An outage affecting web hosting giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) has taken out vast swathes of the web, including websites, banks and some government services. The internet giant blamed the outage, which began around 3 a.m. on the U.S. east coast, on DNS, a system that converts web addresses into IP addresses so that customer apps and websites can load.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/20/amazon-dns-outage-breaks-much-of-the-internet/
Pinterest is rolling out a tool that allows users to “dial down the AI” in their feed, the company says. Users can select which categories they want populated with more or less AI-generated content. But Pinterest stops short of promising a feed that’s completely free of AI: the tool will work only on “eligible image Pins” in categories prone to AI content, including beauty, art, fashion, and home decor.
https://www.theverge.com/news/801093/pinterest-tuner-tool-ai-content-categories
Google Meet has a new AI-powered makeup filter that lets you apply lipstick without opening a real tube. Launched on Oct. 13, the tool is an expansion of the video call platform's "Touch Up" feature added in 2023. Google Meet's new feature allows users to add basic makeup filters that mimic foundation, blush, lipstick, mascara, and eyeshadow.
https://mashable.com/article/google-meet-ai-makeup-tool
Microsoft is busy rolling out new curvy and colorful new Office icons, and now it’s revealing a set of design concepts it experimented with before finalizing these new icons. Some of the concepts are radically different from what Microsoft is shipping, with design explorations for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that more closely resemble the Office for Mac icons of the past.
https://www.theverge.com/news/799736/microsoft-office-icons-test-versions
It's called the "Truckle," and it's a hand-crafted silver and bronze belt buckle that might be the envy of every other cowboy out there, since this one has a place to keep your F-150's key fob without ruining the lines of your jeans. "Once you have it in there, you're not going to lose that key fob. You’re not going to be scratching your head (wondering) where it’s at. It's right there with you in the Truckle."
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/10/keep-losing-your-key-fob-fords-new-truckle-is-the-answer/
The bill signed Wednesday would require them to set up an easy-to-find mechanism that lets Californians opt-out with the push of a button, instead of having to do so repeatedly when visiting individual websites. “These signals are going to be available to millions more people and it's going to be much easier for them to opt out,” said Matt Schwartz, a policy analyst at Consumer Reports.
https://therecord.media/california-signs-law-opt-out-browsers
The new HMD Touch 4G — only available in India for now, and unlikely to ever come to the US — splits the difference between smartphones and feature phones, offering a touchscreen and video calling, but with the small size (and price) of feature phones. It looks mostly like a smartphone, but oddly smushed down: its screen is just 3.2 inches, and the whole thing only weighs 100g.
https://www.theverge.com/news/795993/hmds-touch-4g-is-a-dumb-smart-phone