Tech Roundup: Discord Orbs, Windows Notepad Updates & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• Online dating app Grindr rolls out a new Right Now feed to its app in an effort to "connect with like-minded people without wasting time on mismatched expectations."
• Google officially launches Google Store in India, allowing customers to purchase its products directly from the site, as opposed to other retail outlets like Flipkart, Croma and Reliance.
• OpenAI says its goal is to build an "AI super assistant that deeply understands you and is your interface to the internet"; rolls out a new version of Memory that better remembers and references past conversations, as it opens the feature to logged-in free users of the chatbot.
• Microsoft updates its Windows Notepad app with support for text formatting, including hyperlinks and Markdown.
• Thailand files charges against, and orders the blocking of crypto exchanges Bybit, CoinEx, OKX, 1000X, and XT.com from June 28, 2025, for operating without a license.
• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says AI may wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and spike US unemployment to 10%-20% in the next one to five years.
• X says it's pausing encrypted DMs to "work on making some improvements"; rolls out a more robust version of the feature, XChat, to paying users in beta.
• Twitch plans to start testing the ability to host a vertical livestream and rolls out an open beta of "2K streaming," letting creators stream at 1440p.
• Meta gets approval from South Korean regulators to introduce a facial recognition service that will block ads and accounts impersonating celebrities on its Facebook platform in a bid to prevent scams and fraud.
• Discord unveils Discord Orbs, a new in-app currency in beta that users can earn by completing promotional Quests, which require users to interact with ads promoting new games and content.
• JioHotstar grows its subscriber base from 50 million in March 2025 to more than 280 million in May, driven by IPL cricket streams, nearing Netflix's global subscriber count of 300 million.
• A new investigation from The Guardian finds that more than half of all the top trending videos offering mental health advice on TikTok contain misinformation, peddling misused therapeutic language, "quick fix" solutions and false claims, as users increasingly turn to social media for mental health support.
• Google updates its Gmail app for Android and iOS to automatically show AI-generated summaries in the form of "summary cards" for emails "where a summary is helpful, such as longer email threads or messages with several replies."
• Google ends PayPal account integration in Google Wallet for U.S> users, effective June 13, after stopping new PayPal account linking in April.
• Microsoft announces new Windows changes in response to the E.U. Digital Markets Act (DMA), including an option to uninstall the Microsoft Store app and enable third-party apps to add their web search results in Windows Search, as well as make Edge not prompt users to set it as the default unless it is opened; comes as Apple appeals the iOS interoperability order under the DMA, saying the requirements create "a process that is unreasonable, costly and stifles innovation."
• Character.AI rolls out features like AvatarFX for video generation, alongside Streams and Scenes for creating and sharing videos featuring their characters on a new social feed.
• Microsoft adds a new Bing Video Creator to its Android and iOS apps that's built on OpenAI's Sora text-to-video model, allowing users to freely create short clips with the AI tool that otherwise is locked behind a ChatGPT subscription.
• Pornhub's parent company, Aylo Freesites, plans to stop serving adult content in France as soon as June 4, in protest of government measures requiring it to implement age verification solutions by June 7 in order to shield minors from inappropriate content.
• Google's NotebookLM lets users share notebooks publicly and interact with a public notebook by asking questions or exploring generated content.
• ByteDance-owned TikTok launches Manage Topics globally, lettings users customise how often content related specific topics appear in the For You feed; adds AI-powered keyword filtering to block certain topics from appearing in the feed.
• Epic Games launches a game developer tool called MetaHuman to quickly create realistic digital human characters as part of Unreal Engine 5.6.
• Automotive car makers, suppliers, semiconductor manufacturers and ecosystem partners announce the formation of the OpenGMSL Association to "transform SerDes transmission of video and/or high-speed data as an open, worldwide standard across the automotive ecosystem."
• Reddit makes user profiles more customisable to help users "manage their presence and control what appears on their Reddit profile" with the ability to hide all public posts and comments and selectively display posts and comments from chosen communities while keeping others hidden.
• TikTok officially launches TikTok for Artists, a new music insights platform that is designed to help artists build their careers, eight months after ByteDance shut down TikTok Music; debuts new advertiser tools to better serve ads targeting particular user demographics based on the content watched and the keywords associated with popular content.
• Apple faces new setback after a U.S. appeals court rejects its request to pause key parts of a recently issued order requiring it to open the App Store to more competition as part of its ongoing legal fight with Epic Games.
• Meta has reportedly been in discussions with Disney, A24, and other companies about exclusive content for a premium VR device it plans to launch next year for less than US$ 1,000.
• Reddit sues Anthropic, alleging it scrapped the platform 100,000 times after saying it had stopped; likely aims to reach a licensing deal along the lines of those it already has in place with OpenAI and Google.
• OpenAI rolls out connectors for services like Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and SharePoint for ChatGPT Team, Enterprise and Edu users; says it has 3 million "paying business users," up from 2 million in February 2025, and launches a new "record mode" for ChatGPT Team members to transcribe calls and take notes during meetings.
• Figma releases Dev Mode Model Context Protocol server, which lets AI models directly tap into data related to designs created in Figma.
• Mistral releases a "vibe coding" client called Mistral Code that's forked from open-source project Continue in private beta on JetBrains development platforms and Microsoft Visual Studio Code, as it takes on rivals Windsurf, Cursor, Google AI Studio and GitHub Copilot.
• OpenAI seeks to block a May 13 U.S. ourt order requiring it to preserve all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats, arguing it poses a risk to users' privacy; comes after news organizations suing over copyright claims accused the AI company of destroying evidence. (The order impacts users of ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro, as well as users of OpenAI's application programming interface (API), but does not affect ChatGPT Enterprise or ChatGPT Edu customers, or API customers who are using Zero Data Retention endpoints. However, it also poses new questions as the data retention policies goes against GDPR protections in Europe.)
• Anthropic announces a set of custom "Claude Gov" models that are designed specifically for U.S. defense and intelligence agencies; says it cut Windsurf's direct access to Claude models because of reports that OpenAI is acquiring Windsurf and that "it would be odd for us to sell Claude to OpenAI."
• X changes its developer agreement to prevent third parties from using "the X API or X Content to fine-tune or train a foundation or frontier model"; names Polymarket as its official prediction market partner, with plans to combine Polymarket predictions with X data to deliver live insights.
• Google releases an upgraded preview of Gemini 2.5 Pro that it says excels at coding and has improved math, science, knowledge and reasoning capabilities; rolls out "scheduled actions" in the Gemini app, allowing AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers to ask the AI assistant to perform tasks at specific times.
• Google adds a new "Catch me up" feature in Google Drive to provide a high-level overview of changes in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides since they were last viewed; says its Chrome browser has achieved the highest score ever on Speedometer 3 benchmarks, making it the fastest browser.
• Starlink secures a license from the telecom ministry in India to launch services in the country.
• Google's YouTube rolls out a tool to let some creators upload different thumbnails for each video dubbed into a different language, to help expand their global audience.
• Walmart-backed Flipkart secures a lending license from India's Reserve Bank of India, letting the e-commerce company offer loans directly to Indian customers and sellers on its platform.