Google plans to make it easier for users to access AI mode by allowing them to set it as the default, replacing the traditional blue links.

AI mode is an advanced version of Google Search that uses large language models to summarise information from the web, so you can spend more time on Google than visiting websites.

Google AI mode can answer complex answers, process images, summarize information on the web, create tables, graphs, charts, and even help you code.

Right now, AI mode is optional. It’s placed on the left of the “All” tab, so you can accidentally open Google AI search and slowly prefer it over the traditional search.

In a post on X, Logan Kilpatrick, who is the product lead at Google AI Studio, suggested that AI mode would soon become the default mode on Google.

Later, Google’s Robby Stein, VP, Product at Google Search, clarified that the company only plans to make it easier to access AI mode for those who wish to use it.

Right now, there are no plans to make AI mode the default for everyone, but if you prefer AI mode as your default search tab, there will be a toggle or a button to do that.

This would mean the traditional blue links will not appear by default, but you’ll be able to switch to old results by finding the “Web” tab, which is tucked at the very end of the bar.

AI Mode might become the default mode at some point in future, but when?

I wouldn’t be surprised if AI mode does become the default search page in 2026 for everyone.

Google is still trying to determine how a move like that would affect its ad business.

Google is already testing ads in AI mode and AI Overviews and is pitching AI ad practices to ad partners.

The digital marketing industry is unsure how things will play out when blue links are replaced entirely with AI mode.

Google has about 90% of the search market share and continues to send billions of clicks to publishers across the world.

At the same time, Google does not pay publishers and independent blogs for summarising content.

Instead, the search engine giant claims that the AI summaries send more “quality” clicks to publishers, but it does not have data to back the claim.

Independent research by Pew suggests that fewer people are likely to click on a web result when the search engine shows an AI summary.

Some independent publishers are also discussing creating a “NATO for News” alliance to fight the existential crisis.

07 July BTC makes it easier for whales to hold and integrate as new buyers intervene

Bitcoin remains locked into a tight integration range of $100,000 to $110,000 as market participants wait for a critical catalyst to determine their direction. The price measure continues to respect $109,590 at its January record high as a resistance, but draws consistent support from short-term holders realised prices (STH-RP) around $98,220 to $99,474. Despite the recent rebound from the $10,000 level, the broader trend has stagnated, and the current market setup reflects a delicate balance. While the pressure to earn profits has eased, the lack of sustained momentum suggests that buyers are hesitant too.

Importantly, the repeated market defense against STH-RP rises emphasizes ongoing structural strength. This important on-chain level has historically served as a pivot for continuing trends. That resilience over the last few weeks shows that the Bulls still retain control of the broader structure. The rising cost base reflects the ongoing accumulation by institutional players via ETFS that could provide a more durable foundation than previous cycles. However, the lack of follow-through at high ranges and recent drawdowns in overall interest and whale holdings highlight the growing attention, particularly among experienced market participants.

The US macroeconomic landscape is increasingly marked by indications of tension highlighting recent data highlighting labor markets that are losing momentum amid widespread economic headwinds. Payroll in June showed headline profits of 147,000 jobs, but nearly half of government jobs related to seasonal factors, private sector job creation weakened to its slowest pace in eight months. Sectors such as manufacturing and wholesale have swept employment and deprived them of increased long-term unemployment due to an overall decline in labor force participation.

Wage growth softened, average working hours reduced, and total working hours decreased. Manufacturing is also under pressure. ISM PMI has now fallen below the 50 mark for the fourth consecutive month, addressing supply chain bottlenecks and trade uncertainty, further clouding the prospects for recovery. Job openings have risen primarily in the role of low-wage leisure and hospitality, exposing lagging employment and a vulnerable foundation of labor demand. Against this backdrop, the Federal Reserve appears to be set to maintain stable rates in the short term, with markets focusing on the possibility that they will ease towards the end of the year.

In parallel, the cryptocurrency sector has grown institutional interests, along with developments in contrast to the tentative macroeconomic mood. SSK’s first Solana Staking ETF debut marked a milestone, pulling out a $33 million volume on its first day, offering staking yields of 5-7%, positioning Solana as a reliable player in the regulated capital market. Similarly, companies’ Bitcoin financial strategies are accelerating. Spain’s Banadi Coffee is pivoting dramatically from the cafe business to accumulate Bitcoin Holdings, aiming for a BTC exposure of 1 billion euros, but there are concerns about the company’s strategy considering the overall financial vulnerability. Meanwhile, Tokyo-based Metaplanet has strengthened its Bitcoin accumulation strategy, currently holding a total of 15,555 BTC following the latest purchase of 2,205 BTC, reaching 210,000 BTC by 2027, solidifying its role as a leading corporate Bitcoin holder in Asia. These cryptography movements highlight growing differences. While traditional markets have wrestled with uncertainty, digital assets are increasingly seen as a tool for yield, diversifying the Treasury and hedging inflation.

