Seven years after Bumble launched Bumble BFF, the company is finally giving users their own app for making friends. Bumble has announced the release of Bumble For Friends, an app dedicated solely to finding friends in your area. The company started testing the app earlier this year in the United Kingdom and select regions of Asia, Mashable reported. 

Bumble For Friends will function almost exactly like Bumble BFF (which makes up 15 percent of Bumble's monthly active users, a Bumble spokesperson told TechCrunch). However, there will be no need to download a dating app — something coupled-up users will likely be happy about. Like a dating app, though, you create a profile with a mix of photos, information about yourself and responses to prompts. It can include things like if you drink, your political affiliation, your relationship status and why you're looking to make friends. Your Bumble For Friends profile will also have space to share some of your interests, like dogs or dancing — one of the things Bumble uses to help match you with potential friends.

There is one new feature on Bumble For Friends: the option to create a group chat. Basically, if you think any of your matches would also get along, you can add two or more of them to a group chat. To use this option, go into the conversations tab and pick a Bumble-suggested activity or add your own. You can also just give the group chat a name (which you can edit later on) if you don't want to pick what to do. From there, you can invite matches and get talking. Invitees will receive a notification about the chat showing them your chosen title or the potential activity.

Bumble For Friends is free to download on Apple's App Store or the Google Play Store. You can create a new account or log into your existing one and have your profile and matches transferred over. At that point, your Bumble BFF account will disappear from the original app, but you can still use Date or Bizz modes. Bumble doesn't seem to be forcing anyone to switch to the new app, so you can still keep all your accounts in one place if you prefer.

It's no secret that AI development brings a lot of security risks. While governing bodies are working to put forth regulations, for now, it's mostly up to the companies themselves to take precautions. The latest show of self-supervision comes with Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and Open AI's joint creation of the Frontier Model Forum, an industry-led body concentrating on safe, careful AI development. It considers frontier models to be any "large-scale machine-learning models" that go beyond current capabilities and have a vast range of abilities.

The Forum plans to establish an advisory committee, charter and funding. It has laid out for core pillars it intends to focus on furthering AI safety research, determining best practices, working closely with policymakers, academics, civil society and companies, and encouraging efforts to build AI that "can help meet society's greatest challenges."

Members will reportedly work on the first three objectives over the next year. Speaking of membership, the announcement outlines the necessary qualifications to join, such as producing frontier models and showing a clear commitment to making them safe. "It is vital that AI companies–especially those working on the most powerful models–align on common ground and advance thoughtful and adaptable safety practices to ensure powerful AI tools have the broadest benefit possible," Anna Makanju, OpenAI's vice president of global affairs, said in a statement. "This is urgent work and this forum is well-positioned to act quickly to advance the state of AI safety."

The creation of the Forum follows a recent safety agreement between the White House and top AI companies, including those responsible for this new venture. Safety measures committed to included tests for bad behavior by external experts and putting a watermark on content AI created. 

Though CD Projekt Red has a few games in the pipeline, the company behind the Witcher video game series apparently doesn't have enough work for all its employees. As a result, CD Projekt Red has announced it's cutting about 100 jobs or around nine percent of its workforce. This news follows layoffs in May and June when 29 people were let go from The Molasses Flood (owned by CD Projekt Red), followed by 30 people who worked on a Witcher card game that was scaled back.

"To meet our own high expectations and ambitions to create the best role-playing games, we not only want to have the best people but also the right teams," CD Projekt Red CEO Adam Kiciński said in the announcement. "There's no easy way to say this, but today we are overstaffed. We have talented people on board who are finishing their tasks and — based on current and expected project needs — we already know we don't have other opportunities for them in the next year." The company will notify all impacted employees now, but layoffs will be staggered, with some not taking effect until the beginning of 2024.

CD Projekt Red had a rough last few years — especially with the mess that was the Cyberpunk 2077 launch. Sony Interactive Entertainment pulled the game from its PlayStation Store at the end of 2020 — only one week after it was released — due to widespread glitches. Customers were offered a refund, and CD Projekt Red's stock tumbled by over 20 percent, a drop of $1.8 billion. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, its follow-up starring Keanu Reeves and Idris Elba, will hopefully have a smoother launch when it comes out on September 26th.

