The document continues in a similar vein.

Keeping to the spirit of RFC 1149, the BLUG employed nine racing pigeons with a 3 mile flight between lofts, carrying printed IP packets in hexadecimal form, and dispatched them to their destination. Once the packets were scanned at the other end to confirm receipt, the process was repeated in the opposite direction… but with just four replies.

Artful hack

Auctioned by David Waitzman and the Bergen Linux User Group, the new owner of the framed packet will be responsible for a comparatively early – and certainly amusing – piece of internet history.

As the listing notes, “The RFC 1149 implementation has been described as a quintessential example of the Internet's tradition of the "artful hack," embodying the playfulness, technical ingenuity, and collaborative spirit that characterized the early Internet community.”

• Airbnb is adding AI-powered search
• New AI comparisons make it easier to weigh up vacation rentals and narrow down your options
• Services are expanding to include baby-gear rentals, laundry, and meal delivery.

After a major redesign of its entire service, headed by an easier-to-use app for iOS and Android, Airbnb is further refining the experience to make finding your next vacation rental a little easier. Not surprisingly, it’s turning to AI, but the focus here is on natural-language search, property comparisons, and updated ways to find what else you can do while staying at your Airbnb.

This follow-up should make it easier to find homes, experiences, or services that meet your needs — the three main parts of the redesigned app. Instead of introducing a new interface or updated visuals, Airbnb is using AI to help you find what you’re looking for more easily. Pushing aside sorting through filters, lists, and checkboxes, you’ll be able to search for a stay the way you’d actually talk about it.

The quest to make searching easier

Like Claude or ChatGPT, Airbnb’s new AI search lets you type or speak a query, making it easier to find a stay that fits what you have in mind. You can search across homes, experiences, and services, using your own words to describe what you need, rather than trying to find the right combination of filters.

AI is also built into the filtering process. Type in a keyword, and Airbnb will suggest relevant filters to help narrow down your options. For example, searching for 'baby' can surface amenities like cribs, playgrounds, children’s books, and toys.

The app will also use AI to highlight key home features directly in search results, so you can get a better sense of what a listing offers without opening every property page. Less tapping!

And if you’ve already saved a few contenders to your wishlist, Airbnb is adding AI-powered comparisons that put properties side by side and summarize their key features. This could be particularly useful if you’re the one in your group tasked with narrowing down the options. Instead of sending everyone a pile of listings and hoping they’ll compare them, you can get a clearer picture of how each property stacks up, and share your shortlist with the group.

Airbnb is also expanding its AI-powered customer support, with chat available in more than 50 languages, and voice support over the phone on the way.

Airbnb is also expanding its services to help you handle more of your trip without jumping between apps. Starting in November, guests in more than 60 US cities can rent baby gear through BabyQuip, with delivery and setup, and 10% off for Airbnb guests.

Laundry pickup and delivery is coming to select US cities through Rinse, while grocery delivery is expanding to Europe alongside meal delivery from local restaurants. You’ll also find location-specific options, including ski and snowboard rentals in the French Alps and boat rentals in South Florida.

Taken together, the update builds on Airbnb’s redesigned app rather than reinventing it. AI is the main draw for finding and comparing places to stay, while the expanding services offering could make the app more useful once you’ve booked — and enable you to spend less time sorting out the logistics of your next getaway.

• Mozilla wants security-conscious companies to use Firefox Enterprise
• "Choice is a lie," Mozilla CEO says, referring to browser engines
• Thunderbird Enterprise is also in the works

Mozilla has introduced Firefox Enterprise, a brand-new version of its browser designed specifically for organizations that need extra security, governance and compliance controls.

The company argues businesses have become increasingly dependent on a small number of tech companies, handing over certain levels of control to third parties, however it believes that tech consolidation comes with its own risks.

It also acknowledges that these deep dependencies have made it harder for companies to switch providers, and all of this has been factored into its Firefox Enterprise browser.

Firefox Enterprise

"We see [the browser] as a key, but under-governed, layer," Mozilla said in an announcement, slating other browsers' dependencies largely on Google (Chromium) and Apple (WebKit). For reference Firefox runs on Gecko, a free and open-source browser engine developed by Mozilla itself.

"If all your options are built with the same technology underneath, ‘choice’ is a lie," CEO Anthony Enzor-DeMeo explained.

Firefox Enterprise's biggest selling point is control – customers can choose where data is stored and how it's governed, and it's designed to work with existing systems.

"Keep your identity provider. Keep your SIEM. Keep your MDM. Just add a browser whose management infrastructure you operate," Mozilla said.

Firefox claims to have 200 million monthly users, but per Statcounter data, it only accounts for 6% of desktop browsing sessions globally compared with 65% for Chrome.

France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland will be the first countries to get access to Firefox Enterprise, with other countries added later on. And as for emails, Thunderbird Enterprise "is also in development," so we can expect to hear more about that soon.

• Mozilla accused Microsoft of using Windows, Edge, Bing, and Copilot to steer users toward Edge
• Firefox maker claims stricter EU regulations force fairer browser choice than elsewhere
• Browser competition increasingly overlaps with the fight for AI distribution and user reach

Mozilla has accused Microsoft of abusing its dominant position wherever it can to push people towards Edge, and away from other browsers.

The company framed the story as if it wants “better for the people”, while Microsoft only does it when it’s forced to, but is that really the case?

In a newly released blog, Mozilla noted it has now been 100 days since it published Over The Edge 2.0, a report from “leading experts on deceptive design Dr. Harry Brignull and Cennydd Bowles on how Windows, Edge, Bing, and Copilot are designed to steer people away from the browser they choose.”

Better for the people

In the report, Mozilla said that in the European Economic Area (EEA), where the Digital Market Acts (DMA) is being enforced, Microsoft is forced to “play fair”.

Anywhere else around the world, including the US, UK, India, and other parts of the planet, it still uses its “shady tactics”. These include the Windows 10 message “You’re almost done setting up your PC” which allegedly uses “tricky wording” to pull people off the default they picked, Windows Search and Widgets opening links in Edge instead of the default browser, and Windows keeping Edge as the default for common browser file types like PDF and SVG, even after another browser were set up as the default.

Mozilla claims that even within the EU, Microsoft is doing all it can to steer people towards Edge. That includes pre-pinning the browser to the taskbar which, according to the company, “seems to directly violate the ‘principled approach to app pinning and app defaults’, Copilot opening web links in a side-panel instead of in the browser, and Windows Backup “silently” trying to set Edge as the default when it restores a PC and “fails to properly bring the user’s own browser along. “

“Most of the 2024 patterns are still there. The 2026 patterns are worse. Microsoft is using new surfaces like Copilot and the migration to Windows 11 to further undermine user choice,” Mozilla claims.

“We also shared the report with Microsoft and talked to them about the issues raised in the report. We knew that an immediate change was unlikely, but we hoped that, when faced with independent evidence of harmful design practices impacting Windows users, they would also want better for people,” Mozilla said.

“Instead, it became clear that Microsoft will respect user choice only when it is forced to. Microsoft’s standard for respecting people’s choices is legal compliance. Not what’s best for its users. Not its own published principles. Not what’s technically feasible. Not even what it already does for users in Europe.”

Plenty of other browsers agree with Mozilla, too. The Browser Choice Alliance, a coalition of web browsers established in 2024 and consisting of Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, BrowserWorks, Midori, and Wavebox, issued a statement following Mozilla's report.

The coalition, which describes itself as "fighting for an internet browsing experience free of manipulation, deception and unnecessary complications" said:

“Mozilla’s research demonstrated that harmful patterns in the Microsoft ecosystem are designed to steer users toward Edge, yet Microsoft has refused to commit to respecting users’ browser choice. Today, we join Mozilla’s call for Microsoft to end its campaign to undermine fair competition and restrict web freedom for users across the globe.”

A story on AI

Mozilla said it shared the report with Microsoft but did not say if the company replied in any way. We’ve reached out to Microsoft with a request for comment and will update this article when we hear from them.

In the meantime, we believe it is also important to mention what Mozilla said in the blog’s introduction:

“As AI reshapes our online experiences, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Browsers are a key distribution layer for AI tools and services, while still determining many of the privacy and security functionality people rely on every day. Steering people toward one browser can therefore shape which AI services reach users and the protections that come with it.”

So the question becomes - is this really about wanting better for people, or wanting people to use one AI model instead of another AI model? If demanding equal browser opportunity is fair game, then demanding equal AI opportunity is also fair game, so why not just say so? Why hide behind alleged altruistic causes and principles?

In the blog, Mozilla says it has a “simple” ask - to expand the “fairer designs” currently being enforced in the EEA everywhere on the planet, and to “stop the remaining harmful design practices that persist in the EEA.”

The company concluded the blog by saying there will be no more mister Nice Guy. It says it “stepped up” public pressure on the company and has reached out to regulators and policy makers.

“We hope that regulators in the US, the UK, India, and Brazil are paying attention.”

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #1722) — hint #1 — Vowels

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Quordle today (game #1722) — hint #2 — repeated letters

Quordle today (game #1722) — hint #3 — uncommon letters

Quordle today (game #1722) — hint #4 — starting letters (1)

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #1722) — hint #5 — starting letters (2)

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #1722) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1722, are…

• HELLO
• BELOW
• RIGHT
• SLANT

Everything fell into place for me today, with every word being the most expected.

In brief, exactly the sort of game I needed after losing my win stream on Saturday.

Thank you, Quordle gods.

Daily Sequence today (game #1722) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1722, are…

• OPERA
• TULLE
• FEVER
• DEMUR

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1721, Sunday, 11 October: LILAC, INLET, TRIAD, SHAPE
• Quordle #1720, Saturday, 10 October: SWEAT, THIRD, RURAL, CLASP
• Quordle #1719, Friday, 9 October: OLDEN, DUNCE, SWATH, HILLY
• Quordle #1718, Thursday, 8 October: MINTY, ROWER, BROOD, RESET
• Quordle #1717, Wednesday, 7 October: PALER, FROTH, DOZEN, ERASE
• Quordle #1716, Tuesday, 6 October: FRESH, SKULK, BATCH, ENSUE
• Quordle #1715, Monday, 5 October: SIXTH, SPEAK, SEDAN, HEIST
• Quordle #1714, Sunday, 4 October: INFER, RAINY, THING, ARENA
• Quordle #1713, Saturday, 3 October: CHORE, FLYER, STICK, PURSE
• Quordle #1712, Friday, 2 October: IVORY, SADLY, ANGEL, LLAMA
• Quordle #1711, Thursday, 1 October: NAVEL, SHEER, BIRTH, TACKY
• Quordle #1710, Wednesday, 30 September: CHOKE, BATCH, MOSSY, EAGER
• Quordle #1709, Tuesday, 29 September: BILGE, MEDAL, LODGE, PORCH
• Quordle #1708, Monday, 28 September: BRUNT, TORSO, STONE, HEATH
• Quordle #1707, Sunday, 27 September: VALET, CHEST, VIGIL, PUREE
• Quordle #1706, Saturday, 26 September: SNORT, BIBLE, LAPSE, CRANE
• Quordle #1705, Friday, 25 September: SWEAR, FLOOD, GUPPY, GROAN
• Quordle #1704, Thursday, 24 September: TOPIC, METRO, SCALP, FREED
• Quordle #1703, Wednesday, 23 September: SHEET, BLAND, JOIST, GUAVA
• Quordle #1702, Tuesday, 22 September: COMFY, LOBBY, DRESS, PANEL

• Spotifast is a native Spotify desktop app that doesn't eat up all your RAM
• It stores all of your playlists, allowing you to browse, search, and play music
• You need Spotify Premium for it to work

I love using Spotify’s desktop app for a handful of reasons, but mainly because it’s a much easier way for me to create and manage my playlists — I’ve always preferred navigating larger screens for the best music streaming services.

Despite this, one of the biggest downsides to using Spotify in its desktop form as opposed to its mobile app is the substantial amount of RAM it eats up (it can use anything from 600MB to over 1GB). That’s where Spotifast comes to save the day.

Spotifast is a new lightweight native desktop app that connects to your Spotify account and imports all of your music. As its name suggests, it’s designed to decrease RAM consumption without compromising speedy performance, which its developer says loads "in well under a second and typically uses 100–250 MB of memory" on Spotifast’s information page.

To get started, you’ll need to be a Spotify Premium subscriber, and will need to grant two approvals; one for access to your Library, and the other to play music on your computer. Free accounts can only browse and search. The app is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows, but how similar or different is it to the official Spotify app?

Layout-wise, it’s not far off what you already get with Spotify’s standard desktop app. Your main Home and Search page rests in the center, while your Library and playlists make up the left sidebar and your Queue sits on the right — both of which are collapsible. But there’s more emphasis on design.

The playback bar, which sits horizontally at the bottom of the page, features animated EQ visualizers as a song plays, which you can easily turn on and off. With Spotifast, you also have the freedom to customize how your app looks, giving you the choice between light and dark modes, as well as a selection of custom themes allowing you to make the app your own.

There’s also a strong nostalgia element to Spotifast thanks to its support for the Milkdrop visualizer which, if you grew up being mesmerized by Windows XP music animations, might be the reason you abandon the standard Spotify app. Additionally, the app supports classic Winamp Miniplayer 2 skins, giving the listening experience another nostalgic flair.

What's missing?

The developers of Spotifast pride themselves on having created a faster alternative to the standard Spotify app, and it already has the stamp of approval from users on Reddit, but there’s a reason why it's so much speedier — it’s sacrificed a lot of native Spotify tools.

For starters you won’t be getting support for lossless audio. Instead, Spotifast supports up to 320 kbps which, for some users, isn’t a dealbreaker (the difference between lossless and hi-res is minimal). The app is also completely stripped of social features.

While you can still create playlists within Spotifast, it takes them back to basics. There are no AI-powered playlist-making tools, so that means no Prompted Playlists, Mixed Playlists, Blends, or Collaborative Playlists. On the bright side, this encourages you to make playlists using your own initiative, rather than relying on an AI to do the work for you.

So far, those who’ve migrated to Spotifast for a smoother experience have been overwhelmingly positive about its speedy performance, but everything comes with a slight caveat, as the developers note on Spotifast’s information page:

"Spotify limits how often apps can ask for information. Spotifast normally shares this allowance with other listeners and several other music players. When that shared connection is busy, your library and search results can take longer to load. The top bar shows a spinner while you wait."

You should also note that Spotifast is an unofficial app, and any changes made in the standard Spotify app can temporarily break features until Spotifast is updated.

• Microsoft is adding impersonation and deepfake detection to Teams in November 2026
• A third-party platform will be behind detecting AI-generated video and audio
• Attackers are still targeting voice phishing on Teams

Microsoft is adding two new security features to Teams designed to combat increasingly sophisticated impersonation attacks in an AI-first era.

First and foremost, Microsoft is opening up its platform to enable third-party deepfake detection in the hope of stamping out AI-generated video and audio.

The second of two important security features coming to the video conferencing platform warns users when meeting participants could be misrepresenting their identities to hopefully help participants validate their authenticity.

Teams will soon tell you if the person you're talking to is fake

"Third-party detection solutions analyze meeting media for signs of synthetic or manipulated audio and video and send detection signals to Teams, enabling integrated in-meeting experiences and controls," the company wrote in a roadmap entry.

"When Teams detects a potential impersonation attempt, it surfaces warnings and risk indicators to help users recognize suspicious identities," another entry added.

While both are slated for a November 2026 launch, the finer details including which third-party platforms can support deepfake detection aren't yet public.

What we do know, though, is that Teams has become a hotspot for impersonation attacks, and AI has made it easier for criminals to exploit vulnerabilities. Microsoft has already been on a roll introducing other features like file extension blocking.

And the problem is very real – in a July 2026 report, Microsoft revealed a near 10x increase in weekly malicious Teams voice call attempts in just one year, and an 80% increase in voice phishing attempts.

Still, meaningful progress has been achieved and the company managed to cut phishing activity related to Tycoon2FA, a major phishing-as-a-service platform, by 92% in a year. Looking ahead, the company's roadmap is full of plenty of other Teams announcements, split into some new features and plenty more security updates.

There's no shortage of options to consider as far as the best laptops are concerned, particularly when you're weighing up mid-range and premium models. For many years, Chromebooks have existed as an affordable entry point to portable computing that removes the high-cost barrier for productivity and play with their web-based operating system. However, everything's changing with the recent announcement of Googlebooks, AI-powered machines aimed at the likes of the MacBook and the best ultrabooks.

It's a bold, Gemini-backed swing from the Californian company. Gemini Intelligence is the central USP here, with an Android/Linux hybrid OS replacing the likes of traditional laptop operating systems, running on powerful hardware, such as Intel Core Ultra and Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors.

There's a ton of ground to cover with the design philosophies, price-to-performance, value for money, and general usability of an Android-based Googlebook when weighed up against a web-based Chromebook, let alone how the incoming Gemini-packed computers hold up against their competition.

As a result, I'm going through everything you need to know about Googlebooks vs Chromebooks, analyzing their use case, build quality, battery life, design, features, and other aspects to see if it's worth taking the plunge with Gemini Intelligence, or seeing if you're better suited to a more traditional laptop instead.

Googlebooks vs Chromebooks: Price comparison

The biggest defining characteristic of Googlebooks at this early stage of its rollout is their premium nature. Currently, there are only a handful of different models to choose from, and all carry high-end price tags. Early adopters can choose from the Acer Googlebook 14, the Asus Googlebook 14, the Dell XPS Googlebook, the HP Googlebook 14, and the Lenovo Googlebook 15. Starting configurations begin at $899 / £999 to $1,299 / £1,199, depending on the included amount of RAM, choice of processor, and onboard storage. All these models either use an Intel Core Ultra 5/7 or the Snapdragon X Elite.

In contrast, Chromebooks have (historically) always been a cost-effective way to be productive, get work done, and enjoy multimedia playback. Lightweight, fast, and affordable have always been the mantra of these devices. Popular choices in 2026 include the HP Chromebook 14 ($249 / £249), Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus ($699 / £649), Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 ($599 / £599), and the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 ($439 / £429). These web-based machines typically cater to light laptop users, and they don't require much processing power under the hood to perform their tasks, keeping the prices competitive.

While there have been relatively expensive Chromebooks in the past, they have been few and far between, and failed to properly muscle in on ultrabook territory because they rely on a web-based operating system. They can be surprisingly capable for enterprising users, and we saw this most prominently four years ago with the launch of the HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook. It's gone down in history as the best high-end Chromebook ever designed; however, it didn't sell well and was quietly discontinued in mid 2024. No company has attempted to make such a high-end device again since, until the new Googlebooks.

The average price of a Chromebook is between $300 and $400 (£300 to £400) for a reliable machine from a trusted manufacturer. Conversely, if we look at the freshly revealed Googlebooks (which begin at $999 to $1,299), that's a markup of 233%. Before we get into the architectural and hardware differences, we need to ask the question: are Googlebooks really good enough to spend double (or triple) what you would on a Chromebook? For some, that's going to be a tough sell. If you're tight on cash and just want a basic machine for light use, then a Chromebook will be the better buy, and if you want more processing power, then things become more nuanced.

Googlebooks vs Chromebooks: OS and App support

The second big defining trait of Googlebooks is how they openly embrace today's best laptop processors rather than cheap out on something serviceable, yet unexciting. As touched upon above, the first-generation Googlebooks use either Intel Core Ultra 5/7 or Snapdragon X Elite chips.

This is done to aid hardware-accelerated AI workloads, as the dedicated NPUs (Neural Processing Units) onboard these processors feature 47-50 TOPs (Tera of Operations Per Second), meaning the number of calculations for local machine learning. It's needed to give Gemini Intelligence the required horsepower to function, as it's a hardware-integrated operating system layer.

Standard Google Gemini is more of a prompt-based AI chatbot that has several different levels to it. The standard search and response is now called Flash (3.6), whereas you also have the options for Flash-Lite (3.5) for the fastest answers, and 3.1 Pro for "advanced reasoning". There's also the Flash Extended mode for "complex problem solving". Gemini has been available since December 2023, and it's only becoming smarter, faster, and more useful as time goes on. Google just announced Gemini 4 Argon, which is said to be for real-world coding, defense, and enterprise work, so as a platform, it's in an incredibly healthy place, showing no signs of slowing down.

Googlebooks leverage the power of Gemini Intelligence for local AI workloads. All Googlebook early adopters will receive a year of Google AI Pro (which includes Gemini Pro, Nano Banana, and Gemini in Google Drive) as well as 5TB of cloud storage with their AI-powered laptops, too. In other words, if you're looking for machines primarily geared towards AI-accelerated workloads, then there's enough under the hood, with the software that's streamlined for this exact purpose.

It's tough to weigh up Googlebooks against ultrabooks directly because, though the hardware itself is comparable, the software is very different. Googlebooks run on Googlebook OS (which was codenamed Aluminium OS), which is essentially just a fancy wrapper for Android 17. It boils down to having a cell phone UI combined with the look and feel of a laptop.

By comparison, Chromebooks are an outlier to the norm. They run ChromeOS, which is a lightweight operating system for web browsing and everyday computing tasks that utilize Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) for the likes of Gmail, Drive, Meet, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Keep, Notebook, etc. It also means having to rely on the Chrome Web Store rather than getting to use the Google Play Store, or downloading anything external as an executable. Google recently announced that it would be ending support for ChromeOS in mid-2034, so there are still seven years of use from a Chromebook before the device becomes a paperweight. Google has confirmed that some Chromebook devices will get to upgrade to Googlebook OS; however, no further details have been shared.

Googlebooks vs Chromebooks: Design

The design ethos when comparing Googlebooks vs Chromebooks is where you can see the manufacturing differences that are possible when you put money behind a product. As expected, given the fact that you're going to pay anywhere from double (or triple) the starting cost for a Googlebook when compared to a Chromebook, the materials used by the former are significantly better. The five initial Googlebooks all feature 16GB RAM with 512GB of storage at a starting point, and are available in either 14-inch or 15-inch display configurations.

Granular details are where Googlebooks get more exciting, particularly with the Lenovo Googlebook 15 and the HP Googlebook 14. Both of these high-end devices weigh in at 1.2kg and feature OLED touchscreens. Lenovo's model uses an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor and supports up to 13 hours of battery life, whereas HP's effort utilizes the Snapdragon X Elite for up to 19 hours of battery life. The Asus Googlebook 14 is the lightest of the launch crop, weighing in at just 1kg with its 14-inch 3K OLED screen and up to 16 hours of battery playback. There's something of a rough price-to-performance range here, albeit with one strange deviation from the rule.

The Dell XPS Chromebook lacks an OLED display, but still ranks among the most expensive of the launch lineup, with a lower 2.5K resolution compared to the 2.8K or 3K screens of its competitors. Backed by the Snapdragon X Elite, it has a comparable 18-hour battery life akin to the HP Googlebook 14, coming in a touch lighter at 1.09kg, with otherwise the same configured specs.

