How do you enjoy working from an office in nature from two huts in Vitosha? 

Variety in daily life is an important part of the rhythm of work, not only because it improves emotional stability and health, but also because it naturally unlocks human creativity. Because our work in the IT department is not trivial and we don’t always know in advance the steps that will solve the problem at hand, some of the idea generation happens in unconventional places, often away from the computer. In this line of thought, we appreciate very much the flexibility that Paysafe provides us, to work in nature for part of the time, to enjoy the sun, greenery and fresh air.

What are the main advantages for you when working in the mountains compared to working in a traditional office environment? 

Working outdoors in the mountains activates alternative parts of the brain that often get left behind in a predictable office environment where everything looks the same, day after day. In fact, some of our boldest ideas have been generated outside of the regular office environment and the effect on team spirit is unparalleled.

How does this change in environment affect you – do you feel a difference in concentration, motivation or work-life balance? 

I have noticed that after a day like this, all colleagues are extremely energised and I am sure that even after they go home, the feeling remains and they are able to share it with their loved ones. This is the magic of fresh air, open skies and the living forest. For me personally, the feeling after such a day, no matter how busy it was in terms of operational tasks, is like coming back from an outing with friends.

How often do you take this opportunity and does it happen that you work from the hut together with colleagues? 

We use this opportunity the most in the warm season, when the weather is suitable to stay outdoors all day. This means that we open the season from the beginning of June and close it after mid-October when late autumn starts. So far, I have never gone to work from the hut alone, we are always together with colleagues – it is so much more fun, and more productive. Many times we have used these days out to organize workshops with the teams in order to generate ideas, solve a particular problem and bring the team together.

How do your family and friends react when they find out you work from a cabin in the mountains?

Some of them, who are not used to the concept, are surprised, even asking me, “Well, how come? Do you manage to do good work from there?” I answer this question with a smile, assuring them that some of our most significant results have been achieved precisely through the unconventional approach, encouraging them to try it too, if of course their employer offers them such flexibility. I have also shown them photos of workshops in nature, where the mood and commitment of the participants is evident. After such a discussion I leave everyone with a curiosity and willingness to try and give something new and different a chance.

What place do nature and the mountains have in your way of working and taking care of yourself?

No matter how advanced we are as a society and technology, nature remains our natural habitat. I am personally of the opinion that without regular contact with it, true and complete human health and happiness is unattainable. That’s why I’ve given this type of activity a central place in my life, taking every possible moment to be outside in the woods or a nearby park. As for outdoor work – it inspires me, refreshes me and brings me new perspectives.

Would you recommend this model of work to colleagues and why?

Not only do I recommend this model of work to colleagues, I directly encourage them and go with them when commitments allow. I have repeatedly recommended working from the mountains to my fellow managers as an excellent prerequisite for running successful team workshops, and quite a few of them have already been convinced by personal experience. I would like to tell everyone who reads these lines not to hesitate and get up in the mountains, try the homemade breakfast softies, open their laptop and see what wonders their mind will create in this environment free from office barriers.

The material and images are provided by Paysafe

Over the course of three weeks, teams of students from the Technical University of Sofia, the Faculty of Economics of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” and the Faculty of Physics and Technology of Plovdiv University “Paisii Hilendarski” worked on real business cases provided by companies – members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria (AmCham). The unique format of the Hackathon encourage innovative thinking and application of academic knowledge in a real business environment.

Paysafe was pleased to support the hackathon for the first year

Mentors from the company were Anita Yanudova, Manager Consumer Duty Product Governance and Dimitar Ivanov, Senior Product Manager, Consumer Risk.

“This was an opportunity to get out of the routine, meet young talent and check our watch by meeting young and creative people who are an “incubator” for new ideas, and at the same time contribute our experience and knowledge,”

they said.

“As mentors, we wanted to create a sense of teamwork where everyone has something to contribute. We encouraged the students to share their strengths and take on the tasks best suited to them, guiding them through the stages of case development.”

