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He’ll play a character named Joey who wasn’t in the games. Ian Alexander, who voiced Lev in The Last of Us: Part II, will play opposite him as another original character, Paco. Laura Bailey, who voiced Abby in the game, will join the cast as Elizabeth, a leader of the Seraphites cult.
Following backlash, YouTube posted on X that when the trailer was “submitted as an ad, it was temporarily restricted by our system. Following review the ad has been cleared to run.” Meta spokesperson Alex Dziedzan said, “This was an error,” and will now run the ads.
Update September 26th: Added statement from Meta.
Earlier this month, the board of WordPress.com’s owner put its CEO, Matt Mullenweg, on paid leave in an effort to oust him. Two days later, he was back at the helm. And now, two weeks after the failed coup, the board has been replaced.
It would be easier to name the tech CEOs who didn’t show up to the state dinner being held for China’s president this week. Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and AMD’s Lisa Su. Also in attendance, but not pictured below, were reportedly Satya Nadella, Michael Dell, Zoom’s Eric Yuan, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon, and, of course, David Ellison.
YouTube, TikTok, and Meta have all apparently rejected the trailer for Alex Gibney’s documentary, scheduled to hit theaters on October 9th. It’s not surprising that X has refused to take distributor Bleecker Street’s calls given its owner’s notoriously thin skin. But as The Hollywood Reporter notes:
The unwillingness of platforms to accept even paid advertising is sure to raise concerns about free speech and the dwindling number of companies that control many of the platforms in this country — and ironically provide a proof-text for the very point the film is coming to make. Gibney’s doc is a four-hour look at a title character who attempts to control the conversation in various ways, including with alleged suppressions on X, which he bought in 2022.
Update September 26th: Both YouTube and Meta will now reportedly run the ads.
[The Hollywood Reporter]
On Friday, OpenAI said its “misaligned models” review after the Hugging Face hack would take months, but has mostly found mundane research activity. Then it mentioned 53 incidents of the bots uploading “user-provided” images (anonymized content from personal accounts that haven’t opted out or organizations that opt in) to image-hosting sites.
Now the New York Times confirms that other unusual behavior found includes pulling public data from the Census Bureau and the SEC, while with the Education Department, it “tried to hack the website to gather data from the department’s civil rights office but failed.”
It claims its new Smart Charging Station offers its “fastest production-ready charging performance” yet, and also includes a new system that can “gradually fix” EV battery degradation from fast charging:
The Group has additionally developed lithium-ion pulse restoration technology, which uses micro-pulse currents to reactivate lithium ions accumulated at the negative electrodes during repeated fast charging. By combining AI charging management with battery restoration technology, Geely is able to increase battery cycle life by 20%.
That revamped Trump admin app (now offering access to Trump TV) apparently bounced up to the top of the News list this week.
You might think that securing access to the Strait of Hormuz or really anything else would be the federal government’s focus, but hey, it had the number one app in a category, and as David Pierce wrote in February, the very best thing about that is “being able to tell people you were number one.” The app has since slipped to #2 in news behind X, and to #96 overall.
It’s reportedly testing an alternative to Windows based on the Dutch Linux distro NixOS, according to Tweakers. It’s part of DAWO, a program aimed at reducing the Dutch government’s reliance on non-European tech, including things like office and collaboration apps. Earlier this year, France’s government also announced a switch to Linux.
NBC News released this clip from a Meet the Press interview with Gates that will air on Sunday, where he said, “No one thinks self-regulation is enough” around AI.
Saying that AI is “certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths,” he suggested, “You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like… And that has to be a required thing. And it will be a little bit of overhead for the industry, but not a dramatic slowing of what they’re doing.” Everyone agrees someone should do it, but who, and how?
Robert O’Callahan is quitting his work on AI chips for Google Deepmind, saying “…my team’s goal is ultimately to make AI much cheaper and lower-latency, and I don’t think that’s good for people right now.”
