Author: Frank Salvato
Amazon Pharmacy announced plans to significantly expand its same-day prescription delivery service across the United States, aiming to serve approximately 4,500 cities and towns by the end of 2026. This expansion adds roughly 2,000 new communities, including newly served states like Idaho and Massachusetts, building on earlier rollout efforts. The service leverages Amazon’s established logistics network—using e-bikes in dense urban areas, electric vehicles in suburbs, and other creative delivery methods—to bring medications directly to patients’ doors within hours of ordering, addressing ongoing challenges such as pharmacy closures, staffing shortages, transportation barriers and slow traditional mail-order options. In addition to faster…
A recent report highlights a surprising trend in the U.S. workforce: the early adopters of workplace artificial intelligence tools are showing the first significant signs of burnout, not because they were forced into greater productivity but because the technology made it easier to take on more work. Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, embedded with a 200-person tech company over eight months and conducted more than 40 interviews with employees who freely embraced AI. They found that, despite no managerial push to increase output, workers voluntarily expanded their to-do lists as AI made complex tasks feel more doable. Rather…
A former Tesla product manager has launched a startup that claims to use a custom, tamper-resistant chip and supporting software to make high-end luxury goods effectively impossible to counterfeit, addressing a market where brands lose over $30 billion annually to fake products and buyers in the booming resale market lack reliable verification tools. The technology embeds a small near-field communication (NFC) chip, the size of a tiny gem, into products either during manufacturing or afterward without compromising design, linking each item to a digital authenticity certificate that consumers can verify with a smartphone tap, while the chip is designed to…
In a striking move toward transparency, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI publicly posted the full 45-minute internal all-hands meeting video on the X platform, revealing ambitious long-term plans that extend beyond Earth. During the session Musk outlined a sweeping strategic roadmap for xAI — now part of SpaceX — including a new organizational structure split into four core teams focused on the Grok chatbot, coding systems, image and video generation tools, and a project called Macrohard aimed at autonomous computer tasks. A significant portion of the founding team has departed amid restructuring, which Musk framed as necessary for growth.…
In a development raising serious concerns about digital privacy and corporate cooperation with federal authorities, Google reportedly turned over detailed personal and financial information of a British student and journalist to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in response to a non-judicial administrative subpoena, according to multiple news reports. The data handed over included usernames, physical addresses, IP addresses, phone numbers, subscriber identifiers, and even credit card and bank account numbers tied to the individual’s Google account, and was provided without a judge’s approval or apparent specific legal justification, igniting debates about privacy protections and the use of administrative subpoenas…
OpenAI has started rolling out a test of advertisements inside ChatGPT for U.S. users on the free plan and the new $8/month Go subscription, with ads appearing as clearly labeled “sponsored” links beneath chatbot answers, while subscription tiers at $20/month (Plus) and higher remain ad-free; OpenAI says ads won’t influence model outputs, will be isolated from personal conversation content, and are intended to support broader access, even as rivals publicly criticize the move and debate its effects on user trust and AI monetization. Sources https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/876029/openai-testing-ads-in-chatgpthttps://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001047-ads-in-chatgpthttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/chatgpt-ads-openai-ai-artificial-intelligence/ Key Takeaways • OpenAI has begun testing ads within ChatGPT for logged-in U.S. users on…
Elon Musk and SpaceX have signaled a notable pivot in long-term exploration goals, publicly stating that the company’s near-term priority has shifted from establishing a human settlement on Mars toward building what Musk calls a “self-growing city” on the Moon; this shift is rooted in the logistical advantages of more frequent lunar launch opportunities and shorter transit times, making a lunar settlement achievable in under a decade, even as Musk says Mars remains a long-term objective with plans delayed by roughly five to seven years. The announcement contrasts sharply with Musk’s previous staunch advocacy for Mars — including past assertions…
Microsoft Exchange Online is currently experiencing a service degradation that leads its anti-phishing filters to wrongly classify legitimate business emails as phishing and quarantine them, disrupting normal email flow for organizations using the cloud email service. The issue, tracked under service alert EX1227432, began on February 5, 2026, and is attributed to an overly aggressive new URL detection rule that flags safe links as malicious. Affected users have found both inbound and outbound messages trapped in quarantine, hampering communication and productivity. Microsoft has acknowledged the incident and is actively reviewing quarantined messages to restore delivery, but it has not yet…
Discord will begin enforcing a global age verification system in March 2026 that automatically places all user accounts into a restricted “teen-appropriate” mode unless users verify they are adults; to regain full access, adults will need to complete an age verification process that may include a facial video selfie age estimate or uploading a government-issued ID, while Discord also employs an AI-powered age inference model to reduce verification burden on many users, but unverified accounts will face limitations on accessing age-restricted servers, speaking in live “stage” channels, and viewing sensitive content, raising privacy concerns following a prior data breach involving…
A PC hobbyist reportedly salvaged about $500 in usable RAM modules from a local landfill this week, underscoring both the growing e-waste problem as well as mounting stress in the global hardware market as memory becomes scarcer and more expensive. The episode has drawn attention online as a vivid example of how discarded components that still have value are being thrown away even while supply shortages, driven in part by massive demand for memory by AI infrastructure buildouts, continue to push prices higher and limit availability for consumers and DIY builders. Sources discussing the salvage, the broader context of memory…