Author: GT

Paying with a handwave once sounded like science fiction, but contactless palm recognition service Amazon One has already been used more than 8 million times, according to the company. That’s Amazon, though, which explains why it has been deployed in Amazon stores and more than 500 Whole Foods Market stores in the U.S., but only 150 third-party locations. Meanwhile, fintech startups like Latvia’s Handwave are stepping onto the field, aiming to provide third-party retailers with a similar but independent solution for faster checkout while leveraging the giant’s role in popularizing biometric payments in the West. (China has already begun adopting…

Google DeepMind is rolling out Gemini 2.5 Deep Think, which, the company says, is its most advanced AI reasoning model, able to answer questions by exploring and considering multiple ideas simultaneously and then using those outputs to choose the best answer. Subscribers to Google’s $250-per-month Ultra subscription will gain access to Gemini 2.5 Deep Think in the Gemini app starting Friday. First unveiled in May at Google I/O 2025, Gemini 2.5 Deep Think is Google’s first publicly available multi-agent model. These systems spawn multiple AI agents to tackle a question in parallel, a process that uses significantly more computational resources…

Figma celebrates its initial public offering at the New York Stock Exchange on July 31, 2025.NYSEShares of design software vendor Figma popped 6% on Friday, a day after the stock more than tripled in its New York Stock Exchange debut. Figma opened at $85 on Thursday under the ticker FIG, and shares closed at $115.50 for a 250% gain. On Friday, the stock traded above $120.Figma is the latest tech company to hit the public markets after an extended IPO drought. Artificial intelligence infrastructure provider CoreWeave debuted in March, followed by the digital physical therapy company Hinge Health in May. The stablecoin issuer Circle,…

Joby Aviation is often cast as a developer of commercial electric air taxis, but the publicly traded company has also pursued a separate track to market through a long-standing relationship with the U.S. Department of Defense. Now, its years of research and development with the Department of Defense may be paying off. The company on Thursday said it had signed an agreement with defense contractor L3Harris Technologies to “explore opportunities” to develop a new aircraft class — specifically, a gas-turbine hybrid vertical take-off and landing aircraft that can fly autonomously — for defense applications. The gas-turbine hybrid VTOL will be…

A child playing with a Nintendo Switch game console.Julian Stratenschulte | picture alliance via Getty ImagesNintendo said Friday it plans to hike the price of its original Switch “family of systems and products” in the U.S.The price increases, which take effect Aug. 3, are being made “based on market conditions,” the Japanese company said in a post on its website. It will affect the original Switch console, Switch Lite and OLED models, as well as some Switch accessories.The price of the Switch 2 console, along with physical and digital Switch and Switch games, will remain the same for now, Nintendo…

With search today so full of AI slop and sites spamming SEO tricks, it’s not unusual for people to append “reddit” to their queries in hopes of finding useful answers to their questions. Google has tried to integrate results from Reddit in its search interface, and taking notice of the trend, Reddit has been experimenting with its own AI search as well. But the company has loftier ambitions: It wants to become the go-to search engine people use. Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman said as much during its second-quarter conference call on Thursday: “Reddit is one of the few platforms positioned…

Google CEO Sundar Pichai gestures to the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 20, 2025.David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesGoogle has purged more than 50 organizations related to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, from a list of organizations that the tech company provides funding to, according to a new report.The company has removed a total of 214 groups from its funding list while adding 101, according to a new report from tech watchdog organization The Tech Transparency Project. The watchdog group cites the most recent public list of organizations that…

German prosecutors say a joint U.S.-European operation has seized infrastructure belonging to the BlackSuit ransomware gang, a notorious hacking group blamed for several major cyberattacks in recent years. In a new statement this week, officials in Germany said they had seized the gang’s servers and systems as part of an operation on July 24. The officials said the operation had secured “considerable amounts of data” that will be used to help identify the individuals responsible for the attacks. The officials said they switched off the servers, effectively cutting off the ransomware malware. The statement said BlackSuit had a total of…

Ask any homeowner: renovation projects are no fun at all. From finding a contractor to determining a fair price, the process is rife with uncertainty.  Plenty of startups have popped up to help homeowners tackle electrification projects, including installing solar panels and replacing gas furnaces with heat pumps. But they still struggle with the cost question: acquiring customers is often more than half the battle. Pearl Edison thinks the answer is utilities. “As much as anything, we are leveraging their brand equity and trust,” Evan Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Pearl Edison, told TechCrunch. Investors have bought into the idea.…

A leak suggests that OpenAI is about to launch a powerful new open-source AI model, potentially within hours.The evidence comes from a trail of digital breadcrumbs, eagerly pored over by developers. At the centre of it all are screenshots showing a series of model repositories with names like yofo-deepcurrent/gpt-oss-120b and yofo-wildflower/gpt-oss-20b. The repos have since been deleted, but the accounts feature OpenAI team members.That gpt-oss tag is the real smoking gun, seemingly a clear signpost for ‘GPT Open Source Software’. For a company that has increasingly guarded its top-tier models, this would be somewhat of a return to its roots.…