Building on initial reports in February, leaked images of the supposed upcoming disc-less Xbox Series X  have surfaced.

eXputer has revealed exclusive leaked images of the new version of Microsoft’s console. It appears that the new drive-less Series X will be available in the same ‘robot white’ color that the Series S is currently available in.

Very few details are known at present but the lack of a disc drive means that the new version of the Series X will probably retail around $50 – $100 cheaper than the current version. As well as the removal of the disc drive and the color change, the new console will reportedly have an improved heatsink, but little to no other hardware changes.

An improved heatsink will provide a slight performance enhancement because cooler components run better, but nothing revealed so far suggests the gains will be enough to warrant replacing old consoles with new ones.

What about the previously leaked Xbox console refresh?

eXputer’s report suggests that the new disc-less Series X could launch in June or July (while acknowledging that this is changeable, as anything is with regards to leaks.

It is unclear at present how the new console affects a previously leaked refresh of the console. Revealed in documents related to FTC v. Microsoft last year, a project codenamed Brooklin suggested Microsoft was already planning to launch an “adorably all digital” Xbox Series X, but with much greater changes to the design than color.

The leaked design featured a cylindrical console with plans for updated technology, improved sustainability, and more internal storage alongside a new controller, which would ship for $499, the same price Series X consoles currently retail for.

The Verge obtained an internal email where Xbox CEO Phil Spencer addressed the leaks and suggested that part of the downside of leaks is how quickly things change in the company’s plans.

We've seen the conversation around old emails and documents. It is hard to see our team's work shared in this way because so much has changed and there's so much to be excited about right now, and in the future. We will share the real plans when we are ready.

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) September 19, 2023

So don’t hold your breath about the new leak either – who knows what Microsoft will eventually release. All we can really say for sure is that they are continuing to work on the Xbox console series and may have some plans to release a new version of their flagship console.

The success of GamePass as a digital streaming platform and two leaks that show consoles with no drive for physical media do raise questions however, especially as Spencer has previously said in an interview with Game File that getting rid of physical media was not a strategic decision for Microsoft.

Featured image credit: eXputer

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Rockstar Game’s acclaimed western game Red Dead Online is encountering a flying horse glitch in the game after a recent patch

Patch 1.35 dropped to fix several quality-of-life issues that loyal fans of the game fed back to developers. Coincidentally, one new issue that would spawn out of the update couldn’t be predicted by anyone, but flying horses is a new one for all players of the old-timey shooter.

Red Dead Online flying horses

Initially reported via social media by user @OnlyPVPCat, the issue would show a player riding a horse over what looks like St Denis. The city is a landmark part of the game and a popular spot for online players picking up guns, and ammo.

New bug discovered in Red Dead Online after resent patch – flying horses (on consoles, not PC!). It's the funniest thing that ever happened to this game, but still I hope Rockstar will fix it asap or flying griefers will be in every lobby pic.twitter.com/VIwhbgE46T

— OnlyPVPCat (@OnlyPVPCat) March 25, 2024

The rider is in the sky hurling dynamite and Molotov cocktails down on the urban sprawl. PVPCat flagged the issue as a possible source of online harassment saying:

“It’s the funniest thing that ever happened to this game, but still I hope Rockstar will fix it asap or flying griefers will be in every lobby :).”

‘Griefers’ are disruptive gamers that thrive off of issues or glitches in games to exploit them purely to troll other players. This type of gamer is the root of players choosing to toggle off the player-versus-player (PVP) elements of a game. Thankfully Red Dead Online has this option.

The fact that these bugs can be used for ill-gotten gains should be a concern for Rockstar, but the studio is proactive with their community when it comes to bugs.

Rockstar Patch Notes

However, not all of the fixes in last week’s patch are bad. Some great additions came into the game’s stability, and performance and brought online-specific changes:

• Red Dead Online General Fixes
• Fixed an issue that resulted in Naturalist samples not being counted toward Daily Challenges
• Fixed an issue in Dead of Night that resulted in Night Stalkers being able to collect the Night Stalker mask
• Fixed an issue that resulted in ambient vehicles not appearing in certain content
• Fixed an issue that resulted in Free Roam Missions not launching
• Improved an issue that resulted in players becoming stuck when entering the stables
• Improved an issue that resulted in players being unable to summon horses and wagons
• Voice Chat now defaults to Off

The full list of changes from the Grand Theft Auto studio can be viewed here. We’ll be keeping on top of any other flying animals that happen to take to the skies in the American old west.

