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We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. When a home security camera drops to half its price, it usually means you’re giving up something in return. With the Blink Mini 2, that’s not the case. It’s currently $19.99 on Amazon, down from $39.99, which is the lowest price it’s ever been, according to price trackers. Blink Mini 2 $19.99 at Amazon $39.99 Save $20.00 Get Deal Get Deal $19.99 at Amazon $39.99 Save $20.00 For a camera that can be used indoors or outdoors (with a $9.99 weather-resistant power adapter, sold separately or bundled), that’s compelling. The Mini 2 is tiny (just two inches square) but packs a 143-degree field of view, more than the first-gen model’s 110 degrees. During the day, the 1080p video looks crisp and colorful. At night, it offers both black-and-white infrared and color vision thanks to a built-in LED spotlight. The color mode isn’t perfect (hues aren’t as vibrant as daylight footage), but it gives more detail than plain grayscale. Blink leaned into small upgrades with the Mini 2 that make a noticeable difference. The custom-built chip inside allows features such as smart notifications and person detection, so the camera can tell whether it spotted a person, package, or pet. The catch is you’ll need a subscription for that. The Blink Basic Plan runs $3.99 per month per camera ($39.99 annually) and gives you 60 days of video history, smart alerts, activity zones, and extended live streams. The Plus Plan, at $11.99 monthly ($119.99 annually), covers unlimited cameras. Without a plan, you’re limited to live viewing, unless you pick up a Sync Module 2 ($49.99) and an SD card for local storage. The Blink Mini 2 also fits neatly into smart homes, at least if you use Alexa. It supports voice commands and IFTTT integrations, but not Google Home or Apple HomeKit. That could be a deal breaker if you’re invested in those platforms. Setup is straightforward through the Blink’s companion app, and you can adjust everything from motion sensitivity to light brightness within the settings. Performance is solid for the price, but reviews note black-and-white night footage isn’t as sharp as competing budget cameras like the TP-Link Tapo C120 or Eufy Indoor Cam. Still, for $19.99, you’re getting flexible placement, decent video quality, and features that usually live behind higher price tags. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods Pro 2 Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $199.00 (List Price $249.00) Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge 256GB Unlocked AI Phone (Titanium JetBlack) — $699.99 (List Price $1,099.99) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $299.00 (List Price $349.00) Roku Streaming Stick Plus — $29.99 (List Price $39.99) Blink Mini 2 1080p Indoor Security Camera (2-Pack, White) — $34.99 (List Price $69.99) Ring Battery Doorbell Plus — $79.99 (List Price $149.99) Blink Video Doorbell Wireless (Newest Model) + Sync Module Core — $34.99 (List Price $69.99) Ring Indoor Cam (2nd Gen, 2-pack, White) — $49.98 (List Price $79.99) Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K (2nd Gen, 2023) — $24.99 (List Price $49.99) Shark AV2501S AI Ultra Robot Vacuum with HEPA Self-Empty Base — $229.99 (List Price $549.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is rejecting Democratic demands on health care as unserious but says a government shutdown is still “avoidable” despite sharp divisions ahead of Wednesday’s funding deadline. “I’m a big believer that there’s always a way out,” the South Dakota Republican said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday. “And I think there are off-ramps here, but I don’t think that the negotiating position, at least at the moment, that the Democrats are trying to exert here is going to get you there.” Thune said Democrats are going to have to “dial back” their demands, which include immediately extending health insurance subsidies and reversing the health care policies in the massive tax bill that Republicans passed over the summer. Absent that, Thune said, “we’re probably plunging forward toward the shutdown.” It’s just the latest standoff in Washington over government funding, stretching back through several administrations. President Donald The President was the driving force behind the longest shutdown ever during his first term, as he sought money for a U.S.-Mexico border wall. This time it is Democrats who are making demands as they face intense pressure from their core supporters to stand up to the Republican president and his policies. Democrats have shown little signs of relenting, just before spending runs out Wednesday. Their position remained the same even after the White House Office of Management and Budget on Wednesday released a memo that said agencies should consider a “reduction in force” for many federal programs if the government closes — meaning thousands of federal workers could be permanently laid off. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the OMB memo was simply an “attempt at intimidation” and predicted the “unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back.” Thune stopped short of criticizing the White House threat of mass layoffs, saying the situation remains “a hypothetical.” Still, he said no one should be surprised by the memo as “everyone knows Russ Vought,” the head of the Office of Management and Budget, and his longtime advocacy for slashing government. “But it’s all avoidable,” Thune said. “And so if they don’t want to go down that path, there’s a way to avoid going down that path.” One way to avoid a shutdown, Thune said, would be for enough Democrats to vote with Republicans for a stripped-down “clean” bill to keep the government open for the next seven weeks while negotiations on spending continue. That’s how Republicans avoided a shutdown in March, when Schumer and several other Democrats decided at the last minute to vote with Republicans — to great political cost when Schumer’s party then revolted. A seven-week funding bill has already passed the House. “What would eight Democrats be willing to support?” Thune asked. “In terms of a path forward, or at least understanding what that path forward looks like.” Republicans in the 100-member Senate need at least seven Democrats to vote with them to get the 60 votes necessary for a short-term funding package, and they may lose up to two of their own — Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky both opposed it in preliminary votes last week. A competing bill from Democrats also fell well short of 60 votes. Thune suggested some individual bipartisan bills to fund parts of the government for the next year could be part of a compromise, “but that requires cooperation from both sides,” he said. Democrats say they are frustrated that Thune hasn’t approached them to negotiate — and that The President abruptly canceled a meeting with Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York that had been scheduled for this week. The President wrote on social media, “I have decided that no meeting with their Congressional Leaders could possibly be productive.” Thune said he “did have a conversation with the president” and offered his opinion on the meeting, which he declined to disclose. “But I think the president speaks for himself, and I think he came to the conclusion that that meeting would not be productive,” Thune said. Still, he says he thinks The President could be open to a negotiation on the expanded health care subsidies that expire at the end of the year if Democrats weren’t threatening a shutdown. Many people who receive the subsidies through the marketplaces set up by the Affordable Care Act are expected to see a sharp rise in premiums if Congress doesn’t extend them. Some Republicans have agreed with Democrats that keeping the subsidies is necessary, but Thune says “reform is going to have to be a big part of it.” Democrats are likely to oppose such changes. By Monday, when the Senate returns to session, lawmakers will have just over 24 hours to avoid federal closures. Thune said he intends to bring up the bills that were rejected last week. “They’ll get multiple chances to vote,” he said, before a government shutdown begins at midnight Wednesday. He said he hopes “cooler heads will prevail.” “I don’t think shutdowns benefit anybody, least of all the American people,” Thune said. —Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press View the full article

The last thing you want when dealing with a hot oven is any added burn risk. But some owners of Oster’s countertop ovens have experienced just that. Oster’s parent company, Sunbeam Products, is recalling over a million units of Oster French Door Countertop Ovens due to its doors unexpectedly closing. The company has received 95 reports of this occurring, leading to burn injuries, two of which were second-degree burns. Where and when was the product sold? According to a notice from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the recall includes about 1,290,000 units in the United States and another approximately 104,195 units in Canada. In the U.S., the ovens were sold nationwide in stores such as Bed Bath & Beyond, Costco, and Walmart. The products were sold from August 2015 to July 2025 for $140 to $250. They were also available online through Amazon.com and Overstock.com during this time. Four model numbers are included in the recall: TSSTTVFDXL TSSTTVFDDG TSSTTVFDMAF TSSTTVFDDAF The model number is available on the original packaging or on the back of the oven. How dangerous is this product? According to a separate recall notice posted to the Oster website, 95 injuries have been reported. Of those, 93 were minor burns that required no medical treatment and were “consistent with first-degree burns, such as sunburn or friction-related irritation.” The remaining two were second-degree burns that resulted in the victims seeking treatment. Oster says it has received no reports of hospitalizations as a result of using the ovens. What should I do if I have this product? First, stop using it. If your Oster French Door Countertop Oven is part of the recall, then you can contact Sunbeam Products to receive a free repair kit. You can reach the company through one of three options: A toll free call to 800-334-0759 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday. On Oster’s recall page. On Oster’s website by clicking the recall banner at the top of the homepage. It will bring you to the recall page. The repair kit is made up of a clip-on device that “provides additional holding force to help keep the doors in the open position when reaching in the oven.” It also has repair instructions and QR code that leads to an installation video. No tools should be necessary to attach the clip-on device. View the full article

