Maybe go look at Google’s AR animals before they enter the grave
Remember Google’s AR search, which can make augmented reality bugs, dinos, neat objects, and buildings appear atop the real world through the lens of your phone? Now might be a good time to take it in because it seems to be vanishing.
According to 9to5Google, the number of animals that will give you AR renders when you search for them has shriveled to just a few. My editor, Richard Lawler, saw the same thing on his Pixel 8 Pro, as did I when I checked my Pixel 6. But when I searched in Safari on my iPhone 15 Pro, there they were: Tyrannosaurus Rex, Spinosaurus, Rhinoceros Beetle, Jewel Beetle, and a Giant Panda!
Perhaps it’s just a bug? Or perhaps Safari is a temporary workaround.
Tesla Cybertruck finally gets more off-road controls
The Tesla Cybertruck is finally getting an off-road mode via an over-the-air software update, allowing early owners of the monstrous electric truck to finally get granular 4x4-style features that were promised from the start.
The news comes via a post by Tesla’s Cybertruck account on X, which shared an image of the Off-Road Mode screen with different settings, options for locking differentials, the ability to turn off rear steering, and more. Off-Road Mode has two main settings: Overland Mode for consistent handling and better traction on rock, gravel, snow, and sand, plus a Baja Mode that improves balance and “handles more freely.”
Big Cybertruck update https://t.co/iwSJxQGS32
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 29, 2024
Wes Morrill, whose X...
A new intergovernmental group will try to stem abuses tied to critical mineral mining
The United Nations launched a new panel to craft mining guidelines for critical minerals in high demand for electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies.
The newly established Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals includes representatives from close to 100 countries as well as nonprofit organizations and industry groups. It’s tasked with developing “a set of global common and voluntary principles to safeguard environmental and social standards and embed justice [in] the energy transition.”
Powering an economy with renewable energy is a mineral-intensive endeavor. And it’ll take a concerted effort to curb human rights violations and environmental harms tied to the extraction of those minerals. This is just a first step...
Paramount CEO Bob Bakish steps down as merger inches closer
Paramount has removed Bob Bakish as CEO — and it doesn’t have plans to fill the role. The company announced the news as part of its earnings results on Monday, which will leave Paramount reliant on a committee made up of three executives.
The new Office of the CEO consists of George Cheeks, the president and CEO of CBS; Chris McCarthy, the president and CEO of Showtime, MTV Entertainment Studios, and Paramount Media Networks; and Brian Robbins, the president and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon. Reports first emerged of Bakish’s potential departure on Friday.
Bakish has been with the company since 1997 and became CEO of Viacom in 2016. He remained in the position when Viacom and CBS Corporation merged in 2019 to form Paramount...
ChatGPT’s AI ‘memory’ can remember the preferences of paying customers
OpenAI announced the Memory feature that allows ChatGPT to store queries, prompts, and other customizations more permanently in February. At the time, it was only available to a “small portion” of users, but now it’s available for ChatGPT Plus paying subscribers outside of Europe or Korea.
ChatGPT’s Memory works in two ways to make the chatbot’s responses more personalized. The first is by letting you tell ChatGPT to remember certain details, and the second is by learning from conversations similar to other algorithms in our apps. Memory brings ChatGPT closer to being a better AI assistant. Once it remembers your preferences, it can include them without needing a reminder.
As The Verge’s David Pierce pointed out, some users can find it...
FCC fines AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon nearly $200 million for illegally sharing location data
The Federal Communications Commission is fining the largest US mobile carriers a combined nearly $200 million for allegedly illegally sharing customers’ location data without their consent.
The FCC says it found the carriers “sold access to its customers’ location information to ‘aggregators,’ who then resold access to such information to third-party location-based service providers.” The agency says the carriers effectively “attempted to offload” their responsibility to get customers’ consent to share their location data with “downstream recipients.” Even after being made aware of the issue, the FCC claims, the carriers still failed to limit access to the information.
The fines vary across carriers. T-Mobile faces the largest at $80...
Can Rabbit’s R1 outsmart the smartphone assistants? Let’s find out!
Welcome to another episode of the fantastic new game show where we quiz virtual assistants! Say it with me, folks: “Are you smarter than just googling it?” Let’s welcome our contestants.
You probably know our first two contestants from such hits as “Set a timer for me” and “How much time is left on my timer?”: Siri and Google Assistant! Big round of applause for these hard-working smartphone assistants. Next up is a newcomer — it’s sleek, it’s orange, it’s the Rabbit R1!
We’ll quiz them to see just how smart these virtual know-it-alls are. Let’s get started with the lightning round. The first question is a classic: What’s the weather today?
- Siri: Expect rain today.
- Google Assistant: Rain.
- Rabbit R1: Let me see what I can find. Today...
Peacock is getting a $2 price increase
Peacock is getting another price hike. Starting this summer, Peacock’s ad-supported Premium plan will go from $5.99 to $7.99 per month, and its Premium Plus plan will increase from $11.99 to $13.99 per month.
The $2 increase will take effect on July 18th for new customers, while current subscribers will see the price hike on August 17th. Meanwhile, the annual plans will cost $79.99 for Premium and $139.99 for Premium Plus. Peacock raised prices across both of its plans last year — and that was after it took away its free membership for new users.
As part of its first quarter earnings results last week, Comcast said Peacock added 3 million paid subscribers over the past few months, bringing its total number of subscribers to 34 million....
Meta had its biggest lobbying quarter ever
Meta had its biggest lobbying quarter ever in the first few months of 2024, spending a record $7.6 million engaging with the US government, according to its public lobbying filing released last week.
It’s a 64 percent jump from its spending in the fourth quarter of 2023 and represents more than a third of what Meta spent on lobbying the entirety of last year. The blockbuster quarter underscores just how much pending legislation is aimed at Meta and its peers — on everything from data privacy, kids online safety, and content moderation.
Still, Meta says the sharp uptick is largely due to compensation for its lobbying team. “The increase in Meta’s lobbying expenditures is due principally to operating expenses, including changes to the...
GitHub Copilot can now help start a project with AI, not just complete it
GitHub wants Copilot, its code completion platform powered by GPT-4, present throughout the lifecycle of development, including the very beginning of a coding project.
The company is announcing GitHub Copilot Workspace, a new service that aims to cut down the time engineers and developers spend reading through code and figuring out how to start on a new project. Workspace will only be available in technical preview for a waitlist of developers, but it will be integrated into the larger GitHub Copilot platform after it exits preview.
GitHub wrote in a blog post that Copilot Workspace will be integrated into GitHub repositories or libraries. Developers can describe to Copilot Workspace, through prompts, what they want to do for the...