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For a year now, the AI safety testing firm Andon Labs has tasked frontier models with various real-world tasks to determine how well they do as agents running for long periods with no human supervision. On Wednesday, Andon published a new installment in how things are going in its Vending-Bench research, where the lab has frontier models run a simulated vending machine business for a simulated year. The mission is simple: make more money than the other models. It benchmarks the results in areas like final cash balance, prices paid to suppliers, and refunds paid. Across these tests, it has…
It’s one of the most expensive for a reason, and comes with more attachments than any other model. I do find myself regularly grabbing the Fluffy Optic head for vacuuming my hard floors, which cover many square feet of my home. If you’re looking to really splurge on the best vacuum, this is still the one to get.The only downside is compatibility with Dyson’s bigger attachments, namely a mop head or docking station. It doesn’t have a Submarine option like the V16 or V15, and Dyson’s Auto-empty Dok won’t work with this model. But if you aren’t worried about add-ons,…
Sometimes the crowd isn’t so wise. When Ferrari revealed the Luce — its first EV — to the public in May, the internet reacted. And not in a positive way. Critics compared the wedge-shaped Luce with a Nissan Leaf and said Chinese EVs would outperform it while undercutting it on price. Even former Ferrari chair Luca Cordero di Montezemolo was among the haters. Ferrari’s stock dropped 8% the day after the reveal. Their conclusion: the Luce would be a dud. It turns out, the armchair auto executives were wrong about the five-seater that was largely designed by Jony Ive and his…
Last year, when the novelist Laura Brooke Robson began writing Love Is an Algorithm—a love story between the cofounder of an AI dating app and a musician trying to survive in the age of large language models—she took extra care not to sound like AI herself.She wrote sentences she doubts she would have attempted before the advent of LLMs, avoiding what she calls “wishy-washy metaphors,” and took “a more winding path to avoid an em dash or a tripartite list.”Since the widespread adoption of LLMs, Robson says her writing has fundamentally changed for the better, becoming a deliberate inverse of…
A year ago, Reese’s unveiled Reese’s Oreo, a mash-up combining the peanut butter candy with the sandwich cookie. The collaboration has since generated over $188 million in sales, and Hershey is marking the anniversary with a nostalgic campaign starring Lindsay Lohan.At the center of the campaign, created in partnership with Juxtapose Studio, is a spot featuring Lohan and Amy Sedaris. It’s directed by actress Patricia Arquette in her commercial directing debut.The ad is set at the Reese’s Twin Retreat, where Lohan plays a therapist helping “twins work out their differences.” The setup is a nod to Lohan’s dual role in…
Google is expanding its answer to Apple’s age-assurance tools with Wednesday’s news that it will bring its Play Signal API to users worldwide by the end of 2026. The technology, already available in Brazil, allows Android developers to identify their apps’ younger users in order to provide safer, age-appropriate experiences. The expansion will initially bring the API to Australia and Canada by mid-August, before rolling out globally to all markets by year-end. Its arrival comes as lawmakers and regulators in global markets are increasingly pressuring app stores to provide better protections for minors. Apple, for instance, launched its age-verification tools…
In September 2024, a handful of patients showed up at the emergency room in the coastal city of Fano, Italy, with mysterious symptoms: a rash on their hands and feet, fever, nausea, and diarrhea. Doctors sent for various tests until one came back with a positive result for dengue, a viral infection spread by mosquitoes, usually in tropical regions of the world. They tested the other patients, and, sure enough, they had dengue too. The strange thing? None of the patients had recently traveled to a country where they might expect to pick up a dengue infection. The only thing…
Elon Musk’s X and the advertising trade group the World Federation for Advertisers (WFA) have settled their legal dispute after nearly two years, the organizations said Wednesday.A joint statement published to the X Business account and the WFA website said that they are both “putting the litigation…behind them,” adding that “this resets the relationship between the two organizations.” In August 2024, X levied an antitrust lawsuit against the nonprofit group and several of its member organizations, including Mars, CVS Health, and Unilever (eventually adding Shell, Lego, Nestlé, Tyson Foods, Colgate-Palmolive, and others). The case alleged that the advertisers illegally colluded in…
