Stephen Pollard writes about how a high heart rate alert from his Apple Watch helped diagnose a potentially serious drug interaction issue. Here’s what happened.
‘I live on my own and a heart attack in bed could have killed me’
Political columnist Stephen Pollard has been undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia, a treatment that involves taking what he calls his “miracle pill” every evening, along with three other medications to manage side effects.
Recently, after a cough developed into what appeared to be a chest infection, he saw a GP, who prescribed antibiotics. That’s when trouble began.
Patreon creators will need to make some changes soon, thanks to Apple. On Wednesday, Patreon said Apple has renewed its requirement that all Patreon creators must move to subscription billing. The deadline to do so is November 1, 2026.
Patreon’s blog post announcing the change made it clear that it had no other choice. ”We strongly disagree with this decision,” the company wrote. ”Creators need consistency and clarity in order to build healthy, long-term businesses. Instead, creators using legacy billing will now have to endure the whiplash of another policy reversal — the third such change from Apple in the past 18 months.”
A class of individuals who say they were victimized by nude or undressed deepfakes generated by Grok have filed a lawsuit against parent company xAI, calling the tool “a generative artificial intelligence chatbot that humiliates and sexually exploits women and girls by undressing them and posing them in sexual positions in deepfake images publicly posted on X.”
The lawsuit, filed Jan. 23 in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, alleges that xAI executives knew Grok could generate explicit, nonconsensual images from real photos of victims, failed to implement industry standard safeguards, and instead moved to “capitalize on the internet’s seemingly insatiable appetite for humiliating non-consensual sexual images.”
Bruce Springsteen has shared a moving new single ‘Streets Of Minneapolis’ mourning the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were both killed at the hands of ICE agents on separate occasions this month.
The song recounts the events that led to the loss of lives in Minneapolis and features the lines “We’ll remember the names of those who died/ On the streets of Minneapolis.” It also directly condemns President Donald Trump – “King Trump’s private army from the DHS/ Guns belted to their coats,” and names the victims – “Two dead left to die on snow-filled streets/ Alex Pretti and Renee Good.”
TikTok has reached a settlement in a closely-watched lawsuit over social media addiction, narrowly avoiding a trial that’s scheduled to begin jury selection Tuesday. Terms of the deal, which was reported by The New York Times, weren’t disclosed.
TikTok’s settlement comes about one week after Snap reached a settlement in the same case. The trial is expected to move forward in Los Angeles with Meta and YouTube as the only defendants. Mark Lanier, a lawyer for the plaintiff, said in a statement to NYT that they were ”pleased” with the settlement and that it was ”a good resolution.” TikTok didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Google AI Plus, the company’s most affordable AI subscription plan, is now rolling out in the US. It will cost you $8 a month for its features, though you can get it for $4 a month for the first two months for a limited time only. AI Plus gives you access to 200GB of storage, as well as access to the Gemini 3 Pro model, Deep Research and Nano Banana Pro inside the Gemini app. Nano Banana Pro generates images that look so realistic, they’re nearly indistinguishable from ordinary photos snapped on phones. Google even had to limit its usage due to high demand.
