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Ripple CTO Addresses Speculation on Web Monetization Platform Coil: Details

by admin October 2, 2025

Ripple CTO David Schwartz recently announced he was stepping back from his role as Ripple’s chief technology officer, sparking reactions from the XRP and broader crypto community.

An X user, in reaction to Schwartz’s announcement of his resignation, pleaded with the Ripple CTO to “kindly continue working on Coil.”

Coil is a platform that provides an alternative method for creators to monetize their content online. As subscribed fans consume content, the platform utilized an open API called Web Monetization to stream micropayments to creators instantaneously. The API was built on the Interledger Protocol, co-created by former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas. The Coil platform sunsetted in 2023.

Ripple CTO weighs in

In response to the X user’s request to continue development on Coil, Ripple CTO David Schwartz revealed the hard truth: “We’re kind of stuck. The issue is interesting.”

Schwartz went on to explain the issue, using the context of email. He noted that email really has two different features, which are logically separate.

First, it has a universal namespace based on domain names. Second, it has a universal exchange protocol, SMTP. Schwartz explained the issue, saying, “You can imagine a system that only had one of these things and not the other. First, with neither, things would suck.”

“Coil wanted InterLedger Protocol (ILP) to be like email -a universal namespace and a universal protocol with guaranteed interoperability,” Schwartz said, adding “the problem is that a universal protocol for money with guaranteed interoperability is not practical.”

Schwartz added, “Yes, ILP is a protocol and mostly what you care about it people using ILP to move money. But it has to coexist with other payment methods and requiring people who have other ways to pay to onboard with ILP endpoints doesn’t seem to be necessary.”

Ripple’s paystring — a universal namespace for payment endpoints that can support XRPL addresses, ILP endpoints, Bitcoin addresses, custodial accounts on exchanges, PayPal and Zelle — was developed in response, but it did not guarantee interoperability.

“A big blocker in the past was regulatory obstacles to cross-system payments outside of the self-custody space. I’m not sure if that has gotten better or is still a problem,” Schwartz added.

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October 2, 2025 0 comments

Crypto Trends

Google’s Robots Can Now Think, Search the Web and Teach Themselves New Tricks

by admin September 27, 2025

In brief

DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics models gave machines the ability to plan, reason, and even look up recycling rules online before acting.
Instead of following scripts, Google’s new AI lets robots adapt, problem-solve, and pass skills between each other.
From packing suitcases to sorting trash, robots powered by Gemini-ER 1.5 showed early steps toward general-purpose intelligence.

Google DeepMind rolled out two AI models this week that aim to make robots smarter than ever. Instead of focusing on following comments, the updated Gemini Robotics 1.5 and its companion Gemini Robotics-ER 1.5 make the robots think through problems, search the internet for information, and pass skills between different robot agents.

According to Google, these models mark a “foundational step that can navigate the complexities of the physical world with intelligence and dexterity”

“Gemini Robotics 1.5 marks an important milestone toward solving AGI in the physical world,” Google said in the announcement. “By introducing agentic capabilities, we’re moving beyond models that react to commands and creating systems that can truly reason, plan, actively use tools, and generalize.”

And this term “generalization” is important because models struggle with it.

The robots powered by these models can now handle tasks like sorting laundry by color, packing a suitcase based on weather forecasts they find online, or checking local recycling rules to throw away trash correctly. Now, as a human, you may say, “Duh, so what?” But to do this, machines require a skill called generalization—the ability to apply knowledge to new situations.

Robots—and algorithms in general—usually struggle with this. For example, if you teach a model to fold a pair of pants, it will not be able to fold a t-shirt unless engineers programmed every step in advance.

The new models change that. They can pick up on cues, read the environment, make reasonable assumptions, and carry out multi-step tasks that used to be out of reach—or at least extremely hard—for machines.

But better doesn’t mean perfect. For example, in one of the experiments, the team showed the robots a set of objects and asked them to send them into the correct trash. The robots used their camera to visually identify each item, pull up San Francisco’s latest recycling guidelines online, and then place them where they should ideally go, all on its own, just as a local human would.

This process combines online search, visual perception, and step-by-step planning—making context-aware decisions that go beyond what older robots could achieve. The registered success rate was between 20% to 40% of the time; not ideal, but surprising for a model that was not able to understand those nuances ever before.

How Google turn robots into super-robots

The two models split the work. Gemini Robotics-ER 1.5 acts like the brain, figuring out what needs to happen and creating a step-by-step plan. It can call up Google Search when it needs information. Once it has a plan, it passes natural language instructions to Gemini Robotics 1.5, which handles the actual physical movements.

More technically speaking, the new Gemini Robotics 1.5 is a vision-language-action (VLA) model that turns visual information and instructions into motor commands, while the new Gemini Robotics-ER 1.5 is a vision-language model (VLM) that creates multistep plans to complete a mission.

