Ring has restored police access to user video footage and returned to its original crime-prevention mission under founder Jamie Siminoff, who rejoined Amazon in April after a two-year absence. The video doorbell company announced a partnership with law enforcement technology firm Axon that allows police to request footage through Axon's digital evidence management system, effectively reviving a controversial feature Ring discontinued last year.

Siminoff scrapped Ring's socially-focused mission statement "Keep people close to what's important" that Amazon introduced in 2024 and reinstated the company's original mandate to "make neighborhoods safer." The company previously paid $5.8 million to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations of privacy violations in 2023, though Amazon denied wrongdoing.

Netflix says it has used visual effects created by generative AI in one of its original TV shows for the first time. From a report: The streaming giant's co-chief executive Ted Sarandos said AI, which produces videos and images based on prompts, was used to create a scene of a building collapsing in the Argentine science fiction show, The Eternaut. He said the technology allowed the production team to complete sequences faster and at a lower cost.

The use of generative AI is controversial in the entertainment industry over concerns it creates content using others' work without their consent and fears that it will replace the work of humans. [...] Asked about Netflix's use of AI, Mr Sarandos said the technology has allowed productions with smaller budgets to use advanced visual effects.

LibreOffice has accused Microsoft of intentionally using "unnecessarily complex" file formats to lock in Office users, claiming the company weaponizes its Office Open XML schema to create barriers for competitors. The open-source office suite argued that Microsoft's OOXML format includes deeply nested structures with non-intuitive naming conventions and numerous optional elements that make implementation difficult for developers outside Microsoft.

LibreOffice compared the situation to a railway system where tracks are public but one company's control system is so convoluted that competitors cannot build compatible trains.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Since Monday morning, Claude Code users have been hit with unexpectedly restrictive usage limits. The problems, many of which have been aired on Claude Code's GitHub page, seem to be concentrated among heavy users of the service, many of whom are on the $200-a-month Max plan.

Users are only told "Claude usage limit reached," and given a time (typically within a matter of hours) when the limit will reset. But with no explicit announcement of a change in limits, many users have concluded that their subscription has been downgraded or that their usage is being inaccurately tracked.

"Your tracking of usage limits has changed and is no longer accurate," one user complained. "There is no way in the 30 minutes of a few requests I have hit the 900 messages." When reached for comment, an Anthropic representative confirmed the issues but declined to elaborate further.

Microsoft has shut down its Movies & TV storefront on the Microsoft Store, ending the ability to purchase new entertainment content on Windows PCs and Xbox consoles. The company announced that as of July 18, users can no longer buy or rent movies and TV shows through Microsoft.com, the Microsoft Store on Windows, or the Microsoft Store on Xbox.

Customers who previously purchased content from the Microsoft Store can continue accessing their libraries through the Movies & TV app, which remains available for download. Microsoft will not offer refunds for recent purchases. US customers can use the Movies Anywhere service to sync their purchased content to other compatible platforms.

An anonymous reader shares a column: I can't open LinkedIn without seeing a new post from a Microsoft employee who lost their job in the company's latest round of layoffs. Around 15,000 jobs have been eliminated at Microsoft over the past couple months -- the biggest cuts at the company in more than a decade.

I've spoken to more than a dozen Microsoft employees in recent weeks, and everyone is concerned about the company's direction in this AI era. Morale is at an all-time low, and employees are worried that regular layoffs are simply the new normal.

Sources tell me that Microsoft's leadership team had the choice between reducing investment in AI infrastructure for the upcoming financial year or deeply cutting its headcount and operating expenses. It's very clear what route Microsoft chose.

Delta Air Lines plans for 20% of its ticket prices to be individually determined using AI by the end of this year, up from the current 3% of fares that are AI-determined. President Glen Hauenstein told investors last week the airline's long-term strategy aims to eliminate static pricing altogether in favor of personalized fares calculated by AI algorithms.

The AI pricing pilot program, which has tripled in scope over nine months, has produced "amazingly favorable unit revenues," according to the airline.

You're not alone if you think the move is problematic. Consumer Watchdog analyst Justin Kloczko told Fortune that the airline is "basically hacking our brains," and Senator Ruben Gallego called Delta's practice "predatory pricing."

The computer science major needs a rebrand, Google's head of Android Sameer Samat said, arguing that the discipline is widely misunderstood as simply learning to code. "It is thought of as, 'go learn how to do Java coding,'" Samat said of the major, adding that if that's what students want to do, "you don't need a degree."

