Technology

lundi 17 avril 2023

Bluesky’s CEO wants to build a Musk-proof, decentralized version of Twitter

The logo for the AT Protocol that powers the Bluesky app. | Image: Bluesky

This interview was first published in April 13th’s edition of Command Line, my weekly newsletter about the tech industry’s inside conversation. You can subscribe here to get future editions delivered to your inbox.

As Elon Musk continues wielding Twitter like a blunt weapon against competitors like Substack, the downsides of centralized social media platforms are becoming more apparent every day. For those like me who have built a valuable audience on Twitter over the years, it’s unnerving to consider that those relationships could be broken or taken away completely in the blink of an eye.

That underlying unease animates much of the consternation toward Musk these days. Zooming out, it’s also why I’m closely watching the rise of decentralized social media platforms like Mastodon. Ultimately, they promise that a Musk-like figure won’t be able to censor or ban someone from the underlying protocol. I like to use the analogy of email service providers: you can theoretically be kicked off Gmail and still take your contacts and emails with you to another address.

Before Musk reluctantly bought Twitter, former CEO Jack Dorsey funded and spun off Bluesky, a public benefit company tasked with building an open-source, decentralized social media protocol that he wanted Twitter itself to eventually operate on. Bluesky remains invite only to access but is now starting to let in more users. After setting up my account recently, I wanted to talk with CEO Jay Graber. She agreed to answer some of my questions this week for what I believe is her first interview since she joined to lead the project in August 2021.

Right now, Bluesky’s interface is a shameless clone of Twitter. A key difference is that it defaults to a chronological feed of who you follow and lets you choose to toggle between a “What’s Hot” algorithmic feed. The service currently lacks the basic tools it needs to live up to its decentralized mission, including the ability to export account data. Big parts of what the underlying AT Protocol (atproto) promises to deliver, such as a marketplace of feed algorithms to choose from, also don’t exist yet. The company’s approach to content moderation was just outlined. It’s early days.

Still, I’m fascinated by what Bluesky will become. In the near term, it represents direct competition to Mastodon and Nostr, another decentralized social networking protocol that is also funded by Dorsey. In the long term, the ethos behind Bluesky could signal where the rest of social media is headed.

Below is my interview over text with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, lightly edited for clarity:

I saw you posted (what are Bluesky posts called btw?) that the waitlist for the service jumped to over 1.2 million after Elon Musk bought Twitter. How many accounts have you let on so far, and when do you think the full waitlist is allowed on?

I hesitate to give timelines because we’re a small team and are working hard right now to keep up with demand and build out the moderation tooling that we think is essential to broader adoption. We’ve let in about 20,000 people so far.

Officially, we simply call posts on Bluesky “posts” because they are a common component in the underlying protocol (the AT Protocol) and will show up in many different kinds of client apps. It’s a topic of debate for our current users, though.

Mastodon / ActivityPub seem to be where most of the energy in decentralized social media is going. What’s the main thing the AT Protocol offers that’s better, and how do you compete with that head start? I’m also curious if you ever see interoperability between atproto and ActivityPub happening.

We’ve designed a protocol that has three big things we think are missing from the Mastodon ecosystem: account portability, global discoverability, [and] composable, customizable curation and moderation.

We don’t see ourselves as being in competition with Mastodon — we welcome approaches to decentralize social platforms and are simply taking a different, opinionated approach. Our focus right now is on building out our approach and proving it works at scale.

I know Jack Dorsey is on your board and helped dream this all up. These days, he seems much more into Nostr and spending his time there. Has there been a change with his involvement in Bluesky?

Nope, he’s still on our board. He also welcomes multiple approaches to achieving a decentralized social ecosystem, and I believe he ultimately just wants this paradigm of protocols instead of platforms to succeed.

Are you all planning a business model to support all this (both for you, the company, and developers), or is it too early for that? A marketplace of algorithms is compelling to me, but I’m wondering what the incentives will be for those algorithms to be made.

We have some ideas for business models but are currently focused on the near-term challenges of moderation and growth. There’s a lot to tackle here! In an open marketplace, there will very likely be value-added services that people find worth paying for.

Are you ready for Elon to ban your links?

As the owner of a centralized site, he is free to do that if he wants. But this is exactly why what we’re building is important — the AT Protocol gives users freedom, and developers locked-open APIs.

Because even if Bluesky the app decides to block something, I can take my profile and social graph to another client and not rebuild from scratch?

100 percent. That’s the benefit of account portability between services that we’ve designed around. Users can still opt in to the convenience of an easy-to-use service, but the user’s ability to leave when they want constrains the service’s ability to abuse their power.

To get the rest of last week’s edition of Command Line, you can subscribe below. The first month is free.

How to watch SpaceX Starship’s first test flight — the most powerful rocket ever

Photograph taken of the SpaceX Starship orbital test flight. The Starship rocket is seen ready for launch on the Starbase spaceport in Texas in daylight. — Image: SpaceX

SpaceX will attempt the first test flight of its integrated Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster on Monday morning. Known collectively as “Starship,” it’s the tallest rocket ever built, standing at 394 feet tall (120 meters) — about 90 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. It’s also the most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, with the Super Heavy booster fitted with 33 of SpaceX’s powerful Raptor engines — the most engines ever featured in a first stage rocket booster.

Starship is integral to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s vision of eventually sending a crew of people to Mars. It supersedes the company’s Falcon 9 rocket — currently the world’s most frequently launched rocket — capable of carrying more cargo and a larger crew while featuring a fully reusable design to help reduce the costs associated with spaceflight. Providing everything goes as planned, SpaceX will use Starship to transport NASA’s Artemis 3 astronauts to the moon in 2025.

What time does the test flight livestream start?

Liftoff for the Starship test flight is currently targeted for 9AM ET from the SpaceX Starbase facility in South Texas. SpaceX will begin livestreaming the launch at 8:15AM ET, or 45 minutes before liftoff.

Scheduled liftoff time: New York: 9AM / San Francisco: 6AM / London: 2PM / Berlin: 3PM / Moscow: 4PM / New Delhi: 6:30PM / Beijing: 9PM / Tokyo: 10PM / Melbourne: 11PM

Teams are completing final checkouts and reviews ahead of Starship’s first flight test attempt; weather is looking pretty good for tomorrow morning but we're keeping an eye on wind shear https://t.co/bG5tsCUanp pic.twitter.com/uutSyk93O5
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 16, 2023

How do I watch the SpaceX Starship launch?

