Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is moving to prioritize making Windows more resilient following the widespread CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) update bug that took 8.5 million computers offline last week. These changes include possibly preventing security vendors from accessing the Windows kernel, which is the core part of its operating system, and cooperation between the tech giant and its partners to make security improvements, the company said in a blogpost. "This incident shows clearly that Windows must prioritize change and innovation in the area of end-to-end resilience," said John Cable, vice president of program management for Windows servicing and delivery, in a blog post. "We will continue to develop these capabilities, harden our platform, and do even more to improve the resiliency of the Windows ecosystem, working openly and collaboratively with the broad security community."

OpenAI unveiled its own search engine on Thursday called SearchGPT, offering users "fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources," to their queries from around the web. The new tool, which works similarly to the company's virtual chatbot ChatGPT, helps users to find information via links and images to a given input, and provides the ability to ask follow-up questions alongside a display of generated additional search in a sidebar. "Getting answers on the web can take a lot of effort, often requiring multiple attempts to get relevant results," the company said in a blog post. "We believe that by enhancing the conversational capabilities of our models with real-time information from the web, finding what you’re looking for can be faster and easier.” SearchGPT is currently being alpha-tested with a small group of users, with the goal of integrating the tool into ChatGPT in the future. Shares of Alphabet's Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) were about 3% lower on Thursday.

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) launched Apple Maps on the web via public beta on Wednesday, allowing users to access the navigation service directly through a browser, in a move that increases its competition with Google Maps (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG); google maps were originally a desktop tool that launched in 2005. Apple Maps are now compatible with Safari and Chrome browsers on Mac and iPad, as well as Chrome and Edge on Windows with initial support in English. Apple plans to expand language offerings, browser support and platforms in the future, as well as additional functionality, like 360-degree panoramic location views in the coming months. The new web browser version comes 12 years after Apple first launched its Maps service for iPhone. The web offering works the same as the mobile service, allowing users to plan out a route for driving and walking directions, browse curated guides and reviews, and more.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Tuesday its ordering Mastercard (NYSE: MA), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Revionics, Bloomreach, Task Software, PROS, Accenture and McKinsey & Co to turn over information about the potential impact of their artificial-intelligence-powered "surveillance service pricing" have on privacy, as well as competition and consumer protection. "Firms that harvest Americans' personal data can put people's privacy at risk. Now firms could be exploiting this vast trove of personal information to charge people higher prices," FTC Chair Lina M. Khan said in a press release. "Americans deserve to know whether businesses are using detailed consumer data to deploy surveillance pricing..." The FTC is looking to learn more about how AI is used to change prices based on consumer behavior, location and other personal data in online transactions, among other information in the inquiry.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) said around 8.5 million devices, representing less than 1% of global Windows machines, where affected by the recent CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) outage. The worldwide outage on Friday sparked by a software update disrupted businesses, airports, banks, broadcasters and the healthcare sector, and other industries using Windows systems; iOS (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Linux devices were not affected. "While the percentage [of affected devices] was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the ue of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services," Microsoft Vice President of Enterprise and OS Security David Weston wrote in a blogpost. Weston added that Microsoft is working with CrowdStrike to resolve the issue, which is still impacting systems on Monday.

The United States and Saudi Arabia have pledged to collaborate on civilian space research and exploration in effort to strengthen joint ventures between the two nations, the U.S. State Department and NASA said in a statement on Tuesday. The nations have signed a framework agreement that includes collaboration work in areas like Earth science, aeronautics and education, and highlighted the importance of the Artemis Accords: signed by the U.S. in 2020 and Saudi Arabia in 2022. "We are living in the golden era of exploration - one rooted in partnership," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a statement. "This new agreement outlines how we'll work together, and explore together, for the benefit of humanity." Saudi Arabia's government established the Saudi Space Commission in 2018 as part of the kingdom's Vision 2030, which seek to modern and diversify its economy away from oil.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Prime Day is a "major" cause of workplace injuries, according to the preliminary results of a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee probe released Tuesday, which is also starting day of this year's 48-hour discount event. According to the report, internal data provided by Amazon shows that warehouses are often understaffed during Prime Day and throughout the holiday season, "endangering workers who have to manage increased volume without increased support," according to the report. Another internal document cited by the committee titled "2021 Prime Day Lessons Learned," stated that the e-commerce giant "met only 71.2 percent of its hiring target," between May and June that year, right ahead of that year's summer Prime Day event. The report also cites internal data from Prime Day 2019 showed its total injury rate was "just under" 45 injuries per 100 workers, representing "nearly half of the company's warehouse workers."

