Deezer, a Spotify alternative that launched in the US in 2016, shared on Wednesday that 20,000 completely AI-generated tracks are added to its music service on a daily basis, making up “over 18% of all uploaded content” the platform receives every day.

Like other streaming services, Deezer offers methods for independent artists to upload their own music without having to be part of a larger licensing deal with a record label. While that lowers some barriers, it also leaves the door open for music that isn’t made by people at all. Clearly, people are taking advantage of the option.

Deezer introduced a tool for detecting and tagging AI-generated content in January 2025, when at the time, AI-generated music only made up 10 percent of uploads. The tool is helpful, but it feels like a stopgap until there’s consensus on whether AI-generated tracks should be allowed to exist in the first place. AI companies contend that training on existing books, movies, music, and internet ephemera is “fair use,” but many of the people who made that material feel differently. In terms of pushback, AI music startups Suno and Udio were sued by record labels for copyright infringement in 2024 and artists have spoken out about “unlicensed AI training” but there’s yet to be ruling that sets the new legal standard. 

Deezer also isn’t alone in dealing with an infestation of AI-generated content. It’s well-documented at this point that Spotify has the same issue. Subscribers have highlighted dozens of instances of AI-generated tracks that were clearly uploaded to try and game Spotify’s popular weekly playlists, and while Spotify has removed some copycat tracks when artists have complained, the company has no qualms with hosting AI music. 

“If creators are using these technologies — where they are creating music in a legal way that we reimburse and people listen to them — and are successful, we should let people listen to them,” Spotify co-president Gustav Söderström shared on a Big Technology podcast episode from November 2024. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/deezer-reports-18-percent-of-the-music-uploaded-to-its-service-every-day-is-ai-generated-193652533.html?src=rss

The Trump administration plans to eliminate the IRS’ Direct File program, an electronic system for filing tax returns directly to the agency for free, AP reported Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the decision. From the report: The program developed during Joe Biden’s presidency was credited by users with making tax filing easy, fast and economical. But Republican lawmakers and commercial tax preparation companies complained it was a waste of taxpayer money because free filing programs already exist, although they are hard to use.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A government whistleblower told lawmakers that DOGE’s access to National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) systems went far beyond what was needed to analyze agency operations and apparently led to a data breach. NLRB employee Daniel Berulis, a DevSecOps architect, also says he received a threat when he was preparing his whistleblower disclosure.

“Mr. Berulis is coming forward today because of his concern that recent activity by members of the Department of Government Efficiency (‘DOGE’) have resulted in a significant cybersecurity breach that likely has and continues to expose our government to foreign intelligence and our nation’s adversaries,” said a letter from the group Whistleblower Aid to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence leaders and the US Office of Special Counsel.

The letter, Berulis’ sworn declaration, and an exhibit with screenshots of technical data are available here. “This declaration details DOGE activity within NLRB, the exfiltration of data from NLRB systems, and—concerningly—near real-time access by users in Russia,” Whistleblower Aid Chief Legal Counsel Andrew Bakaj wrote. “Notably, within minutes of DOGE personnel creating user accounts in NLRB systems, on multiple occasions someone or something within Russia attempted to login using all of the valid credentials (e.g. Usernames/Passwords). This, combined with verifiable data being systematically exfiltrated to unknown servers within the continental United States—and perhaps abroad—merits investigation.”

Read full article

Comments

It seems like every few years, gadget makers try to come up with something that will make us care about seeing things in 3D again. Without going all the way back to the 1800s, the first Avatar movie brought millions to theaters to watch blue cat people dance around in stereoscopic vision. Then came the flop that was 3D TVs in the early 2010s before things heated up again with the arrival of VR headsets like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Soon, Samsung will release a new take on the tech with its glasses-free Odyssey 3D Gaming Monitor (model G90XF) and after trying it out, I feel like if 3D has been this good all along, people wouldn’t roll their eyes every time the idea gets brought up.

If this monitor looks somewhat familiar, that’s because Samsung actually demoed very early pre-production models at CES in both 2024 and 2025. In fact, I tried the first version in Las Vegas almost a year and a half ago, playing Lies of P back when it was a slightly larger 37-inch display. Regardless, the Odyssey 3D is finally going on sale later this month on April 28 for $2,000 and while I don’t think it’s an essential piece of tech, it’s definitely a fun way to experience both games and videos in a new dimension.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

The G90XF features a 27-inch 4K LCD panel with a 165Hz refresh rate, which isn’t all that impressive considering its price. And in some respects, it gets even worse when the 3D effect is active. In addition to having two eye and face tracking sensors hidden beneath its bezels, the Odyssey 3D also uses a lenticular filter to create two slightly different versions of the same scene (one for each eye), which gets interpreted by your brain as a 3D image.