Featured image: Ideogram

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Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, is set to be rolled out to all premium X users starting from the end of this week.

Musk himself took to the social media platform on Tuesday (Mar. 26) to share the news, with the AI tool only previously being accessible to Premium+ subscribers who pay $168 per year for the social network.

Later this week, Grok will be enabled for all premium subscribers (not just premium+) https://t.co/4u9lbLwe23

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 26, 2024

Users can ask the chatbot any burning questions or queries and the answer can be directly posted onto X. An instructional video has been shared to give insight into how this will work and look alongside the Tesla-owner’s announcement post.

This news comes amidst an escalating rivalry with OpenAI and an ongoing lawsuit. Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, as well as others, accusing them of violating contractual commitments established during the company’s inception in 2015.

The entrepreneur helped to co-found the ChatGPT parent company but left in 2018 citing a conflict of interest with the AI in his business.

Now, his attention has turned to his startup xAI which has since developed the Grok software.

What is Grok AI?

Grok AI was introduced by Elon Musk in November 2023 and it quickly became hailed as a substitute for ChatGPT – except it’s only available via the X platform.

Unlike other artificial intelligence technology, Grok has been programmed to exhibit a politically incorrect and witty personality, drawing inspiration from conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan.

It has real-time knowledge of current events too, including developments in the world of AI technology. It can craft stories, summarize website content, translate language, and research and answer questions.

Historically, it’s only been available to X subscribers on the most exclusive and expensive tier. This is described as a ‘special group’ on the app website.

It’s not yet known when Grok AI will be available to everyone, with the team focusing on development throughout.

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Newly unsealed documents from a federal court in California are accusing Meta of snooping on Snapchat, YouTube, and Amazon users through their covert ‘Project Ghostbusters.’

The court released the documents on Tuesday (Mar. 26) from a class action lawsuit between consumers and Meta, revealing further insight into the technology conglomerate.

According to TechCrunch, the secret Facebook initiative was launched in 2016 and aimed to intercept and decrypt the encrypted network traffic between Snapchat’s app users and its servers.

It’s reported that the parent company of Facebook then extensively analyzed the network traffic patterns to gain an advantage over its competitors. It’s said this was able to be carried out through the VPN-like service Onavo that the Meta-based company acquired in 2013.

Onavo was eventually shut down just some years later in 2019 due to an investigation that revealed that Facebook had been secretly paying teenagers to use the software so the company could access all of their web activity.

Court documents suggest the technique was later used for the video-sharing website YouTube and online shopping site Amazon.

Facebook wanted ‘reliable analytics’ for Snapchat

Within the documents, it’s reported that emails discussing the project were also leaked. On June 9, 2016, Mark Zuckerberg is believed to have sent an email saying: “When someone asks a question about Snapchat, the answer is usually that because their traffic is encrypted we have no analytics about them.”

“Given how quickly they’re growing, it seems important to figure out a new way to get reliable analytics about them. Perhaps we need to do panels or write custom software. You should figure out how to do this.”

The Onavo team is then thought to have taken on the project which allowed them “to read what would otherwise be encrypted traffic so we can measure in-app usage.”

Not all of the Facebook team was in favor of the project, including the then-head of infrastructure engineering Jay Parikh and then-head of security engineering Pedro Canahuati.

An email is included in the court documents from Canahuati who wrote: “I can’t think of a good argument for why this is okay. No security person is ever comfortable with this, no matter what consent we get from the general public.

“The general public just doesn’t know how this stuff works…”

These documents come amidst numerous legal challenges against Meta. Just this month, the U.S. appeals court rejected Meta’s bid to halt a privacy investigation by the Federal Trade Commission.

Featured Image: Photo by Grant S on Unsplash

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Reddit enjoyed a jump in the price of its shares on Tuesday (26 March) in the continuation of a strong launch of options on the stock.

An 11% increase and a current price of $67.5 looks set to add more than $1 billion to the market value of the social media platform, whilst it is also on track to double the $34 IPO price.

Reddit is a San Francisco-based site that combines elements of social media, message boards, and news aggregation. It was founded in June 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, who sold the platform to Condé Nast the following year. Huffman left the company in 2009 before returning as CEO in 2015.