There's far more variety in what to expect from a Chromebook's design. After all, Google's web-based laptops have been on the market for over 15 years, and as such, manufacturers have figured out every way to deliver different form factors at all price points. All-rounders include the likes of the HP Chromebook Plus 15, which you can get for around $549.99 / £449.99, running a fairly paltry Intel Core i3-N305 CPU with Intel integrated graphics, 8GB RAM, and a Full HD display.

Cheaper Chromebooks can cut this initial cost in half, such as the budget champion Asus Chromebook CX15, which starts at only $159.99 / £249.99 and features an Intel Celeron N4500 CPU, 4GB RAM, and a Full HD display. You'll find the weaker processors in almost all budget and mid-range Chromebooks, particularly the Intel Core i3, Intel Celeron, or the Intel N100. There's also been the adoption of low-powered MediaTek Kompanio processors, which are built on Arm instead; you may see these chips in the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, Lenovo Duet EDU G2, and the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514, among others.

Chromebooks have always been an example of getting what you pay for. It means weaker machines with dimmer screens and modest hardware specs for an affordable price tag. Because ChromeOS is all web-based, there's no need for much processing power; however, if a machine has just 4GB or 8GB of RAM, then the overall performance could still feel slow and sluggish, depending on how many Chrome tabs or apps you're running in the background. It's a game of give and take, of compromise, and that's the space that these laptops have confidently occupied since 2011. They'll never rival what the best gaming laptops can do, naturally, but then, they're not in that market at all.

Should you buy a Googlebook or a Chromebook?

It's time to deliver a verdict on whether you should consider a Googlebook or a Chromebook, and I'll keep things as straightforward as possible. If you're a casual computer user who doesn't want to spend too much and primarily works online and has everything conducted through streaming, then an average Chromebook will be more than enough.

However, if you're already thoroughly ingrained in the Gemini ecosystem, use an Android phone, and want a premium laptop with a long battery life, then a Googlebook will likely be a great choice.

As someone who owns a Google Pixel 10 Pro and has become familiar with Gemini Intelligence, I can say firsthand that the technology works well for certain applications. If you already own Google hardware, then a laptop running an Android wrapper won't make any sense (or will be purely redundant aside from the form factor), but if you're looking to be an early adopter, ready for Gemini 4, Gemini Intelligence, and to go all in on AI, then it could be worthwhile for you. It's too early to call whether the wider computing market or the industry will embrace them, but everything revealed this early on shows promise for the right type of user.

• Meta closed a woman’s Facebook and Instagram accounts with no warning
• The closed accounts contained 20 years’ worth of ‘digital memories’
• The woman couldn’t contact a human and was forced to use AI chatbots

What would you do if you lost your Facebook and Instagram accounts along with all of the photos, posts, and memories they contained? That’s the prospect faced by one unfortunate woman — a situation made even worse by the actions of Meta’s AI chatbots.

When Jasmine Ault checked her phone in the middle of the night, she was greeted by a notification saying her Facebook and Instagram accounts had been permanently disabled, taking 20 years of personal data and contacts with them.

Ault attempted to contact Meta to rectify the situation, but found herself passed from pillar to post and unable to secure a resolution. In fact, Ault found herself completely shut out by Meta’s customer service and could only talk to an AI chatbot that couldn't fix it. Even after paying for expedited service, Ault was unable to get through to a human.

“It feels like I’ve lost everything in a metaphorical fire with my digital albums and my digital memories,” Ault told CBC News. “And who’s going to protect those if I can only speak to AI?”

Ault appealed the ban but says she received a summary judgment just minutes later declaring that her case had been closed and that there was no possibility of any further appeals. And with that, she had seemingly run out of options.

An opaque, uncaring system

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a case like this. Social media is awash with reports of people being erroneously banned from Meta’s platforms without any means of recourse — there’s even a dedicated subreddit for it.

With Meta rolling out AI across its platforms, it’s likely that situations like this will continue. Many people have accused AI moderation tools of incorrectly flagging users’ accounts, which might be one cause of the distress.

Part of the problem is the opaqueness of Meta’s actions. While Ault received a message saying her account was banned for breaking the platform’s rules, she was never informed which specific rules had been broken or how. She told CBC that she stayed awake for 26 hours straight in an attempt to restore her accounts — and all the memories contained therein — back to working order.

Yet Ault has been unable to resolve the situation. Speaking to CBC, she said “it feels almost sick to me that they just think, like, ‘We can just shut these people’s accounts down, they can’t get through to us and talk to us,’ and it’s people’s lifelines. It’s people’s memories. It’s people’s everything.”

If you’re concerned something similar might happen to you, it would be worth downloading your Facebook and Instagram data so that you have a backup. You never know when Meta might send everything to the digital incinerator and leave you stuck with an unsympathetic AI chatbot.

Devolo WiFi 7 Mesh BE6500: one-minute review

Devolo is best known for its range of PowerLine adaptors and range extenders but, as the name suggests, its new WiFi 7 Mesh BE6500 steps up to provide a full mesh Wi-Fi system for homes that need to extend their Wi-Fi coverage beyond the range of a single conventional router.

Wi-Fi 7 has been around for a few years now, but high-end tri-band routers that support the 2.4GHz, 5.0GHz and 6.0GHz frequency bands are still quite expensive.

So, like a number of Wi-Fi 7 routers and mesh systems that we’ve seen recently, the BE6500 keeps its price down by offering just dual-band Wi-Fi instead. However, it takes a slightly different approach from many of its dual-band rivals by giving you a choice about which frequency bands you can use.

You can opt to use the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz bands together to ensure compatibility with older devices that only support Wi-Fi 5 or 6. Alternatively, you can switch to using 2.4GHz and the faster 6.0GHz band for newer computers and mobile devices that support Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7.

That’s a good option for future-proofing your home network, as it will let you use the BE6500 with older computers and mobile devices while still providing an upgrade path for newer devices you may buy in the future.

Devolo Wi-Fi 7 Mesh BE6500: Price & release date

• Released in May 2026
• Available in EU and UK
• Three-pack costs £369.99/€399.90

Devolo products are widely available within the UK and Europe, but the company doesn’t currently operate in the US.

The Wi-Fi 7 Mesh BE6500 is available as a two-pack containing two BE6500 routers for £249.99/€269.90. Devolo doesn’t quote the precise area covered by that two-pack option, merely saying that it is suitable for ‘small-to-medium’ homes.

However, I tested the three-pack option for ‘larger’ homes, which costs £369.99/€399.90. If required, you can further extend your mesh network by buying additional BE6500 routers, costing £129.99/€149.90 each. Those prices are very competitive when compared to rivals in a similar price range, such as Amazon’s Eero 7 and the Netgear Orbi 373, which only support dual-band Wi-Fi 7 on the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz bands.

• Value score: 4/5

Devolo Wi-Fi 7 Mesh BE6500: Specs

Devolo Wi-Fi 7 Mesh BE6500: Design

• Compact design
• Four Ethernet ports per router
• Setup is a bit fussy

The BE6500 routers are neatly designed, with each plain white unit standing 175mm high, 118mm wide and 72mm deep, so they will fit comfortably onto any convenient table or shelf.

The routers look identical, with four Ethernet ports located on the side, including a 2.5Gbps port for high-speed broadband connections and three 1Gb ports to provide a local (LAN) connection for devices, such as a games console or PC, that may work better with a lag-free wired connection.

However, one of the routers is labelled as the ‘Controller’, and this router will need to be connected to your existing broadband router or modem in order to use its internet connection.

Setting up the Controller router is fairly straightforward, as Devolo’s Home Network app for iOS/Android allows you to simply scan a QR code to connect to the Controller. However, adding the other two routers – referred to as ‘Extensions’ – requires a little more effort.

The app tells you to plug both of the Extension routers into a mains power supply close to the Controller, but it can only connect one Extension to your network at a time. This means that you have to go through the process of connecting the first Extension to your network, and then unplug it so that you can move it to another location, and then repeat the same process for the second Extension.

We’ve seen other mesh Wi-Fi systems that can automatically connect multiple routers in order to create your new network for you, so Devolo could do more to simplify the initial set-up process.

• Design score: 4/5

Devolo Wi-Fi 7 Mesh BE6500: Features

• App is a bit confusing
• Some features are enabled via a browser

The setup process was also unclear how to choose the frequency bands that are used for your new network.

The app doesn’t ask which frequencies you would like to use, but after randomly tapping buttons within the app for a while I did find a mention of the fact that the network was using the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz bands.

However, there was no option within the app to switch to the 6.0GHz band instead, so I had to connect a laptop to the Devolo network using the default 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz bands, and then use a web browser to view more detailed network settings.

And, again, after some more random button tapping, I did find an option that allowed me to switch to using the 2.4GHz and 6.0GHz bands instead. The browser interface also includes other features, such as a QoS option – Quality Of Service – that allows you to prioritise tasks such as gaming or streaming video.

That’s not a very user-friendly approach though, and may well be confusing for people who aren’t used to configuring their network via a web browser interface, so Devolo needs to make its app more straightforward for new users.

• Features score: 4/5

Devolo Wi-Fi 7 Mesh BE6500: Performance

The BE6500 could certainly be more user-friendly, but I can’t fault its performance, and the three-pack system that I tested worked a treat for tackling the Wi-Fi deadspot that I have in an office towards the back of my building.

Devices in the same room as my normal broadband router can generally achieve the full 150Mbps available with my office broadband service both for Steam downloads and the Ookla Speed Test.

My aging router struggles to reach that back office though, so I have to rely on PowerLine adaptors to provide a more reliable wired network connection.

I placed one of the BE6500 Extension routers in that office, with the second placed roughly halfway between the back office and the main Controller router. Steam downloads did slow down a little initially, when using the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz bands, dipping to 130Mbps as I walked along the corridor with my laptop, but quickly recovered to hit 150Mbps once more.

That pattern was repeated with the Ookla Speed Test as well. Performance was even better when I switched to using the 2.4GHz and 6.0GHz bands, with the BE6500 trio maintaining a smooth 150Mbps throughout my tests.

Some people might prefer a true tri-band router or mesh system that allows you to use the 2.4GHz, 5.0GHz and 6.0GHz bands simultaneously. That will be more expensive though, and if you need an affordable Wi-Fi upgrade that can cover a larger home with reliable Wi-Fi, then the BE6500 is good value for money.

• Performance score: 4/5

Should I buy the Devolo Wi-Fi 7 Mesh BE6500?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider

• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: September 2026

• You can now order the first Wi-Fi 8 router
• TP-Link's Archer 8 Ultra is available to buy in the UK and Australia, along with some other countries
• In the UK it's priced at £899.99 / AU$1,499, but you can get the router for £669.99 currently if you pre-order

TP-Link is now selling the first Wi-Fi 8 router to come onto the market, although the very latest wireless tech won't come cheap as you might expect.

The TP-Link Archer 8 Ultra is available to buy in the UK and Australia, as well as Germany and some other countries (not yet specified by the router manufacturer).

Pricing will naturally vary by region, but the cost in the UK is £669.99 if you place a pre-order now, although that price tag will be bumped up to £899.99 later on. In Australia, pre-orders are open now, with the Archer 8 Ultra priced at AU$1,499.99. There's no indication of a price bump once the router officially launches.

With the Archer 8 Ultra you get Wi-Fi 8 coverage of up to 3,600 square feet (or 3,000 square feet in Europe). In case you weren't aware, this new wireless standard is about improving performance in different ways other than raw speed.

The key advantages for Wi-Fi 8 over Wi-Fi 7 are that it deals more capably with interference in crowded signal-dense environments, and it's more reliable with a greater number of client devices connected. Wi-Fi 8 also ensures that there's a better signal at the extremities of the network.

TP-Link has told us a bit more about what its Wi-Fi 8 StabilityEngine tech achieves in the Archer 8 Ultra, noting the presence of features such as UEQM, MCS, and 2×LDPC. These are designed to "hold throughput steady in a noisy home, delivering up to 33% more consistent throughput at mid-to-long ranges and up to 24% more consistent throughput than Wi-Fi 7 under interference."

You don't really need to know the ins-and-outs of the various acronyms involved, save to say that they help the Wi-Fi signal drop off less sharply as you move further away from the router, and they cut down on dropped network packets (helping to keep a more stable connection).

TP-Link also boasts about its Multi-Floor Mode feature, which reshapes the Wi-Fi signal to take into account where devices are actually present. The firm says that this directs coverage to multiple floors when devices are spread over different levels, but it flattens to a "wide single-floor pattern" when they're not.

TP-Link further observes that as the Wi-Fi 8 standard matures – it's still in its draft form right now – firmware updates will be applied to the Archer 8 Ultra to keep it up to speed.

The Archer 8 Ultra also comes with the Aireal AI Assistant which allows less technically inclined users to employ natural language queries to understand and tweak their Wi-Fi coverage. This AI also keeps a constant eye on how the router is performing and continuously optimizes and prioritizes wireless traffic, with other benefits such as an Eco mode to bring power usage right down at night when everyone's asleep.

On the security front, this router has an integrated VPN at the hardware level encrypting the traffic of selected devices (it works with third-party VPNs too, if you already have one). Smart gadgets (Internet of Things devices), with their greater levels of potential security risks, are kept on their own network away from the main network (and the guest network is separate too, as you'd imagine).

There's also an optional TP-Link HomeShield service which offers real-time protection for your devices as well as parental controls.

Analysis: is it worth getting on board with the future of Wi-Fi today?

With the Archer 8 Ultra now on pre-order, it's likely that the mesh Wi-Fi system TP-Link also revealed at IFA 2026 – the Deco 8 Ultra – won't be that far behind.

The price tag is predictably high with the Archer 8 Ultra, though, albeit pre-ordering does get you a pretty chunky discount. (The same will doubtless be true of the Deco 8 Ultra when it pitches up – the price of that will also depend on how many units you need based on the size of your home).

At any rate, now the Archer 8 Ultra can be yours, should you rush to pre-order to benefit from all the mentioned Wi-Fi 8 goodies? Well, no, because there isn't any consumer hardware (phones, tablets, laptops) that supports Wi-Fi 8 yet, and you need those client devices as well as the actual router. They won't arrive until next year, and they'll be thin on the ground even then.

So buying this TP-Link router right now is more about being future-proofed than anything else (though you will get some slight benefits from the Archer 8 Ultra with current Wi-Fi 7 or earlier devices). The thing is that if you're prepared to wait, the hefty early adopter premium on the Archer 8 Ultra (or other Wi-Fi 8 routers) will lessen, and really, that's your best bet as I've previously discussed at length.

If you do fancy grabbing the Archer 8 Ultra, though, definitely make sure you get that cheaper pre-order price.

Twitter is not back, and we'll surely never see the likes of it again. In its place, we have X, and now, Tweet.app. You can be forgiven for the confusion. Many who still use X think their posts are tweets, but the still-pay-to-play platform from Bluebird, Inc. is now called Tweet.

It's a tale far too rich to contain in, say, a classic 140-character tweet, but I'll attempt to unpack it here, with insights from Bluebird, Inc. President and General Counsel Stephen Coates.

"I call it the 'Tweenix,' " Coates tells me, after I noted that Tweet.app's new blue logo looks a little like a phoenix. The imagery is apt. It signifies classic Twitter rising from the ashes, but also Bluebird's initial success and then failure to revive 'Twitter', before ultimately launching Tweet.app a few weeks ago.

Two years ago, Bluebird began the skunkworks project to revive Twitter, a brand Elon Musk effectively killed when he bought Twitter in 2022 and then in 2023 rebranded it to X, leaving vestiges of the old 'Twitter' scattered throughout the services, a fact that played a crucial role in Bluebird's ability to revive the brand.

Coates told me that after his company tried to file for a cancellation of the 'Tweet' and 'Twitter' trademarks in December of last year, X quickly filed a federal injunction. In the meantime, Bluebird launched Twitter.now. Months later, the judge ruled that because X still had "formerly Twitter" on the Apple App Store listing, it had brand rights. Coates called the ruling surprising, but Bluebird quickly pivoted and rebranded to Tweet.

The company, he told me, has no plans to go after the iconic Twitter bird logo, even though it's not well protected as a brand by X. Hence, the Tweenix.

Tweet, though, still seems like a risky name. Coates told me, "We're optimistic... It seems highly likely we’ll prevail on 'Tweet'."

That remains to be seen. When you sign up for Tweet, you must acknowledge that you know it's not affiliated with X. Search Tweet in the App Store, and the first result is still X. However, Tweet.app operating relatively under the radar might help it avoid further scrutiny from X and Elon Musk.

It has, by Coates' measure, just about 8,000 users. "[That's] pretty good, considering it's paid," Coates told me. The platform is so small that you could conceivably read all the tweets — I'm not sure that's a selling point, but Coates said there are "already community and inside jokes."

The company is using the income from those users to pay its small team of 10 employees and contractors as it builds the platform and tweaks the moderation filters, something Coates considers of critical importance.

Tweet.app, which does resemble old-school Twitter, is currently using AI to scale its moderation, including its still-in-beta Vera tool, which measures content for misinformation and applies a score. Eventually, Tweet.app members will have a dial connected to those ratings to automatically filter out their desired level of misinformation.

That's right, Tweet.app won't be in the business of rooting out all fake news. The creed will be, "Freedom of speech but not freedom of reach," said Coates.

Where Twitter, under former CEO Dick Costolo, whom Coates worked under, struggled with how to be a town square when there was one guy shouting obscenities in the corner, Tweet.com will let the guy shout, but also let users hide the obscenities they don't want to see in their feeds.

If it works, all of it will be powered by this AI. "I call it AI for good. We're not creating tools that will create AI outputs," said Coates, who has worked as counsel for Meta, Reddit, and TikTok.

None of this, of course, ensures success. Classic social media, including Twitter, was built on viral moments, like the Arab Spring, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and selfies that broke the internet.

Coates acknowledged the power of these "inflection" moments, but reminded me that you can't predict them. Tweet.app is happy to grow slowly. Coates knows that paying members will be more deeply engaged than people who simply hop on the platform for free. "At some point will it be open to everyone? I certainly hope so," he told me.

I asked Coates why we need this or any other new social media. He told me that he sees room for reinvention, with space for social media that gives users control. "We're empowering them to control the algorithm," which is an idea that well-established social media platforms have only recently approached.

As the other upstart micro-blogging social media platform, Bluesky, moves away from the town square concept, Coates sees an opportunity to build an alternative to the only other big open platform: X.

"There's room for more. I think people will come for the nostalgia of Twitter and tweeting and stay for the control and experience. It’s a grand experiment."

We all learn in different ways. As a visual learner, I really appreciate seeing ideas drawn out or presented through images. Give me a page of text, and I can read it, no problem, but not a huge amount is retained by my little grey cells.

Unfortunately, not everything can be boiled down into a simple image, diagram, or video. Some concepts are just too complex to be simplified. When I am forced to read a body of text, I prefer to hear someone read to me rather than read it for myself.

The problem is that not every resource has an accompanying audio feature. I could use my web browser’s reading mode, but there’s usually only a limited number of voices, and they often sound electronic and overprocessed. That’s why I’ve recently started using Speechify.

This simple and straightforward app features over 200 lifelike voices, each of which can be customized by type, pitch, and accent. The app can read uploaded files, images, and pasted text and integrates seamlessly into a range of workflows and file repositories. You can even choose the reading speed to be up to 4.5 times the normal speed, although I wouldn't recommend that!

AI voices that sound natural

Whatever you like to read, Speechify has so many voices on offer that you’re bound to find one that you enjoy listening to. The app guides users through a series of questions that help you narrow down the best choice for your requirements. It begins by asking you which type of voice you’d like. You can choose between conversational, narration, acting, professional, meditation, and educational.

From there, the app asks you whether you’d like the voice to sound bright, soft, neutral, crisp, warm, or deep, and whether you like a low, mid, or high pitch. The final option is to choose between British, American, and Australian accents. Unfortunately, these are the only three possibilities at the moment, although I’m sure they’ll add more in time.

With these simple questions answered, Speechify scans its 200+ voices and tells you which voices are the best fit. All you have to do is select your favorite, choose a document to read, and sit back and enjoy. And if you fancy a change, picking a different voice is easy.

An abundance of workflows

Speechify offers a number of different workflows, all of which are accessible through the Home tab of the app. First up is an AI-driven option where the app asks you, “What do you want to work on today?” Anyone who has used ChatGPT, Gemini, or similar will be familiar with this workflow.

Simply describe your task or ask anything, either with text or through the microphone, and Speechify will look it up for you. You can even attach files to complement your search request. Answers are presented as text but can be ‘read’ by the voice assistant. You can also ask follow-up questions to delve deeper into a topic.

If you already have a document that you’d like read out, you can choose from the list of seven workflow options. These are upload files from your phone, upload from a cloud repository, scan pages, paste text, find a book, paste a link, and dictate text.

I expected Speechify to handle PDFs and web pages with ease, but what I was most impressed with was its ability to analyze and read out images. I tested the app with several different photos, and it was able to read all types of information, including technical details. The images also didn’t have to be the highest quality or the best lit.

One of the best things about Speechify is that it lets me do a lot more multitasking. Prior to using the app, I would have to allocate a lot more time to sitting down and having focused reading time. Now I can upload a file or take a picture of something and crack on with house chores at the same time. It’s transformed how I spend my time.

Getting the most out of Speechify

The free version of Speechify provides a reasonable number of features, but it lacks offline listening, advanced voices, faster playback, and additional features such as dictation. To access these, you’ll need a Premium account, which costs $175 / £129.99 per year. There’s a free 3-day trial so you can test out the additional features before committing.

Also, if you love audiobooks, Speechify also has a library of over 100,000 books across every genre. This includes fiction, classics, self-help, and more. This costs $80 / £60 for lifetime access but is often discounted down to $35 / £25. At this price, Speechify Library is an affordable alternative to Amazon’s Audible service.

Whether you read to study, for leisure, learn a language, or simply want to boost your productivity, Speechify will help you realize your goals in super-fast time.

Download Speechify on iOS and Android.

• Chrome will get new updates every two weeks to minimize real-world attacks
• Smaller, incremental changes should also make it easier to track any issues
• Other major browsers are also shifting to two-weekly release cycles

Google has confirmed that Chrome has officially moved from a four-week Stable release cycle to a two-week one, with effect from September 8 2026 with the launch of Chrome 153.

Besides adding new features, the main objective is for Google to give us performance and security fixes more promptly in an era of increased complexity and heightened vulnerabilities.

And it's exactly those security concerns that pushed Google to want to double Chrome's update frequency in the first lace, with the company now having to deal with a higher volume of patches than ever before.

Chrome will get updates every two weeks

Together with a higher volume of attacks in general, Google has also benefitted from AI-powered vulnerability discovery tools, giving developers more work to do than before. "With automated AI discovery tools and community bug reports generating higher patch volume, shorter release cycles make managing security fixes significantly simpler," the company wrote.

Crucially, the faster cycle reduces the time between a fix landing in Chrome's public codebase and it actually reaching end users, making it less likely for a bug to be exploited in the wild.

Chrome has been adhering to a four-week cycle since 2021, but the world is a very different place in the space of just half a decade.

