Big changes are coming to Android apps, but they’re not the changes Google wanted. The settlement between Google and Epic that aimed to put to rest the companies’ long-running antitrust battle is being withdrawn, and that means third-party app stores are coming to the Play Store. Google has confirmed that it will begin distributing rival app stores next week, setting the stage for competing platforms to take a bite out of Google’s Android revenue stream. […] Google and Epic were set to return to court on July 16 to argue in favor of the settlement. However, the writing may have been on the wall. In a recent expert analysis provided to the court, MIT economics professor Nancy Rose noted that the settlement was “unlikely to enable Google Play’s potential competitors to overcome their long-standing network-effect disadvantage in a timely manner.”

With settlement approval looking increasingly unlikely, Epic and Google agreed this week to call the whole thing off. Here’s how Google Trust and Reputation Communications Lead Dan Jackson explains the company’s decision: “We’ve agreed with Epic to withdraw our motion to modify the US Court’s injunction rather than prolonging this process which creates uncertainty for the ecosystem. This allows us to focus on executing our recently announced global business model evolution to deliver greater app store choice, lower prices, and more opportunities for developers and users. We remain committed to maintaining Android’s industry-leading security and fostering a competitive ecosystem where every app store and developer has the freedom to compete. In parallel, we continue to comply with the US Court’s injunction.”

In a brief filing (PDF), Google’s legal team informs the court that Google is prepared to begin distributing third-party app stores in Google Play on July 22. Under the terms of Judge Donato’s original injunction, these stores will have access to the full catalog of Google Play apps by default. Developers will have the option to opt out of distribution in these stores, and Google has a support page explaining how to do so. Google also has documentation on how app stores can get access to the Google Play catalog. It won’t be mirroring those apps in any shady storefront that asks. The court has allowed Google to charge reasonable fees to cover its security and compliance review of third-party stores, which will be $5,000 per year.

Google will also require approved stores to block malware, respect intellectual property, and include mechanisms to update and uninstall apps. App stores can be removed from the program if more than 1 percent of attempted app installs appear to be malware or unwanted software. It’s unclear if there will be separate, possibly more stringent requirements for storefront distribution in the Play Store. However, Google is prohibited from unreasonably blocking third-party store clients uploaded to Google Play. The changes Google has announced under the Epic agreement will proceed for now. That means Registered App Stores will happen globally, but they will probably only appear in the Play Store for US users. Google hasn’t specified if there will be any differences in the features available to the stores downloaded from Play versus registered stores.

This ticket to retire dialog was opened back in February while is now merged to the FreeBSD source tree for what will become FreeBSD 16.0. With dialog removed, the latest FreeBSD code now retires the GNU sub-tree of the FreeBSD base system now that no more GNU code remains. FreeBSD 16.0 is working its way toward release that is expected to happen in December 2027.

Codex Micro is a collaboration with Work Louder, a boutique hardware company known for customizable mechanical keyboards and shortcut controllers for developers and designers. The small, square macro pad — with backlit keys, a rotary knob and a tiny joystick — sits beside your regular keyboard as a physical shortcut box for common Codex actions and shows the status of your agents. The keys are customizable and include a push-to-talk option as well as a dial to adjust your reasoning setting. Codex Micro is a niche device for Codex power users and will only be available until it sells out. It’s priced at $230.

Microsoft today released software updates to plug at least 570 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, almost triple the number of vulnerabilities the software giant fixed in its record-smashing Patch Tuesday release last month. Microsoft attributed the burgeoning patch counts to vulnerability discoveries aided by artificial intelligence. Nearly 60 of the bugs quashed in July’s Patch Tuesday earned a “critical” severity rating, meaning miscreants or malware could use them to seize remote control over a Windows device with little or no help from the user. Microsoft also addressed three zero-day flaws, including two that are already being exploited in the wild.

Two of the zero-day weaknesses allow an attacker to elevate their user rights on a Windows system, as do approximately 250 other elevation of privilege flaws fixed this month; they include CVE-2026-56155 - an Active Directory Federation Services bug — and CVE-2026-56164, a Microsoft Sharepoint vulnerability. CVE-2026-50661 is a security feature bypass in Windows BitLocker that could allow attackers to gain access to encrypted data if they have physical access to the device. Microsoft said this bug has been detailed publicly, but that it is not aware of any active exploitation.

In a blog post on July 9, Microsoft Executive Vice President Pavan Davuluri wrote that Windows users will notice “a higher volume of security updates included in each security release” as a result of AI aiding in the discovery of vulnerabilities. “The pace of vulnerability discovery is changing with advances in AI making it possible to find more issues, faster, across more code, with new mechanisms that can accelerate both discovery and analysis,” Davuluri wrote.

