• Pornhub will become unavailable for many UK users as of February 2

    Pornhub will stop offering full access to new users in the UK on February 2, its parent company Aylo said Tuesday, citing the nation’s and its age-verification requirements. The company said users who already verified their ages before the cutoff will still be able to access the adult site through existing accounts. The move follows the Online Safety Act’s , which and require adult sites to use “highly effective” methods of . Aylo the system is backfiring and shifting both adults and minors to noncompliant porn sites that don’t verify age or moderate content according to . Aylo’s lawyers argued…

  • TikTok joins Snap to settle social media addiction lawsuit

    TikTok settled a high-profile lawsuit on Monday evening, which alleges that social media companies intentionally make their products addictive, causing harm to users. Snap settled the case last week, but Meta and YouTube — the other defendants — are now heading to trial, where jury selection begins on Tuesday. Centering around a 19-year-old plaintiff known by the initials K.G.M., this case is the first of many similar legal challenges against social platforms. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and YouTube head Neal Mohan are expected to testify, which could set a precedent for how dozens of other lawsuits could play out. By…

  • The French government is ditching Zoom and Microsoft Teams for a home-grown alternative

    The French government is saying au revoir to Microsoft Teams and Zoom as it embraces a home-grown alternative. By next year, civil servants across all departments will have switched to French videoconference platform Visio, as EuroNews reports. As with Teams and Zoom, Visio has an AI-powered transcription tool. Visio runs on a French company’s cloud infrastructure as well. The platform has around 40,000 users and it’s been in testing for the last year. The government expects the switch to help reduce costs by as much as €1 million ($1.2 million) each year for every 100,000 users. The decision to ditch…

  • Anthropic and OpenAI CEOs condemn ICE violence, praise Trump

    On a Monday night NBC News segment, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei expressed concern over “some of the things we’ve seen in the last few days,” referring to the violence of Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis. Amodei focused on the importance of preserving democracy at home, both on NBC and in a post on X that specifically called out “the horror we’re seeing in Minnesota.” On NBC, he said he’s a believer in arming democracies to defend against autocratic countries, and that “we need to defend our own democratic values at home.” He added that Anthropic has no contracts with Immigration and…

  • Yahoo is adding generative AI to its search engine

    Yahoo has a new AI-powered “answer engine”, dubbed Yahoo Scout. The new tool is available now in beta and is powered by Anthropic’s . The company says Scout “synthesizes” info from the web, as well as Yahoo’s own data and content when constructing responses to user’s natural-language search queries. Yahoo says the interface will include interactive digital media, structured lists and tables and visible source links aimed at making answers easier to verify. (Disclosure: Yahoo is the parent company of Engadget.) Alongside Scout, Yahoo is announcing an “intelligence platform” across its varied products. This will include features like AI summaries…

  • WhatsApp is rolling out a new stricter security setting to protect users from cyber attacts

    Days after Meta was sued by over alleged false privacy claims by its chat app WhatsApp, the company has rolled out a new setting to protect users against cyber attacks. The feature, called Strict Account Settings, adds restrictions like automatically blocking media and attachments from unknown senders, and silencing calls from unknown numbers. Under this setting, link previews are turned off, and the setting to block a high number of unknown messages is also switched on. When someone turns this option on, by default, two-step verification is turned on along with security notifications that alert someone when the code of someone they…

  • The EU tells Google to give external AI assistants the same access to Android as Gemini has

    The European Commission has started proceedings to ensure Google complies with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in certain ways. Specifically, the European Union’s executive arm has told Google to grant third-party AI services the same level of access to Android that Gemini has. “The aim is to ensure that third-party providers have an equal opportunity to innovate and compete in the rapidly evolving AI landscape on smart mobile devices,” the Commission said in a statement. The company will also have to hand over “anonymized ranking, query, click and view data held by Google Search” to rival search engines. The Commission…

  • Risotto raises $10M seed to use AI to make ticketing systems easier to use

    Help desk automation is a billion-dollar industry, and one of the most likely to be disrupted by tech built upon AI. Major players like Zendesk, ServiceNow and Freshworks currently dominate the space, but lots of smaller startups are betting that reshuffling workflows will give them a chance to cut in. Risotto is one of those startups, and after today, it will have plenty of runway to test its theory. The company on Tuesday said it has raised a $10 million seed round led by Bonfire Ventures, with participation from 645 Ventures, Y Combinator, Ritual Capital, and Surgepoint Capital. Designed to…

  • The Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold will cost $2,900 in the US

    As promised, Samsung is bringing its Galaxy Z Trifold smartphone to shoppers in the US. The unique foldable goes on sale on January 30. The phone was announced along with its select markets’ sale dates at the close of 2025. We didn’t have price information for Samsung’s domestic market at that time, and even though we were anticipating the Galaxy Z Trifold to cost a bundle, the actual cost is more absurd than we’d guessed. In reality, getting your hands on this slim triple-screen smartphone will run you $2,900. Putting aside the ludicrous expense, this smartphone is pretty dang cool.…

  • Pinterest to lay off 15% of staff to redirect resources to AI

    Pinterest said on Tuesday that it plans to lay off less than 15% of its workforce to cut back on office space and reallocate resources for its AI initiatives. In a regulatory filing, the company noted it expects to complete the layoffs by late September. The filing stated that Pinterest would be “reallocating resources to AI-focused roles and teams that drive AI adoption and execution” and “prioritizing AI‑powered products and capabilities.” The company had 4,666 full-time employees at the end of 2024, which means roughly 700 workers will be affected by cuts. The move comes as Pinterest, and every other…