And it’s probably intentional: the XP wallpaper photo was taken in Sonoma, California. The new MacOS name? MacOS Sonoma.

“BAM Trading did not even implement a formal policy concerning its crypto assets custody and operations until May 15, 2023.” Today is June 5, 2023. For the record. FYI.

Attackers using an unpatched exploit for Progress Software’s MOVEit Transfer product breached a number of large companies. TechCrunch lists BBC, BA, and Nova Scotia’s government as known victims already.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence linked these to an affiliate of the Clop ransomware group, which TechCrunch notes has previously attacked exploits in other file transfer tools like GoAnywhere, and typically demands payment to not post the stolen records online.

In the span of over two months, researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory found more than 40 CSAM images that had been flagged in the past out of a pool of 100,000 tweets, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Outgoing Twitter CEO Elon Musk has touted child safety as his number one priority since taking over the platform last year. However, numerous reports have since suggested Twitter isn’t doing all that great of a job at preventing the spread of child exploitation imagery.

On Friday, I published an article about Artifact’s new feature that rewrites headlines using AI. It was headlined: “An app might rewrite this clickbait headline — here’s why.”

Well:

The update began rolling out on May 26th, according to Google. I got it this weekend, and you need iOS 16.5. and version 3.1 of the Google Home app.

With this update, all four major smart home platforms now work fully with Matter on iOS. This should make it easier to deliver on Matter’s promise of cross-platform compatibility.

Microsoft will stream its big Xbox Games Showcase in 4K resolution and 60fps on Sunday. The stream, which will include a Starfield Direct after the main event, will kick off at 1PM ET / 10AM PT / 6PM UK on Sunday June 11th. Expect to see the latest from Xbox Game Studios and a big update on Starfield ahead of its September 6th release date.

Bird Box was a big hit for Netflix back in 2018, so it’s no surprise we’re getting more. The new film is described as an “expansion” of the original and, as you can probably gather from the title, it explores how Barcelona is dealing with the post-apocalypse. It starts streaming on July 14th.

Certified augmented reality enthusiast Tim Cook would like to remind you (in case our list of top stories allowed you to forget) that Apple will have an event later today, complete with a brief and conveniently loop-friendly musical interlude.

Just press play, and come back here at 10AM PT / 1PM ET for all the news from WWDC 2023.

Sci-fi writer Ted Chiang has become one of the most perceptive voices on AI and is on typically good form in this interview with The Financial Times.

The quote above is a reference to the famous Dartmouth workshop (though that took place in 1956), in which scientists set the foundations for the field — and found a whole lot of trouble on the way.

It’s doubling down on the web app for the almost 3-year-old Luna game streaming service, as previously mentioned by AFTVnews. Here’s part of the company’s statement to 9to5Google:

We saw customers were spending significantly more time playing games on Luna using their web browsers than on native PC and Mac apps.

That leaves the streaming box app for Fire TV, Android TV, and Google TV as the only native app for the platform. Luna recently expanded to three new countries despite layoffs and disappearing games.

Microsoft has once again softened the limitations it placed on the Bing AI Chatbot in February as part of its efforts to correct the search engine’s weird behavior.

Chat’s with the bot can now run for 30 turns (up from the previous 20), and the daily turn limit has increased to 300. This doesn’t mean the previous issues have been resolved though, so proceed with caution.

Elon Musk to the BBC in April: 

I think almost all advertisers have come back or said they are going to come back.

The New York Times based on a Twitter slide deck it obtained:

Twitter’s US advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier.

May doesn’t look much better.

There’s a big report on troubles at AI startup Stability AI from Forbes.

The article, citing interviews with more than 30 sources, paints a picture of a shaky business run by a founder, Emad Mostaque, who’s skilled at taking credit for others’ work and exaggerating his own achievements. It follows earlier stories about the firm burning through cash. Mostaque himself has responded here to the allegations put forward by Forbes.

It’s tricky to parse this evidence. Is missing payroll a damning sign of incompetence, for example, or unsurprising for a fast-moving startup? We’ll have to see how Stability AI navigates these rapids.

Members of the Writers Guild of America spoke out against the deal, as seen in a report in Deadline. Several with membership in one or both guilds tweeted complaints that the DGA had “made a deal behind our backs” and didn’t get “close to no AI source material.”

WGA negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser was quoted in another Deadline article today:

If [AMPTP President] Carol Lombardini thinks negotiating with the DGA while we’re out on strike is some kind of trump card, she’s going to find out that her 2007-08 playbook doesn’t belong in the negotiating room; it belongs in a museum.

The Verge’s Monica Chin sat in it at Computex, and says the Orb X is ideal if you love gaming and hate other people. It’s covered in the requisite RGB lights, while a reclining chair, 34-inch curved gaming monitor and “freaking dope” sound system rounds it out.

I haven’t asked, but I’m guessing she means that sci-fi villain. Would try.

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.

And joining her is NBCUniversal executive vice president Joe Benarroch (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.

The Verge’s Alex Heath has confirmed both will start tomorrow.

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.”