Meta announces AI-generated chat stickers for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, and unveils new AI-powered image editing tools for Instagram
New generative AI tools announced Wednesday at Meta's Connect event will allow users to edit images and create stickers using text prompts.
Meta unveils a Meta AI assistant for WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, and 28 AI characters based on celebrities like MrBeast, Charli D'Amelio, and Snoop Dogg
you can invoke Meta's AI chatbot in any chat, including group chats, to ask it questions and find out info. Good for settling debates, Zuckerberg says. [image] Lance Ulanoff / @lanceulanoff : Meta AI ...
Raspberry Pi 5 launches with 64-bit quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 processor, up to 8GB of RAM, two 4K HDMI ports with HDR, available in October for $60 for 4GB model
Despite doubts that the Raspberry Pi 5 would launch this year, the latest version of the microcomputer has arrived with some notable upgrades at a $60 starting price.
Hands-on with the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses: a classic look, 12MP vs. 5MP makes a big difference, some audio leakage, and a promising tool for content creators
Unlike the original, I kind of see where Meta's going with its second-gen smart glasses.
Meta debuts the $500 Quest 3, featuring a 30% higher resolution than the Quest 2, double the processing power, new lenses, a thinner design, and new controllers
- New mixed-reality headset to start at $500, a $200 increase — Apple to launch rival device, Vision Pro, early next year
Apple launches a Wallet feature in the UK using the country's Open Banking API, showing users their current account balances, deposits, and payment history
Apple is soft launching a new iPhone Wallet app integration today that is powered by the United Kingdom's Open Banking API.
Hands-on with Meta Quest 3: an iterative update, but its mixed reality pass through video is less grainy than the Quest Pro and offers color, unlike the Quest 2
Adi Robertson / The Verge :
Source: Epic Games announced in a staff memo that it is laying off about 900 employees or 16% of its workforce
The job cuts were announced in a memo to staff, said the person, who asked not to be named disclosing information that's not yet public. — Based in Cary, North Carolina …
Sources: OpenAI and Jony Ive's LoveFrom are in advanced talks with Masayoshi Son to raise $1B+ from SoftBank to build the “iPhone of artificial intelligence”
ChatGPT creator in early discussions to create the ‘iPhone of artificial intelligence’
The US and Japan warn that the China-backed BlackTech hacking group is breaching network devices, including Cisco's, to install backdoors on corporate networks
US and Japanese law enforcement and cybersecurity agencies warn of the Chinese ‘BlackTech’ hackers breaching network devices …
OpenAI says ChatGPT can now browse the web, available first to Plus and Enterprise users, and the chatbot is “no longer limited to data before September 2021”
ChatGPT users will now be able to surf the web, Microsoft-backed (MSFT.O) OpenAI said on Wednesday …
Meta's celebrity AIs are generated AI animations built from filming the 28 people they represent; Meta would not comment on how the celebrities were compensated
Actors are in the middle of a major, protracted battle with Hollywood over what role AI will be playing in the future of entertainment …
Reddit removes the ability to opt out of ad personalization based on Reddit activity but says users will still have opt-out controls in “select countries”
Reddit said Wednesday that the platform is revamping its privacy settings with an aim to make ad personalization and account visibility toggles consistent.
Paris-based Mistral AI makes its first LLM, Mistral 7B, that it claims outperforms open models with up to 13B parameters, free to use without restrictions
The most popular language models out there may be accessed via API, but open models — as far as that term can be taken seriously — are gaining ground.
Sources: X is cutting ~50% of its global team devoted to limiting disinformation and election fraud, less than a month after saying it would expand the team
Elon Musk's X, formerly known as Twitter, is cutting around half of the global team devoted to limiting disinformation and election fraud …
Coinbase says it has gained approval from the Bermuda Monetary Authority to offer non-US retail users perpetual futures trading
- Coinbase has gained approval to offer non-U.S. retail users perpetual futures trading from the Bermuda Monetary Authority. — About 75% of global crypto …
Google patches a zero-day in Chrome that was exploited by a commercial spyware vendor, just two days after it was reported by Google's Threat Analysis Group
Google has rushed to patch a zero-day vulnerability in Chrome that was exploited by a commercial spyware vendor.
Report: Bank for International Settlements and French, Swiss, and Singaporean central banks successfully tested cross-border wholesale CBDC trading using DeFi
The Bank for International Settlements alongside the central banks of France, Singapore and Switzerland tested out using wholesale CBDC to conduct cross border trading.
Meta unveils the $299+ Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, featuring a 12MP camera, speakers, five mics, a Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chip, and more, shipping on October 17
Q&A with Mark Zuckerberg on Threads, the future of AI, Quest 3, his Elon Musk rivalry, decentralized social media, “open-source” AI tools, encryption, and more
“[It] actually makes people feel more confident investing in a system if they know that they have freedom over how they operate. … X: Elon Musk / @elonmusk : @xDaily lmaooo @jamesborow : One of the be...
Apple asks SCOTUS to revisit the 2021 Epic ruling regarding alternate IAP payment options, a day after Epic separately asked SCOTUS to take up the case
- IPhone maker wants to avoid allowing an end run around store — Fortnite maker has separately asked high court to take up case
Epic Games asks SCOTUS to review a judge's 2021 ruling that Apple's App Store doesn't violate antitrust laws; SCOTUS may decide by 2024 whether to take the case
Malathi Nayak / Bloomberg :
A US Senate staffer says officials told lawmakers that Chinese hackers who breached Microsoft's email system stole 60K emails from ten State Department accounts
Chinese hackers who breached Microsoft's (MSFT.O) email platform this year managed to steal tens of thousands of emails …
GameStop names Ryan Cohen as CEO effective immediately and says he won't receive compensation for his work as CEO, president, and executive chairman
- Ryan Cohen was appointed the company's CEO, president and chairman and won't receive compensation for his work.
Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan plans to retire in March 2024; Ryan joined Sony in 1994, just before the first PlayStation debuted
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg :
SpaceX gets its first US Space Force contract, valued at up to $70M, offering the military custom satellite communications via the company's Starshield service
- Contract extends billionaire's role as a defense contractor — Starshield provides customized satellite communications
Google unveils Fitbit Charge 6, with a physical side button, integration with Google services like YouTube Music, and more, available on October 12 for $160
Victoria Song / The Verge :
Amazon announces the general availability of Bedrock, unveiled in April 2023 to offer generative AI models from Amazon and third-party partners through an API
Amazon today announced the general availability of Bedrock, its service that offers a choice of generative AI models from Amazon itself …
Disney tells its Canadian Disney+ subscribers the company updated the service's subscriber agreement to limit usage to a single household, effective November 1
what you need to know Brian Barnett / IGN : The Best Disney Plus Deals and Bundles for September 2023 Eddie Makuch / GameSpot : Disney Plus Password-Sharing Crackdown Begins Isobel O'Sullivan / Tech.c...
US v. Google: Microsoft says the company has tried for years to displace Google as the iPhone's default search engine, but Apple never seriously considered Bing
A look at the rise of online feminism in China, driven by content on apps like Weibo, Douyin, WeChat, and Douban, despite increased scrutiny from the platforms
Lying in bed one night in 2021, Zhang Zirui was swiping through Chinese social media app Weibo when she came across a post that gave her pause. Mastodon: @TechDesk@flipboard.social Mastodon: @TechDesk...
NYC-based market intelligence company AlphaSense raised a $150M Series E at a $2.5B valuation, after raising $100M at a $1.8B valuation in April 2023
Market intelligence — where organizations gather information about industries, other businesses, trends, and more in order to use that data …
Kraken plans to offer US-listed stock and ETF trading, a source says in the US and the UK through a new division, Kraken Securities, targeted for a 2024 launch
Bloomberg :
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy confirms that former Microsoft CPO Panos Panay will be joining Amazon at the end of October to lead its devices and services division
X CEO Linda Yaccarino claims 90% of the top 100 advertisers “returned to the platform in the past 12 weeks alone” and that X will be profitable by early 2024
You cannot talk profitability when you are defrauding owed funds to others. … Bluesky: Evan Dandy Warhol / @dadloop.bsky.social : I love that because of their dumb name change, the first thing that my...
A review of 115 warrants for Google's location and search data in five US states shows investigators are increasingly using the data to solve nonviolent cases
Investigators increasingly use warrants to obtain location and search data from Google, even for nonviolent cases—and even for people who had nothing to do with the crime. X: @elizabeth_joh , @deirdre...
How TikTok Shop's growth in Indonesia, meant to be a template for a global expansion, ended in a ban amid backlash from rivals and an activist-turned-minister
Bloomberg :
Canalys: Q2 smartphone sales in North America fell 22% YoY, with Apple down 20% and Samsung down 27%; Google's sales rose 59% YoY and market share doubled to 4%
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica :
The US DOJ sues eBay for allegedly breaking environmental laws by allowing sales of harmful products, like 343K+ devices that “defeat” vehicle emission controls
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters :
The US DoD awards Palantir a three-year $250M R&D contract to develop AI services, building on the company's work since at least 2018 for the Army Research Lab
Adobe makes its web-based Photoshop, including Firefly-powered features, generally available for paid plans, and has no “immediate plans” for a freemium plan
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge :
Vilnius-based Nord Security, which makes the VPN tool NordVPN, raised $100M led by Warburg Pincus at a $3B valuation, up from a $1.6B valuation in April 2022
Ivan Levingston / Financial Times :
Counterpoint: Pixel had a record 12% market share in Japan in Q2 2023, up from 2% YoY, while the iPhone's share fell from 58% to 46% during the same period
Min Jeong Lee / Bloomberg :
Court filings: Indian fantasy sports and online gaming startups like Dream11 and Gameskraft received notices for hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes
Benjamin Parkin / Financial Times :
NYC-based Transfr, which sells VR tools for training and career development, raised a $40M Series C led by ABS Capital, bringing its total funding to $90M
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :
B2B payments startup Slope, which in April debuted SlopeGPT as the first GPT-powered payments risk model, raised $30M led by Union Square; Sam Altman invested
At the center of Google's antitrust trial is a “remarkable” number of deleted employee chats, as chat backups reveal employees discussing going “off the record”
& the power of defaults https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... Rebecca Allensworth / @hawallensworth : Internal documents (or deleted ones!) should play a starring role in these antitrust suits, because ant...
SoundThinking, which makes the sensor-based gunshot-detection system ShotSpotter, acquires parts of Geolitica, which built the predictive policing tool PredPol
https://www.wired.com/... SoundThinking, the company behind the gunshot-detection system ShotSpotter, is quietly acquiring staff, patents, and customers of the firm that created the notorious predict...
Hands-on with ChatGPT's image recognition and voice features: image recognition isn't perfect and refuses to discuss faces, voice is fluid and natural, and more
Kevin Roose / New York Times : X: @kevinroose X: Kevin Roose / @kevinroose : Really like the new ChatGPT image tool for stuff like writing descriptions for FB Marketplace. OpenAI has trained it to re...
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26
Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.