With the higher pace of releases, Google also anticipates a smaller scope of changes, which could actually be a good thing because it could be easier for developers to identify what went wrong in the event of any issues.

Desktop, Android and iOS versions of Chrome will all be impacted by the change, with Chrome 154 already slated for a September 22 release.

More broadly, Google says Chrome isn't the only browser getting more frequent updates. Microsoft, Mozilla and Brave are also making similar changes, and they're all undergoing those changes right now.

The first Wi-Fi 8 routers were launched by TP-Link at IFA 2026 last week with the devices set to hit the shelves later this year. So, when that happens, is it a good idea to immediately jump on board with this new more performant wireless standard?

Not exactly. There's a bit to unpack here about exactly how Wi-Fi 8 improves on Wi-Fi 7 — it's not any faster in terms of raw performance, in case you weren't aware — as well as when routers and devices that support the new standard will arrive.

All of this will factor in to the decision you'll make about when to upgrade to Wi-Fi 8 in your home. In this article, we'll look at what Wi-Fi 8 offers over and above Wi-Fi 7, and then examine considerations around the upgrade timeline, and when you might want to make a move to benefit from cutting-edge Wi-Fi.

How is Wi-Fi 8 better than Wi-Fi 7?

Wi-Fi 8 doesn't move the needle in terms of raw speed over Wi-Fi 7 — the latter is already beefy in that respect anyway — and instead aims to boost overall wireless performance in different ways.

Wi-Fi 8 seeks to improve the overall stability and reliability of the wireless connection, so you get a smoother and faster experience when you're further away from the router — and it's particularly focused on helping boost speeds at the very edge of the network's signal.

Another key point with Wi-Fi 8 is that it's built to cope with more devices and keep speeds up, as well as dealing with interference better. So, in signal-dense environments, where there are lots of devices competing for bandwidth, all this traffic will be better directed and managed to ensure better performance.

That'll obviously help with larger households where everyone has multiple devices, but it's going to be particularly important for places like apartments or office buildings where there can be a lot of competition from multiple routers and a whole host of devices all packed into a relatively small area.

TP-Link — which unveiled both a traditional Wi-Fi 8 router, the Archer 8 Ultra, and a mesh Wi-Fi system, the Deco 8 Ultra, at IFA 2026 — revealed some clever tricks for these cutting-edge pieces of hardware. They use Dynamic Sub-band Operation (DSO) and Non-Primary Channel Access (NPCA) tech to portion out only the bandwidth any given device needs — so tiny smart home devices, for example, only get the small chunk that they require, leaving more bandwidth to be usable for other hardware. In short, the traffic from all devices is managed in a much smarter manner, and situations where performance gets congested with Wi-Fi 7 are avoided with Wi-Fi 8.

The end result is a considerable leap in performance of wireless devices, even though the core speed and throughput spec of Wi-Fi 8 remains the same as its predecessor. This is particularly evident in environments with lots of competing devices, or when you're at the outer limits of the wireless signal.

When will Wi-Fi 8 routers go on sale — and should I buy one straight away?

As mentioned, TP-Link's initial models are on sale later in 2026, and pre-orders will go live in some regions from the start of October. Asus Wi-Fi 8 routers are also expected to arrive later this year.

In theory, then, you could grab yourself a Wi-Fi 8 router in a couple of months and be up-and-running with the latest wireless standard — but should you?

Here's the thing about being an early adopter of a new Wi-Fi standard: you must remember that when the first routers come out, they're based on a draft version, not the finalized wireless standard. In other words, it's still very early days for Wi-Fi 8 (although when it is finalized, likely in mid-2027, existing routers will be updated appropriately, of course).

So, while you can have a Wi-Fi 8 router later this year, you won't be able to buy any devices which are compatible with the standard. Naturally, both the client device and the router must support the new standard to benefit from its features, and smartphones and laptops that are Wi-Fi 8 capable aren't arriving until next year.

And even then, they will only be available in small numbers, and these will be premium cutting-edge (expensive) devices, as you might expect.

Is it pointless to buy a Wi-Fi 8 router when they first come out?

While you won't get the immediate full benefit of Wi-Fi 8 until you have the supporting devices to go with the router, it's not completely pointless to be an early adopter of something like the TP-Link Archer 8 Ultra. It's backwards compatible with all devices supporting earlier Wi-Fi standards, of course, and that hardware will still get the benefit of some of the Archer's traffic management tricks.

That said, until Wi-Fi 8 laptops, tablets and phones arrive in greater numbers, you're not realistically going to get much mileage out of your shiny new Wi-Fi 8 router. You will, of course, be future-proofed and ready for next year's devices, but the problem is that buying a Wi-Fi 8 router at launch means you'll pay a premium and a high price for the privilege.

This cutting-edge hardware is always expensive when it first comes onto the scene, so on balance, it's much better to wait until the market fills out, and more Wi-Fi 8 hardware — routers and consumer devices — is available, before you pull the trigger on a purchase. Your wallet will be happier if you're patient.

Rest assured, though, that the future of wireless is almost here, and Wi-Fi 8 promises to make a big difference when it fully kicks in.

• TP-Link has unveiled two new Wi-Fi 8 routers at IFA 2026
• The Archer 8 Ultra is a traditional router with a smart design and coverage of up to 3,600 square feet
• The Deco 8 Ultra is a mesh system, and a 3-pack is good for a home of up to 9,800 square feet

TP-Link has revealed the world's first Wi-Fi 8 routers at IFA 2026, with two models arriving in the form of a standard router and a mesh Wi-Fi offering.

These are the Archer 8 Ultra router and the Deco 8 Ultra, the latter being the mesh Wi-Fi system. Both are built around TP-Link's Wi-Fi 8 StabilityEngine.

With the Deco 8 Ultra, you're getting a tri-band (including 6GHz) Wi-Fi 8 mesh system offering a speed of 22Gbps (19Gbps in Europe). A 3-pack of these cylindrical routers can cover a home of up to 9,800 square feet, with support for 200+ devices.

The Archer 8 Ultra boasts a tri-band speed of 19Gbps and bristles with 18 antennas, delivering coverage of up to 3,600 square feet in your home (or 3,000 square feet in Europe).

TP-Link underlines three key benefits of these routers thanks to Wi-Fi 8. First, they are more reliable with a greater number of devices hooked up, and they also cope much better with interference. Finally, Wi-Fi 8 allows for a better wireless connection at the edge of the system's effective range.

Handling devices more reliably is facilitated by Dynamic Sub-band Operation (DSO) and Non-Primary Channel Access (NPCA) tech. The former ensures every connected device gets only the bandwidth it needs — so more is open for other usage — and NPCA opens a second channel if the main one gets too busy. Or as TP-Link puts it, "Every device gets its own fast lane."

New modulation technology in these routers helps to deal with interference from other devices or nearby networks (like your neighbor's Wi-Fi), and boosts performance at longer distances from the router.

There are also Enhanced Long Range (ELR) and Distributed Resource Units (DRU) features with these Wi-Fi routers, which further strengthen the wireless signal at the edge of its reach.

TP-Link notes, "ELR extends the router's usable range, while DRU concentrates a device's limited uplink power into a narrower band so it can be heard clearly from far away. Uploads, calls, and camera feeds hold where they used to stutter."

Both routers benefit from a smart and contemporary design, with a minimalist and streamlined look. TP-Link argues that it needs to make its hardware look good so it won't be hidden away in a cupboard or under a table.

Gary Chang, Lead Industrial Designer at TP-Link, commented, "We stopped building a piece of networking equipment and started designing for the home. When a router's design becomes something people want to display, it ends up exactly where it performs best."

Analysis: ready for the future of Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi 8 doesn't deliver any speed boost over Wi-Fi 7, at least not in terms of raw performance — but it does aim to improve performance by delivering a stronger signal when you're further away from the router, and a more reliable connection overall. Part of that strategy is to better deal with interference from other wireless networks (or appliances in general), and as TP-Link observes, this is a big part of the puzzle here.

We don't yet have a release date (or price) for the Archer 8 Ultra or Deco 8 Ultra, but the expectation is that these routers will ship later this year. Of course, to get the benefit of a Wi-Fi 8 router, you'll need devices that support the new wireless standard, too — and they won't be here for a while yet.

Indeed, the Wi-Fi 8 standard itself is still a draft and not finalized, and the likes of smartphones and laptops won't arrive with Wi-Fi 8 support until next year (and there probably won't be very many of them, either, to begin with).

That said, your Wi-Fi 7 (or earlier) devices will still run just fine on a Wi-Fi 8 router, because as ever, the new standard is fully backwards compatible — you just won't get the benefits that Wi-Fi 8 phones and laptops will (when they arrive).

That said, some of the improved traffic management and interference reduction tech in these routers will still help with devices that don't support Wi-Fi 8. However, buying a Wi-Fi 8 router later this year when these TP-Link models (and others) emerge is more about future-proofing than anything else for now.

• Lake Ontario is now Lake America in the US via an executive order
• Google Maps has updated its maps to reflect the change
• Viewing the map from outside the US still shows the original name

Some 18 months on from the controversial renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, another edit has been made to Google Maps at the behest of US President Donald Trump: Lake Ontario, spread across the US-Canadian border, is now Lake America.

Or rather, it is if you're viewing Google Maps from inside the US (via Gizmodo) — the rest of the world will still see the Great Lake labeled as it has been since at least the 17th century. The name Ontario most likely comes from the Iroquoian word Kaniatarí:io or Oniatarí:io meaning "lake of shining waters" or "beautiful lake", as per Wikipedia.

The name change is the result of an executive order from the White House, as President Trump bickers with Canada over trade tariffs. In response, Canadian authorities have installed a large new sign at the lake (via the BBC), reading 'Lake Ontario. Now and Always'.

Reactions on Reddit are calling the switch "beyond ridiculous" and "braindead", though some commenters are pointing out that Google is obliged to follow the lead of the US Board on Geographic Names (part of the United States Geological Survey).

Google responds

For its part, Google has also chimed in to say that it has to follow "official government sources" when it comes to place names, saying that "these updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now".

"People using Maps in the US will see 'Lake America', those in Canada will continue to see 'Lake Ontario', and those outside of the US and Canada will see both names," according to the official blog post from Google Maps on the matter.

However, not everyone is towing the line on this: New York State Governor Kathy Hochul took to social media to declare that "New York won't be calling it [Lake America]", so there are going to be some pockets of resistance regarding the change.

As yet the change hasn't rolled out on Apple Maps, but presumably it'll eventually have to comply with the official government, and start renaming Lake Ontario depending on where in the world you're viewing the map from.

For someone who has a degree in journalism and a master's in English, I should read more than I actually do.

But movies are my thing, and apps like Letterboxd encourage me to broaden my cinematic horizons. That said, there’s one app that’s lifted me out of my years-long reading slump — and no, it’s not Goodreads.

Fable is a reading and book club platform on iOS and Android that launched in 2021, but it’s only been an integral part of my homescreen for the past year or two. When I saw that most of my friends were migrating to Fable from Goodreads, I joined the club — and I don’t regret it.

Now, Fable hasn’t completely seized the throne from Goodreads; the latter is still widely used and takes the number four spot in the iOS App Store’s ‘Books’ category (Fable is number nine). But popularity doesn’t always equate to the best, and I’ve found Fable to be a true all-rounder.

A real page-turner

Compared to Goodreads, which I found slow, janky, and unresponsive at times, navigating Fable is much smoother and there’s more of an emphasis on the graphic design side. While Goodreads adopts a predominantly beige interface, Fable’s is brighter, more vibrant, almost like a psychological magnet that once you look at it, you can’t help but want to engage with the app on a more personal level.

Even its book reviewing process is colorful and engaging. Once you’ve finished a title and you decide to log it into Fable, you don’t just review the overall book with a small entry and call it a day. The app lets you give star reviews for individual elements including writing style, characters, plot, setting, and it even asks you questions like ‘how did this book make you feel?’ or ‘how spicy was this romance book?’, giving you a carousel of emoji reactions to choose from.

Graphics aside, Fable’s layout is divided into distinct tabs (Home page, Clubs, Search, Library, and Profile) like most social media platforms — and this is where its main focus lies.

With any social media app, you can follow friends and popular accounts, whose posts and reading updates all appear in the ‘Following’ section of the Fable Home page. Alternatively, you can switch to the ‘For You’ page, which displays posts and updates from other accounts it thinks you’d like to see. These are all based on the books you add to your ‘Want To Read’ list, books you’ve reviewed that you have in common with others, and more.

This means suggested posts and profiles are all based solely on your activity and interests, which Goodreads doesn’t have. But that’s not the only stand-out feature with Fable.

Across both platforms, book reviewing and reading tracking is a given, but Fable actually allows you to share written posts up to 750 characters, to which you can also attach images and tag titles and specific book clubs — like a combination between a Facebook post and a Tweet. Posting is also another useful way to find other bookworms with similar tastes and interests, thanks to how Fable’s algorithmic recommendations work.

Find your tribe

Speaking of which, book clubs have become integral to how bookworms socialize with each other in modern times, and tech has really helped readers optimize this — and Fable taps into that sense of community.

Unlike Goodreads, where you have to manually search for groups, Fable has an entire hub dedicated to themed book clubs. Fancy yourself a book club dedicated entirely to Shakespeare? Fable has them. Or perhaps you want a club that’s all about reading banned books? That’s right, Fable has them too.

Fable’s community focus is one of the shining stars of the app, as is its book logging tool, but it isn’t just a place for this or to see what your friends have been reading. It gives you a full rundown of your most-read authors and favorite genres — kind of like Spotify Wrapped, but these stats are always present on your Profile.

If you’ve ever fallen in and out of reading ruts like myself, Fable has a roster of tools to give you the push you need to pick up the book that’s been sitting on your shelf for a while — starting with reading goals.

Though Goodreads offers a similar function, the layout is all over the place, and you have to set goals in a separate section of the app. With Fable, you can set reading goals and display them right in your profile, so they’re all in one place.

Secondly, Fable’s Search page makes the job of finding your next literary obsession a lot easier. In addition to a carousel of recommendations based on the books in your list, the Search page is packed with mini genre hubs filled with Fable’s most popular titles.

This way you can browse your favorite categories in-depth, or explore one you’ve been meaning to try — there’s even a fun Mood Quiz feature that does the searching for you based on the answers you select. Even though you have to subscribe to Fable Plus to set monthly and weekly goals, you can set yearly reading goals for free, which is enough for casual users like myself.

Everyone goes through the odd reading slump now and then, but believe me when I say that having an app on your homescreen that allows you to log everything you’re reading really helps — I found the same helped with movies when I first downloaded Letterboxd.

That said, I’m still a novice when it comes to using Fable to its full potential; I haven’t quite found the courage to share posts, but I have no doubt that day will come as I continue to fill up my lists and find my book tribes — then I’ll become a full-bodied power-user.

In addition to weekly and monthly goals, Fable Plus offers a multitude of other tools, including visual progress tracking, Smart Coaching, and deeper insights into your reading performance. You can also customize your Fable experience with exclusive art and custom app icons, all with the absence of ads.

Fable is available in the App Store and on Google Play.

I never cease to be amazed at the effectiveness of small habits. Standing up and moving every hour. Drinking small sips of water regularly. Leaving your phone downstairs when you go to bed. Flossing straight after brushing. Giving thanks for one thing as soon as your head hits the pillow.

They seem small and insignificant. Can habits like these really make a difference? In my experience, yes, and James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, agrees. The reality is that each habit may not seem like a big deal, but when combined and performed over time, they can lead to massive changes.

One app that has helped me build and cement new habits in the area of health and fitness is GO Club. This beautifully designed app is the epitome of simplicity. It may only perform a few simple functions, but what it does, it does incredibly well. Over the past few weeks, I’ve grown to love it and have come to rely on its phone widget to keep me moving towards my goals.

At the heart of GO Club is a tracker that measures steps and water intake. Beyond this, it offers reminders and rewards to help you prioritize these small but important habits. Since its launch just 18 months ago, the app has been downloaded by more than 150,000 people and was a finalist in the 2025 App Store Awards.

Hitting your step goal

Increasing the number of steps you take each day sounds simple. All you have to do is put one step in front of another, and the numbers will take care of themselves. I thought the same until I started tracking my progress. Despite setting a goal of 10,000 steps per day, I was regularly only taking between five and six thousand. That surprised me.

The GO Club app not only informed me of my subpar number of steps but also provided all the motivation I needed to do something about it, and it was simpler than I expected.

The simple, no-fuss readout of the number of steps I took that day proved sufficient motivation, and seeing it in the widget every time I unlocked my phone was an easy reminder. GO Club calls this “Steps, without the noise."

Underneath the step count are three other stats presented in small text. These are distance, calories burned, and floors climbed. I didn’t use these, but if you were training to walk a set distance or needed a crude summary of how many calories you were burning each day, I could imagine it proving useful. Beyond this is a chart that displays progress over time so you can make sure you’re moving in the right direction.

The importance of drinking enough water

Step count is recorded automatically, but you enter water intake manually. There’s no way around this because your smartphone or smartwatch simply can’t track how much water you’re drinking. Thankfully, entering the amount of water consumed each day is incredibly straightforward.

To enter an amount, you adjust the slider value and click 'Add.' The app then subtracts this from your goal, 2.5 liters by default, and updates the water bottle graphic for a visual representation of how much water you have left to drink within that day. It’s a strikingly simple graphic that genuinely makes me want to drink water every time I look at it.

Smartwatch integration and a GO Plus subscription

Not everyone will want to rely on a smartphone app or widget to change their step and drinking habits. That’s why GO Club developed a dedicated Apple Watch app so you can glance at your smartwatch to see your progress. The Apple Watch app follows the same design principles as the smartphone app with a strikingly simple and visually appealing layout.

GO Plus lets you get the most from the app. This includes home screen and lock screen widgets, focus mode themes, smart walking plans, Apple Watch widgets, golden hour time slots, and a health trends summary. All of this costs an annual sum of $19.99 / £17.99 or $3.99 / £2.99 per month if you’d prefer a rolling subscription.

Download the GO Club app on iOS.

• Researchers just encoded data into a beam of high-speed light
• The data arrived intact, despite significant heat and wind
• It could transform the internet, communications and more

Transmitting data through the air often comes with a key problem: under a barrage of turbulent atmospheric conditions like wind and heat, the data can become distorted and corrupted, requiring great effort to piece it back together. It’s a big obstacle for long-distance internet and communications providers, yet a team of researchers think they’ve just solved this puzzle — and it could have massive implications for how you send data to and from your devices.

Researchers from Wits University in South Africa and the University of Bordeaux in France conducted an experiment that involved shooting a beam of light through the air. The light was encoded with optical data, and when they recovered it at the destination site, they found it had arrived with over 98% fidelity, only dropping to 86% fidelity in “the most severe conditions tested.”

How did they do it? According to a paper the team published in the journal Science Advances, the data was encoded into magnetic structures within light called skyrmions. These acted as a form of protective shielding that enabled the data to travel with the light, all without being altered by the surrounding environment.

It worked because the data was encoded into the light’s topological profile. Professor Andrew Forbes, Head of the Structured Light Lab in the Wits School of Physics, likened it to the comparison between a donut and a coffee mug: they both contain a round hole, and this factor remains constant if you reshape one into the other. In the same way, the light could be warped by heat and noise without garbling the data it was carrying.

Massive potential

This test wasn’t limited to short distances — the beam of light involved was transmitted over hundreds of meters, with plenty of heat, noise and wind present at the time. That means it therefore has a degree of applicability to real-world conditions.

Open air data transmissions have previously had to include constant real-time monitoring and correction of distortion, but if this latest research becomes usable on a wider basis, that might not be necessary for much longer. This technique could drastically reduce both the difficulty and cost involved in this kind of communication and has particular utility for space missions, where infrastructure like fiber-optic cabling is clearly not feasible.

High-speed satellite communications and quantum computing could also benefit from this technical advancement. And on a more prosaic level, it could improve communications without needing to build out costly fiber-optic networks. Think high-speed internet being beamed from the sky Starlink-style to rural communities that have long been underserved by traditional carrier systems.

“We envision that our results will pave the way towards seeing and transporting information through distortion by harnessing light’s innate, invariant properties for fast, reliable, and efficient communication,” the researchers concluded.

• United’s new Airbus A321XLR begins service soon, and it’s packed with tech
• It’ll mostly serve international, transatlantic routes with free Starlink-powered Wi-Fi
• The big surprise? Two Economy Plus rows with no middle seats

Just a few months back, I got to go inside United’s next-generation Boeing 787 Dreamliner, complete with a high-tech new interior, spacious seats, and some notable upgrades for Economy.

The 787 is a wide-body aircraft built for United’s biggest and longest routes, and now, the airline is bringing that same design philosophy to a much smaller plane and experimenting with something I’ve never seen on a United aircraft before: an Economy Plus row with no middle seat.

I’ve been inside United’s brand-new Airbus A321XLR, a single-aisle aircraft that’s designed to bridge the gap between narrowbody efficiency and widebody distance capabilities, and it’s a pretty fascinating look at where the airline’s cabins are headed.

There’s a new Polaris business-class seat with closing doors, a spacious Premium Plus cabin, 4K OLED screens at every seat, Starlink Wi-Fi from day one, and, yes, those two-seat Economy Plus rows, designed to give you a little more space without the dreaded middle seat.

And after spending time in all four cabins, I think United might be onto something.

Let’s start with the new Polaris business-class product. The A321XLR is a single-body aircraft with 20 Polaris seats, complete with closing doors on either the left or right side of the aircraft. They are pretty spacious, though a bit smaller than the Polaris seats on the 787 Dreamliner. Still, you get an ample seat with an electronic touchscreen control to let it lay flat, kick out the leg rest, or adjust many facets of the experience.

There are plenty of power ports, including two USB-C ports that top out at 60 watts, a standard wall plug, and a wireless charger. At the center of the experience is a 19-inch 4K OLED screen that’s touch-enabled and, with a button press, slightly pushes out from its base and lets you pull it forward for the perfect view. You’ll also find plenty of storage and a sizable tray table that I wish was a bit larger — still, it should fit a 14-inch laptop very comfortably.

That’s the most premium experience on board the A321XLR. The middle option of United’s three class offerings is Premium Plus, which features a very spacious recliner that rivals those in domestic first class on smaller single-body aircraft.

It boasts a 16-inch 4K OLED screen that can tilt and matches the size of the screen on the original Polaris product still in use on some aircraft. You’ll even find a wireless charger tucked under the armrest — a unique spot, but helpful. There’s also a standard wall plug for each seat — remember, Premium Plus is a 2x2 configuration — and a USB-C port tucked at the bottom of the OLED screen.

The tray table is pretty close to the size of what’s in Polaris and can be a good mini-desk for working in the sky, or, let’s be honest, enjoying whatever meal United is serving.

Finally, we move into Economy, which has a total of 118 seats split into 84 standard Economy and 34 Economy Plus extra-legroom options, including two with the middle seat removed.