You can watch the live webcast directly on SpaceX’s website or YouTube channel. Alternatively, we’ve also embedded the live stream above.

What will happen during the SpaceX Starship test flight?

The test flight on Monday will see Starship takeoff from Texas and reach an altitude of about 150 miles, flying around the world for 90 minutes before eventually falling into the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. Starship’s Super Heavy booster is expected to fall separately into the Gulf of Mexico around eight minutes after the launch. A full flight plan for the test can be found over on the SpaceX website.

A visual guide detailing the plan for SpaceX’s Starship launch on April 17th, 2023. — *SpaceX has drawn up a visual guide detailing the flight path for the Starship orbital test.*

SpaceX eventually intends for Starship and its Super Heavy booster to be landed and re-used. But for the vehicle’s first test flight, the company isn’t focused on Starship’s reusable design features yet. Instead of attempting a vertical landing of Starship or a catch of the Super Heavy booster, both vehicles will crash into the ocean and sink.

Data from Monday’s test is intended to help engineers make improvements for future launches and fix any issues that arise during the flight — providing the launch is successful. If any issues do arise that prevent Monday’s test flight from taking place, The New York Times reports that SpaceX will re-attempt the launch throughout the week.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is trying to keep expectations low ahead of the test flight. “If we get far enough away from the launchpad before something goes wrong then I think I would consider that to be a success. Just don’t blow up the launchpad,” Musk said in a Twitter Spaces live chat on Sunday night. “The chances of us triggering an abort and having to postpone the launch are high.”

Google chief warns AI could be harmful if deployed wrongly

Sundar Pichai calls for global regulatory framework similar to nuclear treaty amid safety concerns

Google’s chief executive has said concerns about artificial intelligence keep him awake at night and that the technology can be “very harmful” if deployed wrongly.

Sundar Pichai also called for a global regulatory framework for AI similar to the treaties used to regulate nuclear arms use, as he warned that the competition to produce advances in the technology could lead to concerns about safety being pushed aside.

Your First Digital Twin Assistant and the Future of Video Entertainment

A conversational AI human created with DeepBrain AI

One of the most interesting implementations of generative AI is the video synthesis model by DeepBrain AI, which can create a working digital twin of a human that can increasingly take on tasks that the human it mirrors would typically have to do. The post Your First Digital Twin Assistant and the Future of Video Entertainment appeared first on TechNewsWorld.

Google will reportedly release new AI powered search tools next month

Illustration: The Verge

Google will release new AI-powered search tools next month, with even more features coming in the fall, reports The New York Times.

The new features will be available exclusively in the US, and will be released initially to a maximum of one million users, says the NYT. It’s not clear exactly what the tools will offer, but they will likely build on the conversational promise of Google’s experimental Bard chatbot. They’re being developed under the codename “Magi.”

The plans are part of Google’s efforts to meet the threat posed by new systems like Microsoft’s Bing chatbot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Many think these chatbots could one day replace traditional search engines like Google — despite their failings.

According to the NYT, Google’s position is so threatened that Samsung is considering replacing Google with Bing as the default search engine on its mobile devices. This deal is worth an estimated $3 billion in annual revenue to Google (the company has a similar deal with Apple worth roughly $20 billion), though it’s not clear how seriously Samsung is considering the switch. The company may have been been swayed by Microsoft’s AI work, but it might also be simply taking advantage of Google’s moment of weakness.

In addition to new features developed as project Magi, Google is also planning a more radical rebuild of its search engine. However, the Times says there’s “no clear timetable on when it will release the new search technology.”

Google is also reportedly developing a range of other AI tools, including an AI image generator called GIFI, a language learning system called Tivoli Tutor, and a feature called Searchalong that would integrate a chatbot into Google’s Chrome browser to answer questions related to the current web page. This is similar to Microsoft’s Bing AI sidebar for its Edge browser.

Satellites Threaten Astronomy, but a Few Scientists See an Opportunity

Satellites Threaten Astronomy, but a Few Scientists See an Opportunity Mega-constellations built by SpaceX, Amazon and other companies could carry thousands of sensors that could aid research into gamma rays, space weather and other subjects.

dimanche 16 avril 2023

Ultra-long YouTube highlight videos are ruining sports — and I’m fine with that

Liverpool FC vs. Arsenal FC - Premier League — Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images

A few months ago, I discovered a new genre of YouTube video. It’s called the “extended highlight,” and it typically takes the form of a video somewhere between eight and 18 minutes long, with rapid-fire jump cuts between all the most important parts of a game.

Since I embraced the glory of the extended highlight, I feel like I’ve watched more sports than ever. I’ve seen every Arsenal goal and almost-goal, every cool Steph Curry shot for the Warriors, every Daniel Jones run for the Giants, every Aaron Judge strikeout or home run for the Yankees. But I rarely, if ever, sit and watch a game. I used to! But why would I now? All the good parts are right there on YouTube a few hours later.

Much has been made over the last decade about how highlight culture is changing sports. (Ruining it, some might say.) For a while, there was a moral panic about SportsCenter’s bite-size renditions of sports. Then it was House of Highlights on Instagram that was threatening to become the biggest thing in sports TV as viewers started to care more about sick dunks than final scores. And indeed, the whole sports fan experience has shifted! Young viewers follow individual players rather than teams; they care about the off-field stories and personalities as much as the on-field results; they really do love scrolling through highlights on TikTok. Leagues, teams, and broadcasters have caught up and are now embracing these platforms and angles more than ever. Now, everybody’s also talking about gambling and fantasy and how those are changing the way we talk about sports.

This is just... the game. Minus all the boring parts.

But extended highlights feel like a different thing altogether. This isn’t “the one play you needed to see from the game”; it’s… the game. Only shorter. It’s like the radio edit of a song or the TV cut of a movie — it just chops out the boring bits, and most people are going to like it better as a result. Eighteen minutes of a 90-minute soccer game is enough to show the starting lineups, the kickoff, every meaningful scoring opportunity, every yellow and red card, every corner kick, and every cool dribbling move that ultimately ended nowhere. No, you don’t get to see the three minutes of buildup that led to the goal, which is what purists will tell you is the whole point of the game. But you do get a sense of the flow, the momentum, the vibe of the game. It’s a remarkably complete retelling in a tiny fraction of the time.

Almost every major sport and league offers these extended highlights, and I kind of can’t believe they all do. Live sports are the most expensive, most coveted thing in the media world right now, and you’re just offering a near approximation for free on YouTube? (To be clear, I love it. Please don’t stop even though it seems like a terrible business decision.) Embracing the internet as a sports distribution tool was the right call — I’m not sure making supercuts of every game was.

