December 30, 2025

The ascent of the AI therapist

We’re in the midst of a global mental-­health crisis. More than a billion people worldwide suffer from a mental-health condition, according to the World Health Organization. The prevalence of anxiety and depression is growing in many demographics, particularly young people, and suicide is claiming hundreds of thousands of lives globally each year. Given the clear…

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Substack now lets writers curate a ‘network’ of recommended publications for their subscribers

February 22, 2024

Substack is updating its peer-to-peer recommendation system, the company announced today. With this new update, Substack is helping writers aid other writers in expanding their reach and potentially getting more subscribers and followers, as the company is now allowing writers to curate and share a list of publications for their readers to subscribe to. In […]

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Google Pay takes its QR sound-box to small merchants in India after trial run

February 22, 2024

Google said Thursday it plans to roll out the SoundPod, its portable speaker designed to instantly validate and announce successful payments, to small merchants across India over the coming months. The Google Pay expansion in India, where the company is among the mobile payment market leaders, comes even as the firm phases out some of […]

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Starbucks Odyssey’s community lead sees NFTs as the best way to build brand loyalty

February 22, 2024

The NFT space may be down substantially from all-time highs, but brands and loyalty programs looking to reach fans in new ways can still find value, said Steve Kaczynski, co-author of the book “The Everything Token” and community lead for Starbucks Odyssey. “Brand anchors” to gated areas like reward programs is something that companies will […]

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Almost half of adults on TikTok have never posted a video, research shows

February 22, 2024

Adults on TikTok lean camera-shy, a new study from Pew Research Center suggests. A survey of 2,745 adults who use TikTok revealed that 48% of respondents have never posted a video, and a typical user hasn’t even updated their bio. It’s not abnormal to prefer lurking to making original content on social media. In fact, […]

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Chrome gets a built-in AI writing tool powered by Gemini

February 22, 2024

Google Chrome is getting a new AI writing generator today. At its core, this Gemin-powered tool is essentially the existing “Help me write” feature from Gmail, but extended to the entire web and powered by one of Google’s latest Gemini AI models. The company first announced this new tool in January and it remains in […]

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