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In a move reminiscent of Facebook’s early days, TikTok is launching a new feature that allows college students to find and connect with others on their campus. The feature, called Campus Verification, lets users add their college campus to their TikTok profile and browse a list of students at their school. Also, On Friday, The Information reported that Meta was preparing to tear down its existing AI org and reorganize it into four new groups. Four days later, the change was made official with an internal memo, as reported by Bloomberg and The New York Times. The changes were announced by Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, who joined Meta as chief AI officer in June. And, a lawsuit alleges that Google collected data from children watching YouTube videos; while this kind of data collection has become common, it remains illegal to collect data from children under the age of 13, per the longstanding COPPA legislation. Though Google will settle the case, the company denies these allegations. It’s possible that up to 45 million people in the U.S. could be eligible to receive small payments from this class action, which encompasses anyone in the U.S. who watched YouTube while under the age of 13 between July 1, 2013 and April 1, 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elon Musk’s X is struggling on Android devices in terms of new installs, even while App Store downloads grow, according to new data from app intelligence provider Appfigures. In July 2025, X downloads on Google Play saw a significant decline, as new installs dropped by 44% year-over-year worldwide, even as iOS downloads grew by 15%. In other news, Spotify is introducing a new feature that allows subscribers to create more professional, personalized playlists. On Tuesday, the company launched a custom transitions feature that lets you either automatically add transitions between a playlist’s tracks or customize your own using preset options like fade, rise, or blend, along with other options. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

xAI’s website for its Grok chatbot is exposing the system prompts for several of its AI personas, including a “crazy conspiracist” that seems designed to handhold a user into beliefs that “a secret global cabal” controls the world. Also, the new interface adopts a block-first approach, letting you insert tables, columns, separators, lists and headers. You can also add rich text blocks to highlight information, add tips, or alerts. A sidebar hosts the AI assistant, which can summarize text, answer your questions, and provide writing suggestions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Earlier this week, Variety and other Hollywood publications reported that Matt and Ross Duffer, the brothers who created “Stranger Things” (and wrote and directed many episodes), were in talks to sign an exclusive deal with Paramount (now under the ownership of David Ellison’s Skydance). Then on Friday evening, Puck’s Matthew Belloni posted that the Duffers had in fact “made their choice” and were going to Paramount. Also, do A.I. chatbots packaged inside cute-looking plushies offer a viable alternative to screen time for kids? That’s how the companies selling these A.I.-powered kiddie companions are marketing them, but The New York Times’ Amanda Hess has some reservations. And, Anthropic has announced new capabilities that will allow some of its newest, largest models to end conversations in what the company describes as “rare, extreme cases of persistently harmful or abusive user interactions.” Strikingly, Anthropic says it’s doing this not to protect the human user, but rather the AI model itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two years after launching, social network Bluesky is revising its Community Guidelines and other policies, and asking for feedback from its users on some of the changes. The startup, a competitor to X, Threads, and open networks like Mastodon, says its new policies are meant to offer improved clarity and more detail around its user safety procedures and the appeals process. Also, the attorney general of Louisiana has filed a lawsuit against Roblox, accusing the platform of failing to implement basic safety controls and making the site the “perfect place for pedophiles." The lawsuit, filed on Thursday by Attorney General Liz Murrill, alleges that Roblox “has and continues to facilitate the distribution of child sexual abuse material and the sexual exploitation of Louisiana’s children.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Igor Babuschkin is leaving xAI less than three years after he co-founded the startup with Elon Musk, following a series of scandals at company. Also, riding in the back of a Waymo that’s autonomously navigating the busy streets of San Francisco and doing so with relative ease thanks to 29 external cameras, six radar, and five lidar sensors all feeding into an AI model is nice. For just 15 bucks, you get to experience what feels like a miracle of modern technology, and yet, there’s a nagging thought you can’t shake. The music sucks in here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Exclusive: A dating gossip app for men exposed thousands of users' personal data, including scans of driver's licenses. CEO Xavier Lampkin won't say if he plans to notify affected users about the app's security lapse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nvidia's research lab developed the technology that took the company from a video game GPU startup to a $4 trillion-dollar company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anthropic’s escalation – a response to OpenAI’s attempt to undercut the competition – is a strategic play meant to broaden the company’s foothold in federal AI usage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The automaker is investing $2 billion into the Louisville Assembly Plant with a $30,000 EV pickup slated for 2027. