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Other USB-C Cables I’ve TestedThere are so many cables out there, and plenty of solid options did not make the cut as a top choice. Here are a few honorable mentions I’ve tested and liked.Statik MagStack Pro for $25: I quite like the automatic magnetic coiling this cable features, as it stays neat, and the colors could be handy if you want something that stands out (I tested the bright orange version). But performance is distinctly average at 100W for charging and 480 Mbps for data transfer. It is 6.6 feet and comes with a two-year warranty.Baseus 2-in-1 Charging Cable…
Google Android has an unexpected face to its AI initiatives: Paris Hilton.The tech giant named the entrepreneur and media personality as its first-ever ‘Icon in Residence,’ on Tuesday, tapping Hilton to front a campaign around vibe-coding—the increasingly popular practice of using chatbots to write code that is taking over traditional programming. The partnership which lives at Android.com/Paris is Google’s latest attempt to position Gemini as a tool for everyday consumers, especially women and younger generations. The move follows a growing industry pattern of tech giants enlisting celebrity credibility to soften its AI image problem.
An Nvidia executive recently said that the cost of compute is now greater than the salaries of his employees. Last week, Mercor’s CEO said the startup is spending more on tokens for internal agents than on employee headcount. As enterprises blow through their token budgets, a big question is: Are companies actually spending more on AI than on humans? Not quite yet, according to fresh research from the Ramp AI Index, which measures the adoption rate of AI among American businesses. The top 1% of firms — which Ramp describes as “AI-pilled” — are spending $7,500 per employee per month.…
This year will go down in history for being not only the first World Cup with 48 teams on the fields of the United States, Canada and Mexico, but also the year in which Electronic Arts’ dominance in the world of soccer video games was shaken. The industry is undergoing an unprecedented transformation, and the result is games that are more varied than ever before.It is no longer a matter of just playing whichever version of EA Sports FC you like best. Now there are four big contenders vying for your time, each with a different strategy and a specific…
Consumers are mired in a trust crisis—and that’s a problem for brands, according to a new study from McCann.The Truth About Global Brands study, released Wednesday, surveyed more than 20,000 people across 20 global markets. It found that though 72% of respondents believe it’s “more important than ever to prioritize truth,” 55% say that brands were more truthful 20 years ago than they are today. AI has only made things worse: 76% of respondents feared that, before long, they’ll be unable to tell actual humans from computer-generated ones.“There’s this yearning amongst consumers worldwide to find the truth,” McCann global CEO Tyler…
Netflix is stepping up its game in mobile and gaming, as revealed during the company’s recent APAC Product Innovation Showcase. During the event, Netflix outlined plans to expand its refreshed mobile experience to additional markets across Asia-Pacific, while also growing its gaming ambitions through the continued rollout of Netflix Playground, a dedicated space for children’s games. Netflix also continues to broaden the reach of its redesigned mobile app. After rolling out the updated experience in Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, India, and Malaysia earlier this year, Netflix plans to launch it in South Korea and Japan in July, with additional…
President Donald Trump is enthralled with the Ultimate Fighting Championship staging an event at the White House on his birthday this weekend—in effect his present to himself, since he came up with the idea. We have the details on both the fighting and the anticipated lobbying.Lobbying by the OctagonWhile the White House does not yet know exactly which celebrities might show up for the UFC on Sunday because they have not accepted their Ticketmaster email invitations, Trump’s aides tell Inner Loop they are expecting a parade of donors to attend.The tickets have been free—and there is no resale—because the UFC…
What do New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor, San Diego Padres pitcher Mason Miller, MVP and Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts, and The Mandalorian’s Grogu have in common?All four have been featured in MLB creative spots promoting the ongoing baseball season and this year’s slate of summer movies as part of a growing marketing relationship between the league and major movie studios.Miller and Disney’s Grogu character starred in a spot to promote Walt Disney Pictures’ The Mandalorian and Grogu, which was released in theaters over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Betts and his daughter, Kynlee Betts, are featured in…
