Timef 04/17/2025

Activists affiliated with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are selling a "measles treatment and prevention protocol" for hundreds of dollars, including supplements supposedly formulated by AI.

Companies around America have started cutting DEI programs and eliminating DEI commitments from public documents in response to legal and political threats from the Trump administration. Just a few weeks ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi instructed the Department of Justice to “investigate, eliminate, and penalize,” DEI programs deemed illegal in private sector companies that receive […]

Stargate, a $500 billion project headed up by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank to build AI data centers and other AI infrastructure in the U.S., is considering investments in the U.K. and elsewhere overseas, according to a Financial Times report.  While Stargate was initially launched as a way to boost U.S. AI infrastructure, the project is […]

Whether you want to sleep through the party or rock out (safely) to your favorite band, these will help block out the noise.

There’s a somewhat concerning new trend going viral: people are using ChatGPT to figure out the location shown in pictures. This week, OpenAI released its newest AI models, o3 and o4-mini, both of which can uniquely “reason” through uploaded images. In practice, the models can crop, rotate and zoom in on photos — even blurry […]

A federal judge has found that Google has violated antitrust laws by “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in the advertising technology market, rounding out a two-year saga after the U.S. and eight states filed its initial complaints against the Alphabet-owned company. The court will set a briefing schedule and hearing date to determine appropriate […]

Want to tap into the energy of 1,000+ startup founders, investors, and tech leaders descending on Boston for TechCrunch All Stage on July 15? Host your own Side Event during “TC All Stage Week,” happening July 13–19! Whether it’s a networking mixer, workshop, morning run, fireside chat, or cocktail hour — you call the shots. […]

The New Jersey attorney general claims Discord's features to keep children under 13 safe from sexual predators and harmful content are inadequate.

As of April 17, get the Google TV Streamer 4K for just $79 at Amazon. That's 21% off.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope confirmed the planet K2-18b has traces of dimethyl sulfide, a potential biosignature of marine microorganisms.

Cameras can offer peace of mind, but choose carefully before inviting one into your home.

In Meta’s antitrust trial on Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified that TikTok’s success was a risk to Meta’s business, saying the short-form video app was a “top priority” and a “highly urgent” competitive threat when it arrived in 2018, according to Bloomberg and other outlets. The reports come from a packed first week of […]

The Roborock Q8 Max+ is on sale at Amazon for just $399.99, down from the normal price of $819.99. That's a 51% discount.

Asus just dropped a smartwatch that is coming for the Apple Watch. The Asus VivoWatch 6 AERO is the first to measure blood pressure and ECG.

How much would an iPhone cost if it were made in the United States? At least $3,500 for you, but billions more for Apple.

Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson shares several easy ways to keep your credit cards safe from digital thieves while you're traveling this summer.

Nintendo held a standalone livestream for 'Mario Kart World,' sharing new details on this Switch 2 launch game.

Temu and Shein plan to raise prices for U.S. customers starting next week on April 25th, due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on goods shipped from China, the Associated Press reports. The 145% tariff on products made in China, along with Trump’s decision to end a customs exemption that had allowed goods under $800 to […]

Should you splurge for the new Series 10 or stick with the SE? Let us help you figure out which version to get (and which to avoid).

If you don't mind a wire, this affordable gaming controller is a winner.

This upgrade to the world’s first-ever smart feeder isn’t perfect, but you don’t need to shell out for a subscription to use it.

When Matija Šošić started working in web development, he was surprised by how hard it was to build a full-stack production-ready web application. One of the biggest hurdles Šošić faced was navigating the fragmented dev tooling landscape. Coding a web application required utilizing different tools for developing the front-end versus the back-end, and so on. […]

New York City — where you can get a dollar slice at 2am or a McDonald’s delivery in under 30 minutes, but still spend two hours crawling down the highway to catch a flight. Archer Aviation wants to change that. The electric aircraft startup says its air taxis could one day fly passengers from Manhattan […]

Here’s how Amazon’s ebook readers stack up—and which one might be right for you.

BondiBoost’s blowout brush is well priced and delivers results on par with more expensive brushes. But will it last?

While it may look like its predecessors, Luna has a digital nervous system that allows it to learn the way sentient beings do.

If you want a cup of coffee in a hurry, this brewer and its earth-friendly pods are absolutely worth considering.