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/btc-makes-it-easier-for-whales-to-hold-and-integrate-as-new-buyers-intervene/feed/ 0 46317 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/this-tiny-gmail-change-will-make-it-easier-to-manage-your-inbox-on-android/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/this-tiny-gmail-change-will-make-it-easier-to-manage-your-inbox-on-android/#respond Sun, 29 Jun 2025 03:48:32 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/this-tiny-gmail-change-will-make-it-easier-to-manage-your-inbox-on-android/

Calvin Wankhede / Android Authority

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The last time I checked, there were at least 35 different smart home devices strewn around my house. Most of them are smart lights or streaming devices, but I also have a variety of smart speakers, displays, and other devices. Not to mention a few smart cameras that we use to keep an eye on the house and its surroundings if we’re gone for more than a few hours.

The problem is that everything that I’ve mentioned is controlled by a different app or service. I’ve tried my best to keep things as tidy as possible, such as relying on Philips Hue for smart light bulbs and a couple of Nest Cams to monitor the outside of my home.

However, while I’m okay with having a bunch of different apps installed on my phone, my wife isn’t. Every new platform means getting her set up and logged in, then keeping my fingers crossed that everything works the way it’s supposed to.

Recently, I finally said that enough was enough and decided that it was time to dive into Home Assistant. See, I’ve actually had a Home Assistant instance set up on an old Raspberry Pi 4 for some time, but I’ve just been too lazy busy to take the time and finish getting everything set up.

Nest, HomeKit, Alexa, Matter, and more

The promise of Home Assistant is that it can act as the central hub for practically any smart device in your abode. And when I say “smart device,” I mean almost anything that connects to the internet in some capacity. In addition to that, Home Assistant works with various “protocols” such as Matter, Thread, Zigbee, HomeKit, Nest, etc.

While improvements have been made to improve multi-protocol integration, none of them have managed to make good on the promise of a seamless smart home. Plus, the only company that seems to even care about releasing new products on a semi-regular cadence has been Amazon. Google’s too wrapped up with phasing out Assistant in favor of Gemini, while Apple is content with living inside the Vision Pro.

Installing Home Assistant is as easy

As for getting started, you have a few different options. The easiest of which is to just pick up the “Home Assistant Green,” offering a plug-and-play solution, as you just need to plug in the power and Ethernet to get started. However, if you’re willing to do a bit of tinkering, you can install Home Assistant yourself on a single-board computer (SBC), like the Raspberry Pi.

Or, you can spin up a Virtual Machine on your computer and install it that way. Seriously, there are even more methods, which go to show just how versatile this service really is. No matter what you install Home Assistant on, just make sure it has a constant network connection, otherwise, it’ll only work when your computer is turned on.

As I said before, I have Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi that is connected directly to my router. More specifically, I’m actually running the Home Assistant Operating System, as it gives me the flexibility to install and use more integrations than the standard installation would. However, if you’re just dipping your toes in the water, I’d recommend either HA Container or Core.

There’s so much that you can do

Once Home Assistant is running, you’re presented with a pretty basic-looking home page, but that’s kind of the point. It’s not just a way of tying all of your smart home devices together. But it can consolidate all of the switches, toggles, and controls into a single location, removing the headache of flipping through pages of apps.

But wait! There’s more!

Say you prefer the way that the Google Home app works, but obviously, you couldn’t integrate a certain platform. This can solve that problem too! With a bit of time and patience, Home Assistant Cloud and the built-in Voice Assistant feature allow you to “expose entities” so that those incompatible devices will now appear within the Home app. And after the add-on is set up, you’re able to control even Apple HomeKit devices using Assistant or Alexa.

The beauty is that this can be something quick that remedies a few pain points, or it can be a weekend project that doesn’t really ever end. There are some pretty awesome integrations, such as tracking your Amazon deliveries, setting up a presence-based automation, and even turning your computer on.

Even after getting everything connected, you can enhance the experience even further by creating a custom dashboard. Some have even gone so far as to turn an old Kindle into a basic smart screen that shows the weather and upcoming calendar events, mounted on the wall.

So if you prefer a more traditional platform like Google Home or Amazon Alexa, you’ve just supercharged it. But Home Assistant is right there for those who want a truly customizable experience with more built-in functionality than you’ll find anywhere else. It provides exactly what we were hoping to see from Matter, but goes further than we could have even thought.

Filling the gaps

With the recent news about Google dropping support for the first two Nest Thermostats, paired with very few new product releases, you might be looking outside of the Nest ecosystem. Well, thanks to Home Assistant, it doesn’t mean that you’ll be left to figure out how to use a completely different app.

