Google has permitted its users to get rid of their embarrassing Gmail usernames in its recent update. In a post on March 31, the tech giant said that it has been working on the update since last year to ‘help your account grow with you’, and the feature is now available to all users in the US. MORE..

French senators vote on Tuesday on a draft law that aims to ban social media access for children under the age of 15, joining countries around the world in considering a move unpopular with many teenagers but supported by some parents and teachers. MORE..

NASA is preparing to launch the first crew of astronauts toward the moon in over 53 years with its second Artemis mission, a critical test flight in humanity’s broader lunar goals as the U.S. races to reassert leadership in space faced with growing competition from China. MORE..

Austria has announced plans to ban social media for children aged under 14, becoming the latest country to consider introducing restrictions for children online. MORE..

Sony is raising the price of the PlayStation 5 by £90 in the UK and by $100 in the US, in a dramatic hike it says is due to “continued pressures in the global economic landscape”. MORE..

Apple plans to open its Siri voice assistant to rival artificial intelligence services beyond its current partnership with ChatGPT, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. MORE..

A Los Angeles jury on Wednesday found Meta and Alphabet’s Google negligent for designing social media platforms that are harmful to young people, in a $6 million verdict that will serve as a bellwether for numerous similar cases. MORE..

OpenAI has shut down its artificial intelligence (AI) video-generation app Sora less than two years after its launch made headlines for creating realistic clips based on simple prompts. MORE..

The escalating conflict involving Iran, the United States, and Israel represents a “global energy stress test” with profound implications for international fuel and LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) security. MORE..

The U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran last month plunged the Middle East into crisis, disrupted global shipping routes and spawned a series of headaches for Umar Ali Hyder Ali’s used-car business in Japan. MORE..

Social media bans, digital curfews and time limits on apps are to be trialled in the homes of hundreds of UK teenagers. MORE..

Instagram announced a much-anticipated update for carousel posts, with users now able to rearrange their posts within a carousel after publishing. MORE..

China successfully launched 10 satellites into orbit late on Sunday, using the Jielong 3 (Smart Dragon 3) carrier rocket that lifted off from a mobile launch platform in the Yellow Sea off the coast of Haiyang in Shandong province, state media reported. MORE..

Facebook is offering larger influencers $3,000 (£2,260) a month to post on the platform, as part of its Content Fast Track programme. MORE..

The US Justice Department on Thursday said it took part in an operation with Germany and Canada to take down infrastructure used by four major botnets that infected more than 3 million devices worldwide, including hundreds of thousands in the US. MORE..

X, formerly Twitter, has suffered a major global outage. The massive downtime on Wednesday (18) has been knocked the social media offline, rendering thousands of users in India and the US unable to access posts, photos and videos. MORE..

Brazil began implementing new measures on Tuesday (Mar 17) to restrict minors’ access to social media and prevent them from viewing violent or illegal content. MORE..

Amazon is ramping up its speedy delivery service by offering 1-hour and 3-hour shipping in markets across the U.S., including Los Angeles and Chicago, in its latest efforts to stave off e-commerce competition from its biggest rival Walmart. MORE..