One of the biggest selling points for modern AI systems is their ability to adapt to users. Every time an AI assistant takes on a task for you, it’s also adapting to your style and preferences, which are incorporated as context for future tasks. With more context and a better understanding of the user, the model can get better every time you use it — or at least that’s the theory. New research suggests that models’ adaptive abilities might be a mixed blessing. On Wednesday, researchers at the AI company Writer published two papers showing how popular memory systems can…
I also like that the Kindle Scribe stylus has a button on it that switches to highlight mode, which is especially convenient as a reader if you wanted to easily switch from underlining or note-taking to highlighting a passage. While the ReMarkable is more accurate and has an impressive paper feel to it, I actually think either Scribe model feels a little more comfortable and convenient to use, especially since you don’t need to pay extra for the eraser point. But the slimmer second-generation Scribe is slightly more comfortable to write with, at least for my hands.Reading Winner: Both Kindle…
Havas is continuing the “bullish” growth of Havas Play in North America with the acquisition of youth culture and experiential agency Archrival, which has sold a majority stake to join the Havas network.The deal marks another step in Havas’ expansion of Havas Play, the group specializing in connecting brands with fans across sports, music, gaming, and entertainment. Havas Play expanded from its roots in France to become a global offering in 2023, consolidating the holding company’s sports and entertainment agencies. It has since become a major growth priority for Havas, according to Greg James, CEO of Havas Media Network North America.
AI coding agent startup Niteshift has raised a $7 million seed round led by Greylock’s Jerry Chen. That’s a modest sum by AI standards, but the startup, founded by two former early Datadog engineers, has attracted some big-name angels like Reid Hoffman, Datadog’s Olivier Pomel and Alexis Lê-Quôc, Ankur Goyal of Braintrust, and Misha Laskin of Reflection AI. Founded by Sajid Mehmood and Conor Branagan, who helped grow Datadog from its early days to a multi-billion valuation, the company has entered the crowded AI coding space with a compelling idea: Why would any company trust its most sensitive assets —…
China has become the first country in the world to operate an underwater data center, or UDC, powered by wind. Located off the coast of Shanghai, the complex represents a significant advance in the country’s strategy to secure energy supplies in the face of the accelerated growth of artificial intelligence, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and reduce the environmental impact of its technology infrastructure.The initiative is the result of a collaboration between private company HiCloud Technology and state-owned China Communications Construction, which involved an investment of 1.6 billion yuan, equivalent to about $236 million.With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts,…
Over the past few decades, Nike and Adidas have created some of soccer’s most memorable advertising, from the former’s 1998 “Airport” to the latter’s “The Wake Up Call” in 2014.This year, both brands took a creative risk for the World Cup, venturing into longer formats and defying the idea that audiences have short attention spans. Adidas’ “Backyard Legends” is a five-minute spot starring Timothée Chalamet as a fast-talking soccer obsessive on a mission to assemble his dream team from a crew of young underdogs.
AI vendors promote their enterprise products as if they’re turnkey solutions, but the chances are low that AI agents will hit the ground running right away. Unless you put in the effort to train a model on the specifics of your business, it’s unlikely to understand how your company, for example, defines revenue or knows who is allowed to see which file. That’s part of the reason why we’re seeing AI companies deploying engineers to help integrate their AI products into customers’ systems. New York-based startup Jedify is attacking this very gap. The company says its platform connects to enterprises’…
A Florida man was wrongfully arrested for attempting to illegally lure a child after police relied on a face recognition match that was inaccurate, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, even though he lived more than 300 miles from the scene and says he had never set foot in the city where the crime took place.Robert Dillon, a 52-year-old commercial crabber from Fort Myers, was arrested after FACES—a face recognition system operated by Florida’s Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office—matched his face against a photo of a man on a computer screen taken with a cellphone. The system returned a “93…