Posts

What went wrong with Skype?

-
Image
Skype was Microsoft’s biggest-ever acquisition in 2011, a deal brokered by former CEO Steve Ballmer when the company was trying to compete with the rise of the iPhone. But after spending $8.5 billion on Skype, Microsoft dropped the ball again and again over the past 14 years, to the point where Skype was so irrelevant during a global pandemic that everyone used Zoom instead. Skype has been relegated to a forgotten relic of an era before Google and Apple’s mobile dominance, and Microsoft is now laying it to rest alongside other failed mobile efforts like Windows Phone. It wasn’t always this way, though. In early 2012, a few months after Microsoft’s acquisition, I visited the Skype offices in Stockholm that engineers had just moved into. Skype had just passed 41 million concurrent users, more than even Steam’s recent record . Skype was so popular at the time that people kept stealing the Skype signs outside its offices, so the company simply stopped replacing them. Inside ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Telo’s electric MT1 mini-truck gets a new preproduction prototype

-
Image
Telo Trucks, the company building a compact, modular electric pickup truck, revealed its new preproduction prototype in Los Angeles. The San Carlos, California-based startup recently closed a $5.4 million funding round and is working with bespoke manufacturing partner Aria Group (which has built EV restomods including for companies like Everrati) to enter the next development phase towards the final mini-truck. The company said they have over 5,000 preorders for the mini-truck, which is now known as the Telo MT1, that “represents over $250M+ in customer commitments.” The EV was first revealed in 2023 and showed off a clever modular design where the truck cab can open for more bed space, or enclosed like a van. There’s also a “Monster Tunnel” storage compartment across the truck’s width where you can carry long items, similar to Rivian’s gear tunnel . The overall design of the latest MT1 looks nearly identical to the original reveal, save for a relocation of the side body in...
Post a Comment
Read more

Google is adding more AI Overviews and a new ‘AI Mode’ to Search

-
Image
The AI-ification of Google Search continues to accelerate: the company announced on Wednesday that it will start showing AI Overviews for even more kinds of queries, and that users around the world, even those who are logged out of Google, will start seeing them too. There’s an even more ambitious AI search tool coming to Google, too. It’s called AI Mode, and it brings a search-centric chatbot right to the core Google experience. It is, more or less, Google’s take on Perplexity or ChatGPT Search . For now, AI Mode is just a test — it’s only available to users paying for Google One AI Premium, and even they will have to enable it in the Labs section of Search. The idea behind AI Mode is that a lot of people searching Google would actually prefer to have their results be primarily AI-generated. If you switch to AI Mode (it’s a tab in the search page or the Google app, like Images or News) and enter a query, you’ll get back a generated answer, based on everything in Google’s search i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Delta Air Lines bets on ‘blended-wing’ flight to reduce emissions

-
Image
JetZero aims to launch a demonstrator proof of concept by 2027. | Image: JetZero Delta Air Lines is backing a startup that wants to design more fuel-efficient, blended-wing-body aircraft in the hopes of reducing its carbon footprint and making air travel more sustainable.  The airline said today that it will help support the development of startup JetZero’s blended-wing-body (BWB) demonstrator aircraft that aims to cut fuel consumption, emissions, and noise. Delta isn’t providing any capital investment in the company but, rather, operational support to help make its dream of a blended-wing aircraft a reality.  JetZero will join Delta’s Sustainable Skies Lab incubator, where it will receive “operational expertise” from the airline’s engineers in the design and construction of a BWB demonstrator aircraft, with the aim to test it in 2027. In 2020, Delta pledged to spend $1 billion on sustainability efforts , including the Sustainable Skies Lab, with the aim of reaching carb...
Post a Comment
Read more

Microsoft’s new Copilot app for Windows has an improved UI

-
Image
Microsoft is finally rolling out a native version of its Copilot Windows app, nearly a year after turning it into a basic web app . A new Copilot app is rolling out to Windows Insiders this week that’s built using native XAML and includes a new side panel and an improved UI. The Copilot app on Windows now matches the design of the recently launched Copilot app for macOS , which lets you upload images and generate images or text. You can also interact with Copilot using a microphone, and access conversation history in the updated sidebar. Microsoft first launched Copilot inside Windows 11 as a “personal assistant” that was integrated into the operating system , but then it removed this integration a year later in favor of a basic web app that made Copilot less useful on new Copilot Plus PCs . The software maker has added keyboard shortcuts and made the Copilot app look a little less like a web app , but this week’s update looks a lot better. This new Copilot app is rolling out to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Split Fiction doesn’t need to be original when the co-op play is this good

-
Image
Split Fiction , the new game from It Takes Two developer Hazelight Studios, doesn’t do anything particularly new. The game is a straightforward co-op adventure that strings together disparate sci-fi and fantasy games like links on a chain. If you bundled together the sci-fi and fantasy sections as separate entities, they wouldn’t form a cohesive experience in either gameplay or story. And the overarching narrative that connects them all is a pretty heavy-handed (though necessary, in today’s climate) parable about the rapaciousness of generative AI tools and the creative bankruptcy of the executives that develop them. Nevertheless, there’s an ironic genius in Split Fiction precisely because it takes so many little gameplay elements that I’ve seen and done before and executes them with a brilliance and polish I have not.  In Split Fiction , you and a partner play as Zoe and Mio, two people who have come to the curiously named Rader Corporation under the auspices of get...
Post a Comment
Read more

Google’s Chrome extension cull hits more uBlock Origin users

-
Image
Google is disabling the original uBlock Origin ad blocker for more Chrome browser users, alongside other extensions that are no longer supported as the browser migrates to its new extension specification, Manifest V3. According to Google, the new standard aims to improve privacy and security, but also removes a feature that some ad blocking extensions relied on to work — a compromise that Mozilla is unwilling to make for its own Firefox browser .  Users online are reporting on Reddit and X that Chrome is removing outdated extensions. In Chrome, a notification window will appear underneath the extensions tab on the browser taskbar with a message encouraging users to remove the impacted add-on, saying it has been turned off and is “no longer supported.” Two buttons are available that allow users to either quickly delete or manage their extensions. Google’s uBlock Origin phaseout on Chromium-based browsers began in October , but started to have a wider impact in recent weeks. Bl...
Post a Comment
Read more