This lowers the perceived resolution of the screen, which results in a very faint screen door effect like you might get on a VR headset. For me, this meant I saw a little chromatic fringing around certain objects while individual pixels became more noticeable. Unfortunately, because the monitor is designed to be viewed with two eyes, the effect doesn’t come across in photos or videos as cameras typically only record with a single lens/sensor at a time. (Womp womp.)

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

That said, even with all of those limitations, I was still impressed by the Odyssey 3D. In games, the monitor can handle two different levels of integration. There is one for titles specifically co-developed with input from Samsung (denoted with a yellow badge) that take full advantage of the tech and another more general setting for games with basic 3D support.

The first game I played — Khazan: The First Berserker — is a fully certified title and it demonstrated a surprising level of immersion. Even without pushing the sliders for 3D effects like focal distance and depth factor all the way up, trees and foliage around the edge of the screen looked like they were popping out the display right at me, while little gameplay elements like floating orbs of blood just hovered in the space between my face and the monitor. There were also details like snowflakes that looked like they were flying past my head, which was a nice touch.

Importantly, the tech never felt oppressive and thanks to the built-in head tracking, I had the freedom to move around in my seat (just a little bit) without ruining the effect. So instead of being a distraction, it simply added a bit of atmosphere to the game. And it still looked quite sharp and ran as smooth as you’d expect. Sadly, I couldn’t play Octopath Traveler, which is another one of Samsung’s supported titles, as I think the combination of the 3D effect with the game’s retro HD-2D art style would be a great showcase of the tech.

As for other titles, the monitor can convert standard 2D graphics into 3D on the fly. Though, as you might imagine, the effect isn’t nearly as pronounced, particularly in more modern titles with fancier graphics. However, when I played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, characters and vehicles still popped out in a very pleasing way that made a more than 20-year-old game feel brand new. Once again, it wasn’t a groundbreaking change, but added an extra level of fun and immersion to an already very nostalgic game.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

But the Odyssey 3D’s abilities don’t stop at gaming because the monitor can also convert non-DRM-protected videos (like clips from YouTube) into 3D on the fly. Similar to games, more recent trailers like Avengers: Endgame had an obvious depth effect that made certain scenes shine, though I still wouldn’t call it a revolutionary experience. However, for other genres like anime, the display did an even better job of separating stuff in the background from characters up front. On top of all that, the monitor can also convert side-by-side stereoscopic footage into standard 3D videos as well, which is a nice, though rather niche, inclusion. I just wish I didn’t have to click on the notification to activate the 3D effect every time I pulled up a new video.

Of course, the big question is if the Odyssey 3D’s added dimensionality is worth an extra $1,000 or more compared to a more traditional monitor with similar specs. And to that I’d probably say no. But I don’t think that means this display is a failure, because I found that being able to turn this effect on and off at will without needing extra equipment like glasses made the whole experience rather enjoyable, instead of completely off-putting like so many devices in the past. And if Samsung can make this tech a bit more affordable, it would feel more like a nice bonus that has definite value when viewing certain games or movies. When you consider all the false starts and flops 3D gadgets have had throughout the years, that feels like a small but important win in my book.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

Finally, while there are currently 12 games that are fully certified to work with the Odyssey 3D, Samsung says it hopes to bring that number closer to 50 by the end of the year. Currently support titles are listed below.

• KHAZAN: The First Berserker

• Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot

• Lies of P

• Psychonauts 2

• Little Nightmares II

• Palworld

• F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch

• SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake

• Like a Dragon: Ishin

• Only UP

• Darksiders Genesis

• Octopath Traveler

The Samsung Odyssey 3D Gaming Monitor will be available for $2,000 starting on April 28, with pre-orders eligible for a $200 credit from select retailers like Samsung.com.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/samsung-odyssey-3d-monitor-hands-on-this-should-be-the-new-baseline-for-glasses-free-3d-190015689.html?src=rss

As someone whose job involves testing and writing about Mac apps, a crowded menu bar is an occupational hazard. Until its ownership change last year, my go-to recommendation for tidying up your menu bar was Bartender. But once it became clear that we don’t really know who owns Bartender now, I tried a few alternatives, and none of them had all the features I was looking for. So, I abandoned menu bar managers until recently, when the apps in my menu bar began extending more than halfway into my screen and I was finding it hard to even locate which app I was looking for.

