Apple’s emergency SOS feature has proven useful for a fair number of people whose cars break down (or tumble down) in areas with no signal.
Soon you’ll be able to use iMessage and SMS as well — though it’s not clear what the limitations on the service may be.
Announced at Apple’s WWDC 2024 keynote on Monday, “Messages via Satellite” works much like the SOS feature did.
When you have no signal — otherwise the phone will use that — you’ll be given the option to find a satellite to relay the data.
Apple did not say when the new feature will be available or whether it’s restricted to certain phones or plans.
Google is shutting down its Podcasts app in the U.S. in a matter of days.
In 2020, YouTube Music offered a similar transition strategy to move music listeners away from Google Play Music ahead of its shutdown that same year.
However, the Google Podcasts app continued to be maintained for years because YouTube Music wasn’t ready to support podcasts until more recently.
By the end of 2023, YouTube Music was able to support podcasts globally, and, by February, they had the ability to upload their RSS feeds, too.
From its earlier statements, though, the plan is to discontinue Google Podcasts in 2024.
A day after researchers surfaced X’s plans to test NSFW adult communities on the platform formerly known as Twitter, the company confirmed that Community admins can now set an “Adult Content” label in their settings to avoid having their communities’ content auto-filtered.
Otherwise, all NSFW content will be soon filtered across X’s Communities by default.
Check out the latest updates and improvements for X Communities.👇 Updates (With the latest version of the app):– [All] Admins can now add topics to their Communities, and you can see topics linked to Communities on all devices.
– [All] Soon, NSFW content will… — Dongwook (@DongWookChung2) March 28, 2024Now, included in a long list of updates to X’s Communities is the confirmation that NSFW-focused communities will be allowed to designate themselves as such to keep from having their content filtered automatically, as in other Communities.
The X executives had not shared any plans for NSFW Communities at that time.
X.ai, Elon Musk’s AI startup, has revealed its latest generative AI model, Grok-1.5.
Grok-1.5 benefits from “improved reasoning,” according to X.ai, particularly where it concerns coding and math-related tasks.
One improvement that should lead to observable gains is the amount of context Grok-1.5 can take in compared to Grok-1.
Context, or context window, refers to input data (in this case, text) that a model considers before generating output (more text).
The announcement of Grok-1.5 comes after X.ai open sourced Grok-1, albeit without the code necessary to fine-tune or further train it.
Google announced today that it will soon roll out on-device AI-powered features such as recording summaries and smart replies on the Pixel 8.
These features will be based on Gemini Nano, a small-sized model Google released last year, primed to run on devices.
The company announced these features last October during the Pixel 8 launch.
In January, Google introduced “Circle to Search” for select Pixel and Samsung Devices.
The company announced this week that more Pixel and Sasmung phones along with select tablets will get Circle to Search feature.
Donald Trump’s beleaguered SPAC deal is finally going through, and just in time to pay nearly half a billion dollars owed over several legal actions — if the board agrees to let him sell.
And that’s without reckoning with the questionable success of Truth Social, the partisan social network hurriedly stood up after the former President was booted from Twitter.
TMTG reportedly had a net loss of around $49 million in 2023, on revenues of under $4 million — not exactly hot numbers.
There’s no doubt that many, many shareholders in the newly public TMTG will sell their shares as soon as possible.
But if Trump wanted to finance his current liabilities, he’d have to sell some 12 million shares at the current price — around 15% of his total stake.
Wizards of the Coast and Resolution Games have announced their collaboration to bring Dungeons & Dragons to virtual reality.
The franchise also made a splash this year with a Hollywood film and the hugely successful Baldur’s Gate III, a video game that licenses Dungeons & Dragons IP.
— but it continues Wizards’ trend of bringing Dungeons & Dragons away from the table and into digital media.
It’s also not clear whether this is a platform for players to connect with their friends to play D&D through VR, or if they’re telling a whole new story, like the “Honor Among Thieves” film.
It’s common for people to use platforms like Foundry and Roll20 to play D&D with non-local friends, and Baldur’s Gate was a hit, but… are we really trying to eldritch blast our enemies in VR?
Coast Runner, is a new entrant in the desktop CNC milling industry, promising to make the technology accessible to everyone, from professionals to hobbyists.
Coast Runner is breaking down the barriers of traditional CNC milling with a focus on power, compact size, and most importantly, education.
Moreover, Coast Runner is developing a bounty board system where users can pay others to create designs or mill parts if they lack the necessary skills.
The Coast Runner machine is aiming to be both affordable and powerful.
“We are making one of the most powerful desktop CNC machines you’ll find in the marketplace.
Just how backed up are the venture capital markets today?
That’s what a recent data analysis indicates is happening today in one critical venture capital market.
The value of the most mature startups in the United States that need to find an exit neared the $1 trillion mark through Q3 2023, according to a recent PitchBook analysis.
The figure underscores how weak the exit climate has been over the last two years and highlights the sheer mass of illiquid equity investments made into startups that call the United States home.
Still, the United States’ venture capital market is worth about half of the global whole, so when we discuss Yankee territory, we’re nevertheless talking about a huge portion of the startup market.
Talks of bitcoin spot ETF approval circulate as India blocks exchange sites and crypto is seeing more optimismWelcome back to Chain Reaction.
The crypto space has been off to a strong start for 2024 as reporters and ETF analysts have reported that a bitcoin spot ETF approval in the U.S. could be coming as soon.
This week in web3The latest podFor this week’s news episode, Jacquelyn dove back into the latest developments on spot bitcoin ETF applications in the U.S. as anticipation builds.
As it stands, there are 14 asset management firms, including BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale and VanEck, hoping to individually win approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for their spot bitcoin ETFs.
We also discussed what a spot bitcoin ETF could mean for investors, institutions and miners, as well as bitcoin’s price.