New skills and challenges

For the participants, the Hackathon turned out to be much more than a competition – with the support of Paysafe mentors, they met real business challenges, learned about methodologies such as design thinking and lean startup – tools for innovation and rapid adaptation in a real business environment, and learned to make decisions quickly, flexibly and customer-oriented.

“I learned to apply new methodologies to solve problems. This will be of great benefit to me in future projects and innovation processes. Technically, I had the opportunity to learn about new tools for rapid prototyping and collaboration, as well as to upgrade my knowledge in the field of artificial intelligence and automation – areas that are increasingly relevant and necessary in modern business,”

said Alexander Hristov, a student in Telecommunications at TU-Sofia.

The team was faced with a challenging task – to work towards promoting sustainable consumption through FinTech solutions – a complex topic, but one with huge social potential. They created an idea for an app that integrates with payment systems, identifies sustainable, ethical and socially responsible merchants and rewards consumers for their choices.

“We conducted in-depth research to understand how people perceive ethical and sustainable products and what would make them prefer them. Based on this, we created an open access app that FinTech companies can integrate – it identifies sustainable merchants and rewards consumers with points for every purchase with them.”

“One of the biggest challenges was figuring out when we had enough information to move forward. Each answer led to three more questions. In such moments Anita and Dimitar, our mentors and with years of experience in the fintech company, were extremely important – they guided us and helped us make the right decisions when we felt lost,”

adds Isabel, a third-year student of Computer Engineering at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”.

Participants discovered not only new knowledge but also new confidence. 

“They should never stop asking their mentors for information and never give up, because if they even once think of giving up, they are doomed to failure,”

advised Ivan Damyanov, a student of Telecommunications at TU-Sofia.

Ina Petrova, a first-year student in Cyber Security at TU-Sofia, sums up the motivation for participating in the competition of many:

“The desire to learn something new and get to know the work process up close motivated me to participate in the competition.”

What inspires young students? 

Although all are highly engaged in their academic projects, students also have a variety of personal interests. Ivan enjoys Airsoft and Paintball competitions, solving puzzles, video games and collecting coins from around the world. Isabel has a passion for solving complex problems and analyzing data, always looking to better understand the world around her. Alexander combines his technical interests with his creative passions for drawing and music, valuing teamwork and quick decision making. And Ina is determined to grow in the IT field, striving for constant improvement and adaptation in a rapidly changing technological world.

By supporting initiatives like AmCham Hackathon 2025, Paysafe is not only investing in the future of innovation – it is empowering the very people who will shape it. This partnership is further proof that when industry, education and motivation meet, the results are creative solutions that move the world forward.

The material and images are provided by Paysafe

At its Delivering the Future event in Dortmund, Germany, Amazon announced the debut of Vulcan, a groundbreaking robot that introduces a fundamental new capability to warehouse automation: the sense of touch.

Unlike previous robotic systems that rely primarily on vision and pre-programmed motions, Vulcan is engineered to physically “feel” the objects it handles—offering a major leap forward in dexterity, safety, and efficiency across Amazon’s vast network of fulfillment centers.

“Vulcan represents a fundamental leap forward in robotics,”

said Aaron Parness, Amazon’s Director of Applied Science.

“It’s not just seeing the world, it’s feeling it—enabling capabilities that were impossible for Amazon robots until now.”

The announcement was made via Amazon’s official blog post and showcased how Vulcan is already transforming warehouse operations in locations such as Spokane, Washington, and Hamburg, Germany.

From “Numb and Dumb” to Tactile Intelligence

While robots have become adept at tasks ranging from autonomous driving to cleaning pet hair, most commercial units lack a sense of touch—rendering them fragile or clumsy in environments that require nuance.

“In the past, when industrial robots have unexpected contact, they either emergency stop or smash through that contact,”

said Parness.

“They often don’t even know they have hit something.”

This is the problem Vulcan was built to solve.

Equipped with advanced force-feedback sensors and an “end of arm tooling” system that mimics human-like grip adjustments, Vulcan can manipulate items with care—gently repositioning objects inside densely packed bins without causing damage.

