Late Tuesday, President Trump announced on social media that he had convinced Coca-Cola to agree to use "REAL Cane Sugar" in Coke, in lieu of the current, cheaper sweetener used in the US version of the drink: high-fructose corn syrup.

"I'd like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them—You’ll see. It's just better!" Trump wrote .

On Wednesday, Coca-Cola failed to confirm that supposed agreement. On its website, the beverage giant posted a brief, vague statement saying "We appreciate President Trump’s enthusiasm for our iconic Coca‑Cola brand" and that "More details on new innovative offerings" will be announced soon.

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Logophiles are "devastated" after Dictionary.com deleted their logs of favorited words that they carefully crafted for years. The company deleted all accounts, as well as the only ways to use Dictionary.com without seeing ads —even if you previously paid for an ad-free experience.

Dictionary.com offers a free dictionary through its website and free Android and iOS apps. It used to offer paid-for mobile apps, called Dictionary.com Pro, that let users set up accounts, use the app without ads, and enabled other features (like grammar tips and science and rhyming dictionaries) that are gone now. Dictionary.com's premium apps also let people download an offline dictionary (its free apps used to let you buy a downloadable dictionary as a one-time purchase), but offline the dictionaries aren't available anymore.

Accounts axed abruptly

About a year ago, claims of Dictionary.com’s apps being buggy surfaced online . We also found at least one person claiming that they were unable to buy an ad-free upgrade at that time.

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Researchers from Cisco’s Talos security team have uncovered a malware-as-a-service operator that used public GitHub accounts as a channel for distributing an assortment of malicious software to targets.

The use of GitHub gave the malware-as-a-service (MaaS) a reliable and easy-to-use platform that’s greenlit in many enterprise networks that rely on the code repository for the software they develop. GitHub removed the three accounts that hosted the malicious payloads shortly after being notified by Talos.

“In addition to being an easy means of file hosting, downloading files from a GitHub repository may bypass Web filtering that is not configured to block the GitHub domain,” Talos researchers Chris Neal and Craig Jackson wrote Thursday . “While some organizations can block GitHub in their environment to curb the use of open-source offensive tooling and other malware, many organizations with software development teams require GitHub access in some capacity. In these environments, a malicious GitHub download may be difficult to differentiate from regular web traffic.”

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If you're the owner of an Android phone and live in a seismically active region, there's a chance your phone has popped up an unusual warning. Not one that asks for permission to share personal information, or potential malware, but something far more serious: There's an earthquake nearby, and you have up to a minute or two to get to a safer location.

Starting in the US in 2020 and expanding internationally since, the system is called Android Earthquake Alert (AEA), and it's on by default in most Android phones. And today, Google has a paper in Science that describes how the system works, how the company has improved it, and what it has seen during the first few years of operation, including what caused a handful of false alarms.

Shaking things up

Smartphones come with accelerometers, small devices that enable them to sense changes in motion. This is how they manage to do tricks like figuring out how many steps you're walking. If your phone is sitting quietly on a table, however, the accelerometer shouldn't be registering much significant motion. But anything from you walking across the room to a truck going by outside can cause vibrations that your phone's accelerometer can pick up. As can the often less subtle vibrations of earthquakes.

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Last year, Medicare spent over $10 billion on dubious bandages—called skin substitutes—that come with eye-popping prices. Some are made from medical waste, like dried bits of discarded placentas or infant foreskin, and many have not gone through rigorous testing to prove they offer any advantage over standard bandages. Yet, in some cases, Medicare reportedly paid for bandages priced at more than $21,000 per square inch. And individual patients have quickly racked up bills over $1 million just for their bandaging—some who puzzlingly didn't even have a wound.

Private insurance companies largely do not cover these bandages, declaring many of them " unproven and not medically necessary ." But Medicare's current coverage seems to tie back to a rule change in 2020 that opened the door to broader use of them—and the market for these dubious skin substitutes, often used for diabetic ulcers, exploded. Since 2023, more than 100 new products have been introduced, according to an investigative report from The New York Times in April .