Commercial off-the-shelf X-ray machines like the ice cooler-sized MinXray TR90BH now allow users to perform scans on subjects far away from traditional facilities. In 2022, [Mayo Clinic researcher Sheyna Gifford] assisted in preparing a crew to successfully generate digital X-rays while experiencing microgravity during a parabolic flight. Gifford’s team then spent years collaborating with SpaceX to plan another feasibility study. This time, they didn’t want to operate an X-ray machine aboard an aircraft simulating the conditions in space — they intended to use the equipment during an orbital mission.

The process was detailed in a recently published study in the journal Radiology, and focuses on last year’s Fram2 mission. Instead of days of medical training, astronauts spent only four hours learning how to use their portable radiography device. They then took preflight X-rays of a hand, forearm, chest, abdomen, and pelvis ahead of their SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch on March 31, 2025. Once in orbit, the team calibrated the system before testing their MinXray on the same body parts as well as a smartwatch.

Once the crew returned, a trio of independent radiologists reviewed the orbital X-ray images based on their positioning, spatial and contrast resolutions, and general scan quality. Although positioning scores were slightly decreased for the central body images, every other scan held up to similar examples created on Earth. Meanwhile, the astronauts reported that using the machine was easy despite minimal prior coaching. Looking ahead, researchers hope to conduct further X-ray tests during orbital missions, while continuing to reduce the overall size of equipment.

President Trump has championed the effort to save an extra hour of daylight before nightfall and make the time zone permanent, describing the ritual of moving clocks forward in the spring and back in the fall a “ridiculous, twice yearly production.” “We are going with the far more popular alternative, Saving Daylight, which gives you a longer, brighter Day,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post in May. “And who can be against that.”

A sizable bloc of Florida Republicans in Congress is leading the charge on legislation that would do just that, mandating daylight saving time nationwide for the entire year. Representative Vern Buchanan of the Tampa Bay area is backing the bill, and Representative Anna Paulina Luna, another Tampa Bay-area Republican, cosponsored it. House leaders agreed to allow a vote on the measure this week as a sweetener for Ms. Luna in their efforts to persuade her to lift a legislative blockade she had maintained as she sought to force Senate action on a voting restriction bill Mr. Trump has championed.

The Iranian government abused well-known vulnerabilities in the global telecoms infrastructure to locate U.S. military personnel in the build-up to the Iran War, as well as in the early days of the conflict, according to Financial Times. The Iranian government exploited Signaling System 7, or SS7, a set of protocols for 2G and 3G networks that has long been the backbone of how cellular networks connect to each other to route subscribers’ calls and texts around the world, the newspaper reported, citing research by the Mobile Surveillance Monitor, as well as anonymous government officials with knowledge of the spy campaign.

Intelligence agencies have long abused SS7 to track cellphones abroad, which is what happened in this campaign. Using this technique, Iran was reportedly able to locate U.S. military forces stationed in military bases as well as hotels in Iraq, Bahrain, and other countries in the Middle East, which allowed the regime to strike them. These attacks resulted in several injuries. Apart from SS7, Iran also abused advertising technology used to serve tailored ads to cellphone users, another well-known surveillance technique that relies on everyday technology.

Apple sued OpenAI last week, accusing the company of stealing trade secrets. But OpenAI believes that the device veers significantly from anything Apple has on the market today and that it’s unlikely that it violates trade secrets belonging to the iPhone maker, the people said. OpenAI’s success in hardware will hinge on bringing a novel approach to the market — something it aims to do with the smart speaker. For instance, the device’s technology is meant to become increasingly personalized and proactive as it gains a deeper understanding of its owner over time, according to the people.

OpenAI envisions the device anticipating needs, surfacing information proactively and serving as an expert on its user, they said. Though the speaker is designed to stay in the home, it will be easy to move around the house. OpenAI believes the product’s defining feature will be its personality and ability to connect on a humanlike level with users. The speaker incorporates mechanical elements that can move on their own, creating a sense that it is alive and not just an object responding to commands. The machine also will draw on personal information such as emails to better understand its owner. The goal is for the device to feel like a companion and become a physical manifestation of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Still, the exact plans could change as the company works through the development and legal process.

The device’s communication abilities will rely on a more advanced version of the ChatGPT Voice Mode — GPT-Live — that OpenAI rolled out this month. The new voice mode is designed to act more like a human. It can listen and talk at the same time, adapt more naturally during conversations, and quickly process information. Though the new product resembles a speaker, OpenAI internally describes it as the first of its kind: a computer built for AI to help make busy people more productive. It includes a camera and other sensors that help it understand a user’s surroundings and context, as well as advanced AI models beyond those available on conventional smart speakers. Another central difference is that the device includes a rechargeable battery, allowing it to be carried from room to room throughout the day. A user could bring it into the laundry room while doing chores, move it into the kitchen for cooking assistance, and later place it in a living room or bedroom to have it play music. It can also remain plugged into a single room if the customer chooses.

