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The newly verified X account for Iran's supreme leader could be putting the company on the wrong side of US sanctions, according to a watchdog group. The Tech Transparency Project, which last month published a report on X granting premium perks to sanctioned officials in Iran, now says that the verified account for the country's new leader raises fresh questions about the issue.
The TTP notes that the X account for Iran's new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, appears to be paying for an X premium subscription despite being on the US government's list of sanctioned individuals since 2019. As the group points out, the Iran-based account was created this month and currently bears a blue checkmark, which typically indicates the account holder is paying for a subscription.
It didn't end there.
An account for Iran's new supreme leader created this month also carries the blue premium checkmark.?? pic.twitter.com/5K9Ss1Sex8
— Tech Transparency Project (@TTP_updates) March 12, 2026
The account belonging to Mojtaba Khamenei has been boosted by other state-linked account
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Flash floods are notoriously difficult to predict, but Google might have a novel solution. The company just revealed Groundsource, a prediction tool for flash floods that uses Gemini to source data from old news reports. This is the first time it has used a language model for this type of work.
This provides a massive,…
— Google Research (@GoogleResearch) March 12, 2026
Google tasked Gemini with sorting through 5 million news articles from around the world and isolating flood reports. It transformed this data into a geo-tagged series of chronological events. Next, researchers trained a model to ingest current weather forecasts and leverage the Groundsource data to determine the likelihood of a flash flood in a given area.
We don't have any concrete information as to how accurate Google's forecast model is, though that should come over time. One trial user did say it helped his organization respond quicker to localized weather events. For now, the company is highlighting risks for urban areas in 150 countries via its
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 With the Studio Display and ?Studio Display? XDR set to launch on Wednesday, members of the media have started publishing their reviews of the new display options.
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POP Smart Button owners began sharing the end-of-line emails from Logitech late last month, which noted that the buttons would cease working on October 15, giving them only slightly more than two weeks' notice.
"For close to a decade, we have maintained the POP ecosystem, but as technology evolves, we have made the decision to end support for the device," Logitech's email reads. "As of October 15, your POP button(s) and the connected hub will no longer be supported and will lose all functionality."
Logitech added that it would give POP button owners a promo code giving them a 15-percent discount on Logitech and Ultimate Ears products (Logitech owns the Ultimate Ears audio brand).
Annoyed POP button owners on Reddit didn't hold back about the prospect of their devices being turned into paperweights.
"This is why, ‘local first'" wrote one user, while another complained, "12 buttons and 3 hubs in my home are going to become beautiful useless [pieces] of tech. Why?"
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