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THE EDITION ARCHIVE

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Making Tech Headlines · AM edition

Published · New York time

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10 pages · 23 stories

PAGE 1 OF 10

The Popularity Contest Finally Counts the People Who Watch Ads

YouTube returns to Billboard calculations, while Uber finds a business in cars that are not moving.

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Billboard Lets Free Listeners Back Into the Counting Room

YouTube will return to Billboard chart calculations in 2027 after the chart publisher changes its formula to give more weight to free, ad-supported music streams. YouTube stopped sharing its data in December 2025, arguing that Billboard did not value that audience sufficiently. The agreement brings a major listening platform back into the rankings and changes the way different types of streams contribute. People who listen with ads and people who pay for subscriptions may enjoy the same song, but a chart formula must decide how to weigh their plays. That decision can shape the public picture of which music is most popular. For artists, the return means YouTube activity will again be part of that picture. For the platform, it gives its free audience more standing in a system that turns listening into a marketable ranking. For Billboard, it restores a source of data after a dispute over what those listeners should count for. The finished chart will still look like a simple race from one position to the next. Behind it sits a negotiation over the relative value of attention, subscriptions and advertising. The chorus may be catchy, but the remix that settled this dispute was performed on a spreadsheet.

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Uber Discovers a Car Can Make Money While Parked

Uber is launching a service that lets customers reserve and pay for parking in major US cities, following its acquisition of parking app SpotHero. The company says the deal gives it access to 13,000 garages, lots and valet services across more than 400 cities. The initial service is aimed at human drivers, adding a new task to an app best known for arranging rides. Instead of helping someone avoid finding a space, Uber can now help find one. The car still has to get there, but the company would like to remain useful once the trip stops. Uber also sees a possible role for the spaces in autonomous transportation. It says robotaxis could use them as staging and waiting locations, potentially reducing congestion and the distance vehicles travel without passengers. That is a prospective use, not a claim that the parking service has already solved either problem. The plan illustrates how a ride-hailing platform can expand into the infrastructure around a journey. Parking is less glamorous than the promise of a car arriving on demand, but every vehicle needs somewhere to be between trips. Uber has found a way to participate in both movement and its prolonged absence. The app, naturally, would prefer that neither happen without it.

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Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.

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PAGE 2 OF 10

The Electric Motorcycle Drops Its Tank and Hires a Futurist

Project Ares rethinks motorcycle styling, and Barracuda warns that patched gateway flaws are being exploited.

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Project Ares Gives the Fuel Tank's Old Desk to the Future

Real Motors' Project Ares shows how electric power can change motorcycle design. Without a conventional engine and the fuel tank that supports it, designers have more freedom to reconsider the shape of the machine, and Ares takes that opening in a cyberpunk direction. The familiar outline of a motorcycle is partly a record of mechanical necessities. Fuel and combustion hardware need space, and the forms built around them have become visual cues that riders recognize. An electric layout can loosen those constraints, allowing a designer to treat the old silhouette as a choice rather than a requirement. That freedom also presents a challenge. A motorcycle still has to communicate what it is and how a rider is meant to occupy it. Some electric designs borrow from the past, while others make the absence of old hardware an invitation to imagine a different future. Project Ares is a reminder that a change in propulsion can alter more than the source of power. It can change which shapes seem necessary and which are simply familiar. The fuel tank has left the meeting, and the design team has apparently used the extra room to bring in an entire science-fiction wardrobe.

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Barracuda's Email Guard Finds Its Own Door Needs a Lock

Barracuda Networks warns that attackers are exploiting two recently patched vulnerabilities in its Email Security Gateway products. The flaws can let attackers run commands with root privileges, giving the issue significance beyond the contents of any single message. A gateway is meant to inspect and protect a channel that organizations use every day. Its place in that channel also makes the security of the gateway itself important. A flaw that permits root-level commands concerns control of the affected system, not just whether an unwelcome email gets through. The warning arrives after patches were released. That leaves administrators with the familiar gap between a fix being available and the fix being installed across the systems they manage. The reported exploitation makes that gap more than an item for a relaxed maintenance agenda. Organizations rely on security products to make other systems safer, but those products remain software with their own updates and dependencies. Centralizing protection can simplify the job while also making the protective appliance an important piece of infrastructure to maintain. The equipment was hired to guard the door. It turns out the guard has a door too, and attackers have not agreed to wait politely while the lock is changed.

