Month: June 2024

Enlarge / The Pixel 8. (credit: Google)

Google's June Android update is out, and it's bringing a few notable changes for Pixel phones. The most interesting is that the Pixel 8a, Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro are all getting DisplayPort Alt Mode capabilities via their USB-C ports. This means you can go from USB-C to DisplayPort and plug right into a TV or monitor. This has been rumored forever and landed in some of the Android Betas earlier, but now it's finally shipping out to production.

The Pixel 8's initial display support is just a mirrored mode. You can either get an awkward vertical phone in the middle of your wide-screen display or turn the phone sideways and get a more reasonable layout. You could see it being useful for videos or presentations. It would be nice if it could do more.

Alongside this year-plus of display port rumors has been a steady drum beat (again) for an Android desktop mode. Google has been playing around with this idea since Android 7.0 in 2016. In 2019, we were told it was just a development testing project, and it never shipped to any real devices. Work around Android's desktop mode has been heating up, though, so maybe a second swing at this idea will result in an actual product.

Enlarge / He isn't using an iPhone, but some people talk to Siri like this.

On Monday, Apple premiered "Apple Intelligence" during a wide-ranging presentation at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino, California. However, the heart of its new tech, an array of Apple-developed AI models, was overshadowed by the announcement of ChatGPT integration into its device operating systems.

Since the announcement, we've seen confusion on social media about why Apple didn't develop a cutting-edge GPT-4-like chatbot internally. Despite Apple's year-long development of its own large language models (LLMs), many perceived the integration of ChatGPT (and opening the door for others, like Google Gemini) as a sign of Apple's lack of innovation.

"This is really strange. Surely Apple could train a very good competing LLM if they wanted? They've had a year," wrote AI developer Benjamin De Kraker on X. Elon Musk has also been grumbling about the OpenAI deal—and spreading misinformation about it—saying things like, "It’s patently absurd that Apple isn’t smart enough to make their own AI, yet is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your security & privacy!"

Enlarge (credit: bennymarty | iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus)

Adobe has promised to update its terms of service to make it "abundantly clear" that the company will "never" train generative AI on creators' content after days of customer backlash, with some saying they would cancel Adobe subscriptions over its vague terms.

Users got upset last week when an Adobe pop-up informed them of updates to terms of use that seemed to give Adobe broad permissions to access user content, take ownership of that content, or train AI on that content. The pop-up forced users to agree to these terms to access Adobe apps, disrupting access to creatives' projects unless they immediately accepted them.

For any users unwilling to accept, canceling annual plans could trigger fees amounting to 50 percent of their remaining subscription cost. Adobe justifies collecting these fees because a "yearly subscription comes with a significant discount."

Enlarge / Artist’s rendition of how the angle of polarized light from a fast radio burst changes as it journeys through space. (credit: CHIME/Dunlap Institute)

Astronomers have been puzzling over the origins of mysterious fast radio bursts (FRBs) since the first one was spotted in 2007. Researchers now have their first look at non-repeating FRBs, i.e., those that have only produced a single burst of light to date. The authors of a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal looked specifically at the properties of polarized light emitting from these FRBs, yielding further insight into the origins of the phenomenon. The analysis supports the hypothesis that there are different origins for repeating and non-repeating FRBs.

“This is a new way to analyze the data we have on FRBs. Instead of just looking at how bright something is, we’re also looking at the angle of the light’s vibrating electromagnetic waves,” said co-author Ayush Pandhi, a graduate student at the University of Toronto's Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics. “It gives you additional information about how and where that light is produced and what it has passed through on its journey to us over many millions of light years.”

As we've reported previously, FRBs involve a sudden blast of radio-frequency radiation that lasts just a few microseconds. Astronomers have over a thousand of them to date; some come from sources that repeatedly emit FRBs, while others seem to burst once and go silent. You can produce this sort of sudden surge of energy by destroying something. But the existence of repeating sources suggests that at least some of them are produced by an object that survives the event. That has led to a focus on compact objects, like neutron stars and black holes—especially a class of neutron stars called magnetars—as likely sources.

Enlarge / The rocket for SpaceX's fourth full-scale Starship test flight awaits liftoff from Starbase, the company's private launch base in South Texas. (credit: SpaceX)

Few people were happier with the successful outcome of last week's test flight of SpaceX's Starship launch system than a NASA engineer named Catherine Koerner.

In remarks after the spaceflight, Koerner praised the "incredible" video of the Starship rocket and its Super Heavy booster returning to Earth, with each making a soft landing. "That was very promising, and a very, very successful engineering test," she added, speaking at a meeting of the Space Studies Board.

A former flight director, Koerner now manages development of the "exploration systems" that will support the Artemis missions for NASA—a hugely influential position within the space agency. This includes the Space Launch System rocket, NASA's Orion spacecraft, spacesuits, and the Starship vehicle that will land on the Moon.