The meteoric rise in artificial intelligence and its usage in nearly every facet of our daily life is leaving a profound mark on the job market. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, more than 76,000 jobs were lost to automation, as AI-powered analytics platforms replaced junior data analysts. Nearly 40% of employers expect to cut staff in areas where AI can handle tasks, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025. Now, with the rise of generative AI’s successor, agentic AI, many in the tech industry fear that AI will soon claim coding and tech jobs. After all, if AI-powered coding assistants can write, debug, and refactor code in seconds, what use is there for human developers? But leaders inside OpenAI see the moment in almost opposite terms. Thibault Sottiaux, engineering lead for Codex at OpenAI, argues that coding isn’t dying—it’s evolving. Rather than rendering developers obsolete, he believes AI is transforming coding by amplifying human strengths in creativity, reasoning, and problem-solving. “If you look at today’s AI tools, it’s clear they’re far from perfect. There’s still so much capacity in the world to absorb better, more powerful, and more delightful software,” Sottiaux says. These coding tools, he says, are radically reshaping the learning curve for young coders. “I see new graduates on my team picking up programming at a speed I haven’t witnessed before.” Developers are spending less time on line-by-line debugging, freeing them up to what should be built, how systems should be structured, and what kind of impact software can have in the world. OpenAI predicts that human roles will increasingly shift toward oversight and orchestration, with AI serving as both collaborator and accelerator: handling background work, surfacing errors early, and enabling engineers to explore ideas faster. OpenAI recently introduced an upgraded version of Codex, a specialized model designed for the long, messy work of coding and software development. Now powered by GPT-5, Codex can adapt its reasoning effort based on task complexity. It can breeze through a simple bug fix in seconds, or run for more than seven hours to reengineer an entire subsystem. “That balance between being fast on simple tasks and going deep on harder problems is a distinctive trait of GPT-5-Codex,” Sottiaux added. “The quality of its code reviews and its ability to think dynamically over longer periods are key differentiators. GPT-5-Codex also pushes further on code quality overall.” Now available in the Codex Responses API, and for use through Codex in various environments, including IDE extensions, terminal, web, and GitHub integrations, it can review an entire codebase, execute unit tests, validate dependencies, and even catch subtle vulnerabilities before they become production headaches. “Codex was built to work alongside developers, and humans still stay in control,” Sottiaux explains. “For newcomers, it’s a collaborator that can help explore languages like Rust, navigate codebases, and grasp core concepts much faster. For senior developers, it provides leverage at a higher level. By setting the right context, guardrails, and structure, they can take on more ambitious problems and ultimately achieve more impact than before.” OpenAI isn’t the only big player arguing that AI isn’t the IT job killer many feared. According to Google’s latest DORA: State of AI-assisted Software Development report, 90% of tech professionals now use AI in their workflows, highlighting a 14% jump from last year, for coding, testing, and security reviews. Likewise, Udemy, one of the world’s largest online learning platforms, reports that the rise of AI integrations within enterprises has sparked a surge in enrollment for AI-related courses. “Every minute, five to eight people sign up for a generative AI class on our platform,” Hugo Sarrazin, CEO of Udemy, tells Fast Company. “Designing code requires critical thinking, which is fundamentally a human trait. Of course, AI will generate a lot more software, but you still need analysis, judgment, and testing. That’s why it’s so important to teach the foundations of coding and development, whether or not someone ends up relying heavily on AI.” Coding as a foundation Skeptics often warn that due to AI-driven automation, coding roles will disappear,leaving fewer opportunities for junior developers to gain experience. That’s not how OpenAI sees it. “Some will use AI to go deep, building technical expertise at an accelerated pace,” Sottiaux says. “At OpenAI, more of the effort is shifting into code review and planning, while much of the coding itself is automated. Software engineering is about making an impact, and this shift allows us to create more in the same amount of time.” He added that coding literacy remains vital for training the next generation of engineers, researchers, and entrepreneurs and stressed that the shift to AI-augmented development is a natural progression. In practice, many of OpenAI’s customers are actively deploying Codex in production. Popular language-learning app Duolingo, for example, uses it to review back-end Python code for the platform. In benchmark tests, the company found that Codex’s upgraded version was the only system able to catch subtle backward-compatibility issues and consistently flagged bugs that other automated reviewers overlooked. On a major software engineering test called SWE-bench Verified, GPT-5 Codex beat its predecessor by a wide margin. It solved more than half of the code-fixing challenges it was given, compared with about one-third for the earlier GPT 4.5 integrated model. For simple bugs, Codex used far fewer resources, cutting the workload by 94%. And when faced with tougher problems, it didn’t just work faster; it applied roughly twice the level of reasoning to reach a solution. Likewise, companies including Gap Inc., Vanta, and Virgin Atlantic are also using Codex for specific applications. “During planning and development, the Extension can be tuned to the right level of reasoning (the ability to solve problems), and its ability to utilize Model Context Protocol (MCP) allows the right tools to be called directly from engineers’ IDEs,” Richard Masters, VP Data & AI at Virgin Atlantic, said in a statement. Surviving the AI era The shifts suggest that coding is becoming just one part of a much larger transformation, as AI tools weave themselves into both work and daily life. Jan Chorowski, CTO at Pathway and a former deep learning researcher at Google who worked alongside Geoff Hinton at Google Brain, says coding is one of the few areas where AI is already delivering on its promise. While workflows are undeniably shifting as teams look to maximize productivity—“Who looks up Stack Overflow by hand these days?” he notes. Chorowski says that while AI enables a deep understanding of coding, from low-level machine tasks to grasping entire problem domains, it often falls short on the basic nuances that human developers handle instinctively. “The key differentiation we have today, as humans, is the ability to come up with new ideas that are well-grounded in a specific context. For developing software, the required context is particularly broad,” he explained. “AI lacks such contextualized judgement. Changing this is the challenge for the next decade. An important question is if AI tools will reach the deep understanding to be able to innovate and go beyond the capabilities of current Codex models.” OpenAI maintains that coding holds a unique place: it cultivates reasoning, the very skill on which AI itself depends. If that vision proves true, the story of coding will not be one of extinction but of expansion—into a future where software is crafted through the partnership of human creativity and machine intelligence. “There’s never been a better time to learn, especially for students and recent graduates,” says Sottiaux. “I’d recommend picking a coding agent and starting a couple of projects. You can even use ChatGPT to generate creative ideas for what to build. Then start learning, engage with curiosity, and treat the agent as a true collaborator.” View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. Maybe you tend to study the old-school way: sit down, break out a highlighter and pen combo, memorize your notes, and pray you retain it all until test time. There are certainly benefits to handwriting and highlighting your notes, but there are also some great apps out there that can help you study more effectively. Yes, your tech devices can certainly be a distraction, but why not let them help you instead? If you need to schedule your studying: My Study Life Credit: My Study Life My Study Life promises you’ll “never forget a class or assignment again” and offers schedulers, task to-do lists, and reminders to that end, plus a number of other features, like a focus timer that lets you tap into the productivity-enhancing power of the Pomodoro method. The app is available on iOS, Android, and your desktop browser so you can use it no matter where you are. The scheduler even works if you have your classes on alternating weeks. The free version of My Study Life works perfectly fine if all you need is the scheduling, but for $4.99 per month or $29.99 per year (after a free one-week trial), you can access additional features like grade tracking, widgets, and dark mode. Read my full review here. If you study best with flashcards: Quizlet Credit: Quizlet If you’re only using Quizlet for low-key cheating on your homework (and yes, your teacher probably already knows), you’re not maximizing its potential. Quizlet is a study tool that has been around a long time and works on iOS, Android, and your desktop browser. It helps you make flashcards and practice tests, plus offers games and various ways to study and review your materials. You can make your materials public to help other people in similar classes and, in turn, can search their public materials for ones that will help you, too—which is how most people come to be familiar with it, as students have uploaded thousands of quizzes over the years. Your flashcard sets and quizzes are customizable, so you can add notes, images, or audio if you need to. Flashcards are, indisputably, one of the best ways to learn, so let this app make it easier for you. It’s free to use, but if you upgrade ($7.99/month), you also get access to different question types and practice tests. Read my full review here. If you need to take notes on lectures: Otter Credit: Otter Otter, which has a pretty extensive free version, is a dictation program that takes notes for you. Commonly used by journalists or people who need to transcribe interviews, it’s also great for students whose professors give long lectures full of important info. I've used it in both scenarios for years. Once you assign a name to a certain speaker, the software will always recognize their voice going forward. You can highlight passages, edit the text in the event the software gets something wrong, and share transcripts with anyone, even if they don’t use Otter. With the free version, you can link it up with Zoom or Google Meet, too, so it’s helpful for online classes, and you can get 300 monthly transcription minutes (with 30 minutes per session) before having to upgrade to Pro for $8.33 per month. A recent update has added a "summary" feature that gives you a brief overview of main topics, which can help you more easily focus on what to study when you're reviewing the lecture later. If you take lots of notes: Notion Credit: Notion In an older version of this post, I declared Evernote the best note-taking and -organizing app, but then I tested and reviewed Notion, which I ultimately concluded is better in a head-to-head battle. Available on iOS, Android, and your web browser, Notion is an all-in-one app that can give you an assist wherever you are. It keeps notes, ideas, schedules, and more all in one place—and it's free. Its most useful feature is its pre-made templates, which can help you in school and beyond. You can choose between templates for life, work, or school, then browse ones called things like, "project roadmap," "finance tracker," and "assignment tracker with automations." On top of that, it organizes notes into notebooks and folders, making it ideal for jotting down key information in class. To create mind maps: Xmind Credit: Xmind A mind map is a hierarchical diagram that connects related concepts and makes it clear how they all tie into one another. You can use them for productivity, but they're also useful as study tools, especially if you like to visualize how materials and ideas fit together or are outlining a study plan using the chunking method. You can make them by hand on paper, but that's tedious. I recommend an app, instead. Specifically, I recommend Xmind, which speeds up the process of creating visual notes by giving you the tools to input arrows to branch off your main idea into related tasks and concepts. It comes pre-loaded with plenty of templates, so if graphic design isn't your passion, that's not a problem. A lot of its basic features are free, but you'll pay between $10 or $15 a month if you want more colors or the ability to add equations, links, tasks, and attachments to maps. Finally, I appreciate that it can be used via browser or app, making it easy to type into and rearrange your map. Read my full review here. My favorite: NotebookLM Credit: Google Finally, I can't review digital studying tools without mentioning Google's NotebookLM, a free AI resource that only pulls from materials you provide. I use it all the time. You create notebooks by uploading PDFs, URLs, or blocks of text, then use it like you would any chatbot, asking questions which the AI answers by reviewing the content you provided. Its answers contain links to the exact sections it found them in, so you can ask things like, "What does the author say about the history of the region?" Then, you'll get a summary, plus the link to where that information came from, so you can read it yourself. It makes sorting through a hefty amount of readings a cakewalk. It can also create a fake "podcast" for you to listen to. In those, two voices discuss the content of your notebook conversationally, just like real podcast hosts would. If you are an auditory learner, this is a game changer. Recent updates have enabled features that create quizzes and flashcards, too. It's available on iOS and Android, as well as your web browser. Read my full review here. View the full article