Pitch clocks made baseball faster. Extended highlights make baseball way faster.

I also think extended highlights might be a clue about the future of sports. The internet-ification of sports has long been happening in subtle ways — sports tweaking their rules to be just a little more exciting and more action-packed, more easily packaged into a TikTok or Reel. Just this year, Major League Baseball made the bases larger and outlawed some very effective defense, which means steals and runs are both up. More highlights!

But the MLB also instituted a pitch clock, which has made games upward of 25 minutes shorter. And there are even more extreme examples coming. Take the Kings League, a new soccer league formed in part by soccer superstar Gerard Piqué. It’s seven-on-seven soccer on teams owned by well-known streamers, with all kinds of tweaks designed to make the games faster and more chaotic. There’s no beautiful game here; there is, instead, the “golden card” that teams draw before the game that says things like “any goal scored in the next minute counts double” or “instant penalty.” And the whole game is only 40 minutes long.

Or there’s LIV Golf, the new (and wildly controversial) competitor to the PGA Tour that turned tournaments from four rounds into three. It has fewer competitors and starts more of them at the same time, which means the day’s round goes much more quickly. The goal, as with the Kings League, is to make sure something exciting is always happening and to make it all happen faster.

It makes sense, right? As viewers, so many things are competing for our attention that hardly anyone wants to watch a pitcher scratch his nose or two defenders kick a ball back and forth for 38 seconds. In 2023, even an 18-minute video is a lot to ask viewers to focus on. Sports, just like other kinds of entertainment, have no choice but to make everything move at a blistering pace or risk losing viewers to the TikTok app on their phones. Of course, when sports push harder and get faster, that creates room for new and different kinds of content surrounding the games. Which means even more competition. It’s hard to see how any of it ever slows down.

It’s wild how much of a basketball game you can fit into nine minutes and 12 seconds.

For a long time, the sports world has viewed YouTube with a sort of side-eyed confusion. Some saw it as an encroaching force threatening the primacy of their live games — the NFL, in particular, made a habit out of picking copyright fights with anyone who so much as tweeted a game highlight. Others saw YouTube as a valuable way to expose more people to their best content. “We’re incredibly protective of our live game rights,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said back in 2016. “But for the most part, highlights are marketing.”

That’s probably still true, especially in the context of “look at this cool goal.” That might turn non-fans into casual ones and make people want to watch more. But watching the extended highlights of Arsenal vs. Liverpool didn’t make me want to go watch more — it made me feel like I’d watched everything. And it only took 16 minutes.

What’s it like to use a $300 Windows laptop for a day?

I spent many hours using HP’s 14, a $289 Windows laptop. You’re all welcome.

The year is 2023, and my tireless quest to find a Windows laptop under $500 that isn’t a flaming pile of trash continues. While I’ve long maintained that people constrained to that category should just get Chromebooks, I understand that this recommendation makes quite a few people very, very angry.

So I’m coming to you today from the HP 14, a 14-inch silver laptop that we purchased from Amazon for $289. It has an 11th Gen Core i3 processor (yes, it’s an older chip, but that’s why it’s so cheap — such is life), 4GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. This is just about as cheap as a Windows laptop can get. (HP’s listed MSRP for this model is $469.99, but you can get it for far less without much effort.) And to see if it’s a viable budget purchase, I spent a full workday on the device, morning to night.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t terrible? I mean, it wasn’t great. But I was surprised by how well it went.

First thing in the morning, I turned on the HP 14 and attempted to load the various programs I use in review testing: Chrome, Slack, Spotify, Steam, display calibration stuff, and the like. (No matter how much Microsoft bullies me about it, I will not switch to Edge, you monsters.) I was blocked from doing all of this because the HP 14 had, it turned out, come out of the box in S mode. Well, that wasn’t going to fly. I turned that off right quick. The world didn’t end; the laptop continued running just fine.

HP 14 half open seen from the back. — *“HP,” the lid proclaims.*

With that out of the way, I began my workday with around 10 Chrome tabs and Slack open. A couple of things froze the first time I tried to do this, so I ended up restarting the computer. This seemed to fix whatever problem it was having. Some things never change.

From that point on, I was impressed by how well the Core i3 handled my workload. There was no point when I really felt constrained or like I needed to avoid opening additional tabs to prevent slowdown. It wasn’t fast, to be clear, but I could get everything done that I needed to with minimal thumb-twiddling.

I conducted multiple video calls over Google Meet using the “HP TrueVision HD” camera overtop my Chrome tabs, and they actually ran without any stutter or slowdown (which is much more than I can say for many other cheap laptops). Co-workers told me that my video feed was grainy and they couldn’t make out too many details, but there wasn’t any lag or disruptive processing on my end.

The fans spun up the first time I opened Chrome but were actually surprisingly quiet after that. They were certainly chugging at points, but they were being much more polite about it than the fans of many premium laptops (*cough* Dell XPS).

SD slot on the left side of the HP 14. — *Look at that! Don’t see one of those every day.*

Another thing I noticed as I worked was that I really like the keyboard. It’s quite bouncy with a generous click and plenty of room. You’ll even find HP’s signature row of hotkeys on the left side for Page Up, Page Down, and such. There is quite a bit of flex in the plastic chassis (what did you expect — it’s $289), and my typing did slightly depress the keyboard, but that’s not something that generally bothers me as much as it does some of you.

HP 14 keyboard seen from above. — *The deck has a nice metallic-y texture.*

The worst part of the experience, honestly, was scrolling. The touchpad is tiny. I have fairly small fingers, and I was still hitting plastic when trying to move down pages quickly. It is also not the easiest or most comfortable thing in the world to depress, so just bear that in mind. I wouldn’t recommend it for folks with limited mobility (or this chassis in general, as the lid can’t be opened with one hand and can be a bit stubborn even with two).

Ports on the right side of the HP 14. — *I was spoiled for connectivity on this day.*

At lunchtime, I took a quick break to eat and watch a few minutes of Succession. (I’m still catching up from last weekend, so don’t spoil.) The episode was quite watchable on the 1920 x 1080 screen, which is higher resolution than you’ll find on most sub-$400 Windows laptops. I didn’t notice any colors that seemed off or washed out; brightness was a bit dim but works fine for indoor use. The bigger obstacle to media consumption on this device was honestly the speakers, which I generally had to keep at maximum volume in order to hear everything accurately. I wouldn’t try to make calls on this device outdoors or in a setting with lots of background noise; you may find yourself having to lean in.

