Heads-up, news hounds

May 18, 2024

🤦🏼‍♀️ Heads-up, news hounds: Gone are the days of Googling a news story and picking your preferred news outlet to read it. Google’s AI will now read all news stories for you and give you one version it creates, complete with its own biases. Yup, Google’s AI once told me it couldn’t provide me with a Bible verse I’d requested because it was “controversial and against its policies.”

Tags: AI (artificial intelligence), Google, News, Now, policies, T, version

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AI update: OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o, Google Gemini 1.5 Pro and Claude iPhone app

It was a big week in the world of AI. Both Google and OpenAI released major updates. You know I’ve got your back. I cut through their marketing-speak to decipher what these updates actually mean for you and me.

Google’s AI, Gemini 1.5 Pro, will handle tons of data. Need to summarize 1,500 pages of text? No problem. It’s pretty nuts.

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How to find and stop hidden fees

When I’m booking air travel, it seems like the price goes up with every click. By the time I pay to check a bag or two, that “great deal” isn’t looking so, well, great.

So of course airlines are fighting the Biden administration’s “junk fees’” rule, which would make them show their fees upfront for checking bags, carrying on a bag, and changing or canceling a reservation.

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San Francisco and Palo Alto used to be the nation’s top destinations for tech talent seeking big checks. But other U.S. cities are catching up. Which has the fastest-growing salaries in tech today? Is it … A.) Baltimore, B.) Austin, C.) Columbus or D.) San Antonio?

Find the answer here! →

$25 million

How much cryptocurrency MIT-educated brothers swiped in just 12 seconds. Clever, except Anton, 24, and James, 28, just got arrested for their 2023 ethereum heist. They studied computer science and math. Now they’ll have plenty of time to calculate the years they could spend in jail.

People in Iran are scared of spiders. But in Iraq, no phobia. (Get it? Arachnophobia? Oh, tough crowd today!)

Which tech CEO was the youngest when they founded their first business? Was it … A.) Evan Spiegel (Snapchat), B.) Jack Dorsey (Twitter), C.) Whitney Wolfe Herd (Bumble) or D.) Bill Gates (Microsoft)?

Find the answer here! →

190.6 million people

Play video games at least one hour per week in the U.S. The majorities of Gen Alpha (79%), Gen Z (76%) and millennials (65%) game. Roughly 53% of Gen X games, while 47% of baby boomers play, too. Do you? I don’t.

The big 4-0

Mark Zuckerberg celebrated turning 40 on his new $300 million superyacht. The 387-foot-long vessel, “Launchpad,” is the big boat. A smaller yacht behind it carries his staff and toys. All this and he still can’t figure out how young girls won’t get DM’d by creeps on Instagram.

1 year cancer-free

For an Australian doc who received a terminal diagnosis. Richard Scolyer is alive thanks to the revolutionary treatment he created. Amazing, right?

$700 CyberHammer

From Tesla is already sold out. Remember when Elon accidentally broke the window of a Cybertruck on stage? Yeah, it’s modeled after the same sledgehammer. They say it’s for gym use or display purposes only.