Apple wants to pay publishers per use, not per year, to give Siri the news
Apple wants to pay publishers per use, not per year, to give Siri the news

Alexandra Bruell reported the talks for the Wall Street Journal on 12 August, citing people familiar with the matter. Apple has approached publishers over recent months. The content would give Siri AI access to current news and information, the kind th…

Airbnb’s CEO says nobody builds AI for normal people. He is on Y Combinator’s board
Airbnb’s CEO says nobody builds AI for normal people. He is on Y Combinator’s board

The Airbnb chief executive made the argument on the Yahoo Finance podcast Power Players with Brian Sozzi this week. His diagnosis has two parts. “I think part of it’s a narrative issue that we’re not talking about AI correctly,” he said. The second par…

Microsoft is killing its AI mascot, ten months after building it
Microsoft is killing its AI mascot, ten months after building it

The cull lands on Tuesday. Group Chat, Podcasts, Copilot Labs and consumer Deep Research all retire that day, according to Microsoft’s own support page. Mico goes at the same time, out of the voice experience and into Learn Live as a tutor. The whole t…

‘That is not acceptable’: Judge orders Google to make rival app store installs easier
‘That is not acceptable’: Judge orders Google to make rival app store installs easier

One month after Epic Games and Google seemingly stopped fighting over the future of Android app distribution, they were back in a San Francisco courtroom today – where Judge James Donato just ordered Google to make it easier to install rival app stores on Android. It’s been nearly three years since a jury unanimously decided […]

X open sources its ranking algorithm, letting users see if they’ve been ‘shadowbanned’

X is expanding the open source code behind its ‘For You’ feed and launching new transparency tools that show users when its ranking systems have affected their accounts or posts.

Instagram introduces a redesigned wordmark

The social media giant says it was time for a sharper and more modern look after a decade.

Microsoft kills off unsuccessful AI features while merging its separate Copilot apps

Microsoft is simplifying Copilot by combining its consumer and business apps, and dropping AI-generated podcasts, Group Chats, Deep Research, and its Mico character.

Cloudflare and Trail of Bits now audit who Signal says you are talking to
Cloudflare and Trail of Bits now audit who Signal says you are talking to

Here is the problem, and it is easier to state than most people expect. End-to-end encryption scrambles a message so only the recipient can read it. That works perfectly, provided you were handed the recipient’s real key. The app fetches that key from …

Apple in talks to pay publishers to provide Siri with current news: report

The tech giant has considered a nine-figure budget for the payments, according to the WSJ.

A billion-dollar game deleted a character in 8 days. Then it had the worst month of its life
A billion-dollar game deleted a character in 8 days. Then it had the worst month of its life

In June, Love and Deepspace took about $38m across the App Store and Google Play. In July it took just over $10m, mobilegamer.biz reported this week, citing Sensor Tower. The game slid to 16th in the monthly gacha rankings, having never before dropped …