I worked on some photos in the afternoon (the ones I shot for this review). And would you look at that — there’s an SD slot! I couldn’t be happier about this considering the number of very expensive laptops I’ve reviewed in recent months that have, like, no ports at all. And the device lasted around six and a half hours to a charge, which, honestly, should cause some much more expensive 14-inch laptops to take a good hard look at themselves.

The HP 14 open, seen from the left side. — *It’s no Acer Swift, but I didn’t mind carrying it around in my backpack.*

But the evening was the biggest surprise. I went over to a friend’s house, and after much deliberation over what to do, we decided to settle down for a good old-fashioned game of Civilization V. I could’ve ditched the HP 14 for a Zephyrus or whatever, but I stayed true to my mandate. We loaded Civilization V onto my test unit and took it for a spin.

You know what? It actually kind of ran. We cranked the game down to its absolute lowest settings, and we got a solid 30 frames per second. Now, it’s a very good thing we didn’t settle on Overwatch because you wouldn’t want to use this device for a title with any kind of action. But for a leisurely, low-stakes turn-based game of building granaries, researching mining, trading whales, and occasionally wiping out cities, it worked just fine.

Now, do I necessarily recommend that you buy this? If you can afford something with more storage, a brighter screen, a bigger touchpad, and a better-looking and better-built chassis, then no. But if you need Windows, and you need Windows for cheaper than $300, then voilà. Here’s a device that functions just fine, comes with some semblance of integrated graphics inside, and even has a port selection that’s nothing to sneeze at. Here, I found it. I’m going to go use something else now.

Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge

‘I didn’t give permission’: Do AI’s backers care about data law breaches?

Regulators around world are cracking down on content being hoovered up by ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and others

Cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems can help you escape a parking fine, write an academic essay, or fool you into believing Pope Francis is a fashionista. But the virtual libraries behind this breathtaking technology are vast – and there are concerns they are operating in breach of personal data and copyright laws.

The enormous datasets used to train the latest generation of these AI systems, like those behind ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, are likely to contain billions of images scraped from the internet, millions of pirated ebooks, the entire proceedings of 16 years of the European parliament and the whole of English-language Wikipedia.

‘Stop or I’ll fire you’: the driver who defied Uber’s automated HR

Alexandru Iftimie received apology from tech giant after investigating data behind his supposed fraud

Alexandru Iftimie, a 39-year-old who came to the UK from Romania seven years ago, was just about making ends meet as an Uber driver during the pandemic when he got an unexpected message from the ride-sharing app.

“I received a warning: ‘We detected some fraudulent activity, therefore you have to stop otherwise I have to fire you,’” he recalls.

Google Devising Radical Search Changes to Beat Back AI Rivals

Google Devising Radical Search Changes to Beat Back AI Rivals The tech giant is sprinting to protect its core business with a flurry of projects, including updates to its search engine and plans for an all-new one.

A Timeline of SpaceX’s Starship Rocket Tests Ahead of Orbital Flight Launch

A Timeline of SpaceX’s Starship Rocket Tests Ahead of Orbital Flight Launch As Elon Musk’s SpaceX aims its next rocket from Texas to Hawaii, take a look back at all the launches — and explosions — that have happened along the way.

samedi 15 avril 2023

Is the bird really freed? A look back at six months of Musk’s Twitter reign

As we approach half a year of Musk’s acquisition of the social media firm, this is how key areas of the site’s business have performed

On 28 October 2022 Elon Musk tweeted “the bird is freed” as he marked his $44bn acquisition of Twitter.

Nearly six months later, it became a dog. The distinctive avian logo the Tesla CEO had referenced in October had been replaced by a picture of a Shiba Inu canine – the face of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency.

‘I didn’t give permission’: Do AI’s backers care about data law breaches?

Regulators around world are cracking down on content being hoovered up by ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and others

The End of Faking It in Silicon Valley

The End of Faking It in Silicon Valley Recent charges, convictions and sentences all indicate that the start-up world’s habit of playing fast and loose with the truth actually has consequences.

‘It’s tough for parents’: should young children have their own phone?

Debate bubbles over how to navigate setting limits as UK study shows fifth of three- and four-year-olds have a device

One in five UK children aged three and four have mobile phone, study finds

How old is old enough to have your own mobile phone? For once, your children may be right that everyone else is getting them younger than you think.

New research from Ofcom has found that a fifth of three- and four-year-olds now have a phone of their own, and are already using them to watch streaming services, use social media and play games online.

TechScape: The end of the ‘free money’ era

In this week’s newsletter: From massive venture capital investment to sky-high salaries, the days of constant growth backed by low-cost loans may be over

Don’t get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article here

For more than a decade, the tech industry has been defined by two economic zeros. The “zero interest rate policy” (ZIRP) across the western world saw the price of money plummet, letting startups run at a loss for years and giving investors massive appetite for risky bets that might pay off in a big way. At the same time, the “zero marginal cost” of the software industry gave outsized returns to effort, allowing for situations like WhatsApp: 55 employees serving 420 million users and selling to Facebook for $19bn.

But both those conditions are coming to an end. Governments around the world have raised interest rates in a desperate attempt to keep post-pandemic inflation under control, while the rise of AI technologies threatens the production model that brought the sector to its current dominance. And because of that, the next decade could be very different from the last.

vendredi 14 avril 2023

OpenAI’s CEO confirms the company isn’t training GPT-5 and ‘won’t for some time’

Image: OpenAI

In a discussion about threats posed by AI systems, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO and co-founder, has confirmed that the company is not currently training GPT-5, the presumed successor to its AI language model GPT-4, released this March.

Speaking at an event at MIT, Altman was asked about a recent open letter circulated among the tech world that requested that labs like OpenAI pause development of AI systems “more powerful than GPT-4.” The letter highlighted concerns about the safety of future systems but has been criticized by many in the industry, including a number of signatories. Experts disagree about the nature of the threat posed by AI (is it existential or more mundane?) as well as how the industry might go about “pausing” development in the first place.

At MIT, Altman said the letter was “missing most technical nuance about where we need the pause” and noted that an earlier version claimed that OpenAI is currently training GPT-5. “We are not and won’t for some time,” said Altman. “So in that sense it was sort of silly.”

However, just because OpenAI is not working on GPT-5 doesn’t mean it’s not expanding the capabilities of GPT-4 — or, as Altman was keen to stress, considering the safety implications of such work. “We are doing other things on top of GPT-4 that I think have all sorts of safety issues that are important to address and were totally left out of the letter,” he said.

