Credit: Aamir Siddiqui / Android Authority Several new features are now being pushed out to Threads users. The most prominent addition is arguably the chronological follower feed. We also get post translations, improved notification filtering, and more. Meta launched Threads earlier this month as a rival to Twitter, bringing a similar micro-blogging approach to the
Read MoreJosh Ye / Reuters: Alibaba plans to let business customers use Meta’s Llama 2 to build apps, the first Chinese company to do so; companies with <700M MAUs can use Llama for free — Alibaba’s (9988.HK) cloud computing division said it has become the first Chinese enterprise to support Meta’s (META.O) …
Read MoreEmilia David / The Verge: GitHub, Hugging Face, Creative Commons, and others write a paper for EU policymakers encouraging support for open-source AI models ahead of the final EU AI Act — In a paper sent to EU policymakers, a group of companies, including GitHub, Hugging Face, Creative Commons, and others …
Read MoreIvan Mehta / TechCrunch: Twitter changes its handle from @twitter to @X, Twitter Blue to @XBlue, @TwitterSupport to @Support, and more; the previous @X owner now uses @x12345678998765 — Twitter has changed its official handle to @X as part of the ongoing rebranding. As a result, the original @Twitter handle is now inactive …
Read MoreIan King / Bloomberg: Texas Instruments reports Q2 revenue down 13% YoY to $4.53B, beating estimates of $4.35B, and forecasts lukewarm Q3 revenue as the global chip slump continues — – Shares slip after chipmaker delivers quarterly report — Automotive field is bright spot for company suffering slowdown
Read MoreWe all lead digital lives, and we work in and on files of one sort or another. And sometimes we get attached to them. That long manifesto you poured your heart into, but nonetheless probably shouldn’t see the light of day? Love letters from former flames? Your first favorite video game that you can’t play
Read MoreIvan Mehta / TechCrunch: Google says 2B+ logged-in monthly users are watching YouTube Shorts, up from 1.5B+ in June 2022, and YouTube is reaching 150M people on their TVs in the US — Google said today that more than 2 billion logged-in monthly users are watching YouTube Shorts, giving it an edge over competitors like
Read MoreCredit: Adamya Sharma / Android Authority The official ChatGPT app by OpenAI is now available for download on the Google Play Store. The rollout is limited to four countries for now. OpenAI’s ChatGPT app is now available for Android devices through the Google Play Store, months after it arrived on iOS. The app has been
Read MorePatrick McGee / Financial Times: PitchBook: US AR/VR/XR startups raised $208M in June, nearly as much as in the previous three months combined, with Vision Pro creating “an inflection point” — Mixed reality start-ups gain from tech giant’s aim to usher in new era of ‘spatial computing’
Read MoreThe Guardian: UNESCO calls for a global ban on smartphones in schools, saying intensive technology use negatively impacts student performance and increases disruption — Major UN report issues warning over excessive use, with one in six countries already banning the devices
Read MoreJeff Wilser / CoinDesk: A look at the origins of Worldcoin’s eye-scanning orb, how the company is trying to safeguard user privacy, its tokenomics, policy challenges, and more — Is Sam Altman’s UBI startup a smart countermeasure to AI, or a privacy nightmare? Jeff Wilser reports. — I’ve traveled to Berlin to stare into the
Read MoreAnto Antony / Bloomberg: A profile of Indian edtech giant Byju’s CEO Byju Raveendran, who has been in crisis mode for months but is expecting a $1B equity investment as early as August — – Indian firm has struggled to overcome issues with liquidity — US investors accused Byju’s of hiding half a billion dollars
Read More[PyottDesign] recently wrapped up a personal project to create himself a custom AR/VR headset that could function as an AR (augmented reality) platform, and make it easier to develop new applications in a headset that could do everything he needed. He succeeded wonderfully, and published a video showcase of the finished project. Getting a headset
Read MoreSarah Perez / TechCrunch: Amazon adds a page to alert customers of recalled or unsafe products within users’ accounts; US sellers can opt in to Amazon’s service to manage recalled items — Amazon today introduced a new feature that will allow consumers to be better informed about potential product safety alerts and recalls.
Read MoreCredit: Google Google has announced four major changes for the Play Store on large-screen devices. The company will now give preference to apps that scale well, aren’t letterboxed, and support both portrait and landscape orientations. There’s also a new split-screen view in Play Store search to make comparing apps easier on large-screen devices. Google is
Read MoreBloomberg: Sources: Ant Group plans to exclude blockchain and other businesses from its financial-related unit that will be used for a Chinese financial holding license — – Ant plans to break off overseas, blockchain units: sources — State-owned firms plan to take part in Ant’s share buyback
Read MoreLauren Tara LaCapra / The Information: Former employees detail how the Apple Card partnership between Apple and Goldman Sachs soured; a source says Apple Card had ~10M users as of earlier this year — Apple and Goldman Sachs were in test runs before embarking publicly on one of the biggest-name partnerships ever between tech and
Read MoreBillionaire Elon Musk recently made waves in the social media world by announcing his decision to rebrand Twitter as X. While this move has generated excitement and curiosity, it also raises important legal questions. Companies like Meta and Microsoft already hold intellectual property rights to the letter X, making the rebrand potentially complicated from a
Read MoreNewley Purnell / Wall Street Journal: Meta hasn’t labeled propaganda accounts of state-backed media from Russia and other authoritarian governments on Threads, unlike on Facebook and Instagram — State-backed media accounts have hundreds of thousands of followers without the labels they are made to carry on Instagram and Facebook
Read MoreFor hundreds of years, Icelanders have relied on the ocean for survival. This is perhaps not surprising as it’s an isolated island surrounded by ocean near the Arctic circle. But as the oceans warm and fisheries continue to be harvested unsustainably, Iceland has been looking for a way to make sure that the fish they
Read MoreThe popular short-video app TikTok has made a calculated decision to increase the breadth of its offering. TikTok has announced the addition of text-only posts in an effort to capitalize on the recent turmoil at Twitter. With this new addition, users will have a place to share their written works alongside their visual ones. The
Read MoreGerrit De Vynck / Washington Post: AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Berkeley CS professor Stuart Russell warn Congress that AI could cause serious harms in a few years — Two AI researchers and the CEO of AI startup Anthropic testified about the long-term risks of AI and said Congress needs to
Read MoreBloomberg: SK Hynix reports Q2 revenue down 47% YoY to ~$5.7B, beating an average projection of ~$4.7B, and a ~$2.3B operating loss, in line with expectations — – AI boosting high-end chip sales, but overall demand still soft — Hynix gearing up to expand output of high-capacity DRAM
Read MoreThere was a point in time, excruciatingly brief, in which desktop computers often had a large “TURBO” button on their front panel. Some even featured an LCD that would indicate the current CPU frequency, providing visual conformation that your machine had leaped to a blistering 66 MHz. The 486 that [someyob] is restoring had the
Read MoreWaste plastic has become a significant problem worldwide, harming ecosystems through littering and other forms of pollution. Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have developed a bioplastic that breaks down as rapidly as a banana peel, so hope is on the horizon. This novel material, derived from algae, degrades naturally and provides a number
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