OpenAI says Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit is ‘rotten to its core’
OpenAI has asked a federal judge to toss out Apple's landmark lawsuit accusing the ChatGPT maker of stealing trade secrets, describing the allegations as "meritless." In a motion filed yesterday to dismiss the complaint, OpenAI says that Apple is mischaracterizing both the actions of the AI startup's employees as theft, and "generic" product development information as "trade secrets," adding that Apple made no reasonable efforts to maintain such secrecy.
The dismissal request is in response to a lawsuit filed by Apple in July, alleging that former Apple employees that went on to work for OpenAI stole confidential documents to further OpenAI …
Elon Musk’s attempt at an AI Wikipedia hasn’t been updated in months
xAI's Grokipedia, an online encyclopedia with AI-generated articles that Elon Musk once promised would be a "massive improvement" over Wikipedia, apparently hasn't been updated since April 24th, according to a report from Lawfare. "As far as we can tell, no entry has changed in more than three months," Lawfare said.
Grokipedia launched in v0.1 in October 2025 with an initial batch of 885,000 articles, and is now on v0.2 (released in November 2025) and has more than 6,000,000 total articles, according to grokipedia.com/live. But that live page also has a section titled "Recent changes to…" with a message under it that reads "No live edits av …
X product chief Nikita Bier is leaving after one year
X head of product Nikita Bier is stepping down and says he will move into a role as an advisor, writing that "it's time to pass the torch and demote myself to my natural state: a poster." He shared the update just over a month after celebrating his one-year anniversary on the job, and just weeks after Elon Musk's combined SpaceX / X / xAI companies went public.
He says that "almost every aspect of X" has been rebuilt while he was head of product, including its timeline, Android app, chat, and notifications. Going forward, the "next leaders" mentioned are Benji Taylor leading design with iOS lead Jonah Katz and Mridul Singhai leading the pr …
Two of Ring’s latest video doorbells are a lot cheaper than usual
Ring’s Wired Doorbell Pro and Battery Doorbell Plus are two of the brand’s most well-rounded video doorbells, whether you’re looking for a hardwired model or one that runs on a battery. Right now, its Wired Doorbell Pro is down to $199 ($50 off) at Amazon and Best Buy, while the Battery Doorbell Plus is on sale for $119.99 ($60 off) at Amazon and Best Buy. Both deals are the second-best prices we’ve seen, just $20 shy of their Prime Day lows.
Ring Wired Doorbell Pro
Where to Buy:
Ring Battery Doorbell Plus (second-gen)
Where to Buy:
Aside from how they’re powered, the main difference between the two comes down to video quality. The Wired Doorbell Pro records sharper 4K video, and it can automatically respond to visitors with prerecorded messages. The Battery Doorbell Plus has fewer features and can capture video in slightly less sharp 2K resolution. Beyond that, the two doorbells share many of the same core features.
Both can provide a head-to-toe view of your doorstep and support motion detection, two-way talk, and support for color night vision. If you’re willing to pay $4.99 for a monthly subscription, you also get more specific alerts for people, packages, and vehicles. Upgrading to the $19.99 Ring Pro plan, meanwhile, grants access to extra AI features like facial recognition and text-based activity summaries, all of which are free for the first month. Both also work well with Amazon Alexa, allowing you to view a live feed on a compatible Echo Show smart display and receive audible announcements when someone rings your doorbell.
Uber CEO brushes off reports of a Waymo break-up
After Uber and Waymo ended their partnership in Phoenix earlier this year, experts and robotaxi watchers wondered whether the companies' improbable bromance was fraying. Not so, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said today. The two companies are committed to continue working together in Atlanta and Austin, and the partnership remains "very strong."
"Waymo is a very important partner of ours, and we continue to operate in Austin and Atlanta," Khosrowshahi said in an earnings call today. "We believe we'll continue to operate next year in those marketplaces. It's a terrific product, and the on-the-ground partnership continues to be very strong."
The …
Apple’s selling refurbished MacBook Neos with a $100 discount
Apple’s most affordable laptop, the MacBook Neo, is available once again at its pre-price hike price. All four colors are currently discounted and available refurbished through the company, with the base 256GB model listed for $599 (usually $699 new), and the upgraded version with 512GB of storage and TouchID selling for $679 (usually $799). The laptops have a one-year manufacturer warranty, with the option to purchase an extended AppleCare plan.
