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Amazon is killing its “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” privacy feature on March 28 as the company aims to bolster Alexa+, its new subscription assistant.

If you're frustrated by some of your favorite apps pestering you to sign up for a subscription, some new data may help you empathize with their developers more. According to revenue data from "over 75,000" mobile apps, the vast majority have a hard time making $1,000 per month.

The data is detailed in RevenueCat's 2025 State of Subscription Apps report. RevenueCat makes a mobile app subscription tool kit and gathered the report's data from apps using its platform. The report covers "more than $10 billion in revenue across more than a billion transactions," and RevenueCat's customer base ranges from indie-sized teams to large publishers. Buffer, ChatGPT, FC Barcelona, Goodnotes, and Reuters are among the San Francisco-based firm's customer base.

Additionally, the report examines apps that rely primarily on in-app subscriptions, as well as those that only generate some revenue from subscriptions. All apps examined, though, actively generate subscription revenue and "meet a minimum threshold of installs or revenue (to ensure statistically meaningful findings," according to the report.

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Microsoft's Windows updates over the last couple of years have mostly been focused on adding generative AI features to the operating system, including multiple versions of the Copilot assistant. Copilot has made it into Windows 11 (and even, to a more limited extent, the aging Windows 10) as a native app, and then a wrapper around a web app, and soon as a native app again.

But this month's Windows updates are removing the Copilot app from some Windows 11 PCs and unpinning it from the taskbar, according to this Microsoft support document. This bug obviously won't affect systems where Copilot had already been uninstalled, but it has already led to confusion among some Windows users.

Microsoft says it is "working on a resolution to address the issue" but that users who want to get Copilot back can reinstall the app from the Microsoft Store and repin it to the taskbar, the same process you use to install Copilot on PCs where it has been removed.

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Enforcement of a first-of-its-kind United Kingdom law that Elon Musk wants Donald Trump to gut kicked in today, with potentially huge penalties possibly imminent for any Big Tech companies deemed non-compliant.

UK's Online Safety Act (OSA) forces tech companies to detect and remove dangerous online content, threatening fines of up to 10 percent of global turnover. In extreme cases, widely used platforms like Musk's X could be shut down or executives even jailed if UK online safety regulator Ofcom determines there has been a particularly egregious violation.

Critics call it a censorship bill, listing over 130 "priority" offenses across 17 categories detailing what content platforms must remove. The list includes illegal content connected to terrorism, child sexual exploitation, human trafficking, illegal drugs, animal welfare, and other crimes. But it also broadly restricts content in legally gray areas, like posts considered "extreme pornography," harassment, or controlling behavior.

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Google Assistant is not long for this world. Google confirmed what many suspected last week, that it will transition everyone to Gemini in 2025. Assistant holdouts may find it hard to stay on Google's old system until the end, though. Google has confirmed some popular Assistant features are being removed in the coming weeks. You may not miss all of them, but others could force a change to your daily routine.

As Google has increasingly become totally consumed by Gemini, it was a foregone conclusion that Assistant would get the ax eventually. In 2024, Google removed features like media alarms and voice messages, but that was just the start. The full list of removals is still available on its support page (spotted by 9to5Google), but there's now a new batch of features at the top. Here's a rundown of what's on the chopping block.

• Favorite, share, and ask where and when your photos were taken with your voice
• Change photo frame settings or ambient screen settings with your voice
• Translate your live conversation with someone who doesn’t speak your language with interpreter mode
• Get birthday reminder notifications as part of Routines
• Ask to schedule or hear previously scheduled Family Bell announcements
• Get daily updates from your Assistant, like “send me the weather everyday”
• Use Google Assistant on car accessories that have a Bluetooth connection or AUX plug

Some of these are no great loss—you'll probably live without the ability to get automatic birthday reminders or change smart display screensavers by voice. However, others are popular features that Google has promoted aggressively. For example, interpreter mode made a splash in 2019 and has been offering real-time translations ever since; Assistant can only translate a single phrase now. Many folks also use the scheduled updates in Assistant as part of their morning routine. Family Bell is much beloved, too, allowing Assistant to make custom announcements and interactive checklists, which can be handy for getting kids going in the morning. Attempting to trigger some of these features will offer a warning that they will go away soon.

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Formula 1's four-wheeled circus got underway this past weekend in Melbourne, Australia. Held on the roads around a lake in Albert Park, the track is one of F1's trickier challenges, made more so on Sunday thanks to rain that eased off before the start of the race, only to return with a vengeance a dozen or so laps before the end. It proved to be a tough day for four of the sport's six new drivers, as well as some more well-known names, and it gave us a clearer idea of the pecking order between the teams, at least for now.

True F1 junkies were probably following the preseason test earlier this month in Bahrain, as the sport now helpfully shows those three days of running on its streaming platform. But those devoted enough to watch the cars circulate for hours with nothing on the line also know you shouldn't read too much into a preseason test, especially one held at a circuit that is unrepresentative of most of the others that F1 visits—and in unseasonably cold weather, to boot.

Little has changed in the way of the technical regulations between the end of last year and the start of this one, other than an increasing scrutiny on the front and rear wings' ability to flex when they're not supposed to. Flexing or deflecting under load at opportune times reduces the drag and allows a car to go a little faster in a straight line for the same amount of power, giving that car an unfair advantage.

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Many variables can affect the quality of a steaming cup of espresso, including so-called "channeling" during the brewing process, in which the water doesn't seep uniformly through the grounds but branches off in various preferential paths instead. This significantly reduces the extraction yield and thus the quality of the final brew. Scientists from the University of Warsaw have gleaned insights into the underlying physics of channeling that will help coffee lovers achieve more consistent results when brewing espresso. They presented their preliminary findings at the American Physical Society's Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California, this morning.

