Tech

WABetaInfo reports the feature is live in beta version 24.9.10.71 of Meta’s encrypted messaging app. Recently online contacts will only show up for those who haven’t “disabled their last seen and online status,” according to the outlet.

In the wake of more “absolutely hard core” layoffs at Tesla that were especially hard on the charging division, Elon Musk is saying the company still plans to grow its Supercharger network “at a slower pace.”

Compare that to the message he sent internally, as reported by The Information: “We will continue to build out some new Supercharger locations, where critical, and finish those currently under construction.”

OpenAI says free and Plus subscribers can now use the feature without giving over their chats to train its models.

With chat history on, users can pick up previous chats where they left off, and the chatbot will reply as though they never stopped. The company also says users can start one-off chats that aren’t saved in the history.

Because it sure didn’t paint a rosy picture of gaming in the Q1 2024 earnings call — “The demand has been quite weak,” said AMD CFO Jean Hu. AMD’s gaming biz was down 48 percent year over year on both semiconductor (PS5, Xbox, Steam Deck etc) and GPU sales, and it’s forecasting a “significant double digit percentage” decline for the rest of the year too.

AMD also says an AI PC refresh cycle will help PCs return to growth in 2024, and that 150 software vendors will be developing for AMD AI PCs by year’s end. The company’s top priority is ramping AI data center GPUs, though, which are “tight on supply.” New AI chips are coming “later this year into 2025,” too.

Earlier this month, the adult entertainment group Free Speech Coalition filed an emergency appeal to overturn the online age verification law, but the Supreme Court has rejected the request. The group said the law violates free speech rights, as it forces users to upload a photo of their government ID to access porn sites.

Mega Bass is long gone. Extra Bass is over. ULT POWER SOUND is here.

The 13 percent year over year increase comes as AWS sales shot to $25 billion in the first quarter of 2024. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company’s cloud division is now at a $100 billion annual revenue run rate — a sign companies are spending more on AI.

Mahmoud Khalil, one of the students negotiating with the university over the encampment, told The City administrators had previously assured him he wouldn’t be disciplined.

I quoted Khalil in my article about the doxxings at Columbia:

I am here on a foreign visa. That’s why for the past six months, I’ve barely appeared on the media. ... I did not participate, fearing that I will be arrested and ultimately deported from this country.

You can read the details of Ver’s alleged misconduct here, but, with this news arriving as Binance founder Changpeng Zhao was sentenced for failing to establish adequate anti-money laundering protections, I’m reminded of this line from Ver, quoted in 2014:

“Money laundering is not a crime,” Ver says. “It’s just because certain men with guns don’t like what other people are doing with their own money, so they decide it’s okay to lock those people in a cage.

The China National Space Administration released a video showing its concept for a future lunar base, which it says it will have set up by 2045, writes Space.

The China Global Television Network appears to have blurred out the Shuttle in the video on YouTube.

Sources tell The Wrap that the high costs stemmed from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s “chronic lateness,” along with inexperienced production execs:

“It should look like a $200 million-plus movie, but it doesn’t, because more than half goes to buyouts of the stars and the above the line,” the production insider said. “Amazon MGM have so many movies that nobody’s concentrating on what actually needs to get done. Given their volume, they can’t concentrate.”

As part of its v65 release, Meta has announced that Quest 3, Quest Pro, and Quest 2 owners with iOS 17 can now upload panoramic images to the Quest mobile app and view them in VR. It’s also expanding the ability to upload and view spatial videos to all iPhone users with iOS 17.

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope recently produced the “sharpest infrared images to date” of the Horsehead Nebula, according to the European Space Agency.

As BBC Science Focus explains, images like this are made up of multiple composites taken at different infrared wavelengths, then shifted to the visible spectrum and combined.

The TikTok-style discovery feed lets you swipe through livestreams and clips on Twitch’s mobile app. If you land on a livestream you like, you can tap into the stream to start tuning in.

According to AppleInsider, it’s testing Safari updates like “Intelligent Search,” which would offer on-device AI-powered webpage summaries and a built-in “Web Eraser” feature that lets you selectively — and persistently — block content on websites.

AppleInsider’s story, which cites unnamed sources, seems at least plausible, given Apple is widely expected to debut a smattering of AI features at WWDC in June.

It’s hard to get people to switch away from Google, but Microsoft has been trying over the past year and hit a milestone of 140 million daily users recently. That’s up from the 100 million that Microsoft announced last year, so it’s clear that its ambitious plans for its AI-powered search engine have got millions more people using Bing.