On top of that, the release of Android 14 introduced the ability to customize your lock screen shortcuts, meaning that you can replace the Google Home app on your phone with, oh, I don’t know, maybe the Home Assistant app. Which is exactly what I’ve done on both my docked Pixel Tablet and Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and I couldn’t be happier. There’s even a Home Assistant app for Wear OS, which is really just icing on the cake at this point.

If you’re ready to venture down this rabbit hole, keep things simple, read the documentation, connect the basics, and explore the interface. Once you have a better grasp on what’s possible, then let your inner tinkerer run wild and have some fun with it. Just keep in mind that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and chances are, neither will your new smart home experience.

Builder: Stu

Language: Rust

Contribution: CTV Prototype, Char Network

Work (s/ed) at:zbd

Before Bitcoin, Stu worked as a Windows system administrator and supported IT. His routine consisted of long, boring days of sitting in a chair engaged in monotonous maintenance tasks, reconfiguring the system, resetting passwords for forgotten users.

It was a job that caused problems requiring you to actually get your attention in a meaningful way.

Stu spent most of his days just browsing Reddit threads during his massive downtime. However, this ultimately turned out to be not such a bad scenario. This was how STU discovered he was drawn into the Bitcoin space around 2017.

During that period, Stu was sucked into the first coin product (ICO) and Altcoin Frenzy to become a lot of Bitcoin, or soon to become Bitcoin. And like many Bitcoiners back then, he was financially burned by some bad investments in random, unknown projects that he probably shouldn’t have invested in in the first place.

Inevitably, bitcoin’s gravity pulled him down from the proverbed rabbit hole.

A few years after learning more about Bitcoin, Stu hit a period of frenzy, quitting his job at the peak of the bull market in 2021, looking for opportunities to work in the Bitcoin field. By then, programming language rust was widely used in various Bitcoin projects and libraries, so Stu began learning to contribute to Bitcoin.

Towards the end of 2022, he searched for work in the space ended when he was hired by Michael Tildwell to work for ZBD, a company that uses the Lightning network to integrate Bitcoin payments into video games.

I work for ZBD

Stu worked on DevOps at ZBD, but at his free time he continued to work on the prototype Rust project.

“Most of my side projects are related to things that I was interested in at the time. I was working for ZBD, so I started making games that allow me to use Bitcoin,” Stu told Bitcoin Magazine.

First, he built Rain.run, a multiplayer web game. This is based on players who are familiar with building applications that need to talk to each other over the network and collect Lightning Bolts for rewards in Satosh. He then built a simple Connect4 game played with the NOSTR protocol.

“(This) was a great way to learn how Nostr works,” Stu said.

“I joined Austin’s BTC++ in 2024. This was the scripted version.” The four-day meeting was the most dense forum for discussion about Bitcoin script improvements and contracts last year or so.

“At that time, it seemed like some kind of consensus had developed due to the Bitcoin contract,” recalls Stu.

“This really made me interested in how the Bitcoin script worked and led me to experimenting with Taproot and Bitcoin scripts…” he added.

“I really didn’t end up with much, but it was a great way to learn how the script works.”

TabConf, Payment Pool, CTV

In 2024, STU attended TabConf, another developer-centric conference held annually in Atlanta, Georgia. The conversation in Atlanta revolved heavily around contracts.

Like all developer-focused meetings, TabConf fitted a hackathon. Stu chose to build the project using a modest logging agreement (DLC). This allowed users to bet on the outcome of the chess match. For STU, it has become very clear that building software around pre-signing a large number of transactions introduces a lot of complexity to developers.

Discussing this issue, he states: “The answer to this question seemed to be CheckTemplateVerify (CTV). I wanted to know more about the contract, so CTV seemed like a good place to start, so I started integrating CTV into the DLC Chess Project.

Stu has created a proof-of-concept prototype for the payment pool using CTV. A payment pool is a very basic layer 2 system where two or more groups share one unused Bitcoin output.

“One way to scale Bitcoin for everyone to use without using centralized third parties is for users to share UTXO,” he said when asked why he chose to work on a proof of concept for a payment pool. “Payment pools are a great way to do this, especially along with other layer 2 solutions like Lightning and Ark.”

contract

The contract has become a controversial issue with debate about where to move Bitcoin forward. All developers have a personal opinion about them, and STU is no exception.

“I think exchanging only pre-signed transactions using contracts is an incredible improvement that will help developers build faster and more securely,” he said. “It removes a lot of interactivity and friction for users, so users will have less need to be online or coordinate with other stakeholders. This could significantly improve the user experience.”

I asked him if this led him to use CTV to build proof of concept and prototypes, as opposed to other contract proposals.

“I was drawn to CTV because it was very easy to implement in the application I wanted to build. Once I built a payment pool with CTV, I was planning on doing the same thing for all my contract proposals. I came up with a way to get exactly the same functionality as my cat, but it took me a very long time to get the job and added more code.