That’s when I discovered Barbee, a powerful menu bar manager for Mac. It can do everything from hiding unnecessary menu bar icons to customizing the shape of your menu bar and even the look of the Apple logo in the top-left corner of your screen.

The app is a free download and comes with a three-day free trial for you to try all its features. Note that you won’t even get charged automatically at the end of the trial. You’ll simply lose access to the app’s features, and you can then either pay $7 for a one-time unlock or choose the annual subscription fee of $3. This allows you to try Barbee with no pressure to see if it works for you.

Barbee requires accessibility and screen recording permissions to allow you to use all its features. These permissions allow the app to show different menu bar layouts and let you set up and run automations, which is an invaluable feature for me. However, if you’re worried, know that the app is sandboxed, so it is limited in how much of its data it can access through those permissions.

Changing menu bar layouts in Barbee

Credit: Pranay Parab

The Menu Bar Layout settings page is your best to place to get started in Barbee, since that’s where you’ll actually arrange which of your menu bar icons are hidden. Here, you can pick which apps you’d like to always see, such as calendar or performance monitoring apps, while moving the rest to the hidden section. There’s also an “Always Hidden” section, which is great for apps that can’t run if they’re not in the menu bar. In my case, one of these is Unclack, which mutes the Mac’s mic when I’m typing. I need to run this app all the time but I never actually want to see its menu bar icon. The difference? You can temporarily reveal hidden icons when needed, but not Always Hidden ones.

This app also has a lot of tweaks available in its settings menu, and I highly recommend going through them all to make the most of it. Under Barbee Settings > General > Mode, for instance, you can choose between Normal Mode and Enhanced Mode. In normal mode, when you reveal hidden icons, the app displays them within the menu bar, right next to the visible icons. But enhanced mode displays them in a small floating menu instead. For those who have a lot of menu bar icons (pretty much the entire target audience for this kind of an app), that is a great feature.

You can also customize the menu bar’s look and feel in the Menu Bar Appearance section. This lets you change the shape of the menu bar, and you can choose if you want it to have rounded corners, a different tint, and even if you want to use a separated layout where app menus appear in a separate menu bar on the left. I prefer a more unified look, so that’s not for me, but I couldn’t resist changing the Apple logo to the classic rainbow variant, which is maybe one of my favorite Barbee features.

Automation and other options

Credit: Pranay Parab

Barbee also has an automation section that allows you to show or hide certain menu bar icons based on triggers. The simplest example is the battery widget, which I only really want to see when the battery is low. So, I went to Barbee Settings > Automation and quickly added a new automation to make that happen. You can set up similar triggers with pretty much every menu bar icon, so feel free to set it up according to your needs. 

I also added a custom keyboard shortcut to see hidden menu items, which speeds up my workflow quite a bit. You can do this by going to the Shortcuts section in the app’s settings. The General settings page has many other useful options, too. Be sure to enable Launch at login to make the app fire up each time you use your Mac, and also the Extend battery life option to ensure that Barbee doesn’t consume an inordinate amount of power. There are also niche, but useful features on this page, such as the ability to show all menu bar icons when you’re using an external display. This is nice to have, because my MacBook Air’s screen has limited real estate, but when I plug it in to my ultrawide monitor, I don’t need to hide any menu bar icons.

There’s yet another Nintendo Direct coming our way, which is the third in less than a month. This one is entirely focused on the upcoming Switch 2 launch title Mario Kart World. It starts at 9AM ET and should last around 15 minutes.

It’s livestreaming on Nintendo’s YouTube page, but mega-fans can also open up that recently-launched Nintendo Today! app to follow along. We are embedding the YouTube link, so feel free to keep this tab open.

We have no idea what information Nintendo is going to spring on us as part of this Direct presentation. The company has already released a ton of info about Mario Kart World. It’s an open-world racer that can accommodate 24 plays at the same time.

However, there are still a couple of unknowns. Most of these involve the open-world aspect. Are there any rewards for exploration? Are there secret tracks that can only be unlocked by finding them? Can the same be said for unlockable characters? Again, we don’t know, but hope springs eternal.

