NerdNews

Google is introducing an AI chatbot feature to its Discover feed, allowing users to describe their preferences and receive personalized content. The feature will use AI to automatically tweak the feed and remember user preferences for future visits.

Waymo has revealed key details about the hardware powering its robotaxis, including a custom 5nm silicon chip. The chip is designed to handle massive amounts of sensor data and perform up to one quadrillion operations a second. Waymo's compute system is built to be responsive, ruggedized, and redundant, and is powered by a range of hardware suppliers including AMD, Micron, and Nvidia.

Meta's Pocket app allows users to create and share generative AI minigames, called 'gizmos', using prompts. The app is now available in the US and features a social media component, allowing users to save and repost gizmos. Gizmos can respond to touch and tilt, and include photos and songs.

The Nevada Transportation Authority has approved permits for Tesla, Uber, and Waymo to operate commercial robotaxi services in Clark County, with up to 8,000 vehicles to be deployed over the next 12 months. Tesla's permit allows for up to 5,000 robotaxis, while Waymo and Uber are approved for 1,000 each. The move is expected to change the city's workforce and transportation landscape.

A new study from Pew Research found that over one-third of web pages published after the release of ChatGPT show signs of being written by AI. The study analyzed nearly half a million English-language web pages and used Open Pangram's technology to detect AI authorship.

TerraPower's nuclear reactor is designed to power AI data centers with a secret weapon - energy storage. The reactor can store excess heat in a giant vat of molten sodium, allowing it to ramp up and down quickly to meet the demands of data centers. This approach takes the best of nuclear power and pairs it with an energy-storage technology, giving TerraPower an advantage in the race to power AI.

Vivodyne, a biotech startup, claims that current AI models lack the necessary data to cure cancer. They've developed a machine called HIVE that can grow human tissue and test drug candidates, generating causal biological data that can be used to train new AI models.

Tesla's Robotaxi fleet in Austin has begun operating without human safety monitors onboard, according to a report. This news comes from a crowdsourced web app called Robotaxi Tracker, which has monitored 170 rides in the past two weeks, all of which were unsupervised. This development is significant as it marks a milestone in Tesla's autonomous vehicle technology, although other companies like Waymo have already achieved similar feats.

DeepSeek Harness is an open-source execution runtime for constructing autonomous AI agents, allowing for modular and unbundled infrastructure. It features a micro-kernel architecture, interchangeable plugins, and an append-only event logging subsystem.

Micro1, an AI data startup, has expanded its gross annual run rate from $100M to $500M in 8 months. The company retains 60-70% of that figure, putting its net annual run rate between $150M and $200M. Micro1's growth is driven by the demand for unique AI training data from top labs and corporations.

Waymo's new Ojai vehicles, built on Chinese EVs from Zeekr, are now available for rides in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. The Ojai features a roomier interior, Gemini-powered touchscreen displays, and Waymo's sixth-generation autonomous driving system.

Next.js 16.3 features Instant Navigations, reduced dev memory usage by up to 90%, and faster builds. It also includes improvements to server-side rendering, type checking, and introduces a new set of tools for instant navigation. The update targets development experience and performance gains.

InfoQ has opened enrollment for the AI-Assisted Engineering Online Certification Program, a new online certification program facilitated by senior practitioners. The program covers what an AI agent is allowed to do, how to catch it when it's wrong, and how to prove to an organization that the code created is valid, scalable, and maintainable.

Phillip Mortimer argues that AI-generated code is too dense to read and becomes write-only. Tests define behavior and become documentation. Code is also disposable, making it easier to rewrite than debug. Humans can't review AI-generated code at scale, suggesting automation of reviews and self-healing software via observability.

Google has introduced a new 'Preferred Sources' button that allows readers to indicate their favorite sources, which can help drive more traffic to publishers' websites. This feature is part of Google's effort to mitigate the impact of AI-driven traffic losses on online publishers.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned federal agencies that threat actors are exploiting a critical MLflow vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-64849. This vulnerability allows attackers to remotely access internal services or cloud metadata configurations on unpatched instances. MLflow is an open-source AI engineering platform used by thousands of organizations to debug, evaluate, optimize, and monitor AI applications.

Amazon's Prime Air drone delivery service has had instances of packages being delivered into pools and ponds, highlighting a need for improved delivery location checks. The company's drones are set to reach 500 cities across the US, but this issue may lead to more problems. Amazon's drones currently check for people, pets, and vehicles before delivery, but maybe they should also check for water.

US Senators are pressing TikTok for details about an experiment that withheld a safety feature from millions of users, including a teen who died by suicide. The feature was meant to prevent 'filter bubbles' in the app's 'for you' feed. The senators are demanding answers about the experiment and whether the company prioritized engagement over user safety.

LG's FLiPP system eliminates metal masks in OLED manufacturing, allowing for brighter, sharper, and longer-lasting panels of nearly any size, with 1.6 times more brightness and 2.4 times longer lifespan, while reducing power consumption by 13 percent.

EE has launched Fast Lane, the UK's first commercial network slice, offering dedicated 5G+ connectivity for consumers and businesses during busy times. The service anticipates network congestion and seamlessly moves eligible users to a dedicated section of EE's 5G+ network to maintain performance.