2026-07-21

What the 2026 World Cup is revealing about the future of product identification

The 2026 World Cup is the most compressed supply chain stress test in history. [...]

2026-07-21

‘It’s a Modern-Day Draft’: Why Stanford Students Walked Out on Sundar Pichai’s Commencement Speech

Last month, more than a hundred Stanford students left their own graduation to protest Google’s military contracts and deals with ICE. Two organizers, Amanda Campos and Eva Jones, tell us why. [...]

2026-07-21

Atlassian: Why AI speeds up employees but not organizations

Presented by Atlassian Most companies are approaching AI adoption backwards by optimizing how individuals use AI instead of how teams work together, said Dr. Molly Sands, head of the Teamwork Lab at Atlassian, during a fireside chat with VentureBeat senior technology contributor Sam Witteveen at VB Transform 2026.Sands leads a team of behavioral scientists and psychologists who study how AI is res [...]

2026-07-21

Abdul El-Sayed Is an Epidemiologist Running for Senate. His State Is a Public Health Disaster

Michigan has been at the epicenter of the wildfire smoke and explosive diarrhea outbreaks. The progressive Democrat talks to WIRED about how he would tackle the forces behind them if he’s elected. [...]

2026-07-21

Alibaba's Qwen Audio 3.0 TTS Plus tops the competition in the text-to-speech rankings

Alibaba's Qwen Audio 3.0 TTS Plus tops Artificial Analysis' Speech Arena leaderboard. The model supports 16 languages and lets users control speaking style with natural language or tags like [angry]. At 16 characters per second, though, it's far slower than rivals Sonic 3.5 and Simba 3.2.<br /> The article Alibaba's Qwen Audio 3.0 TTS Plus tops the competition in the text [...]

2026-07-21

A new Google Home Display is reportedly on the way — but what our smart homes actually need in 2026 is a proper Pixel Tablet successor

A new Home Display sounds intriguing — but I’ll be disappointed if Google gives us another stationary screen instead of a movable AI hub. [...]

2026-07-21

Starlink Mini 2 may come with a major speed downgrade, according to a new leak —and that’s bad news for some users

The Starlink Mini 2 could have a built-in battery but lower internet speeds, a new leak claims. [...]

2026-07-21

Top AI coding agents can be easy victims to sandbox escapes, showing they aren't as secure as they claim to be

What if a host component outside the sandbox reads AI coding agents' output? And what if that output is manipulated? [...]

2026-07-21

Kanishka Narayan becomes the UK’s first cabinet-level AI minister

Kanishka Narayan has become the first UK minister for artificial intelligence to sit at the cabinet table, a promotion that arrives as new prime minister Andy Burnham reshapes Whitehall around the technology. Narayan, the MP for the Vale of Glamorgan and until this week a junior minister for AI and online safety, said Burnham had […]<br /> This story continues at The Next Web [...]