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Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.

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PAGE 3 OF 10

Government Email Acquires a Reader Nobody Put on the List

Turla's Cereal toolset targets Exchange servers, while GTA VI reserves a sizable piece of console storage.

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Turla Makes the Government Inbox Even More Crowded

The Russian state-backed threat group Turla has used a malicious toolset called Cereal to intercept email on Microsoft Exchange servers at government organizations, according to security reporting. The activity puts the systems carrying official communications in focus, not just the individual accounts using them. An Exchange server can handle messages for many people, making it shared infrastructure rather than a single inbox. Interception at that level raises concerns about an unauthorized party observing correspondence intended for others. It is a different problem from receiving unwanted mail: the unwelcome participant is interested in messages already on their way. The reported activity also illustrates the importance of the environment around an account. A user may think of email as a password and a list of messages, while the organization must maintain the servers and access that make delivery possible. Those less visible components can matter greatly when an intruder reaches them. Cereal is an oddly cheerful name for a toolset described as intercepting government email. The breakfast association is about the only comforting part. An inbox already has enough people asking to be included, and this is one reader the recipients did not invite.

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GTA VI Moves Into Your Console Before You Do

Grand Theft Auto VI is available for preload on Xbox Series X and S and PlayStation 5 in most regions ahead of its November 19 release. Players who preorder can install the game before it unlocks, and the download needs a substantial 212GB of storage. Rockstar staggered the digital preload schedule, starting with Xbox owners. The early installation gives players a way to do the waiting before launch rather than beginning a large download when they expect to play. It does not, however, make the storage requirement any smaller. That presents a practical decision for anyone whose console already holds a collection of games. Download speed is one constraint, but the available space on the drive is another. A player may need to choose what stays installed before the new title can take up residence. The game arrives as a digital product, yet its size creates a familiar kind of household negotiation. A shelf has been replaced by a storage menu, and the question remains which old favorite must make room for the new arrival. The first task in this sprawling world may be less about exploring a city than evicting something from a drive.

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Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.

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PAGE 4 OF 10

Security Software Promises Peace of Mind, Then Books an Emergency Meeting

Google patches an exploited Chrome flaw, and N-able takes hosted systems offline after a disclosure.

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Chrome's Eighth Exploited Zero-Day Keeps the Update Button Busy

Google has released emergency security updates for a Chrome vulnerability that attackers have exploited. It is the eighth Chrome zero-day flaw exploited in attacks this year, according to the security report. A fix matters because the browser is a routine route into websites and online services. Users may think of it as a nearly invisible window onto the internet, but it is also software that must handle a wide variety of material from outside sources. When a flaw is already being exploited, a released update addresses an active concern rather than a purely hypothetical one. The update still has to reach the browsers in use. For organizations, that can mean managing many devices and the difference between a patch being available and being applied. For individuals, it may mean allowing the browser to update and restart instead of treating the prompt as a permanent feature of the toolbar. The convenience of a browser depends on a lot of work that users rarely see. The visible part is often an inconvenient interruption, precisely because the less visible work is urgent. Chrome offers a window onto the web, but the window keeps reminding everyone that its lock needs maintenance too.

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N-able's Cloud Takes a Break From Being Available

N-able has taken its hosted N-central environments offline after a security researcher publicly disclosed more than 30 alleged zero-day vulnerabilities. The company also urged on-premises customers to shut down their servers. The disclosed issues include exploits that could let attackers take over vulnerable systems. The response creates an immediate operational tradeoff: a management platform is valuable when it is available, but a potentially vulnerable platform can itself become a serious risk. Taking hosted environments offline interrupts a service controlled by the provider, while the request to on-premises customers asks them to act on systems they manage. That difference matters to the people responsible for keeping technology running. A single product can be delivered in different ways, and the same disclosure can require different responses depending on where the system sits. In both cases, the work extends beyond the researcher and company named in the initial warning. Centralized management is attractive because it gathers complicated tasks in one place. The same arrangement makes an interruption at that place especially noticeable. Cloud customers pay for someone else to handle infrastructure, and sometimes handling it means turning the service off. It is not the feature demonstration anyone planned, but an available system is less useful if an attacker can control it.