Its design resembles a ruler attached to a hair straightener, where:

• The ruler component makes space in crowded bins,
• The paddles grip and insert items using built-in conveyor belts that help “zhoop” them into place.

Vulcan’s ability to pick and stow items makes our associates’ jobs easier—and our operations more efficient.

Built for the Bin: Solving Amazon’s Unique Storage Challenge

In Amazon’s warehouses, items are stored in fabric-covered pods split into one-foot square compartments—each containing up to ten items. The irregularity and density of these compartments have long posed a challenge to robotic systems.

While earlier robots like Sparrow, Cardinal, and Robin relied on computer vision and suction cups to handle packages, they lacked the tactile intelligence to finesse objects in tight spaces. Vulcan, however, changes the game.

Using a suction-based picking arm guided by a camera and stereo vision system, Vulcan identifies items and the best gripping points while avoiding accidental co-extraction of surrounding objects—an error engineers refer to as “co-extracting non-target items.”

Vulcan can pick and stow about 75% of the diverse inventory found in fulfillment centers, performing at speeds that rival Amazon’s human workers. And when it encounters an object it can’t confidently handle, it’s smart enough to call in a human colleague—striking a balance between AI autonomy and human judgment.

Vulcan uses an arm that carries a camera and a suction cup to pick items from our storage pods.

Enhancing Safety and Ergonomics for Employees

One of Vulcan’s key contributions is in improving worker safety and reducing ergonomic strain.

Traditionally, reaching items stored in the top or bottom rows of pods—some as high as eight feet—required workers to use ladders or stoop to floor level. Vulcan now handles these less ergonomic zones, allowing employees to work comfortably at waist height.

“Working alongside Vulcan, we can pick and stow with greater ease,”

said Kari Freitas Hardy, a front-line employee at Amazon’s Spokane facility.

“It’s great to see how many of my co-workers have gained new job skills and taken on more technical roles.”

The company has already deployed over 750,000 robots across its operations, including systems like Proteus, Titan, and Hercules, all built to handle physically demanding tasks. Vulcan is the latest and most advanced addition in this line—focusing on precision and adaptability rather than brute strength.

Vulcan will let our associates spend less time on step ladders and more time working in their power zone.

A Decade of Robotics Innovation

Amazon’s approach to robotics has never been about building flashy tech for its own sake. Instead, the company zeroes in on specific operational problems and builds purpose-driven solutions.

“We pick out important problems and find or develop solutions—we don’t create interesting tech and then look for ways to use it,”

Parness emphasized.

Vulcan’s development began with a simple observation: each time a worker uses a ladder to access a high shelf, efficiency drops and injury risk increases. Tackling this required breakthroughs in physical AI, including:

• Real-world training based on tactile feedback rather than simulation,
• Algorithms to identify item types and bin availability,
• Adaptive grip mechanics to handle everything from tubes of toothpaste to delicate electronics.

Vulcan was trained on thousands of real-world scenarios, and like a child learning through experience, it improves its understanding of object properties through trial and error.

“This is a technology that three years ago seemed impossible,”

Parness said,

“but is now set to help transform our operations.”

Vulcan represents “a technology that three years ago seemed impossible but is now set to help transform our operations,” says Aaron Parness, Amazon’s director of robotics AI.

Empowering the Workforce of the Future

The ripple effects of Vulcan extend beyond automation. As robots take on more of the physical burden, Amazon is investing in reskilling its workforce through programs like Career Choice, helping employees transition into roles like robotics maintenance and automation systems engineering.

With robots now assisting in 75% of customer orders, Amazon’s strategy appears to be less about replacing humans and more about augmenting them—with Vulcan standing as the latest proof that automation and human labor can coexist and even elevate each other.

Images/Photos: Amazon

Google announced on Wednesday the discovery of a new strain of malware, dubbed “LOSTKEYS”, which has been attributed to the Cold River hacking group—an actor previously linked to Russian state interests.

