In Brief

Boston Dynamics’ new electric Atlas can do push-ups

Until today, we’ve seen exactly 40 seconds of Boston Dynamics’ new electric Atlas in action. The Hyundai-owned robotics stalwart is very much still in in the early stages of commercializing the biped for factory floors. For now, however, it’s doing the thing Boston Dynamics does second best after building robots: showing off in viral video […]

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Former Alphabet X spinout Mineral sells technology to John Deere

Earlier this year, reports surfaced that Alphabet had closed the book on its ag-tech robotics spinout, Mineral. The news arrived amid larger money crunches at Google’s parent. Citing a crowded market and profit concerns, Mineral ceased operation and pivoted to technology licensing. This month, Mineral CEO Elliott Grant reprinted the leaked memo, while confirming that

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Apple is bringing audio sharing to Beats Studio Pro via firmware update

Beats Studio Pro are getting one of AirPods’ best features. A firmware update, noted by 9to5Mac, is delivering multi-user audio sharing, allowing music to be streamed to multiple headphones at once. Apple regularly releases features to its AirPods line before they make their way to the Beats brand. The feature arrived on a number of

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OpenAI signs deal to train on Condé Nast content, surface stories in ChatGPT

OpenAI has inked a deal with Condé Nast — the publisher of storied outlets such as The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appétit and Wired — to surface stories from Condé Nast properties in OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot platform ChatGPT and its search prototype SearchGPT. The specific terms of the partnership weren’t disclosed. But in

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The Waymo robotaxi honking problem has been resolved for real this time

The great nightly Waymo honk-a-thon — in which the company’s robotaxis erupted into a chorus of honking as they settled into their respective spaces in a parking lot in San Francisco — was resolved. And then, well, it wasn’t. But now it is again. The quick backstory: Software engineer Sophia Tung set up a livestream of a parking

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Now a million people can watch you fumble Zoom’s screen-share settings at once

Zoom on Monday announced a new single-user webinar feature that caps out at 1 million attendees. The addition comes less than a month after the #WinWithBlackWomen fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris peaked at 44,000 users before crashing. More recently, an X interview between owner Elon Musk and Harris’ challenger, Donald Trump, crashed prior to

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Palantir CEO Alex Karp is ‘not going to apologize’ for military work

Data analytics company Palantir has faced criticism and even protests over its work with the military, police, and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, but co-founder and CEO Alex Karp isn’t interested in “the apology show.” In a lengthy New York Times profile, Karp told writer Maureen Dowd that the company has “a consistently pro-Western view”

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A hellish new AI threat: ‘Undressing’ sites targeted by SF authorities

While the ethics of AI-generated porn are still under debate, using the technology to create nonconsensual sexual imagery of people is, I think we can all agree, reprehensible. One such method is “undressing” sites, which take a normal, clothed photo of a person and generate a fake nude version from it. As you might imagine,

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