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Here are some highly rated series to stream, plus a look at what's new in January.
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Meta's Threads is pulling further ahead of Elon Musk's X on mobile, based on recent estimates from analytics firm Similarweb, Forbes reports. In the first stretch of January, Threads averaged roughly 143 million daily active users worldwide on mobile devices, compared with about 126 million for X.
Similarweb's year-over-year snapshot shows Threads growing sharply, up 37.8 percent year-over-year, while X's daily mobile audience fell 11.9 percent across the same period. The picture is more mixed in the US, where X still holds a narrow edge on mobile. Similarweb data puts X at about 21.2 million daily active US mobile users in early January versus roughly 19.5 million for Threads.
However, Threads' US mobile usage has risen substantially faster over the past year, surging almost 42 percent to X's 18 percent. X remains far larger on desktop, where it draws around 150 million daily users or visits worldwide, while Threads' web presence sits at just 9 million.
Forbes also reported on Similarweb data for Bluesky, another competing text-based platform started by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. Dorsey left the board in the summer of 2024, later telling Pirate Wires he believed Bluesky was "literally repeating all the mistakes we made as a company," in reference to Twitter
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 Meta's Threads has now reportedly surpassed its rival X (formerly Twitter) in daily mobile usage globally.
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 Apple's iPhone 18 Pro models will have a front camera cutout in the top-left corner of the screen alongside a new under-display Face ID system, which will see the Dynamic Island software feature relocated to the same corner. That's according to the latest YouTube video from Front Page Tech's Jon Prosser.
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A new report shows that only 7 percent of new-car buyers in the US completed their purchase online, despite a major push by automakers, Amazon, and others to move past the dealership.
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Fallout, The Girlfriend, and The Mighty Nein are just a few of the shows you should be watching on Amazon Prime Video this week.
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In another attempt to reduce our attention spans to mush, TikTok has released the PineDrama app, which offers serialized drama series that are roughly a minute per episode. As first spotted by Business Insider, the app is designed exactly like TikTok, but instead of trendy dance videos, you can scroll through and watch "micro dramas."
For those new to the category, micro dramas are bite-sized TV shows shot in vertical video and available in minute-long episodes. Don't expect any nominations for Best Original Screenplay with series like The Officer Fell For Me or Married to my past life's nemesis, since they typically offer soap opera vibes with cliffhangers that keep users scrolling to the next episode. The app is designed to keep people on it with a Discover tab, a place to save favorites and the ability to react in real time alongside other viewers.
Right now, the micro dramas on PineDrama are all free to watch and don't have any ads. It's unclear if TikTok will introduce any costs or ads to the app, since other micro drama options like DramaBox or ReelShort have a paid structure. Late last year, TikTok also introduced a way to watch micro dramas within its own app, with a section called
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 OpenAI plans to start testing ads inside of ChatGPT "in the coming weeks." In a blog post published Friday, the company said adult users in the US of its free and Go tiers (more on the latter in a moment) would start seeing sponsored products and services appear below their conversations with its chatbot. "Ads will be clearly labeled and separated from the organic answer," OpenAI said, adding any sponsored spots would not influence the answers ChatGPT generates. "Answers are optimized based on what's most helpful to you."
OpenAI says people won't see ads appear when they're talking to ChatGPT about sensitive subjects like their health, mental state of mind or current politics. The company also won't show ads to teens under the age of 18. As for privacy, OpenAI states it won't share or sell your data with advertisers. The company will also give users the option to disable ad personalization and clear the data it uses to generate sponsored responses. "We'll always offer a way to not see ads in ChatGPT, including a paid tier that's ad-free," OpenAI adds. Users can dismiss ads, at which point they'll be asked to explain why they didn't engage with it.
Users will be able to ask follow-up questions about sponsored content. OpenAI"Given what AI can do, we're excited to develop new experiences over time that people find more helpful and relevant than any other ads. Conversational interfaces create p
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Those are just some of the things that Google's Gemini have been reporting in its Home Briefs—the summaries it can produce of the daily goings-on detected by Nest security cameras and other connected smart home devices—and some Gemini for Home users say they're getting thoroughly creeped out by the briefings, particularly with Halloween right around the corner.
"Throughout the morning, several instances of people in black cloaks or robes were observed standing in the yard," read a Home Brief screenshot posed by a Google Home user on Reddit. "The unusual presence of individuals in black cloaks or robes continued into the afternoon, with multiple sighting in the yard and approaching the driveway."
Talk about a spooky report, but the reality turned out to be pretty innocuous.
"It's hilarious, I got this summary today," the user said. "For the ‘black cloaks or robes,' I have Halloween decorations that the camera sees."
The user allowed that the creepy description was more or less "accurate," but that another event reported in the briefing ("a person was seen walking by the playset in the Backyard") didn't happen: "The person by the playset doesn't exist, the clip showed nobody."
In a similar occurrence, another Gemini for Home users posted a
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In one 30-second clip, you've caught someone breaking the law-but you might also have broken one yourself.
Smart cameras are everywhere now—mounted on porches, tucked under eaves, perched on fences, and watching over driveways, garages, and balconies. They're cheaper, easier to install, and produce sharper video than ever. But with that convenience comes a degree of legal uncertainty. Can you record anything your camera sees? What about what it hears? Can a neighbor make you take it down? And what if you rent instead of own?
We'll break down what the law actually says about surveillance at home—what's legally allowable, where things get complicated, and how to protect your home without accidentally violating someone else's privacy.
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