President Donald The President signed an executive order on Thursday declaring that his plan to sell Chinese-owned TikTok’s U.S. operations to U.S. and global investors will address the national security requirements in a 2024 law. The new U.S. company will be valued at around $14 billion, Vice President JD Vance said, putting a price tag on the popular short video app far below some analyst estimates. The President on Thursday delayed until January 20 enforcement of the law that bans the app unless its Chinese owners sell it amid efforts to extract TikTok’s U.S. assets from the global platform, line up American and other investors, and win approval from the Chinese government. The publication of the executive order shows The President is making progress on the sale of TikTok’s U.S. assets, but numerous details need to be fleshed out, including how the U.S. entity would use TikTok’s most important asset, its recommendation algorithm. “There was some resistance on the Chinese side, but the fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating, but we also wanted to make sure that we protected Americans’ data privacy as required by law,” Vance told reporters at an Oval Office briefing. The President’s order says the algorithm will be retrained and monitored by the U.S. company’s security partners, and operation of the algorithm will be under the control of the new joint venture. The President said Chinese President Xi Jinping had indicated approval of the plans. “I spoke with President Xi,” The President said. “We had a good talk, I told him what we were doing and he said go ahead with it.” China’s foreign ministry on Friday reiterated that the government “respects the will of enterprises and welcomes them to conduct business negotiations on the basis of market rules to reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws and regulations and achieve a balance of interests.” “We hope the U.S. will provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies investing in the United States,” ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told a press conference, without giving further details of the deal. TikTok did not immediately comment on The President’s action. The President has credited TikTok, which has 170 million U.S. users, with helping him win reelection last year. The President has 15 million followers on his personal TikTok account. The White House also launched an official TikTok account last month. “This is going to be American-operated all the way,” The President said. He said that Michael Dell, the founder, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies; Rupert Murdoch, the chairman emeritus of Fox News owner Fox Corp and newspaper publisher News Corp, and “probably four or five absolutely world-class investors” would be part of the deal. The White House did not discuss how it came up with the $14 billion valuation. TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, currently values itself at more than $330 billion, according to its new employee share buyback plan. TikTok contributes a small percentage of the company’s total revenue. According to Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, TikTok was estimated to be worth $30 billion to $40 billion without the algorithm as of April 2025. Alan Rozenshtein, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, said the executive order left unanswered questions, including whether ByteDance would still control the algorithm. “The problem is that the president has certified the deal, but he has not provided a lot of information on the algorithm,” he said. Chinese media on Friday also painted a different picture of the TikTok agreement, suggesting ByteDance would continue to play a major or operational role. ByteDance will set up a new U.S. company as part of the restructuring of TikTok’s U.S. operations, Chinese media outlet LatePost reported, citing sources. The new company to be set up by ByteDance will be responsible for e-commerce, branding operations and interconnection with international operations, the report said. The report also said the joint venture, as described by the White House and valued at $14 billion, would be responsible for U.S. digital security, safeguarding content and software as well as related local businesses. Another Chinese financial magazine, Caixin, also reported, citing people close to the deal, that ByteDance planned to set up a TikTok U.S. entity that will receive some revenue from the new TikTok joint venture. Both reports were taken down from their respective websites later on Friday. The White House and ByteDance did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ORACLE AND OTHERS TO OWN TIKTOK IN THE U.S. A group of three investors, including Oracle and private-equity firm Silver Lake, will take a roughly 50% stake in TikTok U.S., two sources familiar with the deal said on Thursday. A group of existing shareholders in ByteDance will hold a roughly 30% stake, one of the sources said. Among ByteDance’s current investors are Susquehanna International Group, General Atlantic and KKR. Given intense investor interest in TikTok, the 50% stake may still shift, the source noted. Oracle and Silver Lake did not immediately respond to requests for comment. CNBC reported earlier, citing sources, that Abu Dhabi-based MGX, Oracle and Silver Lake are poised to be the main investors in TikTok U.S. with a combined 45% ownership. MGX did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the CNBC report. Republican House of Representatives lawmakers said they wanted to see more details of the deal to ensure it represented a clean break with China. “As the details are finalized, we must ensure this deal protects American users from the influence and surveillance of CCP-aligned groups,” said U.S. Representatives Brett Guthrie, Gus Bilirakis and Richard Hudson. The agreement on TikTok’s U.S. operations includes the appointment by ByteDance of one of seven board members for the new entity, with Americans holding the other six seats, a senior White House official said on Saturday. ByteDance would hold less than 20% in TikTok U.S. to comply with requirements set out in the 2024 law that ordered it shut down by January 2025 if ByteDance did not sell its U.S. assets. Additional reporting by Beijing newsroom and Brenda Goh —Jeff Mason, Dawn Chmielewski and David Shepardson, Reuters View the full article

Electoral Commission says it has found ‘no evidence of any other potential offences’View the full article

Learn about GEO vs. SEO and how to optimize for AI tools like ChatGPT and Google‘s AI Overviews. View the full article