As previously reported, there's an official industry standard for brewing espresso, courtesy of the Specialty Coffee Association, which sets out strict guidelines for its final volume (25–35 mL, or roughly 1 ounce) and preparation. The water must be heated to 92° to 95°C (197° to 203°F) and forced (at a specific pressure) through a bed of 7 to 9 grams (about a quarter of an ounce) of finely ground coffee for 20 to 30 seconds. But most coffee shops don't follow this closely, as the brewing machines allow baristas to configure water pressure, temperature, and other key variables to their liking. The result of all those variations in technique is a great deal of variability in quality and taste.

Naturally, scientists find this fascinating. For instance, in 2020, Christopher Hendon's lab at the University of Oregon helped devise a mathematical model for brewing the perfect cup of espresso over and over while minimizing waste. Hendon is a computational materials chemist, and his lab holds regular coffee hours for the Eugene campus community. The researchers focused on an easily measurable property known as the extraction yield (EY): the fraction of coffee that dissolves into the final beverage. That, in turn, depends on controlling water flow and pressure as the liquid percolates through the coffee grounds.

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Don't just load up on Amazon! Here are the best ways to find your favorite records on wax.

Generative AI is powering the next big shift: the era of “living games” — games that adapt, grow and even help create themselves.Generative AI is powering the next big shift: the era of “living games” — games that adapt, grow and even help create themselves.

Alphabet is spinning out laser-based Internet company Taara from its “moonshot” incubator, hoping to turbocharge the start-up that provides high-bandwidth services to hard-to-reach areas in competition with Elon Musk’s Starlink network of satellites.

Taara is the latest project to spring from X—Alphabet’s experimental hub that produced AI lab Google Brain and Waymo’s self-driving cars—and has its origins in a concept called Loon. That envisaged shooting beams of light between thousands of balloons floating on the edge of space to provide phone and Internet services across remote areas.

Loon was wound up in 2021 due to the political and regulatory hurdles to flying the balloons and the difficulty of servicing the 20-mile-high equipment. However, its lasers found a second life on Taara’s towers under engineer Mahesh Krishnaswamy.

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Bitwarden is open source and secure, has support for passkeys, and costs just $10 per year.

Never miss a delivery. These WIRED-tested picks will help you keep tabs on your front door from anywhere.

Snuggle up under our favorite comforters for every season and every budget.

Cadillac provided flights from Los Angeles to San Fransisco and accommodation so Ars could drive the Escalade IQ. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

SAN FRANCISCO—Newsflash: The new electric Cadillac Escalade IQ weighs over 9,000 lbs, or a fair amount more than 4,000 kilograms. For context, that figure works out to almost exactly half again as much as the 682 hp (509 kW) Escalade V that comes equipped with a barking-mad 6.2 L supercharged V8. Yet the latest and supposedly greatest from Cadillac needed to weigh so very much to achieve a class-leading range target of 460 miles (740 km), thanks to a 205 kWh battery pack.

The Escalade IQ shares a modular General Motors (formerly Ultium) chassis and battery pack with the gargantuan Hummer EV, and even more hardware with the Silverado and Sierra pickup truck siblings. As opposed to trying to attract rugged work truck and off-roading cred, though, for Cadillac that kind of range figure seemed necessary to appeal to a "no compromise" lifestyle that Escalade buyers might well expect while considering a switch to fully electric power.

And the new IQ certainly puts down plenty of instantaneously available grunt, and despite its mass, it can punch out a 0–60 time in under five seconds with the Velocity Max button pushed, thanks to dual motors rated at 750 hp (560 kW) and 786 lb-ft (1,065 Nm).

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Learn more about Google Research’s FireSat project, built to detect small wildfires.Learn more about Google Research’s FireSat project, built to detect small wildfires.

Learn more about Google Research’s FireSat project, built to detect small wildfires.Learn more about Google Research’s FireSat project, built to detect small wildfires.

Learn how our AI Collaboratives for wildfires and food security are taking a new funding approach to help people around the world.Learn how our AI Collaboratives for wildfires and food security are taking a new funding approach to help people around the world.

The first satellite for the FireSat constellation officially made contact with Earth. This satellite is the first of more than 50 in a first-of-its-kind constellation de…

After testing nearly two dozen mattresses, I have some tips on how you can find the best mattress for you, from firmness and materials to deciphering warranties.

Back when EV enthusiasm was higher, there were fits and starts of vehicle-to-home concepts and products. If EVs and their ginormous batteries are expensive, resource-intensive purchases, the thinking went, maybe we should get something more out of them than just groceries and school pick-ups. Maybe we could find other things for that huge battery to do during the 95 percent of time it spends parked in or near our homes.

An EV powering your whole home, or even pushing power back to the grid, is something higher-end EVs might do at some point with some utilities. I have a Chevy Bolt, an EV that does not have even a three-prong 110 V plug on it, let alone power-your-home potential. If I wanted to keep the essentials running during an outage, it seemed like I needed to buy a fuel-based generator—or one of those big portable power stations.

Or so I thought, until I came across inverter kits. Inverters take the direct current available from your vehicle's 12V battery—the lead-acid brick inside almost every car—and turns it into alternating current suitable for standard plugs. Inverters designed for car batteries have been around a long time, opening up both novel and emergency uses. The catch is that you have to start the car's gas engine often enough to keep the battery charged.

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