Wednesday’s top tech news: Section 230 on trial – The Verge

Netflix’s new NFL docuseries starring Patrick Mahomes debuts this summer

2023-06-14T12:24:27-04:00

Netflix is getting into football. On Wednesday, the streaming giant announced a new sports docuseries, Quarterback, that will focus on three NFL quarterbacks: Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs (who just collected his second Super Bowl win and second Super Bowl MVP award); Kirk Cousins of the Minnesota Vikings; and Marcus Mariota of the Atlanta Falcons. The series is set to debut this summer.

"For the first time ever, the NFL allowed quarterbacks to be mic'd up for every single game of a season," Netflix wrote in a post about the series. "The upcoming show will feature behind-the-scenes access to some of the biggest moments of the se …

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The US Copyright Office says you can’t copyright Midjourney AI-generated images

2023-02-22T21:06:41-05:00

A reproduction of the cover page and the second page of Zarya of the Dawn, from the US Copyright Office’s letter. | Image: Zarya of the Dawn — Kris Kashtanova / Midjourney

The US Copyright Office has reconsidered the copyright protection it granted last fall to Kristina Kashtanova for her comic book Zarya of the Dawn, reports Reuters. It featured pictures created by feeding text prompts to Midjourney, an artificial intelligence image generator.

According to this letter (PDF) sent to her lawyer by Robert Kasunic, the associate Register of Copyrights, the US Copyright Office has decided that Kashtanova "is the author of the Work's text as well as the selection, coordination, and arrangement of the Work's written and visual elements."

The images themselves, however, "are not the product of human authorship," an …

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Google resolves 10-hour issue that prevented Gmail from syncing with Outlook

2023-02-22T19:42:36-05:00

If you typically access your Hotmail or Outlook account using the Gmail app, there's a reason you probably didn't see any new emails last night: Google had an issue syncing with Microsoft's servers. According to Google's status page, the company had been working to figure out what was wrong since around noon ET on Wednesday, before fixing it several hours later.

At 9:57PM Wednesday evening, Google said it had resolved the issue. "The Gmail sync issue with Microsoft servers when using IMAP is now resolved. Thank you for your patience while we resolved the problem."

At first glance it seemed like the partial outage would be a niche issue - O …

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Notion’s now letting anyone use its AI features

2023-02-22T18:20:35-05:00

You can use Notion AI to generate text from scratch, and to re-write or summarize existing text. | Screenshot: Mitchell Clark / The Verge

You can now try out the AI features of the Notion note-taking app, which are meant to help you write and refine text, summarize key points in existing notes, and generate task lists, according to an announcement from the company. Notion started testing its AI offering in November, but now it's available to anyone with an account, and there's no waitlist required.

While the AI integrated into the app can write articles from whole cloth (I asked it to write a blog post about the Notion AI announcement, and it spat out 385 words, only some of which were accurate), the company is pitching it more as a "thought partner." In its announcement post …

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Nvidia is still making billions in Q4 2023 despite a giant drop in PC demand

2023-02-22T17:23:14-05:00

Nvidia just reported its fourth quarter and full-year earnings, and it's not exactly rosy - at least compared to pandemic highs. Last year, Nvidia had record quarterly revenue of $7.64 billion, including $3 billion in pure profit. For Q4 of its fiscal 2023, the company forecast that it would see just $6 billion in quarterly revenue in today's earnings results, and that's just about where it landed: $6.05 billion in revenue, down 21 percent, of which $1.4 billion was profit, down 53 percent. For the full year, it raked in $26.92 billion, almost identical to last year, though profit was down 55 percent.

Remember: in 2021, $5 billion in revenu …

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Realme is working on a Dynamic Island copycat just as the original gets more useful

2023-02-22T16:23:21-05:00

Apple’s Dynamic Island lacked third-party support at launch. That’s starting to change. | Image: Nilay Patel / The Verge

Realme, a subbrand of Chinese phone maker Oppo, might be the first Android OEM to clone Apple's Dynamic Island, a deleted tweet from a company executive and a leaked animation suggest. It comes at a time when Apple seems like it might prove that Dynamic Island is worth copying, as the mostly ornamental UI fixture is finally getting some real third-party support.

This doesn't come as a major surprise. As 9to5Google points out, Realme basically told everyone it wanted to clone Dynamic Island back in September. It appears that a feature called the "Mini Capsule" has been in the works since then. A photo in the removed tweet indeed shows a pill …

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Razer launches new Blade 15, and it’s still 16:9

2023-02-22T15:33:54-05:00

Unlike the Blade 16, the 2023 Blade 15 keeps the same aspect ratio we’ve seen on Blades past. | Image: Razer

Razer has launched a new Blade 15 model refreshed with Intel's 13th Gen processors and Nvidia's RTX 4000 GPUs.

The company announced a 16-inch Razer Blade a few weeks ago, and some assumed that it would replace the 2022 Razer Blade 15. The Blade 16 threw a number of new features into the Blade 15's formula - most notably, a 16:10 Mini LED dual-mode display.

But the Blade 15 is a much more minor upgrade from last year's Blade 15. While the chips are new, the 2023 Blade 15 keeps the same 16:9 aspect ratio as its direct predecessor, just in case you're one of those old-fashioned people (sorry, I said what I said) who prefers a shorter and wid …

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Tesla announces new engineering headquarters in California

2023-02-22T14:47:51-05:00

Tesla announced a new engineering headquarters in California, saying it would take over office space in Palo Alto formerly occupied by Hewlett Packard. Tesla CEO Elon Musk made the announcement Wednesday alongside California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), who called the announcement "another proof point of the renewable energy vibrancy that is California."

Tesla was founded in San Carlos, California in 2003 and has called the state home for most of its 20 years of existence. In October 2021, the company abruptly moved its headquarters to Austin, Texas, in recognition of its new Gigafactory that was under construction in the state. Tesla also ha …

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Was trading NBA Top Shots actually like trading stocks? A lawsuit will decide

2023-02-22T14:25:27-05:00

NBA Top Shot developer Dapper Labs and its CEO, Roham Gharegozlou, will face a lawsuit accusing the company of selling unregistered securities in the form of its "Moments," which are non-fungible tokens for sports fans.

Despite Dappers' lawyer's claims that "Basketball cards are not securities. Pokémon cards are not securities. Baseball cards are not securities. Common sense says so. The law says so. And, courts say so," Judge Victor Marrero decided to let the case go forward.

As he wrote in his decision (Friel v. Dapper Labs, Inc. et al., 1:21-cv-05837-VM):

In totality, the economic realities of this case support the Court's conclusion t …

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The Mercedes-Benz E-Class is getting a giant touchscreen, TikTok, and a selfie camera

2023-02-22T13:30:00-05:00

Mercedes-Benz unveiled the 2024 E-Class' interior, and while its cabin is not a radical departure in design from existing Benzes, the new E-Class is packed full of interesting and advanced features that will influence the rest of the lineup - like a selfie camera and built-in apps for TikTok and Zoom.

One of the major upgrades in the 2024 E-Class is the Superscreen, which combines the large standard central touchscreen with a second display in front of the passenger. (Unlike the EQS's Hyperscreen, the digital gauge cluster remains a standalone display.) It looks beautiful, with slim air vents that curve around the top of the screen and a ro …

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