Jonathan M. Gitlin writing for ArsTechnica Since the Bolt, GM has gone on to develop a new battery platform called Ultium, with much lower costs per kWh than the LG cells that power the Bolt. And it will use those cells in the next Bolt, although GM says we need to wait until a later date for anything more specific.

Greg Morris writing on his blog The biggest update to Apple Notes is linking between notes easily, and it’s not an exaggeration to say Apple absolutely nailed the implementation. You can tap link and just type out the name of the note you want to link to, there’s no double bracket or back linking bandwagon joining, it’s simple, elegant and exactly what is needed. I’m really looking forward to this update to Notes. I have over 2,000 notes in Apple Notes, so I think I’m a fairly heavy user. This new feature coupled with tags, which were introduced a couple of years ago, and folders, will make organizing and navigating all those notes much easier. The improvements to Notes over the years has been great, I hope Apple keeps it up.

Met some friends at breakfast this morning.

Magic Kingdom fireworks always impress! 🎇

Some thoughts on Apple’s new Vision Pro I’m surprised the FaceTime avatar isn’t your Memoji. I’m assuming it’ll be an option, but the 3D digital face thing has some room to improve. The hardware they’ve put into this thing is amazing! The screens, the cameras, the eye tracking, the M2 and R1 chips, just 🤯 When I saw the R1 I immediately thought car. I think Eye Sight (the outward facing screen showing the wearer’s eyes) is really well done and a key component to making this something you can wear and still interact with other people. Now some questions

Will Knight writing at Ars Technica (Apple News) The Nvidia team, which included Anima Anandkumar, the company’s director of machine learning and a professor at Caltech, created a Minecraft bot called Voyager that uses GPT-4 to solve problems inside the game. The language model generates objectives that help the agent explore the game, and code that improves the bot’s skill at the game over time. Voyager doesn’t play the game like a person, but it can read the state of the game directly, via an API. It might see a fishing rod in its inventory and a river nearby, for instance, and use GPT-4 to suggest the goal of doing some fishing to gain experience. It will then use this goal to have GPT-4 generate the code needed to have the character achieve it.

OMG Cayde is back!!!

Dan Goodin writing for Ars Technica (Apple News) The ability of BrutePrint to successfully hijack fingerprints stored on Android devices but not iPhones is the result of one simple design difference: iOS encrypts the data, and Android does not. Hopefully this is an easy fix for Google to implement, but then as usual, it would require that fix to roll out to all these phones.

Talyor Kerns writing for Android Police What’s more, when the tablet isn’t attached, the dock doesn’t do anything. On its own, it can’t take Google Assistant commands or play audio — all that is handled by the tablet. At the very least, Google should give the dock the electronics to put it on par functionally with something like a Nest Mini. I think this is the reason why the dock doesn’t make sense to me. If it did something when the tablet wasn’t docked, I might understand it a bit more.

Saw this over on Daring Fireball. Windows has lost a lot of market share over the last decade, very clearly to mobile (Android & iOS). The US chart was interesting as well, so I decided to check out Canada’s: Pretty similar to the US chart in that iOS has greater market share than Android (vs the global numbers). You can also clearly see iOS’s market share increasing while Android’s is decreasing. iOS is clearly the preferred mobile OS in North America. However, in every other region, Android is the dominant operating system.

Allison Parshall writing for Scientific Americanican (Apple News) Now researchers have taken a step forward by combining fMRI’s ability to monitor neural activity with the predictive power of artificial intelligence language models. The hybrid technology has resulted in a decoder that can reproduce, with a surprising level of accuracy, the stories that a person listened to or imagined telling in the scanner. The decoder could even guess the story behind a short film that someone watched in the scanner, though with less accuracy.

Umar Shakir writing for The Verge (Apple News) The devices in question usually include the XIM, Cronus Zen, and ReaSnow S1. The third-party mouse and keyboard interfaces emulate a controller input, enabling users to reap the benefits controllers players have, like aim assist, but with the added precision and movement abilities you could otherwise only get with a keyboard and mouse. They can also execute scripts that enhance aim, fire rapidly, or add other unfair advantages.

Really looking forward to this one!

I don’t play trials very often, but with how good Immortal is, I decided to hop in and start grinding for it. This was by far the biggest play of the weekend for me 🔥

Andrew J. Hawkins writing for The Verge (Apple News) GM’s move to restrict access to CarPlay and Android Auto, which is expected to begin with the 2024 Chevy Blazer EV, will help the automaker capture more data on its customers’ driving, listening, and charging habits. It could also help inform future subscription products, as automakers across the board are seeking to generate more revenue beyond just selling cars.

First clear of Root of Nightmares completed last night and I got the exotic! It’s a great raid, lots of fun!

RIP Commander. TMZ reporting.