- Target’s fall store openings focus on larger formats: The mass retailer is opening seven new locations in October, with a majority topping its square-foot chain average.
- Sundance retail in ‘final days,’ undergoes closing sales: The company, previously known as Sundance Living, recently had an involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition filed by creditors.
- Gen Z pullback could send holiday sales down 5%: PwC: Older generations are cutting back a bit or even spending more, but these younger consumers’ budgets are down nearly a quarter, the firm found.
- Walgreens dedicates in-store space to party supplies, expands assortment: The drugstore retailer, now under a new owner, is making a play for the market segment following the bankruptcy of Party City.
- Klarna counts on retailers for growth: The buy now, pay later giant says the availability of its services at retailers such as Walmart and Macy’s correlates strongly to future growth.
- Macy’s Inc. in search of a new Bluemercury CEO: Maly Bernstein, who has led the beauty business for four years, decided to step down and will leave the company at the end of September.
- OpenAI moves closer to converting itself into a more traditional for-profit company with a plan to give its non-profit arm an equity stake worth at least $100 billion. The AI startup has been holding talks with its top shareholder Microsoft for months about reshaping their relationship. Read about how Microsoft has been key in OpenAI’s restructuring plans.
- Most companies aren’t putting time, budget, or staff into GEO (generative engine optimization, a.k.a., optimizing for AI search and platforms). GEO gets 9% of resources on average (vs. 24% for SEO, 36% for social), only 33% of marketers say they understand it well, and 41% expect to add resources next year, according to a survey of 878 U.S. marketers.
- Google Tag Manager adds event parameters to Ads and Floodlight tags; GTM now supports custom event parameters in Ads and Floodlight tags, closing the gap with manual gtag() implementations.
- ChatGPT traffic rivals organic search engagement: New data shows ChatGPT users are more engaged than Google searchers. But AI traffic comes in much smaller volumes.
- How AI and search can give brands an edge in 2025:New research shows 57% of consumers are using AI tools to discover products. Learn how leading brands are adapting their search strategies.
- TikTok touts 2x purchase lift with Search Ads: TikTok’s Search Ads Campaign lets brands capture high-intent queries on a platform where Gen Z is rapidly shifting its search behavior.
- Reddit launches Pro tools for publishers: Reddit debuts Pro tools to help publishers track stories, auto-import content, and tap into communities as referral traffic shifts.
- Federal Trade Commission orders Alphabet, Meta, OpenAI, and several other AI chatbot makers to disclose information on products’ effects on children.
- A new minister in Albania charged to handle public procurement will be impervious to bribes, threats, or attempts to curry favour. That is because Diella, as she is called, is an AI-generated bot.
- Zindi, Africa’s leading AI community platform, has been awarded the Best Artificial Intelligence Technology Communication in Service of the Community award at the Sharjah International Government Communication Forum (IGCF). The honour was presented by His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, during the annual forum held at Expo Sharjah from 10–11 September.
- Microsoft, OpenAI Truce Clears Hurdle in Path to For-Profit Conversion (6 minute read)
- Microsoft and OpenAI have reached a deal to extend their partnership. The agreement could ease OpenAI’s path toward changes into a for-profit corporation. The companies have not disclosed the terms of the new contract but said that the current agreement was nonbinding. The agreement is a tentative win for OpenAI, which needed Microsoft’s approval for its non-profit plan before it could be formally shared with state regulators. OpenAI told its venture-capital investors it would complete the restructure by the end of the year or risk losing out on $19 billion in funding.
Samsung taking market share from Apple in U.S. as foldable phones gain momentum (10 minute read) - Shipments from Samsung surged in the US in the second quarter while Apple’s market share declined. Apple remains on top of the US smartphone market, but it is experiencing turbulence for the first time in well over a decade. Samsung’s Galaxy and Z phone lineup has a massive span of devices that stretches from $650 up to $2,400, targeting customers at every single price point. Apple may release a folding phone next year – trying out new form factors offers Apple the opportunity to sell devices at higher prices.
- Early Experiments Show Fast-Acting Antidote Targets Carbon Monoxide Poisoning: A newly engineered protein therapy called RcoM-HBD-CCC has been shown to cling to carbon monoxide and expel the poison via the kidneys within minutes when given intravenously to mice. The protein quickly sponges up the toxin without binding to nitric oxide, a gas molecule that plays a key role in relaxing blood vessels. The protein was shown to cling to carbon monoxide in human blood in test tubes. It is unknown how the treatment will work in human bodies until it is tested, but human trials are still likely to be a few years away.
