After experimenting with its $1-ish annual “Not A Bot” subscriptions in New Zealand and the Philippines, Elon Musk suggests that a broader rollout is coming to the service built upon freely contributed content. Only question is when?

While the fee might curtail bot creation, it will definitely curtail new user signups.

Elon Musk’s lawyers have reportedly undercut his free-speech theatrics related to ye old Twitter’s refusal to block accounts as ordered by the country’s highest court. According to Reuters, X’s lawyers said the following in a letter addressed to Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Monday:

“As already communicated to the federal police, X Brasil informs that all orders issued by this Supreme Court and the Superior Electoral Court will continue to be fully complied with by X Corp.”

Despite being a .Swoosh-exclusive this BSOD-themed shoe doesn’t have any NFT links or crypto wallet requirements (although you will need to register an account by April 18th).

Nike’s web3 plans for .Swoosh seem mostly dead, with a January blog post saying digital gaming item tie-ins will skip the blockchain and instead just link to Nike accounts.

It’s pretty tough for a company to submit a copyright claim unless it owns the copyright!

While the “recent” filter should make it easier to find real-time search results, the “top” option shows popular posts related to your search. The test is only rolling out to a small number of users, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri.

OpenAI’s Batch API now lets users upload a file of bulk queries to the AI model, like categorizing data or tagging images, with the understanding that they won’t need immediate attention. Promising results within 24 hours lets them run when there is unused compute power, and keeps those pricey GPUs humming around the clock.

You know, in case that sort of thing is relevant to you.

Geneva Long, CEO of RV company Bowlus, wrote on LinkedIn that in the company’s tests, the dual-motor Cybertruck could only tow Bowlus’ 3,250lb Volterra electric RV trailer for 160 miles before its battery gave out. Others have seen similar results.

Long says the Tesla Model X, on the other hand, pulled the same trailer 235 miles.

Newsweek notes that renewable energy hit a milestone in California, meeting 100 percent of the state’s electricity demand for up to 6 hours nearly every day of the past month.

There’s obviously still a lot of progress needed to hit the state’s goal of running entirely on carbon-free electricity by 2045, but Stanford engineering professor Mark Jacobson says this is a sign that California is well on its way there.

This Vault-Tech number appeared in episode six of Prime Video’s Fallout adaption — and you can call it or text it for a nice little Easter egg.

I didn’t realize it’d failed to deliver so many updates ‘til I read this Ars Technica story. The good news: hardware partner Compal now has a whole firmware team ready to go:

The goal, Patel says, is to continuously cycle through all of Framework’s actively supported laptops, updating each of them one at a time before looping back around and starting the process over again. Functionality-breaking problems and security fixes will take precedence, while additional features and user requests will be lower-priority.

FYI, Framework didn’t send me that promised Laptop 16 replacement to show it’d fixed issues before launch. Hope so!

This morning alone, they wrote about a new Game Boy cartridge with built-in rumble, how people can basically build their own GBAs now, and a true portable PlayStation (unlike that other cool thing I showed ya). The site’s from brains behind Nintendo Life, Push Square, and Pure Xbox, and it’s clearly flown under my radar too long.

I often mention AI model benchmarks in posts, but Kevin Roose at The New York Times said the quiet part out loud: AI benchmark tests don’t help in comparing models, and these need to change.

Benchmarks cover a small amount of human knowledge, but as Roose points out, AI models easily surpass that. Training datasets sometimes include answers from benchmarking tests, so, of course, models beat the tests.

Though Truth Social has lost $3.5 billion in value, its shareholders say they aren’t worried. “This isn’t just another stock to me. … I feel like it was God Almighty that put it in my lap,” says Jerry Dean McLain, who’s invested “$25,000 — pretty much his ‘whole nest egg.’”

That’s apparently the name of what we’ve been calling the Pixel Fold 2 for the past year, according to Android Authority. Google is reportedly adding a Pixel 9 Pro XL to its lineup, too.

The Tie is definitely the star, but I admit nostalgia for the rolling destroyer droid too. There’s also this kid-friendly version of Maul’s Sith Infiltrator with a slightly less-than-kid-friendly $70 pricetag, and an $80 Mos Espa Podrace diorama. I heard “Now THIS is podracing!” the instant I saw it, which I guess is a compliment!

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A bunch of places covered AI-generated images of an unholy Jesus/shrimp hybrid going viral on Facebook earlier this year, but the attention didn’t cause Zuck to take any action to slow the situation down. Here’s JC Noods laying back on a Lambo, a post which has 36,000 likes on Facebook right now. The AI internet is going great, y’all.

A test Meta is running on some accounts puts a messaging button on the profile page with an in-app messaging box.

As Meta told Engadget, this is still using Instagram’s DM system and there are currently no plans to build a standalone messaging experience on Threads. Even still, a step in the right direction.

The new deal adds protections around using digital voice replicas, reports Reuters.

The terms “artist,” “singer,” and “royalty artist,” under this agreement only include humans. In this agreement, clear and conspicuous consent, along with minimum compensation requirements and specific details of intended use, are required prior to the release of a sound recording that uses a digital replication of an artist’s voice.

AI voice cloning improvements mean we’ll probably see more agreements ensuring performers are informed about how copies of their voices are used.

One of the odder things about the Vision Pro is that it doesn’t support a lot of standard VR and 3D video formats, like the side-by-side videos you can find in lots of places. Mike Swanson has a deep dive into Apple’s proprietary immersive video format, which uses a square frame and layered videos for each eye.

If you thought David Pierce’s review for us was scathing, just wait till you watch Marques Brownlee’s review that just dropped. Yikes.