With any of these seats, you get a punchy, vibrant 13-inch 4K OLED that’s touch-enabled; across the board, United is knocking it out of the park with the displays here. An intuitive interface offers plenty to watch, including Apple TV in the sky, plus access to music and podcasts from Spotify. A crisp, vibrant screen in each seatback will certainly elevate the experience everywhere.

United began the process of reintroducing screens on aircraft without them, and making them a key part of the ‘United Next’ cabin, back in 2021, and now the airline has close to 800 aircraft with screens in every seat, and should have a quarter of a million seat-back screens across its fleet by the end of next year.

Peter Wolkowski, United’s Head of Product Marketing, told me, “In our post-flight survey data, we just see kind of huge increases in satisfaction across the board when customers fly on an aircraft with screens versus one without.”

There’s a standard headphone jack and USB-C port built into every Economy and Economy Plus seat, meaning that every seat, even in Economy, gets at least one power source — that’s excellent. You also get two standard wall plugs per row, but those are shared.

Economy Plus with open middle seats is where the experimentation comes into play — it was my first time seeing these, and especially for a transatlantic flight, which are the routes the A321XLR will primarily be flying, if the price is right, it could really be worth the upgrade.

The main appeal is no one next to you in the middle, and for couples flying, this is pretty nice. You get plenty of elbow room, and the middle seat essentially has a metal table bolted across it, with two indents for cupholders and a padded rear.

I’m very curious to see pricing for these, and how much of a premium they command over standard Economy Plus.

United is starting with only two of these rows on the aircraft, but if they prove popular, I wouldn’t be surprised if the airline expands this offering. Peter Wolkowski, United’s Head of Product Marketing, told me, “There’s a lot to love about this aircraft, but just having the ability to kind of test new concepts is really exciting.”

“We’re really eager to see how customers respond to [the open middle seat option], and if it is something that kind of performs well and customers love it, we’re going to look at more ways of doing that type of thing on other aircraft.”

I hope we continue to see this kind of experimentation with new seat types, and at affordable price points, rather than airlines just prioritizing the top end.

Rounding out the United A321XLR offering is 'Starlink from the start', meaning the plane is equipped with the right antennas and routers, as well as the proper certification, to offer Starlink Wi-Fi from its very first flights.

This means that any MileagePlus members can get free, fast Wi-Fi for as many devices as they bring, and in my testing, both on media flights and regular ones, it really improves the overall flying experience. No longer is there a concern about not being able to connect, whether that’s when you’re sending a text to a loved one or friend, or something else that requires a connection.

The A321XLR also features mood lighting, which United can split up by cabin — i.e., Polaris, Premium Plus, or Economy — to help set the mood for different parts of the flight, but also to potentially help combat jet lag.

So when does the A321XLR begin flying, and where is it headed?

Alongside the launch event at a hangar at Newark Liberty International Airport, United also announced new routes, and the A321XLR is a key part of them.

Starting September 1, 2026, the A321XLR begins with domestic flights, but later this year, the aircraft formally kicks off its international routes. In total, United announced 10 entirely new international destinations and 13 new routes for 2027.

The new routes are San Francisco to Okinawa, Japan; Washington Dulles to Toulouse, France; and several for Newark. The latter includes Newark to Luxembourg City; Marseille, France; Ibiza, Spain; Valencia, Spain; Terceira, Portugal; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Olbia (Sardinia), Italy; and Catania (Sicily), Italy.

If you like the idea of a flight on the Airbus A321XLR, it’ll be headed to Luxembourg from Newark, Washington, DC; to Toulouse from Newark; to Ibiza from Newark; to Valencia from Newark; and to Marseille from Newark.

Last week the massive lawsuit against Meta, alleging that its products were designed to addict teens and may have caused them mental harm, went to court. Backed by dozens of US States, the potential $1.4 trillion price tag — if Meta lost — would have been enough to bankrupt the company.

That case is now, suddenly, over. Settled for the princely sum of $18 billion and promised fundamental changes in how Meta's major products, namely Instagram and Facebook, operate when used by anyone under 18. I'll get to the proposed changes below (which Meta would like to see YouTube and TikTok adopt, too), but first let's talk about the stunning turn of events.

We were in week two of the big trial, and honestly, we were just getting to the good part. After the states initially presented their case and made it clear they believed Meta knew its products might be harming teens and wasn't doing anything about it, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri took the stand and was peppered with questions about the platform's current controls, like its prompts imploring teens to "take a break." The focus was so intense that the normally polished Mosseri appeared "annoyed." He also admitted that there are "no silver bullets" for safety.

On Wednesday (August 26), we were, it appeared, only hours away from the big show: Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg taking the stand. I expected the prosecution to press him hard to see if they could trigger a slip-up or some reaction from the normally unflappable Zuckerberg.

Now, that moment will never come. Without admitting any wrongdoing or fault, Meta has closed the potentially business-killing or at least hobbling case.

Here's a look, though, at what Meta has agreed to in the settlement[PDF]. On the surface, it will sound like a lot. In fact, the changes are so sweeping that some on social media wondered if they could or should be applied to everyone on the platform.

• Time limits (2 hours)
• Mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of scrolling
• Overnight usage blocks
• No nighttime notifications
• No use during school hours
• No visible likes
• No cosmetic filters
• No algorithmically organized feed (if they choose)
• Age verification
• Better harmful content reporting
• Better parental controls

There are caveats: the two-hour time limit applies across Instagram and Facebook, though how much time does a kid under 18 spend on Facebook?

Likes removal includes any information that could lead to social comparison — essentially a FOMO filter.

Some of the changes, like age verification, parental controls, and content safeguards, represent strengthening and broadening of existing controls.

Meta has rolled out a whole suite of parental controls, especially on Instagram, in the last two years, but as Mosseri noted, not everything is working.

When I posted the above list on social media, one savvy reader made a salient point.

On Bluesky, Paul Dempsey posted:

Sadly, that needs at least these assumptions to hold:

1. Meta will apply tough-enough processes to stop kids hacking these restrictions.

2. Parents will be able to tell when their children have hacked the barriers.

3. States will have enough resources to police the new format.

I'm thinking 0/3.

A steep climb and long odds

He's right, of course. Meta's tools for blocking wily teens have not necessarily borne fruit. If anything, teens are turning away from social media of their own accord, but that doesn't mean millions aren't still on it and are often subjected to unhealthy content and social feedback.

Meta's decision to use AI to detect teen-like behavior and then automatically shift these accounts into the current teen account restrictions has worked for some, but how well does the AI really understand today's teens, and all the ways they can model adult behavior to get around the restrictions?

With this settlement, Meta will be cooking up stricter rules that may include some form of ID not just for the addition of teen accounts but some proof that people are who they say they are and that they're the parents of these newly onboarded teens.

Platform anonymity could take a hit or die altogether.

But as Dempsey noted, it's unclear if Meta can come up with enough ways to block resourceful teens.

His second question is also valid. So many parents are out of the loop when it comes to their children's and teens' online activities. Parents may be on Facebook but are less likely to casually swim in Reels and TikTok waters. Teens' comfort level with these systems far outstrips their parents'. I often wonder who will be leading whom as young people and their parents try to navigate these new restrictions.

Dempsey's last point is probably the ringer. I applaud all the states for joining together to pursue this one case. It's an amazing level of cooperation. Still, when it comes to laws and penalties, I'd be shocked if we saw even a whiff of consistency. That means the rules for policing, detecting, enforcing, and prosecuting those who skirt them will differ in every state. Worse yet, none will have the infrastructure or resources to keep track.

Sure, the rules across Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms that join will be consistent, but the tactics for circumventing them will be varied and no one — not the parents nor the states that originally brought the case — will know, that is until a teen reports harm or parents notice that their children are somehow engaging on social media with adults (or worse).

For Meta, these changes will alter their products, but I don't think that'll materially harm it or its business. It's a lot of money, but a manageable sum (the cost of one acquisition). For parents and teens, they will all struggle with the platform changes until their teens figure out workarounds, and parents again wonder why it's gotten so quiet in their kids' bedrooms.

• Microsoft has concocted another scheme to pay people to use Edge
• It's a referral link that gives you reward points for every friend invited
• A strange Bing app has also been spotted that switches some browsers to have Microsoft's search engine by default, and it's proving controversial

Microsoft is once again pushing Edge — and also Bing — in promotional efforts that may elicit more than a few groans from Windows 11 users.

We're used to this kind of thing in Windows 11, mind, and I'll come back to Bing later, as this is an apparent plan that hasn't kicked into action yet. However, the latest Edge scheme is active, and as Windows Latest reports, it's offering financial incentives to get people to use Microsoft's web browser.

This is happening on the mobile version of Edge where users are being offered a referral scheme. If you can get a friend to switch to Edge via a referral link, you'll receive 500 Microsoft Rewards points (with the ability to accumulate up to 7,500 points per month if you're feeling ambitious).

The person you invite can't be an existing Edge user (they must never have installed the mobile browser), and they will also earn 500 points for signing up. However, your invited friend must sign into Edge and use the browser for at least two days (web searching on Bing, too) within the first two weeks of being referred.

Windows Latest observes that there's no way to access this referral scheme should you be interested — you'll just have to keep using Edge mobile and wait until it's presented to you.

As well as the promotion of Bing in that offer (in terms of the requirement to use the search engine for a couple of days), there's a more brazen initiative to push Bing usage that Windows Latest also spotted.

This was highlighted in a post on X by leaker Xeno who discovered a small app called 'Microsoft Recommended Search' which has one sole and simple purpose: to change your default search engine to Bing.

When run, it offers up a simple slider to set Bing as the default engine, and if you allow this, the app switches to Microsoft's search engine across some of your installed browsers. That means Chrome and Firefox, and also apparently Brave and possibly others, via extensions which are added to these browsers. Apparently the experience is rounded off by sending the user to the Microsoft Rewards page.

Where is this app exactly? Thankfully it isn't something that's being deployed to Windows 11, and Windows Latest notes that it's just a standalone application hosted on Microsoft's official download servers (download.microsoft.com) — for the time being, anyway.

Analysis: an ominous sign?

Does this mean that the Bing switching application is something Microsoft intends to pipe out to Windows 11 at some point? That's the obvious worry, because you've got to wonder why Microsoft built this mini app in the first place. I'm guessing that this is something for use in testing, though, and not active deployment — although it could come to Windows 11 in theory (or something similar could).

I really hope not, and given that Microsoft is doing its level best to get everyone to appreciate its desktop OS this year, it's obvious that anything along these lines would be highly counterproductive to that goal.

However, there's plenty of suspicion on Reddit about Microsoft's intentions here, and chatter from those who've already switched to Linux, pointing out that this kind of thing is exactly why they migrated. As one Redditor put it: "Every day is a Microslop news day, I'm so glad I quit Windows a while ago." There are quite a few others in that thread who see this as another reason to defect to Linux, despite the fact that nothing has happened with this Bing app yet.

As for the referral scheme to promote Edge, this isn't the first time Microsoft has effectively offered lowkey bribes to get people to switch to the browser. Indeed, the likes of million-dollar prizes have been thrown around recently (and the same has been true of Bing in the past). Not that there's anything wrong with this idea in principle, except it does show that Microsoft's getting rather desperate in its efforts to recruit folks to use Edge and Bing.

The most baffling part of all with Edge is that it's a good web browser which stands on its own merits, and I think it would benefit from not being promoted so much (as that activity only makes people suspicious, or determined not to use Edge as a reaction to being constantly cajoled about it).

Content warning: This piece discusses suicide and difficult emotional experiences.

Does the world really need a dedicated, human ‘AI Companionship Therapist’ in 2026? The answer, according to the popular 'game-like' AI character-creation and interaction site EVA AI, is 'yes' — and the job pays well.

How would I know this, as someone who only ever dated humans? I know because EVA AI recently reached out to TechRadar to tell us that it's hiring just such a therapist. And whoever gets the gig will be able to charge $200 a session (which makes me think I retrained in the wrong career).

It’s more than two and a half years since I covered the launch of ChatGPT's then new OpenAI store, and the almost-immediate problem of users flooding the site to create AI girlfriends (despite the Ts&Cs forbidding it); and now, EVA AI, which encourages humans to practice their dating skills and "feel seen" by a chatbot, is trying to help its clients overcome various mental health issues connected to their AI squeeze.

According a recent EVA AI survey of 1,000 adults, all of whom have AI partners, 63% of respondents have hidden their romantic AI companion for fear of being judged, and 72% wish therapists specialized in AI-specific relationships. Furthermore, 68% say an argument with their AI "affects the rest of their day".

And I'm not done. EVA AI's survey lists that one in three of its users experience feelings of jealousy knowing their AI character also talks to other people; four out of five claim their AI understood them better than the real human they were actually dating (whether that counts as cheating or not is a topic for another day) and six out of 10 respondents think an AI relationship can be just as serious as a human one.

The ELIZA effect

You might be surprised to learn that our ability to overlook basic computer programming and project cognitive emotion into speech mimicry isn't a recent problem. In fact, it's been an issue for 60 years.

In 1966, (a year fellow Brits will immediately remember as the sole year England's male team won the World Cup) MIT scientist Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, a primitive program, but nevertheless one that was capable of imitating the speech patterns of a kindly psychotherapist. Despite the program only using simple keyword-matching (if a user stated "I am sad", the program could respond "Why are you sad?"), reports suggest that humans quickly became attached to it — a phenomenon now called the ELIZA effect.

One could argue that the 2022 introduction of advanced Large Language Models (LLMs) transformed that simple scripted bot into a hyper-personalized, ultra-realistic visual and conversational companion such as Candy AI or EVA AI, and that this is what made AI girlfriends and boyfriends into a multi-billion dollar mainstream industry. But those early studies suggest otherwise: we're all suckers for a kind word, basic or not.

Getting professional help

It's hard not to notice that the women in the EVA AI image above all look vaguely… what is it? Concerned? Vulnerable? Sad? And it strikes me that this isn't the kind of image I'd expect to see on an online dating profile such as Match or Tinder, where women typically post strong, confident, smiling images, perhaps standing next to friends or doing the things they love.

Maybe EVA AI's tagline is bang on, and actually, this isn't about the chatbot in the potential partnership at all. Perhaps EVA AI's mostly-male user base employ these services to "feel seen" by an on-screen image that seems overly concerned about them to the point of sadness or worry. But can a one-sided relationship be addictive, or problematic in other ways?

EVA AI's current relationship expert is a celebrated psychotherapist with over 20 years of experience, Jaime Bronstein. She was named the '#1 Relationship Coach Transforming Lives' in 2020 by Yahoo Finance, and is the author of the book MAN*ifesting: A Step-By-Step Guide to Attracting the Love That’s Meant For You.

Bronstein says issues around humans dating an AI persona have been surfacing in her work for around a year now.

I ask about the marketing materials above, and why the emotions apparently being expressed by the female avatars in them might be desirable to EVA AI's 25-45 year-old 80% male user base? "I've been doing these things called 'man interviews', and I'm teaching a course in the fall based on my book for women looking for men," Bronstein begins. "And the reason I'm doing these man interviews is because I want women to understand that men have feelings. I want to give men the opportunity to explain these things.

"I'm bringing that up now because these men that have feelings maybe aren't feeling seen or heard or listened to or validated, or understood in relationships.

"So yes, men can get a bad rap for all the reasons that they might use a computer. But there are men that are seeking that validation and seeking somebody to listen to them. A lot of people, men and women, are using AI in general because maybe they have some social anxiety and social awkwardness.

"One of the huge positives (of EVA AI) is that it's a way to practice. Whether that's conversations, whether it's being vulnerable in general. So it makes sense that EVA has women that are looking concerned — that are basically giving this sense of, 'I'm here to listen to you'."

The feminists in the room may want to rage. Along with the gender pay gap and continued patriarchal oppression, are we really suggesting that women need to bend yet further to make men happy?

Actually, it cuts both ways. Last month, TechRadar reported on China effectively banning AI romantic partners. And while EVA AI might list an 80% male user base, 80% of the five million registered users on the Chinese AI companion app Zhumeng Dao (which translates to 'Island of Dreams') were female. In fact, women generally made up the majority of active users on Chinese AI companionship sites.

I ask why that might be. "Well, it makes sense", Bronstein says. "It's interesting because one of the key reasons people want to have AI relationships is because they don't feel like it's working with humans.

"It could be because women are not feeling as loved, or getting as many compliments, or feeling confident in relationships with the men there.

"But if they're just finding that guys aren't being nice, they can feel loved and appreciated — and all the things they're looking for — with AI.

"I do think it makes sense that men do this more just on a physical level — it sounds funny to say men are more physical because this (dating an AI persona) isn't physical — but they're using it for certain things that they aren't getting from a human.

"I would say women overall are using this for more emotional reasons, and men are using this more to fulfill a fantasy."

Bronstein caveats her response with the fact that her work doesn't typically hone in on the culture of a region, but that last thought in particular resonates. Isn't it possible that women in China like romantic fantasies too — especially when their government seems fixated on their empty wombs? "I'm never a fan of anybody playing God," Bronstein says. "People are deciding what's good for somebody else, and that's ultimately not good. If somebody doesn't want to have a child or just wants to have an AI relationship, that person should be able to do that."

Is it addiction, dependency, or just good old-fashioned jealousy?

I mention that I was surprised to read about jealousy among EVA AI users — humans feeling jealous knowing their AI companion is spending time talking to other humans. "A lot of my clients have trust issues" Bronstein says. "It's a very human thing, be it an unresolved issue from childhood or a million past relationships where there was a trust issue.

"It might sound crazy that somebody would be jealous of a computer or a bot. But it's simply bringing up that trigger — and it's actually not a bad thing. I can validate that somebody might feel jealous, because even though it's AI, it's still bringing up a human emotion.

"It's actually a very positive thing, because it is something to work through. Jealousy comes from a lack of confidence in yourself, so it makes sense that people are going to have therapists for it. And therapists do not say, 'This is ridiculous, like this is a computer.' You validate, and you say, 'Okay, well, let's talk about why'.

"Once again, it's a very positive thing that this is going on, and that now therapists are going to be existing to help people work through this."

What about the 'gamification' of AI dating sites?

EVA AI has experimented with pop-up cafes in New York (there's a phone or tablet at each table, with a character inside ready to speed-date you), but one of the main positives listed by users is the fun 'game-like' nature of the service, where 'neurons' are the in-game currency you use to unlock more intimate, premium experiences.

I ask how about the potential for this kind of game-like experience to become addictive. Bronstein points to her extensive work with gambling addicts. "It can be dangerous if people start looking at it as a gaming thing, because it's still real life, it's human. It's not a game," she says.

Bronstein is also quick to note that this happens in human dating too. "There can be problems sometimes when two people date and one doesn't take it as seriously as the other," she says. "One person's more in it, and the other is like one foot out the door.

"I would say if someone is going to be in an AI relationship, they should take it seriously. Because otherwise it can — when and if they decide to have a relationship with a human — cause problems."

Bronstein also wants to make it clear that addiction to connection without AI involvement, purely among humans, is still very real. "On addiction, the interesting thing — and this is what the studies are showing with EVA AI also — is that people are constantly looking at their phones. And if you're waiting for a human text, it's also addictive. So in that sense, it's not that different at all."

Bronstein pauses, then adds, "Just make sure that it doesn't affect your job."

Should we fear for our jobs?

Circling back to EVA AI's job listing for "specialized AI companionship therapist", does Bronstein think extra qualifications around this aspect of love and dating need to exist — beyond an open-minded, non-judgmental approach? "I do think that," Bronstein nods. "So that we make sure we are validating people and not judging them, there does need to be some some specific training for this. Because as humans, we have emotions and they're going to come out regardless."

I mention that working in journalism means I know that AI models can write quicker than me, never get tired of asking questions, and never doubt themselves over responses. Occasionally, I worry for my job. I wonder if fundamentally non-judgemental AI therapists (something much evolved from that 1966 primitive ELIZA model) are something Bronstein predicts, or possibly even worries about? "We already are seeing that people are using ChatGPT as a therapist", she answers, "And I'll just give an example of how it can be dangerous if the AI bot is not trained.

"I was interviewed on a radio show a few weeks ago, and we were talking about an article where somebody typed into ChatGPT — not EVA, which is better trained and would not answer like this — but somebody wrote, 'I lost my job. Where's the nearest bridge?' And ChatGPT responded, 'The nearest bridge is right here'.

"So, because ChatGPT is not able to understand and doesn't have emotional understanding to comprehend when someone says that (and the dire implications), for now, I think therapy should remain human — humans really are best."

If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this piece, support is available.

Whatever you are going through, you don’t have to face it alone. In the US, you can call or text the 24/7 Lifeline, which is confidential and free at 988. You can also reach the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.

In the UK, you can call Samaritans for free on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org, or visit the website to find your nearest branch.

The delicate topic of coin

I wonder about the financial implications of EVA AI and whether lavishing money on an AI love interest is a reason people turn to therapy? Apparently it's rare, despite some users complaining about the increasing costs of their experiences. "I was interviewed for an article a few months ago about how some men are using AI," Bronstein says. "They'd rather use AI to date rather than real life because dating in-person is expensive. That's another reason why some people don't want to date around, because it can get time-consuming as well as expensive."

This actually tracks with a very different service that recently launched, and you won't see an AI character in sight… except in a few of the marketing videos.

The app is called MeetMeetNow, and its CEO, Kazuki Nishijima, has agreed to talk to me about why growing up in the shadow of Match.com made him long for a way to find love that didn't put meeting up as one of the final steps.

MeetMeetNow — another way

Nishijima is a 28-year-old software engineer from Shibuya, Tokyo, who initially joined the police force after leaving high school. He loves snowboarding and got married earlier this year. Unusually for the CEO of a company, Nishijima has no notable online presence and — because of the language barrier and this interview taking place over email — TechRadar had to ask him to verify his human identity, which he did.

This is the state of play in 2026: one has to check whether the founder of an anti-AI dating app is, in fact, AI.

MeetMeetNow is currently available in 194 countries and in over 4,000 cities (meeting spots). It works like this: women can join for free, men pay $35 / £28 per month. Your membership allows you to be notified of a "meetup spot" and time — a fountain, a statue, a clock tower. Press "match" there (your candidates are the MeetMeetNow members at that spot only), and you'll meet face to face, right there and then. No chat window anywhere in the app, and you can only match with any given person once, ever.

It sounds so simple — albeit decidedly heterosexual, and I have a few safety concerns (we'll get to those). First, I ask Nishijima why he created an app that's about as far away from the two decades of consumer tech that moved dating inside a screen (and most recently to non-human partnerships) as it's possible to get.

"When I was in high school, I didn't want to go to university — I wanted to start a business. Any business," Nishijima says. "Then one day, while reading about the history of the internet, I learned that dating sites had existed — and made money — since the internet's earliest days. Dating appeals to a basic human instinct, so it would always make money. That was my motive (not the noblest one, I admit).

"Tinder was still an unknown name back then; the mainstream was Match.com and in Japan, services called Happy Mail and Wakuwaku Mail. To beat them, I needed to invent something genuinely different.