You can watch a video of the exchange below:

GPT hype and the fallacy of version numbers

Altman’s comments are interesting — though not necessarily because of what they reveal about OpenAI’s future plans. Instead, they highlight a significant challenge in the debate about AI safety: the difficulty of measuring and tracking progress. Altman may say that OpenAI is not currently training GPT-5, but that’s not a particularly meaningful statement.

Some of the confusion can be attributed to what I call the fallacy of version numbers: the idea that numbered tech updates reflect definite and linear improvements in capability. It’s a misconception that’s been nurtured in the world of consumer tech for years, where numbers assigned to new phones or operating systems aspire to the rigor of version control but are really just marketing tools. “Well of course the iPhone 35 is better than the iPhone 34,” goes the logic of this system. “The number is bigger ipso facto the phone is better.”

Because of the overlap between the worlds of consumer tech and artificial intelligence, this same logic is now often applied to systems like OpenAI’s language models. This is true not only of the sort of hucksters who post hyperbolic Twitter threads predicting that superintelligent AI will be here in a matter of years because the numbers keep getting bigger but also of more informed and sophisticated commentators. As a lot of claims made about AI superintelligence are essentially unfalsifiable, these individuals rely on similar rhetoric to get their point across. They draw vague graphs with axes labeled “progress” and “time,” plot a line going up and to the right, and present this uncritically as evidence.

This is not to dismiss fears about AI safety or ignore the fact that these systems are rapidly improving and not fully under our control. But it is to say that there are good arguments and bad arguments, and just because we’ve given a number to something — be that a new phone or the concept of intelligence — doesn’t mean we have the full measure of it.

Instead, I think the focus in these discussions should be on capabilities: on demonstrations of what these systems can and can’t do and predictions of how this may change over time.

That’s why Altman’s confirmation that OpenAI is not currently developing GPT-5 won’t be of any consolation to people worried about AI safety. The company is still expanding the potential of GPT-4 (by connecting it to the internet, for example), and others in the industry are building similarly ambitious tools, letting AI systems act on behalf of users. There’s also all sorts of work that is no doubt being done to optimize GPT-4, and OpenAI may release GPT-4.5 (as it did GPT-3.5) first — another way that version numbers can mislead.

Even if the world’s governments were somehow able to enforce a ban on new AI developments, it’s clear that society has its hands full with the systems currently available. Sure, GPT-5 isn’t coming yet, but does it matter when GPT-4 is still not fully understood?

Kia EV6 GT review: the attainable, guilt-free supercar

Kia’s quick, fun flavor of the EV6 is a huge upgrade at a reasonable premium. But there’s a catch.

We’ve long passed the point of asking how much horsepower is too much horsepower. It used to be a question of engine capability. When turbochargers went mainstream, it became a question of drivability; then, once the industry figured those out, it became a question of grip. As tires started to catch up, it became a question of responsibility and, then, sheer decency. Now, the only question is this: how much do you want?

The car you see pictured here is a compact Kia SUV with 576 horsepower — 576. Nissan’s all-conquering R35 GT-R? That makes 565 horsepower and comes complete with a price tag of well over $100,000.

And yet, you’re looking at a practical, comfortable, and, at just a tick over $60,000, relatively affordable car that not only looks phenomenal but also runs completely on batteries. Yes, all of this is possible thanks to the beauty of electrification and the genius engineers at Kia, who have bestowed upon us the EV6 GT. It’s a wonderful car, but there’s a catch: this thing is so effortlessly quick that it almost takes the fun out of it.

Making power

This GT flavor of Kia’s double-take machine, the EV6, has seen some considerable upgrades over the $48,700 base rear-wheel drive model. Where that car makes do with a (still strong) 225 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque, this GT model makes 576 horsepower and 545 pound-feet of torque. That comes from two motors — one in the front and one at the back — putting power down to all four wheels.

The front motor generates 160 kilowatts, and the rear does 270. To ensure that power gets to the ground, an electronically actuated limited slip differential splits power between the rear wheels, each wearing a generous 21-inch Goodyear Eagle F1 tire. (Usually, anyway. Mine came on snow tires. More on that in a moment.)

While power is up in a big, big way, the battery pack size has not grown to match. And that’s the first rub of the GT: range. While the base rear-wheel drive EV6 can do up to 310 miles on a charge, according to the EPA’s range test, the GT’s range aspirations are a bit more modest: just 206 miles, per the EPA.

*Kia forgot to pump up the battery pack.*

*The EV6 GT averaged 2.5 miles per kWh during testing.*

*An adequate amount of trunk space, but you’re not buying this thing for its cargo capacity.*

*The GT model makes 576 horsepower and 545 pound-feet of torque.*

In my testing, I averaged 2.5 miles per kWh, which works out, theoretically, to a maximum range of 193.5 miles from the 77.4kWh battery — just short of the EPA’s estimates. But I need to state a few very important caveats. First, there are the aforementioned Pirelli Scorpion snow tires. Even modern EV-optimized snows will carry a measurable range penalty, so keep that in mind.

Second, I did my testing in the middle of January, with temperatures hovering at or just above freezing on most days. The EV6 GT does have a heat pump to maximize efficiency in chilly conditions like these, but low temps are never an EV’s friend.

The third caveat is the most significant: I drove the hell out of this thing. Other than some time spent droning on the highway, I spent much of my time in GT mode with maximum power and responsiveness, demanding every bit of power I could get out of those two motors.

GT mode is accessed by a little green button to the lower right of the wheel. The color makes the button hard to miss, but you’ll know when you’ve touched it because the car immediately lurches forward.

This could be seen as playful, but it could also be seen as a failure of the car to temper the changing of the throttle map. A throttle map is literally how much power the car delivers for a given amount of pedal application. An aggressive throttle map, like on GT mode, means quick acceleration with just a light brush of the gas pedal. A relaxed throttle map, like on Eco, requires a bigger movement.

Most cars ease the transition when changing from one mode to the next, but not the EV6 GT. If you’re tooling around in Eco mode and pop into GT, the car immediately snaps to this next twitchier mapping, also snapping the heads of your passengers back into their headrests. If you’re not careful, it’ll send your car flying into the bumper of the car ahead, too. In time, you’ll learn to lift off the gas before hitting that GT button, but you really shouldn’t have to.

This twitch does at least give everyone in the car fair warning of the violence that is to come. Put simply, the EV6 GT does not pull any punches. It is relentlessly rapid around town. See that gap in traffic? You’re there. Light about to turn red? Hit the accelerator, and you’ll shift its spectrum entirely.