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Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.

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PAGE 5 OF 10

AI Financing Goes Up While the Cloud's Perimeter Gets Complicated

Nominal raises another round, and Fireworks reports a breach through a third-party provider.

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Nominal's Valuation Gets an Eight-Month Growth Spurt

Nominal, a startup offering an AI platform for hardware engineering, has raised another financing round that values it at $3 billion. TechCrunch reports that the valuation has tripled in eight months, and the company claims defense technology firm Anduril as a major customer. The round places Nominal in the busy market for tools that promise to apply AI to specialized work. Hardware engineering is a different proposition from asking a chatbot to draft an email: the customers are organizations with technical projects and their own demands for useful software. The reported customer claim gives a sense of the market Nominal is seeking, while the valuation shows what investors are willing to assign to the company in this financing. A valuation is not the same as a measure of revenue or proof that every promised use will succeed. It is a price attached to an investment, informed by expectations about what the business may become. In a fast-moving AI market, those expectations can change quickly. Nominal's platform is aimed at engineering physical hardware, but its newest headline number is financial. The machinery may take time to build and test. The valuation, by contrast, has already completed three laps around its previous figure.

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Fireworks Finds a Side Entrance in Someone Else's Cloud

AI infrastructure startup Fireworks has disclosed a security breach in which attackers accessed its development machines after breaching a third-party cloud provider. The reported path into the company's environment ran through a service outside Fireworks itself. Development machines are part of the environment where software is built and maintained, making access to them a serious concern. The report identifies that access and its route; it does not establish that every customer system was accessed. The incident nevertheless shows how a company can inherit risk from infrastructure it relies on but does not entirely control. Cloud services let organizations use computing resources without owning every layer of the underlying machinery. That can make operations easier to organize, while security responsibilities span more than one company. A provider's systems and a customer's systems may appear as separate boxes on a diagram, but an intruder's route can cross the line between them. For an AI infrastructure company, the tools used to build and maintain software are themselves an important part of the business. The cloud is often depicted as a neat abstraction floating above a slide. Attackers appear more interested in the very real doors underneath it.

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Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.

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PAGE 6 OF 10

California's Billionaire Tax Meets a Billionaire-Sized Campaign

Voters reject Proposition 40, while Google gives its AI chips more specialized assignments.

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The Wealth Tax Debate Finds Wealth Can Also Buy Ads

California voters rejected Proposition 40, a proposed one-time 5% tax on billionaires, the Associated Press reported. Tech leaders outspent the measure's backers by roughly 10 to 1 in the campaign against it, according to TechCrunch. The vote settled the fate of a proposal aimed at an exceptionally wealthy group in a state closely associated with the technology industry. It did not settle the competing forecasts about how those people would have responded had the measure passed. Founders and economists interviewed by TechCrunch before the vote were divided over whether the tax would have driven wealthy residents away or simply reduced their fortunes. That disagreement was central to the business and economic assessment of the proposal. A tax rate can be stated precisely, while its effects on behavior must be estimated. Voters made their choice amid competing claims about those possible effects and a large imbalance in campaign spending. The result is an especially tidy illustration of the advantages that come with being the subject of a debate about vast wealth. Opponents had substantial resources to make their case against the tax. California's voters made the decision, and the fortunes under discussion proved fully capable of funding a very loud discussion about themselves.

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Google Gives Each AI Chip a More Impressive Job Title

Google has unveiled two specialized AI chips planned for next year as it expands its tensor processing unit lineup. The TPU 8tx is designed to encrypt sensitive data at the chip level for confidential computing. The TPU 8i Max combines two TPU chips for more processing power and memory, including for long-context workloads. The announcement broadens Google's challenge to Nvidia in a market where demand for AI computing capacity is high. Google says every TPU it currently has is committed to customers. The new designs address different needs rather than presenting one chip as the answer to every workload. The 8tx emphasizes protection for sensitive data, including work by public-sector bodies and businesses in heavily regulated areas. The 8i Max emphasizes capacity, combining chips to supply more processing power and memory. Both reflect the fact that AI services depend on hardware choices as well as the software visible to users. The popular image of an AI chip is a rectangle that makes a chatbot faster. The actual product lineup increasingly resembles a department with separate roles for privacy and heavy workloads. Google is giving its chips specialized résumés, and the next performance review may need a processor of its own.