The revelation was detailed in a blog post by Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), highlighting the evolving tactics of a threat actor known for targeting high-profile geopolitical entities.

A New Chapter in Cold River’s Toolkit

According to Wesley Shields, a security researcher at Google GTIG, LOSTKEYS represents “a new development in the toolset” of Cold River. The malware is capable of exfiltrating files and transmitting system information back to its operators, enhancing the group’s surveillance and espionage capabilities.

Cold River—also known in cybersecurity circles as Callisto Group or Seaborgium—has been previously linked to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). The group is notorious for its phishing campaigns and credential theft, often aimed at extracting sensitive information from targets aligned with Western institutions and governments.

Recent Campaigns: Intelligence Gathering on Ukraine and the West

The blog notes that Cold River’s activities have persisted into 2025, with observed campaigns in January, March, and April targeting:

• Current and former advisers to Western governments and militaries
• Journalists
• Think tanks
• Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
• Unnamed individuals associated with Ukraine

These efforts appear to support Russian strategic objectives, consistent with Cold River’s historical operations.

A Track Record of High-Profile Intrusions

Cold River has been implicated in several high-stakes cyber campaigns over the past few years. In the summer of 2022, the group targeted three U.S. nuclear research laboratories, attempting to gain access to highly sensitive scientific data.

Later that year, in an operation exposed in May 2022, the group published the private email correspondence of former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove and other pro-Brexit figures. The campaign appeared to be part of a broader disinformation effort aimed at influencing public discourse in the United Kingdom.

Image: Freepik

Apple is reportedly developing its own AI-driven search engine, a move that could significantly shift the dynamics of its long-standing relationship with Google. The revelation, reported by Bloomberg, suggests Apple may be looking to reduce or even sever its dependency on Google’s search technology—a partnership that has been a cornerstone of both companies’ mobile strategies for over a decade.

A New Chapter in Search

The news comes amid growing interest in next-generation, AI-powered search engines, such as those developed by Perplexity, OpenAI, and Anthropic. These tools use large language models to provide more conversational, context-aware answers—posing a direct challenge to traditional search engines like Google.

Apple appears to be eyeing a similar path. The company is exploring the integration of artificial intelligence into its search experience, possibly laying the groundwork for a native AI search solution across its ecosystem.

Confirmed in Court

Apple’s intent was disclosed during Google’s ongoing antitrust trial, where Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services, testified to the shifting search landscape. Cue noted a recent decline in user searches—a trend he attributed to growing adoption of AI-powered tools that offer faster, more relevant results.

Cue also revealed that Apple is “actively looking at” integrating AI search providers—such as OpenAI and Anthropic—directly into its Safari browser, further signaling a break from its reliance on Google.

This shift could have major financial implications. Google currently pays Apple billions annually to remain the default search engine on iOS devices. If Apple ultimately replaces or deprioritizes Google in favor of its own AI solution, it could disrupt a significant revenue stream tied to Google’s advertising business.

Market Reaction

Investors responded swiftly to the potential shake-up. Shares of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, fell more than 7% following the news, erasing over $75 billion in market value. Apple, by contrast, saw a relatively modest decline of around 2%.

The stark contrast reflects growing investor concern that Google could lose its grip on one of the most valuable digital entry points: the default search position on Apple devices.

The Bigger Picture

While Apple has yet to make any official announcements via a press release or public blog post, its ambitions in AI search align with broader trends reshaping the tech industry. As consumer expectations evolve, driven by advances in generative AI and large language models, traditional web search is increasingly being reimagined.

Should Apple move forward with its own AI-powered search product, the move would not only intensify competition in search—it could also redefine how users interact with information on mobile devices.

Image: Apple Newsroom

IBM has introduced a suite of new technologies aimed at scaling enterprise AI across hybrid environments, as announced today at its annual THINK conference. This move reinforces IBM’s commitment to breaking down barriers to AI deployment with integrated solutions that unify data, orchestrate AI agents, and simplify enterprise operations.