The company is seeking a valuation of up to $6.4 billion in its flotation on the New York Stock Exchange.

Reaction to the Reddit stock price boom

Jeremy Goldman, a senior director of client briefings at Emarketer, formerly Insider Intelligence, spoke on the early trading and returns on the new stock.

“More bullish investors have bought options in Reddit, which is part of its early stock market success in its first full week of trading,” he said. 

Goldman added, “From my estimates, about 90,000 options have changed hands, possibly more.”

The options launch enticed significant bets on the stock on Monday, closing up around 30% and crowning Reddit as the top percentage gainer on the NYSE. 

If the current trajectory remains, the company is well-poised to smash through its $6.4b target and also the $10 billion valuation Reddit received in a 2021 private fundraising round. 

Lo Toney, founding managing partner of Plexo Capital and Reddit shareholder told CNBC that Reddit’s debut was “a positive sign not only for the company, but I think also the tech industry and what it might mean for future IPOs.”

“One thing we know with certainty is that there (was) a lot of investor appetite during the roadshow for Reddit, and we see that it’s continuing to hold up well.”

Toney added, “Clearly the market is signaling there’s an appetite for more companies to come to the public markets.”

Featured image: Generated by Ideogram

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It’s now easier to avoid seeing political content across Instagram and Threads thanks to the new opt-out setting.

This has been rolled out to accounts following Meta announcing the development of this feature in February via a blog post. They describe this as being an addition to their ‘existing approach’ to how they treat political content.

The feature has been added to the ‘Content preferences’ section under account settings on Instagram. Users can choose to toggle between ‘Limit political content from people you don’t follow’ and not limiting this. The default is set to the former option.

The photo-sharing app is synced to recently launched Threads so the update will apply to that platform too.

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri took to Threads six weeks ago to update people on this new addition: “If you follow political accounts on Threads or Instagram, we want to avoid getting between you and their content.

“That said, we also don’t want to proactively amplify political content from accounts you don’t follow…

“Over the next few weeks we will be improving how we avoid recommending content about politics on recommendation surfaces – like Explore, Reels, and Suggested Users – across both Instagram and Threads…

“Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to choose to interact with political content, while respecting each person’s appetite for it.”

‘People want to see less politics’

This update comes after a report on the Meta Transparency Center which directly states that people “have told us they want to see less political content.”

The team at Meta says this has prompted a refinement in their approach on Facebook and then other apps too.

For Facebook, AI systems are used to consider personalized signals to understand what is meaningful for each individual user.

Meta says this is how political content is ranked within the main Facebook feed, moving away from a ranking system based on engagement signals like how likely someone is to comment on or share content.

They’ve discovered that those aren’t reliable indicators that the content is valuable to that specific person.

Featured image: Via the Instagram blog

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With the ban looming, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is trying to diversify by promoting its other social media platform named Lemon8.

According to the New York Post, the company is paying influencers to suggest the other app via TikTok.

Often described as being similar to Pinterest, Lemon8 allows users to share photos and look for inspiration from others. It’s said to be very similar to the Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu.

A content creator spoke exclusively to The Post saying she was offered $200 for a brand deal where she was asked to upload ‘a video that promotes Lemon8 on TikTok.’

While she didn’t take ByteDance up on the offer, other influencers are starting to speak out about the Pinterest-like platform. It’s unclear whether there’s been a move to the app organically or if these creators have been paid to post.

In March of last year, Lemon8 was in the top 10 most downloaded apps. Just a month later the app’s daily active users almost halved from 11,930 to 6,360. The current statistics have not yet been publicized.

This all comes after ongoing debate around the ban of video app TikTok, with the US House of Representatives having passed a bill on March 13 that calls for the Chinese developer to divest from the company or be banned from US app stores.

Reactions to ByteDance’s other app Lemon8 aren’t too favorable

There seems to be some confusion around the app by TikTok users as people say they’re not sure what Lemon8 actually does. In one video by user Audreygentilee she asks her audience ‘wtf is lemon8.’

@audreygentilee

im so serious what is it #lemon8

♬ original sound – audreygentile

Some social media fans don’t seem to be too convinced as yet, with one person responding to that video saying “I wanted to get it at first bc it looks cool but idek what it is and now I’ve seen it too much I will never get it.”