Fans of Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant will be disappointed to learn that the beloved restaurant and pub chain has abruptly closed all of its locations across multiple states. Here’s why and what you need to know about Iron Hill Brewery’s closure. What’s happened? Yesterday (Thursday, September 25), Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant made several announcements. Effective immediately, it was closing the doors to all its locations, the company revealed. Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant was founded nearly 30 years ago. Its first location opened in Newark, Delaware, in 1996. Since then, it had expanded to multiple states along the country’s eastern coast, including Georgia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and South Carolina. According to Nation’s Restaurant News, Iron Hill Brewery had 19 locations as of the end of 2024. That same year, the company’s sales increased by 4% to $104.1 million. Yet the modest sales growth apparently wasn’t enough to keep Iron Hill Brewery going. Last week, the company announced it was closing three of its locations, including its original Newark location. At the time, an Iron Hill Brewery spokesperson told NRN that the three closures were “part of the company’s ongoing efforts to adapt to a changing business landscape while focusing on strengthening its long-term growth and success.” But just a week later, Iron Hill shocked customers and employees by announcing that its remaining 16 locations would be closing as well. Iron Hill Brewery notifies employees of bankruptcy via email On September 25, Iron Hill Brewery sent an email to employees notifying them that the business would be closing all locations for good. In the email, which was obtained by the website Breweries in PA and also shared on social media forums like Reddit, Iron Hill’s leadership said, “It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the closure of all our restaurant locations effective immediately.” The email went on to explain that it had made the “difficult decision to file for bankruptcy.” It cited “ongoing financial challenges” as the reason for its decision. The company went on to explain that it had been trying to secure new funding to keep the chain going, but presumably, that funding was not achieved. The same day of the email to employees, Iron Hill posted a brief notice on its website, letting customers know of the developments. USA Today reports that this same notice was posted to the doors of some of the shuttered Iron Hill restaurants. “After many wonderful years serving our communities, all Iron Hill locations have closed,” the notice read in part. “It has been our pleasure to serve you, and we are deeply grateful for your support, friendship, and loyalty over the years.” The notice ends by noting that the company “sincerely hope[s] to return in the future.” Full list of closed Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant locations With the three closures on September 18, and the additional 16 closures on September 25, Iron Hill Brewery has now closed all of its 19 locations. Here is the list of those locations: Delaware Newark Rehoboth Beach Wilmington Georgia Atlanta New Jersey Maple Shade Voorhees Pennsylvania Chestnut Hill Exton Hershey Huntingdon Valley Lancaster Lehigh Valley Media Newtown North Wales Philadelphia West Chester South Carolina Columbia Greenville A busy time for restaurant bankruptcies Unfortunately, Iron Hill Brewery isn’t the only restaurant chain that has announced bankruptcy recently. Since 2024, several established chains have announced bankruptcy plans, including Buca di Beppo, Hooters, Red Lobster, Roti, BurgerFi, and Tijuana Flats. Many of these bankruptcies have resulted in store closures. While each company will have different factors influencing its decision to file for bankruptcy, many restaurant chains have been experiencing similar problems in recent years, which often contribute to their bankruptcy. These problems include higher costs, inflationary pressures that lead diners to cut back on their discretionary spending, and foot traffic that has yet to recover to its pre-pandemic norms. View the full article

WhatsApp is stepping up its game in cross-language communication with the launch of a new message translation feature designed to enhance user connectivity. With over 3 billion users globally, the messaging platform is taking strides to simplify communication in a multicultural landscape—a significant boon for small business owners navigating the complexities of serving diverse clientele. Imagine chatting with an international customer or partner without the fear of miscommunication. With WhatsApp’s latest update, users can now translate messages within the app, creating smoother and more efficient interactions that bridge language barriers. This feature allows small businesses to expand their reach—targeting potential clients in markets they’ve previously found challenging to engage with due to language differences. To use the feature, small business owners can simply long-press a message in a chat and select “Translate.” Users have the option to choose their target language, facilitating real-time communication that can be saved for future reference. Notably, this functionality extends to 1:1 chats, group discussions, and Channel updates, allowing teams to collaborate more effectively. For Android users, there’s even more flexibility. They can enable automatic translation for an entire chat thread, meaning all incoming messages will be translated automatically. This capability is particularly useful for busy entrepreneurs who juggle multiple conversations, ensuring no message is lost in translation. In a world where privacy is paramount, WhatsApp has designed this translation feature with user security in mind. All translations take place directly on users’ devices, meaning that WhatsApp itself does not have visibility into translations, further solidifying user trust. Currently, the feature is gradually rolling out to both Android and iPhone users, initially offering translations in select languages. Android users can look forward to functionality in six languages—English, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, and Arabic—while iPhone users benefit from translations in over 19 languages. This broad language support opens avenues for business owners looking to connect with clients from varied linguistic backgrounds. Quotes from WhatsApp highlight the intent behind this new offering: “We hope this feature helps break down language barriers and allows users to connect more deeply.” For small businesses striving to establish a foothold in different markets, this enhancement could serve as a crucial tool. However, it’s essential for small business owners to consider potential challenges that accompany this new utility. While the convenience of instant translations is attractive, users should also be aware of the nuances that come with language translation. Automated translations may not always convey the intended tone or context, potentially leading to misunderstandings. Proper training on how to use the feature effectively and awareness of its limitations will be vital for maximizing its potential. Additionally, as the feature rolls out, users might face temporary hiccups in functionality or limited language options. Keeping an eye on updates from WhatsApp will be crucial in ensuring the best possible experience. In summary, WhatsApp’s introduction of message translations signifies a significant advancement for small businesses looking to deepen their communication and broaden their markets. By taking advantage of this tool, business owners can enhance customer engagement, improve team collaboration, and ultimately drive growth in an increasingly global economy. For further details on this new feature, visit the WhatsApp press release. Image via WhatsApp This article, "WhatsApp Introduces In-App Message Translation to Foster Global Communication" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

WhatsApp is stepping up its game in cross-language communication with the launch of a new message translation feature designed to enhance user connectivity. With over 3 billion users globally, the messaging platform is taking strides to simplify communication in a multicultural landscape—a significant boon for small business owners navigating the complexities of serving diverse clientele. Imagine chatting with an international customer or partner without the fear of miscommunication. With WhatsApp’s latest update, users can now translate messages within the app, creating smoother and more efficient interactions that bridge language barriers. This feature allows small businesses to expand their reach—targeting potential clients in markets they’ve previously found challenging to engage with due to language differences. To use the feature, small business owners can simply long-press a message in a chat and select “Translate.” Users have the option to choose their target language, facilitating real-time communication that can be saved for future reference. Notably, this functionality extends to 1:1 chats, group discussions, and Channel updates, allowing teams to collaborate more effectively. For Android users, there’s even more flexibility. They can enable automatic translation for an entire chat thread, meaning all incoming messages will be translated automatically. This capability is particularly useful for busy entrepreneurs who juggle multiple conversations, ensuring no message is lost in translation. In a world where privacy is paramount, WhatsApp has designed this translation feature with user security in mind. All translations take place directly on users’ devices, meaning that WhatsApp itself does not have visibility into translations, further solidifying user trust. Currently, the feature is gradually rolling out to both Android and iPhone users, initially offering translations in select languages. Android users can look forward to functionality in six languages—English, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, and Arabic—while iPhone users benefit from translations in over 19 languages. This broad language support opens avenues for business owners looking to connect with clients from varied linguistic backgrounds. Quotes from WhatsApp highlight the intent behind this new offering: “We hope this feature helps break down language barriers and allows users to connect more deeply.” For small businesses striving to establish a foothold in different markets, this enhancement could serve as a crucial tool. However, it’s essential for small business owners to consider potential challenges that accompany this new utility. While the convenience of instant translations is attractive, users should also be aware of the nuances that come with language translation. Automated translations may not always convey the intended tone or context, potentially leading to misunderstandings. Proper training on how to use the feature effectively and awareness of its limitations will be vital for maximizing its potential. Additionally, as the feature rolls out, users might face temporary hiccups in functionality or limited language options. Keeping an eye on updates from WhatsApp will be crucial in ensuring the best possible experience. In summary, WhatsApp’s introduction of message translations signifies a significant advancement for small businesses looking to deepen their communication and broaden their markets. By taking advantage of this tool, business owners can enhance customer engagement, improve team collaboration, and ultimately drive growth in an increasingly global economy. For further details on this new feature, visit the WhatsApp press release. Image via WhatsApp This article, "WhatsApp Introduces In-App Message Translation to Foster Global Communication" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

This week we covered the completion of the Google August 2025 spam update and then we saw ranking volatility heat up again post spam update. Google Search Console impressions are impacted by Google blocking bots...View the full article