As of April 17, the 44mm Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 is on sale at Amazon for $289.99. Normally it's listed for $379.99, so you're saving 24%.

As of April 17, the roborock Qrevo Master Robot Vacuum and Mop is on sale at Amazon for $799.99. Normally it's listed for $1,599.99, so you're saving 50%.

As of April 17, the Sony WH-CH720N headphones are on sale for $89. Normally they're listed for $149.99, so you're saving 41%.

The ecommerce site penalizes sellers for abrupt price hikes, and many are hesitant to make risky changes amid a volatile trade war.

As of April 17, Lepro TB1 AI Smart Table Lamp is on sale for $64.59 at Amazon with a 15% off coupon and promo code LEPRODAY.

As of April 17, the DOOM: The Dark Ages Xbox controller is up for preorder for $79.99 at Amazon. Includes a bonus in-game skin.

As of April 18, Doom + Doom II 'Will It Run?' Edition is up for preorder at Limited Run Games for $666.66. Only 666 units available.

Massive Blue is helping cops deploy AI-powered social media bots to talk to people they suspect are anything from violent sex criminals all the way to vaguely defined “protesters.”

Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland reunite for one hell of a third zombie film, Watch the trailer.

X's smart assistant Grok can now recall your conversations.

Google rolled out live video and screen sharing abilities for Gemini Live in March, and now Android users get it for free.

Arcturus sets up cameras around the edges of baseball stadiums to capture real-time action and generate a 3D digital clone of the game.

Amid an ongoing measles outbreak, the US is also facing a surge in pertussis, or whooping cough. As vaccine rates drop, other diseases could be next.

WIRED’s advice columnist pushes back on the idea that ChatGPT and other generative AI software tools foster connections with other people.

Mark Zuckerberg’s political ideology and tastes have evolved. His real estate portfolio reflects the shift.

"Baking Show" judge Prue Leith talks about the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between "The Great American Baking Show" and "The Great British Baking Show."

Get Microsoft Office and Windows 11 Pro together for life for just $55.

Always have a scanner on hand with a lifetime subscription to this handy app, SwiftScan VIP, now $41.99 (reg. $199) with code TAKE30 through April 27.

The PowerUp Trinity 3-in-1 Charging station can power your iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch at the same time.

Get a pair of like-new AirPods Pro 2 with MagSafe USB-C Charging Case for only $159.99 (reg. $249) while supplies last.

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' rocket company that recently launched Katy Perry and others into space, released footage of its New Shepard rocket booster landing back on Earth.

Experts believe the unauthorized listings could mislead consumers looking for mental health help.

Should you stay for the end credits of Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan's "Sinners"?

What's fresh on Netflix, Max, Hulu, Prime Video, and more? Here are the must-sees and the better-off-to-avoids.

Live stream Alcaraz vs. Djere in the 2025 Barcelona Open online for free from anywhere in the world.

Save 10% on the Apple Pencil Pro at Amazon.

Answers to each clue for the April 17, 2025 edition of NYT's The Mini crossword puzzle.

Save 6% on the Apple Magic Keyboard at Amazon.

Save 33% on the TOLOCO Massage Gun at Amazon.

Smashing, an AI-powered app that lets users build a curated list of news and posts, is shutting down, because of its inability to scale rapidly enough.

Enjoy 10% off your entire order with today’s Newegg discount code and save with the latest coupons and deals for gaming PCs, laptops and computer parts.

Unload repetitive or time-consuming tasks onto AI — you'll get tools like Gemini, Meta AI, ChatGPT, and more with the 1min.AI Advanced Business Plan, now £60.41 (reg. £407.89).

How to watch the Barcelona Open for free. Live stream the 2025 Barcelona Open for free from anywhere in the world.

The best free online courses from Harvard University.

How to unblock porn for free. Unblock and watch xHamster for free from anywhere in the world.

How to unblock porn for free in Virginia. Unblock and watch Pornhub for free from anywhere in the world.

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, is slowly bringing its Grok chatbot to parity with top rivals like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Wednesday night, xAI announced a “memory” feature for Grok that enables the bot to remember details from past conversations. Now, if you ask Grok for recommendations, it’ll give more personalized responses — assuming you’ve […]

Connections: Sports Edition is a New York Times word game about finding common sports threads between words. How to solve the puzzle.

The NYT Strands hints and answers you need to make the most of your puzzling experience.