Elon Musk’s X has settled its multiyear legal battle with advertising trade group the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), the two organizations said on Wednesday. The settlement ends Musk’s aggressive attempt to hold advertisers legally responsible for pulling spending from X over brand safety concerns. X sued the WFA in 2024 for conducting what it called a “systematic illegal boycott” of the platform after it saw a decline in advertising revenue following Musk’s $44 billion takeover of the social network in 2022. Companies X accused of doing so included Mars, CVS Health, Shell, Lego, and more. The advertisers rejected the…
Apple has spent more than a decade tending to its thriving walled garden of products. Outgoing CEO Tim Cook’s core legacy at the company was turning it into a subscription service, where devices and services sync and communicate seamlessly, locking customers in.Apple Upgrade is the latest iteration of that vision. On Tuesday, Apple announced a new product leasing service that lets you rent products like a new iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch. (The news was leaked a week early by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.)Apple Upgrade is a partnership with the financial company Klarna, known for its buy-now, pay-later services. If…
CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil recorded gains in total viewers and the advertiser-coveted Adults 25-54 demo for the week of July 20. CBS News’ flagship evening program finished slightly below the 4 million total viewer mark but broke the 500,000 viewers barrier in the demo—the last time it was above this mark was the week of June 29.Meanwhile, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir and NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas saw viewership declines in both measured categories for the just-concluded week. Still, the two networks remained far ahead of CBS.Note: The weekly averages of ABC World News…
AI browsers were all the rage in 2025. Companies large and small tried to build browsers that baked in AI in an effort to own the interface people use to browse the internet. How the turns have tabled. Today, OpenAI’s Atlas is history, and The Browser Company sold to Atlassian, with its Dia browser now focusing on productivity use cases. Firefox tried to strike a balance in its own AI efforts by providing an off-switch, but it got shouted at anyway. This year, the focus has shifted to agents and automation. Startups like Strawberry, Browser Use, and Aside are building…
Some still believe that you can’t manage a car company unless you’re a fully paid-up “car guy.” Tell that to Benedetto Vigna, Ferrari’s CEO. He’s a physicist by education, hired to run the company in 2021 after a career in semiconductors, although he did significant business with automotive during that time.Vigna also helped develop a three-dimensional motion sensor first used in airbags, later adapted for the Nintendo Wii and the iPhone’s screen rotation function. An inventor, then. “I prefer innovator,” he once told me. “A lot of the time inventors are just thinking, but innovators conceive new things and make…
DoorDash is building a drone delivery business, including its own aircraft, as part of an effort developed by its robotics and autonomy team, which will eventually operate within the company’s delivery app. The company unveiled the new business, called DoorDash Air, after receiving a Part 135 air carrier certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. The certification allows the company to legally operate a commercial drone delivery service in the United States. This does not mean DoorDash’s custom-built drones will be delivering burritos tomorrow, or even next month. The company didn’t provide a detailed timeline for when its aircraft would…
X has a new argument against sweeping underage social media bans which would limit usage of its platform: They interfere with international law.The social media platform, which sits within Elon Musk’s SpaceX, issued a submission to the Australian Parliament published Tuesday that called for the government to drop efforts to strengthen its underage social media ban. It complained that the proposals to increase pressure on sites to demonstrate efforts to crack down on underage access are unnecessary, ill-suited, unfair, and could violate privacy rights.X pushed back against the “highly invasive” information gathering powers the proposed amendment would allow, accusing the…
Spotify is adding a new mode to its phone app for people who like to listen to music on runs. The new running mode cues up songs based on different phases of runs, and selects tracks based on your preferences and tempo. Paying subscribers can find the running mode in Fitness Hub, and can select from one of the 25 presets. Users can choose their workout type from options like interval runs, steady runs or pyramid, and can customize the duration, beats per minute, and the kind of music they want to listen to. Image Credits: SpotifyImage Credits:Spotify As well…