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Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.

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PAGE 7 OF 10

The Smart Home Knows Everyone, Once Everyone Visits Settings

Apple Watch health alerts and Google Home personal results put daily routines into device menus.

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Apple Watch Offers Helpful Reminders and One More Menu

Apple Watch offers health-related alerts that can be useful to older adults, including medication reminders and fall detection. The features may be especially relevant for people who live alone, where a timely prompt or alert can matter. The two functions address different situations. A medication reminder helps someone keep track of a routine, while fall detection addresses an unexpected event. Both take advantage of a device that can be worn during the day instead of being consulted only when a person remembers to open an app. Their usefulness also depends on choosing and setting up features in a way that fits the wearer. A reminder has to correspond to the person's routine, and an alert is one part of a broader approach to support rather than a replacement for one. The small device can offer meaningful assistance, but it still needs a human to decide what assistance is wanted. That is a familiar challenge for wearable technology. Manufacturers can fit an impressive number of functions onto a wrist, then leave the owner to find the useful ones among the settings. The watch can help remember a routine, provided someone first remembers to introduce the routine to the watch.

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Google Home Learns a Family Is Not One Giant Person

Google Home's personal results feature lets members of a household use an assistant for information tailored to them. Setting it up helps a shared device respond to different people rather than treating the whole room as one generic user. The distinction is useful when several people rely on the same household technology. A shared speaker can be convenient because it is available to everyone, while personal results make the answers more relevant to the individual asking. That convenience also makes account and setup choices worth attention: the device needs to be configured for the household using it. The feature illustrates a common design tension. A home product is supposed to be simple enough for everyone to use, yet personal enough to recognize that everyone has different information and needs. Sharing the hardware does not mean a family wants to share every detail of its digital life. A household can share a kitchen table without sharing a calendar. Google Home's personal results aim for a similar division of space, with the assistant serving multiple people from the same device. Before the technology can act like a considerate housemate, however, the actual housemates may have to spend some quality time in settings.

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Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.

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PAGE 8 OF 10

Airport Security Adds Your Battery to the Travel Party

Travelers may be asked to power on phones, while Vanderbilt responds to a cyberattack.

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TSA Gives the Phone Battery a Place on the Itinerary

Travelers passing through airport security may be asked by the Transportation Security Administration to turn on a phone. Border agents can also conduct a more thorough device search, a separate concern for people entering the United States. The two situations involve different encounters with authorities. A request to power on a phone makes a charged battery a practical part of preparing for screening. A more thorough border search raises distinct questions about the personal information stored on or accessible through the device. A phone is both a piece of electronics and a container for material that can be important to its owner. It may hold travel details, messages and access to accounts, even though it appears at the checkpoint as a small rectangle placed among shoes and bags. Keeping it functional is another task to add to the ordinary work of organizing travel. For passengers, the battery has joined the list of things that need to cooperate on the way to a flight. The phone may already serve as a boarding pass, a map and a means of reaching people at the destination. Now it should also be ready to demonstrate that it can turn on, preferably before its owner has found coffee.

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Vanderbilt's Shared Systems Bring an Uninvited Guest

Vanderbilt University says it is responding to a cyberattack claimed by the BYOD ransomware gang. The group claims it encrypted university databases and stole sensitive student, employee and research data. The claims about encryption and stolen information come from the group, while the university has warned that it is responding to an attack. The distinction leaves the specific scope of the group's claims attributed to the people making them, rather than treating their account as an independently established inventory. A university handles many kinds of information for many different purposes. Student and employee records support administration, while research data can represent work accumulated over long periods. An attack on shared systems can therefore raise concerns across a broad community, even as the details of a particular incident remain important. Connected systems make collaboration and administration easier by letting information move where it is needed. They also place a substantial burden on the institution to protect that information. The promise of a shared platform is that people can work together without each maintaining a separate island of records. A university is built to make knowledge useful to a community. Its security team has the less celebrated task of keeping the invitation from extending to a ransomware gang.

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Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.

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PAGE 9 OF 10

The Universal Cable Standard Still Has One Very Persistent Holdout

Micro USB lingers, Wyndham faces questions over app data exposure, and mesh Wi-Fi offers a coverage tradeoff.

