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Comparing Our Favorite KindlesWhat About the New Kindle Scribes?AmazonKindle Scribe Colorsoft and Kindle Scribe (3rd Gen)I got to test two of Amazon’s new Kindles, the Kindle Scribe ($500) and Kindle Scribe Colorsoft ($630), before they shipped to the public. Both have a similar look, though the Scribe Colorsoft has a color screen and a shorter battery life (only eight weeks of reading time, compared with 12 weeks for the black-and-white Scribes). Both have a new, taller design with an 11-inch screen, slightly slimmer form factor, and updated stylus. They both also have a quad-core chip and have a new homepage,…
What does it take to rebuild cultural relevance for a brand that once had nearly one in two guys in America using it? In this episode of The Speed of Culture podcast, Dolores Assalini, head of Axe US at Unilever, lays out the brand’s evolution from cultural phenomenon to a social-first, creator-powered operation designed for how young men live, shop, and interact with brands today. The conversation explores how innovation, humor, and digital-first thinking are guiding Axe into its next chapter. Dolores also reflects on what has changed in marketing over the last fifteen years and what has stayed the same, distilling…
At a time when AI slop is flooding music streaming platforms, Spotify is beta testing a new “Artist Profile Protection” feature that allows artists to review releases before they go live on their profiles. The idea behind the new tool is to give artists more control over which tracks are associated with their name on the streaming service. “Music has been landing on the wrong artist pages across streaming services, and the rise of easy-to-produce AI tracks has made the problem worse,” Spotify wrote in a blog post. “That’s not the experience we want artists to have on Spotify, and…
Arm, one of the world’s leading chip design firms, announced Tuesday that it is producing its own semiconductors. The move is a departure from its long-standing model of licensing intellectual property to companies that manufacture and sell chips themselves. Speaking to a live audience in San Francisco, Arm CEO Rene Haas made his pitch for how the new Arm CPU could benefit the tech industry and why this is the right time for the company to step outside of its lane and go head-to-head with other chipmakers.“Let me be clear: We are now in a new business for ARM, and…
Six months into making a big bet on shopping, OpenAI-owned ChatGPT is switching its strategy.In September, ChatGPT launched a feature called Instant Checkout that allowed consumers to buy products through its platform—winning the support of Walmart, Shopify, Etsy, and PayPal. ChatGPT has since gotten rid of that feature. Now, it is letting retailers steer the buying experience, by either pushing the checkout process to the retailer’s site, or by pushing it to an app within OpenAI that the retailers control.“We’ve found that the initial version of Instant Checkout did not offer the level of flexibility that we aspire to provide,…
Storied semiconductor and software company Arm Holdings is starting to make its own chips after nearly 36 years of licensing its designs to companies like Nvidia and Apple. At an event Tuesday in San Francisco, the company revealed the Arm AGI CPU, a production-ready chip built for running inference in an AI data center. The UK-based company developed the chip using its Arm Neoverse family of CPU IP cores and through a partnership with Meta. Meta is also the chip’s first customer of the Arm AGI CPU, which is designed to work harmoniously with the tech company’s training and inference…
The Federal Communications Commission has banned new consumer internet routers manufactured outside the US, citing national security concerns. The ban doesn’t affect any routers already in American homes or currently on sale in the US, but all new routers aimed at the consumer market will need to be approved.While the headline is that foreign-made consumer routers are banned, manufacturers can apply for exemptions. There’s no need to throw out your router, and you’ll still find plenty of mesh systems on the store shelves. But what does this mean for you?Why Are Foreign-Made Routers Banned?“Malicious actors have exploited security gaps in…
The main takeaway:New interactive ad features and strategic partnerships with Amazon, InMarket, and Kochava were the key announcements during Tubi’s IAB NewFronts presentation on Tuesday afternoon.Hosted by actor Tiffany Haddish, the FAST service’s Tubitopia: An Advertiser’s Paradise event signaled that it will continue to invest in Gen-Z-focused and sports-culture original programming, which should continue to lure advertisers to its platform. The biggest announcements:During the presentation, Tubi introduced Scene Sense, which is Tubi’s contextual targeting solution that uses scene-level signals, such as visual cues, tone, and sentiment, when viewers pause content, allowing brands to deliver timely and relevant display messaging that aligns…