Quests are now available to everyone with a Quest — a Meta Quest VR headset, that is. Meta is rolling out quests and rewards to every user on Horizon Worlds, its virtual reality live-interactive experience. Meta started testing quests over the spring with a game called Giant Paddle Mini Golf and added two more: Arena Clash and Bad Roommates. Rewards include things like new clothing options for your avatar.

Meta clearly designed many of the quests (and rewards) to encourage users to interact more with their avatar — an area of its business that has seen billions of dollars lost. Main quests include "try on a clothing avatar reward you've earned" and "open your backpack and change your emote" — not exactly a Frodo traveling to Mordor-level quest, but some could be engaging. Quests are available in the Worlds Menu, each stating how much of a reward you'll receive for completing it. Meta claims it will add more as time goes on.

Meta Horizon Worlds' update also includes a new quick actions menu that can pause your gameplay and lets you mute, follow or block people you encounter. While Meta fixed some bugs, anytime you discover one, you can now report them by clicking the home button four times in a row or holding down AB/XY.

Governing bodies worldwide have taken steps in recent years to boost local chip manufacturing, such as tax incentives and funding. For instance, the European Union just approved the Chips Act, regulations meant to improve its member states' semiconductor production capacity. First announced in February 2022, the Chips Act aims to use €43 billion ($47.5 billion) in investments to increase the EU's cut of microchip production to 20 percent in 2030 — it currently sits at about 10 percent. The Council of the European Union also hopes it will "attract investment, promote research and innovation and prepare Europe for any future chip supply crisis." The semiconductor industry is projected to be worth $1 trillion by 2030, led by smartphones, servers, data centers, and storage applications. 

In approving the Chips Act, the EU might remove some of its reliance on foreign entities, like China, to produce semiconductors. "With the Chips Act, Europe will be a frontrunner in the world semiconductors race," Héctor Gómez Hernández, Spanish Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism, said about the development. "We can already see it in action: new production plants, new investments, new research projects. And in the long run, this will also contribute to the renaissance of our industry and the reduction of our foreign dependencies."

The EU's final approval of the Chips Act follows President Biden signing the CHIPS and Science Act into law in 2022. It made $52 billion in funding and tax credits available to the United States' semiconductor industry, with $39 billion of it set aside for semiconductor manufacturing initiatives — applications for funding first opened in Spring 2023. 

Listening to your favorite songs uninterrupted is about to get a little pricier: Spotify has announced it's raising the price of all its Premium plans. In the United States, this means a Premium Single subscription is going from $10 a month to $11 a month — its first increase since Spotify launched over a decade ago. Its Premium Family and Student plans are also going up by a dollar, now costing $17 and $6 per month, respectively. Premium Duo has the largest bump, going up two dollars per month from $13 to $15.

The move follows similar price hikes by competitors, with Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music all raising their ad-free individual plans to $11 in the past year. Last October, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek seemed to revel in other companies' increased costs, "When our competitors are raising their prices, that is really good for us." At the time, Ek said he would like to charge more for subscriptions, especially in the US, and felt confident Spotify would be able to in 2023. 

People keep coming to Spotify, with the music streamer reporting five million more users during 2023's first quarter worldwide, and an extra $12 a year might not impact that much. Updated prices are rolling out in countries across the world, from the United Kingdom to Thailand. Spotify says it will contact users via email to share how much their bill will go up and when it will happen. 

Unlike when Dogecoin's Shiba Inu briefly replaced it, it seems Twitter's longstanding bird logo is genuinely having its last curtain call. Elon Musk and Twitter (or should we say X?) CEO Linda Yaccarino announced that the company was rebranding as "X" and projected the new emblem onto the company's San Francisco headquarters. So far, the simple white logo with a black background has replaced the bird in the top left spot of the website, and the pair have it next to their respective names and blue checks. Twitter's official account has also been renamed X, with the new logo and a stark black background. As of publication, the blue bird still exists in the browser icon, but that will likely change soon.

Musk has long had an affinity for the letter X, naming his 1999 banking startup x.com, aerospace company SpaceX and recent AI venture xAI. Speaking of x.com, type that into your search bar, and it will automatically reroute you to Twitter's homepage — Musk bought x.com back from PayPal in 2017.

