Grammarly is rebranding itself as “Superhuman” following its acquisition of the email client, while keeping its existing product names for now. Along with the rebrand, the company is launching “Superhuman Go,” an AI assistant that integrates with tools like Gmail, Jira, and Google Drive to enhance writing and automate productivity tasks. “The assistant can use these connections to do tasks like logging tickets or fetching your availability when you’re scheduling a meeting,” adds TechCrunch. “Superhuman said it plans to add functionality to enable the assistant to fetch data from sources like CRMs and internal systems to suggest changes to your emails.”

“Users can try Superhuman Go by turning on a toggle in the Grammarly extension, which will let them connect it to different apps. Users can also try out different agents in the company’s agent store, which include a plagiarism checker and a proofreader, launched in August.”

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This is a fascinating video of Youtuber pannenkoek experimenting to determine if you can collect any stars in Super Mario 64 by only pressing a single button and not using the joystick. The answer? Yes. In fact he’s able to collect three stars that way. FULL DISCLOSURE: he does play the levels from the level entry though and not the start of the game since you’re required to press the Start button to start the game, but it quickly becomes useless for progressing in the game. So, if you’ve ever wanted to watch Mario infinitely punch his way to some stars in Super Mario 64, this is the video for you. If that is not your cup of tea, no worries, I have a flask. “What’s in it?” Whatever was in it when I found it. Tastes like rust but kicks like my girlfriend in her sleep.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Character.AI said on Wednesday that it would bar people under 18 from using its chatbots starting late next month, in a sweeping move to address concerns over child safety. The rule will take effect Nov. 25, the company said. To enforce it, Character.AI said, over the next month the company will identify which users are minors and put time limits on their use of the app. Once the measure begins, those users will not be able to converse with the company’s chatbots. “We’re making a very bold step to say for teen users, chatbots are not the way for entertainment, but there are much better ways to serve them,” said Karandeep Anand, Character.AI’s chief executive. He said the company also plans to establish an AI safety lab.

Last October, a Florida teenager took his own life after interacting for months with Character.AI chatbots imitating fictitious characters from the Game of Thrones. His mother filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging the platform’s “dangerous and untested” technology led to his death.

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Magic Leap is back.

The tech company, now owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, today revealed a prototype for a pair of Android XR smart glasses made as a “reference design for the Android XR ecosystem,” and announced it had extended its partnership with Google. The AR glasses have thicker-than-normal frames, but not ridiculously so, and seem to have a camera. But that’s about all we know: there’s no word on availability or what the glasses actually do.

While Magic Leap didn’t reveal a ton of concrete details about its new shades, it did say they combine “Magic Leap’s waveguides and optics with Google’s Raxium microLED light engine” with the goal being an all-day AR wearable.

“Magic Leap and Google’s collaboration is focused on developing AR glasses prototypes that balance visual quality, comfort, and manufacturability,” the company said in a statement.

Magic Leap and Google’s spotty history in AR

That all sounds good, but both companies have stepped into AR in the past and released products that fell far short of expectations. Back in 2018, there was a lot of excitement among tech-heads about the Magic Leap One, but the $2,295 augmented and virtual reality headset fizzled, selling an estimated 6,000 units in six months. Magic Leap abandoned Magic Leap One back in 2024, but it’s apparently ready to jump back in with something new.

Google has an even deeper history in AR that didn’t catch on, having released Google Glass in 2014 with a great amount of hype, and basically abandoned the product in 2015 after privacy concerns and limited functionality resulted in disappointing sales.

To be fair, both Google Glass and the Magic Leap One had potential, but may have been ahead of their time—mid-2010s hardware couldn’t deliver on the possibilities at a price that was reasonable. It’s a different world in 2025, when everyone from Apple to Meta to dozens of smaller players are hoping to release killer AR glasses.

The AR-smart glasses space is getting mighty crowded, but the goal isn’t really this generation of smart glasses, it’s the next one. The game-behind-the-game for the tech companies is creating a pair of smart glasses that are functional and flexible enough to replace your phone entirely. In some ways, we’re tantalizing close to a pair of shades that can replace all other screens—the displays in glasses like the XReal One are amazing. But other technical limitations, like a battery that will last a reasonable amount of time, and an intuitive control system, are still on the horizon. For now.