Reddit isn’t the point. It’s proof that real decision-making happens in conversations, not corporate content, and AI search is amplifying that shift. The post Why Reddit Is Driving The Conversation In AI Search – User Journey Over Short Tail appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Many still treat E-E-A-T as a box to tick in an SEO audit. But it’s more than that – it’s how search engines and AI systems decide which content to trust. The paradox? Global brands that dominate in one country often underperform in others. Without clear local trust and authority signals, even the strongest global reputation may not carry across borders. Why E-E-A-T breaks down across borders When Google or an LLM compares multiple content options, it must choose which is the most complete, accurate, and trustworthy. That decision once leaned heavily on backlinks. Now, advanced algorithms consider a richer mix – authorship, structured data, entity connections, local signals, and even user engagement patterns – to determine the best answer for each market. This is where global brands often stumble. Despite deep pockets and strong reputations, they lose to local competitors not because of weaker products, but because those competitors send clearer local trust and authority signals. You can have the best English content in the world. But if it appears on a French page with machine-translated copy, no local context, and no regional recognition, Google may not see it as authoritative in France. Your customers won’t either. To see why, it helps to look at how each element of E-E-A-T falters when applied across markets. Experience Google increasingly prioritizes lived experience content that shows: First-hand use. Direct observation. Regional familiarity. Translated content often fails here, lacking local examples and nuance. Example: A global electronics brand’s Japanese site shows only U.S. product reviews and does not mention region-specific certifications, voltage requirements, or local retailers. Expertise Expertise must be contextual and demonstrable. A central content team with no local expert input can’t meet the same threshold as a local subject matter expert. Example: Medical advice reused globally without review from a local doctor, despite differences in standards of care and legal requirements. Authoritativeness Authority isn’t automatically portable across markets. It’s reinforced locally through citations, backlinks, and recognition in regional media or industry associations. Example: A luxury fashion brand with no Japanese media backlinks is outranked by smaller domestic competitors with a strong local presence. Trustworthiness Trustworthiness is often where global brands fail, especially in regulated categories. Google sometimes auto-translates U.S. medical content descriptions for SERP presentation into local languages when it cannot find trustworthy, authoritative local alternatives. Local websites may have existed, but without compliance details or region-specific trust markers, Google substituted a machine-generated localized version of an authoritative English source. Japan adds another layer of complexity. Healthcare content has one of the highest E-E-A-T thresholds. Yet, a Japanese doctor may be referred to as “Sensei” (先生), a generic title, and list prestigious medical school credentials or research achievements without the “MD” suffix Western systems expect. We can’t assume Google fully understands this local nuance and considers the content as authoritative. The challenge grows when the schema implementation is inconsistent. Suppose author credentials, affiliations, or brand relationships aren’t stored in a structured, uniform way in your CMS or database. In that case, you can’t scale trustworthy structured data, and your trust signals will remain fragmented. This is where localization and technical SEO must come together: Local expert bios must be built into content templates, not added ad hoc. Schema must reflect regional expressions of trust, not just Western defaults. Database fields and CMS templates must be structured to enable scalable markup, not fight against it. Trust isn’t just about what the user sees – it’s about what the system can verify. And in a world where AI-driven search is deciding who gets cited, these gaps are no longer academic. They’re existential. Dig deeper: User-first E-E-A-T: What actually drives SEO and GEO Common pain points for global brands Here are the most common ways E-E-A-T fails to scale internationally. Translation ≠ localization Language is just the start. Local idioms, cultural context, measurements, and regulatory differences all matter. Without them, content may be understandable, but it will be irrelevant. The ‘HQ knows best’ trap Centralized content production often leaves local teams with little influence. Localization becomes a checkbox instead of a strategic effort. Token localization One blog post, one page, or one local expert quote won’t move the needle. You need consistency, depth, and reinforcement over time. Over-reliance on machine translation Scalable, but devoid of lived experience, leading to generic, unconvincing content. Missing local citations or media mentions Strong U.S. PR doesn’t help if there’s zero local coverage in the local market. Missing or weak local entities Google’s Knowledge Graph and AI systems increasingly rely on local entity connections. If your local brand variant or expert author isn’t registered, cited, or recognized, your content may not get surfaced. Inconsistent branding Different product names, logos, or messaging can dilute brand recall in global campaigns and fragment off-page signals. Without clear entity connections between these variations, search engines may treat them as separate brands – making it harder to consolidate authority and leverage your global reputation in local markets. Compliance and cultural gaps A global privacy policy isn’t enough. GDPR, LGPD, and Japan’s APPI all have local nuances. Tone-deaf localization can tank brand trust even if everything is technically accurate. Cultural expectations around trust Trust badges that work in Korea may not resonate in the U.S., and vice versa. Inconsistent URL and hreflang implementation Inconsistent use of canonical tags or misconfigured hreflang can result in Google serving the wrong language or country version, undermining both user trust and compliance. Ensuring a clean, consistent URL strategy with correct hreflang mapping is essential for protecting local visibility. Dig deeper: Multilingual and international SEO: 5 mistakes to watch out for Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. How to fix it: Building real local E-E-A-T Local expert involvement in content Work with local product managers, engineers, doctors, or compliance officers, not just translators. Add bios, credentials, and structured author markup. Coordinate this globally so your CMS and database can handle different naming conventions and brand identities. For instance, in Asia, Whisper is P&G’s feminine care brand. Without schema linking Whisper to Procter & Gamble via parentOrganization or sameAs, the local site cannot inherit P&G’s global authority in feminine care. Earn local authority Run PR and outreach campaigns in each market to earn citations from regional media, trade associations, and industry events. Show real trust signals These markers need to be visible to both people and search systems. Examples include: Native-language privacy policies. Local office addresses and phone numbers. Region-specific compliance marks and certifications. Reviews on local platforms (e.g., Rakuten in Japan). Demonstrate local experience Use market-specific examples, imagery, testimonials, and data. Reference local regulations, cultural practices, or environmental factors that affect product use. Don’t overlook visual signals and media assets. Be sure to localize imagery, alt text, and even structured data (ImageObject) to reinforce the market connection so that search engines and AI systems can recognize the market context in both the visual content and its metadata. Dig deeper: How to craft an international SEO approach that balances tech, translation and trust Measuring local E-E-A-T Localizing content isn’t enough – you need to verify that search engines and customers recognize your authority. Key metrics include: Branded vs. non-branded traffic by region. Local backlink growth and diversity. Knowledge Graph presence for local authors and brands. Inclusion in AI Overviews/Perspectives by market. Review volume and sentiment in local ecosystems. Relevance is built, not assumed Global reputation doesn’t automatically equal local trust. Search engines and AI systems are more capable than ever of assessing regional authority, credibility, and experience – so are your customers. It is crucial to collaborate globally on this initiative so that the database can be structured to accommodate different nomenclatures and reference points. If this is not structured, it makes automation difficult. Failing to establish strong local E-E-A-T signals doesn’t just impact rankings. It affects how your brand is perceived in that market. If search engines and AI systems don’t select your content as the most authoritative answer, local competitors will occupy that space, shaping customer perception and eroding both market share and brand trust over time. The brands winning now aren’t just translating. They are: Embedding local expertise. Structuring global-to-local authority connections. Demonstrating trust in ways that people and machines can recognize. Those who fail to do this risk invisibility – essentially handing market share to competitors who understand how to earn trust locally. View the full article

