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Meta announced on Tuesday an update to its AI glasses that will allow you to better hear people talking when you’re in a noisy environment. The feature will initially become available on Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses in the U.S. and Canada, the company says. In addition, the glasses are getting another update that lets you use Spotify to play a song that matches what’s in your current view. For instance, if you’re looking at an album cover, the glasses could play a song by that artist. Or if you’re looking at your Christmas tree with a…
NEW YORK (AP) — Welcome to exhausted America 2025: Most adults are more than a little fine with doling out cash as gifts, and many plan to be asleep before midnight on New Year’s Eve, according to a new AP-NORC poll.About 6 in 10 Americans say cash or gift cards are “very” acceptable as holiday presents, but they’re much less likely to say that about a gift that was purchased secondhand or re-gifted, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.“Cash is OK for the grandkids I guess,” said Nancy Wyant, 73, in rural…
DoorDash is launching a new AI-powered social app that’s designed to help users quickly find local restaurants. The app, called Zesty, is initially available in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York. With the app, DoorDash is branching out beyond food delivery and stepping into the social and discovery space. The idea behind the app is to get rid of the need to read a bunch of different reviews, look up different menus, or browse TikTok when looking for a new place to eat. Once people open the app and sign in with their DoorDash accounts, they can ask…
Slate Auto, the electric truck startup backed by Jeff Bezos, has now collected more than 150,000 refundable reservations for its low-cost EV due out at the end of 2026. The company shared the figure in a new Q&A video with CEO Chris Barman, where she answers questions from those reservation holders about the company’s plans for self-driving (there are none), or whether owners will be able to affix a car seat to the optional rear seats (they will). Reservations are a somewhat helpful metric for gauging general interest in a new car, but they are by no means a signal…
A recent study published by Consumer Reports (CR) alleges that Instacart has been conducting AI-led dynamic pricing experiments that, in some cases, are drastically inflating the cost of certain products. CR and its research partner, Groundwork Collaborative, found that the delivery app was conducting these experiments at the platform’s retail partner locations — places like Kroger, Albertsons, Costco, and Safeway. In some cases, consumers were paying as much as 23% more than other shoppers for the exact same product, the report says. The software involved in the experiments, Eversight, is a SaaS product that offers grocers a retail pricing suite…
Elon Musk’s X is updating its Terms of Service to indicate it still lays claim to the “Twitter” trademark. The move to add this detail to the company’s terms follows an announcement from a Virginia-based startup, which recently filed an application to trademark the term “Twitter.” The startup, Operation Bluebird, claims that X had abandoned the brand “Twitter” by renaming its social networking service “X.” In its petition to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filed on December 2, the startup pointed to a post from X owner Musk on July 23, 2023, which proclaimed that the social network would…
It’s nice to remember that not everything on the internet needs to be a subscription-based platform with ads. On WikiFlix, a Netflix-inspired archive of public domain films, you can watch movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Nosferatu” for free. You don’t even have to make an account! Crazy, right? A project of Wikipedia’s volunteer community, WikiFlix hosts over 4,000 movies from Wikimedia Commons, the Internet Archive, or YouTube that have fallen into the public domain — that means they are free to share and distribute, usually because the copyright lapsed, or there was never any copyright at all. So,…
In early 2023, Luminar was riding high. After going public during the pandemic and scoring a key deal with Volvo, the company had added Mercedes-Benz and Polestar as customers of its “lifesaving” lidar sensors. Founder and CEO Austin Russell called it an “inflection point,” as Luminar prepped to have those sensors integrated into the first production vehicles. Volvo in particular was all in on the technology. The Swedish automaker, which spent decades building a brand around the idea of making the safest cars, was the first to jump at integrating the laser-based sensors in its vehicles. Volvo initially tapped Luminar…
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Authorities have asked the public for any footage they might have of the gunman who fatally shot two students and wounded nine others at Brown University, even as they released a new video timeline and a slightly clearer image of a possible suspect. Investigators provided no indication Tuesday that they were any closer to zeroing in on his identity. In all the videos made public, the suspect’s face was masked or turned away, and authorities have only been able to give a vague description of him as being stocky and about 5 feet, 8 inches (173…
When a measles outbreak hit West Texas earlier this year, school absences surged to levels far beyond the number of children who likely became sick, according to a study, as students were excluded or kept home by their families to minimize the spread of the disease. Absences in Seminole Independent School District, a school system that served students at the heart of the outbreak, climbed 41% across all grade levels compared with the same period the two previous years, according to the Stanford University study. The preliminary study, which has not been published or undergone a formal peer review, offers…