Jay Peters
Starlink is offering 30 days of free service in areas impacted by Hurricane Helene.
The company has a guide on how to sign up on its website.
Tech Archive
Archives for October 2024
Andrew Liszewski
Turn your iPhone’s home screen into an app-filled bookshelf.
Leveraging new iOS 18 features allowing for more customizability when arranging apps (including hiding their names) Kristin Moore designs custom wallpapers that turn iPhone home screens into bookshelves, as spotted by 9to5Mac.
They’ve already shared a few bookshelf wallpapers on Threads, but you can order a custom design through their Etsy shop, or buy a template to customize your own.
Jay Peters
Is it October 24th yet?
That’s when Windblown, the new roguelike from Dead Cells creators Motion Twin, launches in early access on Steam. I loved Dead Cells, so I can’t wait to check this out. There’s a demo coming on October 14th, and progress will carry over into the main game.
Jay Peters
Here are the PC requirements for Civilization 7.
Check ‘em out to see if your PC can run the game when it comes out on February 11th. Specs aren’t yet available for macOS and Linux.
Jay Peters
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly isn’t planning to hire a new CTO anytime soon.
At an all-hands meeting last week, Altman told employees the company is not looking to replace [Mira] Murati in the CTO role for now, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Mira Murati announced last week that she was leaving OpenAI.
Nilay Patel
PSA: do not turn off stability control on your 4,500-pound SUV because Google AI says so.
Google rolled out ads in its AI-powered search overviews today, but it doesn’t appear the system is any better at understanding what it’s actually saying. As flagged on Threads, it suggests turning off the forward collision-avoidance feature on the Kia Telluride by disabling electronic stability control, which is a dangerous idea for most drivers. (I did the same search and got a similar AI search summary.)
The AI overview appears to be getting this idea from a caution notice in the Kia EV6 manual, which, well, there’s a reason I asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai if he thought language was the same as intelligence the last time he was on Decoder.
Gaby Del Valle
Andrew Liszewski
Upgrading a Switch Lite with an OLED screen doesn’t look terribly complicated.
You can now buy a DIY OLED screen upgrade kit for the Nintendo Switch Lite for less than $50, but how easy it to install? Taki Udon demonstrates the process and while there’s no soldering needed, the installation does require the Lite to be nearly completely disassembled, and its original screen to be removed with the help of a hair dryer.
Emma Roth
Mozilla on the future of advertising and privacy.
In a blog post, Mozilla president Mark Surman writes about the organization’s plans to fix the “fundamentally broken” online advertising industry:
We have the beginnings of a theory on what fixing it might look like — a mix of different business practices, technology, products, and public policy engagements. And we have started to do work on all of these fronts.
You can read Mozilla’s full plan in the post linked below.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
