Gmail already adds an Unsubscribe button to every promotional email or newsletter you receive in your inbox. That way, you can stop someone from sending you emails without first visiting their website. The service is now going one step forward, giving you a single place to manage all your subscriptions, and an option to unsubscribe from each with just a tap—kind of like the Subscriptions screen on YouTube.Manage Subscriptions is rolling out nowThere's a clear advantage to the new Manage Subscriptions feature. With it, you no longer need to go through your entire inbox to find all the newsletters, as Gmail will instead surface them for you. You'll see the names and email addresses of senders of both newsletter subscriptions and promotional emails.The feature is rolling out on Android, iOS, and on the web, but according to Google, it's going to be a gradual rollout, so it might take time to show up on your devices. For example, I can access it on Gmail's iPad app, but not on my iPhone or the web, even though they're all logged into the same account.How to easily unsubscribe to email newsletters en masseFirst, let's find a list of all your subscriptions. To do this on iPhone or Android, tap the three-lined Menu in the top left, and choose Manage Subscriptions. On the Gmail website, you'll have to click the More button to expand the sidebar options and find Manage Subscriptions. Credit: Khamosh Pathak You'll now see a list of all the people who send you newsletters, and an estimate of recently received emails. If you tap on a sender name, Gmail will show you a list of all of their recent emails. To unsubscribe from a newsletter, tap Unsubscribe on the right (the button that looks like a mail icon with a minus sign). Credit: Khamosh Pathak Gmail will then ask you for a confirmation. Just tap Unsubscribe, and you're done. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Gmail will tell you that it has unsubscribed you from the newsletter on your behalf, but that it might take a few days to stop receiving those emails. For most newsletters, the ones that have a clear-cut Unsubscribe button, this is how it will work. But in some cases, Gmail won't be able to unsubscribe automatically on your behalf.In such cases, you'll see Go to website instead, where Gmail will open the website for confirmation. But that's just one extra tap, and is still easy to do. Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Amazon’s Project Kuiper is reportedly way behind schedule, according to an investigation by Bloomberg. This is the company’s satellite internet service, which intends to rival SpaceX and Starlink. The issue seems to be one of scale, as the company has had trouble increasing production of the actual satellites. The reporting indicates that the Kuiper team has only managed to manufacture a few dozen of these satellites. As a comparison, there are currently over 7,000 Starlink satellites in orbit. The initial production of the Kuiper satellites was delayed until the tail-end of last year, so Amazon hasn’t had too much time to ramp things up. Beta testing didn’t start until earlier this year. Amazon had planned for an initial launch on April 8 for 27 satellites, but that got delayed until April 28. Project Kuiper hopes to eventually provide broadband connectivity to at least 400 million households, in addition to providing service in remote areas. However, it needs to launch over 3,000 satellites to reach that goal. Additionally, it secured a government contract with a deadline to put 1,600 satellites in orbit by next summer. Insiders suggest that it will probably have to seek an extension from the FCC. "We’ve designed some of the most advanced communications satellites ever built, and our primary objective is to build and launch enough of them to begin delivering service to customers later this year," an Amazon spokesperson told Seeking Alpha. "Our manufacturing schedule is on track to support this target, and we’ll continue to increase our production and launch rates as we begin a full-scale deployment of our network." It did manage to launch a pair of prototype satellites into space in late 2023. This was followed by successful tests of an optical mesh network that linked the two satellites in low Earth orbit.  The company is scheduled to conduct a number of launches throughout the year, with help from Arianespace, Blue Origin and SpaceX. United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, will handle the April 28 launch. Amazon hasn’t indicated why satellite production has hit this hiccup. We reached out to the company and will update this post when we learn more.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/amazons-starlink-rival-project-kuiper-is-reportedly-way-behind-schedule-153514471.html?src=rss

More people worldwide will be seeing ads on Threads in the future. Back in January, Meta launched a small test of ads visible to a subset of users in the US and Japan, which included a handful of brands. Threads was completely ad-free since it became available a year-and-a-half before that, though Meta had been planning to put ads on the service months before the test began. Now, Meta is rolling out ads on Threads to over 30 countries globally. That means the advertisements will reach a bigger percentage of its 300 million users, though it will be interesting to see if their rollout will have any impact on the service's steady growth.  Meta didn't list out those 30 countries, and it also didn't say how often ads will show up in people's feeds. Like in the initial test period though, the advertisements will appear in between organic content or posts from people and friends users follow. Meta is opening up ads on Threads to all its eligible advertisers around the world, as well, so users will be seeing placements from more companies, including ones local to their countries. The company told us that it's adopting a phased approach to its rollout, so advertisements might appear more and more frequently on the service as time goes on.  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-expands-ads-to-threads-users-in-over-30-countries-150535654.html?src=rss

Jenna Ortega's goth teen queen is back in first trailer for Netflix's Wednesday season 2.

