Author: Author

Earlier this month, Spotify announced that its premium individual plan would be going up in some markets starting September, a move aimed at improving profit margins. But that’s not the end of it. Now, the company is hinting at more price hikes down the line as it rolls out new features. In a new report, Alex Norström, Spotify’s co-president and chief business officer, made it clear that higher prices are part of the strategy going forward.Price increases and price adjustments and so on, that’s part of our business toolbox and we’ll do it when it makes sense.– Alex Norström, co-president…

Learning the right Excel formula has always been a pain point for many users. Now, Microsoft Copilot is making that easier by letting you type plain-English instructions directly into a cell and automatically generating the correct formula. This new feature saves time and cuts down on the need to memorize complex syntax. How the New Excel Copilot Feature Works Previously, you had to open a separate Copilot window to ask for help with formulas. With this update, you can now type plain-English instructions directly in a cell, and Copilot will convert them into the right Excel formula. Microsoft says this…

Roomstyler is an extension of the website, roomstyler.com, a site where people enter contests and vote on the best room designs. On your Apple TV, you can browse through some of the top rooms from the contests, which incorporate more than 120,000 items from your favorite brands. This app is bred from competition, but it provides you with some amazing room designs that you can incorporate into your own renovation or build. The Roomstyler website runs themed contests regularly, and this app brings the top rooms from those competitions to your Apple TV so you can get inspired by them.…

Google has a habit of quietly tweaking its Messages app, with small design changes popping up here and there. For example, not long ago, it dropped the G logo that used to show up at launch. And right now, users are still seeing three different versions of the app’s branding floating around. But the latest update isn’t about looks – it’s all about security.According to a new report, Google Messages is starting to introduce QR code-based key verification, which helps confirm that you are actually talking to the person you think you are. When this rolls out to your device,…

Editing photos in Google Photos is about to get much easier. With the Pixel 10, Google is rolling out conversational AI edits that let you transform pictures simply by asking. You can type or say what you want to change, and the app will make it happen. The redesigned editor already made things easier with one-tap suggestions and AI-powered effects. But now, you can go further with Gemini’s conversational abilities. Instead of hunting for tools or dragging sliders, you just describe the edit. For example, you could ask it to “remove the cars in the background” or “restore this old…

Sitting a few feet away was Simon Last, one of Notion’s three cofounders. He is gangly and shy, an engineer who has relinquished management responsibilities to focus on being a “super IC”—an individual contributor. He stood to shake my hand, and I awkwardly thanked him for letting me vibe-code. Simon returned to his laptop, where he was monitoring an AI as it coded for him. Later, he would tell me that using AI coding apps was like managing a bunch of interns.Since 2022, the Notion app has had an AI assistant to help users draft their notes. Now the company…

(Shutterstock AI Generator) Space travel has always rewarded improvisation. Astronauts often rely on quick and practical fixes with whatever is on board. A strap becomes a sling. A checklist gets rewritten on the fly. Now there is a new partner on board.  NASA and Google are testing an AI medical assistant called the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA), built to help astronauts handle medical problems when a doctor is not on the spacecraft and talking to Earth takes too long. It is meant to be a calm and informed guide that understands spaceflight medicine and can walk a crew…

The latest addition to China’s Tiangong space station is an AI chatbot with expertise in navigation and tactical planning. Named Wukong AI—after the protagonist of the “Monkey King” legend in Chinese mythology, Sun Wukong—the chatbot was introduced on the space station in mid-July, and has already completed its first mission: supporting three taikonauts during a spacewalk.Information about Wukong AI remains limited. Chinese authorities have said that they developed it from a domestic open-source AI model; according to Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, engineers designed it to meet the requirements of manned space missions, and focused its knowledge-base on aerospace flight…

(Pla2na/Shutterstock) The Trump administration has put a price on access to China’s AI market. Nvidia can now continue shipping select AI chips to Chinese customers as long as it observes performance caps and returns 15% of those sales to the U.S. The decision replaces blanket bans with conditional permission, opening a narrow lane back into a market that makes up more than a tenth of Nvidia’s revenue. That shift rewires incentives on both sides. Nvidia gets access to the huge market, but it must weigh margin pressure against the risk of ceding ground. The Chinese buyers face ceilings that set…

Everyone has a stake in how tech is shaping education today. From the tech moguls and venture capitalists who are starting “microschools” and building ed-tech tools to policymakers who are writing bills to safeguard kids online and teachers who are getting creative about using AI for school.WIRED explored all this and more in our recent back-to-school digital edition, and we’re excited to talk about it at our next subscriber-only livestream on Thursday, August 28, at 1 pm ET / 10 am PT / 6 pm UK. Join us for an exclusive look into these stories with WIRED’s features director, Reyhan…