162 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Wes Davis

Wes Davis

Former Weekend Editor

Former Weekend Editor

    More From Wes Davis

    Wes Davis
    Wes Davis
    A company lost $25.6 million because of a deepfaked conference call.

    An employee of the company was invited to a group video call full of deepfaked company officers, including what appeared to be the company’s CFO, according to the South China Morning Post.

    The scammers then gave the employee orders to transfer the money to five separate Hong Kong bank accounts. This sort of fraud will only get worse, as crypto scam ads on YouTube and blackmail using deepfaked nudes have shown.

    Wes Davis
    Wes Davis
    How independent are the boards of Musk’s companies?

    Not very, according to The Wall Street Journal’s examination, published last night.

    It’s not just that some members have earned, for example, “hundreds of millions of dollars” — far more than typical board member compensation, the Journal says.

    It’s that reportedly, some members are heavily invested in Musk’s and each other’s companies, and regularly do drugs with him “because they think refraining could upset the billionaire, who has made them a lot of money.”

    Wes Davis
    Wes Davis
    You can’t walk and Vision Pro at the same time.

    Of course there are plenty of videos circulating showing people “using” Apple’s headset while driving and walking — it’s an easy bit to snag views with!

    As Luke Miani’s video here shows, you’ll only walk through your apps if you try, and Travel mode, which is meant for use on flights, is not a solution. It’s evident in other videos, like Casey Neistat’s, that Vision Pro wearers have to stop moving to use its apps.

    Wes Davis
    Wes Davis
    Here’s Marques Brownlee’s Vision Pro review.

    Although the unboxing and “what it’s like” videos aren’t really reviews, Brownlee’s latest video — the actual review — is more of a closing chapter of a trilogy chronicling his thoughts on Apple’s very fancy headset.

    This moment says a lot about the quality of the passthrough video — not just visual fidelity, but latency also:

    I also had a moment where I was using the Vision Pro for a while and I had my Mac and some other monitors around me, and then I took it off and then I went and did something, and then I came back and before I put the headset back on I looked up at the wall to where I thought a window was going to be.

    Wes Davis
    Wes Davis
    Halide sums up the stereoscopic photography of the Vision Pro.

    Portrait mode images aren’t 3D — iPhones use depth mapping to determine where everything is in space, then they use machine learning to apply simulated bokeh (that is, the blur that optical lenses give you when focusing on a subject).

    iPhone camera app maker Halide explains how the Vision Pro’s “spatial” photos, which use the Vision Pro’s “stereoscopic 3D camera system,” aren’t that.

    Wes Davis
    Wes Davis
    Threads is preparing to venture deeper into the fediverse.

    That comes courtesy of Alessandro Paluzzi, who frequently reverse engineers and reveals Threads and Instagram features. The new option lets you turn fediverse sharing on and off at will and you can easily copy your username formatted for the decentralized Activity Pub social protocol.

    Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said recently that Threads users will also be able to follow and interact with fediverse accounts from Threads, though their accounts will have to be public to do so.

    A pair of screenshots showing that a new Fediverse sharing feature is coming.
    Fediverse sharing (BETA) is on its way.
    Screenshots: Alessandro Paluzzi
    Wes Davis
    Wes Davis
    How would you score Apple’s spatial computer?

    On the latest Vergecast, Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz discuss The Verge score for the Vision Pro, which got a 7 for being fun, but perhaps it should’ve been less?

    Nilay put it to a vote on Threads yesterday, asking Vision Pro owners, in a “world of no 7s,” is it a six, or an eight? The winner was a third option: “Show me the results.” (Six came in second, though).

    Wes Davis
    Wes Davis
    Hugging Face makes it easier to create its custom chatbots.

    Hugging Face tech lead Philipp Schmid posted yesterday that users can now create custom chatbots in “two clicks” using Hugging Chat Assistant. Users’ creations are then publicly available.

    Schmid directly compares the feature to OpenAI’s GPTs feature, and adds they can use “any available open LLM, like Llama2 or Mixtral.”

    A screenshot showing examples of Hugging Chat Assistants.
    Hugging Chat Assistants are available now.
    Image: Hugging Face
    Wes Davis
    Wes Davis
    AI is coming to the OnePlus 11 and 12 phones.

    The OnePlus 12 launched without big AI features, but now it’s getting them, at least in China, according to a new ColorOS update posted on Reddit (and later reposted on X by Mishaal Rahman). It’s no AI bonanza like other Androids, but OnePlus is clearly moving in that direction, at least in China.

    AI-summarized phone calls and articles and AI photo editing are among the features being added in the update.