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After a federal judge ruled that Google had a monopoly on the search market, the tech giant and the government are in court to debate penalties. One possible result: forcing Google to spin off Chrome.

(Image credit: Kent Nishimura)

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Speaker of the House Emerita Nancy Pelosi about her experiences meeting Pope Francis and his legacy.

(Image credit: Nikki Kahn)

President Trump and the first lady welcomed an estimated 40,000 people to the South Lawn of the White House on Monday for its annual Easter egg roll event. The annual tradition dates back to the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, and save for war and food shortages, has been a mainstay of Pennsylvania Avenue since 1878.

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla)

Watch The Last of Us, Hacks and more when you pay for a year upfront.

Google has been hyping up its Project Astra as the next generation of AI for months. That set some high expectations when 60 Minutes sent Scott Pelley to experiment with Project Astra tools provided by Google DeepMind.

He was impressed with how articulate, observant, and insightful the AI turned out to be throughout his testing, particularly when the AI not only recognized Edward Hopper’s moody painting "Automat," but also read into the woman’s body language and spun a fictional vignette about her life.

All this through a pair of smart glasses that barely seemed different from a pair without AI built in. The glasses serve as a delivery system for an AI that sees, hears, and can understand the world around you. That could set the stage for a new smart wearables race, but that's just one of many things we learned during the segment about Project Astra and Google's plans for AI.

Astra's understanding

Of course, we have to begin with what we now know about Astra. Firstly, the AI assistant continuously processes video and audio from connected cameras and microphones in its surroundings. The AI doesn’t just identify objects or transcribe text; it also purports to spot and explain emotional tone, extrapolate context, and carry on a conversation about the topic, even when you pause for thought or talk to someone else.

During the demo, Pelley asked Astra what he was looking at. It instantly identified Coal Drops Yard, a retail complex in King’s Cross, and offered background information without missing a beat. When shown a painting, it didn’t stop at "that’s a woman in a cafe." It said she looked "contemplative." And when nudged, it gave her a name and a backstory.

According to DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, the assistant’s real-world understanding is advancing even faster than he expected, noting it is better at making sense of the physical world than the engineers thought it would be at this stage.

Veo 2 views

But Astra isn’t just passively watching. DeepMind has also been busy teaching AI how to generate photorealistic imagery and video. The engineers described how two years ago, their video models struggled with understanding that legs are attached to dogs. Now, they showcased how Veo 2 can conjure a flying dog with flapping wings.

The implications for visual storytelling, filmmaking, advertising, and yes, augmented reality glasses, are profound. Imagine your glasses not only telling you what building you're looking at, but also visualizing what it looked like a century ago, rendered in high definition and seamlessly integrated into the present view.

Genie 2

And then there’s Genie 2, DeepMind’s new world-modeling system. If Astra understands the world as it exists, Genie builds worlds that don’t. It takes a still image and turns it into an explorable environment visible through the smart glasses.

Walk forward, and Genie invents what lies around the corner. Turn left, and it populates the unseen walls. During the demo, a waterfall photo turned into a playable video game level, dynamically generated as Pelley explored.

DeepMind is already using Genie-generated spaces to train other AIs. Genie can help these navigate a world made up by another AI, and in real time, too. One system dreams, another learns. That kind of simulation loop has huge implications for robotics.

In the real world, robots have to fumble their way through trial and error. But in a synthetic world, they can train endlessly without breaking furniture or risking lawsuits.

Astra eyes

Google is trying to get Astra-style perception into your hands (or onto your face) as fast as possible, even if it means giving it away.

Just weeks after launching Gemini’s screen-sharing and live camera features as a premium perk, they reversed course and made it free for all Android users. That wasn’t a random act of generosity. By getting as many people as possible to point their cameras at the world and chat with Gemini, Google gets a flood of training data and real-time user feedback.

There is already a small group of people wearing Astra-powered glasses out in the world. The hardware reportedly uses micro-LED displays to project captions into one eye and delivers audio through tiny directional speakers near the temples. Compared to the awkward sci-fi visor of the original Glass, this feels like a step forward.

Sure, there are issues with privacy, latency, battery life, and the not-so-small question of whether society is ready for people walking around with semi-omniscient glasses without mocking them mercilessly.

Whether or not Google can make that magic feel ethical, non-invasive, and stylish enough to go mainstream is still up in the air. But that sense of 2025 as the year smart glasses go mainstream seems more accurate than ever.

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The new color, olo, is described as a "blue-green of unprecedented saturation."

