Meta just created a moderation nightmare for its smart glasses
Meta's smart glasses have been a PR headache for the company. Public backlash has been swift, and fierce; people are concerned about the erosion of privacy and expansion of surveillance. Some especially bad actors are using the glasses to film themselves "pranking" random strangers. Women have become unsuspecting social media content for men filming themselves hitting on them without their knowledge. When your product is being referred to as "pervert glasses," you have a problem on your hands.
On Thursday, Business Insider reported that Meta was taking the fairly extraordinary step of banning some content filmed with Meta glasses from the c …
Qualcomm is about to raise prices and that’s bad news for everyone
Qualcomm sent a letter to customers on Friday warning of plans to increase its prices by "a percentage in the double digits," Bloomberg reports. The price hikes will go into effect starting with products shipped after September 1st.
Qualcomm claims it has "exhausted its ability to absorb higher costs from suppliers," as ongoing component shortages continue to drive up prices. The company also said it attempted to source components from alternate suppliers prior to announcing the price hikes.
As Bloomberg notes, Qualcomm's price increases will likely have a ripple effect, particularly for smartphones. Qualcomm's chips power everything fro …
Midjourney bought the astrology app Co-Star
Midjourney, which has gone from generating AI cat images to full-body ultrasound scans, is getting into a new field: astrology. The AI startup announced on Thursday that it has acquired the personalized astrology app Co-Star, as reported earlier by Bloomberg.
Co-Star is a free app that offers daily horoscopes and allows you to check your compatibility with friends. As noted on the app's FAQ page, it combines human insight, data from NASA, and AI to deliver personalized advice for users each day. The terms of Midjourney's deal, which reportedly closed in spring, haven't been disclosed.
Midjourney founder David Holz says Co-Star founder Banu …
DJI camera clone company Xtra is halting and refunding all preorders
After selling a barely disguised version of the hit DJI Osmo Pocket 3 in the United States last year, Xtra Technology seemed ready to sneak in its version of the new dual-lens Osmo Pocket 4 Pro, too. But today, Xtra has abruptly removed the new Xtra Muse 2 Pro from its website landing page, is pausing preorders indefinitely, and says it'll refund all the $20 deposits that it's already collected.
Just days after showing off the camera at a Los Angeles launch event, the company is no longer necessarily committing to launch at all: "XTRA has not made a final announcement regarding future product availability. We have not announced a new produc …
Nothing confirms layoffs, but calls market exit rumors ‘fake news’
In response to a report that Nothing is planning to "exit 12 markets as global shipments decline," Nothing cofounder Akis Evangelidis said the company is "reorganizing" and laying off some of its staff, but that "the reported numbers are way overblown." Evangelidis disputed a claim about underwhelming sales for Nothing's Phone 4B, saying it "sold 29,537 units on Day 1 only, breaking records in its price segment."
He also said Nothing isn't shutting down in any markets, and is instead "consolidating" its operations into regional hubs as well as introducing an "AI-native" business unit.
The update comes as rising component prices squeeze the …
Roku raises streaming hardware prices by up to $50
Roku has increased prices across its streaming hardware, with the cheapest HD Streaming Stick now priced at $39.99 instead of $29.99, as first reported by The Desk. The price hike affects all of Roku's other devices as well, with some increasing by as much as $50. Here's a rundown of the changes:
- Streaming Stick: $29.99 to $39.99
- Streaming Stick Plus: $39.99 to $59.99
- Streaming Stick 4K: $49.99 to $79.99
- Roku Ultra: $99.99 to $149.99
- Roku Streambar SE: $99.99 to $149.99
Roku is currently holding a sale that puts some devices at their original prices, which you can see on this archived web page. Fox announced plans to acquire …
Blade Runner 2099’s moody dystopia streams on Amazon in November
After teasing the series with some first-look images yesterday, Amazon is finally properly unveiling its Blade Runner streaming series. Called Blade Runner 2099, the show hits Prime Video on November 25th with all eight episodes dropping at once. We also got the first trailer for the series, which is full of Blade Runner staples: a bleak futuristic LA, dramatic narration, and some really good coats.
The show is helmed by Silka Luisa, previously showrunner on Apple TV's adaptation of Shining Girls, while original Blade Runner director Ridley Scott is signed on as an executive producer. 2099 stars Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer and, as the …
You can’t ignore Google Zero anymore
The web and Google once had a deal: Google collects data and indexes webpages and in exchange sends oceans of traffic to websites. The deal wasn't perfect and certainly made Google more money than it made the websites, but it worked for a long time. Now, however, the deal seems to be dead. And the web is being forced to reckon with what happens when the Google traffic dries up.
On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay talk about the week's Google Zero news, including Reddit's interest in getting out of an AI training deal, and the publishers considering blocking Google from crawling their sites altogether. (Nilay also takes a bit o …
Anthropic releases Opus 5 with ‘close’ to Fable 5’s capabilities
Weeks after Anthropic's latest toe-to-toe with the US government, and days after an OpenAI security incident that dominated tech industry discussions, Anthropic on Thursday released its newest model, Claude Opus 5.
The company said in a release that Opus 5 "comes close to the capabilities of Claude Fable 5 in many domains" and is much better at complex coding tasks. (Fable 5 is the public-facing Mythos-class model that drew the government's ire, was taken offline for a few weeks along with Mythos 5, and then brought back with even stronger cyber safeguards than before.)
The Fable 5 concerns - and the ensuing weeks of negotiations between …
Meta is making its AI chatbot more like an assistant
Meta is upgrading its AI chatbot with new productivity features in a bid to compete with rivals like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude. The update will allow Meta AI to tap into your calendar to help you plan events and generate daily briefings, as well as perform in-depth research that you can steer as it progresses.
In a blog post, Meta says this update marks its "next step toward personal superintelligence," something CEO Mark Zuckerberg has touted as the future of AI. Meta is powering the update with its newly released Muse Spark 1.1 model, which the company says will allow its chatbot to go beyond its current capabilities of answering questi …