PCMag

3 days ago | pcmag.com | Rob Pegoraro

A large language model is as free to read as you and me, a federal judge held Tuesday—unless that LLM's creators didn't pay for the books used to train that AI system. Judge William Alsup's Tuesday order turns aside part of a class-action lawsuit filed by book authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson against the AI firm Anthropic but agrees with one of their key claims.

3 days ago | pcmag.com | Jibin Joseph

Get a street-level look at how a location has changed with historical Street View images. (Credit: Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images) Google Earth is celebrating its 20th anniversary with an interesting new feature: the ability to time travel through your favorite spots with Street View. Google Earth added historical aerial imagery last year. And it already included access to current Street View imagery.

3 days ago | pcmag.com | Rob Pegoraro

Verizon Wireless would prefer you call its customer-service line less often—but only because it hopes to make repeated calls about the same, still-unresolved problem unnecessary. Verizon says new customer-support changes announced Tuesday are "designed to empower customers with easier, more personalized support." They start with having a "Customer Champion" field your query until it's resolved, updating you on their progress via your choice of calls, texts, or notifications in the My Verizon app.

3 days ago | pcmag.com | Jibin Joseph

US House staffers have been instructed to stop using WhatsApp and uninstall the app from their work devices due to security concerns, Axios reports. "The Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use,” reads a memo sent to congressional staffers from the House’s chief administrative officer (CAO) on Monday.

4 days ago | pcmag.com | Jibin Joseph

Perplexity is now testing its AI browser, Comet, on Windows with a select few invitees, according to CEO Aravind Srinivas. Comet is a Chromium-based browser that differentiates itself by integrating Perplexity AI as the primary search engine instead of Google or Bing. It provides a more conversational search experience, with curated responses for each of your queries (similar to Google's AI Mode).