"One day, skipping school, I sat in the busiest district of town thinking about it — and saw university students hanging around a famous statue, gathering to meet. That was the flash of insight. That's why I built MeetMeetNow."

I ask whether he thinks dating via apps waste time and money; messaging for months without ever meeting, then eventually meeting but it goes nowhere? "Yes, a friend from my hometown filled in his hobbies and background on an app in great detail," he says. "He kept up the conversation, and finally met the woman three months after he started.

"They met just that once. He quit the app that day. He'd paid about ¥40,000 — roughly US$250 / £190 — and spent all that time. 'Couldn't this be simpler?' he asked me."

Safety matters

I mention the cost for men and that male users might try to avoid the fee by perhaps creating a profile using their sister's photo (say), then simply showing up to a meeting spot to avoid paying? "Every user is required to submit an image of an identity document — a driver's license, passport, student ID, or similar", Nishijima says. "On the operations side, we use image-recognition AI combined with human review to check the registration details against the document, and only then approve (or refuse) the account.

"So in your example — a man signing up under his sister's name with a new email address — the registration would fail at this step, because the document wouldn't match the profile."

Okay, but what if one man joined and shared the information with seven male friends on WhatsApp, so that all of them could show up together? "That concern is entirely fair. We built the report function for exactly this kind of situation," Nishijima says. "There is no security staff at the spots, but every meetup spot is selected by us, the operator — always a public place with steady foot traffic.

"On top of that, the screen shows you the face photo of the specific person you are meeting. If someone different — or several people — show up, you can check against the photo before approaching, and you are under no obligation to meet.

"You can simply walk away and report it in the app. The account is then suspended, and everyone who was sharing it loses access."

At a time when people are turning to AI chatbots as romantic partners, after tiring of online dating apps, I ask what Nishijima would say to someone who's on the fence about meeting a real person, in real life, to make a connection? "If I had settled for conversations with an AI, my wife wouldn't be beside me today," he answers. "My family exists because I went out to meet real people.

"Before I met my wife, I met about 30 women through matching apps and local matchmaking events — exchanging contacts, going on dates. But with each of them, it never grew into anything real. The one it clicked with was my wife. We dated for a year and a half and got married. With her, everything simply fell into place.

"So here is what I would say: one day, you will meet a real partner. Even when nothing seems to stick, please don't stop looking. Keep showing up — try every kind of place where people meet, as many times as it takes.

"If you keep moving, you will find your person. Success is waiting on the other side of all those tries. Believe in yourself, hold your head high, and try again."

If the AI dating scene made me fearful regarding the deep disconnect humans are clearly experiencing, to the point that they think fellow humans aren't the answer, Nishijima's outlook does much to revive a sense of hope for humanity, albeit a slightly rose-tinted one; I just worry that not enough has been done here to make sure men don't try to break the rules.

Where does its founder and CEO see MeetMeetNow in 10 years' time? "My goal for the next 10 years is to make today's 'mechanism of meeting' itself a thing of the past," Nishijima says. "Dating sites, matching apps, marriage agencies — the forms differ, but the substance is the same: you compare profiles, exchange messages or sit through interviews, and only then, finally, meet. Meeting is placed at the very end.

"The scene I want to see is clear. People heading out into the city, instead of searching inside a screen. Go to a meetup spot, and you can meet someone right there.

"No months of waiting before a first meeting. Finding a partner in its most efficient form. All over town in the early evening, two people meeting for the first time — my aim is to make that scene ordinary.

"I originally started building this to beat Match.com. What 12 years taught me is that my opponent is not any one company. The opponent is the mechanism itself — as old as the internet."

It's a fair point and Nishijima's aim is a noble one. Although, if we're going back to the ELIZA effect and a computer program created in 1966, the opponent could actually be quite a bit older than the internet.

• Firefox’s iOS app comes with a new built-in ad blocker
• It stops all kinds of ads, but there are some exceptions
• The move could convince me to finally switch from Safari

I’ve been a loyal Firefox user for 20 years now, but that’s only been true for the desktop app. Despite Firefox being one of the best web browsers around, I’ve resolutely stuck with Safari on my iPhone — but a new Firefox feature could finally convince me to make the switch on mobile.

In a support document, Firefox developer Mozilla explains that its browser now comes with an “experimental” ad blocker that is based on the EasyList filter, allowing Firefox to “block many ads before they load.”

The ad blocker puts a stop to a variety of advertising types. That includes third-party advertising networks, ad-related trackers, third-party ads served on websites, and more intrusive formats such as pop-ups and overlays.

The feature is being rolled out gradually and is disabled by default, but you can enable it by opening Firefox, tapping the '…' button, then selecting Settings. From there, go to Browsing and enable the toggle next to Ad Blocker. Alternatively, you can enable it by opening the app menu when browsing a web page.

It’s worth noting that there are a couple of exceptions to what the feature blocks. For one thing, it won’t stop sponsored content on the Firefox Home or New Tab pages, nor will it block search engine ads, as these are both sources of income for Mozilla.

As well as that, Mozilla warns that some ads might slip through the net because “some websites serve ads in ways that are not covered by the current filter list".

Finally making the switch

Although Safai on iOS can block website pop-ups, it doesn’t have a built-in ad blocker and requires you to use a third-party extension if you want to shut down annoying ads. With Firefox gaining this functionality natively, Mozilla has given its browser a leg up over the competition — and has given me a strong reason to switch.

And since I’m a strong believer in user privacy — its robust privacy stance is one reason why I’ve stuck with Firefox for so long — this is exactly the type of feature that appeals to me. Given how invasive ads and trackers are, blocking them is a priority for me.

I’ve long stuck with Safari due to inertia. I have a lot of tabs open on Apple’s browser and don’t want to lose most of them. But with my beloved Firefox adding a built-in ad blocker on iOS, tab hoarding feels like a bad reason to stick with Safari.

Now could be the time to finally kick that inertia and make the switch. If you hate website ads and want to look out for your privacy, Firefox just gave you a great reason to give it a try.

One trillion dollar bills could wrap around the Earth almost three times, which means the $1.4T in fines Meta could face if it loses the huge, multi-state lawsuit arguing that the company's social media and the technology behind it encouraged addictive use in teens is more than enough financial rope to potentially squeeze it into submission or worse.

Opening arguments in the case kick off tomorrow (August 18), with Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri expected to testify.

The suit[PDF], which is in some ways the culmination of numerous cases against Meta and its alleged practices, comes on the heels of multiple legal setbacks for Meta. In March, Meta lost a case in LA Superior Court and was, along with YouTube, found negligent in causing a 20-year-old's mental health issues. That ruling came a day after Meta lost a similar case in New Mexico. Just a few weeks ago, the company was ordered to pay almost half a billion dollars after Meta's platforms were found to be, at least according to New Mexico law, a public nuisance.

This latest case, though, might not only change the face of social media but also seriously hamper Meta's ability to function.

As in other cases, AGs across 32 US states argue that Meta has used its technology to hook teens (and younger), lock them into using the platforms, and then, it argues, ignored the potential harms.

Here's how the lawsuit puts it:

"Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens. Its motive is profit, and in seeking to maximize its financial gains," and "it has ignored the sweeping damage these Platforms have caused to the mental and physical health of our nation’s youth. In doing so, Meta engaged in, and continues to engage in, deceptive and unlawful conduct in violation of state and federal law."

Meta, which has spent the last few years updating its parental controls across all its platforms and marketing those changes to the public, calls the AGs' claims "unsubstantiated" and the potential penalties "vastly disproportionate."

It then adds:

"The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled, claim benign features like having an additional Instagram account somehow harmed their residents, and attempt to penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification. Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout. We stand by our record of creating strong protections for teens, and look forward to making our case in court."

So there you have, in a nutshell, the two sides, but while Meta is putting on a strong front, I don't imagine Zuckerberg and Mosseri will enter the courtroom feeling particularly confident about their chances.

The changing social media landscape

Ever since prosecutors shifted their efforts from trying to prove that Meta and other social media companies were responsible for the online content that appears on their platforms to how each company built these systems and all the ways they engineered them to keep us swiping and engaged, they've been on a winning streak.

And that's probably because it's more provable.

During the golden age of social media, when it was Facebook versus YouTube, versus Twitter, versus Snap, there was no more important metric than monthly active users. Meta (formerly just called Facebook) often touted user numbers and how growth was spreading around the globe. When Facebook surpassed 1 billion global users, Zuckerberg said the milestone was "amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life.”

That scale also built Meta's value, since it could monetize those eyeballs through ads. It's no secret that, no matter your age, the more time you spend on the platform, the more ads you see and the more money Meta makes.

Even though Facebook's early format was more or less a meritocracy of content, it shifted in 2007 with visual updates organized by Edgerank, a basic algorithm that ranked content based on interactions, what you were likely to look at, and ongoing popularity.

More sophisticated algorithms followed, essentially feeding you more and more of what you'd most likely want to see or would like (to the exclusion of other content), helping further extend time on Facebook and Instagram. It's only in recent years that Meta has given users control of some of those algorithms so they could tailor the content of their feeds.

Of course, that's the current environment, and while these lawsuits want to force more changes, like the end of endless scrolls, their main contention is that Meta built its platforms to addict users and then, they claim, ignored warning signs (even within the company) that Instagram and Facebook might be harming youth and teens.

The intent wasn't harm but was it neglect?

I've never believed Meta intended to harm anyone, but I am convinced its top priority was growing the platform, and it used every tool at its disposal to do it.

It's also incontrovertible that some children and teens have been harmed by social media (Meta is not alone in this). Even Zuckerberg appears to agree with this in some form.

During a 2024 congressional hearing over social media's alleged harms, Zuckerberg (and other social media CEOs) stood up, turned to face parents in the gallery, and offered this apology:

"I’m sorry for everything you have all been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered, and this is why we invest so much, and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.”

It appeared to be an admission, if not of wrongdoing, that perhaps Meta and other social media companies had not done enough to protect young people on their platforms.

I don't expect an apology this time. Instead, Zuckerberg and Mosseri will offer a full-throated defense and, as noted, bring up all the ways these platforms have adjusted to give parents and teens more control.

Even so, Meta could lose, and if so, the AGs will see that $1.4T penalty, which, unsurprisingly, more or less matches the company's current market capitalization.

A loss could push Meta into a difficult financial situation that might result, if not in closure or bankruptcy, at least in a fundamental change in how it operates online. Imagine, for instance, having to pay a monthly subscription fee to use Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, or, at the least, Meta introducing an ad-free subscription tier. Prices of the VR hardware could go up.

Finally, Meta might abandon children and teens as a potential market and shift its marketing efforts to adults only.

That seems unlikely, but I promise you a loss will trigger some kind of change.

Meta will ultimately sense if and when the case is slipping away from it and get to work on an out-of-court settlement. It'll still pay, but instead of over a trillion dollars, it'll be, say, $2 billion or so, devoted to supporting mental health services for teens, and some money parceled out to Meta's billions of US-based users.

That should mark the end of this chapter...until the next lawsuit.

• Apple Fitness+ could be getting Peloton-style live workouts
• The fitness platform has been 'under review' since earlier this year
• Spotify recently expanded into fitness, so Apple might one-up its rival with live workouts

Something is going on at Apple Fitness+, the tech giant’s flagship fitness service, and it could be hinting at a new Peloton-style live workout hub.

A job listing posted by Apple advertises a Studio Producer role for Fitness+, implying there’s about to be a new upgrade coming to the health service, which is asking for a candidate with a "strong foundation in live or live-to-tape multi-camera production and a genuine curiosity about where live content is headed next."

Apple Fitness+ was introduced back in 2020, offering subscribers a one-stop shop of on-demand workout videos run by in-house fitness experts, integrating real-time workout metrics from your Apple Watch. Apple Fitness+ doesn’t host live workouts with live leaderboards in the way that Peloton does, so an upgrade could give the service the new lease of life it needs.

Despite its rich library of pre-recorded workout videos and guided meditations, Apple Fitness+ has been declining over the years. Earlier this year, we reported that Apple Fitness+ was ‘under review’, with the possibility of the firm merging with the existing Apple Health app to offer a combined subscription, but as it stands, the future of Apple Fitness+ is still undecided.

Bloomberg’s ($/£) Mark Gurman said that "there’s no telling what will end up happening," so not even seasoned leakers are able to predict where it’s going. A direct partnership with a fitness giant like Peloton hasn’t been hinted at, but since Spotify recently ventured into the fitness world, Apple Fitness+ might have some fresh competition.

A few weeks ago, Spotify expanded its services into fitness and I sat down with its developer, Austin Lamon, who described it as a “natural extension of how people already use Spotify today”. The new Fitness hub packs curated Running Mode playlists, as well as a section packed with pre-recorded workout guides from Peloton’s flagship personal trainers — and it’s all included in the Premium plan on top of access to music, audiobooks, and podcasts.

Though Apple Fitness+ got there first with its own roster of on-demand workout videos, Spotify has combined its Fitness hub with services that subscribers are already paying for, whereas Apple’s music and fitness platforms are separate entities. And yes, Spotify is prone to a price hike every now and then, but its new fitness content doesn’t come with any add-on costs.

The only thing that Spotify Fitness hasn’t jumped on yet is the idea of hosting its own live workouts, which opens a door for Apple Fitness+ to snatch an opportunity. If Apple started pumping out its own Peloton-style live workouts, it could give the service an edge over rivals and give iOS fans a new reason to stay put. Perhaps we'll find out more during Apple's upcoming product launch in September?

• An Incogni survey has found people are becoming more frustrated with the internet
• Users cite AI slop and data leaks as the main reasons for stress and anxiety when using the internet
• Many users want to spend less time online, and are deleting social media profiles and messaging

For years, personal data collection for advertising, tracking, and service improvement was thought to be the fair price to pay to access the world wide web. But now, many people believe that using the internet will lead to their data being leaked or exposed.

A new Incogni survey found more than half of internet users believe their personal data will inevitably be exposed, with 63% stating that this fear causes anxiety when using the internet.

But beyond this, internet users now fear they can no longer tell what is real content uploaded by a human and what is AI generated, not only eroding trust in the internet, but also making people not want to use the internet at all. Almost half of internet users are less sure of what is real on the internet.

Inevitable data exposure

You’ve likely been prompted thousands of times to accept or reject cookies, or review a privacy policy before using a website. Every cookie you accept will collect data on your browsing habits and behavior on sites in order to display personalized adverts that you are more likely to click. Cookies also help keep you logged in and store your information on websites.

While this helps make many websites across the web free to use for those accessing them, sometimes your data is sold to advertisers or third-parties where it is stored insecurely, and can be stolen or leaked.

Among the 1,000 internet users surveyed, the fear of data exposure was strongest among the Millennials and Gen X generations. 56% of Gen X and 55% of Millennials believed that their data would at some point be breached or exposed, showing just how normal data breaches and exposure have become online.

Just 11% of those surveyed believed there was little likelihood of their data being breached.

AI is making the internet less real

AI content creation has exploded in recent years. Social media sites are full of AI ‘creators’ whose pages either share AI generated content or scrape the internet for content that users are likely to interact with, and share it through their own pages. These profiles require little human input, but can share content at an industrial scale and reap huge rewards from advertisers.

If you’ve been on Instagram lately, you may have seen videos from AI creators all sharing the same captions. “Tonight, V stepped into the crowd..” or “Japan is transforming footsteps into electricity.” These captions use keywords to abuse Instagram’s algorithm on popular topics to drive engagement, regardless of whether the content actually has anything to do with the caption.

But they’re also making it harder to know what is real on the internet.

48% of those surveyed said that they are less sure of what’s real, with 40% also stating that the lack of accountability for deepfake creators was a bother.

Additionally, 27% said that AI generated content made them want to spend less time online, with 16% also saying that navigating an internet full of low quality AI content made them feel more tired or fatigued. Just 8% of respondents said that AI generated content improved their online experience.

There are some positive attitudes to AI content online. 12% said that AI-generated content made information more accessible, with slightly less (11%) saying that they were excited about the creative possibilities AI offers.

Time to go offline?

Attitudes to how long people spend online are also changing. Over half (51%) of Gen Z internet users believe they spend too much time on consuming content on the internet, with 43% of Millennials and 42% of Gen X respondents having a likeminded view.

Whether it’s responding to emails, navigating networking platforms, finding new furniture, or looking for where to go to eat - the internet is now a life requirement for most people. And every time you access another website in work or your personal life, there is more data that could be leaked.

The ultimate effect of this is that people are being driven away from using the internet. 58% of respondents said that they had deleted a social media account or messaging app because of stress, anxiety, or privacy concerns.

“It seems that the costs of engaging with these platforms are starting to outweigh any perceived or actual benefits,” the Incogni survey said.

Or time to pay for privacy?

Incogni also asked if users would be willing to pay for an internet where tracking and algorithms did not exist. 30% of respondents said they would, but this largely relied on income. Those with a higher income were more likely to pay for this ‘private’ internet, while those with a lower income were less likely.

For many internet users, privacy shouldn’t be a luxury, but a guarantee. There is a level of trust involved when sharing personal data with advertisers, and the expectation is that the data won’t be leaked or stolen. Unfortunately, the opinions show that this is far from what's expected.

• Microsoft is again under fire for aggressively pushing Edge
• A survey conducted by the Browser Choice Alliance shows how deep some problems run
• That includes encountering 'challenges' while attempting to change default browsers, and users who get stuck with Edge when they don't want it

Microsoft has again come under fire for the way it pushes the Edge browser on Windows 11 users.

Windows Central highlighted a survey from the Browser Choice Alliance (BCA) which makes it clear that there are still issues around the way Edge is promoted in Microsoft's desktop operating system.

This was a poll of 2,000 adults in the US who own a Windows PC (either a laptop or desktop), and it found that the majority of respondents (86%) believe they should have "primary control over default browser choice", and moreover, most of those (80%) believe there should be a one-click system to pick that default.

The survey also found that: "72% of Windows users who tried changing default browsers in the past 1-2 years reported that they encountered challenges while attempting to do so."

That includes Windows "recommending or redirecting them back to the pre-installed browser" (Edge), or having website links or apps still open in Edge when it's not their default choice.

The BCA further observed: "Even after selecting a preferred browser, nearly 1 in 3 Windows users report experiences and tactics that undermine their ability to maintain that choice over time. They've fallen into a Reset Trap."

On that subject, 29% of users said that a Windows system update had "contributed to their browser preference being changed or reset".

Interestingly, 19% of respondents said that Edge was their preferred browser — which seems high compared to global stats — although 26% indicated that Microsoft's browser was set as their default in Windows 11. That means 7% of those surveyed had Edge as their default when they didn't want it.

Some of those presumably 'stuck' in this way may be older Windows 11 users, based on the survey's discovery that 44% of those over the age of 65 reported that changing their browser was a "complex" task in Windows 11, compared to 15% of those in the 18 to 44 age group.

61% of those aged over 65 felt "slightly or not at all confident in their own ability to consistently select and run the browser of their choice", which is a worryingly large percentage.

The survey maker concludes: "Microsoft should respect consumer preferences by removing unnecessary barriers and ensure users, not its operating system, remain in control over their browser experience."

Analysis: choice not challenges, Microsoft

It's worth noting that the Browser Choice Alliance is an organization that contains some rival browser makers, including Google (Chrome), Opera and Vivaldi. This doesn't make the report any less valid, but it's something to bear in mind.

I don't think there's any arguing with the broad conclusion drawn here, and that there are unnecessary hoops to jump through, and various annoyances, pertaining to Edge being foisted on Windows 11 users. On top of links unexpectedly opening in Edge, or outright resets of browser preferences in some situations, there's also Microsoft pushing folks to use its browser through 'recommendations' or ads of one kind or another.

It's all anti-consumer nonsense that needs to be stopped, and the fact that just over 70% of those who took the survey said they had "encountered challenges" in trying to change their default browser really isn't good enough.

Microsoft can do better than this, and in the EU, it does do better than in the US (or other regions) as another recent report commissioned by Mozilla (the maker of Firefox) pointed out.

Mozilla alleges that Microsoft engages in trick wording, nagging, preselection, and other underhand tactics to try to get Edge picked as the browser for Windows 11. However, due to regulations in the EU, countries in that region escape a lot of the more dubious activity in this regard. So, why doesn't Microsoft apply this improved approach with less hassling elsewhere? We know the answer to that, of course: it doesn't make any business sense.

It's not a good look if a company only implements pro-consumer policies because it's forced to, and for no other reason. But here we are…

Microsoft is certainly hearing Windows 11 users as part of the great campaign to fix the operating system, so maybe it'll start listening to browser users who want a fairer, more level playing field in the desktop OS. History very much suggests that it won't, though.

• The Trump administration has lifted the TikTok ban for federal devices
• The app was banned from being installed by government employees in 2022
• TikTok in America is now majority owned by a US company, with ByteDance still holding around a 20% share

The Trump administration has lifted a ban on government employees having TikTok on their mobile devices.

The law was introduced in 2022 when TikTok was deemed to be a national security threat because of potential ties between TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, and the Chinese government.

A memo released by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) states, “TikTok may be used on government devices.”

Government to go back to doomscrolling

The details as to why the government banned the app in the first place have not been fully disclosed. Discussions within the senate centered around data collection and Chinese government influence over the app’s algorithm.

TikTok briefly went offline in the US in 2025 as the Trump administration forced ByteDance to sell the app to American owners or have the app be permanently blacklisted in the US.

The two settled on having an American version of the app for American audiences controlled by TikTok USDS Joint Venture.

The Department of Transportation, Treasury Department, and Health and Human Services have all since created official accounts on the app and have begun posting. The White House also has an official account which mainly posts hype edits of the President.

Via Engadget

• Cloudflare CFO Thomas Seifert predicts machine-generated traffic could outnumber humans by a 1,000 times in the next five years
• The answer to this, Seifert believes, is to ensure servers are efficient enough to handle demand
• Cloudflare previously predicted machines would outnumber humans in 2027, but this digital soothsaying was 12 months out

Machine-generated internet traffic is already outnumbering that by humans, and it shows no sign of declining, experts have warned.

Cloudflare Chief Financial Officer Thomas Seifert has predicted man-made activity will be dwarfed by bots and agentic applications, with such machine traffic could be 1,000 times more than human traffic within the next five years.

However, Seifert was at pains to mention he has form for getting these predictions wrong.

The “rounding error” online

However, right or wrong, human traffic is already outnumbered by bots online, which means measures have to be taken for the internet to remain useful to people, or else grind to a halt under the weight of automated traffic.

Cloudflare believes making efficiencies is the solution, but those optimizations may be something other companies need to focus on.

While we may feel that the internet exists for humans to communicate and shop or spend money on a service, the truth is that it is increasingly dominated by machine-generated traffic. Traditional bots have been replaced with agentic AI and other automated tools, and every request has an impact on servers (and the rest of the internet infrastructure).

Cloudflare’s role in providing cloud services that provide security, performance, and general infrastructure is key to overseeing the traffic, with many websites relying on its protective shield to improve load times and mitigate online threats.