The Times investigation highlighted two big reasons why they're so pricy: First, due to an oddity in pricing rules, Medicare initially sets the reimbursement rate for the bandages at whatever price the manufacturer chooses—for the first six months at least. The second is that doctors are granted steep discounts, incentivizing them to use the pricy products for bigger reimbursements. After the initial six-month period, Medicare reimburses only what doctors pay after manufacturer discounts. However, some bandage makers get around this by just rolling out new products that are suspiciously similar to the old ones, maintaining the large reimbursement rates.

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On Thursday, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Agent , a new feature that lets the company's AI assistant complete multi-step tasks by controlling its own web browser. The update merges capabilities from OpenAI's earlier Operator tool and the Deep Research feature, allowing ChatGPT to navigate websites, run code, and create documents while users maintain control over the process.

The feature marks OpenAI's latest entry into what the tech industry calls " agentic AI "—systems that can take autonomous multi-step actions on behalf of the user. OpenAI says users can ask Agent to handle requests like assembling and purchasing a clothing outfit for a particular occasion, creating PowerPoint slide decks, planning meals, or updating financial spreadsheets with new data.

The system uses a combination of web browsers, terminal access, and API connections to complete these tasks, including "ChatGPT Connectors" that integrate with apps like Gmail and GitHub.

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Google is hosting its annual Pixel event on August 20, which will likely feature the Pixel 10 series and the Pixel Watch 4. The new Pixel phones are expected to retain the physical design of last year's phones , but a new report claims Google's smartwatch is getting an important hardware upgrade—it may finally be repairable.

Google has stuck with the same design for all three generations of the Pixel Watch, making changes only to internal components, displays, and charging. Even with the year-to-year design consistency, Google has neglected to make replacement parts available—not to consumers and not to repair shops. A report from Android Headlines claims that Google will make changes to the construction that will allow for repairs.

The Pixel Watch, Watch 2, and the current Watch 3 have the same sleek construction, featuring a curved glass cover that merges seamlessly with the aluminum housing. It looks great, but there's no easy way to disassemble it. Even if you manage to get inside, it's nigh impossible to find replacement parts. We don't yet know if the supposed redesign will make the Pixel Watch 4 look different, but the report claims it has been designed specifically with repairs in mind.

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A former cop in the United Kingdom was sentenced to five and a half years in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to covering up his theft of 50 bitcoins seized during an investigation into the now-defunct illicit dark web marketplace Silk Road.

In 2014, the former UK National Crime Agency (NCA) officer, Paul Chowles, assisted in the arrest of Thomas White, a man "who had launched Silk Road 2.0 less than a month after the FBI had shut down the original site in 2013," the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said in a press release .

Chowles was tapped to analyze and extract "relevant data and cryptocurrency" from White's seized devices, specifically due to Chowles' reputation for being "technically minded and very aware of the dark web and cryptocurrencies," CPS said.

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Karl Urban takes a break from The Boys to play a washed-up Johnny Cage in the trailer for Mortal Kombat II , a sequel to 2021's Mortal Kombat reboot and the fourth live-action film in the franchise based on the 1990s video game series. It comes one day after Warner Bros. released a (very entertaining) fake trailer for a new in-universe, faux 1990s Johnny Cage movie, Uncaged Fury . (Cage's prior fake film credits apparently include Cool Hand Cage, Hard to Cage , and Rebel Without a Cage .)

The first live-action Mortal Kombat film turns 30 this year. It was a box office success but a critical failure, although it has since evolved into a campy cult classic—and Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa is still considered by many to be the definitive portrayal of sorcerer Shang Tsung.  A 1997 sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation , however, bombed both critically and financially. And Midway, the game publisher, filed for bankruptcy soon after.

However, Warner Bros. bought the rights and eventually tapped Simon McQuoid to direct a reboot more than 20 years after the original's release, focusing on MMA fighter Cole Young (Lewis Tan). The 2021 film earned mixed reviews, but performed sufficiently well at the box office for Warner Bros. to green-light a sequel, also directed by McQuoid. The 2021 film ended with Cole heading to Los Angeles to look for martial arts movie star Johnny Cage, who is the main protagonist of Mortal Kombat II .

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