Blackbird just topped up its war chest with a fresh £2 million raise to scale elevate.io — its browser-based collaborative video editor that’s aiming to shake up how creators work. The raise, which was fully subscribed, will help elevate.io move […]
Welcome to episode 60 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, Damien, Abner, and Will talk through Nothing’s latest launch event, including the company’s first flagship Android phone, the Nothing Phone (3). From its divisive design to its new Glyph Matrix display, there’s a lot to take in, as the company seemingly pivots towards a more premium market.
The trio also speculate on what Gemini’s new four-color icon could mean for the future of Google as a company. Is this simply about aligning the logo with Google’s standard theming, or does it tell us something about where Search and Gemini are headed in the future?
The Republican-controlled US Congress has passed a budget bill that includes cuts to social programs like Medicaid and more funding for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), alongside provisions that discourage wind and solar energy production. Passed after a marathon debate in both houses, it will allow President Donald Trump to realize policy goals he’s so far attempted to push through executive orders and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Trump intends to sign the bill in a 5PM ET ceremony on Friday, July 4th.
The new budget moves funds away from Medicaid, clean energy tax credits, and other public services and toward Trump’s attempt to mass-deport both documented and undocumented immigrants. The bill extends a number of tax cuts that primarily benefit wealthy Americans while reducing spending and eligibility for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), likely kicking millions off both programs despite objections from some initial Republican holdouts. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who ultimately voted for the bill, expressed concerns that “we can’t be cutting health care for working people and for poor people in order to constantly give special tax treatment to corporations and other entities.”
During a period of intense demand for electricity — including from companies like Meta, OpenAI, and other Silicon Valley AI giants — the budget also makes it more difficult for wind and solar companies to receive tax credits. It winds down tax credits for EVs, likely rendering electric options more expensive for car buyers. And it requires the FCC to sell 800MHz of spectrum that will likely be drawn from the 6GHz band, which is currently left free to provide more capacity for Wi-Fi services.
While much of the budget fight concerned Medicaid and the national debt, there were also protracted negotiations over a planned 10-year moratorium on states regulating AI systems. Lawmakers ultimately voted against that rule, which was opposed by not only Democrats but many state-level Republican politicians. An excise tax on wind and solar power companies that couldn’t meet strict requirements barring “material assistance” from certain foreign entities including China was similarly removed, although the bill still deals a serious blow to the renewable energy industry. Congress also scrapped a ban on Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care, though it will deny Medicaid funding to reproductive health care group Planned Parenthood.
Meanwhile, the budget provides $45 billion for immigration detention facilities and around $30 billion for ICE personnel and operations costs, on top of tens of billions of dollars in other immigration enforcement-related funding that the nonprofit American Immigration Council says will overall make ICE “the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the entire federal government.”
This increase will allow Trump to continue an ever-expanding mass deportation program, which has seen masked ICE agents target immigrants in workplaces, courtrooms, and on city streets. The administration has widened its net to catch not only undocumented residents, but people who hold visas or green cards or were granted temporary protected status, as well as naturalized citizens; Trump mused earlier this week that his “next job” could be expelling native-born citizens for crimes like murder and said he would consider deporting his former “First Buddy” Elon Musk. Since the Supreme Court recently denied a nationwide injunction on Trump’s termination of 14th Amendment birthright citizenship, the administration could even target a freshly created class of stateless newborn babies later this month.
A leak today provides a better idea of what first-party accessories, like Pixel Buds 2a, Google could announce alongside the Pixel 10 series in a few weeks.
This is Rumor Replay, a weekly column at 9to5Mac offering a quick rundown of the most recent Apple product rumors, with analysis and commentary. Today: rumors of a cheaper ‘MacBook’ coming soon, Vision products roadmap, iPad Pro redesign, and more. Here are this week’s Apple rumors.
The maker of a phone app that is advertised as providing a stealthy means for monitoring all activities on an Android device spilled email addresses, plain-text passwords, and other sensitive data belonging to 62,000 users, a researcher discovered recently.
A security flaw in the app, branded Catwatchful, allowed researcher Eric Daigle to download a trove of sensitive data, which belonged to account holders who used the covert app to monitor phones. The leak, made possible by a SQL injection vulnerability, allowed anyone who exploited it to access the accounts and all data stored in them.
Unstoppable
Catwatchful creators emphasize the app's stealth and security. While the promoters claim the app is legal and intended for parents monitoring their children's online activities, the emphasis on stealth has raised concerns that it's being aimed at people with other agendas.
Apple’s Messages app got a lot of new features last year, but iOS 26 continues the trend of big upgrades, including a handy solution for all those unwanted spam texts you keep getting.
With its update coming next week, Google has now confirmed how much it will pay out towards a new phone for Pixel 6a owners who will be affected by an upcoming battery reduction.
The Information is out with an interesting report about how Apple has considered spinning up its own developer cloud services, in a move that would put it against some of its competitors’ biggest revenue streams. Here are the details.