Meta is pivoting Horizon Worlds away from its original VR-centric metaverse vision and toward a mobile-first strategy, "explicitly separating" its Quest VR platform from the virtual world. TechCrunch reports: By going mobile-first, Horizon Worlds is positioning itself to compete with popular platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. "We're in a strong position to deliver synchronous social games at scale, thanks to our unique ability to connect those games with billions of people on the world's biggest social networks," Samantha Ryan, Reality Labs' VP of content, said in the blog post. "You saw this strategy start to unfold in 2025, and now, it's our main focus." Ryan went on to note that Meta is still focused on VR hardware. "We have a robust roadmap of future VR headsets that will be tailored to different audience segments as the market grows and matures," Ryan wrote.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta product managers are rebranding. Some are now calling themselves "AI builders," a signal that AI coding tools are changing who gets to build software inside the company. One of them, Jeremie Guedj, announced the change in a LinkedIn post last week. "I still can't believe I'm writing this: as of today, my full-time job at Meta is AI Builder," he wrote.

Guedj has spent more than a decade as a traditional product manager, a role that sets the road map and strategy for products then built by engineering teams. He said that while his title in Meta's internal systems still lists him as a product manager, his actual work is now full-time building with AI on what he calls an "AI-native team." Another Meta product manager also lists "AI Builder" on her LinkedIn profile, while at least two other Meta engineers write the term in their bios, Business Insider found.

Cable TV providers have spent the past decade losing tens of millions of households to streaming services, but companies like Charter Communications are now slowing that exodus by bundling the very apps that once threatened to replace them.

Charter added 44,000 net video subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2025, its first growth in that count since 2020, after integrating Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ directly into Spectrum cable packages -- a deal that grew out of a contentious 2023 contract dispute with Disney. Comcast and Optimum still lost subscribers in the quarter, though both saw those losses narrow.

Charter's Q4 numbers also got a lift from a 15-day Disney channel blackout on YouTube TV during football season, which drove more than 14,000 subscribers to Spectrum. Charter has been discounting aggressively -- video revenue fell 10% year over year despite the subscriber gains. Cox Communications launched its first streaming-inclusive cable bundles last month, and Dish Network has yet to integrate streaming apps into its packages at all.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has dropped a proposal that would have allowed limited commercial robotaxi deployments outside New York City, citing a lack of support among state legislators. "The move is a blow to Waymo and other robotaxi companies who saw New York, and especially New York City, as a potential goldmine," reports The Verge. From the report: The plan, which was introduced by Hochul as part of the state's budget proposal last month, would have allowed limited robotaxi deployment in cities other than the Big Apple -- while leaving whether New York City would get autonomous vehicles up to the mayor and the City Council. But now that plan is DOA, as support in the legislature never materialized. "Based on conversations with stakeholders, including in the legislature, it was clear that the support was not there to advance this proposal," Sean Butler, a Hochul spokesperson, said in a statement. "While we are disappointed by the Governor's decision, we're committed to bringing our service to New York and will work with the State Legislature to advance this issue," Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher said in a statement. "The path forward requires a collaborative approach that prioritizes transparency and public safety."

The U.S. State Department is reportedly developing a site called freedom.gov that would let users in Europe and elsewhere access content restricted under local laws, "including alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda," reports Reuters. Washington views the move as a way to counter censorship. Reuters reports: One source said officials had discussed including a virtual private network function to make a user's traffic appear to originate in the U.S. and added that user activity on the site will not be tracked. Headed by Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers, the project was expected to be unveiled at last week's Munich Security Conference but was delayed, the sources said. Reuters could not determine why the launch did not happen, but some State Department officials, including lawyers, have raised concerns about the plan, two of the sources said, without detailing the concerns.

The project could further strain ties between the Trump administration and traditional U.S. allies in Europe, already heightened by disputes over trade, Russia's war in Ukraine and President Donald Trump's push to assert control over Greenland. The portal could also put Washington in the unfamiliar position of appearing to encourage citizens to flout local laws.

