While many are champing at the bit to see Apple’s new AR headset, some investors are more interested in potential AI announcements at WWDC, according to a tweet today from supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

As Kuo explains it, the headset “may not be a substantial revenue and profit contributor for suppliers in the next two years compared to AI.”

Second place? Instagram. The Nature Conservancy’s chief scientist, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, decided to track social engagement on a post about her recent Scientific American essay (via Hacker News).

The numbers are all relative — of six platforms, Mastodon won according to the percentage of engagement per follower, calculated as (likes + shares + comments)/followers. But for absolute numbers, Hayhoe’s experiment has Twitter on top.

Incoming CEO Linda Yaccarino announced that NBCUniversal executive vice president Joe Benarroch is joining Twitter (via Wall Street Journal). From the Journal:

“Tomorrow, I start a different professional adventure at Twitter, taking on a role focusing on business operations,” Benarroch wrote in the memo. He noted that he has worked with Yaccarino to champion and grow the company’s business priorities and help build partnerships, among other things. “I am looking forward to bringing my experience to Twitter, and to working with the entire team to build Twitter 2.0 together.” 

Yaccarino’s hiring has helped rid the company of its “high risk” label, and bringing in NBCUniversal’s top ad sales person is another attempt to connect with advertisers.

Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida hinted to the Financial Times that it’s still in the studying phase re: cloud gaming, due to the “technical difficulties” of streaming games over the internet.

Wait, doesn’t Sony already have a cloud gaming service? Kinda, but I suspect he’s talking about this new one!

When we wrote about Engineered Arts’ Ameca android last year, the company said it wants to integrate chatbot functionality, and since then it has done so, using one of the most prominent chatbots, ChatGPT-3 (GPT-4 was too slow). In his conversation with The Verge, Engineered Arts CEO Will Jackson said:

It’s amazing the simple things you can do to make a machine look sentient.

The most human-like trick from the video below was not so much its response, but its double-take after being told “you stink.”

We may not know until after WWDC, but Apple's mixed reality headset probably won't address every AR issue right out of the gate. As pointed out by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter today:

I expect that future versions will fix problems in the first model — such as nausea complaints, performance hiccups, overheating concerns and a lack of cellular connectivity — and bring down the price.

That’s not surprising, and doesn’t paint the “Reality Pro” as doomed, just a first attempt likely aimed at developers and very early adopters. As Casey Newton writes for The Verge, whether Apple’s new platform succeeds depends more on its evolution than on tomorrow’s device.

This new falling block game from an indie developer called M.slivo that asks you the question: what if the blocks were made of sand (via Hacker News)?

Instead of rigidly fitting together, the blocks fall apart when they land, their pixels tumbling down the slopes. You clear “lines” by creating contiguous colored stripes that span the playfield. It breaks your brain in the most delightful way.

It’s for Windows and Linux only, unfortunately.

Selig made Apollo, one of the most popular third-party Reddit clients. He and Snazzy Labs owner Quinn Nelson dive into why Reddit’s abrupt shift to an API access pricing structure may give apps like his an untenable future, saying it could cost him $20 million per year.

It’s a good interview that covers alternative monetization schemes and draws comparisons to API policy changes for both Twitter and Imgur.

Tipster Kamila Wojciechowska, who’s dropped several Google leaks this year, wrote in great detail about the Pixel 8’s Tensor G3 SoC (via 9to5Google).

She says it’s getting the ARM Immortalis GPU, a first for US phones, and that it’s tuned for AI, which makes sense, considering... the entirety of Google I/O.

Pixel leaks just keep coming lately, even from Google itself.

Late last year, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said Apple would change Siri’s invocation phrase to just “Siri” but was unsure about how long that shift might take. Now he says the change will be announced along with everything else we’ll hear about at WWDC next week.

Google tweeted that Google Workspace admins can sign up for a closed beta of Duet AI image generation in Google Slides yesterday (via 9to5Google). The feature lets users add AI-generated backgrounds with a “Help me visualize” prompt in the sidebar.

The feature was announced in March with other Google Workspace AI updates, but this marks the first time AI features have hit its presentation app.

If you sort Reddit’s r/all page by top posts of all time, the number one spot is held by an old picture of Rick Astley riding a bicycle... posted by Astley himself.

The post got around 439,000 upvotes. As it hit the 250,000 upvote mark, Astley commented, “Wtf 🤣🙏.” Don’t worry, none of these links is a Rick roll. Technically.

Because it sure was a packed week in the world of entertainment. We’ve got the excellent sequel to Into the Spider-Verse; a brilliant revival of Street Fighter; remakes of the classics games System Shock and Etrian Odyssey; and the season finales for Yellowjackets and Ted Lasso. Oh, and if you pre-ordered Diablo IV, you can dig in a little early.

After yanking dozens of shows and movies from Hulu and Disney Plus on May 26th, a new filing with the SEC indicates that Disney plans on taking down even more content “during the remainder of its third fiscal quarter.”

Disney has already racked up a $1.5 billion impairment charge following last week’s takedowns, but now it estimates an additional $400 million charge as a result of its upcoming content removals.

Turns out, a lot of people! Kind of seems like they’re unclear on which of Elon Musk’s claims are backed by science, though:

“Also not sure if it will be possible right off the bat, but I am also a Tesla owner, and it would be pretty rad if I could communicate with my car using just my mind.”

Apple’s recent focus on accessibility in its devices includes features like the upcoming Personal Voice and Assistive Access mode. Now, according to Mark Gurman, Apple’s considering including warnings that people with specific health conditions should not buy or use the headset that it’s expected to reveal next week.

That includes people with Meniere’s Disease, past traumatic brain injuries, post-concussion syndrome, migraines and vertigo. 

A similar notice (PDF) for Meta’s Quest notes the risk of seizures and possible interference with medical devices. In another tweet, Gurman said Apple could add additional warnings for ADHD, anxiety, pacemakers, pregnancy, and more.

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.)