When a robot sorts laundry, for instance, it internally reasons through the task using a chain of thought: understanding that “sort by color” means whites go in one bin and colors in another, then breaking down the specific motions needed to pick up each piece of clothing. The robot can explain its reasoning in plain English, making its decisions less of a black box.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai chimed in on X, noting that the new models will enable robots to better reason, plan ahead, use digital tools like search, and transfer learning from one kind of robot to another. He called it Google’s “next big step towards general-purpose robots that are truly helpful.”

New Gemini Robotics 1.5 models will enable robots to better reason, plan ahead, use digital tools like Search, and transfer learning from one kind of robot to another. Our next big step towards general-purpose robots that are truly helpful — you can see how the robot reasons as… pic.twitter.com/kw3HtbF6Dd

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) September 25, 2025

The release puts Google in a spotlight shared with developers like Tesla, Figure AI and Boston Dynamics, though each company is taking different approaches. Tesla focuses on mass production for its factories, with Elon Musk promising thousands of units by 2026. Boston Dynamics continues pushing the boundaries of robot athleticism with its backflipping Atlas. Google, meanwhile, bets on AI that makes robots adaptable to any situation without specific programming.

The timing matters. American robotics companies are pushing for a national robotics strategy, including establishing a federal office focused on promoting the industry at a time when China is making AI and intelligent robots a national priority. China is the world’s largest market for robots that work in factories and other industrial environments, with about 1.8 million robots operating in 2023, according to the Germany-based International Federation of Robotics.

DeepMind’s approach differs from traditional robotics programming, where engineers meticulously code every movement. Instead, these models learn from demonstration and can adapt on the fly. If an object slips from a robot’s grasp or someone moves something mid-task, the robot adjusts without missing a beat.

The models build on DeepMind’s earlier work from March, when robots could only handle single tasks like unzipping a bag or folding paper. Now they’re tackling sequences that would challenge many humans—like packing appropriately for a trip after checking the weather forecast.

For developers wanting to experiment, there’s a split approach to availability. Gemini Robotics-ER 1.5 launched Thursday through the Gemini API in Google AI Studio, meaning any developer can start building with the reasoning model. The action model, Gemini Robotics 1.5, remains exclusive to “select” (meaning “rich,” probably) partners.

Generally Intelligent Newsletter

A weekly AI journey narrated by Gen, a generative AI model.

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September 27, 2025 0 comments

Crypto Trends

How State Channels Can Reclaim a Decentralized Web

by admin September 25, 2025

More than ever we are at the mercy of platform-based giants like Google and Amazon, who act as digital landlords. We have become cloud-serfs, giving our data and producing trillions in value for algorithms we will never own.

Over 80% of Netflix viewing is dictated by its recommendation algorithm, and Amazon is far from a neutral marketplace — its matching engine gives preferential treatment to Amazon’s own products, and third-party sellers pay up to 50% of their revenue in fees for the privilege of competing for Amazon’s customers.

The promise of Web3 was a world beyond these digital landlords.

Reclaiming the Web3 thesis

Web3, as defined by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood in 2014, was a “post-Snowden web” — an antidote to centralized control built on peer-to-peer trust.

Gavin’s architectural vision has been twisted.

Ethereum created “more individual millionaires than any other project” and together with the rest of the ICOs wave shifted the focus from technological principles to financial gains.

Billions of dollars were channeled into speculative ICOs, up to 90% of which suffered major losses or became defunct within a year. This culminated in the 2021 bull market, where the crypto market cap briefly touched $3 trillion, and “Web3” was diluted into a catch-all marketing term to attract investors.

The mission of building a trustless, peer-to-peer internet would for a time being be buried under layers of hype.

Intermediaries no more

The power of centralized platforms stems from their role as a trusted intermediary.

You trust Amazon to handle payments and arbitrate disputes with the sellers; you trust Google to vet, rank and present information. This trust-as-a-service model creates a golden cage: the intermediary owns the rules, the data and a significant cut of the value exchanged.

Early Web3 attempted to solve this problem with on-chain transactions, where every interaction is a public, permanent record. But this is like asking a global commerce system to run a single, congested highway. Real-world commerce requires an infrastructure that can match its speed and complexity — not everything should be an on-chain transaction.

State channels present a superior infrastructure

Think of a state channel as a high-speed, private lane between two parties that bypasses the congested blockchain. Thousands of interactions — value transfers, data permissions and contract updates — can happen instantaneously and for free, with each step cryptographically signed.

The primary barrier to peer-to-peer digital commerce has been the risk that one party won’t fulfill their side of a deal. State channel (ERC-7824) design eliminates this risk without sacrificing efficiency. Before transacting, parties commit funds to an on-chain smart contract. This acts as a security deposit. If one party walks away, their committed on-chain funds ensure the other party is made whole. By settling profits and losses in near real-time, the system removes the need for a trusted central intermediary.

