I am extremely concerned about the prevalence of AI content on our social media feeds. Now that just about anyone can generate hyper-realistic videos with a simple text prompt, I fear that disinformation will rise exponentially, distorting worldviews faster than algorithms have so far been able to do. So you can imagine how I feel about Meta’s plans to add a “huge corpus” of AI content to its feeds. Good luck out there, everyone.

That’s directly from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself. In a Meta Platforms, Inc. earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg confirmed the company’s plans to add this self-described huge corpus of content, thanks to how easy AI makes it to create and “remix” content. People will create AI content, the platform’s recommendation systems will deliver that content to people, who may then slightly alter that content and send it back into the Metaverse. As this feedback loop will continue, feeds will start filling up with more and more AI content. That’s good for Meta, and anyone who enjoys watching videos that aren’t real. For those of us a little sick of this content, or worried we won’t be able to spot it during long scrolling session, it’s only bad news.

While much (if not most) of that AI content is likely coming from outside sources, like OpenAI’s Sora, some of it may come from Meta itself. The company recently rolled out “Vibes,” its own short-form AI video generator, as part of the existing Meta AI app. Users can create videos directly in Vibes, or remix existing videos. I’d wager some Vibes content is going to cross your Meta feed in the near future, if it hasn’t already.

Zuckerberg took the time to highlight how Meta’s AI recommendation systems across all of its core products—Facebook, Instagram, and Threads—are delivering “higher quality and more relevant content” to users, especially with regards to video. Apparently, the amount of time we’ve spent watching Instagram reels has increased by more than 30% when compared to last year. (Fun fact: Reels brings in over $50 billion according to the earnings call.) That environment seems just right to foster a new wave of AI slop to Meta’s enormous audience.

Look, I’ve definitely laughed at some AI memes that have come my way. But to suggest that flooding the feeds with realistic AI videos without any regulation or forethought is a good idea is itself laughable. If you use Meta products, watch out: You might not be able to trust what you’re watching is actually real for much longer—if at all.

The future of Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher, subscription-free alternatives to Adobe Creative Cloud, was uncertain after the apps’ developer Serif was acquired by Canva in 2024. Now, over a year later, the changes Canva has introduced are big, but not necessarily unwelcome. The newly relaunched Affinity by Canva combines all three apps into a single piece of illustration, photo editing and layout software, and rather than move to a subscription model as many feared, Canva’s made it entirely free. Or, at least, freemium.

Affinity is available now as a desktop app for macOS and Windows, with an iPadOS version on the way at some point in the future. The basic functionality of the app doesn’t seem all that different from the three separate apps Serif offered before, only now you can toggle between their tools via separate Vector, Pixel and Layout tabs. Canva stresses you also have the option to mix and match tools, and save custom toolbars to use for specific types of projects, if you want.

Beyond layering in chunky serif fonts, Canva’s touch seems relatively light. The Affinity app now requires a free Canva account to use and offers integrations with the company’s suite of tools, with a new option to send an Affinity project directly to Canva. The company is also making its Canva AI Studio tools available in Affinity, giving users the ability to automatically remove a background or use Generative Fill to edit part of a photo. How well veteran Affinity users will take to these changes remains to be seen, but they’ll at least be able to continue using their existing copies of the old Affinity V2 lineup.

Free sounds good, but one of the draws of the original Affinity creative suite is that you could purchase a license for Serif’s individual apps and not ever have to think about it again. Canva is promising that the new Affinity will be free going forward, but a free app that requires an account and might try to upsell you on subscription-based AI features is not quite the same thing.

