Tech
Ultra-long YouTube highlight videos are ruining sports — and I’m fine with that
/ Highlight culture has threatened sports for decades but never made me stop watching games. But if you’re going to show me the best 16 minutes of a 90-minute game, why would I watch anything else?
Elon Musk Founds AI Company, “X.AI Corp.”
According to reports, despite being critical of the progression of artificial intelligence, Elon Musk has now founded his own AI company. State filings from last month reveal that the tech magnate has founded a new company called "X.AI Corp."Musk incorporated X.AI Corp. in Nevada last month and currently, Musk serves as the sole director, while Jared Birchall, the director of his family’s offices, stands as the secretary. Recently Elon Musk has advocated for the regulation of AI, signing an open letter that urged tech leaders to put a six-month pause on the development of AI. The CEO and Chief Engineer of SpaceX, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla, and the new Owner and CEO of Twitter shared thoughts of ChatGPT being politically biased, highlighting the "danger of training AI to be woke."R...
Elon Musk Founds AI Company, “X.AI Corp.”
According to reports, despite being critical of the progression of artificial intelligence, Elon Musk has now founded his own AI company. State filings from last month reveal that the tech magnate has founded a new company called "X.AI Corp."Musk incorporated X.AI Corp. in Nevada last month and currently, Musk serves as the sole director, while Jared Birchall, the director of his family’s offices, stands as the secretary. Recently Elon Musk has advocated for the regulation of AI, signing an open letter that urged tech leaders to put a six-month pause on the development of AI. The CEO and Chief Engineer of SpaceX, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla, and the new Owner and CEO of Twitter shared thoughts of ChatGPT being politically biased, highlighting the "danger of training AI to be woke."R...
What’s it like to use a $300 Windows laptop for a day?
I spent many hours using HP’s 14, a $289 Windows laptop. You’re all welcome. The year is 2023, and my tireless quest to find a Windows laptop under $500 that isn’t a flaming pile of trash continues. While I’ve long maintained that people constrained to that category should just get Chromebooks, I understand that this recommendation makes quite a few people very, very angry. So I’m coming to you today from the HP 14, a 14-inch silver laptop that we purchased from Amazon for $289. It has an 11th Gen Core i3 processor (yes, it’s an older chip, but that’s why it’s so cheap — such is life), 4GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. This is just about as cheap as a Windows laptop can get. (HP’s listed MSRP for this model is $469.99, but you can get it for far less without much effort.) And to see if it’...
What’s it like to use a $300 Windows laptop for a day?
I spent many hours using HP’s 14, a $289 Windows laptop. You’re all welcome. The year is 2023, and my tireless quest to find a Windows laptop under $500 that isn’t a flaming pile of trash continues. While I’ve long maintained that people constrained to that category should just get Chromebooks, I understand that this recommendation makes quite a few people very, very angry. So I’m coming to you today from the HP 14, a 14-inch silver laptop that we purchased from Amazon for $289. It has an 11th Gen Core i3 processor (yes, it’s an older chip, but that’s why it’s so cheap — such is life), 4GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. This is just about as cheap as a Windows laptop can get. (HP’s listed MSRP for this model is $469.99, but you can get it for far less without much effort.) And to see if it’...
Twitter Blue Now Allows Tweets of Up to 10,000 Characters
Twitter will now allow Twitter Blue subscribers to post tweets of up to 10,000 characters. Just two months ago, the platform had expanded the maximum character count – again, for Blue subscribers only – to 4,000 characters, a drastic jump from the previous 280 allowed.Along with the increase in character count, Twitter has also rolled out bold and italics formatting. All of these changes arrive amid Elon Musk’s bid to get users to pen longer tweets rather than breaking down content into threads.Seemingly, Twitter is readying up to compete with newsletter platforms such as Substack. Just last week, Twitter began to prohibit Substack users from embedding tweets in their newsletters. On its own platform, meanwhile, tweets containing Substack links weren’t functioning as intended, due to Twitt...
Montana Passes Bill to Block TikTok Downloads
2023 has been a bumpy ride for TikTok and its ownership company ByteDance. Following the application's ban from devices issued by the United States House of Representatives, the White House declared that all government agencies needed to remove the application from all federal devices. In March, the United States took things a step further with a demand to ByteDance that it needs to sell TikTok or prepare for a ban. Afterwards, it faced the ever-growing issue of AI-generated content -- taking a stance that all deepfakes must be disclosed and banning deepfakes of private figures. Now, it faces an unlikely opponent -- the state of Montana.Today, Montana passed a bill -- SB 419 -- that effectively "prohibit[s] a mobile application store from offering the TikTok application to Montana users." ...
Anker’s bassy Sport X10 earbuds are on sale for less than $60 right now
/ It’s also a great time to pick up another Xbox controller or one of the many, many Mario games on sale for the Nintendo Switch. a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Happy Saturday, friends! When it comes to workout-friendly earbuds that are aimed at the gym, we spend a lot of time propping up the Beats Fit Pro. However, if you’re in need of something that’s easier on your wallet, Anker’s Soundcore Sport X10 are on sale in black at Amazon for $55.99 ($24 off), nearly matching their best price to date. The X10 pack a lot of value into their sub-$60 pack...
Makoto Shinkai wants Suzume to build a bridge of memory between generations
Suzume director Makoto Shinkai sees his latest film as an invitation to young theatergoers to build relationships with the past. Share this story a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Photo by Victoria Sirakova / Getty Images In Suzume, Your Name and Weathering with You director Makoto Shinkai’s latest film, an ordinary highschooler finds herself pulled into a life of chasing down otherworldly creatures and sealing portals that would otherwise unleash catastrophic tectonic devastation across Japan. Out of all of Shinkai’s animated features, Suzume’s one of his most direct in the way it ...
Bluesky is my favorite Twitter clone yet
/ Right now, the small community is delightful to be a part of. And thanks to the AT Protocol, the service has a promising future.
Bluesky is my favorite Twitter clone yet
/ Right now, the small community is delightful to be a part of. And thanks to the AT Protocol, the service has a promising future.
Why I’m using a keyboard phone in 2023
/ I have never gotten more questions about a gadget than I have about this $300 phone. For the past month, I’ve been using the Unihertz Titan Pocket, a phone released in 2021 that rocks a 3.1-inch display above a full Qwerty keyboard. To be clear, it’s been by choice — my editors didn’t assign me to do this as a prank (in fact, some of them have clowned on me for using it), and it’s not like I don’t have other options. I’ve got a perfectly good iPhone 12 Mini that I actively gave up to switch to this phone. So uh… why? The first reason is that it can just be kind of fun to try something new. Or, in this case, go back to something old; my first experiences with a smartphone were stealing my dad’s Navy-issued BlackBerry to email my significant other when I was in middle school. But for...
