Technology

Steven Spohn passed a goal this week that he’s been chasing for nearly a year. He raised over a million dollars for AbleGamers, a charity that seeks to improve accessibility in games and connects disabled people with peer support and adaptive tech for gaming. Spohn has been its COO for 15 years. The charity’s mission, he says, is about giving people with disabilities access to “that sense of independence and that feeling of exploration or excitement or relaxation, whatever it is you’re going for, to help you mentally get through the tough times.” Spohn has multiple progressive illnesses that impact his functioning. He started the fundraising campaign, Spawn Together, in September of last year to celebrate his 40th birthday. He says he hoped that more funds for AbleGamers would enable it to...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says his company is working on a humanoid robot and that it will build a prototype “sometime next year.” The humanoid robot will leverage Tesla’s experience with automated machines in its factories, as well as some of the hardware and software that powers the company’s Autopilot driver assistance software. Musk, who has spoken repeatedly about his fears of runaway artificial intelligence, said Tesla is “intended to be friendly,” but that Tesla is designing the robot at a “mechanical level” so that “you can run away from it, and most likely overpower it.” It will be five feet, eight inches tall, weigh 125 pounds, and have a screen for a face. The code name for the bot inside the company is “Optimus,” he said. The robots will be designed to handle “tasks that are unsafe, ...

Apple is delaying its mandatory return to offices until at least January 2022, citing a surge in COVID-19 cases. The company will give employees a month’s notice before they have to return to in-person work. In an internal email sent this evening, Deirdre O’Brien, senior vice president of people and retail, encouraged employees to get vaccinated and noted that Apple retail stores remain open. “I know there are feeling of frustration that the pandemic is not yet behind us,” she wrote. “For many colleagues around the world, this period has been a time of great tragedy, suffering, and heartbreak. Please know that we are all here to support one another and stand with one another during such challenging times.” The company, which previously discouraged working from home for most employees, chan...

During its AI Day event on Thursday, Tesla released plans for its artificial intelligence training system it has dubbed DOJO. The in-house designed device would tackle the “insatiable demand for speed as well as capacity for neural-network training,” Tesla’s Ganesh Venkataramanan said. The project aims to “achieve best AI training performance” and “enable larger and more complex neural net models,” while still being power and cost-efficient. DOJO would be powered by a distributed computing architecture, which would feature a large compute plane and facilitate high bandwidth and low latencies. The device would include several layers, including a chip, the system, a compute cluster and additional software. “It will be the fastest AI training computer,” said Venkataramanan. “We have a wh...

Tesla on Thursday unveiled plans for a human-sized robot aptly called Tesla Bot. The life-sized, 125 lbs humanoid bot was teased during the company’s AI Day held in its Palo Alto headquarters, which showcased enhancements in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. On the development of an eerily-lifelike robot, CEO Elon Musk called Tesla “arguably the world’s biggest robotics company” and described its cars as “semi-sentient robots on wheels.” Musk said the Tesla Bot was made to “navigate through a world built for humans” and would be able to “eliminate dangerous, repetitive and boring tasks.” .@ElonMusk vient d’annoncer au @Tesla AI Day son intention de lancer l’année prochaine le Tesla Bot : un prototype de robot humanoïde destiné aux tâches physiques répétitives ou ennuyeuse...

Adobe announced on Thursday that it’s acquiring the company behind popular collaborative video production software of the same name, Frame.io, for $1.275 billion. Adobe says it tried to create its own collaboration software on its own, but settled on buying Frame.io because some customers were already using it in their workflows, Bloomberg reports. Frame.io takes the frequently time consuming process of reviewing edits and footage, and makes it asynchronous and on the web, Google Workspace-style. Editors, clients, and whoever else can use the company’s cloud-based software to store and view footage, and leave feedback on edits, just by sharing a link. Frame.io also offers integrations with popular video editing software like Adobe’s Premiere Pro, Apple’s Final Cut Pro, and Avid Media Compo...

Samsung’s new foldables are quite impressive, and the company has focused on making them as durable as possible — but sometimes, accidents happen. We asked Samsung how much it would cost to replace a Z Flip or Z Fold 3’s screen should something happen to it, and here’s what the company told us. Samsung provides a one year warranty with the phones, so if your screen breaks in a way that’s covered, you shouldn’t have to pay for a repair. Out of warranty, fixing the interior folding screen of a Z Fold 3 costs $479. Doing the same for a Z Flip 3 costs $369. Thankfully, the external displays are much less expensive — fixing a broken outer screen will set you back $149 for the Fold and $99 for the Flip. Out of warranty, the Fold’s folding screen costs $479 to replace, and the Flip’s costs $369 S...

Earlier today, OnlyFans stunned the world by revealing it would ditch the thing it’s famous for: sexually explicit videos and photography. Yes, OnlyFans is banning porn, starting October 1st. But at least one publication wasn’t completely shocked by the decision — because it came in the middle of a BBC investigation into how the video sharing site was knowingly letting creators slide despite publishing illegal content on the internet. Instead of banning an account or sounding the alarm, the company explicitly recommends in a “compliance manual” that moderators should first issue a series of three warnings about why each piece of content has been removed. Unless it’s a successful creator, of course, in which case “accounts with higher numbers of subscribers can be given additional warnings ...

Video sharing site OnlyFans, best known for its creators’ adult videos and photos, will prohibit sexually explicit content starting October 1st. First reported by Bloomberg, the company says it is making the changes because of pressure from its banking and payment provider partners, though a BBC investigation found that the company had been lenient on creators who had posted illegal content. “In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of our platform, and to continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines,” OnlyFans said in a statement emailed to The Verge. Creators on the platform will still be allowed to post nude images as long as they comply with the site’s acceptable use policy. More information will be available in the coming d...

Facebook released a report on Wednesday detailing the most-viewed content in its News Feed. The inaugural report, set to be released quarterly, spans posts seen by users in the United States from the beginning of April through the end of June and comes as a part of the platform’s effort to increase transparency.  At the top of the list with 80.6 million viewers is a letter scramble posted by a monk based in India, and following that is an “I’m old but I look young” challenge that instructs youthful-looking users aged 30 and up to post a picture of themselves — currently sitting at 61.4 million views. Additional top 20 posts include a pandemic status update from U.S. President Joe Biden; a D.I.Y. video on how to build a swimming pool out of old pallets; and instructions on how to write...

Facebook plans to begin utilizing virtual reality technology in the workplace. Today, the social media and tech giant announced Horizons Workrooms, which is an app for its Oculus Quest 2 VR headset. The app will allow users to facilitate and join meetings either as a personalized avatar or through a traditional videoconferencing application. In light of the pandemic, remote work has assumed a large portion of the workforce. This developing tech from Facebook will be one of the first applications to expand the possibilities of remote work. For those who already have an Oculus Quest 2 VR headset, the new Horizons Workrooms app can be downloaded for free. “It basically gives you the opportunity to, you know, sit around a table with people and work, and brainstorm and whiteboard ideas,” Mark Z...