How to Avoid the Patent Trap That’s Quietly Draining Your Startup’s Budget
How to make smart, strategic calls on when to abandon patents — and why doing so is essential to long-term innovation and budget health
The Download: saving the US climate programs, and America’s AI protections are under threat
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How nonprofits and academia are stepping up to salvage US climate programs Nonprofits are trying to preserve a US effort to modernize greenhouse-gas measurements, amid growing fears that the Trump administration’s dismantling of…
July 2025
Google’s new Web View search experiment organizes results with AI
Google’s new Search Labs experiment will organize the search results using AI smarts.
These 2 Companies Have the Widest Pay Gap Between the CEO and the Typical Worker
The CEOs of Starbucks and Abercrombie & Fitch earn more than 6,000 times the median annual salary of a worker.
Want to Be Discovered in AI Search? These Are the Sources That Matter
As AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity reshape how users discover information, brands must shift from traditional SEO to strategic AI citation optimization to remain visible.
Wahlburgers’ Partnership With Major Grocery Chain Fizzles, Closes 79 Locations
The popular burger chain, founded by Mark Wahlberg and his brothers Donnie and Paul, will no longer be found in Midwest grocery giant Hy-Vee stores.
Amazon introduces a more affordable color screen Kindle
Amazon launches a more affordable, $250 Colorsoft Kindle and a version for kids.
Preston Thorpe is a software engineer at a San Fransisco startup. He’s also serving his eleventh year in prison.
A senior software engineer for Turso, Thorpe is part of an experimental program in the Maine state prison system that allows incarcerated people to work remote jobs from custody.
Spotify takes a swing at gaming with a mini golf game ahead of ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ release
Netflix and Spotify teamed up to launch a golf-inspired game as a way to promote “Happy Gilmore 2,” which premieres on Netflix this Friday.
Cybercrime forum Leak Zone publicly exposed its users’ IP addresses
Exclusive: The popular “leaking and cracking” forum left one of its databases exposed to the internet without a password, exposing the IP addresses of its users logging in.
AI slop and fake reports are exhausting some security bug bounties
“We’re getting a lot of stuff that looks like gold, but it’s actually just crap,” said the founder of one security testing firm. AI-generated security vulnerability reports are already having an effect on bug hunting, for better and worse.