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. Studying can be as easy as sitting down and reading a chapter, but it shouldn't be. I do hate to break that to you, though I'm actually doing you a favor. Just absorbing huge blocks of content isn't necessarily helpful for remembering any of it. Before you do the work of studying, you have to get organized by sorting the content you need to absorb. Even organizing it, especially using the "chunking" method, will help you start to grasp and retain the materials, so by the time you're going through them, you'll be in a perfect position to lodge all that information in your memory. Chunking is a psychological trick that experts swear by. Here's how to master it for yourself. What is chunking?Here’s what the American Psychological Association says: Chunking is “the process by which the mind divides large pieces of information into smaller units (chunks) that are easier to retain in short-term memory. As a result of this recoding, one item in memory (e.g., a keyword or key idea) can stand for multiple other items (e.g., a short list of associated points).” Basically, your short-term memory has a specific capacity for how many units it can store and that capacity is pretty low, ranging from five to nine—but the units themselves can be as complex as you want. The APA says “the exact number of chunks remembered depends on the size of each chunk or the subunits contained within each chunk.” Each chunk is a collection of pieces of related information, like words, numbers, or phrases. The key here is they have to be related to each other, but not very related to the other chunks. Chunking is all about grouping related pieces of information so you can stay in that five-to-nine units frame. You probably already use chunking in your real life to remember things. Think of your phone number. You likely already sort it into your area code, those first three digits, and the final four digits. Remembering a string of 10 numbers is hard; remembering three “chunks” of smaller digits is less difficult. So how do you study in chunks?Look at the things you have to memorize and start grouping them loosely into categories based on how they’re related. This doesn’t have to be about content, either. If you have to memorize 20 words or concepts, you don’t have to group them by their meaning; you can group them by whether they sound similar, start with the same letter, or whatever you want. If you've ever used a mnemonic device to remember something like, say, the order of the planets, you've already made a "chunk" to study before. You can create your chunks with something as simple as a pencil and paper, listing the words or concepts together and skipping a few spaces between units. From here, you can make flashcard sets of each chunk or use the first letter of each phrase to create a mnemonic device. Try an acrostic, a phrase where the first letter of each word corresponds with the first letter of one of the things you need to remember. If you think better in terms of numbers, try grouping your words or concepts by how many letters are in them. The pencil-and-paper technique is helpful for entrenching words in your memory, since you retain things you write down a little better than those you type, but it's not that convenient or functional otherwise. I recommend using apps and digital programs to make this easier. For instance, use a mind-mapping app to sort out your chunks and make them easy to visualize. I always find that even seeing words grouped together and organized can help me remember them and the ways they relate to each other better. Xmind is my favorite app for this, but you can also use something like Canva, which I have absolutely done in a pinch. Next, you can even use an app to create your flashcards. Flashcards are one of the best and most time-tested methods for studying, but it's wildly unrealistic for you to carry a bunch of notecards around. These are my five favorite flashcard apps, which will enable you to keep all your study materials accessible on your phone wherever you are. I recommend making a new deck for every chunk you create so you can keep your groups separate in your mind. Once you've grasped all the content of your various chunks, try mixing some of the decks together and reviewing them in bigger batches. Known as interleaving, this technique will gradually help you make connections between different concepts, enhancing not only your recall of them, but your actual understanding. Just don't forget to start out by studying each set—or chunk—individually. Even though this doesn’t break down the amount of content, having them in groups with similar characteristics will help you remember it all together, and you’ll be surprised how much of the real material you retain. View the full article

Google Ads seems to be rolling out a change to the campaign set up screen and flow. Instead of being asked what ad format you want to run, you must select all for PMax or specific campaign types for display, search, discover and so on. View the full article

Google seems to be testing showing the local pack, Google Business Profile listings, at the top of the Google Shopping results in the Shopping tab. Normally, Google does not show local packs in the Shopping tab, I believe...View the full article

Back in May, we covered how Google was testing a new sponsored results label that placed a few ads beneath it, as opposed to labeling each and every ad as sponsored. Well, that version seems to be expanding and more and more people are seeing it and many are not liking it.View the full article

The show-stealing star on the ‘privileges of living in fiction’, why character acting is a misnomer — and how Tom Holland is keeping him relevantView the full article

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In. Our new print issue features “How YouTube Ate TV,” an oral history of the video-sharing site’s impact on entertainment, culture, and business as told by dozens of eyewitnesses past and present. As we stitched sound bites together into a story, it became clear that our interviews had provided an embarrassment of riches. Indeed, we had too many great stories and insights to cram into one magazine article. So we expanded the online version of the article into five oral histories. Two are live on our site now, covering the company’s earliest days and acquisition by Google. Three more will roll out next week, bringing the story up to 2025—and, in the case of AI’s sweeping impact on the platform, beyond. One of the joys of working on this project with my colleagues and fellow interviewers, María José Gutiérrez Chávez, Yasmin Gagne, Steven Melendez, and David Salazar, was having an excuse to think back to what the web was like 20 years ago. It’s not just that YouTube was brand new and rapidly becoming a necessity of everyday life. At the time, the whole proposition of being able to easily watch videos on the internet at all was a novelty. The technology that made it—and sites like YouTube—possible at all was Macromedia’s Flash. By the time YouTube came along, Flash was more than a decade old. Initially known as FutureWave SmartSketch, it morphed from a drawing app for pen-based computers into a browser plug-in that allowed websites to offer more motion and interactivity than the early web could muster on its own. Flash jazzed up the internet without requiring much in the way of bandwidth or computing cycles—a critical virtue back in the days of pokey dial-up connections. A whole universe of Flash-enabled animations and games sprung up. Flash was so manifestly useful that Netscape and Microsoft bundled it with their browsers. Eventually, the plug-in added support for video playback, dramatically simplifying a process that had formerly required clunky software such as RealPlayer. Instead of video being something you watched in a separate app with its own interface, it could be rendered right inside sites. That’s why YouTube was so easy to use. It also permitted the fledgling site to make its videos embeddable on any web page, spreading them all over the internet. If you were online back then, you may recall all this. But I’m afraid Flash’s reputation was tarnished by what happened well after it helped YouTube become, well, YouTube. A couple of months after YouTube was founded, Adobe agreed to acquire Macromedia. Once Flash came into its portfolio, the software giant aggressively stuffed the plug-in with new features. What had begun as a complement to the plain-vanilla web became a platform unto itself. As Flash got more powerful, it lost its original spritely nature. Increasingly, it was a bloated resource hog—something you reluctantly allowed onto your computer because a sizable percentage of the web wouldn’t work without it. In 2011, I wrote about how Flash had mucked up my MacBook Air, and how much better the laptop worked with the plug-in disabled. Did I mention that Flash also had some pretty significant security issues? By the time I banished Flash from my Mac, the PC-centric web that had given us Flash in the first place was receding into history. Apple’s introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and iPad in 2010 had put browsers onto new classes of gadgets with smaller displays and touchscreen interfaces. But Apple didn’t give Adobe the kind of technical access it needed to put Flash on an iPhone or iPad. On those devices, Flash content showed up as empty boxes. In 2010, Steve Jobs published an open letter, “Thoughts on Flash,” that argued that Adobe’s software was rife with problems and Apple’s platforms were better off without it. Adobe—and a fair percentage of technology enthusiasts—saw Apple’s exclusion of Flash as being about locking out competition, not enhancing the user experience. Now, Google’s Android mobile operating system could run Flash. And for a time, makers of Android devices considered that a major advantage. BlackBerry, the maker of the PlayBook tablet, even ran TV commercials The Presidenteting Flash support as a defining feature. The only problem was that mobile Flash was awful. It taxed the devices of the period beyond their breaking point. Even if it had been more efficient, much of the world’s Flash content simply didn’t work well on a tiny touchscreen. In 2011, Adobe gave up on mobile Flash. Then a suite of open web technologies known as HTML5 largely replicated Flash’s features as part of web browsing’s basic functionality, no plug-in required. Many big sites started abandoning Flash, period. Adobe decided to wind down the technology in 2017 and stopped supporting it altogether in 2020. Today’s internet is entirely Flash-free. I don’t miss Flash in the sense of thinking we were better off when it was central to our computing lives or fantasizing about it coming back. Even in the days when Flash was quite pleasant, a single company bearing so much responsibility for how websites worked was never ideal. That became painfully clear when Adobe lost track of the values that had made Flash popular in the first place. When it finally died, I was able to reallocate the brain cells I’d dedicated to wrestling with it to happier pursuits. Nevertheless, it was nice to remember the days when Flash’s impact on the web was largely positive. As a startup, YouTube got a lot of things right, such as seeing its users as a community, not just a morass of eyeballs. But none of that would have mattered if the internet had still been stuck in the RealPlayer era. As Billy Biggs, a software engineer who’s been at Google and YouTube since 2006, put it when I spoke with him for our YouTube history, “Flash video is what made this all possible.” It was the right technology at the right time. That’s as much a part of its legacy as its later regrettable evolution and descent into obsolescence. You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on FastCompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company This interactive AI-generated podcast app from ex-Googlers blew my mind Huxe makes podcasts almost uncannily personal—and even lets you talk to their AI hosts. Read More → Inside Amazon’s ‘Iliad Flow,’ the deceptive UX at the center of its federal trial We unpack the FTC’s claims that Amazon used design to trick customers into buying—and keeping—a Prime subscription. Read More → A Facebook dating app hopes to be the cure for ‘swipe fatigue’ The AI-powered bot can even suggest pickup lines. Read More → AI tools aren’t making much of a difference for companies Chat GPT, Copilot, and their competitors are boosting productivity without moving the needle on profit and loss. Read More → 5 time-saving Outlook features you’re probably overlooking Once you know these gems, you can’t go back to not using them. Read More → I gave ChatGPT $500 of real money to invest in stocks. Its picks surprised me I told ChatGPT with GPT-5’s ‘Thinking’ model selected that I would give it $500 to invest however it saw fit. Read More → View the full article

