The only office within the US State Department that monitors foreign disinformation is to be eliminated, according to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, confirming reporting by MIT Technology Review. The Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub is a small office in the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy that tracks and counters foreign disinformation campaigns. The culling of the office leaves the State Department without a way to actively counter the increasingly sophisticated disinformation campaigns from foreign governments like those of Russia, Iran, and China. What is vibe coding, exactly? When OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy excitedly took to X back in February to post about his new hobby, he probably had no idea he was about to coin a phrase that encapsulated an entire movement steadily gaining momentum across the world.

SAVE OVER 10: As of April 17, Lepro TB1 AI Smart Table Lamp is on sale for 64.59 at Amazon after applying the promo code LEPRODAY. I've seen some wild smart home gadgets, but this lamp? This lamp is something else. Lepro TB1 AI Smart Table Lamp is marked down to 64.59 at Amazon when you use the promo code LEPRODAY. It's a color-changing, music-syncing, mood-reading piece of future tech masquerading as a bedside light -- and yes, I want one, even if it does make me feel slightly inferior.

Grok, the AI assistant from Elon Musk's X, now has a memory. According to the company's official account on X, Grok can now remember your previous conversations. That means the responses it gives you will be more personalized using stored data; in an example shared on Twitter, a user asks for a workout plan, and gets a response that includes their previous experience and interest in fitness activities. You can always check out which memories Grok has referenced (you can do that by clicking the "Referenced Cards" icon under a response) and erase some of them if you choose to do so. X labels Grok's memory function as beta, and says it's available on iOS and Android, but not in the EU or the UK.

Google rolled out live video and screen sharing abilities for Gemini Live in March, and now all Android users can play with the tools for free. Announced during Mobile World Congress (MWC) last month, Google's ChatGPT Voice Mode competitor now has the ability to "see" -- meaning you can use your smartphone camera or share your screen to ask Gemini Live real-time questions about your immediate surrounds or current website during your chats. At launch in March, the continuous conversational AI's new tool was only available to paying Gemini Advanced subscribers on Pixel 9 and Samsung Galaxy S25 devices. But on Wednesday, Google announced it's now free to all Android users with the Gemini app installed. "We've been hearing great feedback on Gemini Live with camera and screen share, so we decided to bring it to more people," the official Google Gemini App account posted on X. "Starting today and over the coming weeks, we're rolling it out to all Android users with the Gemini app."

SAVE 800: As of April 17, the roborock Qrevo Master Robot Vacuum and Mop is on sale for 799.99 at Amazon. If you're still getting spring cleaning done and looking for a little assistance, a robot vacuum can be a big help with cleaning up the floors around your home. Sometimes they come with some big price tags, but there are some great deals floating around at the moment that are worth taking advantage of. This includes a whopping 50% off the roborock Qrevo Master robot vacuum and mop combo. This discount has dropped the price of the roborock Qrevo Master robot vacuum and mop combo from 1,599.99 to 799.99.

The chief executive of the American chip maker Nvidia visited Beijing on Thursday, days after the US issued fresh restrictions on sales of the only AI chip it was still allowed to sell to China. Jensen Huang's surprise visit was on the invitation of a trade organisation, according to a social media account affiliated with state media. The official broadcaster China Central Television said Huang met Ren Hongbin, the head of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, where he said he hopes "to continue to cooperate with China". China Daily, the ruling Communist party's official English-language outlet, published a photo of Huang in the capital, saying the trip came "three months after pledging to continue cooperation with #China during his last visit". It added the hashtag #OpportunityChina, which it has previously used in posts promoting US-China exports.

In a'transformational' discovery, scientists have discovered the strongest evidence of life on a distant alien planet. Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers found huge quantities of chemicals produced by life on Earth in the atmosphere of the planet K2-18b. According to scientists from the University of Cambridge, an'ocean that is teeming with life' is the best explanation for this stunning discovery. MailOnline has used AI to take scientists' best predictions and imagine what life might be like on K2-18b. The most likely scenario is that K2-18b's oceans are filled with something like phytoplankton - microscopic organisms that feed on the energy from the nearby star.

American police departments near the United States-Mexico border are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for an unproven and secretive technology that uses AI-generated online personas designed to interact with and collect intelligence on "college protesters," "radicalized" political activists, and suspected drug and human traffickers, according to internal documents, contracts, and communications that 404 Media obtained via public records requests. This article is copublished in partnership with 404 Media. Massive Blue, the New York–based company that is selling police departments this technology, calls its product Overwatch, which it markets as an "AI-powered force multiplier for public safety" that "deploys lifelike virtual agents, which infiltrate and engage criminal networks across various channels." According to a presentation obtained by 404 Media, Massive Blue is offering cops these virtual personas that can be deployed across the internet with the express purpose of interacting with suspects over text messages and social media. The technology--which as of last summer had not led to any known arrests--demonstrates the types of social media monitoring and undercover tools private companies are pitching to police and border agents.

Welcome to Opt Out, a semi-regular column in which we help you navigate your online privacy and show you how to say no to surveillance. The last column covered how to protect your phone and data privacy at the US border. If you'd like to skip to a section about a particular tip, click the "Jump to" menu at the top of this article. At the press of a button, your Tesla pulls itself out of parking spot with no one behind the wheel using a feature called Summon. It drives itself on highways using Autopilot. When you arrive at your destination, it can record nearby activity while parked with a feature called Sentry Mode.

Anyone who played with this toy will also remember the sound it made. Once you slid the power button to the On position, you heard a constant whirring sound of plastic gears turning and twisting. And if you tried to push it past its boundaries, it twitched and protested with a jarring "CLICK … CLICK … CLICK." It wasn't just kids who found the Armatron so special. It was featured on the cover of the November/December 1982 issue of Robotics Age magazine, which noted that the 31.95