The accelerative brutality only eases when you get up to highway speeds. Here, the torque of the Kia’s electric motors tapers, and that’s for the best. You don’t really want a car that jumpy at that speed. It’s better to toggle down to a more sedate drive mode, save a few watts, and soften the adaptive suspension while you’re at it.

The EV6 is still firm on rough roads even in comfort mode, jostling a bit over separation joints and the like, but most of the time, it’s a fine cruiser that’s comfortable and quiet. In fact, I’d say the EV6 GT does a better job at cruising than corner attacking. Even in GT mode, with the suspension on its most firm, the handling is sedate. I think this mostly comes down to steering that feels sluggish off the center thanks to the variable ratio and, problematically, never offers much in the way of feel. While the throttle pedal loves to shout, the steering wheel is always muted.

*The EV6 GT does a better job at cruising than corner attacking.*

Weird and wonderful

Any EV6 is worth a second look back in the parking lot — and the GT even more so. Though Kia’s chosen color palette leaves a bit to be desired (red, blue, white, black, or silver), the GT looks fresh and clean in red, despite the clashing chartreuse calipers. The EV6 looks like nothing else on the road. Its styling is wild and weird and wonderful, a medley of organic forms bisected by creases and LED lighting to form what looks like a cyberpunk canvas.

The inside is a lot less radical but no less appealing. Funky patterns etched across the soft-touch dashboard and matched elsewhere on the interior pair nicely with the faux brushed steel ahead of the rotary shifter and the overall mishmash of shapes and planes. Plastics and materials are generally good, from the suede door card inserts to the leather on the bespoke GT seats. Only an expanse of glossy, fingerprinty piano black lets the overall effect down.

Black is very much the theme here. Chartreuse stitching and piping on the front seats help a bit, and RGB customizable accent lighting zhuzh things up at night, but much of the details inside this car just sort of fade into a monotone background.

*The UX is similar to other infotainment screens found across Hyundai and Kia’s lineup.*

*You’ll need those brake calipers with this one.*

Regardless, the interior is eminently practical, with comfortable seating for five grown adults, plenty of headroom front or rear, and acres of legroom on the flat floor for rear passengers. Those seats, of course, fold down, giving room for 50.2 cubic feet of stuff, but don’t go looking for extra storage up front. Yes, there is a little cargo cubby up under the hood, but it’s barely big enough to store a charging cable and maybe a personal pie — but only if you prefer thin crust.

Kia’s UVO infotainment experience runs across two 12.3-inch displays joined at the hip, with a generous bezel between them. This system is so ubiquitous now, found in some flavor across basically every modern Kia, Hyundai, and Genesis, that it’s hard to get excited about finding it here. It feeds your media through a powerful, if a bit boomy, Meridian sound system. Though basic, UVO is snappy and responsive with support for Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, though sadly, not wirelessly.

Also sad? UVO has not seen any real customization for the EV6 GT. Proper performance editions from BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and others come replete with fancy lap timers and integrated G meters, dials and knobs for fiddling with differential settings, and all sorts of goodies that make those performance cars feel special enough to earn their exorbitant premiums.

There’s nothing of the sort here, not even in the cool augmented reality heads-up display, which will project an arrow over your next turn on the road — if you don’t mind using the mediocre built-in navigation experience. Kia didn’t even add any new Dynamic Sound modes. These fake engine noises are occasionally fun, especially Dynamic, which does an almost compelling job of aping a combustion engine with a little digital flare. It even has a somewhat lumpy idle that does help to get your juices flowing a bit, but it probably won’t be long before you disable it again.

Weirdly, the pitch of these sounds seems tied not to the power output of the motors but, instead, to how far you’re pushing down the accelerator, which means that, for a given speed, the EV6 GT is actually louder in Eco mode than in GT. That ain’t right.

The gauge cluster dynamically reconfigures itself to match the drive mode. Push the GT button on the wheel, and the gauge cluster pops into a sportier, cleaner mode of swooping gradients. It wouldn’t look out of place in Tron, if Tron had more fluorescent greens and fewer cool blues.

*The EV6 GT lacks pizzazz but is still fun to drive.*

A somewhat sedate rocket ship

It really is a shame that the EV6 GT doesn’t have a little more pizzazz and a lot more feel to match its wild performance. It is an absolute rocket ship, a car where speed is provided at an almost 1-to-1 ratio with the angle of your right foot. That ease of acceleration is thrilling, but the lack of engagement from the steering and the somewhat relaxed handling just make the whole thing feel a little less special than I wanted.

But special or not, the EV6 GT is a phenomenal car and a proper achievement. Remember, this is Kia’s first performance-oriented EV ever — and for less than a $13,000 premium over a base EV6. If you don’t mind losing the range, then this is one splurge that’s hard to resist. After all, it’s not every day you can have all the horsepower you could ever want and never have to feel the least bit guilty about it.

Photography by Tim Stevens for The Verge

Leverage the Power of Data To Monitor Home Energy Efficiency

You need information to make intelligent choices about how to save energy in your home. Data is power. Here's how to get started. The post Leverage the Power of Data To Monitor Home Energy Efficiency appeared first on TechNewsWorld.

Hackers reportedly holding Western Digital data hostage

Flash Memory Companies Photo Illustrations — Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Hackers who claim to have breached Western Digital have reportedly stolen around 10 terabytes of data from the company and are holding it hostage. TechCrunch spoke to the hackers who appear to have control over Western Digital’s code-signing certificate, private phone numbers belonging to company executives, stolen SAP Backoffice data, and even managed to gain administrator access to Western Digital’s Microsoft Azure instance.

Western Digital reported a “network security incident” earlier this month that allowed an “unauthorized third party” to access data from the company’s systems. The incident put Western Digital’s cloud network out of action for 10 days, and the company only just managed to bring its My Cloud service back online earlier this week.

TechCrunch reports that the hackers are trying to negotiate a ransom payment of a “minimum 8 figures” to not publish the stolen data. Western Digital declined to comment on the situation, and the company is currently coordinating with law enforcement authorities and working with outside security and forensic experts.

Western Digital has admitted that hackers “gained access to a number of the company’s systems,” and that the network security incident was first discovered on March 26th and disclosed a week later. While TechCrunch claims “reams” of customer data has been stolen, the report doesn’t detail exactly what.

Either way, Western Digital’s lack of transparency here isn’t exactly reassuring for customers. The company described its My Cloud issues as merely a “service interruption” or “outage,” in support notes published on Twitter. It’s clearly a little more than your average service outage.