- Reality Is Ruining the Humanoid Robot Hype: There are still many issues, such as battery life, reliability, and safety, that need to be solved before humanoid robots can scale. However, before that, it is important to consider whether it is worth the trouble to make a bipedal robot. We already have reliable, efficient, and cost-effective robots, just without legs. Safe and reliable humanoid robots have the potential to revolutionize the market at some point in the future, but it might not be worth the effort.
- A/B testing can’t keep up with AI: Evals are still a new practice for many product teams. A/B testing is no longer sufficient for AI product optimization because it’s expensive to create variants. AI eliminates this constraint – it is now possible to have unlimited variants that automatically update periodically based on real-user feedback. The companies that evolve to think in evals will build products that improve faster than their competitors can run in a single A/B test.
- Hashed sorting is typically faster than hash tables: The two standard approaches for counting the unique values in a large array of mostly-unique uint64s are to insert into a hash table and return the number of entries, or to sort the array, then count positions that differ from their predecessor. Sorting is typically faster than hash tables in a well-tuned implementation. This problem and its variants are the inner loop of some of the world’s biggest CPU workloads.
- Google Chrome at 17: Google launched Chrome in the fall of 2008. The project has grown from a secret skunkworks into a browser used by billions. Chrome turns 17 this week. This post walks through Chrome’s origins and evolution across speed, security, stability, and simplicity, and highlights key milestones. The journey has been one driven by relentless performance improvements, cutting-edge security efforts, and an uncompromising focus on user experience.
- Pay-per-output? AI firms blindsided by beefed up robots.txt instructions: The ‘Really Simple Licensing’ standard adds an automated licensing layer designed to block bots that don’t fairly compensate creators for content.
- Behind The Scenes of Bun Install: Bun is fast because it treats package installation as a systems programming problem.
- When the government can see everything: One company – Palantir – is mapping the nation’s data: Palantir’s Gotham represents how modern governance might function: through data, connections, continuous monitoring, and control.
- How to think about AI progress: Progress is continuing, but it will take some time before it is visible to actual users and consumers.
- The bloat of edge-case first libraries: Libraries should implement the main use case, with alternatives or plugins providing the edge cases and minority needs.
- AI helps Gen Z workers to automate “grunt work” whilst they spend more time concentrating on complex tasks, the Washington Post has said.
- One US startup has created a wearable device that lets you communicate silently by decoding neuromuscular signals in the jaw and throat.
- Amazon’s robotaxi unit has started offering rides to the public at no charge across Las Vegas.
- The Australian government has plans for a Great Koala National Park that will protect around 12k koalas from habitat loss.
- Older women are redefining and reshaping solo travel, according to new research from women-only travel company, Girls’ Guide to the World.
- Chewy wants to make Chewy+ the top pet membership program: “We see this program in line with an Amazon Prime or Costco membership or Walmart+, with similar benefits and similar returns,” CEO Sumit Singh said.
- Albertsons deploys Google Cloud’s AI-powered tool for product discovery: The AI tool “moves beyond traditional search,” providing personalized interaction and intuitive guidance, Albertsons’ Jill Pavlovich said.
- Einstein Bros. Bagels elevates store template: The bagel chain is the latest restaurant brand to prioritize warmth and a separation between digital pickup and in-store channels in its store design.
- BRICS central banks have been quietly developing and using XRP Ledger infrastructure as part of a strategic plan to reduce dollar dominance in the global financial system. Archived documents show this is a multi-year effort, with Brazil’s central bank actively testing the XRPL in proof-of-concept projects.
- Apple’s new iPhone 17 is enhancing crypto security with a feature called Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE). This hardware-level protection aims to block exploits targeting crypto wallets and Passkey signing operations, making it safer for frequent crypto users.
- Chinese regulators may restrict mainland state-owned enterprises and banks from engaging in stablecoin and crypto activities in Hong Kong. This follows Hong Kong’s new stablecoin regulatory framework, which had initially seen interest from 77 institutions.
- Binance recently inked a deal with Zapper, instantly adding over 31,000 South African merchants to its global payment network, tripling Binance Pay’s merchant reach to over 63,000 worldwide.
