Welcome to the 514th edition of Android Apps Weekly, where we discuss the latest in mobile news and take a closer look at some of the most interesting new apps and games. Let’s jump right in and take a look at some of the biggest highlights from the last week: Android 14 QPR beta 2
Read MoreWhat’s the most-used tool on your bench? For me, it’s probably a multimeter, although that’s maybe a tie with my oscilloscope. Maybe after that, the soldering iron and wire strippers, or my favorite forceps. Calipers must rate in there somewhere too, but maybe a little further down. Still, the top place, and half of my
Read MoreAlex Heath / The Verge: OpenAI says ByteDance’s use of its API was minimal, suspends ByteDance’s account while it investigates a report that ByteDance used OpenAI’s API for its own LLM — After my report was published, OpenAI spokesperson Niko Felix sent the following statement confirming that ByteDance’s account has been suspended:
Read MorePlus: Apple tightens anti-theft protections, Chinese hackers penetrate US critical infrastructure, and the long-running rumor of eavesdropping phones crystallizes into more than an urban legend.
Read MoreOpinion post by Ryan Haines Ready to feel old? Rich Communication Services, better known as RCS, just celebrated its 15th birthday. Yeah, that communication standard that Google has been pestering Apple about for what feels like an eternity is older than iMessage itself. It’s older than Android Authority as a company and technically came into
Read MoreNever in my life have I unboxed a gadget and started using it as fast as I did with this one. Less than a minute after I’d received the Satechi Dock 5, I had already cleaned up my desk, set it up, and sighed of relief. See, my work desk has become busier and busier
Read MoreImage: Max Though there are a handful of human survivors at the core of its story, the real star of Scavengers Reign isn’t a person; it’s a planet. The animated series features a group of astronauts stranded on a bizarre alien world and follows them as they contend with the harsh, confusing, and downright odd
Read MorePlus: Apple tightens anti-theft protections, Chinese hackers penetrate US critical infrastructure, and the long-running rumor of eavesdropping phones crystallizes into more than an urban legend.
Read MoreThis deceptively simple app is where we deposit both our grocery lists and our deepest, darkest thoughts. It is the medium of our time.
Read MoreWhat do you do when you’ve carved out a niche for yourself as a builder of small and useless synthesizers? Why, build an even smaller and less useful synthesizer, of course! If you’ve been paying even a minimal amount of attention you’ll know right away that this comes to use from [mitxela], who while not
Read MoreStop scrambling with wall plugs, and control your smart lights with a voice command or a tap on your phone instead. Now that’s a Christmas miracle.
Read MoreGrowing the perfect Christmas tree often requires coating saplings in insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides, some of which are dangerous to human health.
Read MoreMove over Samsung. Sony’s QD OLED is the prettiest TV we’ve looked at this year.
Read MoreNormally, if you want to control the gain of an amplifier, you’ll use a variable resistor. You know, like a volume control. But what if you want to control the amplifier’s gain with a voltage? [Engineering Prof] explains a circuit that can do this using a pair of op amps and a pair of matched
Read MoreBradley Keoun / CoinDesk: Polygon Labs discontinues contributions to Edge, the OSS used for Dogechain, and shifts towards the Polygon CDK, which is powered by zero-knowledge cryptography — Polygon Labs, a developer of scaling networks for Ethereum, has shifted toward “Polygon CDK,” a blockchain-development kit powered by zero-knowledge cryptography.
Read MoreMalathi Nayak / Bloomberg: Tesla’s Autopilot recall threatens to hurt the company’s defense in six high-profile lawsuits set for 2024 over crashes linked to the driver-assistance program — – Recall bolsters claims Autopilot is defective, plaintiffs say — Carmaker plans over-the-air update to prevent driver misuse
Read MorePerhaps without many of us realising it, our single board computers perform the task of making programming their processor or SoC a lot easier. They take care of setting the right lines or commands to put the chip in programming mode, they deal with timings, such that we simply fire our code from our dev
Read MoreAlex Williams / New York Times: Vera Molnar, considered the godmother of generative art for her computer-aided paintings and drawings that started in the 1960s, died on December 7 at age 99 — Experimenting with algorithms, she began to employ the principles of computation in her work even before she gained access to an actual
Read MoreCalling any one computer the first hobby computer is fraught with peril. Most people think the MITS Altair 8800, first featured in Popular Electronics back in January 1975, was the first. Some might argue that others were first, but there is no doubt that the Altair started the hobby computer revolution from a practical standpoint.
Read MoreMargi Murphy / Bloomberg: How Spamouflage Dragon, China’s largest disinformation campaign per Google and Meta, infiltrates platforms to promote Chinese policies and criticize dissidents — ‘Mold of the internet’ has appeared on 50 platforms, researchers say — When a Twitter account for Utah business coach Spencer …
Read MoreMalathi Nayak / Bloomberg: Tesla’s Autopilot recall threatens to hurt the company’s defense in six high-profile lawsuits set for 2024 over crashes linked to the driver-assistance program — – Recall bolsters claims Autopilot is defective, plaintiffs say — Carmaker plans over-the-air update to prevent driver misuse
Read MoreJosh Ye / Reuters: CGIGC: China’s video games market returned to growth in 2023 with domestic revenue up 13% YoY to ~$42.6B and the number of gamers up 0.61% YoY to a record 668M — China’s video games market returned to growth this year as domestic revenue rose 13% to 303 billion yuan ($42.6 billion)
Read MoreMaybe it’s just us, but isn’t it kind of amazing that in a world of pretty darn realistic games, PONG is still thrilling to play? This 1D implementation by [newsonator] is about as exciting as it gets. It works like you’d probably expect — the light moves back and forth between the two players. Keep
Read MoreNew York Times: A California state agency drops its 2021 sexual harassment case against Activision Blizzard, saying that no “investigation has substantiated any allegations” — The California Civil Rights Department said in a settlement agreement that no “investigation has substantiated any allegations” against the video game maker.
Read MoreSignify, the company which owns Philips Hue, is restructuring its business to focus on four key areas. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Signify, the company that owns smart lighting brands Philips Hue and WiZ, is restructuring in the face “of ongoing market volatility and uncertainty.” In a press release on its
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