Affinity wasn’t the only Adobe competitor to be acquired in 2024. Pixelmator, a developer of popular photo and image editing tools for iOS, iPadOS and macOS, was absorbed by Apple in November that same year. The company’s apps continue to be maintained, but it’s still not clear if Apple plans to shift them to a subscription model in the future.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/affinity-resurfaces-as-an-all-in-one-illustration-photo-editing-and-layout-app-204833289.html?src=rss

AI “cheating” app Cluely’s CEO and cofounder, Chungin “Roy” Lee, said most startups flop because their products don’t get seen. From a report: “Engineers just cannot make good content,” Lee said during a Wednesday interview at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 “There’s a bunch of shallow replicas, but I challenge you to find one video you think is like, ‘Yo, this is as tough as Cluely,'” he told TechCrunch.

Every startup needs to focus more on distribution. And most startups flop because they fail to get seen, even if they have product-market fit, Lee said. Cluely launched earlier this year as a tool to help software engineers cheat on their job interviews, among other use cases. The startup earlier this year posted a tongue-in-cheek video of Lee trying to use Cluely to impress a woman on a date, which went viral.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I’ve been using Fitbit’s revamped app, currently in “public preview” mode for adult Android users in the United States. While I like the simplified aesthetic, its functionality seems to center around the questionable AI that gave me so many wrong and confusing answers. Let me take you on a tour of where the new app has improved, where it’s falling short, and what’s still missing. 

Better: cardio load and key metrics are easy to read

The top few metrics on the home screen have always been configurable, but I find the new version is even more readable than the old one. You get three “focus metrics” on the right hand side, and a big donut shape giving your progress toward your cardio load. 

Fitbit’s current app is on the left; the updated preview version is on the right.
Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Fitbit

Measuring cardio load as progress toward a weekly goal is a welcome change; previously, cardio load was a daily measure that often didn’t correspond to reality. There’s a downside to the new view, though: in the old version of the app, you could turn off the recommendations or hide them. In this version, there’s no way I could find to remove that metric from the top of your screen.

Better: separate tabs for fitness, sleep, and health

What you see on the Fitness, Sleep, and Health tabs.
Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Fitbit

Finding any specific data in the old Fitbit app always meant scrolling through a CVS receipt-length list of things you weren’t looking for. Items tended to be grouped, which helped a little, but ultimately some things need more space than the little card they were stuffed into. You couldn’t find your recent workouts without guessing on which tile to tap—turns out it’s Exercise Days (but not Cardio Load or Active Zone Minutes).

But now, you just tap on the Fitness icon at the bottom, and there everything is! My exercise days and weekly cardio are there, then a listing of upcoming workouts, and then my recent activities. I can log a manual activity right from this screen. Perfect. (The button doesn’t seem to be working right now, but hey, it’s a beta. I can appreciate the idea.) 

Same goes for the Sleep tab. Right up top there’s a trend insight (“Your steps linked [sic] to better sleep quality”) and then I get my graph of sleep stages, and a list of “key metrics” like when I went to bed and how much time in bed was spent awake. 

The Health tab gives my vitals, like my resting heart rate and HRV. If I scroll down, I can set up alerts, update my profile, and the “coach notes” that the AI has written down about me. For example, I see “wants low reps and heavy weights” and “hates lunges.” 

Worse: glitches galore

I know it’s a beta, but things seem really rough. My workout from two days ago is listed as “upcoming,” and the app crashes when I try to mark it as completed. The old Fitbit app says that my high and low heart rate notifications are “on & checking” but the new app says I still need to set them up. 

Some of the AI conversations fail to load at all. When they do, often the bot tells me it doesn’t have access to the information I’m asking about, or it says that “internally” it sees something different than what I’m seeing in the main screens of the app. The team has a lot to fix before these features are ready for widespread use.

Worse: structured data views are replaced with AI conversations

Humans invented graphs, charts, and other means of data presentation because these are easy to scan and interpret at a glance. The new Fitbit app can generate some charts (great!) but tends to present these as little cards to illustrate insights from the AI bot. 

To see more data, you’d think you could tap on a button or card about a recent run to get your lap times, running dynamics, and other information. But that doesn’t seem to be an option. Instead, I get a “continue conversation” button that seems to want to feed a screenshot of the AI output back into the AI bot. 

