Kalakshar US

Mark Zuckerberg has certainly come a long way in his relationship with President Donald Trump. Almost exactly a year after the president threatened the Meta CEO with imprisonment, the two sat side-by-side at a White House dinner, alongside numerous other tech CEOs.

The nearly three dozen CEOs and execs in attendance took turns praising and thanking Trump. But Zuckerberg’s comments were especially notable. In one moment that was widely shared on social media, Trump turns to Zuckerberg and asks “how much are you spending, would say, over the next few years?” Zuckerberg responded that it was “probably going to be something like, I don’t know, at least $600 billion through [20]28 in the US.” Trump seemed to approve. “That’s a lot, thank you Mark, it’s great to have you.”  

But it was a hot mic moment captured later between the two that was especially telling. Zuckerberg, turning to Trump, apologizes and says “sorry, I wasn’t ready …I wasn’t sure what number you wanted to go with.” 

You can watch the whole moment play out in the clip below:

While Zuckerberg has spent the last year trying to curry favor with Trump, their interactions show just how much those efforts have been paying off. A year ago, the then-former president was threatening the Facebook founder with jail time. Now, after donating $1 million to his inauguration, changing Meta’s policies and renouncing DEI, adding a pro-Trump booster to his board, paying $25 million to settle a four-year-old lawsuit  and several private meetings, the two seem to have patched things up. Not only is Zuckerberg promising to spend massive amounts on money in the US on AI infrastructure, he’s seemingly confirming that Trump approves of the specific number.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/zuckerberg-caught-on-hot-mic-telling-trump-i-wasnt-sure-how-much-to-promise-to-spend-on-ai-in-the-us-211915608.html?src=rss 

Unity is updating its game engine to support native screen readers in both macOS and Windows. The feature is available now in the Unity 6000.3.0a5 alpha, and should make the process of making games accessible for blind players cheaper for developers, Can I Play That? writes.

Screen readers narrate on-screen menus so blind and low-vision players can navigate a game or a piece of software without additional assistance. Typically, screen reading software is custom-built for each game, which can make them resource-intensive for developers to implement. “Building something like that from scratch has to be decided upon early in development so you have the time/resources allocated to make it properly,” Steve Saylor, an accessibility consultant and creator, shared on Bluesky. “Having it in-engine can mean the heavy lifting is done for you, and the cost of time/resources now is significantly lower.”

Unity previously offered APIs for both Android and iOS’ built-in screen readers in its Unity 6.0 release, but hadn’t yet added support for Windows Narrator or macOS VoiceOver. With this new alpha and its eventual release as Unity 6.3, developers creating games with Unity will have access to a native screen reader in all of the engine’s major platforms. Considering how popular Unity is as a game engine, that could vastly improve the accessibility of future games.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/unity-developers-can-now-tap-into-system-screen-reader-tools-on-macos-and-windows-200348860.html?src=rss 

The European Commission has announced that it will fine Google €2.95 billion, or around $3.5 billion, for violating European Union antitrust laws and “distorting competition in the advertising technology industry.” The decision follows a similar ruling from earlier in 2025, where a US federal judge concluded that Google maintains a monopoly in online advertising technology.

Google displays ads in search results, but it also has a dominant position as a software provider for online advertisers and publishers looking to sell ad space and place ads. The Commission’s main issue is with the way Google’s ad buying tools (Google Ads and DV 360) interact with its ad exchange software (AdX) and ad publisher servers (DFP) in seemingly preferential ways. Google appears to favor its AdX ad exchange by “informing AdX in advance of the value of the best bid from competitors which it had to beat to win the auction,” according to the Commission. It also found that “Google Ads was avoiding competing ad exchanges and mainly placing bids on AdX,” maintaining the dominance of Google’s ad exchange even if an alternative is a better option for advertisers.

The Commission is giving Google 60 days to share how it plans to address those issues or face an “appropriate remedy” for violating antitrust law. That could just be the fine, but might also include a forced sale of some or all of Google’s adtech business.

Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s Global Head of Regulatory Affairs, shared that the company will appeal the decision in the following statement provided to Engadget: 

“The European Commission’s decision about our ad tech services is wrong and we will appeal. It imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money. There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before.”

$3.5 billion is a staggering amount of money, but it’s not technically the most Google’s been charged for violating EU laws. In 2018, the company was fined $5.04 billion for forcing mobile network operators to pre-install Google apps on phones. Though Google has been under an increasing amount of scrutiny in the last decade for its business practices, it so far hasn’t faced many structural remedies for what has been called anticompetitive behavior.

For example, a US court found Google was a monopolist in online search in 2024, but a judge recently ruled that the company wouldn’t have to sell off Chrome or stop paying Apple to make Google the iPhone’s default search engine. EU regulators have historically been more persistent than their US counterparts, and the European Commission is reportedly investigating Google for at least one other advertising-related issue, but it remains to be seen if there’s any punishment that will actually faze the company.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/eu-fines-google-35-billion-over-adtech-antitrust-violations-183701640.html?src=rss 

Anthropic will pay a record-breaking $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit piracy lawsuit brought by authors and publishers. The settlement is the largest-ever payout for a copyright case in the United States.

The AI company behind the Claude chatbot reached a settlement in the case last week, but terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed at the time. Now, The New York Times reports that the 500,000 authors involved in the case will get $3,000 per work.

“In June, the District Court issued a landmark ruling on AI development and copyright law, finding that Anthropic’s approach to training AI models constitutes fair use,” Anthropic’s Deputy General Counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement. “Today’s settlement, if approved, will resolve the plaintiffs’ remaining legacy claims. We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems.”

Developing…

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-will-pay-a-record-breaking-15-billion-to-settle-copyright-lawsuit-with-authors-192800292.html?src=rss