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Is Google Still Down? What We Know About the Gmail, Workspace and Drive Outage

Many Google services seem to be suffering outages.

Tobias Schwarz/CNET

Did you having trouble accessing Google services on Friday? You’re not the only one. The tech giant was experiencing difficulties, with services including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Meet and Google Workspace all affected.

It seems that the troubles began around 8.a.m PT on Friday morning, just as many people in the US were beginning their work day. At this time, Downdetector saw sharp spikes in reports across all Google services. (Disclosure: Downdetector is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)

Google acknowledged the incident on the Workspace Status Dashboard page, but declared it closed with 46 minutes.

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July 18, 2025
AI Summaries in Google Discover: Rethinking Information Governance, Discovery, and Security | HaystackID

In a bold initiative to integrate AI across various platforms, Google has launched AI-generated summaries in its Discover product, a personalized news feed widely accessible on Android and iOS devices. These AI summaries offer users brief text-based overviews of articles sourced from multiple publications. This marks another move by Google to incorporate AI into its core products, such as AI Overview in Google Search, already significant in AI’s global expansion.

Google’s strategic decision aims to provide users with a more efficient way of engaging with content by offering concise snippets of articles within the Discover feed. These summaries are derived from several sources, with visual cues like overlapping logos indicating multiple contributors. This information is provided alongside traditional presentations, where users can view full articles directly via link. However, only a snippet of initial content is visible, driving users to engage further by clicking “See More.”

Despite Google’s emphasis on providing detailed and context-rich content without requiring direct article access, there are concerns among publishers. Critics argue the initiative could reduce direct traffic to content providers’ sites. According to sources highlighted in TechCrunch, publishers like “The Wall Street Journal” and “The Washington Post” have shown apprehension over potential declines in site visits, highlighting that such AI integrations may negatively affect ad-generated revenue.

Cybersecurity Risks and Attack Vectors

AI-generated summaries present novel cybersecurity challenges that security professionals must address. The aggregation of content from multiple sources through AI systems creates new opportunities for threat actors to inject misleading information or conduct influence operations at scale. Security teams must now consider how AI summarization could be weaponized for disinformation campaigns, where false information embedded within legitimate content could be amplified and legitimized through AI processing.

The centralization of content interpretation through Google’s AI systems also raises concerns about single points of failure and the potential for widespread misinformation if the AI models are compromised or manipulated. Organizations must evaluate how their employees’ reliance on AI-generated summaries might impact their security posture, particularly in industries where accurate information interpretation is critical for operational security.

Information Governance and Data Lineage Challenges

The proliferation of AI-generated content summaries creates significant challenges for information governance professionals who must now address new forms of derived content that may not follow traditional archival and retention policies. When AI systems create summaries from multiple sources, critical questions arise about data lineage, authenticity, and the preservation of original context—all essential for organizations managing regulatory compliance and litigation readiness.

Organizations must now consider how employee use of AI-generated summaries fits within their information governance frameworks, including policies around the use of third-party AI tools, data classification of summarized content, and retention schedules for AI-derived information that may have evidentiary value. Google’s integration of a new bookmarking feature alongside AI summaries, as covered by 9to5Google, further complicates these considerations by raising questions about data ownership, user privacy, and the long-term preservation of bookmarked AI-generated content.

eDiscovery Complexity and Evidence Preservation

The inception of AI summaries within the Discover feed traces back to June, as reported by analytics platform DiscoverSnoop. Initially exclusive to video content, these summaries have now broadened to text, aligning them with the AI Overviews, which facilitated seamless AI engagement in Google Search. Google’s AI Mode, once with limited functionality, is now widely available, including AI Overviews activity concentrated in over 100 countries by the last year.

This widespread adoption introduces complexity for eDiscovery professionals in identifying and preserving relevant information during legal proceedings. The challenge lies in determining whether AI-generated summaries constitute original evidence or merely derivative works, and how to trace back to source materials when summaries aggregate content from multiple publications. This creates potential gaps in the discovery process where relevant information might be overlooked if legal teams focus solely on original articles while missing crucial summarized insights that influenced decision-making.

The shift toward AI-mediated content consumption requires legal technology professionals to reassess their discovery methodologies. Traditional keyword searches and document review processes may miss critical context that exists in AI-generated summaries, necessitating new approaches to information identification and preservation that account for AI-derived content.

