These are just a few of the names that Google has bestowed upon its AI products in recent weeks.
Is it confusing for those of us on the outside to track all of these name changes? Yes. Yes, it is. And as Business Insider details in this fun story, even Google’s own employees are roasting the company by posting memes about it internally.
The next time you look at the screen on your phone or the RGB on your keyboard, thank Shuji Nakamura, the inventor of the blue LED, who made it all possible and should have received way more recognition for it. His breakthrough is still changing the world.
Some scientist has suggested putting salt in tea as the best method of brewing, leading to international uproar.
Of course, putting salt in tea is a fine American tradition.
ICYMI, we discovered the founder of Leia is using a Red Hydrogen as his daily driver. The phone was one of our flops of the decade, and made our list of the worst gadgets we’ve touched. But... the maker of its screen is not only alive, but thriving! Take a look:
Okay. So there’s something called a “Disney Day Drinkers Club” (more than 85,000 members!) and their mascot is a trash can called “Binny.” Disney has moved the trash can.
Too many people were lining up for photos with Binny, blocking the pub’s entrance and causing safety issues, says a Disney spokeswoman.
Moving Binny was a big deal, says Sher, the founder, because of Disney superfans’s obsessive attention to detail, and fandom that can border on fanaticism.
You know what, I will also take a gold bar — from Costco or otherwise — for Christmas. Online shopping is so weird, my friends.
Galanti previously said the company sells out of its gold inventory “within a few hours” of the products being listed online.
According to BI, the gold bars are currently out of stock.
The method by which this incredibly suspicious-looking device turns QR codes into human-readable menus printed on receipt paper would make Rube Goldberg weep. I love it.
Have we figured out yet whether Cloud’s arms are... augmented... in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth? Jay and I were just talking about a very important investigation he conducted back in the day.
In the middle of the NBA playoffs, Eric Lewis was suspended for allegedly responding to criticism of himself and other refs on a “burner” account, despite a policy barring referees from discussing officiating without approval. The 19-year vet had just refereed game one of the Western Conference finals, and even LeBron James took note.
Now, as The Athletic and NBA.com report, everything has come to a close with this statement by the league:
NBA referee Eric Lewis has informed the league office that he is retiring, effective immediately. In light of his decision, the NBA’s investigation into social media activity has been closed.
It hit me that Twitter is dead, so the word “tweet” is fair game now! It wasn’t even Twitter’s word to begin with. So I have reversed her reversal, editing this just-published post of mine four times to just call them tweets. Zuck tweeted. Mosseri tweeted. I will be tweeting again too, just as soon as Zuck and Mosseri let me tweet from the web!
For anyone who hasn’t canceled Max yet, a documentary later this month will dive into the story behind Bishop Sycamore, an alleged Ohio high school program that was mostly a front for a traveling football team.
It stumbled along until 2021 when things fell apart after a 58-0 loss in a nationally televised game on ESPN, and the Ohio Department of Education called it a “scam.”
Remember when we we shared the utterly infuriating elevator buttons stationed in our very own offices? They’ve been vanquished!
Now, instead of every soul aboard a crowded elevator stabbing a keypad in disbelief, a single tap and a single touchscreen press simultaneously summons the elevator, programs it to visit the appropriate floor(s), and points YOU in the right direction. And friends, the doors... they open instantly. Smartest elevators I’ve ever seen.
By the time I click, the email’s usually gone. It’s fascinating how Google can reach into your inbox to delete stuff.
But I can testify that the Dick’s keep getting through Gmail’s spam filters — they’ve seemingly been penetrated for good.
After David wrote that the Vision Pro is Apple’s secret TV project, I’ve seen many people say some variation of “watching TV is a group activity.” Is it?
Sure, I might be in the minority of viewers tuning in solo for F1 streams at 3AM, but ABC has killed the TGIF TV programming block three times in the last 25 years, and in Entertainment Weekly’s oral history, Family Matters co-creator Michael Warren explained why it was canceled the first time in 1997:
Households started getting two TV sets, and mom and dad started saying, “We don’t want to watch Family Matters. If you guys want to watch those, you can go to your room and watch your own TV.” And when the kids went in the other room, they didn’t watch those shows. They watched Friends.
In the era of phones and iPads, I wasn’t aware that we’d changed back?
DEVITO: We deteriorate.
SCHWARZENEGGER: Except in some fantasy. When people talk about, “I will see them again in heaven,” it sounds so good, but the reality is that we won’t see each other again after we’re gone. That’s the sad part. I know people feel comfortable with death, but I don’t.
DEVITO: No.
“Liz, what does this have to do with tech?” Nothing, hope that helps.
[Interview Magazine]
Also: cloud, plane, oval, and left. What else?
(It appears some of these swipe type pictograms were uncovered in 2019 by a “Jack Lance,” who, I’m reading, was quite the puzzler.)
It’s hard to pick a favorite bike build at The Q YouTube channel. The split wheel one? Square wheels? The bendy, locky one?
For the intersection of people who love engineering, bikes, and ASMR. Go watch.
Nilay typed it this morning in Verge Slack, and I’ve been privately chuckling all day.
Yes, I know it’s technically now called “Google Fi Wireless,” and that the addition of the word “wireless” helps get straight to the point. It’s way more practical than letting people confuse Google Fi with Google Fiber! And yet I continue to LOL.
