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Google Earth adds old Street View captures to rewind time from the street level

Google Earth can display a Street View timeline of certain locations, like New York’s Vessel sculpture. Google Earth will now let you look at historical imagery from Street View. The update, which comes as part of the tool’s 20th anniversary, allows you to see how a location has changed over time. Google Earth already offers the ability to switch to Street View while viewing satellite imagery, but now you can look through images captured across different years — just like you can in Google Maps. Last year, Google launched the ability to view historical satellite and aerial imagery, which was previously only available in the Earth Pro desktop app. Google is also planning to roll out a new feature that gives professional users “AI-driven insights” about the planet. That includes information about tree canopy coverage, allowing users to see where an area is more heavily shaded and which places might benefit from cooling approaches. It will also offer access to land surface temperat...
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How AI infiltrated perfume

At a pristine, multimillion-dollar lab on the Manhattan waterfront, just down the street from a men's homeless shelter and the medical examiner's office, a slice of summer plum is being converted into fragrance code. This is the work of Osmo, a fragrance tech startup claiming to build artificial olfactory intelligence. Osmo has parlayed this innovation into offering turnkey fragrance compounding that promises a 48-hour sample turnaround from initial client prompt. In the time it takes your Amazon Prime order to arrive, you may now order a custom perfume. Traditionally, creating a fragrance isn't fast. After a client provides a brief - usually a mood, memory, or concept - a perfumer begins weeks or months of formulation trials, compounding and revising dozens of modifications, or "mods." Each must settle before it can be evaluated for balance, projection, and drydown. Raw materials often need years of cultivation. Bottling, regulatory reviews, packaging, and tes...

Waymo’s robotaxis are now available on the Uber app in Atlanta

Uber customers in Atlanta now have the option of hailing a driverless Waymo robotaxi, the company announced today. Atlanta is the second market, after Austin , to play host to Uber and Waymo’s burgeoning autonomous ridehail partnership . At launch, Waymo’s vehicles will be available exclusively on the Uber app in Atlanta. The two companies first announced a deal to put Waymo’s robotaxis on the Uber app back in 2023 , indicating that Austin would be first, followed by Atlanta. Waymo’s own ridehail app, Waymo One, will not be operational in Atlanta; customers who open Waymo One will be redirected to Uber’s app. Waymo’s vehicles will only operate within a 65-square-mile service area that includes Atlanta’s Downtown, Buckhead, and Capitol View neighborhoods. The vehicles don’t drive on highways yet, nor will they make trips to the airport. Another thing to consider: simply calling an Uber in Waymo’s service area doesn’t guarantee a robotaxi will show up. Like in Austin, the companies wi...

Verizon adopts Google’s Gemini AI to help customers solve ‘complex’ issues

Verizon is trying to streamline its customer service experience by overhauling it with more chatbots and AI tools . The My Verizon app is being relaunched today with a new “AI-powered Verizon Assistant” that aims to help consumers “manage upgrades, add new lines, ask billing questions, take advantage of savings, and more,” according to the telecom giant’s announcement. The idea is that this chatbot service will be able to quickly complete tasks that typically need to be handled by human service reps, providing a more efficient and flexible experience for customers. Dory Butler, senior vice president of customer experience at Verizon, told The Verge that the Verizon AI assistant will transfer customers to a human agent either upon request or if it’s unable to handle the enquiry it’s been given. Butler says the company had “worked very closely with Google” to prevent the Verizon AI agent from hallucinating by creating small language models that are personalized to Verizon services an...

Death Stranding 2 is much more approachable, if you’re prepared

It took me a long time to appreciate Death Stranding . I'm not even sure I fully got it after my initial playthrough, which was equal parts mesmerizing and dull . The game, in which you play as a postapocalyptic delivery man in a world ravaged by a breach with the afterlife, demands a lot from players. The gameplay is fiddly and frustrating, and the storyline is often inscrutable, at times seeming to make no sense. While it borrows elements from walking sims and stealth games, there's nothing like Death Stranding , and so it's hard to calibrate your expectations accordingly. It really wasn't until the end of the game that I felt I finally understood what director Hideo Kojima and his team were going for. And with all of that out of the way, playing the sequel was a more rewarding experience. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is a direct follow-up. You once again control Sam (played by Norman Reedus), who now is living in hiding with his adopted child, Lou, after previ...

Nothing Headphone 1 leaks show quirky translucent design

Its certainly an aquired taste. | Image: nothing_fan_account While Nothing is gearing up to officially unveil its first over-ear headphones next week, leaked images and videos have given us a good idea of what they look like. The Nothing Headphone 1 sports an unusual design that appears consistently across leaks from multiple sources, featuring a squircle earcup with the company’s signature transparent elements and support for what looks like a 3.5mm audio cable. Nothing announced in a video last month that it would be launching over-ear headphones in “summer 2025,” but remained largely tight-lipped about what to expect. What little was teased — including Nothing’s Tom Ridley saying the company was making “a more interesting looking pair of headphones that say something about you,” and Adam Bates suggesting its buttons would feature distinct designs for each control function — appears to have been realized in these design leaks. View Link Images shared by Nothing_fan_blog on In...

Tesla’s robotaxi is live: here are some of the first reactions.

A vehicle Tesla is using for robotaxi testing purposes on Oltorf Street in Austin, Texas, US, on Sunday, June 22, 2025. Tesla finally did the damn thing. The company launched its hotly anticipated robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, June 22nd — and we’re now starting to see some of the first reactions roll in. But first, we have to get a few important caveats out of the way. Tellingly, the service is not open to the general public, nor is it completely “unsupervised,” as Elon Musk once promised . The vehicles will include Tesla-employed “safety monitors” in the front passenger seat who can react to a dangerous situation by hitting a kill switch. Other autonomous vehicle operators would place safety monitors in the driver or passenger seats, but typically only during the testing phase. Tesla is unique in its use of safety monitors during commercial service. The rides are limited to a geofenced area of the city that has been thoroughly mapped by the company. And in ...