- Kazakhstan’s President, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, is pushing for a “full-fledged ecosystem of digital assets” and a strategic crypto reserve by 2026. This reserve would consist of “promising assets” managed by the National Bank’s Investment Corporation, with plans for a “CryptoCity” in Alatau where crypto payments will be used.
- Following in the footsteps of its neighbours, Kyrgyzstan has advanced a bill to establish a state crypto reserve, which would include assets accumulated through crypto mining, tokenisation of real-world assets, and stablecoin issuance. The goal is to enhance financial stability through diversification.
- A member of Russia’s Civic Chamber, Evgeny Masharov, has proposed creating a state-enabled crypto bank. The idea is to combat illicit transactions, support local miners by providing a regulated way to cash out, and bring “shadow transactions” into the legal fold, potentially boosting federal income.
- A new Chainalysis report highlights sub-Saharan Africa as the third-fastest growing for crypto adoption globally, a clear sign of our increasing engagement. Between July 2024 and June 2025, the region saw an impressive $205 billion in on-chain value, a 52% jump from the previous period.
- Blackmagic Releases DaVinci Resolve 20.2 with ProRes RAW Support & More.
- Meta deepens AI focus for latest suite of brand advertiser solutions: The tech giant is expanding access to its Reels trending ads solution, which has already been utilized by brands including JCPenney and SharkNinja.
- Google’s Latest Tool for YouTube Thumbnails: What if creating professional-quality thumbnails didn’t require a photoshoot, editing software, or even a designer? Google’s new AI tool, Nano Banana, changes how marketers craft attention-grabbing visuals—and it’s totally free. In a few clicks, you can turn a simple selfie or screenshot into a cinematic thumbnail with customized backgrounds, lighting, clothing changes, and even on-image text… no Photoshop skills required. Whether you’re A/B testing designs or reusing images from old campaigns, this tool gives you full creative control—without the time suck.
- Social Media Is Navigating Its Sectarian Phase: Kyle Chayka writes about how social-media platforms are navigating—and shaping—contemporary political divides.
- Nepal protests: What we know about the deadly Gen Z-led protests that ousted the prime minister: Officials said at least 22 have people have been killed and hundreds wounded in the clashes in Kathmandu sparked by a government ban on social media …
- Nepal lifts social media ban after anti-corruption protests leave 19 dead, curfew imposed: Nepal lifted a social media ban less than a day after anti-corruption protests that were triggered by the ban led to the deaths of 19 people, …
- Protests against Nepal’s social-media ban grow more violent as demonstrators set buildings on fire: Protests against Nepal’s short-lived ban on social media grew increasingly violent as demonstrators set government buildings and politicians’ …
- Nepal’s protests aren’t just about social media: Protests in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu were initially triggered by a ban on social media, but quickly expanded to include issues of wider …
- Nepal Gen Z protests amid social media ban, clashes kill 19: Protesters are agitating against corruption and a ban on major social media platforms.
- A deadly ‘Gen Z’ protest in Nepal was sparked by a social media ban: Video shared on social media showed protesters attacking Nepali Congress party leader Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife, Arzu Rana Deuba, the current …
- Social media ban sparks violent protests in Nepal: In Nepal, the government’s ban of social media apps including Facebook and Instagram sparked violent protests. The prime minister has now resigned …
- What Authoritarians May Learn About Censorship From Nepal’s Protests: Even after that prohibition was lifted on Tuesday, and the resignations of Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli and Home …
- Nepal’s prime minister resigns after protests against corruption and social media ban: Nepal’s prime minister resigned Tuesday following violent protests against a ban on social media platforms and government corruption.
- FTC Launches Investigation into Potential Harms of AI Chatbots: The FTC is exploring the use of AI chatbots as companions, particularly among young users.
- Pinterest Announces 2025 ‘Pinterest Presents’ Event: Pinterest will showcase its latest projects and developments at the event.
- TikTok Launches Latest Data Center Project in Europe: TikTok is hoping to appease EU regulators with its data separation initiative.
- Reddit Highlights Opportunity for Healthcare Brands: Reddit says that a growing number of people are coming to the app for health-related advice.
- Pinterest Highlights Rising Summer Search Trends: Some trend notes for your Pin planning.
TLDR: Social Media Headlines – 12 September 2025
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