Smart home device maker Futurehome is forcing its customers’ hands by suddenly requiring a subscription for basic functionality of its products. Launched in 2016, Futurehome’s Smarthub is marketed as a central hub for controlling Internet-connected devices in smart homes. For years, the Norwegian company sold its products, which also include smart thermostats, smart lighting, and smart fire and carbon monoxide alarms, for a one-time fee that included access to its…

Popular open source 3D modeling tool Blender’s social media channels and subreddit have regularly seen people asking for a tablet version for years now. And according to a blog post by Dalai Felinto from the Blender team, the developers of the application have now committed to build just that. “The idea is to bring the full power of Blender to these devices,” the blog post explains. “This requires adapting to…

Maybe they should change the button to say, “I am a robot”? On Friday, OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Agent, which can perform multistep tasks for users, proved it can pass through one of the Internet’s most common security checkpoints by clicking Cloudflare’s anti-bot verification—the same checkbox that’s supposed to keep automated programs like itself at bay. ChatGPT Agent is a feature that allows OpenAI’s AI assistant to control its own web…

Russia’s biggest airline cancelled dozens of flights on Monday following a failure of the state-owned company’s IT systems and, according to a Russian lawmaker and pro-Ukrainian hackers, was the result of a cyberattack, it was widely reported. The airline, Aeroflot, said it cancelled about 40 flights following a “technical failure.” An online departure board for Sheremetyevo airport showed dozens of others were delayed. The cancellations and delays hobbled traffic throughout…

Hot on the heels of a major ransomware group being taken down through an international law enforcement operation comes a new development that highlights the whack-a-mole nature of such actions: A new group, likely comprised of some of the same members, has already taken its place. The new group calls itself Chaos, in recognition of the .chaos name extension its ransomware stamps on files it has encrypted and the “readme.chaos[.]txt”…

A firmware update has killed key functionality for Echelon smart home gym equipment that isn’t connected to the Internet. As explained in a Tuesday blog post by Roberto Viola, who develops the “QZ (qdomyos-zwift)” app that connects Echelon machines to third-party fitness platforms, like Peloton, Strava, and Apple HealthKit, the firmware update forces Echelon machines to connect to Echelon’s servers in order to work properly. A user online reported that…

On Thursday, The Verge reported that OpenAI is preparing to launch GPT-5 as early as August, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. The report comes five months after CEO Sam Altman first laid out a roadmap for the next-generation AI model that would unify the company’s various AI capabilities. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed in a post on X last week that the company plans to release GPT-5…

New types of AI coding assistants promise to let anyone build software by typing commands in plain English. But when these tools generate incorrect internal representations of what’s happening on your computer, the results can be catastrophic. Two recent incidents involving AI coding assistants put a spotlight on risks in the emerging field of “vibe coding“—using natural language to generate and execute code through AI models without paying close attention…

Search is changing at a breakneck pace, with Google rolling out new AI features so quickly it can be hard to keep up. So far, these AI implementations are being offered in addition to the traditional search experience. However, Google is now offering a sneak peek at how it may use AI to change the good old-fashioned list of blue links. The company says its new Web Guide feature is…

At least $1 billion worth of Nvidia’s advanced artificial intelligence processors were shipped to China in the three months after Donald Trump tightened chip export controls, exposing the limits of Washington’s efforts to restrain Beijing’s high-tech ambitions. A Financial Times analysis of dozens of sales contracts, company filings, and multiple people with direct knowledge of the deals reveals that Nvidia’s B200 has become the most sought-after—and widely available—chip in a rampant…