With over one billion applications projected to emerge by 2028, businesses are under increasing pressure to streamline operations across fragmented systems. IBM is responding with hybrid technologies, enhanced agent capabilities, and the consulting expertise of IBM Consulting, aiming to help clients accelerate AI adoption and realize measurable business value.

Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM

“The era of AI experimentation is over,”

said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM.

“Today’s competitive advantage comes from purpose-built AI integration that drives measurable business outcomes.”

Enterprise AI Agents Powered by watsonx Orchestrate

Central to IBM’s announcement is the expanded functionality of watsonx Orchestrate, designed to help businesses create, deploy, and manage AI agents across a wide array of enterprise tools.

Key features include:

• Agent Builder: Enables users to create custom AI agents in under five minutes using no-code to pro-code tools.
• Pre-built Domain Agents: Ready-to-use agents tailored for HR, sales, procurement, and more.
• Wide Integration: Supports over 80 leading enterprise applications, including solutions from Adobe, AWS, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce Agentforce, SAP, ServiceNow, and Workday.
• Agent Orchestration: Coordinates multi-agent workflows and tools across vendors.
• Agent Observability: Provides monitoring, guardrails, and lifecycle governance.

IBM also unveiled the Agent Catalog, offering access to over 150 agents and tools co-developed with partners like Box, Mastercard, Symplistic.ai, 11x, and others. Sample integrations include a Salesforce-native prospecting agent and a conversational HR agent for Slack.

Tackling Integration Challenges with webMethods Hybrid Integration

A common obstacle to enterprise AI adoption is integration complexity. IBM is addressing this with the launch of webMethods Hybrid Integration, a solution for automating workflows across applications, APIs, partners, and clouds.

According to a Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) study, organizations using webMethods realized:

• 176% ROI over three years
• 40% reduction in downtime
• Up to 67% time savings on project execution
• Improved ease of use, security, and visibility

This integration technology complements IBM’s existing automation offerings and is enhanced by collaborations with HashiCorp, including integrations with Terraform and Vault, to support secure, scalable hybrid cloud operations.

Unlocking the Value of Unstructured Data

Unstructured data—such as contracts, spreadsheets, and presentations—represents a largely untapped asset in enterprise AI. IBM is advancing watsonx.data to help organizations activate this data with greater accuracy.

Highlights include:

• Open Data Lakehouse: Now with data fabric features like lineage tracking and governance.
• watsonx.data integration: A unified tool for orchestrating data pipelines across formats.
• watsonx.data intelligence: AI-driven tools for deep insights from unstructured data.

Early testing indicates watsonx.data enables up to 40% more accurate AI compared to traditional retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) methods.

In support of this strategy, IBM recently announced plans to acquire DataStax, a leader in unstructured data handling for generative AI. Additionally, watsonx is now integrated with Meta’s Llama Stack, further enhancing its generative AI capabilities.

IBM’s Content-Aware Storage (CAS) is also now available on IBM Fusion, with support for IBM Storage Scale arriving in Q3. CAS enables contextual processing of unstructured data to speed up AI inferencing.

Infrastructure for AI at Scale: Introducing IBM LinuxONE 5

To support high-performance AI workloads, IBM introduced IBM LinuxONE 5, its most secure and powerful Linux platform to date. It can process up to 450 billion AI inference operations per day.

Innovations include:

• Telum II AI Processor & IBM Spyre Accelerator: High-speed processing for generative AI, with Spyre available in late 2025.
• Confidential Containers & Quantum-Safe Encryption: Advanced security for sensitive workloads.
• Cost and Energy Efficiency: Compared to x86 systems, LinuxONE 5 can lower total cost of ownership by up to 44% over five years.

IBM also expanded partnerships with AMD, Intel, CoreWeave, and NVIDIA to deliver new compute and storage solutions for AI-driven applications.

The Road Ahead

IBM’s latest announcements represent a strategic push toward operationalizing AI at enterprise scale through modular, secure, and hybrid-ready technologies. As businesses move from AI experimentation to enterprise-wide adoption, IBM aims to be the infrastructure backbone enabling that transformation.

