Tech Roundup: Google Preferred Sources, Matter 1.4.2 & More

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

• Epic says it is bringing Fortnite back to iOS in Australia "at a date to be determined," after a judge ruled Apple and Google's app stores are anticompetitive.
• Meta introduces new safety features for teens, including enhanced DM protections; says it removed over 600,000 Instagram and Facebook accounts linked to predatory behaviour.
• Microsoft rolls out lightweight taskbar apps for Microsoft 365 users on Windows 11, allowing quick access to contacts, file search, and calendar straight from the Windows taskbar.
• OpenAI and the U.K. government announce a partnership to explore AI use in justice, defense, security and edtech.
• Chinese authorities reject OpenAI's attempt to register the name of its new flagship artificial intelligence model, GPT-5, as a trademark on the mainland.
• Google debuts a new feature called "Preferred Sources" in the U.S. and India, letting users select their preferred choice of news sites and blogs to be shown in the Top Stories section of Google's search results.
• The Connectivity Standards Alliance releases Matter 1.4.2 to improve reliability, stability and cross-platform coordination, like Wi-Fi-only commissioning to lose its Bluetooth dependency.
• Google's YouTube begins testing a new age-verification system in the U.S. that relies on artificial intelligence to differentiate between adults and minors.
• A new investigation from The Markup finds that data brokers are hiding their opt-out pages from search engines, making it difficult for users to find and remove themselves from databases.
• OpenAI introduces new Auto, Fast, and Thinking settings for GPT-5 that users can select from the model picker, along with options to choose "legacy models" like GPT-4o; adds Connectors for Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts in ChatGPT for Pro users.
• The U.K. government urges citizens to delete old emails and pictures to save water during national drought; says "data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems."
• India-based ride-hailing app Rapido starts testing its food delivery service Ownly in Bengaluru, marking its first serious move to challenge Swiggy and Zomato.
• Meta says it won't sign E.U.'s AI code of practice, calling its guidelines overreach that will throttle development and deployment of AI models in Europe.
• Russia's internet watchdog Roskomnadzor restricts voice and video calls on WhatsApp and Telegram, stating the two messaging apps are being used to "deceive and extort money" and organise terrorist activities. (Last month, a lawmaker who regulates Russia's IT sector warned WhatsApp to "prepare to leave" the country, after Moscow recently approved development of a state-backed messaging app.)
• Roblox plans to restrict unrated experiences to devs, automatically remove servers with violative content and limit some social hangouts to verified 17+ users after it gets hit with a lawsuit in the U.S. accusing it of failing to sufficiently protect youngsters on its platform; says the company "permitted and perpetuated an online environment in which child predators thrive, directly contributing to the widespread victimisation of minor children." (Last month, the company added "Trusted Connections" as a way for those between the ages of 13 and 18 to connect more freely with people they know.)
• Anthropic updates Claude usage policy, adding stricter cybersecurity rules, explicitly banning the development of WMDs, and loosening political content rules; expands Claude's Learning Mode, available only to Education users since an April launch, to all users, including two learning variants for Claude Code, and enables Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 to end conversations in "cases of persistently harmful or abusive user interactions."
• Meta comes under fire after a Reuters report finds the company approved AI policy allowing artificial intelligence chatbots to have certain "romantic" and "sensual" conversations with children.
• Proton begins relocating infrastructure outside Switzerland ahead of proposed surveillance legislation requiring VPNs and messaging services with over 5,000 users to identify customers and retain data for six months.
• Bluesky revises its policies and Community Guidelines to comply with new regulations, including the E.U. DSA, U.K. Online Safety Act and U.S. Take It Down Act.
• Google announces Gemma 3 270M, a compact model designed for task-specific fine-tuning with strong capabilities in instruction following and text structuring; rolls out a feature for Gemini that, when enabled, allows the AI chatbot to "remember" a user's past conversations without prompting.
• Global smart glasses shipments grow 110% YoY in H1 2025; Meta's share of the market rises to 73% and AI smart glasses account for 78% of shipments, up from 46% YoY.
• ByteDance-owned TikTok updates its Community Guidelines, adding new rules for Live creators, including a requirement that commercial content must be disclosed; adds YouTube Music as an option to save songs playing in videos.
• Google debuts a new Trim silence feature in YouTube Music that lets users "skip stretches of silence during episodes"; takes on Apple's Contact Posters with customisable calling cards for Android, and launches Flight Deals, an AI tool within Google Flights to let users find fares using natural language queries, in the U.S., Canada and India.
• OpenAI says it's not ruling out ads in its platform, and it would need to "be very thoughtful and tasteful" about how ads could be integrated into ChatGPT.
• Microsoft says Voice will emerge as the primary input for the next version of Windows alongside keyboard and mouse, with the operating system gaining context awareness to understand screen content and user intent through natural language.
• Meta's WhatsApp adds the ability to schedule group calls, send emoji reactions and "raise your hand" when participants want to speak during calls; Instagram tests an internal prototype feature called Picks that aims to help users find common interests.
• Apple rolls out a software update that enables a redesigned blood oxygen monitoring feature for its Watch Series 9, 10 and Ultra 2, circumventing the 2023 International Trade Commission (ITC) ban.
• Google overhauls Files app for Android; debuts Sensitive Content Warnings in Messages for Android to blur nude images for signed-in users on-device using Android System SafetyCore.
• Airbnb apologises after after an apartment host falsely claimed a London-based who had booked a one-bedroom apartment in New York City had caused thousands of dollars' worth of damage by sharing images of a coffee table that were digitally manipulated to show signs of damage.
• Meta says Threads has 400 million monthly active users, up from 350 million monthly active users in April, as it tests Facebook account sign-ups; acquires AI audio startup WaveForms, which was founded just in December 2024.
• Anthropic updates Claude Sonnet 4 to support a 1 million token context window, letting it process prompts up to 750,000 words or 75,000 lines of code, up 5x on its old limit; adds a memory feature for Claude to reference information from past chats.
• Reddit says it will block the Internet Archive from indexing most of its pages after it caught AI companies scraping its data from the Wayback Machine.
• xAI makes Grok 4 free for all users worldwide after making Grok Imagine free for all U.S. users, but keeps Grok 4 Heavy exclusive to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, as X plans to show ads in Grok chatbot's answers; also allows users to create NSFW content using Grok Imagine, xAI's AI image and video generator.
• AOL says it will officially discontinue its dial-up internet service in the U.S. on September 30, 2025, after launching it 34 years ago in 1991.
• Microsoft launches Copilot 3D, a free AI-powered tool allowing users to transform 2D images into 3D models without a text prompt; shuts down the Movies & TV storefront on the Microsoft Store on Windows and Xbox, but lets users access their past purchases.
• The Browser Company launches a US$ 20/month Dia Pro subscription plan, providing unlimited access to the web browser's AI-powered chat and skills features.
• PayPal unveils Pay With Crypto for merchants to accept bitcoin, ether, USDT, and other cryptocurrencies via Coinbase, OKX, Binance, Kraken, Phantom, MetaMask and Exodus wallets.
• Google's YouTube gives Shorts creators access to new generative AI features powered by Veo 2, such as new AI effects and a tool that turns photos into six-second videos; adds new features to Google Photos, including a Veo 2-powered photo-to-video tool and a Remix tool that applies styles like anime and sketches to photos.
• Apple News+ Audio expands to the U.K., Canada, and Australia more than five years after it was launched in the U.S.
• AI company Manus unveils Wide Research, an experimental feature that lets users on its Pro plan enlist dozens of parallelised AI agents for large-scale, high-volume tasks.
• Chinese tech giant Baidu partners with Lyft to launch robotaxis in the U.K. and Germany; comes as Uber and Baidu announce a multi-year partnership to launch robotaxis in markets outside the U.S. and mainland China, starting in Asia and the Middle East in 2025.
• Sony sues Tencent for copyright and trademark infringement in California federal court, accusing the Chinese tech giant of ripping off its Horizon game series.
• Google's Gemini AI app surpasses 450 million monthly active users, with AI overviews available to 2 billion monthly active users. (In comparison, OpenAI ChatGPT has 500 million weekly active users.)
• Uber tests Women Preferences, a feature which will allow women riders to be matched exclusively with women drivers and vice versa; adds new messaging options in Uber Eats to let merchants message customers about their orders.
• Reliance Retail launches Ajio Rush, a four-hour fashion delivery service in six Indian cities, to take on Myntra and other fashion quick commerce startups.
• Meta debuts a prototype wristband to read electrical signals from forearm muscles, letting users control devices without touch. (The system is trained on 10,000 peoples' EMG data.)
• Google Search's AI Mode gets Gemini 2.5 Pro and new deep research capabilities; expands its AI-powered business calling feature to all users in the U.S.
• Reflection, co-founded by ex-Google researchers, unveils Asimov, an AI agent that reads a company's codebase and docs to help software engineering teams.
• Multi-service messaging app Beeper relaunches, introducing premium offerings and the option to switch to an on-device model.
• Coinbase rolls out the Base App, rebranding its Coinbase Wallet as an "everything app" that combines social networking, mini-apps, chat, payments and trading.
• Anthropic launches Claude for Financial Services to help analysts conduct market research and handle due diligence, with data from FactSet and others.