Samat, who studied computer science at UC San Diego, views the field differently: "It's definitely not learning to code. It is the science, in my opinion, of solving problems." The major should focus on breaking down problems, learning system design, and collaboration rather than just coding skills, Samat said.

India has achieved 50% of its installed electricity capacity from non-fossil fuel sources -- five years ahead of its 2030 target under the Paris Agreement, signalling accelerating momentum in the country's clean energy transition. From a report: The announcement comes as India's renewable power output rose at its fastest pace since 2022 in the first half of 2025, while coal-fired generation declined nearly 3%. Fossil fuels still accounted for over two-thirds of the increase in power generation last year. India plans to expand coal-fired capacity by 80 GW by 2032 to meet rising demand.

Apple has filed a lawsuit against YouTuber Jon Prosser and Michael Ramacciotti for misappropriation of trade secrets related to iOS 26 leaks published earlier this year. The complaint alleges Prosser and Ramacciotti conspired to access a development iPhone belonging to Apple employee Ethan Lipnik, acquiring his passcode and using location-tracking to determine when he "would be gone for an extended period."

Apple claims Ramacciotti accessed Lipnik's device and made a FaceTime call to Prosser showing iOS 26 features, which Prosser recorded and used to create rendered mockups for his January, March, and April videos. Lipnik's employment was terminated, and Apple seeks an injunction against further disclosure plus damages.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has said that the majority of his company's new code is written by AI, with "close to 100%" of engineers using AI code editors. Speaking on the 20VC podcast, Tenev estimated around 50% of new code at the trading platform is AI-generated.

Tenev said the 50% figure is imprecise due to advanced "agentic" code editors that have made it difficult to distinguish human-written from AI-generated code. The company has progressed from GitHub Copilot to Cursor and now Windsurf, where "nearly all of the code is written by AI," he said. Tenev estimated only a "minority" of new code at Robinhood is written by humans.

Mozilla will ship WebGPU support in Firefox 141 when the browser launches July 22, bringing graphics processing capabilities that Chrome users have had since 2023. The initial release supports Windows only, with Mac, Linux, and Android planned for the coming months.

WebGPU provides web content direct access to graphics processors for high-performance computation and rendering in games and complex 3D applications. Chrome gained WebGPU support with version 113 in 2023, while Safari 26 is expected to add the feature this fall. Firefox's implementation uses the WGPU Rust crate, which translates web requests into native commands for Direct3D 12, Metal, or Vulkan.

British universities face mounting financial pressures with four in ten institutions running deficits, according to the Office for Students regulator. Half have closed courses to save money, while Durham and Newcastle each shed 200 staff members. Lancaster's cost-saving plan could eliminate one in five academic positions. The crisis, writes Economist, stems from frozen tuition fees for English students, which will rise by only a few percent in August for the first time in eight years.

OpenAI launched ChatGPT agent Thursday, an AI tool that can complete multi-step tasks including online shopping, creating PowerPoint presentations, and generating spreadsheets. The agent combines capabilities from two existing OpenAI services: Operator, which can browse and interact with websites like a human, and Deep Research, which handles complex online research tasks.

The tool runs on a new AI model developed specifically for agent capabilities and can perform tasks such as planning meals and ordering ingredients online, booking restaurant reservations, and creating slide decks based on competitor analysis. In demonstrations, the agent successfully browsed Etsy for vintage lamps under $200 with free shipping and automatically added items to a shopping cart.

ChatGPT agent is immediately available to Pro, Plus, and Team subscribers, with Enterprise and Education users gaining access later this summer. The tool requires user permission before making purchases or performing "irreversible" actions like sending emails. The startup, however, has cautioned that the agent "is far from perfect" and can take several minutes to complete tasks.

Sony removed the tiltable screen from its new RX1R III full-frame compact camera to maintain similar dimensions to the previous model, despite adding numerous new features and charging $5,100 for the device, The Verge reports.

The company increased the camera's size by only 2.5mm in height and 15.5mm in depth while incorporating the high-resolution sensor from the A7R V, Sony's latest autofocus tracking system, a longer-lasting battery, and a proper electronic viewfinder. Sony integrated the top dials and hot shoe into the body for a sleeker appearance. The camera's compact design prevents the inclusion of lens or sensor-based image stabilization. The Verge points out that Leica also added a tilt screen to its Q3 model after users requested the feature, despite the design compromise required.