Author: Frank Salvato

YouTube has unveiled a sweeping upgrade to its connected-TV experience, introducing five new features designed to make watching videos on large screens more immersive and commercially integrated. The updates include boosting thumbnail size limits from 2 MB to 50 MB for 4K clarity, adding an AI-powered “super resolution” tool that upscales low-resolution videos to HD or 4K, enhancing channel previews and TV search, creating binge-style “Shows” groupings, and enabling QR-code shopping directly from the TV screen. The platform says living-room viewing is now its fastest-growing segment, but critics warn that AI upscaling and in-video shopping could tighten corporate control over…

The cyber-crime collective known as Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters (SLH) has begun targeting users of Zendesk in a fresh phishing campaign, according to a new alert by cybersecurity firm ReliaQuest. Researchers have identified more than 40 typosquatted and impersonating Zendesk-related domains created over the past six months — some hosting fake single sign-on pages to steal credentials, others used to submit malicious support tickets aimed at infecting help-desk personnel with malware such as remote-access trojans. The group reportedly exploited a support portal breach at Discord, exfiltrating sensitive user data, and has signaled plans for further campaigns through early 2026. Organizations are…

Zillow has removed climate-risk scores from over one million home listings after real estate agents and the California Regional Multiple Listing Service (CRMLS) complained the information was driving down sales. What began in September 2024 as a feature meant to help buyers assess flood, wildfire, heat, wind, and air-quality risks — using data from climate-analytics firm First Street — has now been replaced with a simple link to First Street’s website. In their defense, First Street argued that hiding the scores doesn’t reduce actual climate risks, only shifts the burden of awareness onto buyers. Meanwhile, Zillow contends the change reflects…

President Trump signed an executive order on November 24, 2025, initiating the Genesis Mission — a sweeping, federally coordinated effort described as a “Manhattan Project for AI,” designed to harness artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is directed to build a closed-loop AI experimentation platform linking 17 national laboratories, federal supercomputers, and decades of accumulated government scientific data into a unified system for research. The plan targets rapid breakthroughs in critical areas such as biotechnology, nuclear fusion and fission, semiconductors, quantum information, advanced materials, and critical-materials supply chains. What distinguishes Genesis from existing initiatives…

Microsoft has acknowledged that its recent Windows 11 updates for versions 24H2 and 25H2 (applied from July 2025 onward) may cause fundamental parts of the operating system — including the Start menu, File Explorer, Taskbar, Windows Search, and other XAML-dependent components — to crash or fail to load on some managed or enterprise machines. The root issue stems from a failure to properly register required XAML packages during the update process, which can prevent critical UI components from initializing. While the company says the problem primarily affects enterprise or managed devices, there’s no guaranteed fix yet; affected users might need…

In a recent report by the Pew Research Center, the social-media platform X (formerly Twitter) retains roughly 21 % of U.S. adults as users — only a slight decline from 23 % in 2021 — despite mounting competition from rivals such as Threads (8 %) and Bluesky (4 %). While major apparatuses like YouTube (84 %) and Facebook (71 %) remain dominant, the slight resilience of X signals that incumbents in the micro-text and real-time commentary space still have staying power even as new platforms attempt to carve out niches. The data also shows significant generational, educational and partisan splits…

Younger workers, especially those from Generation Z, are increasingly skipping meetings altogether and relying on artificial intelligence to take notes for them—a shift that’s yielding real career benefits but also stirring concerns among employers and workplace ethicists. A recent study found that 19% of workers say they now regularly use AI tools to take meeting notes, and hybrid workers are much more likely to adopt these tools (26%) than in-person employees (13%). According to the research, users of these tools save over an hour per week, report fewer manual note-taking burdens, and enjoy improved accuracy—but they also admit to skipping…

The video-platform giant YouTube announced that between July 2024 and June 2025 it paid out over USD 8 billion to the global music industry — including artists, songwriters, labels and publishers — marking a significant increase from prior periods and signalling the continued strength of its combined ad and subscription business model. According to YouTube’s official blog, this payout reflects the platform’s “twin engine of ads and subscriptions” firing on all cylinders. A trade-publication report confirms that this figure has risen by roughly USD 2 billion since the platform last disclosed similar data, and observers suggest it places YouTube increasingly…

The platform YouTube has rolled out a new built-in feature allowing mobile users to set a daily time limit on its short-form video feed, YouTube Shorts. Once a viewer hits the threshold they set, the Shorts feed will pause and display a dismissible notification, essentially telling the user they’ve reached their limit for the day. According to reports, this timer setting is accessible in the app’s settings under “Shorts feed limit” and is now beginning to appear for users, with parental controls — including non-dismissible prompts for supervised kids and teens — expected later this year. While touted as a…

The video-platform giant YouTube, a unit of Alphabet Inc., has introduced a voluntary exit program for its U.S.‐based employees, offering severance pay to those who opt to leave amid a wider reorganization aimed at accelerating its shift into artificial intelligence. In a memo to staff dated October 29, 2025, CEO Neal Mohan explained that YouTube will be restructured into three product divisions—viewer products, creator & community products, and subscriptions products—with the voluntary program giving employees the opportunity to depart without being subject to involuntary layoffs. The move comes as YouTube (and its parent company) face mounting regulatory scrutiny, competitive pressures…