As Flock reckons with a scandal over cops misusing data, Wired reports separately today that CBP personnel have “allegedly used government databases to spy on exes, crushes, and colleagues.” We’ve apparently learned nothing since we found out NSA agents were eavesdropping on love interests in 2013. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next Edward Snowden is being incubated somewhere in the government.
More than just an E-Ray replacement, the GSX adds more power to the Corvette experience.
In the months since Australia’s social media ban, Meta says it has blocked 462,000 Instagram accounts and 294,000 Facebook accounts that appeared to belong to users under 16, according to Bloomberg.
Australia’s prime minister ramped up penalties for social media platforms in June after a study found that four in five teens under 16 in Australia were still using them.
Higgsfield is using Cully Hill Boys to show you how to prompt up your own movie.
A person on Reddit says their friend’s phone added craters to the Sun during yesterday’s solar eclipse. The poster doesn’t say what phone this was captured on, but it’s definitely something we’ve seen before.
The German automaker must have gotten an earful from owners, because after a brief, stick-less interlude, the 911 Carrera S is getting its manual transmission back. The Porsche 911 Carerra S with MT Package (starting price $169,450 for the coupe, $183,350 for the cabriolet) shares its six-gear transmission with the Carrera T, and comes exclusively in rear-wheel drive. Manual transmissions aren’t for everyone, but plenty of Porsche people still prefer them.
Its new C100 8K Giant Custom Macro Pad packs 100 keys (sitting atop swappable Keychron Apex switches) into a 10x10 grid that will take a sizable bite out of your desktop. It’s available now for $64.99 and features an 8,000Hz polling rate and per key RGB lighting that you can potentially use to differentiate what each key does.
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The group says that while changes like more limited data retention is welcomed, the devil is in the details. “Transforming an exceptionally dangerous mass surveillance system into one that is fully protective of civil rights and civil liberties is a difficult, if not impossible task,” it writes.
[American Civil Liberties Union]
Is the shakeup at Google DeepMind a strategy or a crisis?
Going screenless proves you can afford to be intentionally inefficient.
Nvidia says the app’s full release brings “a more polished experience, plus gameplay optimisation with better DLSS Frame Generation.” It initially launched in beta on Ubuntu earlier this year, and Nvidia said at the time that it plans to add support for more distributions in the future.
Season 4 just started streaming, but Apple’s Eddy Cue is already talking about a potential season 5 renewal. “It’s certainly good enough for that,” he told Deadline. “So I think there’s plenty of stories to go on.” Of course, it’s no surprise that Apple would want to extend a hit show for as long as it can.
After announcing GameCube games were coming to Nintendo Switch Online over a year ago, Nintendo has added that console’s divisive Mario outing, Super Mario Sunshine. It joins other GameCube titles like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Luigi’s Mansion, but keep in mind you’ll need to pay for the Expansion Pack to play them.
The surreal sci-fi show will be airing on Toonami on September 5th, a few years after a detour on Netflix. Sadly, there’s still no word on if a second season is ever happening.
But also pricier. The HydraSense is a new countertop water filter that dispenses water with a button press, filling your cup or bottle in seconds.
The $199 gadget launches today, and is more elegant than a big water jug in your fridge, while costing less than cold/hot filtration devices. I just got one to test, and think it’s useful if you don’t have a built-in fridge filtration system and find waiting on your Brita a pain. Here’s a first look.
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Sales dropped 64% year-on-year in Q2, according to research from Counterpoint, as manufacturers raised prices or simply stopped shipping cheaper models. Samsung and Motorola have been the only brands to benefit, as smaller companies became unable to undercut them on price. That helped both grow their market share in prepaid phones.
According to Twitch chief product officer Mike Minton, that’s the “honest answer” as to why the streaming platform has started training Amazon’s generative AI models on users’ content by default. Twitch users can choose to opt out, but Minton defends the default setting because “almost every content service in the world” is also doing it.
The “Ask YouTube” conversational search experience that YouTube started testing in April is now rolling out to the mobile app. It’s available for signed-in users in the US who are 13 or older, and can be found by tapping the “Ask” option in the YouTube search bar.
After denying replacing Rideshare Stimulator’s writers with ChatGPT following a claim from a former lead writer, Stella Sacco, Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch said this to This Week in Videogames:
As far as Stella is concerned, she was replaced by someone more talented and terminated for a variety of reasons a few months later. From what I can gather she enjoys controversy even more than I do. I would frankly in retrospect have been happy to replace her with AI. At least we would be dealing with someone programmed to be honest.
There’s more in the full article. Sacco: “Everything I said was true.”
We live blogged almost 90 minutes of a show that was, honestly, better than expected. Our video team cut it down to eight.
The company working on deals that would let Siri to lean on publisher content for news and information, The Wall Street Journal reports. Apple has apparently proposed a plan where publishers would get paid when content is actually used.
[The Wall Street Journal]
We’re ready for some bad jokes during Google’s celebrity-packed live show.
Anthropic updated its Chrome extension so using the side panel bot now saves chats to your history, where you can continue them outside in the browser in Claude’s desktop, web, or mobile apps.
The Cowork version is available today for Max and Team users, and coming to Pro users “over the coming weeks.”
The Made By Google keynote, hosted by Trevor Noah, kicks off at 6PM ET. Stay tuned to this website starting at 5:30PM for our live blog. Victoria Song will be there live, with Jay Peters, Jake Kastrenakes, and myself following remotely. Let’s see what happens.
TechCrunch reports that the new factory would be located 45 minutes outside of Houston:
The new factory, called Project Crystal Sun, could cost as much as $10.1 billion. Tesla has applied for tax incentives to partially offset the cost, saying that it is exploring other sites “across multiple U.S. states.” The factory would create about 9,700 full-time jobs, Tesla said.