“I’m sure there’s a consensus among Protocol developers that there’s no risk of Bitcoin if you enable CTV…” he said. “…So the argument is that users don’t want that. But users are already using applications and protocols such as lightning bolts and multi-sig vaults that are improved by CTV.

He said this when asked about the current controversial nature of the debate on contracts and the next soft fork, and how it could improve the atmosphere.

“Everything would be good because someone would have to have Saylor tweet a sandwich emoji.”

“But seriously, I don’t know. Events where people can face-to-face discussions may be more useful. It doesn’t seem like a technical reason why we’re not making any progress.

“I think part of the hesitation is around bringing about making a change in Bitcoin. The reason why it’s so difficult to change is the surprising property of Bitcoin, but it doesn’t need to be too extended to soft forks. It causes a lot of stress on certain Bitcoin developers, especially Bitcoin core maintainers. Change,” he said.

future

Stu recently joined the Bitcoin Open Source Software (Boss) program by ChainCode Labs, designed as a way for new developers to reduce teeth and develop a deeper understanding and experience in building Bitcoin.

Going forward, STU will contribute to Char Network, a radar effort to build a new Bitcoin staking platform led by Jeremy Rubin, the developer who designed and proposed CTV. He plans to continue working on his personal side projects and also contribute to open source projects, with the ultimate goal of starting to contribute to Bitcoin Core itself.

Stu was saying this about Bitcoiner’s priorities becoming the future.

“Our number one focus should be on improving self-custody. It’s really awful for now and I think more and more bitcoiners need to acknowledge it in general.

In brief: As the dominant gateway to online information, Google’s search engine has shaped how people access and discover content. However, search results sometimes expose personal data, raising privacy concerns. A recent update introduces a tool that gives users more control over what appears in search results.

Google updated a search engine tool called “Results About You” that it initially rolled out in 2022. Developers have made it more user-friendly and directly integrated its most helpful features into search results, including the ability to remove your personal data from them.

Users must first take a somewhat counterintuitive step to use the tool: inputting their personal information into the system. While potentially alarming for those aiming to protect their privacy, this process is necessary for the tool to identify and manage specific data in search results. However, regardless of whether it appears in search results, Google likely already possesses this information anyway.

One of the most significant improvements in this update is the integration of its key features directly into search results. While not prominently displayed, users can access Results About You through the three-dot menu next to each search result. This menu includes options to remove results containing personal information.

When requesting the removal of personal information, Google prompts users for additional details, a process that typically takes only a few seconds. The interface also accommodates non-personal removal requests, such as reporting illegal content. All requests are logged in the “Results About You” tool for later review. It’s crucial to note that Google can only remove content from its search results, not the web pages containing it.

The redesigned hub allows users to monitor the status of their removal requests and offers additional features. For instance, users can request a data refresh if a search result contains inaccurate information. This option is useful when a website has removed personal data, but the search results haven’t updated.

It is not the first Google has overhauled the tool. In 2023, it introduced a suite of features that made it more proactive, actively scanning search results for users’ data. Developers added an expanded dashboard, giving users a more comprehensive view of their personal information in Search. It also added the ability to request the removal of nonconsensual explicit images from search results.

Google recommends regularly checking the Results About You hub. The tool automatically identifies new instances of previously highlighted personal data, allowing users to request removals quickly. Additionally, users can receive notifications via phone or email when new personal information emerges in search results.

The complexity of tracing and filing crypto taxes was an important barrier to fully exploring the breadth of crypto ecosystems.

So we are expanding our partnership with Koinly, our leading crypto tracking and tax reporting solution, to simplify our clients’ processes so that they can trade with confidence.

First of all: Your privacy is our priority

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Kraken supports industry-leading security and data protection standards, including full encryption of sensitive information, strict access controls, and advanced surveillance to prevent unauthorized access. We do not sell or share your personal data. You are always in full control of your information. Learn more about what Kraken does to protect your personal information.

What is the offer and how does it work?

Koinly simplifies crypto tax reporting by automating the tracking, calculation and analysis of crypto profits, losses and revenues. Through our expanded partnership, we offer 25% discount on Koinly’s paid plans to all Kraken clients, regardless of the country reporting their crypto tax obligations.

This discount allows you to process crypto taxes for your Kraken transaction and other places where you do crypto transactions.

With Koinly’s paid plans, you can:

• Easy to import transactions: Add a Kraken Exchange account via API or CSV file and connect your blockchain wallet using a public address.
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Koinly is available in over 100 countries around the world. To take advantage of this offer, go to the Kraken or Kraken Pro’s (Settings) tab on mobile or on the web and connect to Koinly from Single Sign (SSO).

Over the next few months, we will explore additional ways to make crypto tax even more accessible to our clients.