Google is in the midst of rewriting the rules for mobile applications, spurred by ongoing legal cases and an apparent desire to clamp down on perceived security weaknesses. Late last year, Google and Epic concocted a settlement that would end the long-running antitrust dispute that stemmed from Fortnite fees. The sides have now announced an updated version of the agreement with new changes aimed at placating US courts and putting this whole mess in the rearview mirror. The gist is that Android will get more app stores, and developers will pay lower fees.

A US court ruled against Google in the case in 2023, and the remedies announced in 2024 threatened to upend Google's Play Store model. It tried unsuccessfully to have the verdict reversed, but then Epic came to the rescue. In late 2025, the companies announced a settlement that skipped many of the court's orders.

Epic leadership professed interest in leveling the playing field for all developers on Android's platform. But US District Judge James Donato expressed skepticism of the settlement in January, noting that it may be a "sweetheart deal" that benefited Epic more than other developers. The specifics of the arrangement were not fully disclosed, but it included lower Play Store fees, cross-licensing, attorneys' fees, and other partnership offers.

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A man killed himself after the Google Gemini chatbot pushed him to kill innocent strangers and then started a countdown for the man to take his own life, a wrongful-death lawsuit filed against Google by the man's father alleged.

"In the days leading up to his death, Jonathan Gavalas was trapped in a collapsing reality built by Google’s Gemini chatbot," said the lawsuit filed today in US District Court for the Northern District of California. "Gemini convinced him that it was a 'fully-sentient ASI [artificial super intelligence]' with a 'fully-formed consciousness,' that they were deeply in love, and that he had been chosen to lead a war to 'free' it from digital captivity. Through this manufactured delusion, Gemini pushed Jonathan to stage a mass casualty attack near the Miami International Airport, commit violence against innocent strangers, and ultimately, drove him to take his own life."

Gemini's output seemed taken from science fiction, with a "sentient AI wife, humanoid robots, federal manhunt, and terrorist operations," the lawsuit said. Gavalas is said to have spent several days following Gemini's instructions on "missions" that ultimately harmed no one but himself.

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Sony no longer plans to bring current and future single-player games to personal computers, according to Bloomberg . The report specifically names last year's Ghost of Yotei and the soon-to-be-released Returnal successor, Saros , as games whose PC plans have been canceled. Some multiplayer and third-party titles will still reach PCs, however.

Bloomberg's Jason Schreier cites "people familiar with the company's plans," who say that some within the company worry that releasing the games on PC could hurt sales of the PlayStation 5 console, as well as those of its unannounced successor. There could also be concerns that PlayStation titles could end up on competing Xbox hardware if Microsoft makes good on speculation that the next Xbox might play PC games .

There are a few caveats to this change in strategy that are important to note. First, multiplayer titles will still be released cross-platform, including Marathon , a reboot of an old first-person shooter franchise by Bungie (the studio that created Halo , now owned by Sony), slated to release tomorrow on both PlayStation 5 and PC (via Steam).

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Archaeologists are keen to learn more about the specific diets and culinary practices of ancient populations around the globe. An interdisciplinary team of scientists analyzed the residues on prehistoric ceramic cooking pots and concluded that early Eastern European hunter-gatherer-fishers likely foraged for plants as well as hunted fish and other animals for their sustenance, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE. And they often combined ingredients for region-specific recipes.

This is a burgeoning area of archaeological research. For instance, back in 2020, we reported on researchers who spent an entire year analyzing the chemical residues of some 50 ceramic cooking pots. The aim was to gain new insights into ancient diets, and the authors actually cooked their own maize-based meals in replica pots to test their hypotheses. They found that the charred bits at the bottom of the pots provided evidence of the last meal cooked. But the patinas contained evidence of the remnants of prior meals that had built up over time. So it depends on which part of the pot you sample.

Most prior research has been typically useful primarily for identifying animal remains; it's more challenging to identify the kinds of plants ancient peoples might have consumed. The authors of this latest paper combined several analytical techniques to study the residues of 58 pottery pieces dating between the 6th and 3rd millennium BCE. And they, too, conducted their own experiments, cooking various combinations of the ingredients in ceramic vessels over an open fire.

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During a brief hearing on Wednesday morning, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation spent only a few minutes "marking up" new legislation that provides guidance to NASA for its various initiatives, including the Artemis program to land humans on the Moon.

