There are plenty of services that let you build lists to track and discover new books, movies, and songs, but often, these lists end up getting siloed. Former Squarespace employee Alfonso Cobo wanted to bring all kinds of lists together, and he’s trying to do that with Hypelist. “People on social media were asking for all kinds of recommendations, but it was hard to keep track of suggestions, and there was no way to share or create different kinds of lists in one place,” Cobo said in an interview. “They used different makeshift solutions like WhatsApp, spreadsheets, or notes apps.…
Author: Olsi
Google’s video generator is coming to a few more customers—Google Cloud customers, to be precise. On Tuesday, Google announced that Veo, its AI model that can generate short video clips from images and prompts, will be available in private preview for customers using Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s AI development platform. Google says that the launch will enable one customer, Quora, to bring Veo to its Poe chatbot platform, and another, Oreo owner Mondelez International, to create marketing content with its agency partners. “We created Poe to democratize access to the world’s best generative AI models,” Poe product lead Spencer Chan…
Meta’s X competitor Instagram Threads is gaining an improved search interface, the company announced on Monday. The app, which offers a Meta-run alternative to Elon Musk’s X but is built on top of Instagram’s social graph, is rolling out a new way to search for specific posts, allowing users to filter searches by user profiles and date ranges. This is not as comprehensive as X’s advanced search, which today lets users narrow queries by language, keywords, exact phrases, excluded words, hashtags, and more. But it does make it easier for Threads users to locate specific posts. It will also bring…
General Motors is selling its stake in the nearly completed Ultium Cells battery cell plant in Lansing, Michigan, to its joint venture partner LG Energy Solution (LGES). GM’s step back from the factory comes amid weakening electric vehicle demand and the potential rollback of Biden administration incentives to produce clean energy domestically. General Motors and LGES initially teamed up in 2019 to form a joint venture to mass-produce battery cells for electric vehicles. Since then, the two have poured billions into three factories:. The Lansing facility that LGES is acquiring; a Spring Hill, Tennessee, facility that started production in 2024;…
Users of the conversational AI platform ChatGPT discovered an interesting phenomenon over the weekend: the popular chatbot refuses to answer questions if asked about a “David Mayer.” Asking it to do so causes it to freeze up instantly. Conspiracy theories have ensued — but a more ordinary reason may be at the heart of this strange behavior. Word spread quickly this last weekend that the name was poison to the chatbot, with more and more people trying to trick the service into merely acknowledging the name. No luck: Every attempt to make ChatGPT spell out that specific name causes it…
Coinbase announced an integration with Apple Pay on Monday, allowing app makers to build the ability to buy crypto with Apple Pay directly into their apps. The integration is part of Coinbase Onramp, which gives app makers a way for customers to turn their traditional currencies, such as USD, into cryptocurrencies. That process has historically been difficult, requiring users to pay added fees and visit multiple websites or apps. With the integration of Apple Pay, Coinbase is continuing to push its products toward the average consumer by making crypto purchases more accessible. Apple seems to be embracing crypto with this…
Tenstorrent raised a $693 million Series D round that values the company at more than $2.6 billion, Bloomberg first reported. The round was led by Samsung Securities and AFW Partners. Other investors include Hyundai and Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions, among others. The Toronto-based company said it plans to use the capital to build out its engineering team and to build artificial intelligence training servers to demonstrate its technology. Jim Keller, famed microprocessor engineer and Tenstorrent CEO, told Bloomberg that the company plans to release a new AI processor every two years and has signed customer contracts totaling nearly $150 million.…
I’m talking, of course, about the recent change in RAM configurations. Get this wrong, and you could be throwing away hundreds of dollars. With the launch of the M4 MacBook Pros last month, Apple also updated RAM configurations across the board, moving from 8GB to 16GB. So, the base M4 MacBook Pro, M3 MacBook Air, and M2 MacBook Air all began selling with 16GB of RAM. But here’s the important point: Apple added RAM without raising prices. In the past, Apple charged $200 for moving from 8GB to 16GB—and now, it’s free. All in all, this was very good news…
World Labs, the startup founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, has unveiled its first project: an AI system that can generate video game-like, 3D scenes from a single image. Lots of AI systems can turn a photo into 3D models and environments. But World Labs’ scenes are unique in that they’re interactive—and modifiable. “Our tech” lets you step into any image and explore it in 3D, World Labs wrote in a blog post. “Beyond the input image, all is generated.” The AI-generated scenes, which anyone with a keyboard and mouse can explore on a demo on World Labs’ website, look…
An Apple ad-tech employee filed a lawsuit against his employer on Sunday over how the company monitors its employees, reports Semafor. Apple wants its employees to use Apple devices for work, but work-issued devices are so restricted that many employees use personal devices or tie their work devices to their personal iCloud. To do so, the suit says, employees must allow Apple to install software that grants Apple access to search anything stored on the device or iCloud. The suit claims Apple’s policies allow it to monitor workers even when off duty. The employee claims Apple used its policies to…