Telegram's CEO, Pavel Durov, reacts to the widespread push for creating encryption backdoors, reaffirming the company's commitment to users' privacy and security.

Elon Musk said the future of the EV maker is autonomous cars and vast numbers of autonomous humanoid robots. 

Meta said that all "eligible advertisers globally" will be able to run ads on Threads after initial January testing with a few U.S. and Japanese companies.

Harmful bleaching of the world’s coral has grown to include 84% of the ocean’s reefs in the most intense event of its kind in recorded history, the International Coral Reef Initiative announced Wednesday.It’s the fourth global bleaching event since 1998, and has now surpassed bleaching from 2014-17 that hit some two-thirds of reefs, said the ICRI, a mix of more than 100 governments, non-governmental organizations and others. And it’s not clear when the current crisis, which began in 2023 and is blamed on warming oceans, will end.“We may never see the heat stress that causes bleaching dropping below the threshold that triggers a global event,” said Mark Eakin, executive secretary for the International Coral Reef Society and retired coral monitoring chief for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.“We’re looking at something that’s completely changing the face of our planet and the ability of our oceans to sustain lives and livelihoods,” Eakin said.Last year was Earth’s hottest year on record, and much of that is going into oceans. The average annual sea surface temperature of oceans away from the poles was a record 20.87 degrees Celsius (69.57 degrees Fahrenheit).That’s deadly to corals, which are key to seafood production, tourism and protecting coastlines from erosion and storms. Coral reefs are sometimes dubbed “rainforests of the sea” because they support high levels of biodiversity—approximately 25% of all marine species can be found in, on and around coral reefs.Coral get their bright colors from the colorful algae that live inside them and are a food source for the corals. Prolonged warmth causes the algae to release toxic compounds, and the coral eject them. A stark white skeleton is left behind, and the weakened coral is at heightened risk of dying.The bleaching event has been so severe that NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program has had to add levels to its bleaching alert scale to account for the growing risk of coral death.Efforts are underway to conserve and restore coral. One Dutch lab has worked with coral fragments, including some taken from off the coast of the Seychelles, to propagate them in a zoo so that they might be used someday to repopulate wild coral reefs if needed. Other projects, including one off Florida, have worked to rescue corals endangered by high heat and nurse them back to health before returning them to the ocean.But scientists say it’s essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet, such as carbon dioxide and methane.“The best way to protect coral reefs is to address the root cause of climate change. And that means reducing the human emissions that are mostly from burning of fossil fuels . . . everything else is looking more like a Band-Aid rather than a solution,” Eakin said.“I think people really need to recognize what they’re doing . . . inaction is the kiss of death for coral reefs,” said Melanie McField, co-chair of the Caribbean Steering Committee for the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, a network of scientists that monitors reefs throughout the world.The group’s update comes as President Donald Trump has moved aggressively in his second term to boost fossil fuels and roll back clean energy programs, which he says is necessary for economic growth.“We’ve got a government right now that is working very hard to destroy all of these ecosystems . . . removing these protections is going to have devastating consequences,” Eakin said. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. —Isabella O’Malley, Associated Press