Image: IBM video

Meta announced new steps to expand protections for teen users across its platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger. The update, shared via a company blog post, reflects Meta’s ongoing efforts to create safer, more age-appropriate experiences for younger users and to support parental involvement in their digital lives.

Scaling Up the Teen Accounts Experience

Since the initial launch of Instagram Teen Accounts last year, Meta has introduced a range of built-in safeguards. These include limitations on who can contact teen users, restrictions on sensitive content, and tools to help manage screen time. Teen users are automatically placed into these protective settings, and those under the age of 16 require parental or guardian approval to make changes.

As of April 2025, the company reports more than 54 million active Teen Accounts globally, with an impressive 97% of teens aged 13–15 choosing to remain under these default protections. The experience has since been extended to Facebook and Messenger, broadening the reach of these initiatives across Meta’s ecosystem.

Positive Feedback from Families

According to Meta, both teens and parents have responded favorably to these changes. In surveys conducted by the company, over 90% of parents said the Teen Account features were helpful in supporting their children’s online experiences.

Despite these encouraging numbers, Meta acknowledges the ongoing challenges parents face in navigating the digital world with their teens. “The internet can be overwhelming,” the company notes, emphasizing its commitment to continue evolving its tools in collaboration with parents and experts.

A New Call to Action for Parents

Beginning this week, Meta will roll out in-app notifications to parents on Instagram, encouraging discussions around digital safety and the importance of accurately representing age online. These notifications will include expert advice, such as guidance from Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart, a pediatric psychologist, on how to initiate age-related conversations with teens.

This effort is part of a broader push to ensure that teens are not only protected by default settings, but also understand the importance of truthful age disclosure in online environments.

AI-Driven Age Detection Now in Testing

To further strengthen its teen safety efforts, Meta is testing a new AI system in the United States designed to detect accounts that may belong to teens—even if the listed birthdate suggests otherwise. Once identified, these accounts will be automatically placed in Teen Account settings.

While Meta has previously used artificial intelligence to estimate user age, this marks a more proactive use of the technology. The company states that it is taking care to ensure accuracy in identifying teens and is providing users with the option to update their settings if errors occur.

More details about this AI approach and Meta’s broader age verification initiatives can be found here.

Looking Ahead

Meta acknowledges that determining the age of users online remains a complex, industry-wide challenge. The company emphasizes that while AI and in-app protections play a critical role, parental verification and age confirmation at the app store level remain among the most effective tools for ensuring safe, age-appropriate digital environments.

While many developers have mastered the basics, senior developers should be well-versed in advanced TypeScript concepts to write more maintainable, scalable, and efficient code.

Below are seven advanced TypeScript concepts that every senior front-end developer should understand.

What Every Senior Front-End Developer Should Know About Advanced TypeScript Concepts

1. Union Types

Union types enable a variable to hold one of several specified types, providing the flexibility of dynamic data handling while preserving type safety. It’s akin to having a multi-functional tool that fits diverse scenarios.

Example:

More Real-World Example:

2. Intersection Types

Intersection types combine properties from multiple types, ensuring that a variable satisfies all the conditions. It’s a way to merge the identity of different entities, useful for designing more complex types.

Example:

In this scenario, a SuperAdmin type ensures that a user has both User and Admin properties.

3. Type Guards

Type guards act as validation checkpoints within code, allowing for safer type narrowing during runtime checks. These are like checkpoints that only let specific types through, enhancing security and accuracy.

Example:

4. Conditional Types

Conditional types provide powerful type transformations based on certain conditions. They enable dynamic type manipulation, similar to how logic gates control paths in circuits.

Example:

Conditional types allow developers to build types that adapt based on other types, leading to more expressive and flexible code.

5. Mapped Types

Mapped types transform existing types into new structures by iterating over each property, making it easier to implement type-wide modifications.

Example:

6. Template Literal Types

Template literal types use string literals to create new types, providing a way to enforce naming conventions or combine string patterns for type safety.