Threads has grown to 150 million daily active users. Mark Zuckerberg shared the latest milestone for the company’s text-based app during Meta’s third-quarter earnings call. The company previously reported in August that Threads had reached more than 400 million monthly users.

Zuckerberg, who has mused that Threads could become Meta’s next billion-person app, said that it was “on track to become the leader in its category.” He also said that time spent in the app had increased by 10 percent, which he credited to improvements to the company’s AI recommendation systems. 

On Wednesday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said that Meta was also “exploring” algorithm personalization controls for Threads. The company is currently testing the ability to “tune” Instagram’s algorithmic recommendations. 

As Threads has grown, Meta also confirmed that ads are ramping up on the platform. During the call with analysts, Meta CFO Susan Li said that “ads are now running globally” in the Threads feed. The company had previously brought ads to Threads users in 30 countries following a small test earlier this year. This week, the company also announced that it would expand the type of ad formats on Threads, including video ads. “We’re following our typical monetization playbook of optimizing the ads formats and performance,” Li said. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-reaches-150-million-daily-users-and-is-ramping-up-ads-214259945.html?src=rss

This week, Meta asked a US district court to toss a lawsuit alleging that the tech giant illegally torrented pornography to train AI.

The move comes after Strike 3 Holdings discovered illegal downloads of some of its adult films on Meta corporate IP addresses, as well as other downloads that Meta allegedly concealed using a “stealth network” of 2,500 “hidden IP addresses.” Accusing Meta of stealing porn to secretly train an unannounced adult version of its AI model powering Movie Gen, Strike 3 sought damages that could have exceeded $350 million, TorrentFreak reported.

Filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Monday, Meta accused Strike 3 of relying on “guesswork and innuendo,” while writing that Strike 3 “has been labeled by some as a ‘copyright troll’ that files extortive lawsuits.” Requesting that all copyright claims be dropped, Meta argued that there was no evidence that the tech giant directed any of the downloads of about 2,400 adult movies owned by Strike 3—or was even aware of the illegal activity.

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A cargo ship from Japan pulled alongside the International Space Station on Wednesday, maneuvering close enough for the lab’s robotic arm to reach out and grab it as the vehicles soared 260 miles over the South Atlantic Ocean.

“HTV capture complete,” Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui radioed from the ISS. “I just want to say congratulations to all teams and people involved in this mission. Also, thank you very much for your hard work and support for the first HTV-X mission.”

The HTV-X spacecraft is an upgraded cargo freighter replacing Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle, which successfully resupplied the space station nine times between 2009 and 2020. At the conclusion of the HTV program, Japan’s space agency preferred to focus its resources on designing a new cargo ship with more capability at a lower cost. That’s what HTV-X is supposed to be, and Wednesday’s high-flying rendezvous marked the new ship’s first delivery to the ISS.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The FCC adopted a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to rescind and revise certain rules attached to consumer broadband labels. The measure passed on a two-to-one vote, with Commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the FCC, voting no and calling the notice “one of the most anti-consumer items I have seen.”

The vote was held at the Commission’s open meeting for the month of October. As per a draft notice circulated earlier this month, the FCC is looking to roll back several rules, including requirements that service providers read the label to consumers via phone, itemize state and local pass-through fees, and display labels in consumer account portals, among others. Advocates at Public Knowledge urged the Commission to reconsider, saying in a recent filing that “the Commission could create a permission structure for ISPs to continue to act without accountability.”

In her remarks during Tuesday’s open meeting, Commissioner Gomez appeared to concur, depicting the move as “anti-consumer” and counter to the goals of Congress. The FCC was mandated via the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) to create rules for implementing consumer broadband labels. After a lengthy rulemaking process and discussions with industry and consumer groups, ISPs were required to start displaying labels in 2024.

“I typically vote in favor of notices of proposed rulemaking because I believe in asking balanced questions, even on proposals that I dislike, so that we can encourage fruitful and helpful public comment. Answers to tough questions help us strike the right balance so that our rules can both encourage competition and serve consumers. However, the questions posed in this NPRM are so anti-consumer that I could not bring myself to even agree to them,” said Gomez.

