This week, AT&T confirmed that it will begin notifying about 110 million AT&T customers of a data breach that allowed cybercriminals to steal “almost all” of their phone records. The stolen data includes phone numbers and AT&T call and text message records from six months through 2022, the company said. If you’re an AT&T customer, here’s what this breach could mean for you.
Samsung is getting into the wearables game. The company held its annual Galaxy Unpacked event this week, where it unveiled new Galaxy Z Flip and Galaxy Z Fold phone models, as well as a new generation of wireless earbuds. It also revealed details about a $399 wearable smart ring to compete with the Oura.
According to Bloomberg, Tesla is not ready to unveil its “robotaxi” design next month as planned and is instead pushing the event back to October. The company says it needs more time to build a prototype. Tesla shares fell more than 6% on the report.
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Fisker lowers annual salary to $1: Henrik Fisker and Gupta-Fisker have cut their salaries to $1 a month to keep the bankrupt electric car startup's bankruptcy case open while lawyers work to complete the sale of its remaining inventory. Read more
Elon Musk: No More Twitter Severance Pay: Musk has had one of several lawsuits filed against him over the firing of more than 6,000 Twitter employees dismissed after a federal judge ruled that X Corp. no longer had to pay severance pay to former employees. Read more
Humanitarian executives form new startup: Former Humane executives have left the company to start Infactory, an AI-powered fact-checking search engine. The founders spoke to TechCrunch about their plans. Read more
How Apple Intelligence Will Change Siri: Siri is getting a ton of new features and updates thanks to a partnership with Apple Intelligence and OpenAI. Let’s take a look at all the new features that will change the way you use your iPhone. Read more
There's a cool robot: Google's DeepMind Robotics has implemented the Google Gemini 1.5 Pro as part of a new project to teach the robot how to respond to commands and navigate an office. Read more
OpenAI abandons observer role: Just months after Microsoft took an observer seat on OpenAI’s board, the company is leaving its non-voting seat. OpenAI says there will no longer be an observer on the board, likely ruling out reports that Apple is taking the seat. Read more
Ask Rufus: Amazon’s AI-powered shopping assistant Rufus is now available to all US customers on the Amazon mobile app. Rufus helps you find products, perform product comparisons, and get recommendations on what to buy. Read more
FTC Finds ‘Dark Patterns’ in Subscription Services: Do you find canceling your subscription service more difficult than you thought? As part of a recent study, the FTC found that subscription services use dark patterns to make it difficult for users to cancel. Read more
Will Watburger save you? After Hurricane Beryl, some Houstonians got creative with their attempts to track power outages, including using the What's A Burger app to see which chain restaurants were open. Read more
Lucid Motors sets new record: Lucid Motors sold 2,394 electric vehicles in the second quarter of 2024, a new record for the company and a positive sign as it struggles to solidify its position in the electric vehicle market. Read more
Late-night Wikipedia deep dives just got better.: Wikipedia has finally started implementing dark mode on its mobile website, so you can take some comfort in your eyes while you’re going down a 3am rabbit hole about the Roman Empire. Here’s how to turn on dark mode. Read more
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Spotify is now a social network: With Spotify recently launching comments for podcasts, Sarah Perez looks at how the music streamer is taking another step toward building a social networking experience. Combined with the app’s 2023 overhaul that adds a TikTok-like discovery feed and the ability to post to stories, Spotify is becoming more than just a music streaming app, it’s becoming a social network centered around all things audio. Read more
Can Visual AI Models Really See? State-of-the-art language models are said to understand not only text, but also images and audio. But a study by researchers at Auburn University and the University of Alberta tested the largest multimodal models on a series of very simple visual tasks and found that they didn’t look as good as expected. In fact, as Devin Koldway writes, visual AI models may not look good at all. Read more