After navigating to the redesigned Google Images, users will see a “For You” gallery of images tailored to their interests and browsing history. Like Pinterest, the gallery is designed for continuous browsing, with Google saying it updates in real time with new images. As users browse, they can save ideas to their “collections,” which will appear as tabs above the main gallery of photos. For example, users can create collections for things like vacation outfit ideas, travel inspiration, and ways to design a reading nook, which they can come back to later.

[…] As for generating images directly in Search, Google says the feature is meant for moments when you have a highly specific idea for an image that doesn’t already exist online. Google is bringing image generation directly into AI Overviews on Search and will use its latest Nano Banana model to transform a text prompt into a custom visual. The feature can also help users reimagine spaces and visualize ideas, such as seeing what a room might look like painted red or what a dorm room with a coastal theme could look like.

Employees were allegedly graded, among other things, on how much they used Meta’s AI tools. “Meta’s internal dashboards classified employees by their stage of adoption of its artificial-intelligence tools, using categories such as ‘AI Native,’ ‘AI First,’ and ‘AI Enabled,’" the lawsuit said. The lawsuit is apparently “the first against a major U.S. company to challenge the alleged use of AI in conducting layoffs,” according to Reuters. The complaint alleges that Meta’s tools for monitoring employees did not account for differences caused by disabilities and protected leaves. “Those tools draw on inputs — performance ratings, calibration scores, productivity and output metrics, ‘AI-native’ ratings, and AI-token consumption — that, by design, cannot be accumulated by an employee who is on protected medical or family leave, or whose output is reduced by a disability,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit alleged that Meta management did not take steps to adjust scores for employees who took leave or who requested reasonable accommodations for disabilities. “Meta did not neutralize those inputs for protected leave; did not exclude protected-leave-takers or accommodation-seekers from the selection cohort; and did not pause the system for the individualized, leave- and accommodation-neutral review that the law requires,” the complaint alleged. “The result was that employees who took protected leaves were disproportionately selected for layoff, based on scoring that not only failed to account for their protected leaves, but in effect penalized the employees for exercising their legal rights to these leaves.” The 26 plaintiffs requested leaves or disability accommodations in the 24 months before being selected for layoffs, the lawsuit said. The layoffs are not yet finalized, but employees are scheduled to start losing their jobs on July 22, the lawsuit said.

Google DeepMind boss Demis Hassabis, a Nobel laureate, said in an article posted on X on Tuesday that “urgent action” was needed to address risks associated with artificial general intelligence (AGI) — the point at which AI matches or surpasses human intelligence. “We’ve already seen the challenges frontier models pose for cybersecurity, and other threats including nuclear and bio risks may soon emerge as capabilities continue to advance,” he said.

[…] Hassabis said the U.S. was well positioned to lead in developing an AI framework “given its economic and technical standing.” “It could establish a new Standards Body modelled on a federally overseen public-private partnership or self-regulatory organisation, much like the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), with a board that includes independent leading technical experts and open-source representatives,” he added. FINRA regulates brokerage firms and exchange markets in the U.S.

The proposed body would need “substantial” funding “in order to attract world-class technical talent and provide the necessary compute resources for large-scale testing,” Hassabis said. Funding would “likely” come from industry, he added. Frontier labs would initially voluntarily share models with the body for review up to 30 days before release, before becoming mandatory for deployment in the U.S. market after being shown to be “effective.” “Specific agentic AI tests could look for attempts to bypass safety guardrails or signs of deception, and ensure best practices, such as digitally watermarking AI-generated images and generating human-readable output tokens to understand model reasoning,” Hassabis said.

WinFuture reports that OnePlus is gearing up for an official withdrawal from the U.S. and European markets, with the announcement due in the “coming days” this week. Closed-door press conferences have apparently happened, with no details shared on the exact reason OnePlus as a brand is shutting down in these markets. India and China are, as far as this report claims, not affected. The report, citing “well-informed sources,” notes that this OnePlus announcement will come amid “fundamental changes” to Oppo’s strategy, but the big point here is the global death of OnePlus.

In the preliminary report, IBM said that for its second quarter of fiscal 2026, it expects revenue of $17.2 billion, which is up 1%. It also said it expects a Non-GAAP Diluted Earnings Per Share (EPS) of $2.93, up 5%. However, as noted by CNBC, these preliminary results are below what analysts were expecting, which was $17.86 billion in revenue, and an EPS of $3.01, according to FactSet data.