Connections is a New York Times word game that's all about finding the "common threads between words." How to solve the puzzle.

Here's the answer for "Wordle" #1398 on April 17 as well as a few hints, tips, and clues to help you solve it yourself.

Hints and answers to today's Hurdle all in one place.

Zoom says its platform is back online after suffering an outage for much of Wednesday afternoon. “Service has now been restored after the earlier outage, and we sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding,” Zoom said in a post on X at around 2 p.m. Pacific. The trouble began around 11:40 a.m., according to The Verge, […]

Chapter, a Medicare advisory startup co-founded by former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, has closed a $75 million funding round at a valuation of $1.5 billion led by private equity and venture firm Stripes. The startup helps seniors choose Medicare health plans analyzing doctors, hospitals, and prescription drug coverage. Unlike many other Medicare insurance brokers, […]

The Trump administration is considering new restrictions on the Chinese AI lab DeepSeek that would limit it from buying Nvidia’s AI chips, and potentially bar Americans from accessing its AI services, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. The restrictions are part of the Trump administration’s effort to compete with China on AI. Months after […]

With the Global Engagement Center shut down, the State Department is now set to investigate whether past US efforts against foreign propaganda amounted to censorship of Americans.

Another highly-valued startup has just been added to the mix in the ongoing legal drama between Rippling and Deel: U.K. fintech giant Revolut. In his blockbuster affidavit that reads like it’s straight out of a movie, Irish Rippling employee Keith O’Brien claimed that he was paid about $6,000 a month to spy on Rippling. He […]

The former cybersecurity chief is the latest to push back on the Trump administration's targeting of critics and dissenters.

Workers for the National Civilian Community Corps were sent home due to “new operational parameters.” The program’s long-term fate is unclear.

OpenAI says that it deployed a new system to monitor its latest AI reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini, for prompts related to biological and chemical threats. The system aims to prevent the models from offering advice that could instruct someone on carrying out potentially harmful attacks, according to OpenAI’s safety report. O3 and o4-mini represent […]

During Meta’s antitrust trial this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Snapchat would have grown faster if it accepted his company’s offer to buy the social network back in 2013, Business Insider reports. Court documents revealed that Meta, then called Facebook, offered to buy Snapchat for $6 billion (reports at the time said that […]

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy said that the administrations actions were “neither reasonable nor reasonably explained.”

The CVE Program is the primary way software vulnerabilities are tracked. Its long-term future remains in limbo even after a last-minute renewal of the US government contract that funds it.

Codeium, the maker of a popular AI coding assistant tool Windsurf, is in talks to be acquired by OpenAI for about $3 billion, Bloomberg reported. If the deal happens, it would put OpenAI in direct competition with a number of other AI coding assistant providers, including Anysphere, the maker of Cursor, which OpenAI backed from […]

YouTube star MrBeast disappoints fans with a subpar "experience" in Las Vegas.

Meal-kit company HelloFresh has added 70 all-electric Rivian vans to its fleet, the first major customer to buy the commercial EVs since the automaker ended its exclusive deal with Amazon. The 70 all-electric commercial vans represent nearly one quarter of HelloFresh’s fleet, which has already helped the company save an estimated 20,000 gallons of gasoline, […]

The latest ChatGPT trend involves using its AI image generator to imagine pets as actual people.

Volatility and anti-American resentment are already hurting the niche vinyl industry, but a little-known law could help it survive.

TikTok is testing a reviews tab for some places, like stores and restaurants, right inside the comments section of a video.

Skullcandy released the Method 360 ANC on April 15, bringing Bose-powered sound to a budget-friendly price point.

One of the bugs was discovered by Google's security researchers who investigate government-backed cyberattacks.

X's DM feature is getting rebranded as XChat, which sounds like an adult messaging service, according to a new report.

An organization OpenAI frequently partners with to probe the capabilities of its models and evaluate them for safety, Metr, suggests that it wasn’t given much time to evaluate OpenAI’s most powerful new models, o3 and o4-mini. In a blog post published Wednesday, Metr writes that its red teaming of o3 and o4-mini was “conducted in […]

TikTok is rolling out a feature that's effectively its version of X's Community Notes.

The company also introduced a new tool that helps computer programmers use chatbots when writing code.

China’s success in artificial intelligence has the Trump administration and lawmakers weighing rules and investigations to slow Beijing’s progress in the industry.