For commerce: instead of renting space on Amazon’s platform and paying up to 50% in fees, a buyer and seller open a direct channel governed by an impartial smart contract.
For data: instead of surrendering your life story to Google, you open a channel with an app, granting temporary, paid access to your data and revoking it at will.

This combination of on-chain security and off-chain efficiency enables a new creation: the autonomous enterprise. This is a system where business logic is encoded onto smart contracts, executed transparently and operating globally without the need for a traditional corporate structure.

Bitcoin removed the need to trust the government’s money printing. Ethereum removed the need to trust people to enforce contracts. Now it’s time to remove the need for people to blindly trust platforms.

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September 25, 2025 0 comments

Crypto Trends

Smarter Web eyes distressed rivals as UK Bitcoin treasury race tightens

by admin September 13, 2025

Smarter Web, the U.K.’s largest BTC holder, is going on the offensive. CEO Andrew Webley is eyeing distressed rivals, seeking to aggressively expand its war chest at a potential fire-sale discount.

Summary

Smarter Web’s CEO Andrew Webley considers buying struggling rivals to boost BTC holdings at discounts.
Company stock plunged 35.5% in a month, far underperforming Bitcoin’s 4% drop.
Coinbase warns treasury firms face “player vs player” competition for investor capital.

According to a recent Financial Times report, Andrew Webley, CEO of The Smarter Web Company, confirmed his firm is actively considering the acquisition of struggling competitors.

The primary objective is a strategic expansion of its Bitcoin (BTC) treasury by potentially purchasing BTC holdings at a significant discount to market value. This move comes amid a sharp decline in the company’s own stock price, which has dramatically underperformed Bitcoin over the past month.

Navigating a high-stakes battlefield

Smarter Web’s stock performance has starkly decoupled from the asset it holds. While Bitcoin declined just over 4% in the past month, the company’s share price plummeted approximately 35.5%, including a nearly 22% single-day drop on Friday.

The significant underperformance highlights a critical vulnerability: investor sentiment toward treasury vehicles is becoming increasingly fragile, independent of Bitcoin’s own price action.

The timing of Webley’s maneuver aligns with a sobering warning from Coinbase researchers that the sector is entering a brutal “player vs player” stage. Head of research David Duong and researcher Colin Basco recently stated that crypto-buying public companies will now compete far more fiercely for investor capital.

They predict that while a handful of “strategically positioned players will thrive,” the market segment is quickly becoming oversaturated, implying many of these treasuries will not survive long term.

Meanwhile, back in June, analysts at Standard Chartered, led by Geoffrey Kendrick, issued a prescient warning about the inherent risks of the Bitcoin treasury model. Kendrick cautioned that the premium at which these companies trade relative to their underlying BTC holdings is unsustainable, especially as access to Bitcoin through regulated ETFs and ETNs becomes easier. He ominously suggested that a drop below $90,000 could put half of all Bitcoin treasury companies underwater on their holdings.

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September 13, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Best VPN for Travel: Stay Private While Browsing the Web and Streaming On-the-Go

by admin September 7, 2025

PIA

Private Internet Access brings a lot to the table, particularly for regular travelers. Its large server network blankets the globe with 35,000 servers in 91 countries. ExpressVPN and Surfshark deliver more individual country choices but PIA’s sheer number of servers lets you easily find an optimal connection. It’s an especially great VPN for folks traveling domestically or to one of the worldwide locales where Private Internet Access maintains a decent presence. In our experience, we found PIA unblocked Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus and Netflix on US and UK servers, making it a good VPN for streaming.

Its wallet-friendly pricing sets you back just $12 monthly, $40 for the first year ($50 annually upon renewal) or $79 total for three years. By comparison, most VPNs like NordVPN and ExpressVPN typically charge $60 to $100 a year. The value-packed Surfshark charges about $48 for your first year and its price jumps to $60 after its initial sweet introductory pricing.

Despite its relatively low cost, PIA doesn’t cut corners. Although it’s not the most feature-rich VPN, you’ll get a solid privacy suite, including a kill switch that stops your internet if your VPN gets disconnected, split tunneling for using a VPN for some apps but not others and 256-bit encryption over OpenVPN or IKEv2 with ChaCha20 on WireGuard. There’s multihop, which routes your connection through another server for additional privacy, and obfuscated servers, making it tougher for apps or ISPs to identify when you’re using a VPN. PIA also boasts unlimited simultaneous connections — the pricier ExpressVPN limits you to eight.

Unfortunately, PIA delivered middling internet speeds in our testing with an average speed loss of 49%. All VPNs slow down your connection somewhat, with the fastest VPNs offering an average internet speed loss of 25% or less. Folks with faster internet connections like fiber shouldn’t notice a difference even with a higher speed loss but PIA isn’t ideal for people with slower speeds like satellite internet users. With its decent features, pricing transparency and subscriptions that significantly undercut the competition, PIA remains a solid VPN that boasts a generous server network, unlimited simultaneous connections and relative affordability compared to VPN rivals. But for the price, you’re better off with Surfshark, which is faster and offers a larger global server network.