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Micro USB Requests Permanent Custody of One Extra Cable

USB-C has largely replaced micro USB, but some gadgets still use the older connector. That can leave buyers keeping another cable for a device in a household where newer electronics increasingly share a different port. A charging connector may seem like a small detail at purchase, but a gadget can remain in use for years. Its port becomes part of the routine each time the battery needs attention. A missing older cable can make an otherwise convenient device less convenient, especially when the nearby chargers fit everything else. A common standard is meant to reduce the number of small decisions involved in plugging things in. A lingering micro USB device makes a modest counterargument: it would like its own cable, its own place in the drawer and a household search whenever that cable disappears. Progress has arrived, but the old connector has not agreed to move out.

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Wyndham's App Leaves a Key Where Customers Can Find It

Wyndham exposed customer data through a hardcoded credential in its customer app, TechCrunch reported. The credential allowed anyone to access customer data. The hotel company would not say whether it could check for past unauthorized access. A credential embedded in an app can undermine the boundary between a service and the information it holds. The reported problem is not simply that the app contains code, but that a credential enabling access to customer data was present in it. The uncertainty about whether Wyndham can check for past access is separate from the exposure itself. It leaves customers without an answer to an important question about what may have happened before the issue was identified. A hotel app is supposed to make the trip from reservation to room more convenient. In this case, the digital front desk appears to have left a key in the lobby.

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Mesh Wi-Fi Offers Better Reach and More Boxes to Explain

Mesh Wi-Fi systems use multiple units to extend a home network, offering an alternative to a standalone router. The assessment involves range, roaming and cost, rather than one answer for every household. A home with places that a single router struggles to reach may benefit from considering additional coverage. A smaller space where one router already works well may have less reason to add equipment. How a connection behaves as someone moves around the home is another part of the comparison, along with the cost of the system. The promise is a network that reaches more of the house. The practical question is whether the extra units solve a problem that household actually has. There is little glory in buying a small committee of devices to serve a room that was already connected perfectly well.

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Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.

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PAGE 10 OF 10

The Newsletter Delivers an Update Its Subscribers Never Requested

SEGA reports exposed email addresses, Epic plans Linux support, and familiar apps add controls.

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SEGA's Newsletter Provider Sends Security to the Top of the Agenda

SEGA says a breach at its third-party newsletter provider, ARARA, exposed the email addresses of 2.2 million subscribers. The incident puts attention on the service that handles a mailing list, not just the company whose news people signed up to receive. Outsourcing delivery does not make subscriber information less important to the people on the list. A newsletter is meant to bring updates into an inbox, while the provider holds the addresses needed to send them. SEGA subscribers got a reminder that distribution infrastructure needs protection too, although it was not the update they had hoped to receive.

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Epic Invites Linux Distributions, Then Works Out the Seating

Epic Games says it plans to support its new Linux launcher on as many distributions as possible, naming Fedora, SteamOS, CachyOS and Omarchy. The launcher is still in preview, and the company says it is evaluating packaging formats and plans to restore AppImage this month. The plan recognizes that Linux gaming does not happen on one uniform version of the operating system. Broader support could reach more players, while the variety of distributions makes packaging and compatibility practical challenges. Saying everyone is invited is the easy part. Making sure each guest can find the door is where the work begins.

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Windows Gives Its Persistent Pop-Up a Checkbox Exit

Windows 11 is adding an easier way to disable the Sticky Keys pop-up, using a checkbox. The change gives users a more direct way to control a prompt that can appear while they are using the keyboard. Accessibility features matter, and so does giving people a clear way to adjust prompts to suit their own use. The improvement is modest beside the grand promises that often accompany software updates, but its appeal is easy to understand. Sometimes a helpful new control is simply a box that lets an interruption take the hint and leave.

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Venmo Invites the Receipt to Settle the Dinner Debate

Venmo is rolling out an in-app bill-splitting feature that scans receipts, bringing the details of a shared expense closer to the place where users arrange payments. Dividing a bill can involve more than splitting the total evenly, particularly when a group has ordered different things. A receipt-scanning tool offers a way to handle those details without asking one diner to become the table's full-time accountant. The app cannot remove every social question about who owes what, but it can give the receipt a more active role in the discussion.

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Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.

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