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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]
Last week we got special guest, Jack White. This week it’s Musgraves who gets that honor, after releasing the title track from her upcoming album Middle of Nowhere, the second single after “Dry Spell.” This weekend’s livestream replaces the stage with Yuma. That means no Model / Actriz or Drain, but you do get Armin van Buuren and a solo Boys Noize set. Watch here.
And a whole lot more, including alternate versions of Acts 2 and 3, Steam Workshop support, and “experimental game modes.” The game got its first major update for all players on Thursday.
The game is a big hit, selling three million copies a week after its March launch, and I can tell you from personal experience that it’s a blast with a friend.
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During a press conference on Thursday, astronaut Reid Wiseman said if Artemis II had a lander, “at least three of my crewmates would have been in it trying to land on the Moon.”
“If you had given us the keys to the lander, we would’ve taken it down and landed on that moon.”
The job cuts could affect around 10 percent of Meta’s workforce, or around 8,000 employees, according to Reuters. This is reportedly the first of two waves of layoffs planned for this year, and follows an earlier report from Reuters that suggests Meta could cut as much as 20 percent of its workforce.
After announcing that the Galaxy Z TriFold phone would be discontinued and offering one final restock, Samsung now says that the “limited-run” phone is “completely sold out,” as reported by 9to5Google. If you want to know what it was like to actually use, check out Allison Johnson’s writeup.
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Iron Galaxy Studios, which has also helped support and port dozens of games, including BioShock Infinite, Diablo III, and The Last of Us Part I, is cutting around 90 employees, according to Kotaku.
The layoffs follow last year’s job cuts at Iron Galaxy Studios, and come as the developer works to “adapt to the climate of the video game industry,” according to a post on LinkedIn.
A new Wired investigation details the lengths Jim Dolan, owner of the New York Knicks and venues like MSG and the Las Vegas Sphere, goes to to spy on perceived enemies, fans, and critics. The vast surveillance apparatus includes dossiers, social media posts, and facial recognition tech.
Last year I wrote about one fan who believes a t-shirt design he had made resulted in a lifetime ban from Dolan’s venues — and that facial recognition picked him out of the crowd.
With the next batch of pre-orders, the Thor Max model with 1TB of storage is getting a $100 price hike to $549, according to a Discord announcement.
AYN is also switching from UFS 4.0 storage to the slower UFS 3.1 storage starting with the next pre-orders of the Thor and the AYN Odin 3 because “UFS 4.0 is no longer available at a sustainable level.”
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