AwareCA provides emergency maps and alerts like Watch Duty, but directly from public safety agencies. The LA Times reports the app addresses fire officials’ “uneasiness” with Watch Duty, with Cal Fire’s David Acuña saying, with AwareCA “you’re not relying on, ‘Well, what did I hear on that really static-y radio?’”
[Los Angeles Times]
The company announced yesterday that search traffic was “down meaningfully,” with CEO Steve Huffman saying that Google’s AI-powered search modes don’t “drive traffic.” Today’s stock market fall was its worst since going public in 2024, CNBC reports.
Yesterday, Reddit also announced that the platform will soon start requiring users to log in.
We saw a post on Bluesky today about how Google is apparently now turning off AI Overviews “by default,” with one reply speculating that AI Overviews appeared if you phrased a query as a question.
But Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels tells The Verge that “We haven’t reduced the triggering of AI Overviews, and we’ve always said that AI Overviews are dynamic and won’t show on every query.” Schottenfels also notes that keyword or navigational queries may not trigger AI responses.
Are you noticing anything different?
This week, 404 Media reported that Proton would be “re-interviewing” staff to ask about how they use AI at work and published an investigation into the company’s push into AI, driven in part by CEO Andy Yen.
But today, 404 Media reports that Yen is canceling the interviews. There will be a reorganization, but Yen said that “there will be no loss of jobs from AI.”
[404 Media]
Anthropic is renaming its Claude Max plans. The Max 5x plan is now just Max, while the Max 20x plan is Ultra. (Apple also does Max followed by Ultra for its most powerful chips.) The prices for the plans stay the same: $100 per month for Max, $200 per month for Ultra.
[X (formerly Twitter)]
The last time Changpeng Zhao got into a Twitter fight with a guy whose company he was an investor in, FTX went belly up. Anyway, here he is scolding Elon Musk about a grimace emoji in response to the enormous, record-breaking hack of Binance.
Thanks to a widget launched with a new update announced today. I do like the mock trending topics in this image, though the “Bluesky users turn 39” entry hits a little close to home. Let me go stretch while I think about it.
