Shopify is launching stablecoin payments for its merchants later this year, starting with USDC in collaboration with Coinbase and Stripe. Fortune reports: The publicly traded tech company lets merchants — including vintage clothes sellers, cosmetics businesses, and electronics companies — set up their own online marketplaces. By late June, Shopify will let a select group of users accept payments in USDC, a stablecoin issued by the crypto company Circle, which recently had one of the year’s hottest IPOs. “In our own philosophical framework, we are extremely aligned with everything that crypto stands for,” Tobias Lutke, the CEO of Shopify and a Coinbase board member, said onstage at a Coinbase conference on Thursday.

Shopify will then gradually expand access to merchants across its network in the U.S. and Europe before opening up stablecoin payments to every merchant who uses its platform. The e-commerce company worked with Coinbase to develop a payments protocol to handle chargebacks, refunds, and other intricacies of retail payments on Coinbase’s blockchain, Base. It also collaborated with fintech giant Stripe, one of Shopify’s payments processors, to integrate stablecoins into the e-commerce company’s existing software stack. “I think other payment processors will look at what Shopify is building and be like, ‘Holy crap,'” Jesse Pollak, a Coinbase executive who oversees the crypto exchange’s wallet and blockchain divisions, told Fortune.

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Amazon has quietly doubled the ad load on Prime Video to 4-6 minutes per hour, up from the 2-3.5 minutes initially discussed when ads launched in 2024. AdWeek reports: According to six ad buyers and documents reviewed by ADWEEK, the current ad load on Prime Video now ranges from four to six minutes per hour. And while that could bring down CPMs, buyers will be watching whether this impacts user experience. “Prime Video ad load has gradually increased to four to six minutes per hour,” an Amazon representative wrote to an ad buyer in an email obtained by ADWEEK. The exchange occurred earlier this month.

The increase, which Amazon had telegraphed to investors but has not publicly acknowledged to consumers, gives the company significantly more inventory to sell across its rapidly expanding streaming business. “They told us the ad load would be increasing,” said Kendra Tang, programmatic supervisor at Rain the Growth Agency. “That’s been confirmed recently when we noticed more avails in the system.”

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After several years, Google has released a major update to the iOS version of its Snapseed photo editor. Version 3.0 is the program offers a complete redesign of both the iPhone and iPad apps. All of the images that have been edited with the tool are displayed in a grid. Navigation has been rearranged into three tabs, with a new Faves section for the photo tools that you want to quickly use on the regular. It boasts more than 25 different tools and filters for altering photos, including some newly added film filters. Snapseed also has a refreshed its logo with a more streamlined look.

Google acquired Snapseed all the way back in 2012. The new take on the app is a surprise, since Snapseed hadn’t received any major updates on iOS since 2021. One thing has not changed: the app is still free and has no advertisements. For now, the listing for Snapseed in Google Play is still a version from last year; it’s unclear if or when 3.0 will arrive on Android.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-completely-remade-its-snapseed-ios-photo-editor-222003395.html?src=rss

The new version of Siri that was demoed alongside Apple Intelligence might not be released until Spring 2026, Bloomberg reports. Apple officially delayed Siri’s release to some time “in the coming year” back in March.

The new Siri could be included in a planned iOS 26.4 update next year, which Bloomberg writes will likely arrive in March. Apple announced the smarter and more personal version of Siri at WWDC 2024 over a year ago now, and nearly two years before this hypothetical Spring 2026 release date. The company could demo the updated AI assistant again at its iPhone event in the fall or even release the new Siri early, but timing reportedly remains up in the air.

Apple’s proposed update to Siri is supposed to give the company’s aging voice assistant the authority to take action inside of apps and understand the content and context of your screen. The company’s demos showed off Siri referencing emails for flight information and embedding photos in documents, all on its own, as evidence of how much more capable the assistant could be.

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Apple executives attribute the delay of the new Siri to it simply not being up to the company’s standards. Internally, Bloomberg writes that there’s also disagreement between Apple’s marketing and engineering teams as to who is really at fault. The company shouldn’t have hyped up the new Siri at WWDC 2024 or built an ad campaign around features that might not ship (Apple’s pulled its Siri ads in March). But the engineering team may have been misleading as to how ready the assistant really was.

