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Where in the world will the Vision Pro launch this year?

Apple CEO Tim Cook told press at the China Development Forum in Beijing that China will get it this year, according to Reuters this morning, citing a Chinese state media Weibo post.

MacRumors notes that this is the first time an Apple executive has confirmed where the Vision Pro will launch outside the US this year. Rumors have also suggested Apple will prioritize UK and Canadian launches.


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Apple’s iOS future could also include Anthropic.

Rumors have said that the company might partner with OpenAI or Google (or Baidu in China) for iOS chatbot functionality while using its own AI for on-device features. Today, Mark Gurman writes in Power On for Bloomberg that Anthropic’s in the mix too. He speculates that Apple could even let any developer build generative AI “deep into the iPhone.”

In the subscriber edition, he also writes that iOS 18 will get a revamped, more customizable home screen.


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The Verge
What do the Purah Pad and 3 Body Problem VR headset have in common?

Neither has any of the apps we’re used to.

Andrew Webster’s reviews of the 3 Body headset and the tablet from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom each drive home the necessity of a healthy ecosystem, even for the coolest tech.


The biggest new battle royale is ready for your phone

Plus, in this week’s Installer: a peek at the Humane AI Pin, new Stardew Valley, 3 Body Problem, and much more.

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The latest SAG-AFTRA AI contracts define voice actors as human beings.

The union’s animation voice actors voted 95.52 percent to 4.48 percent on Friday to ratify contracts that were similar to the deal that ended the actors’ strike last year but didn’t include the same definition, as Variety notes.

The contracts (summarized here) run from July 1st, 2023 through June 30th, 2026, and include pay raises and add limits on the use of AI to replicate voice actors.


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Twitter
Is this what X will look like on a smart TV?

Earlier this month, a Fortune story reported that one of X’s latest moves since Twitter entered its Musk era involves whipping up a video app for smart TVs, with one source calling it “identical” to YouTube’s own.

Assuming this video posted by app researcher Nima Owji is what Fortune’s source saw... yeah, I’d reckon there’s some resemblance.


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Youtube
“I now have NES cartridge purée.”

James Channel altered an original copy of NES Open Tournament Golf so that it can both be played on a Nintendo Entertainment and used as a fully-functioning Nintendo Entertainment System.

Or it can play itself, like some sort of Mariourobouros.


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Google was ordered to identify people who watched certain YouTube videos.

Police investigating suspected Bitcoin money laundering wanted info on viewers of certain tutorial videos viewed over 30,000 times, Forbes reported.

The court orders show the government telling Google to provide the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google account users who accessed the YouTube videos between January 1 and January 8, 2023. The government also wanted the IP addresses of non-Google account owners who viewed the videos. 

The documents reportedly don’t reveal whether Google gave over the information.


3 Body Problem VR headset review: magical tech in need of more apps

The device is far more advanced than an Apple Vision Pro, but it needs more than one game to justify the purchase (once you can actually purchase one, that is).

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Twitter
WhatsApp is working on putting Meta AI right in the search bar.

Instead of opening a Meta AI conversation, users would be able to start typing in the search bar to get answers from the chatbot. WABetaInfo spotted the feature in a new Android WhatsApp beta update (2.23.25.15).


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Twitter
The first Boeing Starliner astronaut flight test is planned for May.

The mission will launch “hopefully the first of May,” according to Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore, who was joined by fellow astronaut Suni Williams during a NASA press conference yesterday.

NASA postponed the first crewed Starliner flight test last summer over safety concerns. When the mission launches, Wilmore and Williams will dock with the International Space Station for up to two weeks before returning to Earth.


Congratulations to Team 0%!

The group that’s been trying to beat every single uploaded Wii U Super Mario Maker level before the servers go dark on April 8th has succeeded.

In fact, a Team 0% member beat it last week. GamesRadar writes that the creator of “Trimming the Herbs,” which Team 0% thought was the final level, revealed he’d faked proving a human could beat it. Team 0% says despite that, some will “keep grinding it for eternal glory until the service ends.”


