PYMNTS.com:
Robotics startup Fulfil, which offers automated micro-fulfillment centers for online grocers, emerges from stealth with a $60M Series B led by Eclipse  —  As grocers look to escape reliance on aggregators, tech providers are offering new automated solutions.

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

During an internal presentation, Meta execs laid out plans for three new Quest headsets, AR glasses in 2027, and a ‘neural interface’ smartwatch.

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Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with iHeartMedia’s Conal Byrne on overseeing podcasting at the company, the industry maturing, RSS, radio and podcast ads, subscriptions, and exclusivity  —  Amid layoffs and a looming recession, folks are concerned about the audio industry. iHeart’s podcast head Conal Byrne is not worried.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter announced that it has “officially launched” a new Violent Speech policy that outlines its “zero-tolerance approach towards Violent Speech.” Its content is similar to Twitter’s previous violent threats policy, though it manages to be both more specific and more vague.

Both policies ban you from threatening or glorifying violence in most scenarios (each version has carve-outs for “hyperbolic” speech between friends). However, the new set of rules appears to expand on some concepts while cutting down on some others. For example, the old policy stated:

Statements that express a wish or hope that someone experiences physical harm, making vague or indirect threats, or threatening actions that are unlikely to cause serious or lasting…

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One fun aspect of 1970s-era hard disk drives is that they are big, clunky and are fairly easy to repair without the need for a clean room. A less fun aspect is that they are 1970s-era HDDs and thus old and often broken. While repairing a CDC 10 MB HDD for the upcoming VCF East event, the folks over at [Usagi Electric], this led to quite a few struggles, even after a replacement 14″ platter was found to replace the crashed platter with.

These CDC HDDs are referred to as Hawk drives, and they make the associated 8-bit Centurion  TTL logic-based computers so much faster and easier to work with (for a 1970s system, of course). Despite the large size of the components involved and the simple, all through-hole nature of the PCBs, issues that cropped up ranged from corroded DIP switches, to head alignment sensors, a defective analog board and ultimately a reported bad read-write head.

Frustratingly, even after getting the platters to spin up and everything moving as intended, it would seem that the remaining problem is that of possibly bad read-write heads, as in plural. Whether it’s due to age, previous head crashes onto platters, or something else, assembling a working Hawk drive turned out to be somewhat more complicated than hoped.

We definitely hope that the bunnies can get a working Hawk together, as working 1970s HDDs like these are become pretty rare.

Apple has released the second developer betas of iOS 16.4, iPadOS 16.4, macOS Ventura 13.3, watchOS 9.4, and tvOS 16.4. Here’s what’s new.

Elad Gil / Elad Blog:
Mid-to-late stage tech startups will likely face a reckoning in late 2023 to 2024, as companies run out of cash from “free rounds” fueled by low interest rates  —  The coming reset in mid-to-late stage startups in 2023-2024 is at this point likely largely decoupled from interest rates and inflation.

Actress Shirley Henderson at a special screening of Stan & ollie. | Photo by Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic

Dune: The Sisterhood — HBO Max’s Dune prequel series about the origins of the Bene Gesserit — already appeared to be in a bit of trouble back when it lost its original co-showrunners, hired two more, and then lost one again. Now, though, things seem to be getting worse.

Deadline reports that actress Shirley Henderson, one of Dune: The Sisterhood’s lead actresses, and director Johan Renck, who was slated to direct the first two episodes, have both decided to pull out of Dune: The Sisterhood just as the show enters a lengthy production hiatus. In a statement to Deadline, an HBO Max spokesperson emphasized that The Sisterhood’s hiatus had already been scheduled before two of the series’ key figures chose to part ways with the project, and…

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Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Twitter changes its violent speech policy to ban users from voicing “wishes of harm” on people, a policy reversal, as well as homes and essential infrastructure  —  Twitter is once again tightening its rules around what users are permitted to say on the platform.

Image: Bluesky

Bluesky, the decentralized project that originated within Twitter, has arrived on the Apple App Store as an invite-only social network, as first reported by TechCrunch. The listing also gives us one of our very first glimpses at the app, which closely resembles Twitter down to the timeline and profile pages.

The project’s backed by Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, and has been working on an app powered by its open-source social protocol for months now, called the Authenticated Transfer Protocol, or “AT Protocol” for short. Bluesky describes it as a “federated social network” where separate networks exist within a single hub.

