Techmeme
October 15, 2024, 6:30 PM

Top News

Tim Hardwick / MacRumors:
Apple unveils an updated iPad mini with A17 Pro, Apple Intelligence, and the same 8.3" display, starting at $499 with 128GB of storage, available to pre-order  —  Apple today announced a significant update to the iPad mini, featuring the powerful A17 Pro chip and support for the company's new Apple Intelligence system.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google rolls out Android 15 to Pixel devices, adding privacy features like a “private space” for apps, security tools, and foldable and tablet improvements  —  Android 15 is now rolling out to Pixel devices, bringing them new privacy features, security tools, and improvements for foldables and tablets.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Meta rolls out “activity status” to Threads that shows a green dot next to a user's profile picture to show the user is online, if they have the feature enabled  —  Meta is adding an “activity status” to Threads so that you can see who's actively online as you're scrolling your feed.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Google rolls out a personalized Shopping feed based on recent searches and YouTube history, coming to mobile first, and adds AI-generated shopping tips  —  Google Shopping is rolling out a personalized feed that shows you a stream of products you might like.
Michael Kan / PCMag:
Chrome begins disabling uBlock Origin as part of Google's plan to phase out Manifest V2 extensions; uBlock Origin has 39M+ downloads on the Chrome Web Store  —  The browser is doing so as part of Google's plan to phase out older Manifest V2 extensions to bolster Chrome's security.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
YouTube rolls out new features: granular playback speed controls, an improved miniplayer on iOS and Android, updated playlists, a sleep timer, and more  —  YouTube is making official a number of updates that it's been testing in recent months, like the new miniplayer and several design updates.
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:
Intel and AMD forge an x86 ecosystem advisory group to ensure a unified x86 instruction set architecture moving forward, amid competition from Arm and RISC-V  —  Cats and dogs, living together!  —  In a rare public-facing display of cooperation between two of the industry's fiercest rivals …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
A teardown of Microsoft's diskless Xbox Series X, which was released today, shows a redesigned motherboard, a 6nm chip, and a new cooling system  —  Microsoft's discless Xbox Series X goes on sale today, and while it looks slightly different on the outside thanks to a white paint job and lack …
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
WordPress plugin Jetpack releases a critical security update to fix a bug letting logged-in users access forms from website visitors, in all versions since 2016  —  WordPress plugin Jetpack released a critical security update earlier today, addressing a vulnerability that allowed a logged …
Alexandra Bruell / Wall Street Journal:
The NYT sends a cease-and-desist letter to AI startup Perplexity to stop using its content; Perplexity says it is “interested in working with every” publisher  —  Publisher demands that Perplexity stop accessing its content.  Startup isn't interested “in being anyone's antagonist,” CEO says.
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Ward Christensen, co-inventor of the computer bulletin board system (BBS), a foundational technology of the internet age, died at age 78 on October 11  —  On Friday, Ward Christensen, co-inventor of the computer bulletin board system (BBS), died at age 78 in Rolling Meadows, Illinois.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Spotify starts rolling out music videos in beta for Premium subscribers in 85 additional markets, after introducing the feature in 12 markets earlier in 2024  —  Music streaming company Spotify said today that it is testing music videos for premium users in 85 additional markets.
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
The FIDO Alliance debuts Credential Exchange Protocol, a specification to make passkeys portable across systems, and Passkey Central, a developer resource site  —  “Passkeys,” the secure authentication mechanism built to replace passwords, are getting more portable and easier for organizations …
CoinDesk:
Trump-backed World Liberty Financial crypto project gets off to a bumpy start, as its website crashes and WLFI token sales fall far short of the $300M target  —  A blockchain wallet connected to the token holds nearly $4 million worth of ether (ETH), $1.2 million of tether (USDT) and around $250,000 USD Coin (USDC) tokens.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Adobe teases AI tools that can generate 3D scenes, make animated graphics in different styles, and automatically remove distractions in images and videos  —  Adobe is previewing some experimental AI tools for animation, image generation, and cleaning up video and photographs that could eventually be added to its Creative Cloud apps.
Zoho:
Introducing the Month-Year field in Zoho Forms  —  Zoho Forms is continuously evolving to meet the diverse needs of its users.  Whether you are organizing events or managing project timelines, precise date selection is often critical.  To make this easier and more flexible, we are excited to introduce the Month-Year field.
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Umar Shakir / The Verge:
YouTube rolls out a new “captured with a camera” label, using the C2PA standard to detect if the video came from a real camera with unaltered footage and sound  —  YouTube is rolling out new labels that tell if uploaded videos come from a real camera with unaltered footage and sound.
More: Truepic on YouTube, Truepic, and Axios
Threads: @sherifhannaBluesky: @marypcbuk.bsky.socialX: @truepic
Chris Kornelis / New York Times:
Lillian Schwartz, one of the first artists to use a computer to make films and who brought together art, science, and tech communities in the 1970s, died at 97  —  Early in the digital era, she worked at Bell Labs on the intersection of art and technology, making films and at one point arriving at a novel theory about the “Mona Lisa.”

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