Accuracy, Reliability, and Compliance Concerns

The presence of AI-generated summaries raises acute questions about accuracy and dependability that are particularly concerning for legal and governance professionals. The summaries arrive with a disclaimer, reminding users of AI’s potential fallibility. Google’s constant reminders about errors highlight the necessity of critically evaluating AI-generated content’s reliability—a challenge that becomes exponentially more complex when these summaries are used as the basis for business decisions or legal arguments.

Organizations operating under strict compliance requirements face documentation and audit trail challenges. Legal teams must establish protocols for verifying AI-generated content and maintaining clear records of how summarized information influenced key decisions, particularly in regulated industries where decision-making processes must be fully documented and defensible.

Competitive Landscape and Risk Assessment

This progressive AI venture is part of a broader trend towards minimal content interaction, evidenced by data from Similarweb indicating a notable decline in click-through rates for news searches. In parallel with Google’s advancements, competitors like Perplexity have also introduced AI-driven features similar in nature. Perplexity’s approach leverages extensive sourcing, citing numerous links often surpassing Google’s summaries, albeit with challenges in highlighting key sources.

This competitive dynamic creates additional complexity for organizations that must now assess and manage risks across multiple AI summarization platforms, each with different approaches to source attribution and content verification. Cybersecurity professionals must evaluate the varying security postures and data handling practices of different AI service providers as the attack surface expands.

Strategic Implications for Legal and Governance Professionals

As AI continues to evolve and reshape how information is consumed, debates over its impact extend far beyond media economics to fundamental questions about information integrity, legal discovery, and organizational governance in an AI-mediated information landscape. Google’s entry into AI summarization represents part of its expansive endeavors in leveraging AI across digital interfaces, aiming to redefine user interaction with digital content.

Organizations should proactively address these challenges by developing comprehensive AI governance frameworks that address the use of AI-generated content in business processes, establishing clear protocols for verifying and documenting AI-derived information, and training legal and compliance teams on the implications of AI-mediated content consumption. The intersection of AI advancement and traditional legal and governance practices requires immediate attention to ensure organizations can harness the benefits of AI while maintaining compliance and risk management standards.

Assisted by GAI and LLM Technologies

Source: HaystackID published with permission from ComplexDiscovery OÜ

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July 18, 2025
Massive $1B telescope redefines our view of the universe

The NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory has released its first images, demonstrating its capabilities just two months after beginning trial operations. Built in Chile over nearly three decades at a cost of more than one billion dollars, the American observatory’s debut images showcase its exceptional imaging power.

The telescope features an exceptionally wide field of view — 3.5 degrees by 3.5 degrees — with each image covering a section of the sky approximately 45 times larger than the full Moon. It is designed to capture around 1,000 images per night, enabling a complete survey of the southern sky every three to four nights. This means each region of the sky will be imaged about 800 times over the course of the telescope’s planned 10 years of operation.

3 View gallery

Giant images with unprecedented detail. The Trifid Nebula and Lagoon Nebula, located several thousand light-years away, captured in a composite made from 678 exposures by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

(Photo: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA)

Unlike narrow-field telescopes, which are designed to zoom in on individual objects and examine them in detail, wide-field telescopes scan large areas of the sky. This broad view allows scientists to monitor changes and transient phenomena, discover previously unknown celestial objects, and, when needed, guide other telescopes to study them more closely.

The Rubin telescope is equipped with an 8.4-meter primary mirror — modest in comparison to upcoming next-generation ground-based telescopes like the Giant Magellan Telescope, which will feature a 25-meter mirror and is expected to begin operations in 2030. While not larger than many current operational telescopes, Vera Rubin’s great advantage lies in its extremely sophisticated camera, roughly the size of a small car and weighing about three tons. Each image it captures is 3,200 megapixels, making it the largest digital camera in the world.

The camera aboard the Rubin telescope uses six color filters, each isolating a narrow wavelength range — effectively capturing one color at a time. A sophisticated mechanical system allows the filters to be swapped within minutes, enabling near-simultaneous imaging of the same region of sky in several colors. Final images are composites of many individual exposures and contain enormous amounts of data.