Another said, “i downloaded it to see as well, and there was like a list you had to do to sign up it was so confusing so i just stopped and never got an account good luck if you find out lmk.”

Featured image: Via Apple App Store

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WhatsApp is upping its game and focusing on its media sharing capabilities within the app, as updates are being tested for users.

The first to be improved is shared images which have notoriously seen a reduction in quality when sent to another user.

On Monday (Mar. 25) WhatsApp news site WABetaInfo found a new update that is being rolled out through the Google Play Beta Program which addresses this issue.

The feature focuses solely on media upload quality, with users soon able to have the option of choosing a higher grade of quality when sending over photos. This is available to some beta testers but will be accessible to more users over the coming days as part of version 2.24.7.17.

The Meta-owned company isn’t just leaving the multimedia upgrades there, as they’ve been turning its attention to videos too.

The latest iOS version that can be downloaded on the App Store is complete with a feature that has been under testing for some months now. Similar to video streaming platforms like Netflix and YouTube, you can now forward and rewind videos.

Double tapping on the right or left-hand side of the screen will move the video forward or backwards by 10 seconds.

The messaging company is reportedly working on other features too including filtering group chats, and sharing status updates and favorites.

WhatsApp developing AI features

With Meta as its parent company, it’s no surprise that the app is developing artificial intelligence (AI) features. Ask Meta AI is reportedly under development as part of version 2.24.7.14.

This would allow users to enter queries into the search bar, with WhatsApp enhancing the process by suggesting some prompts along the way.

When the command or question is submitted, Meta AI will answer and initiate a conversation. This should help people with common searches and obtain information quicker than having to exit the app and visit a browsing tool.

This hasn’t yet been tested, so will need to go through a beta testing program before it’s available to everyone. There isn’t a known date for this announcement or launch.

Featured image: Photo by Mourizal Zativa on Unsplash

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill into law to effectively ban young children from social media.

The restrictive measure for minors has been introduced as a response to the growing concerns over the negative influence of various apps on young people in the United States.

Under the new legislation to be introduced on 1 January 2025, Florida will prohibit children aged 13 and under from having access to social media, whilst 14 and 15-year-olds will require parental consent to be online.

Speaking on Monday (25 March), Governor DeSantis explained his administration is merely “trying to help parents navigate this very difficult terrain that we have now with raising kids.” 

Governor Ron DeSantis Signs HB3 to Protect Children from the Harms of Social Media https://t.co/9nylhaOIXI

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 25, 2024

Republican Speaker Paul Renner viewed this issue as a top legislative priority and he was delighted with the outcome, stating “A child in their brain development doesn’t have the ability to know that they’re being sucked into these addictive technologies and to see the harm and step away from it, and because of that we have to step in for them,” 

The bill comes at a time when another social media battle is capturing many headlines with the proposed ban on Chinese-owned TikTok in the United States after federal lawmakers gave their approval. 

There is a significant push underway to resist moves to curb the crackdown on TikTok and similar moves are in the offing to introduce a challenge in Florida.

Expected challenge against the social media legislation

Democratic Representative Anna Eskamani believes the new law “goes too far in taking away parents’ rights”, adding “Instead of banning social media access, it would be better to ensure improved parental oversight tools and improved access to data to stop bad actors — alongside major investments in Florida’s mental health systems and programs.”

Claims have also been made about restricting freedoms and preventing Americans from accessing information online. 

Khara Boender, a state policy director for the Computer & Communications Industry Association, said in a press release that she understands some of the rationale for online safety but expressed doubts on how effective the legislation will “meaningfully achieve those goals without infringing on the First Amendment rights of younger users,” with the anticipation of a robust legal challenge to follow.

Image credit: Photo by Ashley Satanosky on Unsplash

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Millions of Americans have been caught up in a Chinese hacking ploy which has resulted in seven Chinese men being charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and wire fraud.

Yesterday (Mar. 25) the indictment setting out the charges was announced via a press release from the Office of Public Affairs.

The seven men are said to be involved in a People’s Republic of China-based hacking group that has spent around 14 years targeting U.S. and foreign critics, businesses and political officials.

More than 10,000 ‘malicious’ emails were said to be sent within the hacking community known as Advanced Persistent Threat 31. Some of this activity resulted in compromises of peoples’ networks, email accounts, cloud storage accounts and telephone call records.