Google has introduced Gemini 3.1 Pro, a reasoning-focused upgrade aimed at more complex problem-solving. 9to5Google reports: This .1 increment is a first for Google, with the past two generations seeing .5 as the mid-year model update. (2.5 Pro was first announced in March and saw further updates in May for I/O.) Google says Gemini 3.1 Pro "represents a step forward in core reasoning." The "upgraded core intelligence" that debuted last week with Gemini 3 Deep Think is now available in Gemini 3.1 Pro for more users. This model achieves an ARC-AGI-2 score of 77.1%, or "more than double the reasoning performance of 3 Pro."

This "advanced reasoning" translates to practical applications like when "you're looking for a clear, visual explanation of a complex topic, a way to synthesize data into a single view, or bringing a creative project to life." 3.1 Pro is designed for tasks where a simple answer isn't enough, taking advanced reasoning and making it useful for your hardest challenges.

Minecraft: Java Edition is switching its rendering backend from OpenGL to Vulkan as part of the upcoming Vibrant Visuals update, aiming for both better performance and modern graphics features across platforms like Linux and macOS (via translation layers). GamingOnLinux reports: For modders, they're suggesting they start making preparations to move away from OpenGL: "Switching from OpenGL to Vulkan will have an impact on the mods that currently use OpenGL for rendering, and we anticipate that updating from OpenGL to Vulkan will take modders more effort than the updates you undertake for each of our releases. To start with, we recommend our modding community look at moving away from OpenGL usage. We encourage authors to try to reuse as much of the internal rendering APIs as possible, to make this transition as easy as possible. If that is not sufficient for your needs, then come and talk to us!"

It does mean that players on really old devices that don't support Vulkan will be left out, but Vulkan has been supported going back to some pretty old GPUs. You've got time though, as they'll be rolling out Vulkan alongside OpenGL in snapshots (development releases) "sometime over the summer." You'll be able to toggle between them during the testing period until Mojang believe it's ready. OpenGL will be entirely removed eventually once they're happy with performance and stability.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg faced a barrage of questions about his social-media company's efforts to secure ever more of its users' time and attention at a landmark trial in Los Angeles on Wednesday. In sworn testimony, Zuckerberg said Meta's growth targets reflect an aim to give users something useful, not addict them, and that the company doesn't seek to attract children as users. [...] Mark Lanier, a lawyer for the plaintiff, repeatedly asked Zuckerberg about internal company communications discussing targets for how much time users spend with Meta's products. Lanier showed an email from 2015 in which the CEO stated his goal for 2016 was to increase users' time spent by 12%. "We used to give teams goals on time spent and we don't do that anymore because I don't think that's the best way to do it," Zuckerberg said on the witness stand in sworn testimony.

Lanier also asked Zuckerberg about documents showing Meta employees were aware of children under 13 using Meta's apps. Zuckerberg said the company's policy was that children under 13 aren't allowed on the platform and that they are removed when identified. Lanier showed an internal Meta email from 2015 that estimated 4 million children under 13 were using Instagram. He estimated that figure would represent approximately 30% of all kids aged 10 to 12 in the U.S. In response to a question about his ownership stake in Meta, which amounts to roughly more than $200 billion, Zuckerberg said he has pledged to donate most of his money to charity. "The better that Meta does, the more money I will be able to invest in science research," he said.

[...] On the stand, Zuckerberg was also asked about his decision to continue to allow beauty filters on the apps after 18 experts said they were harmful to teenage girls. The company temporarily banned the filters on Instagram in 2019 and commissioned a panel of experts to review the feature. All 18 said they were damaging. Meta later lifted the ban but said it didn't create any filters of its own or recommend the filters to users on Instagram after that. "We shouldn't create that content ourselves and we shouldn't recommend it to people," Zuckerberg said. But at the same time, he continued, "I think oftentimes telling people that they can't express themselves like that is overbearing." He also argued that other experts had thought such bans were a suppression of free speech. By focusing on the design of Meta's apps rather than the content posted in them, the case seeks to get around longstanding legal doctrine that largely shields social-media companies from litigation. At times, the case has veered into questions of content, prompting Meta's lawyers to object.