Due to the size of its mirror, the telescope is not designed to focus on specific details such as a specific galaxy or solar system, unlike large ground-based telescopes or space telescopes like James Webb and Hubble. Instead, its strength lies in its wide-field, high-detail images, which are expected to allow for the identification of countless celestial objects and, as noted, enable the continuous monitoring of dynamic processes over time. In total, the telescope is expected to collect about 20 terabytes of data each night (that’s 20,000 gigabytes), and over the course of its operations, to accumulate approximately 500 petabytes (half a billion gigabytes) of information — comprising astronomical images and a detailed catalog of billions of stars, galaxies, and other celestial bodies.

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Billions of galaxies in one snap

(Photo: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/P. Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava))

The telescope is expected to collect about 20 terabytes of data each night (20,000 gigabytes) and, over its 10-year operational lifetime, to accumulate roughly 500 petabytes (half a billion gigabytes) of astronomical images and detailed catalogs of billions of stars, galaxies, and other celestial bodies.

Researchers estimate that the Rubin telescope will identify more stars and planetary systems than any previous instrument, while also boosting planetary defense efforts through the detection of numerous asteroids — including some that may pose future threats to Earth. Even during its trial phase, the telescope identified more than 2,000 previously unknown asteroids in just ten hours of imaging. For comparison, the current global discovery rate is about 20,000 new asteroids per year.

“NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory will capture more information about our universe than all optical telescopes throughout history combined,” said Brian Stone, acting director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). “Through this remarkable scientific facility, we will explore many cosmic mysteries, including the dark matter and dark energy that permeate the universe.”

Even during its trial phase, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory identified more than 2,000 previously unknown asteroids. A video demonstration of the telescope’s detection capabilities.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is located at the summit Cerro Pachón in central Chile, at an elevation of nearly 2,700 meters (8,860 feet) above sea level. In recent decades, Chile has become the world’s hub for optical astronomy — thanks to a combination of geographic and human factors: high mountain peaks that allow observation above a portion of the atmosphere, dry air with minimal cloud cover, and remote locations free from light pollution.

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The NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile

(Photo: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/P. Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava))

Named after American astronomer Vera Rubin (1928–2016) — who made groundbreaking discoveries about the rotational speeds of galaxies and whose work laid the foundation for the dark matter theory — the idea of an invisible mass that explains galaxies’ unexpectedly rapid motion — the telescope is expected to significantly advance our understanding of the universe. Researchers also hope it will help unravel the mystery of dark energy, the force thought to drive the universe’s accelerated expansion, and shed light on other fundamental cosmic puzzles.

The telescope is jointly operated by scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (part of the U.S. Department of Energy) and NOIRLab, the U.S. National Science Foundation’s center for ground-based optical astronomy. It operates in collaboration with a broad network of international partners — including Israel, which will contribute through its ULTRASAT space telescope project, currently under development at the Weizmann Institute of Science and scheduled for launch in about two years. Like the Rubin telescope, ULTRASAT will feature a wide field of view and repeatedly scan the sky — but in ultraviolet rather than visible light, making the two telescopes complementary in many aspects. Under the collaboration agreement, American researchers will gain access to ULTRASAT’s data, while Israeli scientists will be able to use data from the Rubin telescope.

The immense amount of data expected to be produced by the observatory will add to a growing number of major sky-mapping initiatives in recent years, including the Milky Way maps produced by the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, which recently completed its mission, and another sky survey by NOIRLab. Also joining this expanding list of sky surveys is LAST, an array of telescopes developed by the Weizmann Institute of Science, which recently began operating in southern Israel. Although LAST covers smaller areas of the sky than the Vera Rubin Telescope, it revisits each section multiple times per night to track rapidly changing phenomena — generating even more data than the new Rubin telescope is expected to produce. Each project has its own strengths and scientific goals, but together — and thanks to advances in computing and big data technologies now transforming astronomy — we are now collecting an unprecedented wealth of information about our universe.

The Rubin Telescope also supports an educational program that gives students and teachers access to its data and images for learning and research. “The Vera Rubin Telescope is an investment in our future,” said Michael Kratsios, then-Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “It will lay down a cornerstone of knowledge today on which our children will proudly build tomorrow.”

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July 18, 2025
Witnesses to Felix Baumgartner’s fatal paragliding crash heard large boom as it spun to the ground

PORTO SANT’ELIPIDO, Italy (AP) — Beachgoers knew something was wrong when they heard a loud boom ring out as a paraglider spun out of control, killing its only occupant, extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner, when it crashed next to a swimming pool near the Adriatic Sea.