As testament to how careful Apple is being now, its focus on AI at WWDC 2025 was far more muted. The closest the company got to touching on some of the magic of the new Siri was the updated version of Spotlight that’s coming in macOS 26, which can leverage the same App Intents framework Siri is supposed to use to perform select actions in apps, like sending a text in Messages without having to open the app.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/apples-ai-infused-siri-may-not-show-up-until-spring-2026-221212681.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has lost another senior leader: executive director Bridget Bean departed on Wednesday. Bean, who served as the de facto agency boss for five months between former CISA director Jen Easterly’s departure in January and Madhu Gottumukkala’s appointment to the deputy director post last month, said she was “officially retiring from Federal service once again” in a LinkedIn post. “My time at CISA has been truly remarkable,” she wrote. “Having had the privilege to serve as the Senior Official Performing the Duties of Director of CISA for 5 months has been a profound honor.”

CISA’s executive leadership page now lists Gottumukkala as its acting director, and the agency remains without a Senate-confirmed leader. President Trump nominated Sean Plankey to serve as the agency’s director, and his nomination is scheduled for consideration (PDF) by the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today. However, his appointment still requires a full Senate vote. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has said he will continue to block Plankey’s confirmation until CISA releases an unclassified report on American telecommunications networks’ weak security.

At the time of her departure, Bean had spent three and a half years with CISA and more than three decades with the federal government, including a job as the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s third-ranking official. Before accepting the executive director post, she was CISA’s first chief integration officer. In this position, she “led the integration of the agency’s operations and ensured CISA’s frontline of regional staff seamlessly supported the critical infrastructure that Americans rely on every hour of every day,” according to her bio on the agency’s website. […] Bean’s retirement comes during a talent exodus from CISA — and other federal government agencies — with some folks getting fired and others taking the Trump administration’s buyout offer to resign from public service. As of May 30, the heads of five of CISA’s six operational divisions and six of its 10 regional offices had left the agency, and around 1,000 people, nearly one-third of its total staff, have reportedly left CISA since Trump took office.

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Breast cancer. Colon cancer. An enlarged thyroid gland. A family history of tumors and cancers as well. It wasn’t until the woman developed an annoying case of dry mouth that doctors put it all together. By then, she was in her 60s.

According to a new case study in JAMA Dermatology, the woman presented to a dermatology clinic in Spain after three months of oral unpleasantness. They noted the cancers in her medical history. When she opened wide, doctors immediately saw the problem: Her tongue was covered in little wart-like bumps that resembled a slippery, flesh-colored cobblestone path. (Image here.)

Such a cobblestone tongue is a telltale sign of a rare genetic condition called Cowden syndrome. It’s caused by inherited mutations that break a protein, called PTEN, leading to tumors and cancers.

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The PCI-SIG, which oversees the development of the PCIe specification, has officially released the final spec for PCI Express 7.0. “The PCIe 7.0 specification increases the per-lane data transfer rate to 128 GT/s in each direction, which is twice as fast as PCIe 6.0 supports and four times faster than PCIe 5.0,” reports Tom’s Hardware. “Such a significant performance increase enables devices with 16 PCIe 7.0 lanes to transfer up to 256 GB/s in each direction, not accounting for protocol overhead. The new version of the interface continues to use PAM4 signaling while maintaining the 1b/1b FLIT encoding method first introduced in PCIe 6.0.” From the report: To achieve PCIe 7.0’s 128 GT/s record data transfer rate, developers of PCIe 7.0 had to increase the physical signaling rate to 32 GHz or beyond. Keep in mind that both PCIe 5.0 and 6.0 use a physical signaling rate of 16 GHz to enable 32 GT/s using NRZ signaling and 64 GT/s using PAM4 signaling (which allows transfers of two bits per symbol). With PCIe 7.0, developers had to boost the physical frequency for the first time since 2017, which required tremendous work at various levels, as maintaining signal integrity at 32 GHz over long distances using copper wires is extremely challenging.