Example:

These types make your type definitions more expressive, offering clearer guidelines for code patterns.

7. Recursive Types

Recursive types are crucial for representing complex data structures like trees, linked lists, or deeply nested objects. They allow types to refer to themselves, providing a way to model data structures that are inherently recursive.

Example:

Recursive types are like building blocks that enable you to model structures as intricate as a family tree or a file directory.

Conclusion

Advanced TypeScript concepts such as union types, intersection types, type guards, conditional types, mapped types, template literal types, and recursive types are essential tools in a senior developer’s toolkit. Mastering these features ensures that your code is type-safe, concise, and scalable, setting a strong foundation for complex application development.

Material provided by: Kristiyan Velkov

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Kristiyan Velkov, Contributor at DevStyleR, is with over 10 years of experience in JavaScript and open-source development. He has honed his skills in tools like React.js, Angular, Vue.js, and Next.js. He also dive deep into DevOps, web accessibility, and security—because great code is about more than just functionality!

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Meta is taking a step back to its roots by reintroducing more personal, connection-focused features to Facebook. In a move designed to bring back the platform’s original spirit of social networking, the company has launched a revamped Friends tab, rolling out first in the United States and Canada.

The update was announced via a blog post, with Meta outlining a broader plan to reintroduce several classic “OG” Facebook experiences throughout 2024.

A Return to Facebook’s Social Core

Facebook began as a platform built around personal connections. Over the years, it expanded into a multi-faceted social network encompassing features like Groups, Video, Marketplace, and more. While these tools offer utility and scale, many users feel that the platform’s original emphasis on friendships has taken a back seat.

To address this, Facebook is introducing a new Friends tab aimed at making content from real-life connections more visible and accessible.

What’s New in the Friends Tab?

The redesigned Friends tab serves as a centralized feed focused exclusively on your Facebook friends. Unlike the main feed—which mixes posts from groups, pages, ads, and suggested content—the Friends tab filters out the noise, surfacing only:

• Stories and Reels from friends
• Traditional posts (text, photo, video)
• Birthday reminders
• Friend requests

Previously, the Friends tab was primarily used to manage friend requests and view People You May Know suggestions. With this update, it becomes a more dynamic space dedicated to real-time social interaction.

The new Facebook Friends tab that makes it easier to connect with your friends

How to Access and Pin the Friends Tab

Initially, users can find the new Friends tab through the navigation bar on their home feed. It will also be available in the Bookmarks section of the app. For easier access, users can pin the tab by following these steps:

1. Tap your profile picture in the Home feed
2. Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Tab Bar
3. Customize the bar and select Friends to pin it

What’s Next?

Meta says this is just the beginning. As part of its broader effort to make Facebook “feel more social,” the company plans to introduce additional features throughout the year that focus on fun, simplicity, and real connection.

The move reflects a growing trend among social platforms to re-emphasize authentic, friend-based interactions in a landscape increasingly dominated by algorithmic discovery and viral content.

Gmail users can now experience a smarter and faster way to find emails, thanks to a new AI-powered search upgrade. Google has introduced an enhanced search functionality that prioritizes relevance over simple keyword matching, making it easier to locate important messages in cluttered inboxes.

A search view before and after. Now, search results are sorted by relevance instead of in chronological order to help you find your intended result, faster.

With this update, Gmail’s search results no longer rely solely on chronological order. Instead, they consider factors such as the recency of emails, the most-clicked messages, and frequent contacts. This means that the emails you are most likely searching for will appear at the top, saving time and improving efficiency.

The new feature, labeled “most relevant” search results, is rolling out globally for personal Google account users. It will be available both on the web and in the official Gmail app for Android and iOS. Users will have the option to toggle between “most relevant” and “most recent” results, ensuring flexibility in their searches.

While this update is currently for individual Gmail users, Google has announced plans to extend the AI-driven search enhancement to business users in the future. With this improvement, Gmail continues to evolve as a powerful tool for managing digital communication more effectively.