Read our PIA review.

IPVanish

IPVanish offers 2,400-plus servers in 108 countries, which is in the same ballpark as NordVPN, Proton VPN, ExpressVPN and Surfshark. (Disclosure: IPVanish is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.) In our experience, IPVanish’s internet download speeds were uneven, with a 44% average internet download speed loss in our 2024 testing, with fast speeds marred by occasionally noticeable dips, which could impact gaming or 4K streaming.

IPVanish provides plenty of perks, including unlimited simultaneous connections, user-friendly apps and great streaming capabilities. It streams and unblocks region-restricted content from Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, Hulu and Netflix with aplomb. At $13 monthly, $40 for the first year or $53 total for two years, IPVanish initially saves you money upfront compared to competitors like ExpressVPN or NordVPN. However, its exorbitantly expensive renewal prices of $156 a year for the annual plan and $312 for the two-year plan trounce even pricey autorenewals of ExpressVPN ($100 renewal) and NordVPN ($140 renewal). IPVanish works fine for casual use, but you can get a VPN with more robust privacy features and faster internet speeds, all of which benefit travel. IPVanish’s user-friendly apps make it a decent choice for beginners seeking a VPN to add peace of mind and allow for streaming abroad. But wallet-friendly VPNs PIA and Surfshark are better options for the money because of their larger server networks.

Read our IPVanish review

CyberGhost

With 11,500-plus servers spanning 100 countries, CyberGhost offers loads of choices for international travel. It’s decent for streaming from BBC iPlayer, Netflix and other sites. You can use specific servers optimized for streaming, but streaming works on all servers. CyberGhost remains wallet-friendly at $13 per month, $42 every six months or $57 total for the first two years of service (you’re billed annually after 24 months of service on its two-year plan).

CyberGhost lacks advanced privacy features like Tor Over VPN or double-hop servers, both of which make it even more difficult to trace your traffic back to its source. There is obfuscation, which makes it more difficult to determine that you’re using a VPN, which can circumvent restrictions by countries, ISPs or Wi-Fi networks that have blocked VPNs. Obfuscated servers could be useful when running a VPN at school, work or in a country where virtual private networks are frowned upon.

CyberGhost’s high internet speed loss isn’t ideal for demanding applications like 4K streaming or gaming. CyberGhost does provide some useful features, including a kill switch, which shuts off your internet if your VPN gets disconnected, and split tunneling for selectively choosing some apps but not all to route through your VPN. All things considered, CyberGhost is acceptable for casual use like streaming videos or web browsing, and its exhaustive server network is particularly well-suited to travel. Uneven speed loss and middle-of-the-road privacy features mean you’ve likely got better choices.

Read our CyberGhost review.

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September 7, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Porting your mobile game to web browsers is a low-effort way to gain a fresh revenue stream | Opinion

by admin September 6, 2025

Pavel Polovinka is head of publishing at Playgama, a platform for the distribution and monetization of HTML5 games.

What happens when you hop from the mobile gaming market into the web one? Can you compare the two? Is there any point to this?

The short answers to these questions are: ‘almost effortless user acquisition’, ‘to some extent’, and ‘undoubtedly’.

The web game market is relatively tiny compared with mobile. But it’s also a growing market.

More to the point, it can be relatively easy to port your mobile title to HTML5 and distribute it to the various web platforms. The potential revenue might be much smaller than on mobile – but by ignoring the web market, you’re leaving money on the table.

Case study

Here’s an example of how Playgama enabled a pair of mobile games to find a new audience and revenue stream.

StoreRider, an all-in-one distributor of Android games on alternative stores, decided to venture into the web game market, and asked Playgama to help them. Most of the time, we provide our services to studios or web-oriented publishers, so StoreRider was a new type of client to work with.

StoreRider is a unique enterprise in many ways. It helps developers earn more from existing mobile games by distributing them outside the usual platforms, such as the App Store and Google Play. Instead, StoreRider explores alternative channels such as the Epic Games Store, One Store, telecom subscriptions, in-flight entertainment, US facilities, and web exports.

StoreRider initially uploaded two games – Gangsta Island: Crime City and Vikings: an Archer’s Journey, originally developed by Pinpin Team – to platforms including Playgama and Crazy Games. But after reaching around 500,000 play sessions, the company soon recognised the market potential and decided to cast a larger net.

Complications

StoreRider’s expertise lies in mobile, and the company didn’t have the time to optimize the source code for all of the different web platforms – let alone connect with the key publishers and drudge through compliance.

Take, for example, Facebook’s guide for Instant Games. One must spend hours reading through checklists, then days trying to adjust the game to fit the requirements. On top of that, there is the registration process, SDK integration, and support.

Multiply every step by the number of platforms one wants to be presented on, then again by the number of games, and the gargantuan amount of jobs to do starts to block the sun.