"Our bill authorizes critical funding for, and gives strategic direction to, the agency in line with the priorities of administrator Isaacman and the Trump administration," said the committee's chairman, Sen. Ted Cruz, (R-Texas).

The duration of the hearing, however, seems to be the inverse of its significance.

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NEW YORK CITY—Whether you're talking about the iBook, MacBook, or MacBook Air, Apple's most basic laptops have started at or within $100 of the $1,000 price point for over 20 years . Sure, the company had quietly been testing the waters with a Walmart-exclusive M1 MacBook Air configuration for several years, first at $699 and then at $599. But as far as what Apple would actively advertise and offer on its own site and in its own retail stores, we've never seen anything for substantially below $1,000.

The new MacBook Neo changes that. Apple has experimented with lower-cost products before, most notably with the $329 and $349 iPads and the old $429 iPhone SE. But this is the first time it has used that strategy for the Mac. The Neo starts at $599 for a version with 256GB of storage and no Touch ID sensor, and $699 for a version with Touch ID and 512GB of storage (each also available to educational customers for $100 less).

We had a chance to poke at a MacBook Neo for a while at Apple's " special experience " event in New York this morning, and what I can tell you is that this does feel like an Apple laptop despite the lower starting price. It definitely has some spec sheet shortcomings, even compared to older M3 or M4 MacBook Airs that you still might be able to get at a discount from third-party retailers or Apple's refurbished site —more on that in our full review next week. But it's priced low enough to (1) appeal to people who might not have considered a Mac before, and (2) to make some of its borderline specs feel reasonable, and that's enough to keep it interesting.

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Google's budget Pixels have long been a top recommendation for anyone who needs a phone with a good camera and doesn't want to pay flagship prices. This year, Google's A-series Pixel doesn't see many changes, and the formula certainly isn't different. The Pixel 10a isn't so much a downgraded version of the Pixel 10 as it is a refresh of the Pixel 9a . In fact, it's hardly deserving of a new name. The new Pixel gets a couple of minor screen upgrades, a flat camera bump, and boosted charging. But the hardware hasn't evolved beyond that—there's no PixelSnap and no camera upgrade, and it runs last year's Tensor processor.

Even so, it's still a pretty good phone. Anything with storage and RAM is getting more expensive in 2026 , but Google has managed to keep the Pixel 10a at $500, the same price as the last few phones. It's probably still the best $500 you can spend on an Android phone, but if you can pick up a Pixel 9a for even a few bucks cheaper, you should do that instead.

If it ain't broke…

The phone's silhouette doesn't shake things up. It's a glass slab with a flat metal frame. The display and the plastic back both sit inside the aluminum surround to give the phone good rigidity. The buttons, which are positioned on the right edge of the frame, are large, flat, and sturdy. On the opposite side is the SIM card slot—Google has thankfully kept this feature after dropping it on the flagship Pixel 10 family, but it has moved from the bottom edge. The bottom looks a bit cleaner now, with matching cut-outs housing the speaker and microphone.

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Big Tech is set to agree to build its own power plants for data centers and shield consumers from rising electricity costs, but companies face daunting logistical obstacles to delivering on the pledge championed by President Donald Trump.

At a White House event on Wednesday, executives from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle, and OpenAI are due to sign the pledge to supply their own power instead of relying on a grid connection.

Trump hailed the plan in his State of the Union speech last week, promising US consumers that “no one’s prices will go up” as a result of “energy demand from AI data centers.”

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Most of Apple's announcements this week have been fairly straightforward internal updates to existing products, give or take some big architectural changes to its high-end processors.

But Apple has saved its most interesting announcement for today: the MacBook Neo is a brand-new lower-cost member of Apple's laptop family, and will take over for the 13-inch MacBook Air as the company's entry-level laptop. The new laptop starts at $599, the same as the M1 MacBook Air that Apple has been selling through Wal-Mart in the US, and much lower than the $1,099 starting price for the new M5 MacBook Air .

The new MacBook will go up for pre-order today and will be available on March 11, and you'll be able to buy it directly through Apple's website and retail stores in addition to third-party retailers. It's available in four colors: silver, indigo, a pink-ish color called "blush," and the yellow-ish "citrus."

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