8
Verge Score
This is bigger than the Pocket 4, but definitely better.
In Meta’s latest earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said that time spent on Instagram globally this quarter has increased by “double digits year-over-year,” largely driven by improvements to its AI-powered recommendations algorithm that keeps people hooked. The proclamation comes amid concerns (and legal battles) around Instagram’s “addictive” design.
[Business Insider]
Samsung Electronic’s memory chip business is killing it, hitting $49.64 billion for the quarter and driving over 99 percent of its operating profit. But the price gouging created by the AI hype caused its smartphone and home-appliance businesses to post modest operating losses due to the higher cost of chips and other components.
Scott Carney and Taylor Lorenz posted on Substack about downward subscriber trends they’re seeing. Carney pins it on subscription fatigue and feeling like “The only way to grow is to pillage the paid subscribers from other creators.” Lorenz questions Substack’s direction, saying “more and more like this app is becoming another social media feed.”
When we recently wrote about writers who are leaving Substack, they mentioned control, pricing, and the social feature creep among their reasons for choosing competitors like Ghost and Behiiv.
In the process of getting through his thoughts, he does a pretty good riff about the people who say they “make” stuff with AI. As for Musk’s version of The Odyssey, Johnson says, “I’m excited for the Cyclops to have two eyes.”
The wide foldable is here, and it’s glorious. The Verge’s Dominic Preston has been reviewing Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8, and joins the show to explain what this shorter, wider device gets right, what it’s still missing, and why this looks like the right kind of foldable for most people. (Once the price comes down, anyway.) With a similar foldable iPhone likely coming soon, it’s shaping up to be a fun year of foldables.
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After adding widgets to the browser’s new tab page last month, Mozilla updated mine to add a mini crossword puzzle widget. There’s one puzzle per day.
In addition to Reuters, WSJ, CNN, Fox News, and USA Today, Meta now has an AI content partnership to “…draw upon Newsmax’s significant current reporting as well as archived content across its platforms to support AI queries across Meta’s apps and devices.”
If access via Truth Plus just wasn’t enough, I guess.
