All the news you need to keep up with the latest developments in the tech world, from product announcements and live events to tariffs, policies, and regulations. Tech touches every aspect of daily news, and our experts are here to keep you informed on what happens and how it all affects you.
Uber lost the first of thousands of cases seeking to hold it responsible for sexual misconduct tied to its services. Similar to ongoing social media trials, these cases are bellwethers that could later inform a broader settlement. Uber spokesperson Matt Kallman told The Times it has “strong grounds for appeal.”
[The New York Times]
It’s got a D-pad, dial, trackball, and number pad making it ideal for playing classic games like Missile Command, Codebreaker, and Breakout. But unfortunately, My Arcade’s new $65 wireless gamepad is only compatible with the handheld Atari Gamestation Go and Gamestation Mega mini arcade cabinet.
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After a back-and-forth in court in 2024, it appears that The Onion really might take control of Alex Jones’ Infowars. The New York Times reports that under a new deal, The Onion will strike a licensing deal for Infowars intellectual property (though a judge still needs to approve it). The Onion is already promoting the new project, which will be under the creative direction of Tim Heidecker.
According to The Information, the Google co-founder said in a memo to DeepMind employees that “every Gemini engineer must be forced to use internal agents for complex, multistep tasks.”
Anthropic’s tools have been leading the AI coding race, and Brin apparently sees catching them as a step toward building AI that can improve itself.
[The Information]
NPR issued prediction market guidance to staff, according to media reporter Ben Mullin, banning employees from betting on news events as well as NPR-related topics (like future Tiny Desk guests — yes, there’s a small market for that).
I reported last week that newsrooms are adding prediction market-specific rules to their code of ethics, even as some of those same news outlets partner with platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi.
Though Apple has been radio silent about The Savant ever since it postponed the show’s debut last year, Deadline reports that the series may finally start streaming some time this July.
Fresh off the loss of its antitrust trial, the company settled with the DC attorney general over claims it “hid the true price of tickets” before checkout. The AG says Ticketmaster has since changed the practice. The settlement is similar to one between StubHub and the Federal Trade Commission.
[Office of the DC Attorney General]
Project Luna — a round screen with a swiveling head that reminds me of Samsung’s “AI OLED Turntable” — offers a glimpse of what’s to come from Samsung’s design, according to chief design officer, Mauro Porcini. Samsung teased the bot in a YouTube Shorts, and now Fast Company has some exclusive details.
Microsoft just added its Xbox mode to the Release Preview version of Windows 11. That means the Xbox mode, that adds a full-screen interface to the Xbox PC app, is just days away from being available on all PCs. Microsoft did promise last month that it would roll out the Xbox mode to all PCs in April, and it looks like it’s rolling out on time.
Astronauts having very human reactions to witnessing Earthset. “Gone! It’s gone. Oh my god.”
Sources told Axios that the agency was among the roughly 40 organizations granted access. This, despite the Pentagon arguing that Anthropic is a threat to national security. The NSA has reportedly been using it primarily to identify vulnerabilities in its own network, but considering its track record, it’s understandable if you’re wary.
The new Adobe Premiere Color Mode, which is available in the latest Premiere beta, is a color grading system built inside the editing program replacing Lumetri. The Asus ProArt validation extends to full HDR editing workflows with the new Premiere feature.
Resurrecting 1974’s Wild Gunman isn’t a matter of extracting a ROM and firing up an emulator. The light gun game used two projectors and live-action footage spread across multiple film reels. Callan Brown managed to get his hands on them, scan them, and built a replica of the original cabinet.
This is also your last chance to catch any performances you might have missed. Last week I missed out on Clipse, Young Thug, The Rapture, and Tomora, so they’re my priority. But I also am looking forward to Röyksopp, who didn’t make the stream last weekend. Head over to the official Coachella YouTube channel.
Some parts of the probe were powered down last year, but power dropped unexpectedly during a maneuver on February 27th, leading NASA to shut down the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment (LECP) earlier than expected. A fix is in the works that could extend the life of both Voyagers and possibly bring LECP back online.
“While shutting down a science instrument is not anybody’s preference, it is the best option available,” said Kareem Badaruddin, Voyager mission manager at JPL. “Voyager 1 still has two remaining operating science instruments — one that listens to plasma waves and one that measures magnetic fields. They are still working great, sending back data from a region of space no other human-made craft has ever explored. The team remains focused on keeping both Voyagers going for as long as possible.”
It finished the 21.1-kilometer race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds. The world record was set just a month ago by Jacob Kiplimo, at 57 minutes and 20 seconds. More impressively, when this race was held last year, the winning robot finished in 2 hours, 40 minutes — a stunning improvement.
Correction April 19th: An earlier version used the wrong unit of measurement. A half-marathon is 21.1 kilometers, or 13.1 miles.
The New York Times has found hundreds of fake accounts on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook that appear to be a pre-midterm push to get conservative voters to the polls in support of Trump’s agenda. The accounts often use the same captions and awkward phrasing.
It’s not clear who created the A.I. accounts, and determining whether they are the product of a hired content farm, a foreign influence operation, an experiment or something else is difficult, experts said. They all agree, however, that creating such avatars is becoming easier, especially for contractors and marketing companies that now specialize in developing and dispatching A.I. avatars in bulk for increasingly low prices.
[New York Times]
