Author: News Room

Discord just completed something it started back in 2023, and while the result is genuinely impressive, there’s a big asterisk in place.  As of early March 2026, every standard voice and video call on Discord is end-to-end encrypted (E2EE), and you don’t have to toggle any switches, as the feature is enabled by default. The encryption is based on DAVE, which, for the uninitiated, is Discord’s own open-source protocol.  Nearly three years after we started, every voice and video call on @Discord (except Stages) is now end-to-end encrypted (E2EE). No opt-in required.Shipping this seamlessly across web, desktop, mobile, apps/bots, consoles, and…

AI can pass the Turing Test in live chats, and the latest result lands with a chill. In a UC San Diego study, GPT-4.5 outperformed real participants at convincing judges there was a person on the other side. The setup was harder to shrug off than a standard benchmark. Judges reacted to real-time exchanges rather than static prompts, then made a fast call based on conversation alone. The unsettling part is how familiar the skill looks. The model didn’t need a body, a voice, or a biography. It only needed to sound like someone. How did AI beat the human…

Electronic accessory brand Ugreen has unveiled a new Air series of charging solutions aimed at Apple users. The new launches include the Nexode Air 65W and Nexode Air 45W wall chargers, and the MagFlow Air magnetic power bank. As you can likely guess from the name, these are portable alternatives to the usual bulky charging solutions that take up space in your office or travel bag. How portable is Ugreen’s new 65W charger? The Nexode Air 65W GaN charger is built for portability, with a folding plug, a bundled 100W USB-C cable, and a compact body that weighs around 2.5…

Samsung’s next foldable may be chasing refinement again, which means the real upgrades are still a while away. A new leak from a known tipster, Ice Universe, claims that the Galaxy Z Fold 8 series will miss three key upgrades that would have made Samsung’s next flagship foldable a lot more exciting. This could make the Galaxy Z Fold 8 fall behind the rumored iPhone Fold. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 series doesn’t have a Privacy screen. doesn’t support the S Pen, and the crease doesn’t improve much.— Ice Universe (@UniverseIce) May 20, 2026 The S Pen omission hurts the…

For years, victims of revenge porn and nonconsensual deepfake imagery had almost no reliable way to get that content taken down. State laws were all over the place, and tech platforms either dragged their feet or simply did not act. That is finally changing. As of May 19, the Take It Down Act is now in full effect across the United States. It requires online platforms to remove nonconsensual intimate images, real or AI-generated, within 48 hours of receiving a valid report. Platforms that fail to comply face civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation. The act casts a…

A new study suggests YouTube’s recommendation algorithm may be shaping political perspectives differently for men and women – even when both groups start with the same interest in political content. The research, published in Cornell University’s arXiv repository, explored how YouTube’s recommendation system responds to different viewing behaviors. Researchers created 160 automated social bots, splitting them into two groups with “male-coded” and “female-coded” viewing habits. While both sets of accounts showed identical interest in YouTube’s News & Politics category, their recommendations reportedly evolved in dramatically different directions over time. Different algorithms, different political experiences To conduct the experiment, researchers programmed…

Canva and Adobe are moving deeper into Google Gemini, giving the assistant a bigger role before users ever open a design app. Adobe says its “Adobe for creativity” connector is coming to Gemini in the coming weeks, giving users a way to describe tasks and send them through Adobe tools for imaging, design, and video. Canva is already rolling out its Connected App for Gemini in select English-language markets, with full availability coming soon. For users, the change is practical. A campaign, mockup, social post, or image edit can begin in Gemini, then move into Canva or Adobe when the…

I had a hard time processing this news. As someone who has been deeply in love with stories since childhood and who grew up on the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Terry Pratchett, J.R.R. Tolkien, and other such venerable authors, seeing an AI-written story win a prestigious writing award is hard to digest.  If you are unaware, the winners for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for 2026 were announced, and three of the five winning regional stories have been found to be entirely or partially written by AI. Or at least that seems to be the consensus among readers. As…

Here’s an uncomfortable thought for every academic institution currently using AI detectors to police student and researcher submissions: the tools don’t work as reliably as institutions assume.  A paper presented at this week’s 2026 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy by researchers at the University of Florida concludes that commercially available AI-generated text detectors are “poorly suited for deployment in academic or high-stakes contexts.” That’s a polite way of saying universities are making career-altering decisions based on results from tools that are essentially unreliable. What did the research actually find? Patrick Traynor, Ph.D., professor and interim chair of UF’s Department…

Airbnb started as a place to find someone’s spare bedroom, but twelve years later, it’s trying to be the only travel app you need.  With the 2026 Summer Release update announced today, you can not just book a bedroom or a house, but also order groceries, schedule airport pickups, car rentals, boutique hotels, access the AI planning tools, and access the FIFA World Cup experiences, all within the Airbnb app.  What new services can you book on Airbnb now? Airbnb has already launched two new services today. The first one is airport pickups (through Welcome Pickups), which, as the name…