A month ago, Google announced new agentic (agent based) features for AI Mode. Well, some are now seeing this live in AI Mode, specifically making reservations at recommended restaurants. View the full article

Google is sunsetting the session-related metrics for Google AdSense. Google said this includes all metrics that rely on ad sessions, such as "Ad sessions", "Ad session RPM", etc.View the full article

For a decade, marketing strategy was engineered to master Google’s “messy middle.” Today, the customer’s exploration and evaluation journey has migrated from the open web (PPC, Reddit, YouTube, websites) into closed AI environments (ChatGPT, AI Mode, Perplexity), making direct observation impossible. Your marketing analytics stack faces funnel blindness. You must reconstruct customer journeys from fragmented data offered by LLM visibility tools. Funnel reconstruction relies on two primary data streams The rush to measure LLM performance has vendors promising dashboards to help you “Analyze your AI visibility right now.” This work requires reconciling two fundamentally different data streams: Synthetic data (the prompts you choose to track as a brand). Observational data (clickstream data). Every LLM visibility tracking platform delivers products built from some extraction, recombination, or brokerage of this data. Funnel reconstruction relies on two primary data streams The questions, commands, and scenarios you want to track are, by their nature, synthetic. Lab data is inherently synthetic. Lab data does not come from the real world; it is the direct output you get when you inject chosen prompts into an LLM. Tools like Semrush’s Artificial Intelligence Optimization (also known as AIO) and Profound curate a list of prompts for brands to help map the theoretical limits of your brand’s presence in generative AI answers. Companies use lab data to benchmark performance, spot errors or bias, and compare outputs across different queries or models. It shows how various models respond to exactly what the brand wants to test. This approach only reflects how the system performs in test conditions, not what happens in real-world use. The data you get is pulled from a world that doesn’t exist, without any persistent user context (memories ChatGPT keeps of its users’ habits, for example). These engineered scenarios are idealized, repetitive, and distant from the messy middle and real demand. Lab metrics show the “best case” output you get from prompts you carefully design. They tell you what is possible, not what is real. They cannot predict or reflect real-world outcomes, conversions, or market shifts. The only actionable results come from observed field data: what actually happens when anonymous users encounter your brand in uncontrolled environments. Synthetic persona injection and system saturation Some vendors use two bold strategies – system-level saturation and user-level simulation – to compensate for the lack of real customer data. “Sometimes, personas are assigned to these prompts. Sometimes, it boils down to brute-forcing a thousand prompt variants to see how LLMs respond,” said Jamie Indigo, Technical SEO authority. One strategy, employed by vendors like Brandlight, is system-level saturation. This brute-force approach maps a brand’s entire citation ecosystem by analyzing millions of AI responses. System-level saturation is designed to maximize exposure by revealing the structural footprint of the system itself, rather than modeling user behavior. This approach is designed to maximize influence and exposure in AI environments by targeting the most impactful sources, rather than a tool for modeling or predicting authentic user behavior. The alternative strategy is user-level simulation, used by tools like Quilt. This involves injecting thousands of synthetic personas into the testing environment. Persona injection means creating simulated users for your prompts (distinct types, priorities, edge-case scenarios) and feeding their tailored prompts to an LLM in testing environments. Experts like Indigo acknowledge the value of this approach, which helps expose clarity gaps and reveal edge behaviors. Others, like Chris Green, a veteran Fortune 500 SEO strategist, underscore its arbitrary nature, pointing out that it remains disconnected from real-world behavior patterns. These synthetic personas may offer structural insight and help brands stress-test, but do not predict audience outcome or campaign ROI. These methods are useful for product teams that need fast, cheap feedback on their logic, language, and interactions. They cannot reproduce the randomness and unpredictability of actual users. Real user behavior, as captured in clickstream data, rarely matches lab personas or occurs in any meaningful sequence. Case in point: humans are now starting to rely on agentic AI to make online purchases. Clickstream data: Validating what’s real If lab data maps the possibilities, field data validates reality. That data is clickstream data, the record of how users interact with digital platforms: Pages they view. Results they click. Paths they follow. Companies like Similarweb or Datos (a Semrush company) offer data capturing genuine user actions, collected through browser extensions, consented panels, app telemetry, and provider networks. Visibility tools like Semrush’s AIO and Profound are built on this principle, leveraging clickstream data, sequential metrics showing which AI results are seen, engaged with or ignored. This is the only ground truth available, exposing your brand’s real-world impact and pinpointing the precise moments of friction or success. The integrity of the underlying clickstream data of any LLM visibility tool is central to validating what’s real. Most analytics platforms buy data from brokers, so the quality of your insights is dictated by the quality of their source. You should focus on scale and quality when it comes to clickstream data. Ask the following questions of any platform/tool you are considering: What is the scale? Aim for tens of millions of anonymized users across relevant device/region. Is the data cleaned, deduplicated, and validated? What about bot exclusion and compliance? No dashboard or reporting tool can be trusted if it is not built on strong clickstream signals. Weak clickstream panels, small samples, limited geographies, hide minority behaviors and emergent trends. Most AI analytics do not own their clickstream panels (except Semrush’s AIO); they buy from brokers who extract from global browser/app data. Vendors segment only as far as their panels stretch. Datos sets the current standard for reliable, real-time, actionable clickstream data. As the largest global panel operator, it provides the backbone for visibility platforms, including Semrush AIO, and Profound. Tens of millions of anonymized users are tracked across 185 countries and every relevant device class. This data ensures you are anchoring market decisions in a way that synthetic personas or millions of curated brand prompts cannot. Where strategy is forged Lab data, including all the prompts you curate and track, is only half the story. Without the validation of field data (clickstream data), your lab data remains an idealized marketing funnel. Field data, without the context of the lab’s map, is just a rearview mirror, providing the “what” but never the “why.” Manage the delta between the two, reconcile, and calibrate the map of what’s possible in an ideal scenario against evidence of what actually works and brings revenue. This is the feedback loop you should seek from LLM visibility tools. The actionable intelligence, the actual strategy, is forged in the gap between them. You should consider the “messy middle” a dynamic intelligence feedback loop, not a static funnel analysis. Modern online marketing means mapping what is possible with what is profitable. View the full article