European Union watchdogs fined Apple and Meta hundreds of millions of euros Wednesday as they stepped up enforcement of the 27-nation bloc’s digital competition rules.The European Commission imposed a 500 million euro ($571 million) fine on Apple for preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store.The commission, which is the EU’s executive arm, also fined Meta Platforms 200 million euros because it forced Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them.The punishments were smaller than the blockbuster multibillion-euro fines that the commission has previously slapped on Big Tech companies in antitrust cases.Apple and Meta have to comply with the decisions within 60 days or risk unspecified “periodic penalty payments,” the commission said.The decisions were expected to come in March, but officials apparently held off amid an escalating trans-Atlantic trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly complained about regulations from Brussels affecting American companies.The penalties were issued under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, also known as the DMA. It’s a sweeping rulebook that amounts to a set of do’s and don’ts designed to give consumers and businesses more choice and prevent Big Tech “gatekeepers” from cornering digital markets.The DMA seeks to ensure “that citizens have full control over when and how their data is used online, and businesses can freely communicate with their own customers,” Henna Virkkunen, the commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, said in a statement.“The decisions adopted today find that both Apple and Meta have taken away this free choice from their users and are required to change their behavior,” Virkkunen said.Both companies indicated they would appeal.Apple accused the commission of “unfairly targeting” the iPhone maker, and said it “continues to move the goal posts” despite the company’s efforts to comply with the rules.Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said in a statement that the “Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.”In the App Store case, the Commission had accused the iPhone maker of imposing unfair rules preventing app developers from freely steering consumers to other channels.Among the DMA’s provisions are requirements to let developers inform customers of cheaper purchasing options and direct them to those offers.The commission said it ordered Apple to remove technical and commercial restrictions that prevent developers from steering users to other channels, and to end “non-compliant” conduct.Apple said it has “spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for.”“Despite countless meetings, the Commission continues to move the goal posts every step of the way,” the company said.The EU’s Meta investigation centered on the company’s strategy to comply with strict European data privacy rules by giving users the option of paying for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram.Users could pay at least 10 euros ($11) a month to avoid being targeted by ads based on their personal data. The U.S. tech giant rolled out the option after the European Union’s top court ruled Meta must first get consent before showing ads to users, in a decision that threatened its business model of tailoring ads based on individual users’ online interests and digital activity.Regulators took issue with Meta’s model, saying it doesn’t allow users to exercise their right to “freely consent” to allowing their personal data from its various services, which also including Facebook Marketplace, WhatsApp, and Messenger, to be combined for personalized ads.Meta rolled out a third option in November giving Facebook and Instagram users in Europe the option to see fewer personalized ads if they don’t want to pay for an ad-free subscription. The commission said it’s “currently assessing” this option and continues to hold talks with Meta, and has asked the company to provide evidence of the new option’s impact.“This isn’t just about a fine; the Commission forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multi-billion-dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service,” Kaplan said. “And by unfairly restricting personalized advertising the European Commission is also hurting European businesses and economies.” —Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer

Did you know that, for most of human history, blue was very difficult to come by? While it is the sky and the ocean's default color, blue is otherwise rare in the natural world. Blue flowers are scarce (produced by less than 10% of flowering plants) as are minerals that produce blue pigment.Image: Delonix, CC BY-SA 4.0 The Egyptians developed a synthetic blue pigment by mixing sand, calcium, copper and ash, but it was labor-intensive and difficult to make. When Europeans first caught wind of indigo in the 16th century, they went wild for the stuff, importing it first from India and then America, where it was produced at a heavy cost—slave labor. Today blue isn't rare. With the prevalence of smartphones and computer-generated imagery, we take colors for granted. You can move a bunch of sliders on a screen and generate whatever color you want. But researchers at U.C. Berkeley have sort of discovered a new color, one that you and I have never seen.What the researchers did was manipulate the cones in the retinas of test subjects in order to get them to see this new color. We have three types of cones, Long, Medium and Short (L, M, S) that receive light and translate those into color within our brains. The L cones are sensitive to red light, and the S cones to blue. Those two cones do most of the heavy lifting, as the M cones have no naturally-occuring light frequency that stimulates them.Image: Rapidreflex, CC BY-SA 4.0 The Berkeley researchers mapped the test subjects' retinas to figure out where their M cones are, then used a laser to send pulses of light directly onto these M cones. The test subjects then saw the "new" color, perceiving it as "a patch of colour in the field of vision about twice the size of a full moon," according to the Guardian.Their description of the colour is not too arresting – the five people who have seen it call it blue-green – but that, they say, does not fully capture the richness of the experience."It was jaw-dropping. It's incredibly saturated," said Ren Ng, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley.The researchers shared an image of a turquoise square to give a sense of the colour, which they named olo, but stressed that the hue could only be experienced through laser manipulation of the retina."Olo" John Barbur, a University of London vision scientist, was dismissive of the experiment, saying "It is not a new colour" and stating that the exercise had "limited value." Researchers, however, hope it will help them understand color blindness and vision-affecting diseases.I don't know how bulky or expensive the equipment is, but I bet if they set up a booth at a trade show attended by designers, they could charge money. What designer wouldn't pay five, ten, twenty bucks, to see a color they've never seen before?