Gomez stressed that the notice will harm consumers by enabling ISPs to hide add-on fees and stripping people of their ability to access information in their own language. Moreover, added Gomez, it’s unclear why the FCC is doing this. “What adds insult to injury is that the FCC does not even explain why this proposal is necessary. Make it make sense,” she added.

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Attackers are exploiting a major weakness that has allowed them access to the NPM code repository with more than 100 credential-stealing packages since August, mostly without detection.

The finding, laid out Wednesday by security firm Koi, brings attention to an NPM practice that allows installed packages to automatically pull down and run unvetted packages from untrusted domains. Koi said a campaign it tracks as PhantomRaven has exploited NPM’s use of “Remote Dynamic Dependences” to flood NPM with 126 malicious packages that have been downloaded more than 86,000 times. Some 80 of those packages remained available as of Wednesday morning, Koi said.

A blind spot

“PhantomRaven demonstrates how sophisticated attackers are getting [better] at exploiting blind spots in traditional security tooling,” Koi’s Oren Yomtov wrote. “Remote Dynamic Dependencies aren’t visible to static analysis.”

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Sometimes, game development is a labor of love. Other times, it’s an agonizing experience akin to pulling teeth. More than a decade after first announcing the project, Lunar Software and Raw Fury appear to be in the home stretch with their project Routine. The sci-fi horror game has been given a December 4, 2025 release date. For their sakes, I hope it comes to pass.

The duo first announced Routine all the way back at Gamescom in 2012 and gave it a 2013 release date. After that window came and went, the project went dark until Summer Game Fest 2022, with promises that the game a) still existed and b) had been fully remade for the new generation of gaming hardware. If the current schedule holds, Routine will be on Steam and Xbox, including day one availability on Game Pass, by the end of this year. 

The Aliens vibes are strong in the brief release date teaser. Think film grain effects, janky gadgets and of course the looming threat of death around every corner. The player will explore an abandoned lunar base to try and figure out how everything went horribly wrong before your arrival. The answer seems to involve murderous robots that would make Weyland-Yutani proud.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/13-years-after-it-was-announced-sci-fi-horror-game-routine-has-a-release-date-of-december-4-205604793.html?src=rss

Microsoft shipped its first Xbox handheld nearly two weeks ago. The $600 white Xbox Ally cannot reliably sleep, wake, or hold a charge while asleep. Neither Microsoft nor Asus would admit there’s a problem or offer a timeline to fix it after repeated requests by The Verge. Asus said it needs more time to test.

Installing Bazzite, a Linux-based operating system, solves the problems, the publication reports. The same hardware runs games up to 30% faster than Windows and beats the Steam Deck in all but one benchmark. Steam runs more responsively without Windows bloat. The device can be used like a Nintendo Switch, pausing games with the power button and resuming hours or days later. Bazzite initially had sleep issues but fixed them two days after programmer Antheas Kapenekakis obtained the hardware and consulted with two AMD contacts. The black Xbox Ally X, which doesn’t have as many sleep issues, gets a similar speed boost with Bazzite.

Two Xbox Ally units tested on Windows repeatedly woke themselves at random intervals. One lost 10% battery after 12 hours of supposed sleep, the other 23%. After another 12 hours, both had only 30% battery remaining. One tried to apply a Windows Update while asleep. Both units refused to wake from sleep at times and required hard resets. Many users have reported similar issues on Reddit with both Xbox Ally versions.

Further reading: Microsoft’s Next Xbox Will Run Full Windows and Eliminate Multiplayer Paywall, Report Says.

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This is a visualization crated by MetaBallStudios (previously) imagining various numbers of things as representing by a collection of 1cm square cubes. Things start off small enough with the number of letters in the English alphabet (26) and first generation Pokemon (151), but quickly get out of hand from there. Honestly, it’s really hard for me to imagine any number over 100,000, which is about what I’ll earn over the course of my entire life provided I can land a $100,000 job and hold it for a year.