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Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom says AI companies are trying too hard to “juice engagement” by pestering their users with follow-up questions, instead of providing actually useful insights. Systrom said the tactics represent “a force that’s hurting us,” comparing them to those used by social media companies to expand aggressively.  “You can see some of these companies going down the rabbit hole that all the consumer companies have gone down in trying to juice engagement,” he said at StartupGrind this week. “Every time I ask a question, at the end it asks another little question to see if it can get…

Brisbane, Australia CNN  —  The man vying to become Australia’s next prime minister has spent weeks trying to distance himself from comparisons to US President Donald Trump. “I’m my own person,” opposition Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton insisted, when asked for his thoughts on “Temu Trump,” the label given to him by critics referring to the Chinese website with a reputation for cheap copies. Political analysts say comparisons to Trump have eaten away at any lead Dutton had over incumbent center-left Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who is topping opinion polls before Saturday’s vote. Ex-police officer Dutton became opposition leader…

Summary The cancellation of the Halo TV series highlights its flaws and presents the best chance for gamers to get the movie they were promised. The idea of a Halo movie has been around for over 20 years, with names like Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro attached. A Halo movie can stay closer to the games, giving fans a live-action iteration that avoids the same mistakes as the series. The Halo TV series was canceled after two seasons, presenting the perfect opportunity to give fans the movie they were promised years ago, which could help correct the show’s mistakes.…

Ethereum’s relative dominance among layer-1 (L1) blockchain networks has declined, resulting in an “open race” to become the leading Web3 platform, according to Alex Svanevik, CEO of data service Nansen.“If you’d asked me 3–4 years ago whether Ethereum would dominate crypto, I’d have said yes,” Svanevik said during a panel discussion at the LONGITUDE by Cointelegraph event. “But now, it’s clear that’s not what’s happening.”Ethereum is still the most popular L1 network. According to data from DefiLlama, its roughly $52 billion in total value locked (TVL) represents 51% of cryptocurrency residing on blockchain networks.However, Ethereum’s dominance has diminished sharply since…

Next week, Google will begin allowing kids under 13 who have parent-managed Google accounts to use its Gemini chatbot, according to The New York Times. The Times reports that Gemini will be available to kids whose parents use Family Link, a Google service that enables families to opt into various Google services for their child. A Google spokesperson told the publication that Gemini has specific guardrails for younger users and that the company won’t use that data to train its AI. As The Times notes, chatbot makers are racing to capture younger audiences as the AI race heats up. That’s despite the…

Jill Sobule’s friends believed the singer-songwriter escaped their house amid a blaze that killed the “Supermodel” singer in Minnesota early Thursday, as authorities try to establish whether Sobule died before or amid the fire. The couple, whose names have not been released, rushed out of the suburban St. Paul home upon realizing it was ablaze, at which point they believed Sobule was with them, her agent Craig Grossman told TMZ Friday. It wasn’t until they’d escaped that they came to the tragic realization Sobule was trapped in the Woodbury residence, where the fire was too far gone to retrieve and save…

Harvey Weinstein accuser Miriam Haley broke down in tears and cursed on the witness stand Friday as a defense lawyer questioned her account of the former Hollywood mogul forcing oral sex on her nearly two decades ago. “He was the one who raped me, not the other way around,” Haley told jurors. “That is for the jury to decide,” Weinstein lawyer Jennifer Bonjean responded. “No, it’s not for the jury to decide. It’s my experience. And he did that to me,” Haley said, using expletives as tears began streaming down her face. Judge Curtis Farber halted questioning and sent jurors…

A recently released Google AI model scores worse on certain safety tests than its predecessor, according to the company’s internal benchmarking. In a technical report published this week, Google reveals that its Gemini 2.5 Flash model is more likely to generate text that violates its safety guidelines than Gemini 2.0 Flash. On two metrics, “text-to-text safety” and “image-to-text safety,” Gemini 2.5 Flash regresses 4.1% and 9.6%, respectively. Text-to-text safety measures how frequently a model violates Google’s guidelines given a prompt, while image-to-text safety evaluates how closely the model adheres to these boundaries when prompted using an image. Both tests are…

Apple and Anthropic are teaming up to build a “vibe-coding” software platform that will use generative AI to write, edit, and test code for programmers, Bloomberg reported on Friday. The iPhone maker is planning to roll out the software internally, according to Bloomberg, but hasn’t decided if it will launch it publicly. The system is a new version of Apple’s programming software, Xcode, and relies on Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet model, according to the report. To accelerate its AI efforts, Apple seems to be tapping a network of partners. OpenAI’s ChatGPT already helps power the company’s Apple Intelligence features, and Google’s…

Disturbing new details emerged Friday about an attack by an accused rapist who sexually violated a 27-year-old man on a Manhattan subway car, as the suspect flew into a deranged, expletive-filled tirade during his arraignment. “How long, how long?” defendant Mohammad Azeem, 36, shouted as officers led him out of a Manhattan Criminal Court room. “S–k my d–k. F–k you,” he added. Azeem was ordered held without bail on charges including rape and forcible touching by Judge Kacie Lally. Boarding a northbound No. 1 train at the South Ferry Terminal Station at 4:11 a.m. on Apr. 26, the victim told investigators…