Tech

Stephen Hackett over at 512 Pixels has gotten his hands on a promotional mailer for eWorld, Apple’s early 1990s web service portal, similar to Prodigy or AOL at the time. It was meant to introduce people to things like email, news, and other online services we take for granted now and it’s a fascinating time capsule.

Honestly, I’d like to go back to eWorld.

I’m guessing it’s Vonmählen, a company that has a truly bizarre MagSafe battery pack that’s also an Apple Watch charger and also a data hub and also a Pop Socket and also a USB charger. It’s on Kickstarter (of COURSE), so buyer beware and all that.

If you haven’t read Josh Dzieza’s story on the grueling, extremely human work required to make AI systems work, you really should. And then you should catch up on all The Verge’s Smart Home Week coverage, because we have some big ideas about garage door openers on this podcast.

The entire point of Marvel’s Secret Invasion series is to tap into people’s deep, existisitential anxieties about being replaced and destroyed by hostile adversaries. That makes the studio’s choice to create the show’s opening credits sequence with AI-generated art make a certain amount of sense.

But it’s hard to deny how bad these optics are for Marvel especially at a time when traditional artists are increasingly sounding the alarm about the threat AI-generated art poses to their livelihoods.

The FTC case against Microsoft kicks off on June 22nd and we’re starting to get a better idea of the arguments and exhibits that will form part of the court case. Microsoft is planning to submit a bunch of emails, with one in particular standing out thanks to its subject line: “FW: pettiness from Sony and GameSpots fanboy reviewers.” Wow.

A Canadian search aircraft with underwater detection capabilities picked up “banging” sounds coming from the depths around the HMS Titanic wreckage about every 30 minutes, per a US government memo obtained by CNN.

Rolling Stone, who first reported it, said an email to the Department of Homeland Security from the research group Explorers Society read:

“It is being reported that at 2 a.m. local time on site that sonar detected potential ‘tapping sounds’ at the location, implying crew may be alive and signaling.”

Knocking was heard 4 hours later when “additional sonar was deployed.”

You.com was one of the first search engines to incorporate a ChatGPT-style chatbot, and now it's one of the first to put unlimited access to AI tools behind a paywall.

The new YouPro subscription costs $14.99 / month (but currently costs $9.99 / month for a limited time), and gives you access to unlimited AI chat searches, unlimited AI image generation, unlimited text generation, and more. Will Microsoft and Google be next?

A year after launching its AI Voices feature in beta, soundboard and voice changing tool Voicemod has announced a new “AI Humans” feature that adjusts your voice in real-time to sound like a virtual person across apps like Facetime, Zoom, and Discord. There are 20 characters to choose from including 80-year-old Joe and 25-year-old Jennifer.

Just click the notification at the top of the Share menu. Handy!

Google is looking for suppliers to manufacture its Pixel smartphones in the country, according to Bloomberg. If that ends up happening, Google would be following in the footsteps of Apple, which assembles some iPhones in the country.