Pineapple on pizza is delicious — and if you disagree, you can’t log in to WordPress.org ... and more Tech News
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There are few matters in life that divide a room more than the prudence of putting pineapple on pizza. But if you're one of the persuasion that tropical fruit has no place on a pie, you'll have to swallow a bitter pill, if you want to access the WordPress.org developer portal and forum, at least. Users this week reported seeing an extra checkbox on the WordPress.org login page, requiring them to agree that...

The pineapple is delicious on pizza. It would be easy to chuckle and put this down to festive merriment from the good folks at the WordPress Foundation, but it's actually part of the ongoing WordPress vs. WP Engine brouhaha currently playing out in the courts.

WordPress developer Automatic blocked WP Engine from accessing core resources of the open-source project back in September, while also inserting a checkbox requiring users to confirm that they are not affiliated with WP Engine. Last week, a court ordered Automatic to reverse course on both counts. So now everyone from freelancers to multinational enterprises must confirm that they like pineapple on pizza instead.

What a time to be alive. TikTok and ByteDance asked the United States Supreme Court to block the law that forces TikTok to be sold off or banned in the United States, according to an emergency filing with America's top court on Monday. The social media company requested that the Supreme Court consider blocking the sell or ban law passed earlier this year by January 6th.

This would give American app stores and internet hosting providers just a few weeks to prepare for January 19th, the deadline when the US could force them to block TikTok. Today, TikTok is asking the court to do what it has traditionally done in free speech cases

Also on Monday, TikTok CEO Shu Chu is reportedly meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, according to CNN's Caitlin Collins.

The meeting comes hours after Trump told reporters, "He has a warm spot in my heart for TikTok," which is quite the change of heart considering Trump previously tried to ban TikTok with an executive order. The TikTok ban was long destined for the Supreme Court, but now it finally appears to be headed there. TikTok has argued for months that this law hinders the free speech of millions of users, app stores, and the company itself.

However, that argument has fallen flat so far with the Department of Justice, which last week asked a U.S. appeals court to reject Bidens' motion to block the law.

Waymo will begin testing its autonomous vehicle technology in Tokyo in early 2025, the first time the Alphabet Company's robo-taxis have driven on public roads outside the US. The move to Japan is part of Waymo's RoadTrips, a development program that involves bringing its technology to a variety of cities and testing it, with each city having different challenges. In Tokyo, the Waymo robo-taxis will face left-hand driving and a dense urban environment.

Until now, those road trips have focused on a dozen U.S. cities, usually to test out specific conditions or environments such as rain in Miami or extreme heat in Death Valley, California. The company also has tested its vehicles in Buffalo, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, and

and Seattle. Typically, Waymo begins by bringing a small fleet to a city where a human manually drives the vehicle and maps certain areas. The vehicles will eventually test in autonomous mode, at first with a human operator behind the wheel. Waymo said it will partner with taxi-hailing app Go and taxi company Nihon Katsu as part of its Japanese road trip.

Nihonkatsu will oversee the management and servicing of the Waymo vehicles, according to the company. Initially, Nihonkatsu drivers will operate the vehicles manually to map key areas of the Japanese capital, including Minato, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Chiyoda, Chuo, Shinagawa, and Koto. Waymo said it is working with Nihonkatsu's team to train its employees how to operate Waymo's self-driving Jaguar I-PACE vehicles.

The announcement comes just a week since GM said it would scrap its Cruise robo-taxi program, a decision that also ended plans to launch a driverless ride-hailing service in Japan with partner Honda. In October 2023, Honda, Cruise, and GM announced plans to launch a robo-taxi service in Tokyo together in 2026 using Cruise's purpose-built robo-taxis called The Origin.

ChatGPT Search, OpenAI's AI-powered web search experience, is now live for all ChatGPT users, with several new features in tow. By default, ChatGPT will automatically determine which questions to route through ChatGPT Search, or users can tap a new Search the Web icon in the ChatGPT interface. ChatGPT Search shows summarized answers from different online sources, as well as a list of questions to be answered.

as well as rich content like embedded photos and YouTube videos. ChatGPT Search launched in October as an evolution of OpenAI's SearchGPT prototype unveiled this summer. Powered by a fine-tuned version of OpenAI's GPT-4.0 model, ChatGPT Search serves up information from the web, like sports scores, news, stock quotes, and more, along with links to relevant sources at which point users can ask follow-up questions to refine their search.

ChatGPT Search was initially only available for premium ChatGPT subscribers. Now, non-paying users can access it as well. ChatGPT Search has also been made faster, OpenAI said during a livestream Monday, and can now be set as the default search engine for any web browser.

In addition, there's an improved ChatGPT search experience for mobile. On mobile, users can now see, for example, better organized business info, including addresses in Apple Maps on the iOS ChatGPT app and phone numbers.

Lastly, ChatGPT Search is now available in Advanced Voice Mode, OpenAI's real-time conversational feature for ChatGPT. In the coming days, users will be able to access up-to-date web info while using Advanced Voice Mode on mobile or desktop. My colleague Max Seff found ChatGPT Search to be a mixed bag when he tested it earlier this year. OpenAI is clearly intent on refining the feature, though, which it sees as a key avenue for growth.

Some publishers have protested AI-powered search tools such as ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews, saying they threaten to cannibalize traffic to the sites from which they source their information. One study found that AI Overviews alone could negatively affect about 25% of publisher traffic due to the de-emphasis on links to web pages.

OpenAI says it has incorporated feedback from partners about how ChatGPT Search decides which articles are most relevant to a query, as well as determining the summary length and quotations for articles. That's all for now. For more stories like this one, visit TechCrunch.com.