On this episode of "Uncanny Valley," we unpack the trial between Meta and the FTC.

Spring deals at Amazon that will arrive by Sunday include up to 47% off Lego sets, Bose speakers, toys, and more.

BluSmart, India’s all-electric cab-hailing startup that was once seen as an emerging rival to Uber, appears to have suspended service in some cities just as the country’s market regulator launched a probe into Gensol Engineering, the publicly listed company that shares two of its co-founders. The cab service, which had been operating in Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, […]

During an OpenAI livestream, the company demoed its ChatGPT o-series models, o3 and o4-mini.

Apple says its close to meeting its global sustainability goals, including reducing its global greenhouse gas emissions and hitting carbon neutrality.

Mark Zuckerberg took the stand for two days during the FTC's antitrust trial against Meta. Here's what we learned.

OpenAI announced on Thursday the launch of o3 and o4-mini, new AI reasoning models designed to pause and work through questions before responding. The company calls o3 its most advanced reasoning model ever, outperforming the company’s previous models on tests measuring math, coding, reasoning, science, and visual understanding capabilities. Meanwhile, o4-mini offers what OpenAI says […]

In a bid to inject AI into more of the programming process, OpenAI is launching Codex CLI, a coding “agent” designed to run locally from terminal software. Announced on Wednesday alongside OpenAI’s newest AI models, o3 and o4-mini, Codex CLI links OpenAI’s models with local code and computing tasks, OpenAI says. Via Codex CLI, OpenAI’s […]

Get a 10TB secure cloud storage lifetime subscription on sale for A$449.

Aura, a digital photo frames company founded by early Twitter employees, is introducing its latest model, Aspen, which adds new technology to the device and its accompanying mobile app. In addition to hosting your digital photos in its 12-inch HD display, the device now also allows you to add captions to your photos when they […]

Android smartphones have a new security feature that reboots your device if it hasn't been unlocked in three days.

As of April 16, you can snag a certified refurbished Bose 550 Dolby Atmos Bluetooth soundbar for just $169.99 at Woot.

As of April 16, you can get up to 60% off sex toys, lingerie, and more at Lovers.

A new AI agent from the startup Simular switches between different AI models depending on the task at hand.

As of April 16, get the Blink Outdoor 4 security camera for 50% off at Amazon.

ChatGPT introduces an image library to store your generated photos

Americans are apparently rushing to get cheap Chinese goods while they still can.

A Chinese e-commerce app has shot up the App Store rankings in response to Donald Trump’s tariff changes. It's as safe as the next online marketplace—but as with all of them, buyers should know what they're in for.

Jimmi Simpson speaks about the movie "Cast Away" and "Black Mirror": "USS Callister: Into Infinity"

Graze, a startup that lets people build and monetize custom feeds for Bluesky’s social network, has attracted new capital. Pre-seed investors, led by Betaworks and Salesforce Ventures, have invested $1 million in the company’s small team, which is working to give users control over their algorithms and social media experiences. Graze’s software, available via the […]

Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

Apple reported on Wednesday that is more than halfway to its 2030 goal.

According to Google's latest ad safety report, the company has used AI to detect and enforce fraudulent advertisers, resulting in millions of suspended accounts and billions of ads blocked.

Startups attracted $91.5 billion in venture capital funding in Q1, according to the latest report from data provider PitchBook. This figure not only exceeds the previous quarter’s allocation by 18.5% but also represents the second-highest quarterly investment in the last decade. Despite this seemingly positive news, Kyle Stanford, lead U.S. venture capital analyst at PitchBook, […]

Microsoft researchers claim they’ve developed the largest-scale 1-bit AI model, also known as a “bitnet,” to date. Called BitNet b1.58 2B4T, it’s openly available under an MIT license and can run on CPUs, including Apple’s M2. Bitnets are essentially compressed models designed to run on lightweight hardware. In standard models, weights, the values that define […]

This is the first time representatives for the spyware maker have publicly named its government customers.

Microsoft confirmed a vicious CPU-eating bug in Outlook Classic, and the only fix right now is more of a temporary bandage.

As of April 16, get a Lexar 1TB microSD Express Card for under $200 at Amazon.

The best Amazon deals on April 16 include the Eufy X10 Pro Omni, Shark FlexStyle, Audible Premium Plus, Sony ULT Wear, and Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic.