Google’s current mission is to weave generative AI into as many products as it can, getting everyone accustomed to, and maybe even dependent on, working with confabulatory robots. That means it needs to feed the bots a lot of your data, and that’s getting easier with the company’s new Private AI Compute. Google claims its new secure cloud environment will power better AI experiences without sacrificing your privacy. The pitch…

Over the past year, scammers have ramped up a new way to infect the computers of unsuspecting people. The increasingly common method, which many potential targets have yet to learn of, is quick, bypasses most endpoint protections, and works against both macOS and Windows users. ClickFix often starts with an email sent from a hotel that the target has a pending registration with and references the correct registration information. In…

When engineers build AI language models like GPT-5 from training data, at least two major processing features emerge: memorization (reciting exact text they’ve seen before, like famous quotes or passages from books) and reasoning (solving new problems using general principles). New research from AI startup Goodfire.ai provides the first potentially clear evidence that these different functions actually work through completely separate neural pathways in the model’s architecture. The researchers discovered…

The heads of Apple TV have “no plans” to bring ads to the streaming service, balking, at least for now, at a strategy that has driven success for Apple’s streaming rivals. In its November 2025 issue, British movie magazine Screen International asked Eddy Cue, senior vice president of Apple Services, if there are plans to launch an ad-based subscription tier for Apple TV. Cue responded: Nothing at this time. ……

The next time you encounter an unusually polite reply on social media, you might want to check twice. It could be an AI model trying (and failing) to blend in with the crowd. On Wednesday, researchers from the University of Zurich, University of Amsterdam, Duke University, and New York University released a study revealing that AI models remain easily distinguishable from humans in social media conversations, with overly friendly emotional…

Another day, another malware attack on smartphones. Researchers at Unit 42, the threat intelligence arm of Palo Alto Networks, have revealed a sophisticated spyware known as “Landfall” targeting Samsung Galaxy phones. The researchers say this campaign leveraged a zero-day exploit in Samsung Android software to steal a raft of personal data, and it was active for almost a year. Thankfully, the underlying vulnerability has now been patched, and the attacks…

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has a ‘for sale’ sign up. And that could mean big changes for subscribers to the company’s most popular streaming service, HBO Max. After receiving unsolicited acquisition offers, WBD recently declared itself open to “strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value.” WBD drew new attention by being open to selling its streaming business (WBD is also still open to moving forward with previously shared plans to split…

One of the world’s most ruthless and advanced hacking groups, the Russian state-controlled Sandworm, launched a series of destructive cyberattacks in the country’s ongoing war against neighboring Ukraine, researchers reported Thursday. In April, the group targeted a Ukrainian university with two wipers, a form of malware that aims to permanently destroy sensitive data and often the infrastructure storing it. One wiper, tracked under the name Sting, targeted fleets of Windows…

Google has announced new features in the popular Google Finance platform, and it leans heavily on Google’s tried-and-true strategy of more AI in more places. This builds on Google’s last Finance update, which added a Gemini-based chatbot. Now, Google is adding Gemini Deep Research to the site, which will allow users to ask much more complex questions. You can also ask questions about the future, backed by new betting market…

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Google is planning to build a large AI data center on Christmas Island, a 52-square-mile Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, following a cloud computing deal with Australia’s military. The previously undisclosed project will reportedly position advanced AI infrastructure a mere 220 miles south of Indonesia at a location military strategists consider critical for monitoring Chinese naval activity. Aside from its strategic military position, the…