An update to Gmail begins rolling out soon, readying Google's premier email app for all your upcoming holiday purchases. Gmail has been surfacing shipment tracking for some time now, but Google will now add a separate view just for remembering the things you have ordered. And if you want to buy more things, there's a new interface for that, too. Yay, capitalism.

Gmail is quite good at recognizing purchase information in the form of receipts and shipping notifications. Currently, the app (and web interface) lists upcoming shipments at the top of the inbox. It will continue to do that when you have a delivery within the next 24 hours, but the new Purchases tab brings it all together in one glanceable view.

Purchases will be available in the navigation list alongside all the other stock Gmail labels. When selected, Gmail will filter your messages to only show receipts, order status, and shipping details. This makes it easier to peruse your recent orders and search within this subset of emails. This could be especially handy in this day and age of murky international shipping timelines.

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The United States has emerged as the largest investor in commercial spyware —a global industry that has enabled the covert surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders, politicians, diplomats, and others, posing grave threats to human rights and national security .

In 2024, 20 new US-based spyware investors were identified, bringing the total number of American backers of this technology to 31. This growth has largely outpaced other major investing countries such as Israel, Italy, and the United Kingdom, according to a new report published today by the Atlantic Council.

The study surveyed 561 entities across 46 countries between 1992 and 2024, identifying 34 new investors. This brings the total to 128, up from 94 in the dataset published last year.

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The first 21 satellites in a constellation that could become a cornerstone for the Pentagon's Golden Dome missile defense shield successfully launched from California Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The Falcon 9 took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 7:12 am PDT (10:12 am EDT; 14:12 UTC) and headed south over the Pacific Ocean, heading for an orbit over the poles before releasing the 21 military-owned satellites to begin several weeks of activations and checkouts.

These 21 satellites will boost themselves to a final orbit at an altitude of roughly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers). The Pentagon plans to launch 133 more satellites over the next nine months to complete the build-out of the Space Development Agency's first-generation, or Tranche 1, constellation of missile tracking and data relay satellites.

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Verizon lost an attempt to overturn a $46.9 million fine for selling customer location data without its users' consent. The US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit rejected Verizon's challenge in a ruling issued today.

The Federal Communications Commission fined the three major carriers last year for violations revealed in 2018 . The companies sued the FCC in three different courts, with varying results.

AT&T beat the FCC in the reliably conservative US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, while T-Mobile lost in the District of Columbia Circuit. Although FCC Chairman Brendan Carr voted against the fine last year, when the commission had a Democratic majority, his FCC urged the courts to uphold the Biden-era decisions .

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As part of its unprovoked invasion, Russia has been firing massed waves of drones and missiles into Ukraine for years, though the tempo has been raised dramatically in recent months. Barrages of 700-plus drones now regularly attack Ukraine during overnight raids. Russia also appears to have upped the ante dramatically by sending at least 19 drones into Poland last night, some of which were shot down by NATO forces .

Many of these drones are Shahed/Geran types built with technology imported from Iran, and they have recently gained the ability to fly higher, making shootdowns more difficult. Given the low cost of the drones (estimates suggest they cost a few tens of thousands of dollars apiece, and many are simply decoys without warheads), hitting them with multimillion-dollar missiles from traditional air defense batteries makes little sense and would quickly exhaust missile stocks.

So Ukraine has adopted widespread electronic warfare to disrupt control systems and navigation. Drones not forced off their path are fought with mobile anti-aircraft guns , aircraft, and interceptor drones , many launched from mobile fire teams patrolling Ukraine during the night.

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Someone might want to tell David Zaslav to read the room. Despite people’s ongoing frustration with the rising prices of streaming services—and just about everything else —the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) thinks that there is reason for HBO Max to charge more.

Zaslav shared his sentiments while speaking at the Goldman Sachs Cornucopia + Technology conference today in San Francisco. The Hollywood Reporter quoted Zaslav as saying:

The fact that this is quality—and that’s true across our company, motion picture, TV production [and] streaming quality—we all ... think that gives us a chance to raise price. We think we’re way underpriced.

Today, HBO Max starts at $10 per month with ads, $17/month for no ads, and $21/month for no ads and premium features (4K streaming, Dolby Atmos, and the ability to stream from more devices simultaneously and perform more downloads). The streaming platform has raised prices twice since launching (as Max) in May 2023 . In June 2024, the Standard, ad-free plan went from $16/month to $17/month, and annual subscription fees went up by $20 or $10, depending on the plan. Subscription fees also increased in January 2023.

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Susan Monarez, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who was ousted last month after mere weeks in the role , is set to testify before the Senate next week about what was behind her dramatic downfall, as well as the ongoing chaos at the public health agency under health secretary and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In a hearing last Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee , a combative Kennedy repeatedly called Monarez a liar and made the incredible claim that he fired her after he asked her directly if she was a trustworthy person and she responded "no." While Senators clearly struggled to believe that explanation, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) wryly noted that Kennedy should have asked her the question before having the Senate confirm her for the role.

In an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal the same day as Kennedy's testimony, Monarez gave a different account of her firing—one corroborated by independent reporting—saying that she was ousted after she refused Kennedy's directives to fire senior CDC staff and pre-approve vaccine recommendations from an advisory committee he has stacked with fellow anti-vaccine advocates.

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A prominent US Senator has called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Microsoft for “gross cybersecurity negligence,” citing the company’s continued use of an obsolete and vulnerable form of encryption that Windows uses by default.

In a letter to FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) said an investigation his office conducted into the 2024 ransomware breach of the health care giant Ascension found that default use of the RC4 encryption cipher was a direct cause. The breach led to the theft of medical records of 5.6 million patients.

It's the second time in as many years that Wyden has used the word “negligence” to describe Microsoft's security practices.

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Google is one of the most ardent proponents of generative AI technology, as evidenced by the recent launch of the Pixel 10 series. The phones were announced with more than 20 new AI experiences, according to Google. However, one of them is already being pulled from the company's phones. If you go looking for your Daily Hub, you may be disappointed. Not that disappointed, though, as it has been pulled because it didn't do very much.

Many of Google's new AI features only make themselves known in specific circumstances, for example when Magic Cue finds an opportunity to suggest an address or calendar appointment based on your screen context. The Daily Hub, on the other hand, asserted itself multiple times throughout the day. It appeared at the top of the Google Discover feed, as well as in the At a Glance widget right at the top of the home screen.

Just a few weeks after release, Google has pulled the Daily Hub preview from Pixel 10 devices. You will no longer see it in Google Discover nor in the home screen widget. After being spotted by 9to5Google , the company has issued a statement explaining its plans.

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