As smoke infiltrated the air in New York City on June 7, Bradley Cooper and his six-year-old daughter masked up to stay safe while out and about.
As smoke infiltrated the air in New York City on June 7, Bradley Cooper and his six-year-old daughter masked up to stay safe while out and about.
Wildfires in Canada have led to a surge in air pollution levels in the US, with New York currently having the worst air quality of any major city. There are plenty of images of N95-mask-wearing people walking down smog-blighted streets that wouldn’t look out of place in many a dystopia. Many states and cities have urged folks to stay inside unless they absolutely need to leave, and they’re pumping out as much Air Quality Index data as they can.
But do you actually know what the Air Quality Index is, or what it’s for? We’ve done an AQI deep dive, exploring how it works and how you can keep yourself informed and safe.
And, on the subject of being safe, we’ve also knocked up a guide for how to make a quick-and-dirty box fan air filter. All you’ll need is a box fan, some AC air filters and some duct tape, and you’ll be able to screen out a lot more of the bad air floating around your home in the next few weeks.
– Dan Cooper
The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.
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Apple has always been one to eschew the buzzword of the day in favor of coining its own terms or, like at this week’s WWDC, just not talking about it at all. After analyzing Apple’s big keynote, we found “AI” was never mentioned, despite its obvious prevalence in so many of its products. Instead, the company prefers more accurate terms like “machine learning,” or talking about how its models are trained on thousands of people.
I don’t think it’s unfair to say Samsung’s king of the folding-phone hill right now, despite the number of rival companies in the space. The winds of change have hinted for a long while now that the Korean giant would put greater emphasis on its premium foldables as time went on. At its next big Unpacked event, scheduled for late July in its hometown of Seoul, Samsung has let slip it’ll be a foldables-heavy show, maybe to the exclusion of all other categories.
WordPress, which enabled countless people to find their voice online, is now offering an AI to write your blog posts for you. You’ll be able to type in a prompt and let the system churn out hollow but professional-sounding content for people to think about reading. WordPress says Jetpack AI will even be able to switch the tone of its posts from informative to funny or sarcastic with the touch of a button. It won’t be long and maybe someone can cook up a bot that’ll even live your life for you, making humanity an entirely redundant part of the system.
The following article discusses matters of a sensitive nature.
Researchers from Stanford and UMass have found a vast network of CSAM accounts in the darkest corners of Instagram. It’s the latest in a series of controversies about the power of the algorithms Meta’s companies use to connect people, as well as its inconsistent moderation. Meta has pledged to launch an internal taskforce which will address the researcher’s findings. But Facebook’s former chief security officer Alex Stamos was damning in his indictment, saying that if “three academics with limited access could find such a huge network, [it] should set off alarms at Meta.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-lets-talk-about-air-quality-111528380.html?src=rss
OpenAI has announced a few new updates for its iOS app, including Shortcuts integration. Now you can create a ChatGPT prompt in Shortcuts and save it as a link between the AI tool and different apps. For example, ask ChatGPT to answer a problem or look up a fact and then message the response to your friend or save it as a note. You can also now ask Siri to bring up ChatGPT or create these Shortcuts. ChatGPT for iOS already utilizes OpenAI’s Whisper speech recognition for voice input, with Siri further expanding its accessibility.
A new drag and drop feature further integrates ChatGPT across iOS devices, letting you pull messages out of its interface and into other apps. It’s a bit like the manual version of Shortcuts, so it’s up to you which method to use.
ChatGPT is also going to be better supported across iPads moving forward. Previously, iPad users weren’t getting a full-screen experience when using the app — OpenAI had only formatted it for iPhone-sized displays. Now it will take up all the screen real estate you have, ideally providing a less wonky experience.
The updates follow ChatGPT’s recent expansion across Apple’s platforms, with OpenAI first launching an iOS app for US users in mid-May and soon taking it to 11 more countries. Before these updates, the app already synced conversations to your computer and provided access to GPT-4 for ChatGPT Plus subscribers. While ChatGPT continues to advance its presence on Apple devices, Android owners still have to wait for an app.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/chatgpt-for-ios-gets-support-for-siri-and-shortcuts-095557134.html?src=rss
United Airlines has struck a deal with Panasonic Avionics that could make flying in economy more bearable. No, it will not magically make the seats wider or the leg room bigger, but it will distract you with a larger, sharper in-flight entertainment display and — some will perhaps find this even more exciting — Bluetooth. The airline has announced that it’s installing almost 300,000 units of Panasonic Avionics’ Astrova in-flight entertainment (IFE) screens on select new Boeing 787 and Airbus A321XLR aircraft.
They’re seatback displays that use 4K OLED technology, which promises sharper image quality and better contrast ratio than a lot of other IFE systems. The company says Astrova can also provide high fidelity 3D spatial audio through its latest Bluetooth technology. Yep, you won’t need to use wired headphones anymore or bring one of those Bluetooth dongles just so you could use your wireless earbuds. Astrova also comes with USB-C ports capable of charging your phones and tablets with 100 watts of DC power.
As Aviation Week notes, the Boeing 787 and Airbus A321XLR planes are part of United’s international fleet, but the airline will reportedly equip its domestic planes with Astrova IFE systems, as well. The displays will be installed under the United Next program, which aims to put a seatback in-flight display at every seat. United plans to provide first class passengers access to 13-inch displays and passengers in economy with 10-inch IFE screens.