While he says it’s not related to recent AI warnings and resignations, he listed some concerns:
However, I am not convinced the chance of ASI doom is 100%. Rather, I think the risk is real but uncertain… I’m also very concerned about other AI-related issues: cognitive surrender, AI-induced psychosis and loneliness, power concentration, economic disruption, cybersecurity, lack of accountability, and so on
The original 1986 NES Castlevania is available for free on iOS and Android until October 24th, arriving ahead of the newest title in the series, Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, launching on October 15th.
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After a recent software update, the custom EQ option is now available on a handful of supported AirPods, 9to5Mac reports. You can find it in the Settings app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac — on my MacBook Air the new Equalizer feature was under Audio & Routing in my AirPods Pro 3 settings.
Bitget says $351.6 million in crypto was stolen by hackers on Thursday, and reportedly suspects the breach may be linked to North Korea. Meanwhile, Protos reports three other DeFi projects that posted about being hacked on Thursday, with losses totaling $7 million at Duelbits, $2.3 million at Meter, and $1.8 million at Payy Network.
It’s not a new idea, but following the proliferation of status screens on power banks and chargers, tiny inline displays are becoming more common on USB cables. Ugreen’s latest offering comes with a full color LCD on one end displaying the current power draw up to 240W, and is available in 3.3 ($22.99) or 6.6-foot ($26.99) options.
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After bringing its plugin to ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and Slack, Adobe’s app is now available in Google’s chatbot too. Just tag “@Adobe” in Gemini with your request after installing the plugin, and it’ll surface the best Creative Suite tools for editing photos, generating marketing designs, and more.
The Chinese brand has 73 percent of the worldwide 360 camera market. What’s next?
11 years after the game first launched, the free upgrade for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt hit RPG includes improved visuals, combat mechanics, UI designs, and more. It’s rolling out on September 29th, and you can now check the release map below for the exact global availability timings. Happy hunting!
The NYT takes a look at Mark Zuckerberg’s style metamorphosis from “robotic coder in a gray hoodie to fashion-conscious bro next door.” Unlike, say, the newly buff Jeff Bezos who loves a tight tee, Zuck is trying to find 20 polo-collared shirts with boxier ’fits favored by MMA fighters.
“That’s like a fun thing to go do, right? […] Everyone knows I’m in really good shape, so I don’t need to show my muscles.”
If you want to know where the power in tech currently lies, you only need to look at this photo of the head table at Donald Trump’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping. I see Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, AMD’s Lisa Su, Apple’s Tim Cook, and SpaceXaiTesla’s Elon Musk seated by the leaders of the world’s two superpowers. The CEOs and / or founders of Alphabet (Google), OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, Qualcomm, Micron, Dell, and… Zoom, were also in attendance.
The long-delayed truck is finally in production and reaching customers this week. Now Tesla has to prove that it was worth the wait.
The biopic arrives on Prime Video on November 18th, starring Cage as the famed NFL coach. The full trailer and some new photos also give a first look at the rest of the cast, including John Mulaney as EA founder Trip Hawkins and Christian Bale as Raiders owner Al Davis, as well as Kathryn Hahn, Sienna Miller, and Shane Gillis.
A24, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and The New York Times Company are all reportedly interested.
Other rumored potential buyers include Versant and The Ankler, as well as Netflix, Paramount, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.
[New York Times]
Choy shared a screenshot of the ad on X that appears nearly identical to one of his videos, except the person in the ad is white. NPR’s Bobby Allyn reported in a separate post that the ad is real, adding, “A Kalshi rep says the ad is old and that they no longer use AI-generated ads.”
On Thursday, Trump posted a picture to Truth Social of himself with Chinese President Xi Jinping that doesn’t comport with Getty Images of the event. Why does Trump only have one glove? Why did the face of the woman in the background change? The answer could include anything from uprezzing to “zooming out” the camera to deliberately replacing faces with AI.
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Instead of relying on a large array of charging coils to power up a Qi-compatible smartphone, this desk uses an overhead camera to locate devices and reposition a single moving charging coil beneath them. It first prioritizes charging phones before moving on to other devices and incorporates a transparent LCD as the desk’s surface that plays animations as power flows.