I’ve already written about some of the problems I’ve had conversing with the AI bot, so I won’t rehash those issues here. (It hallucinates in ways that are sometimes hilarious and often frustrating.) But even if the AI was as intelligent as it’s supposed to be, this would still be a major issue. The AI responses are slow, and I can’t always get the bot to give a straight answer to my questions. 

In short, it seems like the app’s designers said “we’ll have the AI handle it” anytime they weren’t sure how to build a feature. So the app feels like a mere wrapper around the bot, and the bot is just not the right tool for all those jobs. 

Missing: nutrition, menstrual health, and more

Google says that it hasn’t ported all the Fitbit app’s features to the new preview. When I asked about these limitations by email, the response I got was that “As a preview, the service is not yet feature-complete and lacks several functionalities to focus testing on the core AI coaching experience.” 

A full list of missing features is available from this Fitbit forum post. They include: 

• Nutrition tracking

• Hydration tracking

• Menstrual health

• Community features

• Badges

• Social media sharing

• Heart rate zone analysis for workouts

• Running analytics for Pixel Watch 3 and 4 users (other devices don’t provide this data)

• Syncing data from Aria Air smart scales

The post also notes that the AI coach treats certain subjects as off-limits for the moment, including those related to weight, body fat, running distance, and heart health measurements like ECG and irregular rhythm notifications.

Despite being a vast repository of personal information, smartphones used to have little by way of security. That has thankfully changed, but companies like Cellebrite offer law enforcement tools that can bypass security on some devices. The company keeps the specifics quiet, but an anonymous individual recently logged in to a Cellebrite briefing and came away with a list of which of Google’s Pixel phones are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking.

This person, who goes by the handle rogueFed, posted screenshots from the recent Microsoft Teams meeting to the GrapheneOS forums (spotted by 404 Media). GrapheneOS is an Android-based operating system that can be installed on select phones, including Pixels. It ships with enhanced security features and no Google services. Because of its popularity among the security-conscious, Cellebrite apparently felt the need to include it in its matrix of Pixel phone support.

The screenshot includes data on the Pixel 6, Pixel 7, Pixel 8, and Pixel 9 family. It does not list the Pixel 10 series, which launched just a few months ago. The phone support is split up into three different conditions: before first unlock, after first unlock, and unlocked. The before first unlock (BFU) state means the phone has not been unlocked since restarting, so all data is encrypted. This is traditionally the most secure state for a phone. In the after first unlock (AFU) state, data extraction is easier. And naturally, an unlocked phone is open season on your data.

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With a child in college and a spouse who’s a professor, I have front-row access to the unfolding debacle that is “higher education in the age of AI.”

These days, students routinely submit even “personal reflection” papers that are AI generated. (And routinely appear surprised when caught.)

Read a paper longer than 10 pages? Not likely—even at elite schools. Toss that sucker into an AI tool and read a quick summary instead. It’s more efficient!

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The Tinymoose Pencil Pro Ultra is both an affordable accessory and a serious productivity tool, and it’s currently on sale for $39.95 on StackSocial. It costs less than a third of what Apple charges for its stylus, and it works with an Android device thanks to its Smart Switch button on the top. A single press lets you jump from sketching on an iPad Pro to jotting notes on a Galaxy Tab without digging through settings. That makes it more flexible than most one-platform pens, especially for students or professionals who don’t want to carry two separate styluses. It also works on phones in dual mode, which could be handy if you like editing photos on your Android but use your iPad for work.

In use, the Pencil Pro Ultra does a lot right. Tilt sensitivity and palm rejection give you smooth shading and writing, at least on supported tablets, while zero-lag precision keeps lines from wobbling behind your strokes. Bluetooth gestures add a layer of convenience: one press takes you home, two pulls up multitasking, and a long press powers it on or off. As for the battery life, it holds its own with 10 hours of productivity, and supports fast charging via USB-C.