Court documents say the group’s activities have potentially compromised work and personal email accounts, cloud storage accounts and telephone call records belonging to millions of Americans.

Many of the emails were under the guise of news articles that were sent to the target. These emails contained hidden tracking links and once opened the hackers would then gain access to and information about the recipient. The group then used this information to engage in more direct targeted hacking.

People working in the White House, at the Departments of Justice, Commerce, Treasury, and State, the U.S. Senators and Representatives of both political parties were targeted.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco says: “The Department of Justice will relentlessly pursue, expose, and hold accountable cyber criminals who would undermine democracies and threaten our national security.”

Both the UK and New Zealand’s governments have also accused China of being responsible for cyber campaigns. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington DC said: “without valid evidence, relevant countries jumped to an unwarranted conclusion” and “made groundless accusations.”

Embassy Spokesperson on the UK’s hype-up of so-called cyber attacks by China pic.twitter.com/TqACY7NSqq

— Chinese Embassy in UK (@ChineseEmbinUK) March 26, 2024

The international community responds to Chinese hacking allegations

The UK Government has now formally accused China of being behind cyber attacks against Members of Parliament and the Electoral Commission. As a result, sanctions have been imposed.

Two Chinese nationals and a company named Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company Ltd have been sanctioned, resulting in a freezing of assets and a travel ban stopping them from entering or remaining in the UK. UK citizens and businesses have been barred from handling their funds or resources too.

The government says the company is affiliated with Advanced Persistent Threat Group 31.

Authorities in New Zealand have also accused China of targeting its parliamentary network in 2021.

Featured image: Ideogram

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Despite a litany of legal cases against him, former US President Donald Trump’s net worth is now greater than it has ever been and the businessman has earned a place as one of the 500 richest people on the planet.

What is Donald Trump’s net worth?

The incredible boost to Trump’s fortunes comes after the recently completed merger between Trump’s social media company Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and the special purpose acquisition firm Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC). The deal, completed on Monday (Mar. 25) has seen the 77-year-old’s total wealth rise to $6.5bn according to Bloomberg.

Trump owns nearly 80 million shares of the company which operates Truth Social, or around 58%, of the combined entity which will begin trading under the ticker DJT on Tuesday.

At DWAC’s closing price of $49.95 on Monday, Trump’s 58% stake is currently valued at approximately $3.9 billion on paper. This massive increase from just $22.5 million based on the last disclosure forms accounts for the bulk of the $4 billion spike in his net worth over the past few days.

The timing of the merger and the skyrocketing value of his personal fortune could not be better for Trump, who is facing a huge civil fraud penalty. Initially ordered to pay $464 million for a bond to avoid asset seizures, a New York appeals court dramatically lowered that amount to $175 million – a sum Trump claims he can cover.

However, Trump cannot immediately cash in on his new paper fortune from the TMTG merger, as his shares are locked up for roughly six months under the merger agreement terms. There are also lingering questions about the company’s financial viability, with less than $3.5 million in revenue over the first nine months of 2023 while posting a $49 million net loss during that period.

Nevertheless, Trump’s entry into the rarefied air of the world’s highest net-worth individuals represents a striking reversal from the legal and financial woes that seemed to be intensifying against him just 24 hours prior. For now, his long-held assertion that he is a billionaire is indisputable.

Trump took to his network Truth Social to celebrate the news, posting a report from Fox News with the caption, “ALWAYS ONE STEP AHEAD”.

“ALWAYS ONE STEP AHEAD” pic.twitter.com/HTV3iTSKQV

— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) March 26, 2024

Featured image: Generated by Ideogram

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A San Francisco district judge has delivered a scathing response to Elon Musk’s X Corp, throwing out their lawsuit against a campaign group targeting hate speech online.

The case was dismissed in accordance with the state’s anti-Slapp laws which negate legal action taken for the primary concern of censuring free speech.

Slaap is an abbreviation for Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.

US District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco granted the dismissal request by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which had compiled an extensive report on the rapid proliferation of racist, antisemitic and extremist content on X, formerly known as Twitter, since Musk’s takeover of the social media platform.

The ruling does not come as a surprise following a preliminary hearing last month when Breyer called out aspects of Musk’s case as one of the “most vapid extensions of law that I’ve ever heard”.

That was followed up with an emphatic decision, today.

“Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff’s true purpose,” said the US district judge.

“Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose. This case represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech.”

Embarrassing rebuke for Musk and X

Given how Musk sets out his X platform as a bastion of truth and a bulwark against the interests of legacy media, the judges findings will be viewed by some as an embarrassing rebuke for the Tesla, Neuralink billionaire.

He had instigated legal action against CCDH last year, alleging the group had “intentionally and unlawfully accessed data” by scraping the platform’s posts to form its reports. The anti-hate lobby defended its methods as public data gathering and insisted the allegations were “riddled with legal deficiencies”, setting out the argument the true purpose of the lawsuit was to shut down speech which was critical of Musk and his interests.

Image credit: Ideogram

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Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) witnessed their stock price fall more than 2% on Monday (Mar.25) following reports China would restrict the use of their chips and servers in government devices.

The latest salvo in the ongoing chip trade war between the USA and China poses a threat to billions of dollars in sales for the tech giants and could be an intriguing sequel to the story after China warned the proposed TikTok ban would “come back to bite” America.

In recent days, the Beijing administration has set out fresh guidelines to effectively phase out US chips from Intel and AMD with further plans to jettison Microsoft as part of a protectionist ploy to favor and support domestic providers.

China has been pouring significant resources into its semiconductor industry in recent times as it contends with moves from Washington to restrict and stifle the export of the highly sought-after chips, especially those on the cutting edge of development.

As part of these measures, the country’s leading chipmaker SMIC has established new production lines in Shanghai to manufacture next-generation 5-nanometer (5nm) mobile processors. The chips are designed by technology giant Huawei as part of its homegrown Kirin line of smartphone processors.

How will Intel and AMD revenues be impacted by the Chinese restrictions

The importance of the headline curbs is instantly reflected in the figures as China was Intel’s largest market in 2023 with a 27% share of its revenue. It was less than one-fifth for AMD with 15% of its revenue coming from the sprawling Asian state but still of considerable importance.

Stacy Rasgon, a senior figure at Wall Street research firm Bernstein commented on developments with the following analysis:

“A total cessation of China governmental purchases of Intel and AMD CPUs might impact revenue by low-single digits,” he said, with a prediction of a maximum $1.5 billion hit for Intel and a few hundred million dollars for AMD.

Image credit: Ideogram

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The hotly anticipated AI assistant Rabbit R1 is set to begin shipping to US buyers this week.

According to Rabbit, the first batch of Rabbit R1 pre-orders will begin shipping on Sunday, March 31. With US deliveries taking a few weeks the company estimates that the initial R1 orders will be in customers’ hands ‘around April 24th’.

Debuting this year, the sherbet-toned orange Rabbit R1 has generated a lot of hype. Branded as an AI assistant, its arrival raises a lot of questions about the utility and impact of AI hardware in the age of smartphones. The Rabbit R1 is powered in large by San Francisco startup Perplexity’s LLM and the sleek and vibrant design by Teenage Engineering features a physical scroll wheel and a rotating camera, topped off with a cute animated bunny that serves as an avatar for the AI software.

The tech company started taking pre-orders of the Rabbit R1 for $199 in January – with the initial batches of 10,000 devices selling out rapidly. Batch one is set to release for shipping soon, however, buyers who purchased a later batch pre-order will have to wait a few months for theirs to arrive. Pre-orders for batch seven are currently live.

Rabbit is also hosting a pickup party in New York City at the end of April, open to all kinds of buyers and not just bulk orders. More information and details about the party and first deliveries will be released next week.

How does the Rabbit R1 work?

With such an appealing yet minimalist design, it raises the question of how this device works.

Well, the main way that users interact with the R1 is via pushing and holding the ‘Push to Talk’ button. This allows the Rabbit OS to start listening for input. An artfully designed rabbit head slowly rises and flows up and down as you speak your request. Booking a table for dinner? R1’s on it. Asking for a good Easter dinner recipe? No problem (Although no rabbit I hope). What track was sampled on Ice Cube’s hit ‘It Was A Good Day’? These are the types of questions that the Rabbit R1 can handle with ease, according to their controlled video demo.

Featured image: Rabbit: R1

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Analysts have indicated the number of daily users on X is falling, more than a year after Elon Musk acquired the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Since the rebranding, there have been a lot of changes in the social network. In a move geared toward an ambition of delivering an app for everything, Musk has been instrumental in the arrival of a subscription service, including a change to the verification system. Audio calls have been introduced, whilst the Tesla billionaire’s Grok AI tool has also been made available to premium users.