A screenshot from issmmbeatenyet.com, reading “Is Super Mario Maker beaten yet? YES”
The sign has been flipped to “Yes.”
Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge
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Twitter
The Rabbit R1 will start shipping on Easter Sunday (March 31st).

Get it? Rabbit? Easter? Customers will get it beginning April 24th, or a day earlier at Rabbit’s NYC pickup party. The company posted the update last night after announcing it had sold 100,000 units.

Rabbit had previously said its little Teenage Engineering-designed AI doohickey would start shipping in March, and so it will! It just... needs to go through some things on its way to owners. Like customs.


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Twitter
Oops.

I still don’t know what yesterday’s update added in terms of security for iPhones, iPads, and Vision Pros, but there is one explanation for an AirTag update that seemed to roll out a little faster than usual.

iSoftware Updates tweeted that the deployment date was set with the wrong format (24 instead of 2024 for the year), and Apple’s system started delivering it to 100 percent of devices right away instead of seeding it to just a few until Apple corrected it later.


US v. Apple: everything you need to know

It’s all about Apple’s vise grip over the smartphone market and the iPhone’s locked-down ecosystem.

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The Verge
It’s time to wave goodbye to Mint, Intuit’s free budgeting app.

The company was originally going to shut it down on January 1st, but now the end has finally come: Mint will disappear after tomorrow, March 23rd (so it’s a good time to finally download that data). Intuit has urged Mint users to move to Credit Karma, which is also free but not quite the same thing; however, there are alternatives. We’ve laid out a few for you:


Mint is going away, but these easy budgeting apps can take its place

There are plenty of other apps that can help you watch your budget.

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TikTok
All that data has to go somewhere.

Set to John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” a TikTok user cut together idyllic, quaint clips of their hometown — followed by a bunch of sterile data centers being built.

On TikTok, the medium is the message. Not everyone seems to know what a data center even is (the recommended search query below the video is “data center explained”) but the video works. This trend, as they say, has potential.


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Fitbit users soon won’t be able to download third-party apps or clock faces in the EU.

The change, which will go into effect in June 2024, comes after “a careful assessment of the impact of new regulatory requirements,” Google says. It won’t impact EU users’ ability to use the apps and clock faces they’ve already downloaded.

Google already shut down Fitbit Studio, the tool used to make apps and clockfaces for Fitbit wearables last April. It also lost several other social features as its ecosystem becomes more intertwined with Google’s.


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$10,000 fine shows why you should report ISPs who lie about serving your address.

When I suggested you should challenge the FCC’s new broadband maps — which still let ISPs lie about coverage — some readers told me it was pointless. Well... a small ISP in Ohio is now getting fined $10,000 after it was caught lying! Here’s hoping we can make bigger lying ISPs feel the heat, too.


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Three years later, AT&T still won’t say how 70 million customers’ data got leaked.

TechCrunch’s Zack Whittaker has been pushing the company for answers, now that the massive cache of customer data is circulating once again. But although a known hacker claimed responsibility in 2021, AT&T still claims its systems weren’t breached at all — and yet it wouldn’t give Whittaker any other explanation for where the data came from.


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GM will no longer sell your driving data to third-party companies.

The automaker was caught by the New York Times providing micro-details about its customers driving habits, including acceleration, braking, and trip length, to insurance companies. Clueless vehicle owners were then left wondering why their insurance premiums were going up. But now GM tells the Times it’s going to stop.

“OnStar Smart Driver customer data is no longer being shared with LexisNexis or Verisk,” a G.M. spokeswoman, Malorie Lucich, said in an emailed statement. “Customer trust is a priority for us, and we are actively evaluating our privacy processes and policies.”

No word yet on Kia, Subaru, and Mitsubishi, which also were reportedly sharing driver data with insurance firms.