This isn’t the first time Western Digital has been hit by security issues. Hackers were able to mass-wipe lots of My Book Live cloud storage products in 2021 due to a 0-day exploit. Petabytes of data was estimated to be affected, and Western Digital was forced to provide free data recovery services and a trade-in program for My Book Live owners.

As a presenter I can tell you, TV news needs a human touch. This AI newsreader won’t give you that | Simon McCoy

They may be cheaper and less trouble, but they’ll never have the gravitas, the engagement or the raised eyebrow of reporters like me

“The news is … there is no news.” With those words, outside St Mary’s Hospital in London awaiting the birth of Prince George in July 2013, my reporting for the BBC went viral on the internet. My somewhat testy response to standing in the street with nothing to say had struck a chord with many. Not for what I was saying but the way I was saying it. The resigned look. The world-weary tone. The slight annoyance that four decades of reporting from around the globe had led to this moment. I couldn’t hide it. Viewers knew what I was thinking and feeling. Some were annoyed by it. Quite a few people appreciated it – because they could relate to it. Because they are human. And so am I.

“Fedha” is not human. Yes, the blond woman with light-coloured eyes, wearing a black jacket and a white T-shirt, looks human. She even sounds human. But this week she was introduced as the first presenter in Kuwait who works by artificial intelligence. “What kind of news do you prefer? Let’s hear your opinions,” she says in Arabic.

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Pushing Buttons: The Super Mario Bros Movie is just fine – but what else did you expect?

In this week’s newsletter: After decades of offensively terrible video game adaptations, I’m more than happy to settle for one that is simply OK

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I don’t think I’ve ever been to see a film on its opening day – but I made the effort for the Super Mario Bros Movie last week. Using my six-year-old as a convenient excuse to see a children’s movie in the middle of the day, I sat in a suspiciously quiet cinema and tried to keep a handle on my trepidation. The reviews had come out the day before, and they weren’t good. I anticipated spending the next 90 minutes feeling bitterly disappointed that, yet again, Hollywood had screwed up a golden opportunity to bring a beloved game to the big screen.

Perhaps my expectations were just exceedingly low – I have, after all, suffered through 30 years of offensively terrible movie adaptations of video games, with only the occasional reprieve – but I thought it was fine. It’s not as surreal and funny as Detective Pikachu, nor as creative as the video-game-inspired Wreck-it Ralph or Free Guy, but it looked right, sounded right, and didn’t labour the nostalgia too much. Plenty of critics have characterised the film as a lazy and meaningless sequence of empty references – and, yes, it suffers from a distinct absence of plot – but how much narrative justification do we actually need for a trip down Rainbow Road in go-karts? (Side note: a Mad Max/Mario Kart mashup road battle was not something I was expecting from this film.)

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The AI Revolution Is at a Tipping Point

We spoke with Rootstrap co-founder and machine learning expert Anthony Figueroa about the issues surrounding the need for developer controls of machine learning and the potential need for government regulation of artificial intelligence. The post The AI Revolution Is at a Tipping Point appeared first on TechNewsWorld.

PBS also stops tweeting after being hit with ‘Government-funded Media’ label

In this photo illustration, the Public Broadcasting Service... — Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has stopped tweeting from its primary Twitter account after it was given a “Government-funded Media” label. As of this writing the @PBS account hasn’t tweeted since April 8th, and the organization has since confirmed that it currently has “no plans” to resume posting to Twitter.

“PBS stopped tweeting from our account when we learned of the change and we have no plans to resume at this time,” PBS spokesman Jason Phelps tells Bloomberg. “We are continuing to monitor the ever-changing situation closely.” While PBS isn’t tweeting from its main account, it’s continued to put out content on affiliated accounts like @NewsHour, which have not had the “Government-funded” label applied.

The decision by the public broadcaster follows a similar move made by National Public Radio (NPR), which officially announced it would be leaving Twitter after being labeled as government-funded. Twitter initially labeled NPR as “US state-affiliated media,” using terminology usually reserved for state-backed outlets that aren’t editorially independent like Russia Today or China Xinhua News. It later changed the label to “Government-funded Media.”

“We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public’s understanding of our editorial independence,” NPR CEO John Lansing said in a memo to staff.

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk, who has long had an antagonistic relationship with the media, has doubled down on the decision to apply the labels to US public broadcasters. In a series of tweets, Musk called for NPR to be defunded, and said that the organization was hypocritical for calling its federal funding essential while also promoting its own editorial independence.

Best podcasts of the week: Jon Ronson and the ex-debutante who turned neo-Nazi – and then informant

In this week’s newsletter: The master storyteller investigates Carol Howe’s extraordinary life in The Debutante. Plus: five of the best real-life mystery podcasts

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The Debutante
Audible, all episodes out now
Jon Ronson hosts another addictive series, this time investigating Carol Howe – the glamorous former debutante who joined the neo-Nazi movement responsible for the Oklahoma bombings and became a government informant. A fascinated Ronson speaks to those whose lives collided with Howe’s, and asks: “Is it really the case that, had she been listened to, the bombing might never have happened?” Hollie Richardson

When Your Boss Is an App

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iPhone 15 Pro could end up having physical rather than solid-state buttons after all

Side of iPhone 14 Pro showing volume buttons and alert switch. — *The iPhone 14 Pro’s physical buttons, which could re-appear on this year’s followup.* | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

After months of leaks saying Apple will ditch the physical volume and power buttons on this year’s iPhone 15 Pro in favor of fancy solid-state replacements, one of the original sources of the rumor now says it’s not happening.

“My latest survey indicates that due to unresolved technical issues before mass production, both high-end iPhone 15 Pro models (Pro & Pro Max) will abandon the closely-watched solid-state button design and revert to the traditional physical button design,” reputable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote in a Medium post. 9to5Mac reports that another analyst, Haitong Tech’s Jeff Pu, also thinks Apple will stick with traditional mechanical buttons for iPhone 15 Pro models.

Two iPhone 15 Pro models’ removal of solid-state button design negatively affects Cirrus Logic and AAC / 兩款iPhone 15 Pro取消固態按鍵設計不利Cirrus Logic與瑞聲科技https://t.co/Ot81sCQzgk
— 郭明錤 (Ming-Chi Kuo) (@mingchikuo) April 12, 2023

Rumors that Apple would switch to solid-state buttons for the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max emerged around October last year. At the time, Kuo predicted that Apple would switch to a solid-state solution similar to what it used for the home button on the iPhone 8 for the upcoming phones’ volume and power buttons (though there was no mention of the change coming to the non-Pro iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus). Instead of mechanical buttons, a pair of Taptic Engines would generate haptic feedback on a button press. Subsequently leaked phone renders appeared to confirm this design change.

