Tech

This time we get a full-on Pixel 8A promo video courtesy of mysmartprice showing it’ll get Google’s AI features from the Pixel 8, including Best Take, Circle to Search, Live Translate, and Audio Magic Eraser.

Google’s tradition goes back much, much, much further than earlier today.

Following a report by Puck’s John Ourand that ESPN has carved out a piece of the new NBA media landscape, The Athletic added an Amazon rumor:

It is expected that Prime Video’s package will include significant regular season and postseason games, perhaps even some conference finals. The anticipation is that the final contract will be for at least a decade and begin the 2025-2026 season.

If the deals go through, this might add streaming NBA games on Thursdays when Amazon’s NFL games aren’t on.

The creator subscription platform markets itself as basically the opposite of the algorithm-driven TikTok — but that doesn’t mean Patreon is celebrating the forced divestment from ByteDance.

Banning TikTok just serves to further entrench YouTube and Instagram as the dominant platforms in this industry. But more competition is good for creators–it gives them more leverage and ultimately more control over their businesses.

The company worked with IBM to release a 1998 uncompiled version DOS 4.0 on Thursday, although unfortunately, this release lacks the app-switching capabilities that landed it the nickname MT-DOS. Multitasking was scrapped in later versions to make way for GUI operating systems like Windows.

Microsoft already released MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 in 2014, in cooperation with The Computer History Museum.

Underneath your Home and Work address shortcuts, the Google Maps widget now has a shortcut that lets you launch a map of your current location. This is neat, considering that, unlike Garmins, most Wear OS watches don’t have native compasses or maps preloaded.

I mean, what could go wrong? A new video conferencing feature in the style of Zoom, Meet and Microsoft Teams is coming soon to X, according to X user/Elon whisperer DogeDesigner and X Daily News.

X Conferences will be hosted on the the platform’s existing live audio platform X Spaces (which added video earlier this year), according to a screenshot of the beta version.

Specifically, the rails that keep Joy-Cons firmly connected to the Switch? Because Spanish pub Vandal (which correctly reported minor details of the Switch OLED before launch) says a larger Switch 2 will replace those rails with magnets.

That’s according to accessory vendors who apparently didn’t even see the Switch 2, mind, just touched it in a box. Still: magnets alone? I could see magnets and rails, but...

Romulus is looking pretty scary, but if you’re in the mood for something more immersive there’s an Alien horror game for VR on the way as well. Unfortunately there’s no actual gameplay in this trailer for Rogue Incursion, but the developers at Survios describe it as a “single-player, action-horror game” launching this holiday on PS VR2, PCVR via Steam, and Meta Quest 3.

Reuters reports Pope Francis will head to Puglia in Italy to meet leaders from the US, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Canada, and Japan to discuss regulating AI.

The pope previously expressed concerns about AI-driven inequality and has learned more about the technology since then.

The pontiff will presumably not wear a Balenciaga coat.

The WSJ’s Joanna Stern wanted to find out just how it survived the fall — by dropping phones from a drone, of course.

Alex Garland isn’t the only filmmaker thinking about the current state the US’ political system. During a recent appearance on The Ringer’s The Town podcast, Aaron Sorkin shared that he’s in the early stages of writing a new The Social Network-esque movie about January 6th and Facebook’s role in galvanizing the attempted coup.

Jason Parham’s 2021 Wired article about Black Twitter detailed quite a bit about what made the community such an enriching space for Black people. But Hulu’s new docuseries based on the piece looks like going to be focused on detailing how Black Twitter became a broader cultural phenomenon. The series premieres on May 9th.

Early bird pricing starts at $399 via Indiegogo, with shipments expected to start in May. It’s advertised as the first device with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon G3x Gen 2 that’s designed to chase the booming gaming handheld market.

There are Android gamers out there, right? We’ve been asking you to email The Vergecast about your Android gaming life, let us know!

One owner apparently plugged his into his car after recieving it at the swanky NYC event a few days back and it promptly bricked itself.

They said that Rabbit was quick to replace it, but not before they snapped a pic of what looks like an Android debugging UI.

It yanked the App Store listings days after a 404 Media report on the existence of Instagram ads advertising the apps as tools that can non-consensually remove the clothes of any person. Google also took down similar apps on the Play Store.

Overall, Apple removed three apps from the App Store, but only after we provided the company with links to the specific apps and their related ads, indicating the company was not able to find the apps that violated its policy itself. 

The WSJ reports that Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Google’s Sundar Pichai also have a seat on the board, which the Department of Homeland Security formed to promote AI safety and security. Other members include academics, civil rights leaders, and government officials, according to the WSJ.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met with China’s Xi Jinping today to discuss everything from AI to the war in Ukraine. But “TikTok did not come up,” Blinken told reporters at a short press conference following his meetings today. Seriously, that’s all he said. Maybe next time.

Equipped with laser sighting, lidar mapping, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, the Thermonator (yes, really) is apparently legal in 48 US states for things like “snow and ice removal.” It’s also purportedly being sold for $9,420, or about 3x more than buying the robot and flamethrower separately. But what good is a flamethrower if not for a marketing stunt?

Yes, this is a real AI-generated image that Microsoft has used in one of its corporate blog posts about Copilot (spotted by Albacore). I assume it’s supposed to say Copilot, but many AI models regularly fail at producing text correctly in images. Microsoft had a similar AI image fail earlier this year.