Initially, we didn’t plan to add any new features to the two StoreRider games. The idea was to obtain the source code for both of them and then integrate our SDK, which enables compatibility with any web platform.

Gangsta Island: Crime City | Image credit: Store Rider

However, we decided to go a little further. We optimized both games so that they would work flawlessly on mobile browsers within the WebGL context, and we increased the max memory usage capacity to guarantee smooth gameplay (thus reducing loading times and lowering the churn rate).

We also localized Vikings: An Archer’s Journey to 15 languages, and Gangsta Island: Crime City to three, and we added asynchronous saves and engagement tools, such as ‘Share with friends’, to plug into Facebook’s social mechanics.

Finally, we published both games on Playgama, MSN Games, Facebook, Yandex Games, VK, Game Distribution, Lagged, and Y8.

The results, although modest by the standards of big publishers, were inspiring. Over three months, the games achieved over one million play sessions, a 20% day one retention rate, and number one position in the MSN top ten for several consecutive weeks.

There’s little sense in comparing these figures to the vastly larger mobile market. But the key takeaway is this: a mobile distributor was able to find a new revenue stream with close to no contribution on their part.

Right now, we’re publishing the polished versions of StoreRider’s games to even more platforms. Overall, the WebGL optimization service seems promising, as we expect more mobile devs and distributors to hedge their bets with web gaming.

A slice of the pie

Let’s backtrack to the questions we posed in the beginning. Currently, the web gaming market is considered a Plan B for the mobile crowd – and rightfully so.

The mobile market dwarfs the web market in terms of volume: the former was worth $106.5 billion in 2024, whereas the latter came in at just $16.77 billion in the same year. As such, the potential revenue is far lower.

If you don’t succeed on mobile, it costs close to nothing to win something back on the web

Still, it is crucial to keep in mind that the web market is far more accessible in terms of marketing spending and user acquisition. If you don’t succeed on mobile, it costs close to nothing to win something back on the web.

As a closer, here’s some food for thought. The number of web browser games has increased by 4.9 times over the past two years, and the HTML5 games market is projected to grow to $31.9 billion by 2030.

If you hunger for a piece of this pie, it’s better to get your metaphorical fork out now. Entering this niche has never been easier, even for mobile studios and distributors.

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September 6, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Full soundtrack for skate. hits the web

by admin September 5, 2025

Coming to early access on September 16th, skate. is almost here. What is here, however, is the soundtrack. EA took to the airwaves to give us a listen to the new soundtrack behind it’s much-anticipated skating release, and there are some bangers in there. Check the details below as you prepare those ollies.

skate. just dropped the full soundtrack lineup ahead of its Early Access launch on September 16. The soundtrack is jampacked with songs from breakthrough artists like Little Simz, Turnstile and so much more! Check out the full soundtrack on Spotify here. Much like the evolving world of San Vansterdam, the skate. soundtrack is built to grow with each season – keeping every session fresh and full of high energy and vibes.

Here’s a taste of what players can expect as they cruise through San Van:

“HIT THE FLOOR” — Denzel Curry with Ski Mask The Slump God
“NO HANDS” — Joey Valence & Brae ft. Z-Trip
“Trap Door” — Jake One ft. MF Doom
“Are you Looking Up” — Mk.gee
“Fan the Fire” — Earth, Wind & Fire
“NEW HEART DESIGN” — Turnstile
“destroy me” — 2hollis
“In Circles” — Sunny Day Real Estate
“goo lagoon” — EKKSTACY
“Mood Swings” — Little Simz
“Fill in the Blank” — Car Seat Headrest
“Are you Looking Up” — Mk.gee

skate. launches into Early Access on September 16 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One & PC via Steam, Epic Games Store and EA app.

For more information on skate. please visit: https://www.ea.com/games/skate/skate

Stay tuned to GamingTrend for more skate. news and info!

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September 5, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Apple Planning AI-Powered Web Search for Siri Next Year: Report

by admin September 4, 2025

Apple is planning to launch a new AI-powered web search tool for Siri next year, according to a new report from Bloomberg, as it seeks to compete with competitors who’ve invested heavily in AI. Details are still scarce and could change before launch, but it sounds like the whole thing could be powered by a custom version of Google’s Gemini.

The new system is being called World Knowledge Answers internally, according to Bloomberg, and may even be added to Safari and Spotlight. An AI-powered version of Siri has been long delayed, after Apple promised in 2024 that it would be available in June 2025. That, of course, was pushed back.

The new AI features for Siri will likely create a search experience on Apple devices that utilizes the unique access it has to things like text, photos, and videos. And it’s likely to create summaries based on web searches that are more powerful than what’s available with the currently anemic Siri.

But even if a custom-built Gemini is used for some functions like summarizing, it would probably run on Apple’s own Private Cloud Compute servers in order to maintain privacy, according to Bloomberg. Google has already reportedly delivered Gemini’s summarizing tech to Apple, but it’s still being fine-tuned. Apple previously considered buying Perplexity but is no longer interested, according to the news outlet.