According to Bluesky, AT Protocol is built based on four main ideals: account portability;…

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Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge

CNBC reports The Global Times, a state-run paper in China, has warned Elon Musk about pushing the covid “lab leak” theory. Reporter Eunice Yoon said the social media post asked if Musk is “breaking the pot of China,” with a meaning similar to asking if he was biting the hand that feeds him.

Ever since Musk announced his intention to buy Twitter, it’s seemed certain that at some point, the service’s content would put him at odds with the Chinese Communist Party, as Nilay Patel wrote after the deal closed:

Are you excited for the Chinese government to find ways to threaten Tesla’s huge business in that country over content that appears on Twitter? Because it’s going to happen.

How fast we arrived at this most obvious sticking point is no…

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The app that lets you make contactless payments with the device on your wrist is expanding to new territories. Google Wallet on Wear OS is now available in over 60 countries.

Today, Google announced in a blog post that it is rolling out support for Google Wallet on Wear OS to a few new countries. “Starting today, we’re expanding support for Google Wallet on your wrist to new countries including Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Kuwait.” Altogether this brings the total number of supported countries and regions to 60.

Reuters:
HP reports Q1 revenue down 19% YoY to $13.8B, vs. $14.1B est., Personal Systems net revenue down 24% YoY to $9.2B, and Printing net revenue down 5% YoY to $4.6B  —  HP Inc (HPQ.N) on Tuesday reported the steepest fall in quarterly revenue since 2016 and missed analysts’ estimates …

No thank u. | Image: The Verge

There is a new trend among websites where they want my email address before I’m allowed to read their free content. While I sympathize with the struggles of the media business, I am just going to point out something obvious: not reading is easier than reading — and way easier than logging in.

I don’t mind that The Atlantic requires an email — it has kept me from hate-reading the astounding churn of bad takes they publish — but just about everyone else has got to knock this off. You hear me, Reuters? I am annoyed with Reuters, specifically, because it’s a wire service, and I can usually find its articles without logging in by avoiding the Reuters website. As for you, The New York Times, I do not want to read your stories in your app! No…

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This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.

I hope you all had a great week! Hot Pod Summit was a lot of fun — it was great to meet so many of you in person and chat about some of the biggest issues in the industry.

We’ll have more on that below, but first, some acknowledgments. Big thanks to our partners at work x work and the whole On Air Fest team for bringing the event together as well as to the Wythe Hotel for hosting us. Also, I absolutely would not have made it through this without the help of my Verge colleagues Kara Verlaney, Esther Cohen, T.C. Sottek, Helen Havlak, and, of course, Jake Kastrenakes. Plus, we were so lucky that the Decoder team was down to put on their…

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Fibbage 4 has you try to tell a convincing lie to your friends… en Español. | Image: Jackbox Games

Jackbox Games has released a free update that localizes the games in its Party Pack 9 bundle. That means that party games like Fibbage 4, Roomerang, and Quixort are now available in French, Italian, German, Latin American Spanish, and Castilian Spanish.

The translations cover pretty much every aspect of the games, from the intro videos and songs playing in the credits to the actual content of the games themselves. In a post on Monday, the company writes that it chose which translations to focus on based on “existing demand.”

It’s not the company’s first run at localizing the content of its party games. In 2020 and 2021, it released versions of Quiplash 2 and Drawful 2 with extra languages, and the 2022 Jackbox Party Starter includes…

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It’s no secret that the Apple Watch could use a boost in the battery department. Until then, a reliable charger is key to getting the most out of your smartwatch. For portability, convenience, and an unobtrusive aesthetic, Belkin has you covered. Find out more in this BoostCharge Pro for Apple Watch review.

What you need to know about the Belkin BoostCharge Pro for Apple Watch

Anyone with more than one cat can tell you that the joy mischief they bring into your life is much more than twice that of a single cat. And if those felines have different dietary needs, you can end up where [Benjamin Krejci] found himself, which resulted in this fancy RFID cat feeder.

For a little backstory, [Ben]’s furry friends [Luna] and [Fermi] have vastly different eating styles, with the former being a grazer and the latter more of a “disordered eater,” to put it politely. [Fermi] tends to eat until she vomits, which is fun, and muscles her pickier sister away from the bowl if there’s anything left in it. [Ben]’s idea was to leverage [Luna]’s existing RFID chip, which he figured would be a breeze. But the vet-inserted chip is designed to be read by a high-power reader directly in contact with the cat’s skin, which made reliably reading the chip a challenge.