NBC News outlined the findings of two research firms, as well as reports from X, on user numbers. The former presents a detailed breakdown of falling figures but the social media giant has responded in a bullish manner, suggesting that its performance stacks up.

As of February this year, X had 27 million daily active users of its mobile app in the United States, a reduction of 18% from the previous 12 months, found research from Sensor Tower, a San Francisco-based market intelligence company.

It has indicated US user numbers have been flat or falling every month since November 2022, which was also the first full month of Musk’s ownership. Over the full period of his custodianship up until February, Sensor Towers presented a drop in user levels of 23%.

Globally, the bigger picture is almost as bad with daily active users on the mobile app reducing to 174 million in February, down 15% on the year before, said Sensor Tower.

X responds to reports of falling daily user numbers

Abe Yousef, a senior insights analyst at the firm provided further insight on the research report.

Conversely, rival social media platforms reported modest gains in their worldwide user bases over the same period, with Snapchat enjoying an increase of 8.8%, Instagram up 5.3%, Facebook increasing their share by 1.5% and TikTok seeing a nominal gain of 0.5%.

All of the above apps experienced drops in their US user numbers but none to the extent of the steep decline of X.

Yousef stated it had “the most material decline in active users compared to its peers,” adding “this decline in X mobile app active users may have been driven by user frustration over flagrant content, general platform technical issues, and the growing threat of short-form video platforms.”

In defense of its credentials, X published a defiant post on Monday casting doubt on the figures presented by Sensor Tower. It claimed the worldwide user base is higher than what was indicated with 250 million individuals using the service daily, across the world.

You’re absolutely right @XNews. 250 million people use X every day. 550 million people visit the global town square every month.

On average, users spend 30 minutes a day on X. https://t.co/RoEX4RzIxL pic.twitter.com/L9mkoWll44

— Data (@XData) March 18, 2024

Elon Musk had indicated in 2022 around the time of his takeover, Twitter had around 258 million “monetizable daily active users,” reflecting the company’s metric at the time.

Another important finding from Sensor Tower was that 75 of the top 100 US advertisers had departed X since October 2022, taking their spending elsewhere. Late last year, Musk told advertisers at a conference in New York to “Go f*** yourself,” amid claims of blackmail after he was caught up in a furor around antisemitism.

Image credit: Ideogram

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The EU has launched investigations into three of the world’s biggest companies over uncompetitive practices.

Meta, Apple, and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) are being assessed over potential breaches of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) introduced in 2022.

If found guilty the companies could face potentially huge fines of up to 10% of their annual turnover – which is in the hundreds of billions for each of the trio.

On Monday (Mar.25), EU antitrust boss Margrethe Vestager and industry head Thierry Breton announced the investigation.

Today we open 1st #investigations under the #DMA.

We are concerned #Alphabet, @Apple & @Meta are not meeting their obligations e.g:

#Apple & #Alphabet still charge recurring fees to #app #developers
#Meta offers no real choice for users to opt out of #data combination

— Margrethe Vestager (@vestager) March 25, 2024

The DMA only contains obligations for six companies, who just so happen to be the largest tech companies in the world: Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Amazon, ByteDance, Microsoft. However, none of these firms are based in the EU – with ByteDance having headquarters in Beijing and the rest being based in the US.

Apple, Meta and Google are now facing questions over their compliance report. Submitted two weeks ago, the reports have been thoroughly analyzed.

This news will is another blow for Apple after they were fined €1.8 billion three weeks ago for breaching competition laws on music streaming. On top of this, the US also accused Apple of monopolizing the smartphone sector, in a landmark lawsuit against the tech firm brought in last week.

A company spokesperson says the firm will work proactively with the investigation and that they have no doubt that their plan compiles with the Digital Markets Acts.

They made clear that their teams created a variety of mechanisms to ensure compliance with the EU’s landmark legislation, as well as privacy and security protections for EU users.

Apple said: “Throughout, we’ve demonstrated flexibility and responsiveness to the European Commission and developers, listening and incorporating their feedback,”

Elsewhere, a Meta spokesperson said the company’s use of subscriptions as another option for advertising was “a well-established business model across many industries.”