Privacy has been a tricky problem to solve when tech companies tackle AI. OpenAI’s Sam Altman has warned that anyone using ChatGPT as a therapist should know that there are no doctor-patient confidentiality laws for AI chatbots. And Signal’s Meredith Whittaker has warned that agentic AI capabilities are extremely difficult to pull off in an encrypted way.

Apple has gotten some heat from investors for seemingly slipping behind other startups in implementing AI. But there has been good reason to be cautious. Generative artificial intelligence often doesn’t work as advertised, and there are a number of hurdles to making it safe. OpenAI has learned that lesson the hard way, as reports of AI psychosis flood the internet.

But Cook has recently signaled that he understands how transformative the tech could be for Apple, dubbing the AI revolution “as big or bigger” than the internet during a global all-hands meeting last month.

Apple’s ramp-up with AI is expected to take some time, as Bloomberg notes. The company is announcing a new iPhone next week, but the device isn’t expected to have any “major” new AI features.

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September 4, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Apple’s latest AI project may be a web search tool

by admin September 4, 2025

Apple continues to seek a foothold in the artificial intelligence race, and its next effort could bring the company into web search. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg reports that Apple is building a search platform that it may incorporate into its AI-driven overhaul of Siri. Sources said the tool, internally called World Knowledge Answers, could also be added to the Safari web browser and the Spotlight smartphone search interface.

Apple’s efforts in AI have been under the microscope since the lackluster introduction of Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024. Since then, the company appears to still be foundering, with its revitalized and AI-empowered Siri now not due to arrive until 2026. This proposed search tool would be part of that planned Siri re-launch next spring.

Some core aspects of Siri are still up in the air. The company has reportedly trialed using Google’s Gemini to power a version of the AI assistant, although it hasn’t committed to using that approach. Considering an outside partnership for this critical feature is one path Apple could take to bolstering its AI offerings. CEO Tim Cook has also said the company is open to acquisitions to pursue its current roadmap. There were even rumors that the company had its eyes on snapping up Perplexity.

Apple has historically avoided getting involved in search, but this development could reflect how more of its potential customers are turning to AI chatbots to access information online. And particularly if the company brings an AI option to Safari, Apple might be able to compete more directly to other tech majors that offer their own-branded chatbots, such as Google with Gemini or Microsoft with Copilot. It could also draw closer to parity with AI companies that are entering the browser game, such as Perplexity and OpenAI.

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September 4, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Bluehost Web Hosting review | TechRadar

by admin September 2, 2025

Why you can trust TechRadar

We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Bluehost, one of the world’s largest and best web hosting providers, has almost two decades of experience in helping users build and host quality WordPress websites.

Bluehost is owned by Newfold Digital the company behind other major hosting names like HostGator, Network Solutions, and SEO tool Yoast too.

Bluehost has a real depth of knowledge in WordPress which goes way beyond most competitors. It has developers working on the platform full-time, and has been directly recommended by WordPress.org since 2005.

For a quick run through what Bluehost is like to use check out my One Hour With Bluehost article.

Bluehost subscription options:

12 month plan – $2.95 per month ($35.40 total cost)

What types of hosting does Bluehost offer?

Bluehost provides some of the best WordPress hosting in the shape of shared, VPS hosting, cloud, and dedicated hosting plans. These plans are good for everything from blogs to ecommerce sites of all sizes.

The shared plans come in four flavours: Starter, Business, eCommerce Essentials, and eCommerce Essentials Premium. You’ll find yourself directed to these plans if you click through from WordPress Hosting, WooCommerce, and Web Hosting. The only difference is that if you click through from WooCommerce you’ll only be offered eCommerce Essentials, and eCommerce Essentials Premium.

The shared plans are ideal for up to 400K visits but those figures are based on the average site and don’t specify a performance level for the sites. You should consider the number an estimate and safety net. If your site gets a lot of visitors, you’ll likely need to use one of the VPS, cloud, or dedicated plans.

The VPS plans come in three flavours: Standard NVMe 4, Enhanced NVMe 8, and Ultimate NVMe 16. Plus, a bonus custom flavour. The number in the name corresponds to the amount of RAM you get with each plan. You get a 1:2 ratio of CPU cores to gigabytes of RAM. As for site visits, you’re on your own here when it comes to estimated levels but support will help you make the choice on which one is best for you.

The cloud plans also come in three flavours: Cloud 10, Cloud 25, and Cloud 50. Plus, the additional custom plan. The number in this name corresponds to how many sites each plan supports. The cloud plans are ideal for 300K – 23 million site visits a month.

It’s the same pattern with dedicated hosting plans: Standard NVMe 32, Enhanced NVMe 64, and Premium NVMe 128…and the custom plan. These plans have a CPU core to RAM ratio of 1:4.