Musk and co have made hefty claims about Twitter's future since he first took ownership, and its rebrand is no exception. "X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities," Yaccarino said in a Twitter thread repeating much of what Musk has said in the past. "Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we're just beginning to imagine." We'll have to wait and see if the rebrand does anything to bring back all the advertising dollars the company has lost or help it compete against Meta's Threads.

Summer is all about adventure, with better weather and longer days giving you more opportunities to bike, run, hike or even surf. If you want to keep a record of it all without breaking the bank, now is your chance. The GoPro Hero 11 Black Mini is half off right now — down to $200 from $400 — at both Amazon and Adorama.

The GoPro Hero11 Black Mini is a great choice if you want a camera mounted on your body. Its slightly smaller frame and lower weight make it a more comfortable option for placement somewhere like on a helmet. In fact, when we reviewed the Hero11 Black Mini, it felt like it was made to sit on a helmet, thanks also due to its additional rear mounting fingers that help position it facing forward. Other features include 360-degree rotation, HyperSmooth 5.0 video stabilization and 2X Zoom. You can also use TimeWarp 3.0, Time Lapse and Night Lapse when shooting a video with up to 5.3K resolution.

The Hero11 Black Mini does give up some features in exchange for its smaller size. It can't take pictures and instead pulls 24.7MP ones from videos. It also doesn't have a screen, so you need the Quik app to do most of the setup.

The classic GoPro Hero11 Black is also on sale if you're looking for a slightly more complex option, with a 30 percent discount bringing its price down to $349 from $500. The Hero11 Black is about three-quarters of an inch wider than the mini and offers several more features, such as the ability to take 27MP photos and pull 24.7MP ones from videos if you like. It also has a built-in 1.9-inch screen so you can review content right from the device. Additional tools include the ability to schedule when and how long it will capture content, the addition of a webcam and a removable 1720mAh Enduro battery.

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Every app has one flaw that is baffling in how unnecessarily complicated it is. For WhatsApp, that has always been the fact that you can only message people after first saving their contact. But the frustrating extra step is finally gone: A WhatsApp update is rolling out that lets you reach out to whoever you want without saving their information, WABetaInfo reported.

That's right, no more contacts saved with "Lisa library" or "Paul apartment on South 4th" for people you communicate with over WhatsApp once and never speak to again. You can try out this new feature much in the same way you would start any message. Click on the new message button on your home screen (top right for Apple devices, bottom right for Android ones) and then type the number into the search bar. The number will appear under the category "Not in your contacts." To the right of the person's number and profile photo is the option to click "chat," which brings you right into a conversation with them.

Until now, one of the only exceptions — if you can even call it that — has been responding to unsaved numbers in group chats. But, this still required you to enter one through a QR code or link or for a person with your contact saved to invite you into it. WhatsApp's latest update is rolling out to all users, so you should see it in the next few days or maybe weeks. 

The good news keeps coming for all Babylon 5 fans: The entire series is coming to Blu-ray just a few months after sharing that an animated feature-length film is in the works. The 30th-anniversary release will include all 110 episodes of its five-season run and its pilot TV movie, The Gathering. Show creator J. Michael Straczynski shared a celebratory tweet directed at fans stating, "YOU WANTED IT, YOU ASKED FOR IT, AND IT'S FINALLY HAPPENED!"

Straczynski's series followed the inhabitants of a 23rd-century Earth Alliance space station set up to mediate peace between five powerful empires. Its initial production wasn't the highest quality — to say the least — jumping between acted scenes and blurry CGI frames. But, in 2021, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment released Babylon 5 Remastered to stream on what was then called HBO Max and as a digital download on iTunes and Amazon. The original camera negatives were scanned in 4K and then downscaled to HD with a clean-up and color correction to boot. The CGI sequences were upscaled to HD, and the show has been available to watch in its original 4:3 ever since.

The Blu-ray release will be "fully remastered in HD," which could be the 2021 update or a newer version. Babylon 5's Blu-ray edition is now available to pre-order for $100 and will be released in the US and Canada on December 5th.