When you incorporate essential oils liked lavender oil and bergamot oil into your routine, you can reduce anxiety symptoms and promote relaxation.

• Developers shift from loyalty to flexibility as OpenAI leads, but DeepSeek gains ground fast
• Microsoft struggles for developer mindshare with only a 10% adoption rate
• AI integration gets leaner as teams drop formal structures and focus on usable tools

OpenAI has been dominating the LLM space for some time, and remains the leading choice for many developers, but market dynamics and loyalty seem to be shifting, new research has claimed.

A survey by Vercel of 656 app builders found 87% use OpenAI’s models and 83% rely on its inference APIs. However, developers now use an average of two providers, and 60% have changed vendors within the last six months - raising questions about their loyalty.

DeepSeek is now used by nearly a third of businesses (29%), while Microsoft's LLMs, by contrast, appears to be struggling, with only 10% of respondents report using the latter, and 9 out of 10 developers do not consider it a viable option.

Developers now focus on tools, not teams

“AI is dissolving the boundaries between roles. We’re seeing new product designers blend UX, UI, and code in one creative flow - thanks to tools like Vercel, v0, Uizard, and Cursor. Whether junior or senior leader, anyone can now build, test, and ship ideas independently - and that’s not just efficient, it’s liberating,” said Nicolas Le Pallec, CTO, EMEA - AKQA.

AI now builds around clear use cases, with developers prioritizing tools - not teams. Forty-five percent of respondents said they have no dedicated AI team, while 57% reported no specific AI leadership structure. Instead, success with AI depends on clear priorities and the right tools.

“By embracing cutting-edge AI technologies, we’re empowering our teams to work smarter and faster,” said Dr. Jan Ittner of BCG X, echoing the sentiment that an AI writer or developer tool can be more valuable than another hire.

Product AI features are now a priority for 75% of customer-facing apps, while only 39% still include traditional support chatbots. Website personalization remains underutilized at 27%, indicating room for future innovation.

Cost control is also a major priority. Over 70% of developers manually test their models, spending under $1,000 monthly - showing how much can be achieved on limited budgets. To cut costs, only 14% train their models, while 60% instead use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and vector databases.

The focus on tools stems from a perceived "overhype" around AI, with an average rating of 6.4 out of 10. Yet developers gave a 7.7 out of 10 when asked if AI will transform their industries in the next 12 months.

In a shifting field where speed, precision, and adaptability matter more than scale, the best LLM for coding isn’t fixed - it’s the one that solves today’s problems while keeping tomorrow’s door open.

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The shipping company's temporary new policy comes as President Trump continues to upend U.S. global trade policy.

(Image credit: Nicolas Guyonnet/Hans Lucas)

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 415 for April 22.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle No. 1,403 for April 22.

Hints and answers for Connections for April 22, #681.

Don't worry if you miss the peak -- the Lyrids will continue through Saturday.

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• Synology’s 2025 Plus range only works with certain hard drives
• It says this is for lower failure rates and compatibility issues
• Older models won’t be affected by this new policy

Taiwanese NAS-maker Synology has confirmed a new policy that requires Synology-branded hard drives to be used for full compatibility within its 2025 Plus series of network-attached storage (NAS) devices.

From launch, the policy states Synology-branded hard drives will need to be used, but the company promises to “update the Product Compatibility List as additional drives can be thoroughly vetted in Synology systems,” a company spokesperson said(via Ars Technica).

In the meantime, this could spell out reduced choice and increased cost for customers, with potential sustainability issues stemming from users’ inability to use hard drives they might already have, rendering them unusable.

Synology NAS devices hard drives

Synology has nine products in its Plus range, supporting all the way up to 24 hard drives, however users will be required to use approved storage drives only.

The company said that “Synology systems are at less risk of drive failure and ongoing compatibility issues.”

Chad Chiang, the Managing Director of Synology’s Germany and UK businesses, noted: “With our proprietary hard disk solution, we have already seen significant benefits for our customers in various deployment scenarios.”

Despite the change for 2025-onward models, the company confirmed that older models sold up to and including 2024 (excluding XS Plus series and rack models) remain unchanged.

Interestingly, Synology doesn’t manufacture its own hard drives, instead choosing to rebrand models from popular brands like Toshiba and Seagate.

This could be good news, indicating the possibility that further Toshiba and Seagate models might appear on the approved list of third-party drives at a later date, however it could also mean that drives from other brands might be less likely to appear on the list.

Of course, this is speculation only, but we’ve contacted Synology for further details in the hope that we can get access to a list of pre-approved third-party drives.