Bluehost offers quality WordPress plans with some powerful extras (Image credit: Future)

Bluehost shared & WordPress hosting

Bluehost’s WordPress and shared hosting plans are the same. Opt for one of these plans and your website is stored on a server which also hosts many other accounts. This type of hosting saves money, because the cost of the server is shared between many users. But it runs the risk of unstable performance, because the server’s resources – the processor, the RAM, the network connection – are also shared by all the accounts.

The cheapest plan starts at $3.95/mo for 36 months and then renews at $9.99. It supports 10 websites and up to 40K visits a month. It provides 10 GB NVMe storage, a CDN, managed WordPress updates, SSL, and some security features. Email and back ups are only free for one year.

Spending more on the next plan will set you back $6.45/mo for 36 months and then $14.99/mo after. The only difference is that the plan supports more visitors (200K) but also malware removal and free domain privacy for one year.

Step up again and you’ll be paying 6.99/mo for more resources and more security, development tools, and ecommerce tools. This plan renews at $17.99/mo.

These are capable products, easy to manage, faster than most (more on that later) and powerful enough to handle many personal and small business sites.

(Image credit: Future)

Bluehost VPS hosting

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting is where a physical server is divided up into individual server environments. There are far fewer accounts on a server than you’ll see with shared hosting, and your VPS doesn’t have to share its resources with other sites. That’s a real performance plus, and while some shared hosting plans might struggle with large amounts of visitors, a good VPS can usually handle hundreds of thousands.

Bluehost has three VPS plans. The simplest gives you 2 CPU cores, 4 GB DDR5 RAM, 100 GB NVMe storage, unmetered bandwidth and a cPanel/WHM license for $46.99/ month over three years, $65.99 on renewal. At the top of the range, an 8 core, 16 GB DDR5 RAM, 450 GB NVMe storage and unmetered bandwidth setup is priced at $94.99 a month over three years, $140.99 on renewal.

A full-featured cPanel setup is stuffed with web management features (Image credit: Future)

Bluehost dedicated hosting

Selecting a dedicated hosting package gets you the maximum resources and control: an entire web server, for your use only.

The server users the latest hardware including AMD EYPC processers. Speedy NVMe storage which is becoming the new standard SSD. You also get unlimited bandwidth, Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, and a 99.9% SLA.

The servers are fully managed and come with white-glove onboarding.

Bluehost website builder dashboard (Image credit: Future)

Does Bluehost have a page builder?

Bluehost offers a WordPress page builder. It’s based on WordPress and has some of the same pain points of the WordPress built-in block editor but has some handy tools to make it easier. You can use this for all types of sites from blogs to eCommerce stores.

First of all, you get a helping hand if you’re stating out with your first WordPress site in the form of an AI built website. There are also suggestions and tutorials to help you make it better. There is also the WordPress Academy to help you better understand WordPress.

Then, there is the WonderBlocks tool that has loads of templates for all sorts of things you want to add to your site. You can read more about the experience of building your first site with Bluehost in my one hour with Bluehost review and the full Bluehost website builder review.

Bluehost’s uptime (Image credit: Future)

How fast is Bluehost?

Performance matters in web hosting, even for the cheapest of plans. A slow site, regularly down, could be worse than having no website at all.

To test Bluehost we migrated a WordPress site to the most basic plans and then ran some WordPress benchmark tests to see how well the server performed in general. After that we did some gentle stress testing to see how well the site coped with some traffic.

Swipe to scroll horizontallyWordPress benchmark testing

CPU & Memory

Operations with large text data

8.8

Row 1 – Cell 0

Random binary data operations

5.14

Row 2 – Cell 0

Recursive mathematical calculations

6.13

Row 3 – Cell 0

Iterative mathematical calculations

7.2

Filesystem

Filesystem write ability

8.82

Row 5 – Cell 0

Local file copy and access speed

9.36

Row 6 – Cell 0

Small file IO test

Database

Importing large amount of data to database

8.68

Row 8 – Cell 0

Simple queries on single table

Row 9 – Cell 0

Complex database queries on multiple tables

7.7

Object Cache

Persistent object cache enabled

Network

Network download speed test

Overall

Your server score

7.9

Swipe to scroll horizontallySiege test

Concurrent users

Transactions

1086

2110

1473

availability

95.6

96.7

95.71

elapsed time

299.22

299.87

299.11

Data transactions

13.96

25.95

19.45

response time

0.41

1.17

2.61

Transaction rate

3.36

7.04

4.92

throughput

0.05

0.09

0.07

concurrency

1.49

8.22

12.87

sucesful transactions

1086

2110

1473

failed transactions

longest transaction

19.77

19.93

20.21

shortest transaction

0.11

0.1

For benchmarking, the WordPress Benchmark plugin measures CPU and memory use, object cache, filesystem access, and network speed. It then provides a final benchmark score. Meanwhile, the command line tool Siege can simulate multiple concurrent visits, providing us with an idea of the server’s reliability when demand is high.