There are trade-offs, though. Palm rejection and tilt features only work in tablet mode, which means the experience is more basic when you’re on a phone. The magnetic attachment also doesn’t work outside of Apple’s tablets, so Android users will need to keep the included leather case handy. And while it’s backed by a six-month warranty, that’s shorter than what you get from bigger brands. Still, with three extra nibs, a carrying case, and cross-platform support baked in, it’s a compelling option for anyone who doesn’t want to lock into one ecosystem. If you’re a casual creator, note-taker, or multitasker who wants a stylus without splurging, this deal is worth considering.

When graphic design platform-provider Canva bought the Affinity image-editing and publishing apps early last year, we had some major questions about how the companies’ priorities and products would mesh. How would Canva serve the users who preferred Affinity’s perpetually licensed apps to Adobe’s subscription-only software suite? And how would Affinity’s strong stance against generative AI be reconciled with Canva’s embrace of those technologies.

This week, Canva gave us definitive answers to all of those questions: a brand-new unified Affinity app that melds the Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps into a single piece of software called “Affinity by Canva” that is free to use with a Canva user account, but which gates generative AI features behind Canva’s existing paid subscription plans ($120 a year for individuals).

This does seem like mostly good news, in the near to mid term, for existing Affinity app users who admired Affinity’s anti-AI stance: all three apps’ core features are free to use, and the stuff you’re being asked to pay for is stuff you mostly don’t want anyway. But it may come as unwelcome news for those who like the predictability of pay-once-own-forever software or who are nervous about where Canva might draw the line between “free” and “premium” features down the line.

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We’re a few weeks away from the debut of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things—at least the first of three parts of it—and Netflix has dropped one doozy of a trailer that shows things looking pretty bleak for our small-town heroes of Hawkins.

(Spoilers for prior seasons below.)

As previously reported, S4 ended with Vecna—the Big Bad behind it all—opening the gate that allowed the Upside Down to leak into Hawkins. We’re getting a time jump for S5, but in a way, we’re coming full circle, since the events coincide with the third anniversary of Will’s original disappearance in S1. The fifth season will have eight episodes, and each one will be looong—akin to eight feature-length films. Per the official premise:

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This is a video highlighting the 130-long garden tunnel grown by horticulturist Steve Mills, which features plums, peaches, apples, pumpkins, and pears growing on all sides and overhead. How about that — just reach in any direction and there’s something to eat! It’s not unlike my desk in that regard. Just, you know, infinitely healthier. My desk is more Willy Wonka style.

The Trump administration is refusing to give broadband-deployment grants to states that enforce net neutrality rules or price regulations, a Commerce Department official said.

The administration claims that net neutrality rules are a form of rate regulation and thus not allowed under the US law that created the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. Commerce Department official Arielle Roth said that any state accepting BEAD funds must exempt Internet service providers from net neutrality and price regulations in all parts of the state, not only in areas where the ISP is given funds to deploy broadband service.

States could object to the NTIA decisions and sue the US government. But even a successful lawsuit could take years and leave unserved homes without broadband for the foreseeable future.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is getting ready to dump even more AI-generated posts into your social feeds. From a report: During an earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said the company will “add yet another huge corpus of content” to its recommendations system as AI “makes it easier to create and remix” work that gets shared online.

“Social media has gone through two eras so far,” Zuckerberg said. “First was when all content was from friends, family, and accounts that you followed directly. The second was when we added all of the Creator content.” Though Zuckerberg stops short of calling AI the third era of social media, it’s clear that the technology will be heavily involved in what comes next.

Zuckerberg said that recommendation systems that “deeply understand” AI-generated posts and “show you the right content” will become “increasingly valuable.” The company has already begun embedding AI tools across its apps and is now experimenting with dedicated AI social apps, too.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.