A new essay in Works in Progress Magazine argues that Europe's failure to produce a Tesla or a Waymo stems not from insufficient research spending or high taxes -- problems California shares in abundance -- but from labor laws that make it devastatingly expensive for companies to unwind failed bets. According to estimates, corporate restructuring costs the equivalent of 31 months of salary per employee in Germany, 38 in France, and 62 in Spain, compared to seven in the United States.

The downstream effects are visible across Europe's flagship industries. When Audi closed its Brussels factory after cancelling the E-Tron SUV in 2024, severance ran to $718 million -- over $235,000 per employee and more than the cost of writing off the plant's physical assets. Volkswagen spent $50 billion on its electric vehicle lineup, failed to develop competitive software internally, and ultimately paid up to $5 billion for access to American startup Rivian's technology.

Between 2012 and 2016, 79% of all startup acquisitions tracked by Crunchbase took place in the US. The essay points to Denmark, Austria and Switzerland as countries that have found a middle path -- generous unemployment insurance and portable severance accounts that protect workers without penalizing employers for taking risks.

Phison CEO Pua Khein-Seng, whose company is one of the leading makers of controller chips for SSDs and other flash memory devices, admitted in a televised interview that the ongoing global RAM shortage could force companies to cut back their product lines in the second half of 2026 -- and that some may not survive at all if they cannot secure enough memory.

The interview, conducted in Chinese by Ningguan Chen of Taiwanese broadcaster Next TV, drew an important distinction: it was the interviewer who raised the possibility of shutdowns and product discontinuations, and Khein-Seng largely agreed rather than volunteering the prediction himself. The shortage stems from AI data centers consuming the vast majority of the world's memory supply, a buildout that has sent RAM prices up by three to six times over the past several months. Only three companies control 93% of the global DRAM market, and all three have chosen to prioritize profits over rapid capacity expansion. Even Nvidia may skip shipping a gaming GPU for the first time in 30 years, and Apple could struggle to secure enough chips. Khein-Seng also expects consumers will increasingly repair broken products rather than replace them.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Post: In 2024, the Ethiopian government banned the import of fossil fuel-powered vehicles and slashed tariffs on their electric equivalents. It was a policy driven less by the country's climate ambitions and more by fiscal pressures. For years, subsidizing gasoline for consumers has been a major drag on Ethiopia's budget, costing the state billions of dollars over the past decade. The country defaulted on its sovereign bonds in 2023 after rising interest rates drove up the costs of servicing its debts, and it received a $3.4 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund the following year.

In the two years since the ban on internal combustion engine vehicles, EV adoption has grown from less than 1% to nearly 6% of all of the vehicles on the road in the country -- according to the government's own figures -- some way above the global average of 4%. "The Ethiopia story is fascinating," said Colin McKerracher, head of clean transport at BloombergNEF. "What you're seeing in places that don't make a lot of vehicles of any type, they're saying: 'Well, look, if I'm going to import the cars anyway, then I'd rather import less oil. We may as well import the one that cleans up local air quality and is cheaper to buy.'"

For decades, Ethiopia's high import tariffs on vehicles put new car ownership out of the reach of most of the country's population. Per capita gross domestic product is only about $1,000, and even by the standards of low-income countries, it has among the lowest car ownership rates. At 13 vehicles per 1,000 people, it's a fraction of the African average of 73. With few cars manufactured in the country, the vast majority are imported, and most are bought used. The government's import policy has upended the market. In parallel, tariffs for EVs were dropped to 15% for completed cars, 5% for parts and semi-assembled vehicles, and zero for "fully knocked down" -- vehicles shipped in parts and assembled locally. That has made new EVs cost-competitive with old gasoline cars.