There’s also the $80 elephant in the room. The exorbitant retail price of Mario Kart World has sent many fans into a tailspin. That’s a whole lot of money, and Nintendo only recently-released its first-ever $70 game. There’s a minuscule chance that the company will throw us a bone and knock $10 off the asking price, but this is highly unlikely given current economic uncertainty. At the very least, we could get some new data regarding the preorder date for US customers. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/heres-how-to-watch-the-mario-kart-focused-nintendo-direct-184825796.html?src=rss

Like many AI chatbots, ChatGPT has offered image generation for some time now. You might be well acquainted with it, seeing as its latest image generation tools have recently gone viral.

Putting both the ethics of AI art as well as its errors, quirks, and inconsistencies aside for a moment, you may have noticed some issues with ChatGPT’s image generation, especially if you’ve been using a lot. Since each image is contained to the ChatGPT conversation in which it was generated, it’s quite difficult to keep tabs on all your images, unless you’re exporting and cataloging them somewhere else manually. OpenAI might not be able to solve the other issues with AI art yet, but it can offer a solution to the last point.

Introducing ChatGPT’s Image Library

On Tuesday, OpenAI announced Image Library, a new section of ChatGPT. The Image Library automatically stores all images you generate with ChatGPT’s 4o model across your various discussions. That way, you don’t have to scroll through past threads in search of a particular image you made. It sort of acts like the default image library on your smartphone: Any photos you take or save throughout the day end up in one centralized database.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

All ChatGPT account types now have access to Image Library—including Free, Plus, and Pro—and you can access it from both the app as well as the web app. You’ll find the option, “Library,” in the side panel on the left, under “Explore GPTs.” (While the web app should update on its own, you may need to update your ChatGPT app before the option appears, however.)

The Library itself is relatively straightforward. When you open it, you’ll see your previous image generations. It might not be all of your images, however: I was a bit confused to see two of my most recent generations, knowing I had definitely generated far more with ChatGPT in the past. However, OpenAI says legacy DALL-E images will not appear here. Only images generated with 4o are added to the library, so don’t expect your entire generation history to pop up. That said, OpenAI says it is currently backfilling all images for the new Library feature, so more of your older images may appear in your Library over the next couple days.

When you select one of your images in your Library, ChatGPT presents you with a series of options: Edit, Select, Save, and Share. You can choose “Edit” to launch a new chat along with the image, so you can prompt ChatGPT with the edits you want it to make. Similarly, “Select” lets you highlight a portion of the image you want to edit, so ChatGPT will only change that selection. You can choose “Save” to add the image to your device’s personal library, while “Share” lets you export the image to any destination you want.

I don’t use ChatGPT for much, especially image generation, so I can only imagine this feature will be a convenience for those that do. However, one pain point I see is the lack of a “delete” option. If you want to remove an image from your ChatGPT Library, you have to find the thread you generated it in and delete it from there. While Library lets you open the thread where that image was generated, you won’t be able to delete the image or the thread from here. Instead, you need to locate the thread from the conversation title in your sidebar, then delete the entire conversation to delete the image or images within. It’s pretty complicated, and I’m not sure why OpenAI does it this way, so here’s hoping it adds a simple “delete” button to each image in the Library sooner or later.

Several years ago, Harvard University roboticist Robert Wood made headlines when his lab constructed RoboBee, a tiny robot capable of partially untethered flight. Over the years, RoboBee has learned to fly, dive, and hover. The latest improvement: RoboBee has learned how to stick the landing, thanks to biomechanical improvements to its landing gear modeled on the crane fly, which has a similar wingspan and body size to the RoboBee platform. The details of this achievement appear in a new paper published in the journal Science Robotics.

As previously reported, the ultimate goal of the RoboBee initiative is to build a swarm of tiny interconnected robots capable of sustained untethered flight—a significant technological challenge, given the insect-sized scale, which changes the various forces at play. In 2019, Wood’s group announced its achievement of the lightest insect-scale robot so far to have achieved sustained, untethered flight—an improved version called the RoboBee X-Wing. In 2021, Wood’s group turned its attention to the biomechanics of the mantis shrimp’s knock-out punch and built a tiny robot to mimic that movement

But RoboBee was not forgotten, with the team focusing this time around on achieving more robust landings. “Previously, if we were to go in for a landing, we’d turn off the vehicle a little bit above the ground and just drop it, and pray that it will land upright and safely,” said co-author Christian Chan, one of Wood’s graduate students. The trick is to minimize velocity when approaching a surface and then quickly dissipating impact energy. Even something as small and light as RoboBee can generate significant impact energy. The crane fly has long, jointed appendages that enable them to dampen their landings, so the insect served as a useful model for RoboBee’s new landing gear.