Our modest WordPress-based WooCommerce store, with around 20 items and a welcoming landing page scored 7.9 in WordPress Benchmark. This was a particularly good set of scores across the board, only let down by the “Persistent object cache enabled” benchmark unable to measure a score.

Meanwhile, the Siege testing found the hosting able to handle 9 and 15 concurrent visitors comfortably, responding well and with over 95% availability. Considered together, these test results offer some confidence that even with Bluehost’s most affordable hosting plans, you can expect reliable performance.

Note that these tests determine performance on a shared hosting plan. As such, they don’t offer any insights into speeds on dedicated hosting, cloud hosting, or VPS hosting plans.

What is Bluehost’s support like?

There is only chat support for the most basic shared hosting plans. All other plans come with chat and phone support. There is also only a local US or international number for phone support and all support is in the English language. This might not be an issue if you’re in North America but it could be costly and less than ideal compared with having support in your local language.

To be fair, this shouldn’t be a big cross in the cons column because most hosting companies don’t offer phone support at all – let alone in multiple languages. Still, only offering English support across all support is going to be a dealbreaker for some and other hosts do offer multi-lingual support, such as Hostinger.

Final verdict

The company’s tiny and not-very-configurable VPS and Dedicated plans mean Bluehost is less likely to work for the most demanding business users, but overall, Bluehost remains a quality provider who delivers faster, more reliable and better quality hosting than most of the competition.

Bluehost’s underpowered VPS and dedicated hosting plans mean it may not work for the largest and most demanding business-critical sites, but it excels everywhere else, with all the feature-packed shared, WordPress, website-building and ecommerce plans you need to build fast and reliable personal and small to medium business sites.

Bluehost FAQs

What payment types does Bluehost support?

Bluehost accepts payment via card only.

Does Bluehost offer refunds?

Buy a Bluehost hosting plan, or some add-on products and you’re protected by a 30-day money-back guarantee. That’s typical for the hosting world, although a few providers offer more: InMotion Hosting gives you 90 days, HostGator 45 days.

We noticed one or two minor issues. Bluehost doesn’t offer refunds on SSL certificates, for instance; Hostinger does. But generally, this is a straightforward, catch-free guarantee which gives you exactly the protection you’d expect.

Does Bluehost have an uptime guarantee?

Bluehost doesn’t quote any target uptime figure, or have any formal method of compensating you if your server is down for a lengthy period.

That’s a little disappointing. Most providers quote uptime figures of at least 99.9%, some 99.99%, and say they’ll give you credits if the service doesn’t hit the mark.

These ‘guarantees’ don’t always mean very much, though. The small print might say downtime doesn’t count if it’s due to ‘unforeseeable circumstances’, for instance, something which could be used to rule out almost anything.

Overall, we’d prefer a host to have an uptime guarantee, but if this doesn’t happen, it’s not a disaster. We’ll look at our own and other measurements of uptime, instead, and in our experience Bluehost scores very well.

Where are Bluehost’s data centers?

Bluehost has local data centers for its various regions – USA, India, China – but your site is automatically assigned to the nearest location when you sign up. Buy at bluehost.com and your website is hosted in Bluehost’s USA data center, for instance; use bluehost.in and it’s hosted in India.

For comparison, GoDaddy has data centers in North America, India, Singapore and Europe, and you’re able to choose which data center to use for each hosting plan. That can be an advantage, as it gives you a better chance of hosting your website close to its main audience, improving download speeds.

What is my Bluehost IP address?

Finding your website server’s IP address can be handy, especially if you need to point a domain hosted elsewhere to your website.

There’s no single way to manage this on Bluehost – it depends on your product and control panel – but if your plan has access to cPanel, it only takes a moment.

Log into your Bluehost account dashboard (my.bluehost.com).

Click Advanced in the left-hand sidebar.

Browse the General Information box on the right. The server IP address is displayed as ‘Shared IP address.’ (If you don’t see a General Information box, look for and click a Server Information link).

What are Bluehost’s nameservers?

Bluehost’s nameservers are:

ns1.bluehost.com 162.88.60.37
ns2.bluehost.com 162.88.61.37

If you need more help, the support site has several useful articles on nameservers and DNS

How do I cancel a Bluehost product?

Log into your Bluehost control panel (my.bluehost.com).

Click the account icon top right (it’ll have your initials in a circle) and select My Products.

Find the plan you’d like to cancel, click the More icon to its right (three dots in a vertical line) and select Renewal Options.

Choose Manual Renew and you won’t be charged again. Your subscription will expire at the end of its term.

If you think there’s a chance you might want to cancel a plan, make the decision as early as you can. Bluehost’s auto-renewal scheme takes your money 15 days before the plan expires, so if you leave this to the last minute, there’s a good chance you’ll be too late.

Check out the latest Bluehost promo codes.

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September 2, 2025 0 comments