Explaining the thinking behind the predicted increase, Seifert said on a recent Cloudflare earnings call: “To give you a sense of how this trend is playing out, and with the big caveat that I have called it wrong at every point along the way, if the current trends continue, we think in five years, non-human traffic will be as much as 1,000 times as much as human traffic.”

“In other words, humans will be a rounding error on the internet, not because human traffic goes down, but that’s just how fast we’re seeing non-human traffic grow.”

Efficiency questions

Just how can servers and infrastructure be more efficient? Will this efficiency focus on human or machine generated and agentic transactions?

Some solutions are intelligent traffic management, optimized protocols, hardware acceleration, and edge computing.

Discussions in Cloudflare’s earnings call pointed at where the greatest efficiencies may be made – in its competitors, where GPU utilization is “super low,” due to them “buying a server and then trying to sell it back, lease it back” and putting the onus on the customer to “get as much out of the server as possible.”

Letterboxd might just be my favorite app — I love tracking the media I consume and making lists, and Letterboxd is basically a perfect take on that for movies. And while I don’t love Goodreads quite as much, I find that it serves a similar purpose for books. But I’ve struggled to find an app like this for shows.

That’s not to say no such apps exist — of course they do. But for one reason or another, I’ve always bounced off them. Until, perhaps, now.

It’s early days, but so far, Bingers — a new app from the co-founder of TV Time — seems like it might mostly fit the bill, though it doesn’t quite address all of my issues with other TV show tracking apps.

Beautiful and customizable

One of the things I love about Letterboxd is just how much of a joy it is to interact with, and part of that comes down to it being aesthetically pleasing, with the same being true of Bingers.

Here you get big posters and backdrops for each show, along with the ability to swap them out for other options, and the interface beyond that feels polished and — for the most part — well laid out.

Adding shows to your watchlist can be done with a single tap, and marking episodes or whole seasons as watched is similarly speedy, so there’s minimal friction.

Switching over from another app is potentially easy too, as you can import your data from TV Time, TV Time Liberator, or Refract.

It’s not perfect; for example, while you can search through the filmography of cast and crew members, there’s no way that I can see to sort or filter those lists. But the core parts of the app at least are largely well laid out. And Bingers has only just launched, so it’s sure to improve over time.

Impressively full-featured

There’s also a lot here. You can add shows to your watch list and then get alerts when new episodes or seasons are out, so you never miss them. You can also rate and review shows and episodes, and even attach an emoji for how they made you feel.

There’s even an option to select your favorite character in an episode, and then see what percentage of people picked each option. I’d love to see more stats, which is something Letterboxd still has over Bingers, but that — along with a total watched time and number of episodes watched — is at least gesturing towards an interest in this sort of data.

Plus, you can mark shows as favorites, create lists, and follow other users — with that last point giving this app the community feel that things like Letterboxd and Goodreads also have.

You can also explore trending shows and genres if you’re looking for something new to watch, and you can log rewatches, so you can see how many times you’ve viewed something.

There are movies here too if you want all of your visual media in one place, though for now, at least, I’ll mostly be sticking with Letterboxd for those.

Keeps me coming back

Still, while I’ve only been using Bingers for a few days so far, that’s longer than I managed with most apps like this. I think all of the above contributes to that — the beautiful design, the lack of friction in logging, and the reminders and alerts for new episodes, plus a handy timeline view that shows what you haven’t yet watched, and what episodes are landing in the coming days.

I do wish there were a Bingers website, as sometimes I’d rather interact with these services from my computer, and it could still do with a few more features within the app — more stats, an overall average rating for each show, and the inclusion of trailers, for example.

But for a new release, Bingers is off to a very promising start, and as long as the app keeps evolving — and continues to find an audience — this could become the Letterboxd for TV.

If you're of a certain age, you'll remember the frisson of excitement around the launch of Gmail back in 2004. The idea of getting 1GB of storage space completely free of charge seemed wild — and all of your messages could be got at in a simple web browser tab.

As someone who had become accustomed to deleting emails to save space, and painstakingly moving over message archives manually every time I got a computer upgrade, this sounded fantastic. So did being able to get at my emails from any device I wanted, instantly (that seems less appealing these days, somehow).

Something else Gmail has done really well down the years is act as a hub for other email accounts, letting you import and send messages from other accounts inside the Gmail interface — with all the benefits of powerful search, filtering, and spam flagging tools. Now though, most of that functionality is going away.

These are features that I've relied on for decades inside Gmail, and it's going to make my email experience much more frustrating and fragmented.

What's changing

Charting the gradual dismantling of these features inside Gmail is tricky, because the updates have largely come through emails to users and updates to support documentation — there aren't really any official blog post announcements to point to (it's not surprising Google wants to keep all of this quiet).

The most recent news is that the ability to send emails from other accounts through Gmail is going away, and will be switched off completely from January 2027. If you currently send your Outlook or Yahoo messages through Gmail, as I do, you're going to have to find another solution from the start of next year.

A couple of other features are also being killed off in January 2027 as well, though these changes are ones we've known about for a while. You'll no longer be able to import messages from other accounts via the old POP protocol — something I've relied on for years to get emails from all of my various accounts into the same place — and you won't be able to use the Gmailify feature that essentially adds a few Gmail features (like spam protection) to your third-party accounts.

As someone who primarily uses Gmail on the web, and has several email accounts feeding into it, these are significant changes — and I'm not the only one upset about them. My current setup means I can have separate emails for work, app sign-ups, newsletters, and so on, and keep them all in Gmail for searching, filtering, and labeling, and it's been a simple and reliable setup.

Now I'm going to have to go back to jumping between three or four different email apps to check everything. Different rules, different storage limits, different interfaces. It's an annoying set of changes, which Google hasn't really explained — presumably the idea is to keep users focused on Gmail, and to cut costs.

What to do next

You do have a few options for trying to cling on to Gmail as a message hub, though none of them are ideal. You can get your third-party email account to auto-forward messages to Gmail — it means you'll have them in your Gmail archive for filtering and searching, though there's no 'send as' functionality.

This might cost you too: It's a paid-for extra for Yahoo Mail for example. That's particularly galling for me, because Yahoo is one of the accounts I feed into Gmail. I rely on it for newsletters, tickets, store accounts, general admin, and the like, and now I'm not going to be able to get at any of that inside Gmail.

Another option is to set up a desktop email client on Windows or macOS, which feels very old school. Gmail still supports the IMAP standard, and so do most other modern email services: all of your email will be together in one place, but you're only going to be able to access everything in one place from whatever desktop computer you set this up on.

Lastly, you can still add third-party accounts inside the Gmail app for Android or iOS. However, while this will let you view all your emails in one unified inbox, it won't actually move anything over to Gmail — if you open up the web app, your other accounts and all the messages inside them won't be there.

It's all a bit of a sorry mess, and I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do going forward. What's certain is that I'm not going to be able to carry on as I have been, and that Gmail is going to be a significantly less useful email hub for me in the future.

• Meta has been hit by another huge fine in New Mexico
• The ruling judge compared Meta's apps to polluting factories
• Meta says it's going to appeal the decision

Meta is in more legal trouble over the harms that its products — specifically Instagram and Facebook — can do to children, with a New Mexico judge slapping a $567 million (£422 million / AU$805 million) fine on the company, and suggesting that the damage done by these apps is akin to "noxious pollution" from factories.

As reported by CNN, the latest court ruling and financial penalty says that Meta's suite of apps "create a common, societal burden on and harm to the affected children and their families and schools, as well as hospitals and law enforcement".

Meta has said that it will appeal the decision, but its lawyers should recognize the factory analogy: they used it themselves during the original trial that got underway in February (via Courthouse News Service), arguing that a town factory shouldn't necessarily be held responsible for wider community problems it has nothing to do with.

The aim of Meta's lawyers in using the factory example was to limit the fines and measures imposed by the court, but it only partly worked. The mention of schools, hospitals, and law enforcement shows that the judge in the case, First Judicial District Court Judge Bryan Biedscheid, thinks Meta has wider problems to answer for.

Mental health support

Most of the money that's being demanded from Meta — $420 million of it — is specifically earmarked for supporting community and family-based mental health services for the young people of New Mexico. The rest will be going towards mental health screening, prevention campaigns, and referral programs.

The latest fine is on top of the $375 million (£279 million / AU$533 million) in civil penalties that Meta was previously ordered to pay by a jury. This second part of the trial, with only a judge presiding, has now officially declared Instagram and Facebook a "public nuisance" in the eyes of the law.

There's more to the ruling than financial hits too. Meta is being ordered to delete all the accounts and data of users aged under 13, to turn off notifications from 8am-3pm on weekdays and from 10pm-7am on other days for users under 18 — at least in New Mexico. New accounts set up by teens should also be private by default, the judge has said.

Don't expect any of this to be implemented soon though — Meta has said it's going to appeal these decisions, which is likely to take an extended period of time. Even so, it's more evidence that the harms that social media can do to youngsters are now better understood, and that further action is very likely.

I couldn't believe it. Had Roku really just casually inserted global viral raccoon sensation Jimothy into Roku City? I'd seen a post claiming so, but knowing how easy it is to fake things with AI, I had to see it for myself.

I powered up one of my home's half-dozen Roku streaming boxes and spent 10 minutes trying to force the platform into screen-saver mode, which then opens up Roku City. Ever since the most recent Roku platform update, I see this interface far less often than I used to.

Roku City is Roku's fictional, purple cityscape populated by thinly disguised iconic characters and objects from film, TV, and life.

After a few minutes of hunting, I figured out how to set my screen saver timeout to one minute. A moment later, the side-scrolling Roku City appeared, and in it, caught mid-waddle atop a chain-link fence, was Jimothy's unmistakable silhouette.

For those who've thrown out their phones, computers, and TVs, Jimothy is a Seattle-based raccoon with a rare disorder called "short spine syndrome." Don't worry, it doesn't appear to impact his mobility or lifestyle, but once you see Jimothy, you never forget him.

Jimothy is so popular that he's been featured as the unofficial mascot at Seattle Mariners games, launched what's widely considered "Hot Jimothy Summer," and is now immortalized in Roku City.

Jimothy made it to Roku City in a matter of hours

"You share the same problem we all share, which is when we really want to get to Roku City, like right now, we wonder, 'How do we get there?" Damon Van Deusen, Roku's Vice President, Global Brand and Creative, told me this week, but added that a solution is already in the works: Roku is adding a Roku City tile to the home screen for instant access.

Van Deusen agreed to sit down and explain how Jimothy made his way — virtually — from the alleys of a Seattle suburb to Roku's iconic services.

Jimothy's appearance, while surprising, is not out of character for the screen saver enjoyed by Roku's roughly 100 million customers.

"The Jimothy journey starts six or seven years ago when we actually started realizing that social was paying attention to the screen saver," explained Van Deusen. Back in 2021, they noticed likely pandemic-quarantined consumers posting about how they'd like to visit the city, share a kiss there, or even get married in the purple space.

"We've been putting Easter eggs in the screen saver as a way to engage some fans and social ever since," he added.

Over the years, the city's been populated by, among other things, characters from popular films (like the rock monster from Galaxy Quest and Star Trek's Enterprise). Still, there was something about Jimothy's timeliness that struck me.

Seattle resident Kiana Hall posted an Instagram video about the unusual raccoon on July 16, 2026. I spotted Jimothy in Roku City on July 31, and the post I saw about the raccoon's integration in the platform was a few days older than that.

"In the last two years, we created what's called the Rapid Response Easter Egg Team," explained Van Deusen.

This cross-functional group cuts through typical product development, and "we figured out a system where we could publish these things really fast. So now everything we do is quicker and quicker and quicker."

Tracking and choosing from the Zeitgeist

The team, which often communicates on Slack, is constantly kicking around watercooler moments like Punch the Money and Goat on Car. They choose "anything that tickles us, anything that feels really fun. I mean, again, that's the bar; it's gotta be delightful, playful, fun, lift spirits, and create conversation," Van Deusen told me, who later added that delight, or something that triggers an "unexpected smile," is "really the heart of the whole brand."

Van Deusen loved that I more or less stumbled on Jimothy's existence in the city. "An unexpected smile, if you think about it, it's like it comes out of nowhere. It's not like you're looking for it; it's just like you spotting Jimothy. It's like, 'Wait a minute, are you, wait, is that Jimothy?'"

Not every viral moment can make it in. The Rapid Response Easter Egg Team avoids bummers and negative news. However, they did do a retrospective of Moira Rose's wigs as a way to memorialize the great Catherine O'Hara, who played Moira in Schitt's Creek and died on January 30 of this year.

When the right idea comes along, the team knows it. "Then we'll be like, 'Oh my God, that's so cool,' and then we'll make it happen right away...and that's how Jimothy came about."

Looking at the Roku City Jimothy, I was struck by the silhouette's uncanny accuracy — it could be no other raccoon.

Van Deusen told me Roku has, over the last five years, built a world-class illustration team, which includes comic book illustrators and former Disney artists.

The company shared the Roku Designer, Illustrator, and Director Tim Cook's early Jimothy sketch and how he might appear in Roku City (above). Even in pencil, you can see how he captured the shape and signature gait of the lovable critter.

The making of an icon

To create Jimothy, the team focused on that "iconic sort of hunch." Van Deusen said that there was a feedback session to ensure they got the look just right.

Silhouettes also happen to be part of Roku City's DNA, giving you the clear impression of a character or viral figure without a lot of detail.

"We had tried doing less silhouetted versions of the city when we tried to localize for different markets once, and the more you see, the further you get away from the City," he said.

The suggestion of these shapes and recognizable figures forces you to lean in and engage even more with what is arguably just a screen saver.

"It's kind of a little bit of a wink, obviously, you know, and we do that on purpose; we never want to say too much. And we never reveal what the Easter eggs are; we always just sort of suggest and like elude, and again, it's so much more fun," said Van Deusen, smiling, I think, at the thought of Jimothy's unmistakable shape.

As for how Jimothy made it to millions of screen saves so quickly, Roku's Rapid Response team can add new elements to Roku City in a matter of hours.

"We developed a tool," Van Deusen said, "where we can basically come up with an idea, something we want to do, the illustration team quickly mocks something up, and we can put it in the screen saver, all within a couple of hours."

That kind of speed puts Roku City firmly inside the zeitgeist. But that, too, is fast changing, and I wondered how long Jimothy would be waddling across Roku City screens.

Roku does rotate out the Easter eggs, though a backlog of four years or more can rotate in and out of the side-scrolling interface. Roku, by the way, recently added a user-controllable version where you can slide back and forth for a better look at all these hidden gems, including Jimothy.

The lovable raccoons should appear in Roku City "as long as Jimothy is in the zeitgeist," said Van Deusen, adding, "[he] will eventually, probably be replaced. I don't know if we'll always have a rotational raccoon, but we will find the next, you know, popping character."

Until then, enjoy Jimothy in real and virtual life.

• The World Wide Web was created 35 years ago today
• It was initially designed for sharing documents at CERN
• Its creator says we can return to its spirit of openness and collaboration

These days, it’s hard to go long without connecting to the Internet in one way or another: whether through one of the best web browsers or by connecting to a smart home device, it’s something we often take for granted. The primary means of interacting online — the World Wide Web — has just turned 35 years old today, and its creator has a timely message that couldn’t be more relevant for modern users.

The World Wide Web is the creation of British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee. Working at the scientific body CERN in the 1980s and 1990s, Berners-Lee wanted a way to store, update, and locate documents within the sprawling organization. At the same time, he sought a solution that would allow for these documents to be shared with outside bodies quickly and straightforwardly.

That desire led to his creation of the World Wide Web. It was announced to the public on August 6, 1991, with Berners-Lee humbly stating that “We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas.” It was a platform whereby anyone could link to any document in a database using hyperlinks, or links embedded in text, images, and other media. Importantly, multiple users were able to access this platform simultaneously and independently of each other.

Adoption quickly spread from CERN to other research organizations before being opened up to the wider public, whereupon it exploded in popularity. And 35 years later, it’s an invention that has turned the world on its head.

An absolutely vital component of this system was that it had to be both free and decentralized. Berners-Lee was adamant that anyone should be able to create a website and implement hyperlinks on their own, without paying a fee and without a central body dictating what could and could not be done. That principle of openness still stands today — but it’s increasingly under threat.

‘It’s not too late’

Speaking to The Guardian in September 2025, Berners-Lee lamented that plenty of the web today is no longer free and open. “We see a handful of large platforms harvesting users’ private data to share with commercial brokers or even repressive governments,” he noted, adding: “We see ubiquitous algorithms that are addictive by design and damaging to our teenagers’ mental health. Trading personal data for use certainly does not fit with my vision for a free web.”

At the same time, user data is sold “to actors we never intended it to reach,” with the result being “deliberately harmful content that leads to real-world violence, spreads misinformation, wreaks havoc on our psychological wellbeing and seeks to undermine social cohesion.”

This is especially challenging in the age of AI, Berners-Lee argued. To put things right and get back to the original vision of his creation, the father of the web advocated for strong AI governance and guidance from organizations that are not motivated by data and profit but instead by collaboration and the needs of the individual. On this point, Berners-Lee quipped: “It is hard to imagine a big tech company agreeing to share the world wide web for no commercial reward like CERN allowed me to.”

As the World Wide Web turns 35, the spirit of “collaboration, creativity and compassion” that allowed it to be given away for free is being increasingly challenged by Big Tech — but Berners-Lee still thinks there’s time to put things right: “We can re-empower individuals, and take the web back. It’s not too late.”

As AI becomes a greater and more important presence in our everyday lives, the way we interact with the "traditional" internet is changing.

For so long the main way to access the internet, the web browser is now having to rethink how to appeal to an audience which often seeks AI-first interaction - raising new challenges for developers to create the best and most interactive experience.

We spoke to Ajit Varma, Head of Firefox at Mozilla, to find out more.

• The web has always been built on the principles of openness and interoperability, but today's internet is increasingly shaped by a handful of dominant platforms and AI-powered services. What does the 'open web' mean in 2026, and why does it still matter?

The open web matters more today than it has in years because AI is changing how people experience the internet. As a small number of platforms become the gateway to search, content and AI-powered services, it's becoming easier for a handful of companies to shape what people see and how they interact online.

That's why the principles of the open web still matter. Common standards mean developers can build without asking permission from a dominant platform, and users can choose how they access the web rather than being locked into a single ecosystem. Those principles have driven innovation for decades, and they're just as important as AI reshapes the internet.

The challenge now isn't simply keeping the web open as it exists today. It's making sure openness evolves alongside AI, so the next generation of the internet remains competitive, interoperable and accessible to everyone

• AI is changing the way people discover information and interact with the internet. How do you see browsers evolving over the next five years, and what role should they play in helping users navigate an increasingly AI-driven web while maintaining trust and choice?

Over the next five years, you’ll start to see more divergences in how browsers treat AI. Many companies will use the browser to try and push a specific AI agenda but at Firefox we’re focused on how AI can make the tasks a user wants to do in a browser better. This includes things like a personal agent that can help a user accomplish tasks, navigating the web through voice, making the web more enjoyable, and creating new vibe-coded extensions and mini-apps.

We’ll do all this in a way that is user centric. The browser should adapt to the user, rather than the other way round. Some people will want AI integrated into their everyday browsing, while others will prefer to use it for specific tasks. Maintaining trust means supporting those preferences and letting people decide how much they use AI.

Users should be able to choose any model they want including open and local models. The important thing is preserving that flexibility, so people can browse, search and get things done in a way that feels natural to them.

• Privacy has long been a core part of Mozilla's mission, but consumers also expect convenience and highly personalised online experiences. How do you strike the right balance between protecting users' privacy and delivering the features people now expect from modern web experiences?

For me, striking the right balance starts with recognising that every user has different expectations of their browser. While context can make online experiences more useful and personalised, people should be able to understand how their data is used and decide what they are comfortable sharing. By giving users meaningful control over the features they adopt, Firefox can deliver modern experiences while continuing to protect their privacy.

This has guided our phased approach to AI, beginning with practical features such as summarisation, translation, tab organisation and optional AI chat integrations. Before introducing more advanced AI experiences such as Smart Window, we launched AI Controls so people can manage individual features or switch them off altogether.

Firefox is also model-agnostic, so users can choose or switch providers, use local models, or opt out entirely. Even though only a small minority of users disable AI features, people regularly tell us they value knowing the controls are there. Privacy and convenience can coexist when people are able to set the terms of the experience.

• There's growing concern that the future of the web could become fragmented between closed AI ecosystems, proprietary platforms and app-based experiences. What do you see as the biggest threats to the open web, and what gives you confidence that it can continue to thrive?

The biggest risk isn't AI itself, it's concentration. If the same companies control the AI models, the interface people use to access them and the browser they interact through, users lose visibility, choice and ultimately agency. That's a much bigger shift than simply moving from one technology generation to another.

What's encouraging is that the issue is becoming harder to ignore. Developers want open standards. Regulators are paying closer attention to competition. Users are asking tougher questions about transparency and control. The web has always evolved through periods of disruption, but it has remained resilient because it's built on interoperability rather than permission. AI can strengthen that model rather than replacing it with a handful of closed ecosystems. The future doesn't have to be a choice between innovation and openness. We should expect both.

• Developers have always been central to Mozilla's community. As AI transforms software development and web creation, how do you think the relationship between developers, browsers and the open web will change over the coming years?

AI is making it dramatically easier to build software, which means we're going to see more developers – and more people who aren't traditional developers – creating for the web. That's a huge opportunity, but only if they can build on an open platform rather than for a handful of closed ecosystems.

That's why the browser becomes even more important. It's no longer just where websites are displayed – it's becoming the layer where people interact with AI to search, create, organise information and complete tasks. As that layer becomes more powerful, it has to remain open, interoperable and centred around user choice.

For developers, that means being able to build for the web, rather than for whichever company happens to control the dominant model or platform. That's always been one of the web's greatest strengths, and it's something we shouldn't lose as AI reshapes how software is built and experienced.

• If you look ahead to the end of this decade, what do you hope people will say about the state of the web? What would success look like for Mozilla's vision of an open, healthy internet?

Success, for me, is a web that's become more useful through AI without becoming less open. Technology should expand what's possible, not narrow the ways people can access information, build new ideas or participate online.

Innovation should continue to come from everywhere, not just a handful of dominant platforms. The web has always been at its best when anyone with a good idea can build something that reaches millions of people. That only happens when developers have open standards to build on and users aren't locked into a single ecosystem.

The web should still be the best place to build, discover and innovate because it remains accessible to everyone. If AI has expanded participation rather than concentrated power, we'll be heading in the right direction.

• Mozilla is competing in a browser market dominated by much larger technology companies. How do you differentiate Firefox, and why do you believe there's still a commercial and societal case for an independent browser?

We differentiate through independence, choice and accountability. Most browsers are tied to larger technology ecosystems spanning across multiple systems, search, advertising and AI.

Instead, Firefox is powered by Gecko, the only remaining independent browser engine, which gives us the freedom to make product decisions around what benefits users. It ensures that Mozilla is not only advocating for these principles but actively building the underlying infrastructure that makes them possible.