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Monday signaled the central bank will not wait until inflation eases to 2% to begin cutting interest rates. "If you wait until inflation gets all the way down to 2%, you've probably waited too long, because the tightening that you're doing, or the level of tightness that you have, is still having effects which will probably drive inflation below 2%," Powell said, speaking at the Economic Club of Washington D.C. on Monday, adding that "greater confidence" that inflation will return to that level is what policymakers are looking for "and lately here we have been getting some of that." Moreover, Powell noted that he believes a potential "hard landing" for the U.S. economy is not "a likely scenario," given current conditions. The federal funds current target rate is between 5.25% to 5.50%, up from a range of 1.50% to 1.75% before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

AT&T (NYSE: T) disclosed Friday that hackers stole six months' worth of call and text message records from most of its cellular network customers in a breach that impacts the sensitive data of millions of Americans. The data contains records of calls and messages between approximately May 1 and Oct. 31, 2022 and on Jan. 2, 2023, AT&T said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company said it had learned from an internal investigation back in April that hackers had "unlawfully accessed and copied" call logs that were then saved on a third-party cloud platform, according to the filing. "While the data does not include customers names, there are often ways, using publicly available online tools, to find the name associated with a specific telephone number," the company said.

Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) Chief Executive Ed Bastian told CNBC in an interview following the carrier's second quarter earnings report that he expects the Paris Olympics to impact $100 million in potential bookings this summer season as travelers seek destinations away from the popular city for tourists. "Unless you're going to the Olympics, people aren't going to Paris," Bastin told CNBC. "Business travel, you know, other type of tourism is potentially going elsewhere." Delta has the most service of another U.S. airline to Paris, where it holds a joint venture with Air France. Earlier this month, Air France issued a similar revenue impact forecast of as much as 180 million euros ($195.5 million) this summer due to the Olympics, CNBC reports. “Travel between the city and other destinations is also below the usual June-August average as residents in France seem to be postponing their holidays until after the Olympic Games or considering alternative travel plans," the company said.

Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) is expanding the way listeners can interact with podcast hosts on Tuesday, launching podcast comments to episode pages. Content creators will also be able to like and respond to posts from listeners, making interactions similar to those experienced between fans and creators on platforms like YouTube (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Instagram (NASDAQ: META). Spotify said in a blogpost that its platform hosts more than 250,000 video podcasts, with listeners already showing engagement with interactive features on episode posts like polls and questions-and-answers launched in 2021. According to the company's internal data, listeners who engage in interactive features on the platfrom are about four times more likely to return to a podcast within 30 days and listen to two times more podcasts on average when compared to users that don't engage. Spotify said the feature will have a slow rollout, with podcast hosts having the option to opt in.

Athletic Brewing Company, one of the leaders in the non-alcoholic beverage market, announced Tuesday it has raised an additional $50 million in equity in a funding round led by General Atlantic. "We are passionate about transforming the way modern adults drink and converting critics into believers. We're at the start of a long-term trend, and we couldn't be more excited to have General Atlantic by our side as Athletic begins its next phase of growth," the company said in a release. Launched in 2018, Athletic has become the 10th largest U.S. craft brewery and 20th largest overall brewing company in the United States, according to the Brewers Association. Brands like Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ), Anheuser-Busch (NYSE: BUD) and Heineken (OTC: HEINY) have recently joined the non-alcoholic beer trend as more Americans choose to drink less.

Tropical Storm Beryl crossed the Texas coast, impacting cities like Galveston and Houston, on Monday, bringing with it damaging winds, heavy rainfall and storm surge flooding, as well as power outages across the Houston metro area. "We're in an emergency. We're in rescue mode," said Houston Mayor John Whitmire during a press conference Monday. "We're literally getting calls across Houston right now asking for first responders to come rescue individuals in desperate life safety conditions." Beryl, which was a Category 1 hurricane when it made landfall, is expected to bring 5 to 10 inches of rain, with 15 inches possible in localized areas, the Hurricane Center warned Monday. Studies show warmer air and increasing ocean temperatures from emission-caused climate change result in greater amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere, which in turn leads to storms with heavier rainfalls.

Cloudflare (NYSE: NET) has launched a new tool to prevent bots from scraping information from websites hosted on its platfrom to train artificial intelligence models. The "one click" tool is available to all subscribers, including the network and cybersecurity platform's free tier. "Customers don't want AI bots visiting their websites, and especially those that do so dishonestly," the company wrote in a blog post. "We fear that some AI companies intent on circumventing rules to access content will persistently adapt to evade bot detection." Cloudflare added that bots "generally use tools and frameworks that we can fingerprint," the new feature will be automatically updated as "new fingerprints of offending bots" are identified as the firm continuously surveys traffic across its network.

Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) announced Wednesday it has adopted a shareholders rights plan, commonly known as a "poison pill," in response to activist Elliott Management's investment in the airline and efforts to oust CEO Bob Jordan and Chairman Gary Kelly. The plan will only activate if another investor (in this case Elliott) acquires at least 12.5% of the company, allowing other shareholders to purchase one new Southwest share for every share they own at a 50% discount if reached. Southwest said the poison pill was adopt in response to filings Elliott made with antitrust authorities, known as HSR filings, that would allow it to acquire a larger stake by next week. “Southwest Airlines has made a good faith effort to engage constructively with Elliott Investment Management since its initial investment and remains open to any ideas for lasting value creation,” Kelly said in a statement.