If there’s one thing I’ve learned living in a house with pets and the pollen in the southern US, it’s that indoor air quality matters more than we think. Air purifiers help lessen the problem, but when you can automate them, even better. SwitchBot recently updated the , and it now supports Matter and works natively with HomeKit without needing an extra hub.
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Twenty-eight-year-old Nathan Laatsch was, until yesterday, a cybersecurity employee at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He had a Top Secret clearance and worked in the Insider Threat Division. Laatsch spent his days—you'll understand the past tense in a moment—"enabling user monitoring on individuals with access to DIA systems," including employees under surreptitious internal investigation.
Given that Laatsch was one of those who "watched the watchers," he appears to have had supreme confidence in his own ability to avoid detection should he decide to go rogue. "Stupid mistakes" made by other idiots would "not be difficult for me to avoid," he once wrote. DIA couldn't even launch an investigation of Laatsch without him knowing that something was up.
The Greeks had a word for this: hubris.
© Getty Images
Microsoft is adding text formatting to its Windows Notepad app. The significant Notepad update is available for Canary and Dev Channel testers on Windows 11, and introduces bold and italic styling, alongside hyperlinks and even Markdown support.
The addition of text formatting in Notepad means there’s now a formatting toolbar at the top of the app, alongside the existing File, Edit, and View options. The toolbar includes access to bold, italic, and hyperlink options, but it also includes support for lists and headings.
“The experience supports Markdown style input and files for users who prefer to work directly with the lightweight markup language,” explains Dave Grochocki, principal product manager lead for Microsoft’s Windows inbox apps. “You can switch between formatted Markdown and Markdown syntax views in the view menu or by selecting the toggle button in the status bar at the bottom of the window.”
Since Notepad is usually used with plain text, you can also easily clear all formatting from the formatting toolbar or from the edit menu in the app. If you’re not a fan of the lightweight formatting options, you can also fully disable this new support in the Notepad app settings.
This formatting addition to Notepad comes just a week after Microsoft started testing a new feature in the app that can generate text for you using AI. The new Write feature in Notepad can be used to “quickly draft text based on your prompt,” and alongside these formatting options Notepad is starting to look a lot more like Microsoft Word.
Like I wrote in my Notepad newsletter earlier this week, it’s amazing that Microsoft barely touched Notepad for decades, and now it’s gone from basic log file reader to writing messages itself. A lot of Notepad’s new features have arrived since Microsoft decided to remove WordPad from Windows, after nearly 30 years.
If you thought the “iPhones are getting solid-state, haptic buttons” rumors were dead, well… so did it. But according to Chinese leaker Instant Digital, Apple is back at it not just for future iPhones, but potentially for other products as well.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has failed to reverse a preliminary injunction currently blocking him from probing Media Matters for America (MMFA) in defense of Elon Musk's social media platform X.
On Friday, a US appeals court upheld the injunction. In his opinion, senior Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards wrote that there was "ample" evidence that Paxton "pursued a retaliatory campaign" against MMFA "because they published an unfavorable article about X.com." And MMFA has standing to raise a First Amendment defense, because "the First Amendment generally 'prohibits government officials from subjecting individuals to retaliatory actions after the fact for having engaged in protected speech," Edwards wrote.
Edwards noted that the day after X sued MMFA over reporting on antisemitic posts appearing next to big brands' ads on X—alleging the report fraudulently spawned an ad boycott—Paxton announced a broad probe into MMFA that, he confirmed in a press release, was directly due to X's lawsuit.
© Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg
Hugging Face is best known as a platform for machine learning and AI development, but it has also been dabbling in the world of robotics. This week, the company revealed two new robots it plans to bring to market—including a humanoid one that it would sell for around $3,000, far less than many of the other options that have been floated, like Unitree's $16,000 G1.
Dubbed the HopeJR, Hugging Face's robot has up to 66 actuated degrees of freedom. According to Hugging Face Principal Research Scientist Remi Cadene, it can walk and manipulate objects. As shown in a short X video, it has an accessible look that reminds us a bit of Bender from Futurama. (It's the eyes.)
Co-designed with French robotics company The Robot Studio, HopeJR will be open source. "The important aspect is that these robots are open source, so anyone can assemble, rebuild, [and] understand how they work, and [they’re] affordable, so that robotics doesn’t get dominated by just a few big players with dangerous black-box systems," Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue told TechCrunch.
Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen has signed a bill that cracks down on social platforms’ features that could keep kids online for longer. Under the Age-Appropriate Online Design Code Act (LB504), major platforms must let users choose to see a chronological feed, rather than one provided by a recommendation algorithm, which experts have found could negatively affect children’s mental health and development.
In addition to pausing potentially disruptive notifications at nighttime and during school days, platforms must offer users the option to voluntarily limit how much time they spend on the services. Online services are required to let users limit certain categories of content from getting recommended, too.
The law also places several limitations on user tracking and requires platforms to apply strict privacy settings to users identified as minors by default. These settings allow platforms to only collect the “minimum” amount of data from young users, block targeted advertising, and limit the use of dark patterns.
Though California and Maryland have passed similar laws, NetChoice is fighting them in court over claims they violate the First Amendment. NetChoice is a technology trade group that includes Meta, Google, Amazon, Reddit, X, Snap, and other tech giants. In February, NetChoice sued Maryland to block its Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, while a judge sided with NetChoice in a ruling that blocked California’s version of the rule in March.
Amy Bos, NetChoice’s director of state and federal affairs, wrote in a letter to Governor Pillen that Nebraska’s design code law could impose age verification requirements “on most websites available to Nebraska users, including news sites, popular blogs, and certain online retailers,” potentially posing a security risk. Bos also argues that tracking requirements conflict with existing requirements under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). NetChoice similarly believes that Nebraska’s design code law violates the First Amendment, though this particular bill doesn’t include limits on the types of content children can access.
States that have more recently introduced design code laws have overhauled the legislation in an attempt to harden it against potential lawsuits from such trade groups and companies. Nebraska’s design code law goes into effect on January 1st, 2026. Companies that violate the law could face an up to $50,000 fine for each violation starting July 1st, 2026.
Following last week’s launch at I/O 2025, Google is expanding access to Veo 3 in the Gemini app and Flow, while the Google AI Ultra subscription is coming to more subscribers.
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Google today reached out to Pixel Superfans in the UK about a “pre-launch event” this June for the Pixel 10 series and other “upcoming devices.” It does not suggest that Made by Google 2025 is happening any earlier this year.
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In 2019, Apple launched the U.S.-exclusive Research app. It was designed to let its users enroll in health studies that would help shape new health-related features for its devices, as well as contribute to medical investigations with impact far beyond Apple’s ecosystem.
Six years later, the app is still going strong. And if you live in the U.S. and would like to participate, here’s how to enroll.
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