In today’s note, Kuo doesn’t offer many details on the “unresolved technical issues” that prompted Apple to remove the feature, but says that switching to simpler physical buttons at this stage shouldn’t result in any delays on the phones’ production schedules. Kuo notes that it’s not great news for the suppliers of the solid-state button hardware, however. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t still happen in future years, but not for 2023.

While today’s news seems to eliminate one of the major changes coming to this year’s iPhone lineup, there are other rumored upgrades on the way including using a USB-C charging port rather than Lightning, and adding Dynamic Islands to this year’s non-Pro models.

Elon Musk says Twitter at ‘roughly break-even’ after ‘quite painful’ ownership – business live

Twitter owner says ‘constant criticism and attack’ has been ‘rough’, but that company is trending towards being cashflow positive very soon

Elon Musk says BBC’s Twitter tag will be changed from ‘government-funded media’

Demand for cinema trips picked up last year as pandemic restrictions were lifted, boutique operator Everyman Media Group reports this morning

Everyman, which runs 38 venues across the UK, told shareholders today that its revenues swelled to £78.8m in 2022, up from £49m in 2021, with admissions rising to 3.4m from 2m.

Supported by an increasingly strong pipeline of new releases, commitment to the theatrical window from studios and new investment from streamers in films for theatrical release, we view our prospects with increasing confidence.

Moving through 2023 and beyond, the Everyman proposition feels as relevant as ever.”

Several shareholders in the group, which has been listed in London since it demerged from pubs business Mitchells & Butlers two decades ago, asked at an investor roadshow last month whether it had any plans to switch its primary listing to the US, IHG chief executive Keith Barr told the Financial Times.

The group has a secondary listing in New York. “When we listed, there was probably no reason to even think about listing in the US for our primary listing because the FTSE was the FTSE and it was incredibly liquid . . . but things have changed,” said Barr.

It’s been 84 years, but Strava finally has a Spotify integration

Phone showing Strava/Spotify integration with plants in the background — *You don’t need a Spotify or Strava subscription to use the new in-app widget.* | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

Strava has been around since 2009, but today, the popular fitness app is finally, finally adding an in-app Spotify integration. Instead of having to switch between apps, you can now access your Spotify favorites from the workout record screen. And, perhaps the best part is you don’t need a Spotify or Strava subscription to use it.

“It’s just one of those things we know people have been asking for a long time, and finally, the stars aligned,” says Mateo Ortega, Strava’s vice president of connected partnerships. When asked about the possibility of adding other platforms, Ortega didn’t rule out the possibility but noted that Spotify was a clear first step.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see why Strava and Spotify partnering matters. Spotify is the most popular audio streaming service. Strava is one of the most popular fitness apps. Millions of people rely on music, podcasts, and audiobooks to distract from the physical agony of a grueling workout (or, you know, keep them motivated during the tough parts). But aside from the obvious reasons, an in-app Spotify widget eliminates the need to toggle between apps any time you want to switch up your tunes. Less time fumbling on your phone means you’re more likely to stay in the zone.

Screenshot of Spotify and Strava integration in the app — *You’ll see this once you tap the music icon in the Record screen.*

Screenshot of the Spotify widget in the Strava app — *The Spotify integration appears as an in-app widget.*

On the other hand, the integration seems like a long overdue addition — one that’s perhaps too late now that smartwatches and fitness trackers can also stream music. For example, I personally found this to be a bigger problem when I relied on my phone to track workouts circa 2013. Plus, several other fitness apps have added Spotify or Apple Music integrations over the years.

That said, when I tried the integration for myself, I could see the appeal. All you have to do is tap the record button and then select the music icon in the right-hand corner. From there, you’re prompted to connect your Spotify account. Once that’s done, you can browse through your top mixes in a little widget within the Spotify app. This is a bit different from some other music integrations that I’ve tried. In the Runkeeper app, for example, enabling Spotify just redirects me to the app’s running playlist page. It doesn’t actually bring me to the playlists that I’ve painstakingly curated. Likewise, the Apple Music integration auto-plays a single playlist and displays only the current track at the top of the screen.

It’s a small difference, but I was pleasantly surprised by Strava’s in-app widget approach. Not only can you swipe up to see what’s in the queue, but you can browse through various mixes — ones that you’ve curated yourself, as well as frequently listened to Spotify-made playlists.

“If people forget that they used to have to open Spotify, come back to Strava and hit record, and to change a song, switch back to Spotify — if it changes their behavior and keeps them in the moment? That is how this is going to be a good integration for us,” says Ortega.

The only quirk I noticed is that if you pause for a long-ish period, you’ll be asked whether you want to continue listening. You’ll have to reauthorize Spotify, though that part happens automatically once you hit play again.

This integration ultimately works best for users who use the Strava app to record workouts, as opposed to those who import them from other services or trackers. Even so, the move bolsters Strava’s status as a de facto fitness hub.

Right now, the digital fitness and wellness space is made of a bunch of little fiefdoms; there are a ton of apps for tracking runs, rides, nutrition, and route planning but only a handful of ways to view all of your data in one place. But while you can consolidate your data within Apple and Google’s health APIs, it leaves a gaping hole in terms of community. As Fitbit recently proved, making social features dependent on hardware has its downsides when social features are shut down or friends opt for a different platform.

“Our strategy has always been to be the Switzerland of fitness devices. We want everything to work with Strava,” Ortega says.

And by everything, Ortega isn’t really exaggerating. The Lululemon Mirror, Peloton bikes and other equipment, Garmins, Apple Watches, Komoot, Zwift, and MyFitnessPal — these are just a handful of the platforms that work with Strava. This is what makes Strava’s aggressive integration strategy savvy. It doesn’t really matter what fitness tracker or app you use — you can still connect with friends regardless of the platform. So it’s no surprise that Strava has emerged as a popular place to share your fitness exploits and keep your data in one place. Adding Spotify to the mix just gives Strava users more reasons to stick around.

lundi 17 avril 2023

Monthly

Annual

Corporate

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dimanche 16 avril 2023

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vendredi 14 avril 2023

GPT hype and the fallacy of version numbers

Making power

Weird and wonderful

A somewhat sedate rocket ship

jeudi 13 avril 2023

mercredi 12 avril 2023