On the agenda for this edition is Disney’s innovative VR treadmill, OpenAI fixing its “lazy” AI and MIT’s high-capacity, fast-charging organic battery tech.
We also cover Apple’s new stolen device protection feature, AI startup Rabbit’s nifty hardware and app makers debating launching apps tailor-made for Apple’s Vision Pro headset.
Apple’s new device protection: Romain writes about Apple’s new stolen device protection feature, which, when turned on, requires Face ID or Touch ID biometric authentication for some actions, like accessing stored passwords and credit cards.
Vision Pro apps a maybe: After Netflix said it wouldn’t release a dedicated app for the Apple Vision Pro, other app makers, including YouTube, are following in its footsteps.
Bonus roundLamborghini licenses MIT battery tech: Writing for TechCrunch+, Tim reports that Lamborghini has licensed new battery tech from MIT that could overcome the limitations of the lithium-ion batteries in wide use today.
NASA and Lockheed Martin have finally taken the wraps off of the X-59, a “quiet supersonic” aircraft that may shape the future of both military and civilian air travel.
The X-59 has been under development at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for years, following a $248 million grant from NASA in 2018.
NASA’s X-59 will help change the way we travel, bringing us closer together in much less time,” said Pam Melroy, NASA deputy administrator, in a press release.
“By demonstrating the possibility of quiet commercial supersonic travel over land, we seek to open new commercial markets for U.S. companies and benefit travelers around the world,” said NASA’s Bob Pearce.
Others than NASA and Lockheed are interested in this kind of flight, of course: Boom Supersonic is hard at work getting its own quiet supersonic test plane out there.
To coincide with the National Retailer Association’s annual conference in NYC, Google Cloud today unveiled new gen AI products designed to help retailers personalize their online shopping experiences and streamline their back-office operations.
But the slew of announcements show, if nothing else, how aggressively Google is attempting to court gen AI customers.
(Google’s long offered Distributed Cloud Edge as a service, but it’s now targeting retailers more directly.)
My question after being pre-briefed on all this was, frankly, are retailers really clamoring for gen AI?
But considering some of the rocky rollouts of gen AI in retail recently (see: Amazon’s review summaries exaggerating negative feedback), I can’t say I’m convinced that the retail industry will rush to adopt gen AI en masse — from Google Cloud or any other provider.
Multiple Threads users on the iOS app reported earlier today that they are seeing a new “Latest” option to sort search results on the new social network.
However, the company told TechCrunch that the feature was just an internal prototype and it was rolled out by mistake.
Threads first started testing the ability to search for posts in Australia and New Zealand in August 2023.
In September last year, Meta rolled out the search to almost all English and Spanish-speaking countries where the social network was available.
In December, the company expanded the search to all languages along with the launch in the EU later in the month.
TikTok has rolled out an update to enhance the app experience for viewers on tablets and foldable devices, the company announced on Monday.
The company says the app is now better optimized for larger screens, as viewers can now experience a clear video feed, streamlined navigation bars and orientation support.
By rolling out a landscape mode on larger devices, TikTok is inching further into YouTube’s territory, which it has already been doing by supporting longer videos.
It’s worth noting that TikTok’s optimization for foldables and tablets comes as Instagram, one of its main competitors, still lacks an iPad app.
By rolling out updates for the app experiences on larger devices, TikTok is able to move beyond its mobile-first approach at a time when the competition is still behind.
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