Canada’s BKR Capital announced Monday that its Fund II has closed CA$20 million (around $14.5 million), bringing it closer to its CA$50 million target. This fund is looking to back “high-growth technology companies led by founders from the Black community, building solutions for the future of work, living, and global connectivity,” managing partner Lise Birikundavyi told TechCrunch. The firm is mainly looking at Canada but is open to backing select companies globally. The average check size will be between $250,000 and $1.5 million, she said. Birikundavyi said that almost 70% of the Black population in Canada is first or second-generation…
Whether you’re an experienced vinyl collector or just getting started on your journey, we recommend the Audio-Technica AT-LP120XUSB. This excellent record player comes with great connectivity and a built-in phono preamp, and it has the backing of one of the biggest players in home and professional audio. You can currently pick up the LP120XUSB for just $398 on Amazon, a $51 markdown from the usual price.Courtesy of Audio TechnicaThe AT-LP120XUSB features basically everything you could want from a modern, upgraded turntable. The built-in phono preamp lets you easily swap the turntable from your headphones to your speakers without any extra…
The North American sports betting industry is growing up, and challenger Bet365 is putting its chips on building a strong brand to stand out.Late last year, the global sports betting giant selected the WPP network as its first creative agency of record in the United States and Canada. VML beat out four other agencies for the three year contract in an eight-week review, managed by consultancy ID Comms. Their first campaign together, “Winning Is Everything,” launched three months later.With a multi-year UFC partnership and expansion into more U.S. states ahead of NFL season, Bet365 realized it needed a dedicated partner…
Apple Music announced on Tuesday that it’s partnering with Ticketmaster to power its Concert Discovery feature. This integration aims to improve how users discover live music events based on their listening habits. Ticketmaster is the first ticketing service to integrate with Apple Music, allowing listeners to find nearby concerts and events tailored to their individual music preferences. Every event listing on the music streaming app now includes a direct link to Ticketmaster for easy ticket purchasing. With the new integration, Apple Music users can explore ticket options through various features in the app, including the homepage carousel that highlights nearby…
When NASA’s new moon rocket lifts off as soon as April 1, its immense core stage will mix 537,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen with 196,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and ignite the propellant in four, eight-foot-wide engines, producing some 1.7 million pounds of thrust. Shortly after these main engines fire, two solid rocket boosters, one on each side, will light their gunpowder-like propellant to add 3.3 million pounds of thrust each.This immense force will lift the 322-foot-tall rocket, named the Space Launch System (SLS), on the first leg of Artemis II, a more than 600,000-mile journey to the moon and…
The programmatic supply chain may be headed for a reset—one where buyers no longer toggle between dashboards, stitch together vendors, or manually orchestrate campaigns.That’s the pitch from PubMatic, which is deploying a set of AI agents to plan, execute and optimize media campaigns in real time, through a new partnership with Untapped Growth, a collective representing 20 independent agencies.At the center of the effort is AgenticOS, PubMatic’s AI infrastructure built in collaboration with NVIDIA, alongside its buying platform Activate. The system replaces traditional campaign setup workflows with a network of specialized AI agents that handle tasks like audience discovery and…
A secretive AI lab founded by serial entrepreneur Brett Adcock shared new details about what it believes is a novel marriage of model-building and hardware design that will change how humans interact with intelligent software. The company said in a statement it would design multi-modal end-to-end models, their hardware, and their interfaces in tandem to deliver a “seamless end-to-end personal intelligence product.” The system will have a persistent memory of your life and can listen, see, and interact with the world in real time. How that will be executed remains unclear outside the company, but Hark’s ambition is representative of…
Know thyself. It’s an old adage that has new resonance in the digital age. Today, you can buy smart devices that monitor your heartbeat, blood pressure, exercise habits, water intake, sleep, mood, menstrual cycle, sexual activity, and meditation patterns, not to mention your poop. The internet of things has turned into what academic and author Andrea Matwyshyn has termed the “Internet of Bodies” with the promise of selling you insights about your “quantified self.”The desire for self-awareness is not new, but these data offer a different twist on enlightenment. Millions of Americans live with a smartwatch that reminds them to…