Several round of design iteration resulted in the current configuration, with a large antenna coil poised above and behind the food dispenser. [Luna] has no choice but to put the back of her neck and shoulder blades almost directly in contact with the coil, which makes it easier to read the 134.2-kHz chip with a long-distance RFID module. If [Luna]’s chip is found, the lid on the food bowl opens gently and quietly, so as not to spook the mild-mannered cat. The lid stays open as long as [Luna] is in place thanks to some IR sensors, but as soon as she backs out, the lid comes down to keep [Fermi] from gorging herself.

Hats off to [Ben] for working through the problem and coming up with what looks like a fine solution. We suppose he could have tried something easier like weighing the two cats to distinguish between them, but this seems like a cleaner solution to us.

Views of the sunset and stormy skies on September 9th, 2021 in La Paz, Mexico.  | Photo: Alfredo Martinez/Getty Images

Buyer beware: there’s a dubious new kind of climate credit for sale.

Traditional carbon offset credits, say, for planting trees or protecting forests, have a record of failing to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Now, a startup is selling credits for its attempts to manipulate the planet’s ability to reflect sunlight, a controversial response to climate change called solar geoengineering.

A group of prominent scientists published a letter yesterday that warns that this kind of climate intervention is nowhere near ready to be commercially deployed and probably never should be. A big name on the letter is James Hansen, a former NASA scientist who’s now at Columbia University and is famous for sounding the alarm on climate change…

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The company’s anti-union tactics at retail outlets have drawn government scrutiny and are fueling a drive to get a new labor bill through Congress.

Wall Street Journal:
Memo and sources: Instacart told employees that its Q4 revenue increased 50%+ YoY, Q4 gross profit rose 80%+ YoY, and 2022 revenue grew 39% YoY to ~$2.5B  —  The company increased revenue 39% in 2022 despite slowing sales on its grocery delivery app  —  Instacart Inc. generated sharply higher sales …

Apple has revealed that its Apple Watch Activity Challenge for International Women’s Day will kick off on March 8th.

Anyone with more than one cat can tell you that the joy mischief they bring into your life is much more than twice that of a single cat. And if those felines have different dietary needs, you can end up where [Benjamin Krejci] found himself, which resulted in this fancy RFID cat feeder.

For a little backstory, [Ben]’s furry friends [Luna] and [Fermi] have vastly different eating styles, with the former being a grazer and the latter more of a “disordered eater,” to put it politely. [Fermi] tends to eat until she vomits, which is fun, and muscles her pickier sister away from the bowl if there’s anything left in it. [Ben]’s idea was to leverage [Luna]’s existing RFID chip, which he figured would be a breeze. But the vet-inserted chip is designed to be read by a high-power reader directly in contact with the cat’s skin, which made reliably reading the chip a challenge.

Several round of design iteration resulted in the current configuration, with a large antenna coil poised above and behind the food dispenser. [Luna] has no choice but to put the back of her neck and shoulder blades almost directly in contact with the coil, which makes it easier to read the 134.2-kHz chip with a long-distance RFID module. If [Luna]’s chip is found, the lid on the food bowl opens gently and quietly, so as not to spook the mild-mannered cat. The lid stays open as long as [Luna] is in place thanks to some IR sensors, but as soon as she backs out, the lid comes down to keep [Fermi] from gorging herself.

Hats off to [Ben] for working through the problem and coming up with what looks like a fine solution. We suppose he could have tried something easier like weighing the two cats to distinguish between them, but this seems like a cleaner solution to us.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Typeface, which offers generative AI for marketing copy and images, emerges from stealth with $65M from Lightspeed Venture Partners, GV, M12, and Menlo Ventures  —  Typeface, a startup developing an AI-powered dashboard for drafting marketing copy and images, emerged from stealth this week …

Motion blur is the curse of even the best smartphone cameras, but not for long. At MWC 2023, sensor designer Prophesee partnered with Qualcomm to bring its “event-based” Metavision technology to Snapdragon platforms and, therefore, future smartphones. Farewell, blurry pet photos, unusable sports action shots, and smudged low-light snaps.

Prophesee’s journey began with custom image sensor hardware designed specially to track motion within a scene, and that’s the key to what makes Metavision so promising. The technology doesn’t capture images like a traditional image sensor, instead calculating the direction and amount of motion to produce a map of moving pixels. This is accomplished by tracking when a pixel changes rather than capturing a full image frame-by-frame like a traditional camera.