Virtual Staging AI helps Realtors digitally furnish rooms within seconds
House staging is a significant part of the real estate industry, and while Realtors have traditionally staged houses physically before posting a listing, it’s an expensive and time-consuming process. A startup called Virtual Staging AI is making it possible for Realtors to virtually stage a house with the help of
Read moreTreating a chatbot nicely might boost its performance — here’s why
People are more likely to do something if you ask nicely. That’s a fact most of us are well aware of. But do generative AI models behave the same way? To a point. Phrasing requests in a certain way — meanly or nicely — can yield better results with chatbots
Read moreUncovering names masked with stars
Sometimes I’ll see things like my name partially concealed as J*** C*** and think “a lot of good that does.” Masking letters reveals more than people realize. For example, when you see that someone’s first name is four letters and begins with J, there’s about a 70% chance they’re male
Read moreHumane pushes Ai Pin ship date to mid-April
Hardware is difficult, to paraphrase a famous adage. First-generation products from new startups are notoriously so, regardless of how much money and excitement you’ve managed to drum up. Given all that, it’s likely few are too surprised that Humane’s upcoming Ai Pin has been pushed back a bit, from March
Read moreArc browser’s new AI-powered ‘pinch-to-summarize’ feature is clever, but often misses the mark
The Browser company’s Arc, a browser focused on a less cluttered web experience, launched a new feature in its mobile app Arc Search that uses AI to summarize web pages. The feature involves a clever “pinching” gesture that shows a neatly formatted summary with main points. The feature has gotten
Read moreReddit downplays risks of developer backlash, decentralized social media in its IPO filing
Reddit’s long-awaited IPO is nearing, promising to be the largest social media IPO since Pinterest. But in the company’s S-1 filing, Reddit fails to fully address the complications that arose from changes to its developer platform and API pricing, which late last year led to site-wide protests, communities going dark,
Read moreReddit cites r/WallStreetBets as a risk factor in its IPO filing
As Reddit finally files to go public, the company wrote in its S-1 filing that “meme stock” schemes on r/WallStreetBets could pose a risk to investors. The subreddit r/WallStreetBets, a community of retail traders with 15 million members, describes itself as being “like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal.” It’s most
Read moreAlmost ASCII
I was working recently with a gigabyte file that had a dozen non-ASCII characters. This is very common. The ASCII character set is not quite big enough for a lot of tasks. Of course it’s completely inadequate if you’re writing Japanese, but it’s almost enough for documents written in English
Read moreSpyware leak offers ‘first-of-its-kind’ look inside Chinese government hacking efforts
Over the weekend, someone posted a cache of files and documents apparently stolen from the Chinese government hacking contractor, I-Soon. This leak gives cybersecurity researchers and rival governments an unprecedented chance to look behind the curtain of Chinese government hacking operations facilitated by private contractors. Like the hack-and-leak operation that
Read moreGoogle is sunsetting the Google Pay app in the US later this year
Google has announced that Google Pay is shutting down in the United States in June, as the standalone app has largely been replaced by Google Wallet. The company says the move is designed to simplify its payment apps. After the standalone app shuts down in the United States, it will
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