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Once it became clear that all paths converged to AI6, I had to shut down Dojo and make some tough personnel choices, as Dojo 2 was now an evolutionary dead end,” Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, on Sunday. In other news, Nvidia, AMD may sell high-end AI chips to China if they pay US a cut. The global AI chip race narrative used to be about U.S. national security, but apparently now it's about tariffs: Nvidia and AMD have agreed to pay the U.S. government 15% of the revenue they make from sales of high-end AI chips to China in exchange for licenses to sell to those chips in the country, the Financial Times reported, citing anonymous sources. And the hidden cost of living amid Mark Zuckerberg’s $110M compound. Mark Zuckerberg has spent 14 years gobbling up his leafy Palo Alto neighborhood, according to a New York Times report detailing how the Meta CEO has purchased 11 properties for over $110 million to create his own personal fiefdom in Crescent Park. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Trump administration has finally issued new guidance that states can use to dole out $5 billion in funding for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, after spending months withholding the money. Also, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Monday it has seized the servers and $1 million in bitcoin from the prolific Russian ransomware gang behind the BlackSuit and Royal malware. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rocket Lab is taking the concept of an 'end-to-end' space company to new heights with a forthcoming acquisition. In other news, Openvibe, an app for tracking the open social web in one place, now supports RSS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you, like practically anyone else with a cell phone in the U.S. and beyond, have received a scam text message about an unpaid toll or undelivered mail item, there’s a good chance you have been targeted by a prolific scamming operation. But a series of opsec mistakes ultimately led security researchers and investigative journalists to the real-world identity of the maker of the scamming software, Magic Cat, who researchers say goes by the handle Darcula. In other news, During a Reddit ask-me-anything session on Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and key members of the GPT-5 team were peppered with questions about the new model and requests to bring back its previous model, GPT-4o. They also asked Altman about the most embarrassing — and perhaps funniest — snafu in the presentation, the “chart crime.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hubble Network's satellite-enabled Bluetooth network is getting a boost from Muon's new XL satellite bus. Also, Truth Social’s AI search is powered by Perplexity, but the platform can set limits on sources. The search engine, dubbed Truth Search AI, is already available on the web version of Truth Social, with public Beta testing on the iOS and Android apps planned for “the near future.” And Upwork is buying its way into corporate staffing beyond freelancers. The company will merge Bubty and Ascen with its existing enterprise business to form a separate entity later this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google denies AI is impacting search across the web, saying only "some" sites have suffered. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a debate likely to get louder as AI agent usage grows, some people say Perplexity crawling blocked websites isn't a simple matter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For the first time in more than five years, OpenAI is launching a new open language model that appears to be state-of-the-art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joby is buying the Blade brand and the company's passenger business, which includes operations in the United States and Europe, for as much as $125 million. In other news, Mastercard seemingly denied playing a role in a recent marketplace crackdown on games with adult content, while Valve says the pressure was indirect. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

North Korean IT workers are increasingly using generative AI to draft resumes and "deepfake" their appearances to make money for North Korea's sanctioned nuclear weapons program. Also, Apple is reportedly working to create a lightweight competitor to ChatGPT. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dribbble is enforcing its terms of service that lets it take a cut of designers' work, and kicking out those who don't comply. One top designer has had enough, and is building his own startup instead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google DeepMind has revealed Genie 3, its latest foundation world model that the AI lab says presents a crucial stepping stone on the path to artificial general intelligence, or human-like intelligence. Also, enterprise security company SonicWall is urging its customers to disable a core feature of its most recent line-up of firewall devices after security researchers reported an uptick in ransomware incidents targeting SonicWall customers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google released its first publicly available "multi-agent" AI system, which uses more computational resources, but produces better answers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple is open to M&A to accelerate its AI strategy, and says it's made seven acquisitions this year so far. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Space Force is leveraging commercial competition for the next phase of its PTS program. Also, Adobe is adding an improved background removal tool to Photoshop using AI, so the app doesn't leave weird artifacts in your images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spotify says AI will allow for "much more interactive" consumer experiences in its app. Also, YouTube is introducing age detection technology to identify teens on the platform in the U.S. and apply protections, and TikTok is bringing new parental controls to Family Pairing, its feature that allows parents to link their accounts with their teen's account to customize safety settings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Construction could start fast -- but that speed has edangered Boring Company workers in the past. Also, Jack Dorsey's Bitchat is now available on the App Store, but security researchers have questioned the app's privacy claims. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Golden Dome, the White House's next-gen missile defense system, is a huge opportunity for startups that can successfully collaborate with incumbents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A U.K. law requiring that pornography websites verify the age of their users took last week. Also, the Department of Government Efficiency has presented plans to use a new AI tool to eliminate half of the federal government’s regulatory mandates by the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s return to office, according to The Washington Post; and Indie video game marketplace Itch.io announced this week that it has "deindexed" adult and not-safe-for-work games, removing them from its browse and search pages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

India has ordered the blocking of 25 streaming services — many with millions of viewers and even paying subscribers — for allegedly promoting "obscene" content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The NATO Innovation Fund is entering a new chapter, marked by the arrival of two new partners and the departure of its penultimate founding team partner. Also, Google is testing a new vibe-coding tool called Opal, available in the U.S. through Google Labs, that lets users quickly spin up web apps with just a few prompts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tesla is behind on its goal to produce at least 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots by the end of 2025. Also, Apple has expanded its age rating system to include 13+, 16+, and 18+ ratings, in addition to the existing ratings for younger users; and in response to the European Union's incoming regulation of political advertising, Meta said on Friday that it would stop selling and showing political ads in the EU from October 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new AI coding challenge has revealed its first winner — and set a new bar for AI-powered software engineers. On Wednesday at 5pm PST, the nonprofit Laude Institute announced the first winner of the K Prize, a multi-round AI coding challenge launched by Databricks and Perplexity co-founder Andy Konwinski. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When DeepSeek, Alibaba, and other Chinese firms released their AI models, Western researchers quickly noticed they sidestepped questions critical of the Chinese Communist Party. U.S. officials later confirmed that these tools are engineered to reflect Beijing’s talking points, raising concerns about censorship and bias. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple launches $19.99 monthly AppleCare One subscription with coverage for three devices Also, Snap Map's new "Home Safe" feature sends one-time alerts to friends, so you don't need to remember to message others that you're back safely. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Proton's new AI assistant Lumo promises to keep user data private with zero-access encryption, no logging, and an incognito mode. In other news, NetZeroNitrogen's bacteria approach has attracted investors and $6.6 million in seed funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Karun Kaushik and Selin Kocalar weren’t planning to raise a Series A so soon. Their AI compliance startup, Delve, which announced a $3 million seed round in January, was growing fast and signing customers at a steady clip. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The spyware maker was banned from the surveillance industry in 2021, but was caught flouting the ban less than a year later. Now the founder wants the ban lifted altogether. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The new SS7 bypass-attack tricks phone operators into disclosing a cell subscriber's location, in some cases down to a few hundred meters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SpaceX has been moving at breakneck pace, rapid progress comes at a cost. Worker injury rates at its Starbase facility are almost six times higher than the average, data reveals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenAI announced the launch of ChatGPT agent, which the company claims to be its most capable AI agent product yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hadrian wants to revolutionize American manufacturing through automation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Uber is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Lucid and autonomous vehicle technology startup Nuro in a bid to launch its own robotaxi service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The new business calling feature uses AI to call local businesses on your behalf, for information about availability and pricing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A senior engineer describes the thrill, chaos, and exhaustion of working at OpenAI this past year while launching its coding agent Codex. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Researchers warned that Chinese residents, and visitors to China, should be aware of the tool's existence and the risks it poses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

ParadeDB built a Postgres extension that facilitates full-text search and analytics on Postgres without the need to transfer data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Atmo will use its deep learning models to help Rainmaker identify clouds that have potential for seeding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Analysis: In calling itself an ethical spyware vendor, Paragon has opened itself up to scrutiny of its government customers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Software engineer workflows have been transformed in recent years by an influx of AI coding tools, but However, a new study calls into question the extent to which today's AI coding tools enhance productivity for experienced developers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices