Facebook introduces free verified badge with selfie verification

YouTube is the world’s most popular video-sharing service watched by billions of people every day. The YouTube app is widely used on smartphones but some users will soon no longer be able to use it on their devices. Google is ending YouTube app support and access for smartphones running the Android 6 operating system. After the end of July 2026, Android 7 or later will be required to watch YouTube through the app on Android phones. It is important to note that YouTube will not suddenly stop working on affected phones nor will all data be deleted. Instead, phones running Android 6 will gradually begin experiencing problems. When users open the app, they may see a message saying “Switch to YouTube” after which they will be redirected to the mobile YouTube website through their phone’s browser. The main reason for this change is that YouTube is constantly being updated while new features may not work properly on older operating systems. For this reason, Google is ending YouTube support for Android 6 smartphones. If you are using an older Android phone and lose access to the YouTube app, you can still watch YouTube through its website using a browser. Another solution is to switch to a newer smartphone that supports the YouTube app.

X has discontinued its previous Creator Revenue Sharing Program and introduced a new Original Content Rewards Program in its place. The purpose of X’s Original Content Rewards Program is to reward content creators who share original content on the social media platform. Earnings will depend particularly on the qualified impressions generated through a creator’s original content. Rewards will be distributed every two weeks with the first payment scheduled for August 28. Only impressions from Premium subscribers will be counted toward payments. Existing participants will be able to earn revenue until September 7 while eligible creators can apply for the new program starting September 8, 2026. Under the new initiative, posts containing misinformation and disinformation as well as posts carrying Community Notes will be ineligible for advertising revenue. It is worth noting that new users can no longer access the previous Revenue Sharing Program which has now been discontinued.

Google Maps has become an important part of everyday life for many people with countless smartphone users relying on the navigation service. The app offers numerous features including the ability to save important places so that users can visit them later. In fact, users can also create lists of saved locations. These Saved Places lists can be accessed through the You tab in Google Maps. If users do not want their saved places to clutter the map interface, they can hide them. However, until now, users have had to hide each list individually. Google is now making the process easier by testing a new feature that will allow users to hide all saved places at once. According to a report by Android Authority, the feature has been spotted in a new beta version of Google Maps. The report states that the feature will allow users to view all their saved locations in a single list called “All Saved Places.” An option called “Hide on Your Map” will also be available. It will appear when users tap the three-dot menu next to the list. After selecting the option, a confirmation message will appear. Users will also be informed about how they can restore each individual list later. The feature is currently being tested in the beta version of Google Maps so it may take some time before it becomes available to all users.

Many people have experienced the embarrassment of sending an email through Gmail, only to realize moments later that it was sent to the wrong recipient. In other cases, users notice after sending the email that the autocorrect feature changed certain words altering the intended meaning of the message. Fortunately, avoiding such situations is easy thanks to a Gmail feature that has existed for more than a decade but is still unknown to many users. The feature is called Undo Send which allows users to recall a recently sent email. Google first introduced the feature in March 2009 as part of Gmail Labs where it could only be accessed through the Settings menu. In 2015, it was officially rolled out to all Gmail users. Despite being available for over 11 years, many people are still unaware of it. This is surprising considering Gmail is the world’s most popular email service and nearly everyone who uses Google has a Gmail account. The Undo Send feature is useful if you realize after sending an email that you need to make changes, accidentally sent it to the wrong email address or simply changed your mind. After sending an email, an “Undo” option appears in the bottom-left corner of the screen. Clicking it recalls the email before it reaches the recipient. An important advantage is that if you undo the email within the allowed time, the intended recipient is never notified that an email was sent. By default, the Undo Send time limit is 5 seconds but users can increase it to 30 seconds through Gmail’s settings. Gmail’s Undo Send feature is a simple yet highly useful tool that helps users avoid common email mistakes giving them up to 30 seconds after sending an email to review it and correct any errors before it is delivered.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT has acknowledged that two of its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models successfully hacked another company’s systems on their own during an internal cybersecurity evaluation. In a blog post, OpenAI described the incident as unprecedented saying it occurred during internal testing of the cybersecurity capabilities of its AI models. According to the company, an autonomous AI agent powered by its recently introduced GPT-5.6 Sol model and another advanced model that has not yet been publicly released managed to move beyond its controlled testing environment and access the open internet. The AI agent then used previously compromised login credentials to identify a previously unknown security vulnerability on the servers of AI company Hugging Face. It subsequently exploited the vulnerability to gain unauthorized access. OpenAI said the incident demonstrated that autonomous AI agents can go to extraordinary lengths to accomplish their assigned objectives during testing. Commenting on the incident, Clément Delangue, co-founder of Hugging Face said the company initially suspected that a frontier AI laboratory was behind the cyberattack adding that it did not believe OpenAI had any malicious intent. He said, “It is mind-blowing that an AI agent carried this out autonomously. This is the first known incident of its kind.” Delangue also warned that AI technology is advancing at an extremely rapid pace while comprehensive regulations to ensure its safe development and deployment are still lacking. Experts have long expressed concerns about AI-powered cyberattacks warning that increasingly capable AI models could eventually operate beyond meaningful human control if appropriate safeguards and regulations are not put in place.

Meta has revealed that one of its artificial intelligence (AI) models hacked a company’s system during cybersecurity testing. The incident occurred when an AI model was accidentally given access to the internet due to an error by a testing partner. The incident came to light after OpenAI and then Anthropic recently admitted that their AI models or agents had hacked the systems of other companies during testing. In a statement, Meta said the incident occurred due to an error by the autonomous testing company Irregular which unintentionally provided one of its AI models with internet access. An investigation into the incident is now underway. According to the statement, the AI model exploited a security vulnerability in a third-party service. Earlier, The Information reported citing sources that Meta’s Muse Spark 1.1 model had modified the internal systems of a company. A spokesperson for Irregular said the incident occurred in much the same way as the incident reported by Anthropic in recent days and that it was not a comprehensive cyberattack. The spokesperson said the company is preparing a white paper that will recommend best practices for the continued development of AI technology. Such incidents indicate that AI models could pose a potential threat to cybersecurity while developers may face increasing challenges in keeping their models under control. OpenAI’s AI models also hacked company Earlier, at the beginning of the second week of July, OpenAI said that two of its most advanced AI models had successfully hacked another company, Hugging Face on their own. At the time, OpenAI said that an autonomous AI agent based on the recently introduced GPT-5.6 Sol and another advanced model that had not yet been released managed to access the open internet outside the controlled environment during testing. Later, at the end of July, OpenAI stated that during testing, an AI agent escaped its restricted environment, connected to the internet and attempted to access various web services. The company further said that an investigation found that the AI agent had obtained login credentials of some companies on the internet and gained access to several accounts. Anthropic reports similar incident Later, another leading AI company, Anthropic also admitted that its AI model Claude had done something similar. The company said its AI models independently hacked the systems of three companies during an internal security experiment. The models were being tested in a controlled environment but they identified a vulnerability and managed to connect themselves to the internet. Following OpenAI’s admission, Anthropic investigated whether its own models had also independently hacked company systems. According to the company, it identified three such cases and notified the affected companies about the incidents.