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Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Pope Francis died Monday, the day after Easter, at the age of 88. As the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, he was the first Latin American pontiff, the first non-European pope in more than a millennium, and he left behind a legacy of service, unity, and compassion.

(Image credit: Lisa Maree Williams)

You can even get store credit in some cases when you trade in old PCs, laptops and printers.

Looks like Bethesda really has been reworking Skyrim's predecessor for modern audiences.

Bluesky, the upstart, decentralized social network that's offered an island of blue calm for those departing the tumultuous, dark waters of X (formerly Twitter), is finally introducing an official form of account verification. It will look familiar to those who spent time on old-school Twitter, but it does feature a few notable caveats.

Up until today (April 21, 2025), there was no Bluesky-supported system for verifying an account or visual indication of verified status, and the microblogging social media platform was suffering from an imposter problem. Bluesky addressed this, in a way, by encouraging people to set up and use their own domain names to establish the veracity of an account.

My account, for instance, is attached to lanceulanoff.com, a domain I've owned for years. Bluesky reports that some 270,000 accounts have linked their accounts to domains.

Still, setting up a domain and connecting it to your Bluesky account is not a trivial matter. This new feature significantly simplifies the process.

A new check

(Image credit: Future)

According to a new Bluesky blog post, there are now three levels of identity on the platform: the basic Bluesky account, a Trusted Verifier, and a Verified Account.

The Trusted Verifier is interesting because it's a verified account that, with Bluesky's review, can verify other accounts. The example given is The New York Times' Bluesky account, which can then verify its journalists' accounts.

Years ago, Twitter had something similar, where an entity like TechRadar could ask Twitter directly to verify some of its journalist employee accounts.

It was not a popular feature among, for instance, celebrities and officials, who wondered (often on Twitter) why journalists needed verification. The topic of Blue Checks and verification on Twitter became so fraught that, for a time, Twitter's then-CEO Jack Dorsey stopped verifying accounts. When Elon Musk took over, he removed verifications from millions of accounts, only to return them some months later.

Who verifies who

Bluesky wrote that it is proactively verifying some "authentic and notable accounts," which will now have a white check in a blue circle.

Trusted Verifiers will have a scalloped blue check to indicate their vaunted status. A tap on someone's verified status can show you which Trusted Verifier granted verification.

It's not necessarily a foolproof system, as I think media companies might seek to verify all journalists in their camp, and Bluesky could push back against that. Or maybe Bluesky says yes, but at some point, "the notables" grow irritated because there are suddenly so many non-famous people with checks.

One thing Bluesky is not supporting is "requests for verification." However, the social media platform is not ruling it out and has promised that as this system settles in and stabilizes, it will "launch a request form for notable and authentic accounts interested in becoming verified or becoming trusted verifiers."

If you're wondering about the other decentralized social media platform, Threads, it adopts verifications directly from Instagram, another Meta property.

It'll be interesting to see what Bluesky asks for in its future verification process and if any part of it will involve some form of ID.

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• The FBI is warning about an ongoing scheme targeting victims of online fraud
• The victims are encouraged to reach out to a person on Telegram, posing as the chief of IC3
• The person would try to gain access to the victims' financial accounts

Cybercriminals are preying on victims of online fraud, using their state of emotional distress to cause even more harm, the FBI has said, revealing it received more than a hundred reports of such attacks in the last two years.

In the campaign, cybercriminals would create fake social media profiles and join groups with other victims of online fraud. They would then claim to have recovered their money with the help of the FBI's Internet Complaint Center (IC3). This makes the ruse credible, since IC3 is an actual division of the FBI and serves as a central hub for reporting cybercrime.

Those who believe the claim are then advised to contact a person named Jaime Quin on Telegram. This person, claiming to be the Chief Director of IC3, is actually just part of the scheme. Quin will tell people who reach out that he recovered their funds and would then ask for access to their financial information, to steal even more money.

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Getting in touch

This is just one example of how the scam works. The FBI says that initial contact from the scammers can vary.

“Some individuals received an email or a phone call, while others were approached via social media or forums," it said. "Almost all complainants indicated the scammers claimed to have recovered the victim's lost funds or offered to assist in recovering funds. However, the claim is a ruse to revictimize those who have already lost money to scams."

To minimize the risk of falling victim to these scams, you should only reach out to law enforcement through official channels. Furthermore, you should keep in mind that law enforcement (especially those in executive positions) will never reach out to you this way, especially not to initiate contact.

Finally, the police will never ask for your password, financial information, or access to private services.

Via BleepingComputer

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