Uber plans to invest $100 million in EV charging infrastructure to support current and future robotaxi fleets in cities like Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and Dallas, "eventually partner[ing] with multiple robotaxi companies on actual robotaxi deployment -- WeRide, Waabi, Lucid, Nuro, May Mobility, Momenta, and Waymo of course," reports CleanTechnica. From the report: "Cities can only unlock the full promise of autonomy and electrification if the right charging infrastructure is built for scale. That infrastructure needs to work for today's drivers and the fleets of the future," said Uber's global head of mobility, Pradeep Parameswaran. In addition to building some infrastructure itself, the company is making "utilization guarantee agreements" with EVgo for various major US cities as well as Electra, Hubber, and Ionity in Europe.

On Uber's latest shareholder call, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that the company would make "targeted growth-oriented investments aligned with the 6 strategic areas of focus." That includes self-driving vehicles/robotaxis. "With the benefit of learning from multiple AV deployments around the world, we're more convinced than ever that AVs will unlock a multitrillion-dollar opportunity for Uber. AVs amplify the fundamental strengths of our platform, global scale, deep demand density, sophisticated marketplace technology, and decades of on-the-ground experience matching riders, drivers, and vehicles, all in real time," Khosrowshahi added.

Google's Pixel 10a is essentially a flatter version of last year's Pixel 9a, keeping the same Tensor G4 chip, camera hardware, RAM, storage, and $500 price while dropping features like Pixelsnap Qi2 charging and advanced Gemini AI capabilities found in higher-end models. Gizmodo reports: We use words like "candy bar" or "slab" to describe our full-screen smartphones, but Google has designed what is likely the slabbiest phone of the modern era. During an hour-long hands-on with Google's all-new Google Pixel 10a, I slid the phone across a desk and felt oddly satisfied that it could glide as neatly as a figure skater without any hint of a camera bump hindering its path. It's the first thing I need to bring up regarding the Pixel 10a, because there's no other discernible difference between this phone and the previous-gen Pixel 9a.

And that seems to be the point. The Pixel 10a starts at $500, exactly how much the Pixel 9a cost at launch. In a Q&A with journalists, Google told Gizmodo that the company wanted to offer the same price point as before. That apparently required Google to stick with the same Tensor G4 chip as last year. You still have the same storage options of 128GB or 256GB and the minimum of 8GB of RAM. Think of the Pixel 10a as a Pixel 9a with a reduced camera bump. If you're one of the heretics who uses a phone without a case, that fact alone may be enough to pay attention. Otherwise, you'll be scrounging to find any real difference between the Pixel 10a and one of last year's best mid-range phones.

Mark Zuckerberg is testifying in a landmark Los Angeles trial examining whether Meta and other social media firms can be held liable for designing platforms that allegedly addict and harm children. NBC News reports: It's the first of a consolidated group of cases -- from more than 1,600 plaintiffs, including over 350 families and over 250 school districts -- scheduled to be argued before a jury in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Plaintiffs accuse the owners of Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snap of knowingly designing addictive products harmful to young users' mental health. Historically, social media platforms have been largely shielded by Section 230, a provision added to the Communications Act of 1934, that says internet companies are not liable for content users post. TikTok and Snap reached settlements with the first plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman identified in court as K.G.M., ahead of the trial. The companies remain defendants in a series of similar lawsuits expected to go to trial this year.

[...] Matt Bergman, founding attorney of Social Media Victims Law Center -- which is representing about 750 plaintiffs in the California proceeding and about 500 in the federal proceeding -- called Wednesday's testimony "more than a legal milestone -- it is a moment that families across this country have been waiting for." "For the first time, a Meta CEO will have to sit before a jury, under oath, and explain why the company released a product its own safety teams warned were addictive and harmful to children," Bergman said in a statement Tuesday, adding that the moment "carries profound weight" for parents "who have spent years fighting to be heard." "They deserve the truth about what company executives knew," he said. "And they deserve accountability from the people who chose growth and engagement over the safety of their children."