Read full article

Comments

Microsoft just announced that Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One owners can now stream select games they own directly from the console. This feature is exclusive to Game Pass Ultimate members.

What’s the point of this? It’s intended to save both time and hard drive space. Gamers can jump right in immediately, without having to download and install a giant file. It doesn’t work with every game. As of this writing, there are over 100 titles that enable this feature. They include standouts like Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Animal Well, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Hogwarts Legacy, among others.

Xbox

All you have to do is peruse your library and look for the cloud icon accompanying a game. Playable titles can also be filtered in search. The Store app even displays this icon, allowing you to start playing as soon as you hand over some digital cash.

Xbox players could already do this on devices outside of an official console. Throughout the past few months, the feature has been popping up on select smart TVs, Amazon Fire TVs and Meta Quest VR headsets. It also works on browser-supported devices like PCs, tablets and smartphones. A beta test for Xbox consoles started in December.

Microsoft also just announced that backward compatible games from the Xbox and Xbox 360 will now be streamable via remote play across all supported devices. That significantly increases the library of available titles. It’s worth noting that the company has removed remote play from the official Xbox app on mobile, but it still works via browsers.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/xbox-users-can-now-stream-games-they-own-on-their-consoles-173739687.html?src=rss

MIAMI—A decade after its first visit to the state, Formula E returned to Florida this past weekend. The even has come a long way since that first chaotic Miami ePrix: The cars are properly fast now, the racing is both entertaining and quite technical, and at least the trackside advertising banners were in place before the start of the event this time.

It’s not the same track, of course. Nor is it anywhere near the Hard Rock Stadium that Formula 1 now fills with ersatz marinas and high-priced hospitality packages during its visit to the area. Despite what the b-roll helicopter shots might have led viewers to believe, we were actually an hour south of the city at a mid-sized oval track next to a landfill in Homestead. Usually, a place that hosts NASCAR races, for Formula E, there was a 2.2-mile (3.5 km) layout that used the straights and infield but not the banked corners.

Formula E has begun to branch out from its original diet of racing exclusively on temporary city center street tracks, having visited Portland International Raceway in Oregon in 2023 and 2024. Despite the bucolic charm of PIR, with its easy bicycle and light rail access, enthusiastic crowd of attendees, and exciting racing, it was only a temporary patch for Formula E. The vast majority of Formula E’s fans live outside the US, and Portland means nothing to them, but they’ve heard of Miami, I was told last year.

Read full article

Comments

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

A new version of the Kindle Scribe, an upgraded version of the classic e-reader designed for note-taking, came out this past December, with some nice upgrades that make the device more pleasant to use. Those upgrades don’t come cheap, with prices on the new Kindle Scribe starting at $399.99. Right now, though, the 16GB version is discounted to $324.99, the 32GB version is going for $339.99 (originally $419.99), and the 64GB version is $364.99 (originally $449.99).

Dimensions: 9.0 by 7.7 by 0.22 inches, Weight: 15.3 oz, Screen Size: 10.2 inches, Storage: 16 GB

Amazon Kindle Scribe (16 GB)

$324.99
at Amazon

$399.99
Save $75.00

$324.99
at Amazon

$399.99
Save $75.00

Dimensions: 9.0 by 7.7 by 0.22 inches, Weight: 15.3 oz, Screen Size: 10.2 inches, Storage: 32 GB

Amazon Kindle Scribe (32 GB)

$339.99
at Amazon

$419.99
Save $80.00

$339.99
at Amazon

$419.99
Save $80.00

Dimensions: 9.0 by 7.7 by 0.22 inches, Weight: 15.3 oz, Screen Size: 10.2 inches, Storage: 64 GB

Amazon Kindle Scribe (64 GB)

$364.99
at Amazon

$449.99
Save $85.00

$364.99
at Amazon

$449.99
Save $85.00

The original Kindle Scribe first came out in 2022; that first version is currently $339.99 for the 16GB model, which puts how good of a deal this is in perspective.

If you already have the 2022 version, there really is no reason to upgrade. The main difference is the 2024 version comes with the Premium Pen instead of the Basic Pen stylus. The tablet itself is shorter, narrower, and slimmer, but not by much (you can even still use the same case). The new screen also has texture, which will add more resistance when you’re writing on it for a more natural feel, and the gap between the screen and the outer casing is smaller. But that’s where the differences end, at least according to PCMag’s 3.5-star review.