The remote work movement is a growing global phenomenon. 79 percent of knowledge workers worldwide said they work from home, and 80-90% of the U.S. workforce would like to work remotely at least part time. And while no two remote work situations are identical, there are some common themes when it comes to the tools and accessories for success. Of course, the most crucial element is wifi. But after that, there’s still plenty to consider: the desk setup, the commuter bag, the headphones, the travel accessories and more. And then, there are the more classic questions… Mac or PC? iPhone or Android? On Buffer’s global team of 80 folks, many team members have spent a great deal of thought, time and research answering these questions as they work and travel. To help out any new or future remote workers, we gathered some teammate suggestions about the best gear and gadgets for remote workers. If you’re looking for a gift for the digital nomad or remote worker in your life, these might be some great ideas! Backpacks: The best daily go-bags for working remotely To carry your laptop and essentials, a day bag is one of a remote worker’s toughest choices. Here are some brands and bags recommended by our team. Bags under $200Black canvas Kaukko bag: ($40) “Not too bulky, stylish bag. Got it as a gift from my wife.” – MichaelHershel backpack: ($45) “Very simple, I’ve had it since college!” – EmilyIncase City Collection Brief 15” Heather Black: ($70) “Solid, quality fabric, low volume, and cute.” – PhilippeDeuter Giga Daypack: ($70) “I bought this for university and I love that it has many compartments — one for my laptop and paper documents, one for clothes/lunch box and one for small items like headphones and wallet.” – AlfredEastpack Floid: (€70) “The bag is not so big, has many pockets, a main compartment with laptop sleeve and the most important thing: a pocket in the back. It’s really easy to access and super secure, so very convenient to keep your passport safe while traveling.” – MaximeECBC grey laptop backpack: ($100) “I adore my rugged Northface backpack, but wanted something that looked slim and professional so I didn’t feel like I was going off to camp! My qualifiers were: weight (under 2 lbs empty), color, price, fabric (water resistant), laptop area and many organizing pockets, water-bottle pockets (must-have, even better if it zips away when not in use), padding/comfort of straps, and return policy.” – CarolynFjällräven laptop backpack: ($110) “The Fjällräven has survived snow and rain!” – StephaniePatagonia Black Hole 32L Pack: ($149) “Patagonia makes solid products with the intent that they’ll last a really long time. I like this bag in particular for its versatility and the protection it provides for my laptop.” – RoyA BlueLounge backpack: ($149) “Not only is it the perfect size for my day-to-day trips through the city, it also expands perfectly to be all the luggage I need for Buffer retreats! Also, is eco-friendly!” – Mike SBags $200 and upcôte & ciel : ($200-$800) “I absolutely adore this Paris-based company’s (their name is “coast & sky” in French) approach to designing products! They seek inspiration from the natural world as well as the cityscape and urban space of Paris.” – JulietMinaal Daily + Minaal 2.0: ($250-$300) RodolpheGoRuck GR1: ($295) “The best backpack I’ve owned – looks amazing, lifetime warranty, made in America and the company was founded by a former veteran!” – SuperMission Works the Rambler – ($295) “The price may sound expensive at first, but I plan on owning and using it for several years to come, which makes this well worth the cost broken down over that period of time. I’ve also made an effort to prioritize function over form—although at a very high level of quality, luckily often both are included.” – Leo (Here’s more on Leo’s experiment in living out of one bag!)The Everyday Backpack: ($260) “Getting this for laptop and camera in December.” – AndyMichael Kors Jet Set Travel Saffiano Leather Top-Zip Tote: ($298) “Stylish and practical.” – HannahMulberry Slim Heathcliffe: ($1,150) “I’ve gone through many backpacks, bags, etc. and find this to be the perfect bag for all my daily items (Macbook, iPad, Chargers, Camera, etc.) in a functional (briefcase + shoulder strap) design. It’s also a classic, quality-focused bag that will last a lifetime.“ – Daniel Luggage: The best bigger bags for travel Whether you check a bag or carry on, a travel bag is often a key investment for digital nomads. Luggage and carry-ons under $150“I use an old Nike carry-on bag along with a HikPro backpack ($20). Love being super mobile when I’m traveling and so I pack light. It allows me to get out my computer on command and I save time at the airport.” – Brian“Depending on the trip, it might be a big Berghaus backpack ($70-$75) and my daypack for a short trip. I like to carry backpacks when the trip requires a lot of walking with my stuff and huge luggage when I’m on a tour or when I can drive around.” – Alfred“My wife and I both have a Samsonite Lift2 Spinner ($139–$199). We generally check any large bags when we fly. And we’ll carry on a backpack with things we want to have handy while we’re traveling” – Spencer“I do not check my bag, I love having everything with me on the plane and the feeling of traveling lightweight! BlueLounge backpack ($149) or, if I need some extra space, I use an Eastpak (€60 and up) that’s a bit larger.” – Mike SLuggage and carry-ons $200+“My husband recently convinced me to travel for a month with only a backpack – and I was super unsure about it! It ended up being the absolute BEST. We each bought Osprey Ozone 46 bags, ($160) and everything we needed could fit in them! It was also a breeze to get through airports, since these bags fit as carry-ons :) Now, I imagine this will be my bag of choice for longer trips!” – Arielle“If <2 weeks, carry-on suitcase/bag combination from Timbuk2 Aviator Convertible ($189). If travel is longer, I have a checked suitcase from Roncato and my light backpack” – Marcus“Love my Tortuga ($249)! Incredible when traveling and super easy to take through Security. Amazingly fits in overhead bins.” – AdamRimowa Topas – Multiwheel® 32’’ ($980) – I used to travel with the amazing Minaal bag before making the switch to the Fjallraven Duffel No. 6 Medium ($225), both of which were PERFECT carry-on bags. I recently made the switch to the Topas for durability and wheels. I often found myself exhausted traveling due to backpack load, or having to keep setting my bag down. Now it’s more stress-free while also allowing me to carry-on still. The Topas is an incredible piece of luggage, fits a ton and comes with a 5-year warranty.” – Daniel F Also a huge must-have: travel power adaptors! Desk setup: Laptop stands and ergonomic accessories We’ve shared a bit before how important your work setup is to your health. Here are suggestions from that piece and some other ways that our team has found to work in a healthy way! Laptop stands and adjustable standing desksRoost stand – ($74.95) This collapsable and portable stand helps lift the laptop screen to a more ergonomically-friendly height. The $22 IKEA desk hack is the brainchild of Colin Nederkoom, CEO of Customer.io. With side tables, shelves, and brackets purchased at IKEA, Nederkoom put together a custom desk for his monitor and keyboard/mouse. Products like the Varidesk ($395 and up) and Kangaroo Pro ($425) help convert a standard desk into a standing desk, and they have the adjustable power to set the screen and keyboard at the ideal height. Standing desks“A stand-up desk is always great. I like to find high tables at coffee shops and switch off between standing and sitting” – Darcy For the best standalone adjustable desks, we cede the floor to the Wirecutter, which tested a number of desk options. They found that the Jarvis Bamboo ($500) is the best standing desk on the market. They also liked Uplift’s Standing Desk ($693). Headphones we love Whether you’re into music, podcasts, or a soundtrack to maximize productivity and creativity, headphones are crucial for the remote worker. Buffer’s favorite: Apple Earpods ($29) Other favorites include: Sony earbuds ($25 and up)Marshall II ($119)Beats by Dre ($130 and up)AudioTechnica ATH-M50x ($169)Klipsch Reference earphones ($199)H6 Bang and Olufson ($299) Laptops: The most vital tool for the remote worker Have laptop, will travel. And the clear favorite amongst the Buffer team is Mac. Buffer’s favorite: Macbook 13 inch Specifically, the 13-inch MacBook ($1,499 USD and up). This combines the power and portability many digital nomads and remote workers need — and this is what we recommend for our team members and reimburse for as they graduate from bootcamp. The “other” category laptops included: – 15-inch MacBook Pro ($2,399 and up) – 13-inch MacBook Air ($999 and up) – 15-inch Lenovo ($829 and up) E-readers, tablets, and more! Buffer gifts our new team members and significant others a Kindle Paperwhite ($119 and up) when they are brought onto the team full-time — reading is a huge focus for the team! Other favorite e-reader options: iPad mini ($269 and up)iPad Pro ($599 and up)Apple Watch ($269 and up)Kindle Voyage ($199 and up) Step trackers It’s fair to say our team is all over the map on this one! Here are the main gadgets we use to track our steps: Jawbone ($20 and up)FitBit ($60 and up)Garmin ($99 and up)Pebble ($130 and up)Withings Activité Steel ($150)Apple Watch ($269 and up) Smartphones Buffer’s Favorite: iPhone The team leans toward iPhone about 3:1 over Android. Note: Our “other” response here was currently an Android user who planned to switch to the iPhone 7. Other essentials from our team The Better Back ($59) is a favorite among many team members. “Game changer: packing squares. These make me so happy because all my things are in their own little bag, instead of having a backpack/suitcase full of random stuff everywhere!” – Emily “Plain old paper books :) For any occasion.” – Humber “I use my Apple Pencil ($99) a ton to take notes throughout the day on my iPad :)” – Jordan “Project Fi by Google has to be the most essential addition for my daily work, life and travel since the discovery of PB-Jam sandwich! With its data coverage in over 135+ countries, I can now travel to new countries without any worries since I know Project Fi will have me covered in case a wifi connection doesn’t work well to do my job. I’m very grateful for it! :)” – Octavio (a full-time digital nomad) “Absolute essential is my trusty sketch book. I find ideas flow so much easier (and it’s so much more enjoyable) when using paper and pencil. Not just for ideas, but for to-dos and arranging thoughts for the day or a given task.” – James “My playlists in Spotify are everything to me. I feel like I can’t produce great work unless I’ve picked the right music to match my mood. Today is a Birds of Tokyo kind of day.” – Paul “Always have my Mophie ($30 and up) phone charger on hand. And some variety of wires to ensure I can charge everything! Backup Mi-fi dongle in case Wifi disappears or my iPhone tethering fails on me.” – Colin “Can’t leave home without Burt’s Bees. For travel, my miles card gives me early boarding which I love. Also, global entry/TSA pre-check ($85 to apply) is a game changer for me.” – Dan Over to you! What’s missing from our list? What’s your top choice for our remote work categories? Add you voice to our list! We’d love to hear from you in the comments! View the full article

Former Lib Dem leader brought up in Glasgow tenement was key figure in party’s success in 2000sView the full article