Google is bringing its Lyria 3 AI music model into the Gemini app, allowing users to generate 30-second songs from text, images, or video prompts directly within the chatbot. The Verge reports: Lyria 3's text-to-music capabilities allow Gemini app users to make songs by describing specific genres, moods, or memories, such as asking for an "Afrobeat track for my mother about the great times we had growing up." The music generator can make instrumental audio and songs with lyrics composed automatically based on user prompts. Users can also upload photographs and video references, which Gemini then uses to generate a track with lyrics that fit the vibe.

"The goal of these tracks isn't to create a musical masterpiece, but rather to give you a fun, unique way to express yourself," Google said in its announcement blog. Gemini will add custom cover art generated by Nano Banana to songs created on the app, which aims to make them easier to share and download. Google is also bringing Lyria 3 to YouTube's Dream Track tool, which allows creators to make custom AI soundtracks for Shorts.

Dream Track and Lyria were initially demonstrated with the ability to mimic the style and voice of famous performers. Google says it's been "very mindful" of copyright in the development of Lyria 3 and that the tool "is designed for original expression, not for mimicking existing artists." When prompted for a specific artist, Gemini will make a track that "shares a similar style or mood" and uses filters to check outputs against existing content.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For a while now, Mac owners have been able to use tools like CrossOver and Game Porting Toolkit to get many Windows games running on their operating system of choice. Now, GameSir plans to add its own potential solution to the mix, announcing that a version of its existing Windows emulation tool for Android will be coming to macOS. Hong Kong-based GameSir has primarily made a name for itself as a manufacturer of gaming peripherals -- the company's social media profile includes a self-description as "the Anti-Stick Drift Experts." Early last year, though, GameSir rolled out the Android GameHub app, which includes a GameFusion emulator that the company claims "provides complete support for Windows games to run on Android through high-precision compatibility design."

In practice, GameHub and GameFusion for Android haven't quite lived up to that promise. Testers on Reddit and sites like EmuReady report hit-or-miss compatibility for popular Steam titles on various Android-based handhelds. At least one Reddit user suggests that "any Unity, Godot, or Game Maker game tends to just work" through the app, while another reports "terrible compatibility" across a wide range of games. With Sunday's announcement, GameSir promises a similar opportunity to "unlock your entire Steam library" and "run Win games/Steam natively" on Mac will be "coming soon." GameSir is also promising "proprietary AI frame interpolation" for the Mac, following the recent rollout of a "native rendering mode" that improved frame rates on the Android version. There are some "reasons to worry" though, based on the company's uneven track record. The Android version faced controversy for including invasive tracking components, which were later removed after criticism. There were also questions about the use of open-source code, as GameSir acknowledged referencing and using UI components from Winlator, even while maintaining that its core compatibility layer was developed in-house.

TP-Link is facing legal action from the state of Texas for allegedly misleading consumers with "Made in Vietnam" claims despite China-dominated manufacturing and supply chains, and for marketing its devices as secure despite reported firmware vulnerabilities exploited by Chinese state-sponsored actors. The Register: The Lone Star State's Attorney General, Ken Paxton, is filing the lawsuit against California-based TP-Link Systems Inc., which was originally founded in China, accusing it of deceptively marketing its networking devices and alleging that its security practices and China-based affiliations allowed Chinese state-sponsored actors to access devices in the homes of American consumers.

It is understood that this is just the first of several lawsuits that the Office of the Attorney General intends to file this week against "China-aligned companies," as part of a coordinated effort to hold China accountable under Texas law. The lawsuit claims that TP-Link is the dominant player in the US networking and smart home market, controlling 65 percent of the American market for network devices.

It also alleges that TP-Link represents to American consumers that the devices it markets and sells within the US are manufactured in Vietnam, and that consistent with this, the devices it sells in the American market carry a "Made in Vietnam" sticker.

