Last week, a neighbor invited my children over for ice cream. My 9-year-old wanted to walk alone, so she strapped on her Apple Watch and set out with my son. I watched the blue dot rush enthusiastically off. “Baby, you’re going the wrong way,” I texted. She corrected her course, …
Read More »It’s Chromebook’s Turn for an AI Injection
Ai Ai Ai. No not the Vanessa da Mata song—it’s the theme for tech in 2024. Last week, Microsoft announced new Surface laptops with artificial intelligence capabilities, and several PC manufacturers like Samsung, Asus, and Acer are launching new Windows machines to take advantage of the AI bump. Early in …
Read More »Pocket-Sized AI Models Could Unlock a New Era of Computing
When ChatGPT was released in November 2023, it could only be accessed through the cloud because the model behind it was downright enormous. Today I am running a similarly capable AI program on a Macbook Air, and it isn’t even warm. The shrinkage shows how rapidly researchers are refining AI …
Read More »Judge Hints at Plans to Rein In Google’s Illegal Play Store Monopoly
A jury in December found that Google broke US antitrust laws through deals and billing rules that gave an unfair boost to its Google Play app store. On Thursday, a judge began laying out how Google could be forced to change its business as a penalty. The remedies under consideration …
Read More »A Far-Right Indian News Site Posts Racist Conspiracies. US Tech Companies Keep Platforming It
In 2017, Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair cofounded the fact-checking website AltNews in India. Almost immediately, the pair were targeted with persistent and vicious attacks from the far-right news website OpIndia. Many of the attacks claimed that Zubair was a Rohingya Muslim who illegally migrated to India and that his …
Read More »/e/OS Is Better Than Android. You Should Try It
Google's Android mobile operating system is open source, which means anyone can, in theory, build their own mobile operating system based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Why, then, are there not many different versions of Android to choose from? Well, the good news is that there are a …
Read More »Google Search’s New AI Overviews Will Soon Have Ads
Last week Google introduced a radical shake-up of search that presents users with AI-generated answers to their queries. Now the company says it will soon start including ads inside those AI Overviews, as the automatic answers are called. Google on Tuesday announced plans to test search and shopping ads in …
Read More »Google Taps AI to Show Shoppers How Clothes Fit Different Bodies
One of the worst parts of online shopping is trying to figure out whether an item of clothing will actually fit. While some brands have begun hiring models with more diverse body types, the process still often requires a leap of faith—or making a lot of returns. Google announced Tuesday …
Read More »Apple Makes It Easier to Stare at Your Phone in the Car
You’ve been there, sitting in the passenger seat of a car, trying to focus intently on your phone as a way to ignore all your karaoke-belting seatmates. And then there’s a lurch, or a buildup of motion that causes a swirl of unease in your gut. What you’re feeling is …
Read More »How to Use ‘Circle to Search’ on an Android Phone
As you've no doubt noticed, tech companies are pushing artificial intelligence into as many of their products as they can at a ferocious rate. One of the newest AI-powered features to make its way to Android phones is called Circle to Search. Here's the idea: There's something on your phone …
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