Gizmodo: Snap Is Doing What Twitter Can’t. “As Elon Musk threatens to charge all users with a monthly subscription to access Twitter, Snap is seeing a userbase more willing to pay to use the perks of its platform. Snap’s membership service Snapchat+ has reached a whopping 5 million users, which is officially halfway to its goal of 10 million.”
Engadget: Windows’ Copilot AI starts rolling out September 26. “Microsoft announced that its Copilot AI, which currently exists in various iterations in the Edge browser, Microsoft 365 platform and Windows, will be bundled into a single, unified and ubiquitous generative AI assistant across all of Microsoft’s products — from Powerpoint to Teams.”
TechCrunch: Mastodon’s latest release makes the open source Twitter alternative easier to use. “As changes at Elon Musk’s X continue to push former Twitter users to seek alternatives, the open source, decentralized social network Mastodon — a popular Twitter/X rival — is releasing an update designed to make it easier for users to get started, use its network even when logged out, and more easily search for content across its platform. The web interface has also received a visual refresh and a number of other improvements.”
The Verge: Substack’s redesign makes it feel like a more traditional social media app. “After a tease in a blog post on Tuesday, Substack officially shared details about its redesigned app on Wednesday, which offers a new ‘Home’ tab and some adjustments to the app’s current layout.”
Ars Technica: iOS 16.7 arrives for older iPhones and people who don’t want to upgrade. “The iOS and iPadOS 16.7 update covers all devices that could run version 16, including older stuff like the iPhone 8, iPhone X, and first-gen iPad Pro that can’t be upgraded to version 17. In a couple of months, if precedent holds, newer devices will have to upgrade to keep getting security fixes, while iOS 16 updates will continue to support older devices for at least another year.”
US Census Bureau: Census Bureau Releases 2020 Census Data for Nearly 1,500 Detailed Race and Ethnicity Groups, Tribes and Villages. “The U.S. Census Bureau today released 2020 Census population counts and sex-by-age statistics for 300 detailed race and ethnic groups, as well as 1,187 detailed American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) tribes and villages.”
Times Argus Online: Vermont State University names David Bergh a new interim president. “Vermont State University has named a new president. The Vermont State Colleges System board of trustees announced Friday morning that David G. Bergh will lead VTSU as its next interim president. Bergh takes over following the planned departure of current interim president Mike Smith, who is set to resign from the role by Nov. 1.” Bergh takes over after the disastrous tenure of Parwinder Grewal.
TechCrunch: Google wants to map more of the world’s roads with expansion of ‘Road Mapper’ volunteer community . “Google announced today that it is opening access to more contributors to participate in Road Mapper, a tool where you can add missing roads to Google Maps in areas of the world that need it most.” Thinking about this in relation to the recent Google Maps driving directions lawsuit is kind of 😬.
WTVQ: Appalshop in Whitesburg receives grant to treat, digitize images damaged in flood. “Appalshop Archive, a media, arts and education center in Whitesburg, recently received a grant to treat and digitize images that were damaged in the July 2022 flood. The Save America’s Treasure Grant provides Appalshop with $750,000 to help cover preservation lab costs to salvage hundreds of hours of moving images that document life in Central Appalachia from the 1930s to the present day.”
Ars Technica: Hell freezes over, MS Paint adds support for layers and PNG transparency. “The venerable, equally derided and beloved MS Paint app has been on a roll lately, picking up a major redesign, dark-mode support, better zoom controls, and other fit-and-finish updates all within the last couple of years. But today Microsoft announced that it is finally adding two features that could make the app a bit more useful for power users: support for Photoshop-esque image layers and the ability to open and save transparent PNGs.”
XDA Developers: Google Bard gets smarter with Extensions support. “To take the competition head-on and challenge rival platforms like ChatGPT, Google has announced a couple of new features for Bard. The Mountain View tech giant has announced Bard Extensions and the ability to double-check responses in Bard to give users more customized responses.”
The Verge: X is shutting down Circles. “X is planning to shut down Circles, a feature that lets you share posts with a limited group of people instead of all of your followers. The company said in a ‘PSA’ on Thursday that Circles will be disabled by October 31st.”
Philly Voice: Mütter Museum asks the public to weigh in on ethical battle over displaying human remains. “Philadelphia’s shrine to unusual medical history is in the midst of a culture war between devoted supporters and change-minded leaders who want to review the site’s practices.”
New York Times: Google’s Bard Just Got More Powerful. It’s Still Erratic.. “I put the upgraded Bard through its paces on Tuesday, hoping to discover a powerful A.I. assistant with new and improved abilities. What I found was a bit of a mess. In my testing, Bard succeeded at some simpler tasks, such as summarizing an email. But it also told me about emails that weren’t in my inbox, gave me bad travel advice and fell flat on harder analytical tasks.”
Gizmodo: Google Quietly Removes ‘Written By People’ From Suggestions for Website Owners. “Google quietly removed the suggestion that the text of a website should be ‘written by people’ from its guidance for site owners who want to do better in search results, a change first spotted by Search Engine Land. The change will likely accelerate the deluge of AI-generated content that’s already beginning to spread across the web, in part thanks to tools that Google itself is building.”
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