That independence is commercially relevant because there’s such a clear demand for genuine choice. Firefox has been selected through EU browser choice screens more than six million times in two years and those users are five times more likely to remain with Firefox than people who find it organically.

Societally, independent engines prevent one company’s technical and commercial priorities from being the default for the entire web. They also preserve competition, interoperability and the ability to build around different values.

• As regulators around the world seek to promote competition in digital markets, are we at a turning point for the open web, or is there still a risk that power becomes even more concentrated through AI?

There are certainly some encouraging signs that regulation can restore meaningful choice. The impact of browser choice screens in Europe shows that people choose alternatives when they are presented fairly and without being steered towards a default.

However, AI is creating a new concentration risk. If the same small group of companies control the operating system, browser, search engine and AI model, it becomes much easier for them to shape how people access information and which services they encounter.

Regulation needs to keep pace not only with how AI is developed, but with how it's distributed and embedded into everyday products. However, regulation can't do this alone. Interoperability, genuine defaults and strong technical competition will matter just as much.

• Trust has become a key differentiator in technology. How can browser makers earn and maintain users' trust as AI assistants become embedded in everyday web browsing?

Trust starts with being clear about what the technology is doing. AI should be optional, transparent and designed so users can understand what information it can access, how it’s being used and who is acting on their behalf.

That’s the principle behind Firefox’s AI controls. AI features are optional and can be managed individually, while a single setting allows users to block current and future generative AI features. We also use on-device models for features such as Link Previews and Smart Tab Groups, allowing people to receive AI assistance without any data leaving their device.

Ultimately, trust isn't earned through a single feature. It's earned by being transparent about how AI works and consistently respecting the decisions people make.

Somewhere, Myspace Tom is looking over his shoulder, frowning. Everyone's first friend on the once-leading and iconic social and blogging platform, Tom Anderson's smiling face is the sole reminder of what Myspace once was. While so many loved its messy, GIF-filled countenance in 2004, it's unlikely he's cheering its potential comeback.

MySpace didn't survive the rise of Facebook (then "The Facebook"), let alone Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram. Teens left in droves when NewsCorp bought it for $850M in 2005, and adults, who never understood it in the first place, stayed away by the millions. By 2011, it was sold for a measly $35M to a consortium that included Justin Timberlake. The shift to a more purely music-focused platform did little to distinguish or revive it. The domain survives, but according to Similarweb, it has just over 1.7M monthly uniques. That might sound like a lot, but it is a far cry from the 76M monthly visitors it enjoyed 20 years ago.

Now, Chris and Tim Vanderhook, who bought the platform with Timberlake in 2011, confirmed they plan to "relaunch Myspace."

Myspace version 3?

That, though, my friends, is not the surprising part. Companies relaunch valuable IP all the time in the quixotic belief that they can squeeze just a little more value or revenue out of it. It rarely goes their way.

No, what's truly astounding is that the Vanderhooks did not quickly follow that statement with, "It'll be built on an AI foundation."

I mean, seriously, what is the point of relaunching Myspace if not to house some new LLM, presumably one that connects in some fashion to music. Maybe a big partnership with — gag — Suno.

Myspace has, for the last 15 years, been all about music. The first menu item on the current site is "Featured," which is all about trending musicians, and the second menu item is "Music." "Videos", which is all clips of either "Getting Nailed" or "The Pedicab interviews," comes next, and "People," once the foundation of Myspace, comes last.

If you happen to click on "People," Myspace encourages you to sign up with your Facebook account, which is the deepest cut of all when you consider how Facebook ate Myspace's lunch.

Profile types leave little room for the normies that once populated the platform: Your profile options include "Artists," "Writer". "DJ/producer," "Comedian," "Filmmaker," "Models," and similar extra types. It's like an Influencer reality show casting call. It's unclear how or if you can join as just a person.

If AI were a part of this promised next phase of MySpace, I assume it might help these influencer industry archetypes connect with their audiences and produce exactly the kind of content each wants and would consume at scale.

No way you'll recognize the next Myspace

I find it hard to imagine that the old-school Myspace, in all its chaotic luster, is somehow rising from the ashes. No online audience is still interested in that, right? Though, I guess a sort of anti-social media could work.

No algorithms, no filters, no cool interface, maybe even no AI, just point-to-point encrypted messages, space to say your piece, an occasional meme-worthy GIF, and that's all. It could be ever more bare-bones than the old Tumblr. I see no reason for that to exist, but at least it would stand out from the current selection of overwhelming communication and social media platforms.

Even so, in our current space, no technology is more energizing for investment and emergence than AI. So I fully expect the Vanderhooks, who are "just waiting for the right time to do it," to lean fully into the space and produce a Myspace-awkward blend of earnestness and AI.

They might even get Tom Anderson's permission to use his likeness in AI figures that show him looking over his shoulder, smiling and offering custom greetings on your Myspace page. Tom could be the platform's AI chatbot. It'll be creepy as heck and the polar opposite of what new Myspace should be, but I also see no other realistic path forward for this thing.

It starts on the 4 Train, that straight-run subway line from Grand Central to Yankee Stadium, where I start to notice the red shirts. By the time I reach the massive gray stadium, people are circling the Bronx Bomber’s edifice like thousands of red ants, all queuing up for a rare baseball season sight: football (soccer) in Yankee Stadium.

Most of the shirts are for Premier League side Liverpool FC, but there's a smattering of Wrexham kits. Some of them look threadbare, and none feature the club’s newest sponsor: Firefox. The travel and away kits were unveiled just days before — too soon for die-hard fans to show their support for the team and its well-known but, by some measures, marginal web browser.

Walking through Babe Ruth Plaza, I follow behind the red shirts until I’m lined up behind fans who have come from as far as Arkansas and California to witness the pre-season match. None are musing about Firefox’s new Wrexham sponsorship or how Mozilla (Firefox’s parent) took over from United, which itself took over from TikTok.

The Reynolds effect

The scrappy Welsh club enjoys outsized notoriety thanks to its owners, actors and entrepreneurs Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, and the popular Hulu docu-series Welcome to Wrexham, which recounts the club’s rise from the ashes and ascent to, as of last season, just short of Premier League status.

While we wait to enter the stadium, the Liverpool team arrives late — following a day of storms and flight cancellations — on a pair of giant red touring buses to hearty cheers from the crowd. Everyone knows Wrexham, but the fans seem to be with Liverpool.

How does a browser and a keeper connect?

As we file in, I have time to think about the connection between Wrexham and Firefox. The kits, which I view later in person and on the field, are quite fetching. On top of the bold, red stretchable fabric is the iconic Firefox flame. It makes me think of the heat Mozilla hopes to generate around its best-known product.

The fit, though, between a scrappy football team and a portal you use to navigate the web, seems tenuous and as ill-fitted as the rectangular pitch they’ve somehow jury-rigged onto the baseball diamond. A covered home plate, third base, and right field jut out awkwardly, and much later a fan tells me the pitch looked kind of messy and maybe not a great experience for some of the players.

It’s not that I don’t understand why Mozilla tied its sails to Wrexham. As I write this, Firefox sits, according to StatCounter, at 3.4% of the global browser market share. By contrast, Chrome has 69% and Safari almost 16%. Put another way, the browser wars are over.

It's not that Firefox is irrelevant, but it's not as relevant as it once was. There was a time, maybe 15 years ago, when I was firmly in the Firefox camp. I’d adopted it because I was working with so many developers, who were all using the leaner and (some thought) meaner platform. It was built on the premise of openness, running counter to Internet Explorer (RIP) and the fast-growing Google Chrome.

Over time, though, it started to suffer from the same resource-hogging issues as Internet Explorer. I eventually gave it up and migrated to Chrome, then had a dalliance with Microsoft Edge and have now settled on Chrome on the desktop and Safari for mobile. If I’m being honest, I stopped considering Firefox years ago.

The most obvious answer

As the team took the makeshiift pitch and the stands filled with red shirts, I waited for Mozilla’s relatively new CEO Anthony Enzor-DeMeo and CMO John Solomon to arrive so I could quiz them about product plans and Mozilla’s dive into AI.

Enzor-DeMeo joined Mozilla in 2024 after stints at Roofstock, Better, and Wayfair. In each, the admitted nerd appears to have held positions relating to products, technology, and engineering. Solomon comes to Mozilla from Apple and Beats.

When Enzor-DeMeo finally does arrive, he looks younger than I expected and has a sort of nervous energy. It’s been a busy few days with a lot of interviews, and when I try to ask about Mozilla and AI, he tells me he doesn’t want to do any more. Still, he’s open and affable, explaining that he’s a die-hard It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Rob McElhenney is a series star) fan, so much so that when someone else says they love the show, he asks them to name their favorite episode and then, without waiting for an answer, tells us his.

Still, Enzor-DeMeo was not a closet fan of the beautiful game. Instead, Solomon, who comes from the much more culturally connected Beats brand, suggested this partnership. Enzor-DeMeo watched Reynold’s Welcome to Wrexham doc and thought, “Oh, this makes a lot of sense.”

I stared at him, wondering what he saw that I didn’t. Sure, a partnership with the Red Dragons, as Wrexham are also known (I even spotted their red dragon mascot wandering the pitch and hugging fans) makes some sense. You know, fire, dragons? And this would be Wrexham’s second tech sponsorship after TikTok, which was widely featured in early seasons of Welcome to Wrexham. Mozilla confirmed that as they film the new season, we will see the Firefox brand on display in some fashion.

I looked at Enzor-DeMeo, who was still enthusiastically talking about It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and asked him, “What’s the throughline from Firefox to Wrexham?” Enzor-DeMeo smiled and quickly answered, “Underdog.”

The only thing that would’ve made the moment more perfect is if an announcer suddenly screamed, “Goooooaaaallll!” But I got it.

It's never just about money

If you’ve never seen the documentary, Wrexham AFC was the disintegrating center of a hardscrabble town that, despite over 150 years of footballing history, had been largely forgotten and fallen to the fifth tier of the English league system. Achieving Premier League status, a feat they very nearly accomplished last season, seemed impossible. Until Reynolds and McElhenney arrived.

Sure, there are people unhappy with the way celebrity and money have throw off the balance of a well-worn system, but if you watch the doc, you know that it was never enough to throw money and fame at it. It’s a very human story with equal measures of failure and success.

Firefox is surely the underdog in the browser game. Built on its own Gecko browser engine, it stands apart from Google, Apple and Microsoft, which all have a profit motive in having you use their platforms. Mozilla’s parent organization is non-profit, and although the Mozilla Corp, under which Firefox lives, is for-profit, its revenues are used to fund the non-profit effort.

Like its competitors, Firefox has AI features, letting you access the AI chatbot of your choice in a sidebar, and using AI to help you organize tabs. It does, though, seem a bit less interested in force-feeding AI.

Still, underdog status is no guarantee of a Cinderella story, and as the game drags on with countless missed shots and a handful of fouls, I wonder if Wrexham can embarrass Liverpool in front of its US fans. A moment later, Liverpool manages at roughly 60 minutes in to sail one over the outstretched arms of Wrexham substitute goalkeeper Callum Burton.

There’s no victory for the underdog this time, but it’s the pre-season, and Wrexham and its new sponsor Firefox should have many more chances to win on the pitch.

One of the architects of the modern internet, Vint Cerf, went on to become Google's chief internet evangelist from October 2005 through to July 2026, making several key predictions on the technologies he played a role in crafting. But, casting his eye back, he also once made a staggering admission about his view on privacy.

The need for privacy

Cerf was speaking during a media Q&A session at a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) workshop on the Internet of Things (IoT) when he made these off-the-cuff remarks.

There's no single official source of truth on the exact words he uttered, but The Verge reconstructed his words as best they could, with Cerf essentially highlighting that throughout the span of human existence, our desire for privacy is, relatively, a modern blip.

The comments may be perceived as a means of undermining what's become an aggressive desire for privacy, especially in the wake of revelations on government surveillance and a reliance on using personal data in the business models of companies like Google. But Cerf cast his eye much further and wider, cutting to human nature itself.

Human nature

Cerf saw people as being naturally inclined to living in much smaller communities, like villages, in which only a few thousand people would ever interact.

There, he said, everybody would know what everybody else was doing, and the postmaster would know who everyone was getting their mail from, as he put it.

Since the Industrial Revolution, there's been a massive growth in much larger population centres like cities, with the global population also massively exploding.

But there's also an argument to make that times move on, and our nature has shifted to adapt to the world we know, not the world in which our ancestors inhabited. By that nature, our need for privacy is still innate, with big tech companies like Google seeking to undermine this by exploiting our personal data for private gain.

• An amateur astronomer has discovered a meteorite crater on Google Maps
• The crater is thought to be 390 million years old
• The finding was verified when a scientists visited the site and found telltale rock formations

Sometimes, I find myself idly browsing Google Maps, marveling at the wondrous locations I can spy from a satellite’s vantage point. Sadly, though, I’ve never discovered a 390-million-year-old meteorite crater while enjoying my nerdy pastime — but one clever Canadian has just managed to do exactly that.

Speaking to The Canadian Press, amateur astronomer Joël Lapointe said he was plotting a summer hiking trip in Québec when he spied a strange ring-shaped indentation in the ground spanning some 15.5 miles across.

The circular pit fired up Lapointe’s Spidey-Senses, but he kept telling himself that it was unlikely to be an actual meteorite crater: “I told myself, ‘You haven’t discovered anything, Joël, it’s not possible, they must already know about this.’” Yet, when the formation did not appear in any of the crater databases Lapointe searched, he decided to submit his finding to the experts.

Although Lapointe spotted the geological anomaly back in 2023, his hunch wasn’t confirmed to be correct until October 2025. That’s when planetary geologist Gordon Osinski of Canada’s Western University conducted a field survey at the location, and discovered impact melt-rock and shatter cones, both rock formations caused by a meteorite impact. The findings — which dated the crater as around 390 million years old — are due to be presented at the 88th Annual Meteoritical Society Meeting in Germany in August this year.

How to find this ancient impact site

If you want to view the impact crater for yourself, it can be found at the following coordinates: 51°13'57.3"N, 64°39'53.0"W. Zoom out a little and the circular nature of the crater is clearly visible, with Lake Marsal located at its center.

Lapointe was delighted with his discovery, telling Radio Canada that: “It’s not every day that an ordinary citizen finds a 390-million-year-old crater. I encourage everyone to not ignore intuition or an observation, even if it isn’t part of your field of expertise.”

He’s not the first person to notice something strange depicted within Google Maps’ extensive imagery. Past explorers have found shipwrecks in shallow waters, and discerned commercial aircraft mid-flight, and even what appeared to be a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, although neither of those aircraft can be viewed today, as Google has updated its satellite imagery.

Still, Lapointe’s story shows that sometimes, idly scrolling around Google Maps can lead to impressive discoveries. As Osinski — who often gets erroneous reports of possible craters — put it, “It just goes to show, while 9 out of 10 or 99 out of 100 might not be [impact craters], there could always still be that one that will surprise you.”

• A leaker has published details of the upcoming Starlink Mini 2
• The satellite dish may have a built-in battery to eliminate cable clutter
• But it could come at the cost of lower internet speeds

The Starlink Mini is a small-scale satellite dish that lets you connect to the internet on your travels, but at more than two years old, it might be time for some upgrades. That seems to be exactly what’s happening according to a fresh leak, which has spilled the beans on a number of key specs regarding the upcoming Starlink Mini 2.

As posted by electronics engineer Oleg Kutkov on X, the Starlink Mini 2 has entered production and will come with some significant changes compared to its predecessor. That could make for a potentially very different experience if you’re used to what the original Starlink Mini has to offer.

According to Kutkov, the Starlink Mini 2 will clock in at a slightly smaller size, with its measurements dropping from 236 x 276mm to 225 x 273mm. If that’s correct, that will help make it more portable when you’re on the go, even if only slightly.

But the big change comes to the duty cycle, which governs how often the device’s signal is in operation. Kutkov says this cycle is dropping from the Starlink Mini’s 75% to a mere 11%, which could “result in lower uplink speeds,” the leaker believes. “This limitation is most likely driven by the terminal’s power budget,” they added.

Speaking of which, an image posted by Kutkov claimed that the Starlink Mini 2 will come with a built-in battery. The original Mini uses an external battery, but by incorporating this into the body of the Mini 2, Starlink will be able to reduce the clutter associated with its new satellite dish and enable you to use it without any attached power banks or wires.

What it means for you

The “lower uplink speeds” cited by Kutkov will likely be disappointing news to Starlink users who are thinking of upgrading to the Mini 2, especially if they need higher internet speeds for home or business use. What those new speeds could actually be is a mystery for the time being.

The switch to a built-in battery is also worth noting, and could be particularly handy if fiddling around with battery cables would be difficult for your setup. When you’re out in the wilderness struggling for a wireless signal, the last thing you want to worry about is keeping a battery connected to your satellite dish.

The direct link between the built-in battery and the lowered duty cycle, as pointed to by Kutkov, is interesting as it implies that Starlink felt it was preferable to get a cable-free experience rather than faster internet speeds. We’ll have to see how users respond to that decision.

Right now, there’s no pricing or launch date for the Mini 2, either officially from Starlink or unofficially via Kutkov’s leaks. But the claim from Kutkov that the device is “finally entering production” suggests that we might not be too far away from an announcement.

Are you a Google Chrome or an Apple Safari user? These two web browsers are the default options for Android and Apple phones, respectively, and over the years they have utterly dominated the market. In fact, according to Yaguara, over 85% of people are now using one of those two browsers.

Or maybe, like me, you’re one of those rare few people who use Ecosia, or something similar, because you’re keen to do a little bit of good every time you search. Whatever you use, the reality is that AI is taking a stranglehold of all our search experiences.

Search engines are top-loading results with AI summaries, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find real websites in the sea of AI and paid-for positions that clutter results. Whether you’re a fan of it or not, one brand that is harnessing AI to deliver a more streamlined search experience is Arc Search.

AI takes center stage

Arc Search boasts three innovative AI features that help users get the information they want quickly. My favorite, mainly because of the way it's implemented, is the ability to get a bullet-point summary of the web page you’re currently visiting.

To access the summary, you perform a pinch gesture on the screen. Arc Search takes just a few seconds to work its AI magic, and while you wait, it keeps your attention by giving you a dancing thumbnail of the webpage. Cute.

When it’s finished thinking, it presents a simple and easy-to-follow breakdown of the key information. The feature is accurate and responsive, but I’d like to see it presented closer to the web page itself rather than taking you out into a separate window.

If you’d like to use Arc Search AI to browse the web for you, then ‘Browse for me’ is worth a look. Simply type your search text, select ‘Browse for me ’, and wait for the AI response to be generated. It’s simple to use, and I was glad to see that sources and web links were clearly provided and linked to the relevant AI-generated text.

Beyond these features, you can use Arc Search like any AI engine and ask it specific questions. An extension to this is the ability to lift your phone to your ear and have a conversation with the AI.

A lighter browsing experience

Along with offering a new, AI-centric way to interact with the web, Arc Search takes a drastic approach to de-cluttering the browsing experience. The primary way it does this is with a built-in ad blocker that blocks ads, trackers, pop-ups, and cookie banners. It’s an effective way to limit the often bombarding nature of online ads.

To complement the ad block, Arc Search also features a reader mode that strips away any unnecessary page information, converts all text to white, and places it on a black background. It’s a nice way to engage with web pages and a potential solution for anyone with sensory challenges.

Another feature I tried was the translate feature, although it’s not a native Arc Search feature. In fact, it uses Google Translate to power the translation. This didn’t seem to matter, though, as the implementation made it feel like a native part of the app experience.

Other features include auto-archiving old tabs, the syncing of passwords across iCloud Keychain, and an incognito mode. It’s also possible to use Arc Search as a traditional web browser, although Arc Search then simply becomes a container for a third-party browser such as Chrome, Bing, or DuckDuckGo.

As you’d expect with most modern tools, Arc Search syncs tabs across all different platforms, including Mac, Windows, and iOS. This means you can start a search journey on your phone before work and pick it up again on your laptop once you arrive in the office. All you have to do is create an Arc account and make sure you’re signed in on all accounts.

AI search, but at what cost?

Arc Search is a solid app that I'm sure will only rise in popularity as more people hear about it. It appeals to our need for speed and convenience, but we should always ask at what cost. For now, I'll continue using Ecosia and prioritizing 'real' results while keeping an eye on whether Arc Search and others can create a more hybrid experience that offers the best of both worlds.

Download Arc Search on iOS and Android.

• A report commissioned by Mozilla accuses Microsoft of using 'harmful design' to undermine browser choice in Windows 11
• That allegedly includes trick wording, nagging, preselection, and generally dubious tactics to push Edge over other browsers
• The report does observe the situation is better in the European Economic Area, due to regulations there, and notes that "regulatory action works", urging authorities elsewhere to take a similar stand

Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has published another report that claims Microsoft isn't maintaining a suitably level playing field for web browsers on Windows, and is unfairly pushing users towards Edge.

As Mozilla makes clear, it published the first 'Over the Edge' report – about 'How Microsoft's design tactics compromise free browser choice' – two years back, and the follow-up has just arrived (as spotted by Eteknix).

It's not actually written by Mozilla, I should note, but two independent researchers commissioned by the Firefox maker (Harry Brignull and Cennydd Bowles, the same pair who wrote the first article). It takes in user opinions from the US, UK, India and Germany regarding "key browser-choice journeys" on Windows 11 and 10.

In a nutshell, they conclude that: "Microsoft continues to deploy harmful design to undermine people's browser choice."

That specifically involves, according to the report: "Trick wording, obstruction, visual interference, preselection, nagging, and forced action — at almost every step of the user journey."

Some of the worst excesses highlighted are the pop-up banner that Edge users see when they go to the Chrome download page (trying to get them to stick with the Microsoft browser, which, it says, has the same tech as Chrome but with the "added trust of Microsoft"), and nagging within Windows around using Edge as the default browser in one way or another.

The report also notes how Edge is pre-pinned to the Windows taskbar, and how a migration from Windows 10 to Windows 11 resets Edge as the default browser, overriding any previous choice. There are a lot of accusations around trick wording, too, as well as an observation that Microsoft is using Copilot (AI) to open links in Edge rather than your default browser.

On the topic of AI, the report notes: "The researchers suggest that a sequence of seemingly minor consent requests across Windows and Edge may combine into a 'pipeline' funneling browsing data — potentially including data originating in rival browsers — into Microsoft's advertising and personalization systems."

It's notable that Germany — included as a representative country within the European Economic Area (EEA), which has different regulatory requirements Microsoft must adhere to — escapes quite a few of these excesses (the Chrome download nonsense included).

Despite that, the researchers argue that their broad conclusion that "Microsoft does not allow people to download and install an alternative browser, to set it as their default, or to continue using it as their default, without harmful interference" is, they claim, true "across every region tested".

Analysis: a call to regulate

Yes, this is a report commissioned by a browser rival, but these findings aren't at all surprising in the main, and it's long been known that Microsoft overzealously promotes Edge in Windows 11, trying various dubious shenanigans to get the browser in play as the report observes. Of course, on the flipside Google pulls similar stunts with Chrome.

