Tech Archive

iOS has AirDrop, Android has Nearby/Quick Share, and soon it looks like WhatsApp might offer an alternative. Its unreleased file-sharing feature was spotted by WABetaInfo in a beta release of WhatsApp’s Android app, and says file transfers are end-to-end encrypted. There’s no word on when it’ll release, but as readers have pointed out it has the potential to bring cross platform sharing to about 2 billion WhatsApp users worldwide.

The site’s teardown showed the company’s engineers “spared at least some thought” to making it something you can fix yourself, ultimately giving it a middling score.

Rabbit’s founder, Jesse Lyu, showed off the buzzy AI gadget’s vision capability in a video that kicks off with it playing “Feel Good Inc” by The Gorillaz.

The country’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) used vision-based navigation (hence its nickname) to help it land on Friday. Ars Technica has a detailed explanation for how this all worked, while a translated video published on The Independent’s YouTube channel offers insight, as well.

But there’s something satisfying about this TikTok account’s low-tech videos using popsicle sticks, some thick wire, some cardboard, and a power drill to simulate engine sounds.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) says it reestablished contact by having the Perseverance rover “perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal.” The agency had lost contact with Ingenuity on Thursday, just as it was ending its 72nd Mars flight.

Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that AI start-up Delphi cannot use OpenAI’s platform after it created Dean.Bot, a chatbot mimicking Representative Dean Phillips (D-MN) for a super PAC supporting his presidential bid.

AGDQ 2024 has just raised $2 million dollars for charity! The charity speedrunning event first broke the $2 million threshold back in 2017 and surpassed that with $3 million just two years later.

DPD, a package delivery company based in Europe, said it has used AI-powered customer chat “successfully for a number of years,” according to a BBC story yesterday.

I published the full list of Google’s 2024 company goals that were recently shared internally in the last issue of Command Line:

I’m very intrigued by the Holo Tile demo that the Disney Parks YouTube account posted earlier this week. It’s a little like an omnidirectional VR treadmill that multiple people can use (just, you know, very slowly).