Dominic Preston

The Financial Times has a good rundown of the extensive executive churn across Elon Musk’s companies in recent months, from Tesla’s robotics team to xAI’s CFO. Musk’s “24/7 campaign-style work ethos” is apparently a little difficult to keep up with.

Two of the best Pixel features are hitting more countries. Google phone owners in Australia, Canada, and Ireland now get Call Screen, with a Hindi beta coming to India soon. They’re all getting Scam Detection too, as are UK users, who got Call Screen last year.

There’s been a bit of backlash to the Xbox Ally handheld’s $999 price tag, which will be a stiff test of consumer interest in expensive console hardware. But it’s also a test of Microsoft’s “everything is an Xbox” philosophy, because this sure is expensive for an Xbox that only plays PC games, and not everyone is sold:

Last October it introduced facial scans to spot ads scamming users with fake celebrity endorsements, now the same tech will look out for impostor accounts. It’s switching on for Facebook in the EU and UK, with Instagram to follow. No-one tell the arm of the company in charge of celebrity lookalike chatbots, alright?

This year’s Material 3 Expressive aesthetic looks great, but only if the heavy background blur doesn’t make things hard for you to read. If it does, a new Android test build includes a toggle to disable blur everywhere. No word yet on when it’s getting a stable release though.

Amazon will pay $2.5 billion to settle a lawsuit with the FTC over how it handled Prime subscriptions and cancellations. But, would you believe it, the company says it and its executives “have always followed the law.” I guess it was just feeling generous!

The update to firmware version 4.467 is rolling out, letting the buds adjust ANC on the fly to keep you aware of your surroundings. Announced in August, the update also brings loud noise protection, clearer mic audio for Gemini Live, and head gesture controls to take or decline calls.