Otherwise, you’ll get the same book format compatibility, the same 15.3 oz weight, the same glare-free 300 ppi front-lit display screen, and the same 12-week battery life. Both tablets run the same software. Still, if you don’t own a Scribe at all and are considering getting one, the newer version is the better option, especially since it is currently cheaper than the older version.

Bloober Team has provided a first proper look at gameplay for its latest project, Cronos: The New Dawn, after a brief tease at the end of the initial reveal in October. The trailer has a very Dead Space-like feel, which shouldn’t be too surprising given that this is a third-person survival horror game, but that’s hardly a bad thing. There appear to be some other influences at play here, and there’s one particular feature that seems quite terrifying.

The game takes place across two time periods, a decayed post-apocalyptic future and 1980s-era Poland. As a Traveller, you’re sent back in time to rescue certain people before they die in an apocalypse. To do that, you’ll need to battle creatures known as Orphans, which Bloober describes as “twisted, body-horror monstrosities born from humanity’s darkest nightmares.” But you’ll need to be sure to burn the bodies of fallen monsters. If you don’t, that can spell a whole heap of trouble.

Living Orphans can absorb the bodies of their fallen ilk. This so-called Merging evolves the creatures. They become fast, stronger and tougher to take down, and they gain new abilities to boot. So yeah, you’ll want to torch any Orphans that you take out.

There’s a lot going on elsewhere in the trailer. Along with Dead Space, the action and visuals evoke games like The Last of Us Part 2 (if you know, you know), Returnal, Bioshock and Control — not least because of the shifting, fractured Brutalist architecture. The creature designs are reminiscent of those in last year’s Silent Hill 2 remake, a game that Bloober Team just happens to be behind.

Those aren’t criticisms in any way. There’s nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from others and fashioning them into something new. Cronos: The New Dawn is looking pretty compelling, and it’s already got a spot on my wishlist.

Cronos: The New Dawn is slated to arrive later this year. It’s coming to Steam, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/cronos-the-new-dawn-seems-to-smush-dead-space-and-control-together-in-a-good-way-172611962.html?src=rss

When preparing for homemade pizza, it’s easy to hit the grocery store with mozzarella on your list. But what kind of mozzarella is best? Fresh, shredded, string? And is that really the best cheese for the pizza you’re craving? I sit here typing away when I should be nursing the burnt roof of my mouth because great pizza discoveries have been made in my kitchen today—my cheese-scorched mouth can wait. 

Similar to why there are good and bad cheese options for the best grilled cheese sandwich, pizza requires one with good melting properties (a fatty cheese), with a good balance of water, and not an overload of protein (which can resist melting). There are some surprises here, including cheeses you’d normally find at the sandwich counter and cheeses you’ve probably seen on pizza before. Here are the best cheeses to try on your next pizza, and unexpected ones to avoid.

Muenster cheese (and fatty cheeses)

For the longest time, I thought shredded cheese was the only cheese for my homemade slice, but I auditioned sandwich slices of Muenster cheese and was blown away. Muenster is a semi-soft cheese that doesn’t break into oily pockets after cooking. I tore up a slice of muenster and scattered the irregular flats around my sauced pie. After 15 minutes or so in the oven, I removed a pizza that could stand up to even the most bougie Brooklyn pizzeria. 

Fatty sandwich slices of cheese—the same ones you use for grilled cheese—make great melting cheeses for high oven temperatures. They don’t become greasy after they melt, and they reward you with a lovely gooey cheese pull after slicing. Since they really melt out far and wide, don’t load up the pie too much. You can leave some space between each island and still have a nice balance of cheese to sauce. 

Other fatty cheeses like muenster: havarti, gouda, taleggio, and fontina.

Some mozzarella 

Mozzarella is the pizza cheese. There’s no question that the flavor and stretchy consistency make for both the perfect centerpiece and a great canvas for toppings. However, there are a couple mozzarellas out there, and not all of them can stand up to the heat. 

The fresh mozzarella starts to squeeze out water which is puddling in the middle of the pie.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Fresh mozzarella and the like. Fresh mozzarella, burrata, and buffalo mozzarella are these gorgeous, moist orbs of creamy white cheese. They’re usually wrapped with some moisture in the packaging or submerged and floating in liquid. While you might think these cheeses would be insanely creamy and wonderful on pizza, stay your eager cheese hand. 