A 30-year-old mother watched the deadly descent unfold Thursday afternoon from nearby with her two young children, who were entranced by the constant traffic of paragliders above the beach town of Porto Sant’Elipido in central Italy’s Marche region.

“Everything was normal, then it started to spin like a top,’’ Mirella Ivanov said Friday. “It went down and we heard a roar. In fact, I turned around because I thought it crashed on the rocks. Then I saw two lifeguards running, people who were running toward” the crash site.

When she saw people trying to revive the occupant, she scurried her two children away.

The city’s mayor confirmed the death of 56-year-old Baumgartner, who was renowned as the first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound. The cause of the paragliding accident was under investigation. Police did not return calls asking for comment.

“It is a destiny that is very hard to comprehend for a man who has broke all kinds of records, who has been an icon of flight, and who traveled through space,” Mayor Massimiliano Ciarpella told The Associated Press.

Ciarpella said that Baumgartner had been in the area on vacation, and that investigators believed he may have fallen ill during the fatal flight.

Baumgartner’s social media feed features videos of him in recent days flying on a motorized paraglider —known as paramotoring — above seaside towns, and taking off from a nearby airfield surrounded by cornfields.

The Clube de Sole Le Mimose beachside resort where the crash occurred said in a statement that an employee who was “slightly injured” in the accident was in good condition. No guests were injured, and the pool has been reopened.

In 2012, Baumgartner, known as “Fearless Felix,” became the first human to break the sound barrier with only his body. He wore a pressurized suit and jumped from a capsule hoisted more than 24 miles (39 kilometers) above Earth by a giant helium balloon over New Mexico.

The Austrian, who was part of the Red Bull Stratos team, topped out at 843.6 mph — the equivalent of 1.25 times the speed of sound — during a nine-minute descent. At one point, he went into a potentially dangerous flat spin while still supersonic, spinning for 13 seconds, his crew later said.

Baumgartner’s altitude record stood for two years until Google executive Alan Eustace set new marks for the highest free-fall jump and greatest free-fall distance.

In 2012, millions watched YouTube’s livestream as Baumgartner coolly flashed a thumbs-up when he came out of the capsule high above Earth and then activated his parachute as he neared the ground, lifting his arms in victory after he landed.

Baumgartner, a former Austrian military parachutist, made thousands of jumps from planes, bridges, skyscrapers and famed landmarks, including the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil.

In 2003, he flew across the English Channel in a carbon fiber wing after being dropped from a plane.

In recent years, he performed with The Flying Bulls, an aviation team owned and operated by Red Bull, as a helicopter stunt pilot in shows across Europe.

Red Bull paid Baumgartner tribute in a post Friday, calling him “precise, demanding and critical. With others, but above all toward yourself.”

The statement underlined the research and courage with which Baumgartner confronted “the greatest challenges.”

“No detail was too small, no risk too great, because you were capable of calculating it,’’ Red Bull said.

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July 18, 2025
Noni Madueke signs for Arsenal | News

We’re delighted to announce that England international Noni Madueke has joined us on a long-term contract.

The 23-year-old, north London-born forward joins us from Chelsea, where he made 92 appearances in all competitions.

Beginning his youth career at Crystal Palace and Tottenham Hotspur, Noni then moved to the Netherlands, joining PSV Eindhoven in 2018. There, the powerful winger soon broke into the first team as a 17-year-old, impressing with his direct attacking style.

Noni’s rapid progress continued, with the dynamic wide forward making 80 first-team appearances for PSV before moving to Chelsea in January 2023. Representing England through the youth levels, Noni made his full debut last September against Finland, marking his first cap with an assist. To date, he has played seven times for the Three Lions.

Sporting Director Andrea Berta said: “We’re very pleased to have concluded an excellent deal for a hugely talented young player in Noni Madueke.

“Noni’s performance numbers and availability over recent seasons have been exceptional, reflecting his quality and professionalism. Noni is a dynamic, versatile wide forward player with strong technical ability who will significantly strengthen our squad.

“Noni already has valuable experience at the top level and we know he will make a big impact at Arsenal. Together with everyone at the club, we warmly welcome Noni to Arsenal.”

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