In their announcement, the companies said their agreement will allow United to upgrade the Astrova displays over the coming years. The IFE system uses a modular architecture with a removable peripheral bar that makes it easy to add newer technologies and update its Bluetooth or charging stations. No upgrade will be happening anytime soon, though — the airline isn’t scheduled to start installing the in-flight entertainment systems until 2025.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/united-is-putting-4k-displays-and-bluetooth-on-its-planes-103520707.html?src=rss
WhatsApp has launched a new feature called Channels that makes it much more like a social media app, the Meta-owned company announced. It allows accounts to send one-way broadcasts to followers in the form of “text, photos, videos, stickers and polls,” much as you can with an app like Twitter. Broadcasting accounts can decide who’s allowed to follow their channel, whether they want it to be discoverable and more. At the same time, “following a channel won’t reveal your phone number to the admin or other followers,” WhatsApp said.
Users can find channels in a new tab on the app called Updates. That area shows Status and channels you decide to follow, separate from chats with family, friends and group chats/communities. For creators who plan to use the feature, WhatsApp will eventually add payment services to monetize it.
Privacy is also key, the company said. A channel’s admin info isn’t shared and it only retains 30 days of history. Admins can also prevent followers from taking screenshots or forwarding messages. Channels aren’t end-to-end encrypted, but WhatsApp said it’s exploring the idea for non-profits, health organizations or other privacy-sensitive organizations.
Channels is more or less a copy of a similar feature on rival chat app Telegram of the same name. Earlier this year, Meta launched Broadcast Channels on Instagram, allowing creators to stream updates to their followers’ inboxes much as WhatsApp users will be able to do. The feature can be likened to a newsletter, and in fact, it may have been called Newsletter while still under development (or the latter could arrive later as a separate feature).
WhatsApp is evolving well beyond it’s original purpose as a simple messaging app. Meta recently added the ability to use one account on multiple devices, something that was not only impossible before, but potentially created a hassle when you changed phones. The company has also updated group chats, while adding polls, shopping and more.
The new feature is not launching widely, but starting with “leading global organizations and select organizations in Columbia and Singapore,” the company said. It’ll arrive to more countries and users down the road “in the coming months.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/whatsapps-new-channels-feature-lets-accounts-send-one-way-updates-to-followers-090843232.html?src=rss
The Federal Communications Commission has issued a cease-and-desist letter to Avid Telecom, the same company sued by nearly all Attorneys General in the US for alleged robocall activities. In the letter (PDF) addressed to Avid CEO Michael Lansky, the FCC said it has determined that the company “is apparently originating illegal robocall traffic on behalf of one or more of its clients.” The commission explained that it worked with USTelecom’s Industry Traceback Group, which investigated prerecorded telemarketing calls related to health insurance that the aforementioned state attorneys general identified as robocalls made without consent.
Apparently, their investigation determined that Avid originated the calls. When notified about the calls, Avid told the traceback group that its customer obtained consent through opt-in websites, but the FCC explained in its letter that the customer “failed to make adequate disclosures to obtain consent.” That is, it didn’t tell people that their consent authorizes the caller “to deliver advertisements or telemarketing messages using an auto-dialer or an artificial or prerecorded voice.” In some cases, the customer allegedly called people even after they revoked their consent.
The FCC has outlined the steps Avid has to take to address the issue, starting by investigating the identified traffic. Then, it has to implement measures that can prevent new and existing customers from using its network to make illegal calls. Within 48 hours of receiving the letter, Avid is required to update the FCC with the measures it has taken to mitigate robocalls coming from its network. After that, it has to inform the commission of the safeguards it has implemented to prevent its customers from using its network to make robocalls. The FCC warned that if Avid fails to comply, downstream voice service providers might permanently block all of Avid’s traffic.
In late May, Attorneys General from 48 states filed a lawsuit against the Arizona-based VoIP services provider, accusing it of being the origin for over 7.5 billion calls to people on the National Do Not Call Registry. According to the lawsuit, Avid spoofed phone numbers and made calls appear as if they were from government offices, law enforcement agencies and companies like Amazon. The Attorneys General are asking the court to issue an injunction on Avid for making robocalls and to make the company pay for damages and restitution to the people it called illegally.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fcc-orders-avid-telecom-to-stop-health-insurance-related-robocalls-064428940.html?src=rss
Even though Kim Kardashian strips down for photo shoots all the time, she’s admittedly a bit shy when it comes to getting intimate in the bedroom.
Even though Kim Kardashian strips down for photo shoots all the time, she’s admittedly a bit shy when it comes to getting intimate in the bedroom.
On the June 8 episode of ‘The Kardashians,’ Khloe opened up about how she makes it clear to Tristan Thompson that they’re not getting back together.
On the June 8 episode of ‘The Kardashians,’ Khloe opened up about how she makes it clear to Tristan Thompson that they’re not getting back together.
During a new episode of his podcast on Jun. 4, singer Lance Bass revealed that Britney Spears’ team once stopped her from meeting his children.
During a new episode of his podcast on Jun. 4, singer Lance Bass revealed that Britney Spears’ team once stopped her from meeting his children.
Elliot Page admitted to once falling deeply in love with a closeted actress he calls ‘Ryan,’ carrying on a two-year relationship with her.
Elliot Page admitted to once falling deeply in love with a closeted actress he calls ‘Ryan,’ carrying on a two-year relationship with her.