Beyond raw throughput, the update also offers improved power efficiency and stronger support for longer or more complex electrical channels, particularly when using a cabling solution, to cater to the needs of next-generation data center-grade bandwidth-hungry applications, such as 800G Ethernet, Ultra Ethernet, and quantum computing, among others. […] With the PCIe 7.0 standard officially released, members of the PCI-SIG, including AMD, Intel, and Nvidia, can begin finalizing the development of their platforms that support the PCIe specifications. PCI-SIG plans to start preliminary compliance tests in 2027, with official interoperability tests scheduled for 2028. Therefore, expect actual PCIe 7.0 devices and platforms on the market sometime in 2028 – 2029, if everything goes as planned. PCI-SIG also announced that pathfinding for PCIe 8.0 is underway, and members of the organization are actively exploring possibilities and defining capabilities of a standard that they are going to use in 2030 and beyond.

“Interestingly, when asked whether PCIe 8.0 would double data transfer rate to 256 GT/s in each direction (and therefore enable bandwidth of 1 TB/s in both directions using 16 lanes), Al Yanes, president of PCI-SIG, said that while this is an intention, he would not like to make any definitive claims,” reports Tom’s Hardware. “Additionally, he stated that PCI-SIG is looking forward to enabling PCIe 8.0, which will offer higher performance over copper wires in addition to optical interconnects.”

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Meta has entered into an agreement with XGS Energy to develop “next-generation geothermal energy” projects in New Mexico. The plan is for these projects to connect directly into the electrical grid that Meta’s data centers draw from, feeding the growing energy needs of the company’s AI development.

Both companies claim the new deal will add 150-megawatts of carbon-free energy to the grid “with zero operating water use.” New Mexico is apparently uniquely suited for geothermal energy production because the state has “some of the best hot rock resources in the country,” according to the deal announcement. XGS Energy’s approach will allow “these hot, but typically dry, rock resources” to be used to produce electricity without having to worry about water accessibility.

The agreement is split into two phases, an initial smaller one and a second larger one, both of which are “projected to be operational by 2030.” Meta has previously explored geothermal energy through a partnership with Sage Geosystems, and like its past deals — including Meta’s recent 20-year agreement to use a nuclear power plant in Illinois — the company is focused on finding more sources of energy for its AI data centers.

“Advances in AI require continued energy to support infrastructure development,” Urvi Parekh, Meta’s Global Head of Energy, shared in the deal announcement. “With next-generation geothermal technologies like XGS ready for scale, geothermal can be a major player in supporting the advancement of technologies like AI as well as domestic data center development.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-is-helping-to-fund-geothermal-energy-projects-in-new-mexico-212222815.html?src=rss

Nearly two weeks have passed since Jared Isaacman received a fateful, brief phone call from two officials in President Trump’s Office of Personnel Management. In those few seconds, the trajectory of his life over the next three and a half years changed dramatically.

The president, the callers said, wanted to go in a different direction for NASA’s administrator. At the time, Isaacman was within days of a final vote on the floor of the US Senate and assured of bipartisan support. He had run the gauntlet of six months of vetting, interviews, and a committee hearing. He expected to be sworn in within a week. And then, it was all gone.

“I was very disappointed, especially because it was so close to confirmation and I think we had a good plan to implement,” Isaacman told Ars on Wednesday.

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Microsoft quietly teased its next-generation Xbox by showcasing its collaboration with Asus “to bring two Xbox Ally handhelds to the market later this year,” writes The Verge’s Tom Warren. From the report: The Xbox Ally handhelds run Windows, but the Xbox team has worked with Windows engineers to boot these PC handhelds into a full-screen Xbox UI. The Windows desktop doesn’t even fully load, and you use the Xbox app UI as a launcher to get to all your games (even Steam titles) and apps like Discord. While the combination of Windows and Xbox here is intriguing, it’s the way that Microsoft is positioning these devices that really caught my attention.

“This is an Xbox,” said Microsoft during the reveal, clearly expanding its marketing push beyond a single console to every screen and device. It all felt like a true Xbox handheld reveal. There was even an 11-minute-long behind-the-scenes video on the Xbox Ally handhelds, filmed in a similar style to Microsoft’s “Project Scorpio” Xbox One X reveal from nearly nine years ago. “This is a breakthrough moment for Xbox,” Carl Ledbetter, a 30-year Microsoft design veteran, says in the video. Ledbetter helped design the original IntelliMouse, the Xbox 360 Slim, the Xbox One X, and plenty of other Microsoft devices. When Ledbetter is involved, you know it’s more than just a simple partner project with Asus.