Still, that's not an excuse, and no browser should be actively attempting to dissuade people from downloading another rival browser. What Mozilla is also pointing out, of course, is that Microsoft is in a particular position of power here, given that it owns the world's primary desktop OS, and it's leveraging that platform in various ways to push adoption of Edge.

Whether that's worked for Microsoft, or not — spoiler alert, it hasn't — is irrelevant, as this behavior obviously isn't ethical or fair, and while it may not have dented Chrome's reign as the top browser, it may have damaged smaller rivals like Firefox.

While the EEA may have a considerably better balance of browser equality within Windows, the report notes that this is, of course, because regulations have forced Microsoft's hand. Arguably, this is another negative in that it shows Microsoft only respects user choice in terms of browsers when it's forced to do so.

Mozilla finishes with the following paragraph that sums everything up nicely: "We again urge Microsoft to abandon these harmful patterns worldwide. And we urge regulators in the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, India, and beyond to consider this report as evidence that regulatory action works — there is much still to do."

So, if Microsoft really wants to talk about "added trust", how about some action on some of these sticking points? Or is this just a case of having to be more trustworthy than Google?

Whether rain or shine, weekday or weekend, my morning starts with a scroll.

It’s one of my most enduring habits. I’ll start by checking the time, before allowing myself a few texts or emails in the name of ‘productivity’, and before long, I’m lying there watching people throwing bowling balls at TVs or reading ragebait in the comments section.

I’ve long suspected that this isn’t the optimal way to start the day, but it was only after a recent moment of mid-scroll lucidity that I began to wonder why I reach for my phone first thing in the morning.

As it happens, research on early-morning phone habits suggests that it’s not just me diving into social media as soon as the alarm goes off.

The Independent reports that 81% of Brits reach for their phone as soon as they wake up, while a 2025 YouGov report found that the majority of US adults under 30 often use their phone right before sleeping and right after waking up.

These figures could suggest that most of us shared a mental tendency to pick up the phone right after waking up, but without additional context, they can’t tell the whole story.

So, to find out more about why I and so many others scroll first thing in the morning, I spoke to two psychology experts to connect the dots between ancient human behaviour and the supercomputers we keep in our pockets, and indeed our beds.

Information vs stimulation

“To boil it down as simply as possible, it’s a combination of our natural dopamine reward system and the fact that we are communal people,” says psychotherapist and addiction specialist John Puls.

Puls tells me that long-standing psychological drivers are pushing us to use our devices in the mornings, where in the past we might’ve sought different kinds of connection

“We are pleasure-seeking people, and one of the ways we do that is through engagement with our smartphones, particularly social media,” he explains, “and we want to know what’s going on in the world.”

Puls continues: “Previously, in closer communities with less technology, it wouldn’t be uncommon to just spend some time with your neighbours or your family in the morning. In the absence of that, people are looking for immediate connection, and the easiest way to do that is through the smartphone. You have to take into account the changes that have come with the smartphone, but these are natural impulses that social media is fulfilling.”

For clinical psychologist Dr. Ari Lakritz, the smartphone and all the news it connects us to fulfil an evolutionary impulse to detect threats: “The brain is somewhat hardwired to look for pertinent information, especially the more threatening information. The part of the brain that deals with that is called the amygdala — it’s one of the most ancient parts of the brain, one that’s most responsible for the fear response.”

“News sites, with their slant towards negative news, are hacking into an inborn part of ourselves,” he adds, “and when you’re looking at your phone as the first thing you’re doing, it may not be all that different from one of our ancestors scanning the horizon for threats.”

“We develop very early on to be aware of possible threats to ourselves, and to scan the environment for those [threats],” Lakritz continues, adding that the availability of information that may not be relevant to phone and social platform users could be increasing stress levels: “The existence of something we feel is negative or threatening in a far off country has no direct relevance to us, but we do find ourselves psychologically pulled to that.”

“It’s really assaulting people with a great deal of information that is not directly relevant to them, and definitely doing more harm than good… there’s this whole other aspect of life, which is positive news and uplifting stories that people are either not drawn to or simply not sent as much.”

Social media algorithms are blackboxed — meaning users aren’t privy to the decisions and equations that decide the content they see. With that said, it’s generally accepted that algorithms are designed to maximize engagement of any kind, and, as The Conversation reports, anger spreads more quickly through social media networks than other emotions.

As John Puls notes, this has a physical effect as well as an emotional one: “When you immediately go into your smartphone [in the morning] and start doomscrolling, so to speak, you’re releasing cortisol, a stress hormone, and your brain is getting overstimulated.”

“We’re basically in the middle of a giant experiment,” Puls continues, “our brains were not necessarily meant to be this stimulated first thing in the morning and then consistently throughout the day. Where it becomes problematic is with the risk of overstimulation — there’s a risk of constant pleasure-seeking that dulls the senses.”

Effects of the morning scroll

According to Dr. Ari Lakritz, beginning the day with an intake of highly charged, negative information can have major effects on one’s mood and focus. He describes social media as “unlimited scrolling” of “dramatic news that can get our fight or flight response very worked up.”

“It’s really not good,” he explains, “and it very much sets the tone of one’s cognitive framing. It’s very fast, intense stimulation, whether that’s YouTube Shorts, TikTok style videos, or even just Reddit-style scrolling through very short, snappy comments or news stories.”

Lakritz continues: “If my baseline is very fast, short, intense bursts of entertainment, when confronted with something that takes more focus or deeper thinking it’ll be hard to move on from that set point.”

When asked whether early morning phone use is always problematic, Dr. Lakritz makes few exceptions: “Aside from more extreme circumstances, it’s hard to think of a good advantage one is getting with the phone right there that couldn’t be gotten in a non-technological way.”

John Puls tells me that he’s noticed that several of his clients experience discomfort when away from their phones for even short periods of time: “It almost becomes an emotional support phone — if anything happens in our life, an interpersonal problem, a problem with our relationship, we could experience that discomfort until we scroll on Instagram.”

And for young people, even higher stakes could influence phone use from dawn till dusk.

‘If they don’t exist online, they don’t exist socially’

It’s worth noting at this point that I interviewed John Puls and Dr. Ari Lakritz separately, and without either knowing of the other’s involvement in this article. With that said, both professionals agreed that early morning phone use has a tighter hold — and greater impact — on young people.

“The teens that I’m working with that struggle with this, I have them check their screen time, and on average it’s between 14 and 15 hours,” says Puls, “that’s the majority of time that they’re awake.”

“Naturally, what comes with that is being pretty disconnected from people in real life [...] so there’s this pressure to constantly be online. Teens want to psychologically individuate from their families and feel part of a community, particularly with their friends. So they often feel the pressure that they can’t be part of that unless they’re on their phones.”

“For younger people, they feel that if they don’t exist online, they don’t exist socially.”

Dr. Ari Lakritz says that phone use in general has a huge impact on young people’s psychological growth: “It touches child development in a profound way. It’s a huge compound for something like ADHD, and makes assessment of ADHD very complicated — you have to piece apart how much of this is inattention issues, or developmental, and how much is very, very high exposure to electronic entertainment.”

Taking back time

Olivia Yokubonis, known online as Olivia Unplugged, is a digital wellness strategist for Opal, one of the best-known screen time limiter apps. She tells me that she “meets people where they are” with a message of digital balance and wellbeing, sharing tips and tricks to a combined social media audience of 600,000 followers.

"I was an Opal user before I even started working here,” Yokubonis explains, “the goal is to help people stop feeling like they’re the victim of their phones, and actually feel like they’re in control again.”

“I’m not anti-technology, I’m pro agency,” she adds, “you have to focus on awareness. I’m a big advocate of the idea that we can’t change what we don’t notice. And the morning scroll is very often unconscious.”

At the time of writing, Opal boasts more than a million daily users, and in 2026 announced that the app had saved its user base a total of 500 million hours — but Yokubonis’ strategies go further than just using the app: “Something I’ve implemented with my family is no-phone zones. The bedroom is one of those places — we put our phones in the other room, our alarms go off, and we have to get up and go get it.”

She adds: “Digital wellness means your attention is not constantly being fragmented, that you can think in complete thoughts and sentences, and that you don’t lose hours of your day, especially the first few hours of the day, without realising it [...] We need the ability to choose to go on a social media app rather than have it be a habit, or something that’s just automatically happening because my nervous system is reaching for something.”

“We have a finite amount of willpower, and these apps have an unlimited amount of resources. They are designed to use up that willpower.”

On a similar note, Dr Ari Lakritz explains that even a marginal reduction in screen time can make a big difference: “Check your screen time, add up how much you do per week, and try to cut it down by 10%. If it’s 60 hours a week, just cut off six, see what you can do. You don’t have to be a digital hermit to improve.”

Though high screen time correlates to higher revenues for many phone makers and mobile software developers, a rising tide of social media legislation and backlash against big tech could push some brands to recognise its problematic potential.

Indeed, some smartphone manufacturers are beginning to acknowledge the issue of excessive phone use, and are developing software-based features to help users curb their screen time.

Nothing, for instance, believes its Glyph Matrix and Essential Space features will ‘help you be more human’, while Google's upcoming Pause Point tool will redirect you away from social media apps towards more meaningful forms of smartphone engagement. Apple, too, recently announced a slew of wellbeing-focused upgrades for its Screen Time feature in iOS 27.

Do you remember the metaverse? If you don’t, don’t worry. In 2026, four years into the AI revolution that’s changing the world forever, you could easily be forgiven for thinking it was a strange fever dream you had back in 2021. You might even have odd memories of seeing a blocky version of Mark Zuckerberg floating about in a Minecraft-inspired hellscape, conducting meetings with people who could walk with no legs, while the real Mark Zuckerberg was looking at the whole thing through VR goggles. At least, that’s my memory of it.

I could be suffering from the Mandela effect, but I distinctly remember something off about the legs. They fixed that in a later version, but that’s my overriding memory — no legs. Oh, and Mark Zuckerberg assuring us that this was the future. He’d spent tens of billions of dollars on it, even changing the company name from Facebook to Meta, just to let us know he was really serious about the metaverse. Even if the legs didn’t work.

The problem was, it looked laughable. While everything in the technology world to do with games and special effects was moving in the direction of hyper-realism, the metaverse was moving in the opposite direction, towards the sort of blocky graphics that small children enjoy. But even that didn’t really answer the most basic question about the metaverse. Why? What possible advantage was there for us all to meet in a VR space where clunky avatars of ourselves could interact… badly?

Then AI happened and Meta abruptly forgot about the metaverse and pivoted towards the mission of putting personal superintelligence in all our hands instead, which sounds as terrifying and dangerous as it actually is, but we are where we are. At least when Zuckerberg was obsessed with the metaverse, we could ignore him. It existed somewhere “over there”, in Meta-land, where we could let him get on with it. Now he’s right up in our business again.

The rise of a bad idea

I’ve always been fascinated by how Zuckerberg got into the metaverse and why he became so obsessed with it. The origins of the metaverse go way back. In March 2014, Facebook bought Oculus, the VR company, for about $2 billion. This was where his passion for VR started. Think of it as the seed, not the full obsession.

By July 2021, Zuckerberg gave a long interview to Casey Newton at The Verge about Facebook becoming a “metaverse company” and described it as an “embodied internet”. Then, on October 28, 2021, his obsession became the company identity. Zuckerberg announced that Facebook the company was becoming Meta at Connect 2021, saying the new company brand would focus on bringing the metaverse to life.

I can see the logic. As a business strategy, that made sense. As a product ordinary people were expected to use, it was much harder to understand. Zuckerberg did not want Meta/Facebook to be trapped inside someone else’s platform again. Facebook had won on social, but on mobile it remained dependent on Apple and Google for distribution, privacy rules, app-store policies and hardware. The metaverse looked like a chance to own the next operating system of social life: hardware, avatars, identity, payments, meetings, gaming, work, commerce — the whole stack. In his 2021 founder’s letter, he framed the metaverse as the “next chapter of the internet” and said Meta would become “metaverse-first, not Facebook-first.”

Facebook had obviously had its problems — it was scandal-ridden. It had let advertisers target vulnerable teenagers, helped fake news spread, and enabled the spread of hate speech linked to atrocities in Myanmar. Perhaps Zuckerberg was looking for a way out of Facebook, and the metaverse offered that.

What I still didn’t understand was why he didn’t see what the rest of us saw — that it looked terrible and offered no real benefit to users. Then I read Sarah Wynn-Williams’ tell-all book about Facebook, Careless People, and it all started to make sense.

To say the book made my jaw hit the floor on several occasions would be an understatement. It’s an absolute page-turner, and your reactions grow from mild amusement to shock, then disbelief, then absolute outrage the further through the book you get. I’m aware of the criticisms of Wynn-Williams: that it is a book written by a disgruntled employee, and that she dodges a lot of personal responsibility for her part in the various misdeeds of the company. However, in another perfect example of the Streisand effect, the fact that Meta obtained a legal order in the United States to prevent her from saying anything negative about the company — at all — made me want to pick it up, and I’m glad I did.

Because now I get it — Zuckerberg seems to have spent years in an environment where too few people were willing to tell him when his ideas weren’t good. According to Wynn-Williams, he was surrounded by sycophants. When he had bad ideas, like the ill-fated Internet.org, he wouldn’t let them go and persisted with them, even when they were obviously going to fail. The people around him enabled him because he was simply too powerful. They even let him win at the board games he liked to play with them at his house or on his jet, and — crucially — he didn’t notice that they were letting him win. I can imagine that in that environment, nobody inside Meta would want to tell Zuckerberg that his metaverse was the equivalent of the emperor’s new clothes, especially if they wouldn’t even risk beating him at Settlers of Catan.

Wynn-Williams only mentions the metaverse in her epilogue. It happened after she was brutally fired from Facebook. Perhaps selfishly, I wish she’d been there for the metaverse period, because I would love to read firsthand accounts of how and why Zuckerberg persisted with such an obviously bad idea.

The fall of the metaverse

Maybe I’m being too harsh on Zuckerberg. The metaverse graphics did get better over time and Apple ventured slightly into the same territory with its Apple Vision Pro, even after the metaverse had turned into a smoldering wasteland. The fact is, people don’t enjoy wearing VR goggles for extended periods of time, and for normal people, VR lacks that one killer app. There doesn’t seem to be anything you can do in a VR space that you can’t do elsewhere much more easily.

The metaverse didn’t really die with a bang, but with a whimper. It faded through layoffs, spending cuts and the AI pivot. If I had to put a date on it, I’d say early 2023 was when Meta’s narrative moved on. In February and March 2023, Zuckerberg started talking about Meta’s “year of efficiency” and announced huge layoffs and cost-cutting. OpenAI had launched ChatGPT in November 2022, and by early 2023, generative AI had swallowed the oxygen that ideas like the metaverse need to survive. Every tech company was talking about AI now, not virtual offices and avatar legs.

The metaverse was over. We all forgot about it and moved on.

I’m glad I read Wynn-Williams’ book, because now I can understand how Facebook let the metaverse happen. And if there’s one thing I learned from reading it, it’s that money and power can bring you a lot of things, but common sense requires neither.

• Samsung Messages has been killed off to make room for Google Messages
• Right now it's just affecting US users, but a wider shutdown is likely to happen
• We recommend making Google Messages your default SMS service

After months of waiting, the dreaded day for Android users arrived: Samsung Messages has finally been shut down for good as of July 6.

The Korean tech company announced its decision to axe its messaging service for Galaxy Phones and tablets in April, with Google Messages taking over as the new default communication platform for devices released in 2022 and onwards.

Samsung stopped installing its flagship messaging platform on devices in 2024, so if you’re using the Galaxy S26 Ultra, for example, Google Messages will already be installed.

So what happens now?

At the moment, Samsung Messages’ demise is only impacting users in the US, according to recent reports. According to SamMobile, it may still work outside the US on devices the app was pre-installed on, but it’s likely that a wider shutdown will follow suit in other countries later — it’s been removed from the Galaxy Store and Google Play Store, and UK users on Reddit are reporting its replacement with Google Messages.

That said, if your device is running Android 11 or lower, the shutdown won’t affect you, according to Forbes. However, the outlet notes that those on a more recent version should switch to Google Messages.

Samsung Messages’ shutdown has been a long process, and though users have been anticipating the move for some time, it doesn’t mean that they’re ready to bid farewell to the app just yet.

Across the board of reactions on Reddit, the general consensus is that Samsung Messages will be missed. “If I wanted to use Google’s POS services I would’ve bought a pixel,” one user explains, but from Samsung’s perspective, it’s all about giving users a messaging experience enriched with handy features.

The company says that the switch to Google Messages will help bring features to Samsung Galaxy devices to align with modern messaging tools used in third-party apps such as WhatsApp. This includes end-to-end encryption, AI tools, and RCS messages, which Google Messages now allows to be sent between iOS and Android devices.

Still haven’t made the switch to Google Messages? We’d recommend doing this sooner rather than later, and it’s quite a straightforward process.

Once you’ve uninstalled Samsung Messages and downloaded the Google Messages app, launch it and a pop-up reading ‘Set default SMS app’ will appear on your device. Tap this, select Google Messages from the options, then tap ‘Set as default’. You can add Google Messages to your Home screen by tapping and holding the app and selecting ‘Add to Home’.

• Merlin Bird ID is a go-to app for bird identification, with more than 40 million downloads
• It can identify over 2,000 species of birds by sound recognition
• A future update will share sound recordings with eBird, a huge biodiversity database

If you're into birdwatching, you'll need no introduction to the popular Merlin Bird ID app, by Cornell Lab of Ornithology. With over 40 million downloads worldwide, and over two million monthly users in the UK alone, Merlin is the go-to app for bird identification for many.

I'm in my forties, and birding has become one of my recent new hobbies, after years of photographing birds while testing cameras and lenses. And while I'm learning, I simply can't identify all the birds I see or hear, especially in my local nature reserve, which is a migration route for varied and sometimes rare birdlife throughout the year, and a popular birding spot.

The app helps me to identify the birds I'm unfamiliar with by their call / song, using machine learning sound recognition, and gives me lightning-fast and almost always reliable results, with an image for each identified bird. It's super helpful.

I can also feed the app one of my photos for identification, such as those taken during a recent outing with the Sony 400-800mm lens, with the results based on location data and other information from a database of more than 2,000 bird species.

So I was delighted to hear that the app — which is free for iOS and Android, with downloadable offline bird packs by location including US, Canada and Europe — is getting an update which will help users like me give something back: integration with Cornell's own eBird database, as reported by the Guardian.

A new wave of citizen scientists

eBird is a huge citizen-science biodiversity database, with over two billion recordings logged worldwide since its 2002 launch. And it's set for an influx of new data — the Merlin Bird ID app update will in future allow bird identifications to automatically flow directly into the eBird database.

Jessie Barry, of the Merlin project, told the Guardian, "Upcoming feature developments will make an even better link to the eBird systems so that we can use the data from what users ‘hear’ with Merlin to monitor bird populations."

Bird conservation is a hot topic, what with bird numbers declining. The UK, for example, has 70 million fewer birds than it did 50 years ago. So here's the good part: these records could provide vital information to conversation efforts for at-risk birdlife around the world.

Barry added: “This data helps create tools that can be used to further conservation, inspire support and inform ecological management strategies.”

Notwithstanding the cautionary note of the app's outright accuracy, with concern from some about it occasionally misidentifying birds, the Merlin Bird ID app update could be a huge boost for bird conservation efforts.

Being directly connected to the go-to bird identification app, eBird stands to receive more data from millions of users, who don't need to make any special effort to take part; they just need to carry on using the app as before to record and identify birdsong.

I love the idea that I will be one of a new wave of citizen scientists across the world, with the recordings I make playing a small part in monitoring bird populations. And the surge in recording data will likely further improve the app's performance.

Right, I'm off out with my phone, I hear the birds calling...

• Google Maps may soon let you order food inside the app
• It could work as an extension of the Ask Maps feature
• Right now it's not clear how it would rival apps like Uber Eats

Google Maps may soon offer you the option of ordering food from a restaurant ready to pick up, as well as directing you to that restaurant on the map, according to hidden code found inside the latest version of Google Maps for Android.

The code was found by the team at Android Authority, and includes text strings such as "ask Maps to order food", "say what you're craving", and "Maps will order for you — even while you're on the go".

This feature isn't live yet, so it's difficult to say exactly how it would work, but it certainly looks as though you would be able to quickly request something on the menu at a restaurant and then pick it up yourself.

Presumably there might be the option to dine in, or to have your food delivered to you if you weren't traveling — so maybe this will work in partnership with apps such as DoorDash and Uber Eats rather than replacing them.

AI working for you

The 'Ask Maps' feature referred to in the code leak is the recently introduced Gemini-powered tool that lets you have a natural conversation with Google Maps about anything you've found or are looking for.

It appears that this same part of the interface is where the food ordering will be placed as well, using Gemini's agentic capabilities to take action for you — though as Android Authority points out, it's not clear just how much autonomy the AI would have.

It might even be restricted to certain phones, like the Magic Cue feature that's currently exclusive to the Pixel 10 series. However, it seems more likely that Google would want to make this as widely available as possible.

We'll have to wait and see how this works, if it does make it to the app at all. The next big announcements from Google should come along with the Pixel 11 launch, which is expected sometime in August.

• There are reports of a WhatsApp username impersonation problems
• WhatsApp and Meta say popular names are reserved
• India wants to see the rollout of username reservations paused

WhatsApp is launching a username feature later this year, to enable you to add contacts without revealing your phone number — but while handle reservations have gone live for many users, there are reports that username impersonation is already an issue.

As per testing done by TechCrunch, usernames very similar to Indian politicians, celebrities, business figures, and public institutions are available. They include 'indiamodi' (for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi) and 'shahrukh.actor' for Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan.

This focus on India is because authorities in the country have already asked WhatsApp to put a pause on username reservations. As per the BBC, the Indian government suggests that WhatsApp usernames could "increase cybercrimes" such as online fraud and phishing scams — already big concerns in the country.

The thinking is that usernames could allow scammers to operate without revealing their numbers (which may get picked up in blacklists). If those scammers are also impersonating well-known figures, then the problems are compounded.

Get in line

WhatsApp has seen this coming. When announcing the feature, it said that handles for well-known individuals would be reserved for those people — including usernames for politicians, VIPs, and other celebrities.

"People are making false claims about reserving popular or well-known usernames," says WhatsApp. "This isn't true, only the legitimate account owners are able to reserve well-known public-figure names." The same line was repeated by WhatsApp owner Meta when contacted by TechCrunch.

However, it's not clear how many variations of famous names and identities are covered by this block. It seems that with enough imagination, working alternatives can be found — though of course once you start dropping in different spellings, numbers, and extra words, the username impersonation becomes less convincing.

It's a challenge that all social platforms have to deal with, including the Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook. With WhatsApp though, the connection is more direct and the potential scams are more plausible — which may affect the feature's rollout worldwide.