“We designed Subscription for No Ads to address several overlapping regulatory obligations, including the DMA…we will continue to engage constructively with the Commission,” they said.

What are Google, Meta and Facebook being investigated for?

The five different possible acts of non-compliance the EU will investigate are:

• 1 & 2 – Whether Apple and Google are not allowing apps to openly communicate with users and make contracts with them
• 3 – Whether Apple is not offering enough choice to users
• 4 – Whether Meta is unethically asking users to pay to avoid having their data being used for adverts
• 5 – Whether Google is biased towards showing their own company’s products and services in search results

The first two of these investigations is referred to as ‘anti-steering’ – which the EU says it believes the company’s are making it more complicated for apps to inform users of cheaper ways to pay for their services.

The third point covers the EU saying Apple is obliged to allow users to simply uninstall apps, change default settings and be offered ‘choice screens’ to allow them to use different browsers. More so, the EU believes Apple’s current web browser choice screen does not give people enough choice.

The investigation will take around 12 months to complete.

Featured Image: Flickr

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How to access Spotify video-based learning content

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Microsoft has announced the rollout of its Copilot artificial intelligence (AI) assistant across Windows 10 and 11 devices, but the new service does not appear to be operating with full efficiency at present.

An official update last week confirmed Microsoft Copilot was in operation, with the icon visible on the Windows taskbar but all isn’t quite as it seems.

The official blurb describes Copiot for Windows as “an AI-powered assistant that helps you get answers and inspirations from across the web, supports creativity and collaboration, and helps you focus on the task at hand.”

Although the AI assistant is embedded into Windows 11 version 23H2 devices by default, it is disabled on Windows 11 version 22H2 devices.

Further to that, Deskmodder users have uncovered additional access on other Windows 11 devices but crucially, the app is not powering the actual Copilot functionality and range of attributes as it stands.

How to check if Microsoft Copilot is available on my device?

The app may not appear at first glance but once Microsoft Edge is updated to the latest version, it will appear.

To check if the Microsoft Copilot tool is in use on your system, use the following path.

Go to Settings > Apps > Installed Apps.
Change the sort order to “Date installed” or type Copilot into the search field.
If you see Microsoft Copilot listed, it is installed.

You may also want to remove the app from your device with the uninstall option. Navigating to “advanced options” will reveal further details.

More information will be expected, but the findings from Deskmodder appear to indicate the Copilot app as a placeholder in its current form.

Users may also have a different experience, depending on their region, but the overall offering is unclear. Microsoft could later introduce a fully developed app to all devices with an update at some point, whilst there are also murmurs of work on Windows 12 which could be related.

Microsoft has been known to introduce new apps onto devices without a full launch or extensive information so we will have to watch this space.

Image credit: Microsoft

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Apple have announced they will launch their Vision Pro headset in China this year, CEO Tim Cook told Chinese state media.

In a video posted by China Central Television (CCTV) on social media platform Weibo, Cook responded ‘yes’ when asked if the Vision Pro would launch in China at some point this year.

The virtual and augmented reality headset was launched by Apple in the US in February for $3,500.

However, this venture into the Chinese market will see Apple compete with local headset company Pico – which is owned by TikTok owner ByteDance.

Pico’s latest headset – Pico 4 – is currently only available in Europe and East Asia and costs around $700, significantly less than the Vision Pro.

Why is Tom Cook in China?

The Apple CEO has been in China for the last few days, during which he attended the China Development Forum in Beijing as well as visiting a new Apple store in Shanghai. Cook’s visit to China, comes amid a turbulent time for Apple in the Asian country.

The tech giant’s sales in the greater China area fell 13% in the December quarter. The reasons are customers limiting spending and revived competition in the smartphone market from rival company Huawei.

As reported in CNBC, Will Wong, senior researcher at IDC said:

“We don’t expect the iPhone’s shipment growth to return to positive territory in 2024 in China, with Huawei expected to remain the key contributor while more advanced technologies like AI and foldable grabbing more attention from consumers.”

However, Cook pledged Apple’s commitment to the Chinese market:

“I am very confident in it (China),” Cook said on one of videos posted on CCTV’s Weibo account.

“I love China, I love being here, I love the people and the culture. Every time I come here, I am reminded that anything is possible here.”

Apple has yet to set an official launch date for the Vision Pro in China.

Featured image: Apple

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