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Tech Archive

Archives for July 2024

Mia Sato
Mia Sato
An Apple bug was causing Substack writers to panic.

Some saw a lower-than-usual email open rate beginning July 24th — which Substack tied to last weekend’s iCloud Private Relay outage.

With Private Relay, user data is routed through multiple servers, increasing privacy but possibly counting each open more than once. In other words: what newsletter writers saw is a more accurate number.

Have you noticed a dip? Shoot me an email at [email protected].

A Substack post reading, in part: “We’ve investigated a trend of dropping email open rates for a subset of publishers since 7/24. ... After investigating, our team has determined that the recent decline in reported open rates is likely due to an outage with Apple’s iCloud Private Relay. However, it does not reflect an actual change in opens, as click-through rates have been stable during this time.... Secondly, the drop in reported opens is entirely concentrated among Apple Mail users.”
Image: Substack
Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Google is adding a version of Circle to Search to Chrome on desktop.

A new option spotted in the Chrome 128 beta lets you search with Google Lens by clicking and dragging a box around the area of a website you want more information about. Google will then pull up search results based on the image or text you’ve highlighted — sort of like Circle to Search.

The feature matched our image of a Motorola Razr Plus to related search results.
The feature matched our image of a Motorola Razr Plus to related search results.
Image: The Verge
Nilay Patel
Nilay Patel
Um, sure? Sure.

Wired editor-in-chief (and notable Verge alum!) Katie Drummond flags this incredible stack of sourcing and disclosure notes in Semafor’s piece about Perplexity’s new revenue-sharing agreements with publishers. Well done, all around.

Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
Here’s the robot building Amazon’s solar farms.

AES has given its Atlas solar robot some AWS smarts and redubbed it “Maximo.” It helped complete an Amazon-backed solar farm in Louisiana and is now moving on to Bellefield, California, home of the largest solar-plus-storage project in the US. According to Amazon, it can “reduce solar installation timelines and costs by as much 50 percent:”

Besides automating heavy lifting, Maximo can also perform in nearly any weather or lighting condition, which is especially useful for the Bellefield project, which is located in a sandy desert area known for extreme heat. Once Maximo arrives there later this year, the robot will work alongside crews to lift hundreds of heavy solar panels into place.

Tom Warren
Tom Warren
Delta wants compensation from CrowdStrike and Microsoft.

Delta was hit particularly badly by the CrowdStrike outage that impacted millions of Windows-based machines earlier this month. Now, CNBC reports that Delta has hired an attorney to seek damages from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft after it had to cancel nearly 7,000 flights due to the IT outage. The outage may have cost Delta up to $500 million.

Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
Super shoe race.

The Financial Times takes a look at the latest generation of shoes with carbon-fiber plates that have helped deliver an uptick in record-smashing long-distance performances ever since the Nike Vaporfly was released in 2017. Other brands are now catching up with their own shoe tech:

Nike and Adidas are not the only brands with super shoes. Asics, New Balance, On, Puma, Saucony and Under Armour have all developed competitive models with carbon fibre and springlike foam cushioning.

The piece includes CT scans and independent analysis of the latest Nike and Adidas models worn by many of the top Olympians in Paris.

Number of women and men breaking a given time barrier in the marathon.
Number of women and men breaking a given time barrier in the marathon.
Source: FT analysis of data from World Athletics
Sheena Vasani
Sheena Vasani
The new OnePlus Pad 2 is now available.

You can buy the tablet from OnePlus.com for $549.99 and from Amazon this coming August.

I’m still in the testing process, but so far I like it. It offers the same value as its predecessor but is faster and more powerful, with six stereo speakers that sound phenomenal. It’s still not the best for work, though. My full review is coming soon, so stay tuned.

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission.

Somebody holding the OnePlus Pad 2 with the display on and the beach in the background.
Image: OnePlus