MacBook Neo
Apple’s most affordable laptop, with a 13-inch display, A18 Pro chip, 8GB of RAM, and optional Touch ID fingerprint sensor. Read our review.
Where to Buy:
My colleague Antonio G. Di Benedetto reviewed the MacBook Neo, and was impressed with its performance given that it’s running on the A18 Pro – an iPhone 16 Pro processor. While power users might feel a bit limited by the 8GB of memory and relatively slow storage, the excellent screen, keyboard and speakers make this a great choice for people who primarily use browsers instead of system-intensive apps. It’s also a fantastic laptop for high school or college students.
Read our Apple MacBook Neo review.
Other deals to consider
- Amazon has the Google Pixelsnap Charger on sale for $41.99 (usually $69.99), the lowest price we’ve seen yet. This Qi2 wireless charger has a detachable stand to keep your Pixel 10 series phone upright and visible while charging, and supports up to 25W of power for fast charging. It’s worth noting that older Pixel models will need to use a compatible magnet case to attach to the stand.
- You can pick up a Razer Wolverine V3 Tournament Edition from Amazon for $50, half off its usual price. This wired controller packs in features that competitive gamers will appreciate for tuning in their setup, like remappable back paddles, two trigger heights, and hall effect thumbsticks. It’s compatible with PC and Xbox Series S/X over USB.
- Fanatical has Steam codes for Peak discounted to $3.75, just over half off its usual price of $7.99. This co-op climbing game challenges you and your friends to scale a mountain together, with a physics system that often leads to hilarious circumstances, and a variety of helpful (or detrimental) items to discover along the way.
Sure seems like Fenix Flexin used AI music generator Treblo
We were pretty sure that Fenix Flexin's "Rubberz" was made using AI, but musician Medasin was confident that it was made using Treblo specifically. Now the company and a new detection tool seem to confirm it.
On Monday, the company announced the open-source Treblo AI Music Classifier, which detects when a song was generated using Treblo, though not other AI tools. According to a blog post, it has a false positive rate of less than 1 in 10,000. That's not unimpeachable, but it's notable that the company's own Classifier determined that "Rubberz" was "very likely Treblo" with "high confidence," adding more fuel to the PR nightmare for Fenix.
…Google just announced a major shakeup of its top AI leadership
Google is making some significant AI leadership changes, including a major shift for Google DeepMind leader Demis Hassabis.
Hassabis will become the chair of Google DeepMind and the chief scientist at Alphabet, CEO Sundar Pichai announced on Wednesday. Hassabis will continue to lead Alphabet's Isomorphic Labs, which aims to use AI to develop drugs. Koray Kavukcuoglu, formerly DeepMind's CTO, is stepping up to become Google's SVP of DeepMind and will report to Pichai. Kavukcuoglu will remain Google's chief AI architect as well.
"As you've heard me say many times, I've always believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human h …
SpaceX is barely Space and mostly X
Once, I had some questions about why SpaceX, Elon Musk's healthiest company, acquired xAI, his sickliest one. Now I have some questions about why we're calling the whole thing SpaceX.
Look, what we have here, by revenue, is primarily a telecom company and a company that rents compute, according to SpaceX's first quarterly earnings statement as a public company. The space sector of the business didn't break a billion dollars this quarter and contributed only a touch over 10 percent of the company's revenue. SpaceX remains its own biggest customer. There just aren't enough other people who want its rockets. And, I dunno, maybe if the rockets …
Reddit is introducing a new moderator: AI
Reddit is enlisting AI to help moderate new subreddits - and eventually the rest of site. The company is introducing automated moderation tools that rely on LLMs to help mods manage their communities, and it's expanding who can use those tools today ahead of a full launch later this year.
The company calls the suite of tools "Rules Hub," and the tools let mods decide what rules should be automatically enforced and what should happen when a rule is triggered. Rules Hub relies on LLMs to evaluate "whether a post or comment matches the intent of a rule," which "allows Rules Hub to better handle nuance, natural language, and edge cases while pr …