When fresh mozzarella cooks, especially at high temperatures like 350°F to 450°F, the protein network in the cheese begins to denature and tighten up, squeezing out the moisture that used to live in the network. Fresh mozzarella has a lot of moisture to give and it’ll end up on the surface of your pizza as a watery puddle. Besides the sadness of a floppy, wet pizza crust, you also have globs of rubbery cheese that pull off in one bite. 

There is a way to avoid this unfortunate result: During my tests, after about five minutes, the fresh mozzarella was lovely and melted. But after 10 minutes in my 450°F oven, the water started to puddle up as the cheese began to take on some color. Pizza takes at least 15 minutes to cook in a screaming hot oven. If you must use fresh mozzarella, my advice is to add it to the pizza during the last five minutes of the cooking time. 

Low-moisture mozzarella. Fresh mozzarella, burrata, and buffalo mozzarella are expensive and decadent. I’d hate for you to ruin them by cooking them for too long on your pizza. Instead, rely on trusty low-moisture mozzarella. This cheese is produced with way less moisture captured and you won’t risk it ending up on your pizza. You can buy it shredded, in slices, or in big bricks. You can enjoy all the flavor and meltability of fresh mozzarella in a more pizza-friendly.  

Parmesan (and hard cheeses)

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Parmesan and other aged, hard cheeses exhibit strong, bold flavors that are lovely on pizza. However, when cheeses age, they lose moisture, and that’s when they can become broken and greasy on a pizza. Cheeses melt best when they have a balance of fat, water, and protein, so when you have a hard cheese under a high temperature, it doesn’t do much except squeeze out fats and become even harder. 

I added shredded parmesan to cover one of my pizzas, and when I took the pie out of the oven, the cheese stayed put in its shredded form, not really melting out but instead becoming rather translucent. It almost looked like I barely added cheese at all. That said, the flavor was bangin’. Parmesan has a presence; it’s not a mild cheese like mozzarella. I would recommend shredded parmesan if you prefer flavor over cheese pull. It’s important to note that parmesan actually might be better on the bottom of your pizza. It makes a crispy, cheesy frico crust if you make a cast iron skillet pizza. Check out the recipe here.

Flavor-packed hard cheeses like parmesan: Asiago, manchego, aged swiss, aged cheddars. 

The winner is a mixture

It may not come as a surprise, but the best homemade pizza cheese will always be a mixture of cheeses. Each cheese has its strong suit, so don’t deprive yourself. Low-moisture mozzarella is stretchy but mild, so add some shredded asiago for a sharp touch of flavor. Love a good melty cheese pie? Skip the asiago and opt for something like fontina to mix in with your mozzarella. My favorite mixture so far has been mozzarella with pepper jack and a bit of muenster. The opportunities are only limited by your grocery store’s cheese section, so grab some sandwich slices and get experimenting. Once you’ve selected your cheese combo, you’re ready for more of my tips for making the best homemade pizza every time; to start with, you should ferment your dough.

In now-rarified comments from experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency official on Tuesday evening said the explosive measles outbreak mushrooming out of West Texas will require “significant financial resources” to control and that the agency is already struggling to keep up.

“We are scrapping to find the resources and personnel needed to provide support to Texas and other jurisdictions,” said David Sugerman, the CDC’s lead on its measles team. The agency has been devastated by brutal cuts to CDC staff and funding, including a clawback of more than $11 billion in public health funds that largely went to state health departments.

Sugerman noted that the response to measles outbreaks is generally expensive. “The estimates are that each measles cases can be $30,000 to $50,000 for public health response work—and that adds up quite quickly.” The costs go to various responses, including on-the-ground response teams, vaccine doses and vaccination clinics, case reporting, contact tracing, mitigation plans, infection prevention, data systems, and other technical assistance to state health departments.

Read full article

Comments

X DMs may soon be kaput. On Tuesday, a company software engineer posted on the platform that “the whole entire DM’s will be gone soon.” But the former Twitter isn’t getting rid of messaging; the company is said to be replacing it with a full-fledged chatting system called XChat.

X Software Engineer Zach Warunek replied to another user who asked whether XChat would replace message requests. “No, not like request messages but like the whole entire DM’s will be gone soon,” the engineer replied. Engadget contacted Warunek to ask about a timeframe for the feature, and we’ll update this article if we hear back.

These aren’t the first rumors we’ve seen about XChat. Early this year, the X account @xDaily posted a screenshot showing an XChat icon instead of Messages in the platform’s sidebar. In February, owner Elon Musk wrote that, within a few months, he would discontinue his phone number and only use X for texts and calls. Then, @swak_12 (via Android Headlines) posted screenshots this month showing a PIN verification screen (similar to secure messaging apps like Signal) for XChat.