“For the first time, a player is going to be able to hold the power of the Xbox experience in their hand, and take it with them anywhere they want to go,” says Xbox president Sarah Bond, in the same video. Microsoft thinks of the Xbox Ally handhelds as Xbox consoles with the freedom of Windows, and I think the next-gen Xbox is going to look very similar as a result.
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Emojis are a fun evolution from the emoticons of old—but there are only so many to choose from. While a handful of new ones are added each year, for the most part, what you see is what you get, which is why Android’s “Emoji Kitchen” is so great.

The feature lets you combine two emojis to create a brand new one, right on your device. If you want to send a winky face, but with the robot emoji, you can. You can make the skull emoji cry with laughter, or turn a piece of pizza into a rocket ship. The feature multiplies a limited yet sizable pool of emoji choices into a staggering number of varieties.

While Emoji Kitchen is now automaticly included on Pixel devices, it doesn’t even exist on iPhone, at least as of the latest official software version, iOS 18.5. With iOS 26, currently in beta testing, however, Apple has built an Emoji Kitchen-like feature that uses Apple Intelligence to mix multiple emoji or Genmoji together to make a new icon.

The feature didn’t get as much attention as some others during the WWDC keynote introducing iOS 26, but it seems like a fun use of Apple’s AI.

How to mix emoji and Genmoji on iOS 26

Credit: Apple/YouTube

In order to try this out, you’ll need to be running iOS 26 on an iPhone compatible with Apple Intelligence (i.e. an iPhone 15 Pro or newer), though as the beta is still in its earliest stages, I don’t recommend you try it out at this time.

Once you’re running iOS 26, open the emoji keyboard, then tap “Genmoji.” Here, you’ll now see a new “Suggestions” section, which offers a row of emojis you can choose from. If you don’t like these suggestions, you can choose “Show More” to see different categories of emojis, including “Themes,” “Expressions,” “Costumes,” “Accessories,” and “Places.” As Emojipedia highlights, these categories feature icons that aren’t standard emojis, like a race car helmet and flower crown.

If you’re looking to mix specific emojis together, however, just tap the gray “smiley +” icon. This button will open the emoji keyboard, so you can choose whatever options you like, in addition to any text-based prompts you’d like to add. You can add up to six “concepts” (emojis and prompts) per generation, so you can really mix things up—though you might find that using fewer prompts returns results closer to your intended design.

From here, Genmoji will start generating new emojis from your selection, and you can scroll through the different options it presents. While the app hides the emojis and prompts here, you can tap the image to see which concepts it was generated from. If you like a generation, tap the checkmark, and Genmoji will automatically enter it into the text field for you to share.

Apple this week provided a glimpse into a feature that solves one of the biggest drawbacks of passkeys, the industry-wide standard for website and app authentication that isn’t susceptible to credential phishing and other attacks targeting passwords.

The import/export feature, which Apple demonstrated at this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, will be available in the next major releases of iOS, macOS, iPadOS, and visionOS. It aims to solve one of the biggest shortcomings of passkeys as they have existed to date. Passkeys created on one operating system or credential manager are largely bound to those environments. A passkey created on a Mac, for instance, can sync easily enough with other Apple devices connected to the same iCloud account. Transferring them to a Windows device or even a dedicated credential manager installed on the same Apple device has been impossible.

Growing pains

That limitation has led to criticisms that passkeys are a power play by large companies to lock users into specific product ecosystems. Users have also rightly worried that the lack of transferability increases the risk of getting locked out of important accounts if a device storing passkeys is lost, stolen, or destroyed.

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Google reported disruptions to several of its services today. According to the company’s app status page, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Chat, Google Cloud Search, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Meet, Google Tasks and Google Voice are all being impacted by the problem, which began around 11AM PT/2 PM ET. “Our engineers are currently investigating the issue,” the update states.

The tech giant isn’t the only platform reporting issues. Spotify, Discord, Amazon Web Services and Snapchat are currently topping the charts on DownDetector. Even the Pokemon Trading Card Game is having problems.

This story is developing.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-services-are-experiencing-a-partial-outage-193156690.html?src=rss