Microsoft has made the white version of the Xbox Series X official. The new console option won’t include a disc drive and will be entirely digital. Learn more from @theverge. https://flip.it/.C4ZJX #Tech#Technology#Microsoft#Xbox
New York’s state legislature has passed a bill that would prohibit social media companies from showing “addictive feeds” to children under 18 without parental consent. Tech Crunch has more, including where the bill goes next and how “addictive feed” is being defined. https://flip.it/8cubJE #Tech#Technology#SocialMedia#Law#Politics#NewYork
Siri was always supposed to be more than it was. Since the voice assistant’s initial launch in 2011, Siri has become, for most people, either a way to set timers or a useless feature to be avoided at all costs. Now, 13 years later, it sounds like it might actually be ready. @theverge has more: https://flip.it/eLOXuz #Tech#Technology#AI#Apple#Siri
Microsoft has announced it is making its controversial Recall feature, announced alongside its new Copilot+ PCs last month, something you will have to opt-in to use.
The feature, which will screenshot everything you do on your computer, is something privacy advocates and security experts have warned could be a “disaster” for cybersecurity. Microsoft had originally planned to turn Recall on by default, but now the company says users will need to “proactively choose to turn it on.” @theverge has more.
Have you ever wished you could understand what your dog is saying? AI could be the answer. The researchers involved in a new study say that AI models like Wav2Vec2 can identify a dog’s “gender, emotion, and breed” based on their bark. To test the accuracy of the models, they used two different sets of data to train the AI models and then compared the results.
One was trained on human speech and then fine-tuned with the barks, while the other was trained only on the barks. The researchers found that the model pre-trained with human speech did better at understanding and identifying the secret language of dogs. BGR has more.
A 27-year old mystery was solved this week when a collector figured out how to unlock secret characters on the Mothra Tamagotchi, first released in Japan in 1997.
@404mediaco reports a Discord user named rhubarb_pie found out how to unlock the “Moll & Lora” twins as playable characters through a very specific three-week gaming process, something that was previously thought to have occurred through a “battery glitch.”
An artist-run, anti-AI social platform called Cara has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users in just a week, as artists leave Instagram in their thousands to protest against Meta’s AI policies.
Artists aren’t happy that the social media giant is using public posts on its platforms to train its generative AI systems, with no way to opt out for U.S. users. Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain, but such a jump in users hasn’t come without its challenges. @TechCrunch has more.
Microsoft announced that it’s reopening a Windows Insider Beta Channel for PCs still running Windows 10, which will be used to test “new features and more improvements to Windows 10 as needed.” This comes despite the company’s intention to end support for the aging yet stubbornly popular operating system in October 2025. Read more from Ars Technica: https://flip.it/xCtSdz #Tech#Technology#Microsoft#Windows
Call it the battle of the voice assistants. A Tech Radar editor tested Apple’s Siri against Google Gemini and Samsung’s Bixby. He made a list of 25 tasks he expected the AI to complete and graded them all on each. One of them easily outdid the others. Take a guess as to which one it was. https://flip.it/gqv-IQ #Tech#Siri#Gemini#Bixby#AI
Here’s a secret you may not have known if you bought a new iPad, iMac or MacBook. Apple has quietly added a Thread radio to several new Macs and iPads released since September 2023. @theverge has more, including which models on which they found evidence of Thread testing: https://flip.it/-R.XMr #Tech#Apple#SmartPhone#iPhone#iPad#Mac
Capital One is teaming up with fin tech companies Stripe and Ayden to crack down on fraud. Tech Crunch has more on the unusual collaboration between the banking stalwart and the newer payment giants, including what spurred Capital One to make the move. https://flip.it/_ErGMU #Tech#Technology#Business#FinTech
An entirely new way to forecast the weather, using artificial intelligence, is sending “shockwaves through the field of meteorology." The results are said to be already outperforming traditional, physics-based models on tasks like hurricane forecasting, reports @arstechnica.
The secret to this success? Good data. With enormous data sets of in-depth weather information going all the way back to 1940, there is plenty of information to help AI learn, understand and predict weather patterns. What could this mean for the future of weather reporting? Here’s more.
Are Tesla’s days of dizzying growth already behind it? @FastCompany reports that shares for the electric car manufacturer are down nearly 30% this year, and have fallen by more than 50% since their 2021 high, wiping out around $600 billion in market value.
Even some of the company’s diehard believers have started to distance themselves by selling off shares in recent months. “I think the story is over, is the best way to say it,” said one. Here’s more.
Has Spotify’s loyal user base given it the confidence to raise its prices for the second time in a year?
According to research firm Antenna, Spotify’s listeners are the least likely to cancel among any of the major video or audio streaming services in the U.S., with its growth and cancellation rates “much, much better” than its peers, reports @bloomberg.
While overall subscriber growth is slowing across all streaming services, last year Spotify managed to produce its best year of user growth and second-best year of subscriber growth. Can it sustain that and keep its subscriber base engaged at its new prices?
Want to become a major player among venture capitalists? A dishwashing job may be a good place to start your journey. VC Wesley Chan worked three jobs in high school, including washing lab beakers, to bring money home to his family. It wasn’t easy, but today Chan is the cofounder and managing partner of FPV Ventures, a two-year-old firm with a $450M VC fund. TechCrunch has more on Chan’s fascinating rise. https://flip.it/vCAf_R #Tech#Technology#VentureCapital#FPV