Month: December 2023
Mailchimp cancels podcast after refusing to work with union producers
This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more. Mailchimp, one of the podcast industry’s best-known sponsors, recently reached out to Pineapple Street Studios about making a new show. Pineapple and Mailchimp first collaborated in 2019, producing narrative ads for Mailchimp and branded series. So…
Read More
Grimes has a new line of AI plush toys, including one named Grok
The musician Grimes has developed an interactive AI plush toy for children which can converse with and “learn” the personalities of their owners. Grimes and toy company Curio created the line of toys in partnership with OpenAI, as first reported by The Washington Post. Grimes, who voices all three toys, is…
Read More
The EU AI Act passed — now comes the waiting
The European Union’s three branches provisionally agreed on its landmark AI regulation, paving the way for the economic bloc to prohibit certain uses of the technology and demand transparency from providers. But despite warnings from some world leaders, the changes it will require from AI companies remain unclear — and…
Read More
Agility’s Digit warehouse robot understands natural language commands thanks to AI smarts
Agility Robotics shared a demo video Wednesday of one of its Digit robots upgraded with AI. Although that may conjure terrifying pop-culture images of sentient sci-fi machines taking over the world, the demo video reveals something much more pedestrian, if not boring. The bipedal warehouse robot ploddingly works to complete…
Read More
This new portable USB4 drive may resemble a sleek, silver heatsink, but it packs a punch when it comes to performance, all at an affordable price
Other World Computing (OWC) has unveiled the Express 1M2 portable USB4 NVMe SSD, its first venture into the world of USB4 drives. The Express 1M2 is designed with a focus on performance, delivering real-world speeds of up to 3151MB/s (when used with most Macs and PCs from 2020 onwards) and…
Read More
Apple is making a Murderbot series starring Alexander Skarsgård
If you haven’t read the books — you can check out our review right here — Apple says the adaption is “about a self-hacking security android who is horrified by human emotion yet drawn to its vulnerable ‘clients.’” In the show, “Murderbot must hide its free will and complete a…
Read More