An anonymous reader writes:

Electric buses are proving unreliable this winter for Vermont's Green Mountain Transit, as it needs to be over 41 degrees for the buses to charge, but due to a battery recall the buses are a fire hazard and can't be charged in a garage.

Spokesman for energy workers advocacy group Power the Future Larry Behrens told the Center Square: "Taxpayers were sold an $8 million 'solution' that can't operate in cold weather when the home for these buses is in New England."

"We're beyond the point where this looks like incompetence and starts to smell like fraud," Behrens said.

"When government rushes money out the door to satisfy green mandates, basic questions about performance, safety, and value for taxpayers are always pushed aside," Behrens said. "Americans deserve to know who approved this purchase and why the red flags were ignored."

General manager at Green Mountain Transit (GMT) Clayton Clark told The Center Square that "the federal government provides public transit agencies with new buses through a competitive grant application process, and success is not a given."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: In 1987, economist and Nobel laureate Robert Solow made a stark observation about the stalling evolution of the Information Age: Following the advent of transistors, microprocessors, integrated circuits, and memory chips of the 1960s, economists and companies expected these new technologies to disrupt workplaces and result in a surge of productivity. Instead, productivity growth slowed, dropping from 2.9% from 1948 to 1973, to 1.1% after 1973. Newfangled computers were actually at times producing too much information, generating agonizingly detailed reports and printing them on reams of paper. What had promised to be a boom to workplace productivity was for several years a bust. This unexpected outcome became known as Solow's productivity paradox, thanks to the economist's observation of the phenomenon. "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics," Solow wrote in a New York Times Book Review article in 1987.

New data on how C-suite executives are -- or aren't -- using AI shows history is repeating itself, complicating the similar promises economists and Big Tech founders made about the technology's impact on the workplace and economy. Despite 374 companies in the S&P 500 mentioning AI in earnings calls -- most of which said the technology's implementation in the firm was entirely positive -- according to a Financial Times analysis from September 2024 to 2025, those positive adoptions aren't being reflected in broader productivity gains.

A study published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that among 6,000 CEOs, chief financial officers, and other executives from firms who responded to various business outlook surveys in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Australia, the vast majority see little impact from AI on their operations. While about two-thirds of executives reported using AI, that usage amounted to only about 1.5 hours per week, and 25% of respondents reported not using AI in the workplace at all. Nearly 90% of firms said AI has had no impact on employment or productivity over the last three years, the research noted. However, firms' expectations of AI's workplace and economic impact remained substantial: Executives also forecast AI will increase productivity by 1.4% and increase output by 0.8% over the next three years. While firms expected a 0.7% cut to employment over this time period, individual employees surveyed saw a 0.5% increase in employment.

Following backlash over Discord's global rollout of strict age-verification checks, users are flocking to rival platform TeamSpeak and overwhelming its servers. According to PC Gamer, the Discord alternative said its hosting capacity has been maxed out in a number of regions including the U.S. From the report: [A]s I saw for myself while testing out free Discord alternatives, it's hard to deny the appeal of TeamSpeak. It's quick and easy to make an account, join or start a group chat, or join a massive, game-based community voice server, and at no point does TeamSpeak cheekily ask if it can scan your wizened visage.

During my testing, I was able to dive into 18+ group chats without tripping over an age gate. However, there's no guarantee TeamSpeak won't have to deploy its own age verification mechanism in the future. In the UK at least, the Online Safety Act makes those sorts of checks a legal obligation, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently stating "No social media platform should get a free pass when it comes to protecting our kids."

Besides all of that, if you'd rather not chat to randoms who also happen to have an unhealthy obsession with Arc Raiders, you'll likely need to pay an admittedly small subscription fee to rent your own ten-person community voice server. By that point, you're handing over card details and essentially fulfilling an age assurance check anyway. If you'd rather limit how much info your chat platform of choice has about you, there are arguably better options out there.