Yet another alleged leak posted on Wednesday by @P4mui includes more screenshots and a list of XChat features, including fully encrypted end-to-end messaging, file transfers and the ability to unread messages and delete individual ones for all users.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-may-soon-replace-dms-with-its-upcoming-chat-platform-171006540.html?src=rss

A mere two days after announcing GPT-4.1, OpenAI is releasing not one but two new models. The company today announced the public availability of o3 and o4-mini. Of the former, OpenAI says o3 is its most advanced reasoning model yet, with it showing “strong performance” in coding, math and science tasks. As for o4-mini, OpenAI is billing it as a lower cost alternative that still delivers “impressive results” across those same fields.

More notably, both models offer novel capabilities not found in OpenAI’s past systems. For first time, the company’s reasoning models can use and combine all of the tools available in ChatGPT, including web browsing and image generation. The company says this capability allows o3 and o4-mini solve challenging, multi-step problems more effectively, and “take real steps toward acting independently.” 

At the same time, o3 and o4-mini can not just see images, but also interpret and “think” about them in a way that significantly extends their visual processing capabilities. For instance, you can upload images of whiteboards, diagrams or sketches — even poor quality ones — and the new models will understand them. They can also adjust the images as part of how they reason.  

“The combined power of state-of-the-art reasoning with full tool access translates into significantly stronger performance across academic benchmarks and real-world tasks, setting a new standard in both intelligence and usefulness,” says OpenAI. 

Separately, OpenAI is releasing a new coding agent (à la Claude Code) named Codex CLI. It’s designed to give developers a minimal interface they can use to link OpenAI’s models with their local code. Out of the box, it works with o3 and o4-mini, with support for GPT-4.1 on the way. 

Today’s announcement comes after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company was changing course on the roadmap he detailed in February. At the time, Altman indicated OpenAI would not release o3, which the company first previewed late last year, as a standalone product. However, at the start of April, he announced a “change of plans,” noting OpenAI was moving forward with the release of o3 and o4-mini.  

“There are a bunch of reasons for this, but the most exciting one is that we are going to be able to make GPT-5 much better than we originally though,” he wrote on X. “We also found it harder than we thought it was going to be to smoothly integrate everything. and we want to make sure we have enough capacity to support what we expect to be unprecedented demand.”

That means the streamlining Altman promised in February will likely need to wait until at least the release of GPT-5, which he said would arrive sometime in the next “few months.” 

In the meantime, ChatGPT Plus, Pro and Team users can begin using o3 and o4-mini starting today. Sometime in the next few weeks, OpenAI will bring online o3-pro, an even more powerful version of its flagship reasoning model, and make it available to Pro subscribers. For the time being, those users can continue to use o1-pro. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openais-new-o3-and-o4-mini-models-are-all-about-thinking-with-images-170043465.html?src=rss

Google may have finally found an application of large language models (LLMs) that even AI skeptics can get behind. The company just released its 2024 Ads Safety report, confirming that it used a collection of newly upgraded AI models to scan for bad ads. The result is a huge increase in suspended spammer and scammer accounts, with fewer malicious ads in front of your eyeballs.

While stressing that it was not asleep at the switch in past years, Google reports that it deployed more than 50 enhanced LLMs to help enforce its ad policy in 2024. Some 97 percent of Google’s advertising enforcement involved these AI models, which reportedly require even less data to make a determination. Therefore, it’s feasible to tackle rapidly evolving scam tactics.

Google says that its efforts in 2024 resulted in 39.2 million US ad accounts being suspended for fraudulent activities. That’s over three times more than the number of suspended accounts in 2023 (12.7 million). The factors that trigger a suspension usually include ad network abuse, improper use of personalization data, false medical claims, trademark infringement, or a mix of violations.

Read full article

Comments

The semiconductor industry is bracing to potentially lose more than $1 billion once Donald Trump announces chip tariffs.

Two sources familiar with discussions between chipmakers and lawmakers last week told Reuters that Applied Materials, Lam Research, and KLA—three of the largest US chip equipment makers—could each lose about “$350 million over a year related to the tariffs.” That adds up to likely more than $1 billion in losses between the three, and smaller firms will likely face similarly spiked costs, estimating losses in the tens of millions.

Some chipmakers are already feeling the pain of Trump’s trade war, despite a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs and a tenuous exception for semiconductors and other electronics.

Read full article

Comments