MAB Robotics Tuesday showcased the latest trick from its Honey Badger robot. In a video, the quadruped is seen running along the bottom of a pool. Legs don’t generally make more sense than propellers or other more standard methods of underwater robot locomotion, but the video demonstrates a sense of robustness and dynamism not often seen in such sophisticated systems.
The Polish firm points to search and rescue as a potential application for a land-dwelling robot that doesn’t mind taking a dip.
“Developing locomotion systems capable of navigating the challenges of underwater terrain is a fascinating journey and I’m excited about the potential impact this work could have on inspection and maintenance services in flooded areas,” MAB cofounder and CEO Jakub Bartoszek says in a LinkedIn post.
Search and rescue has been an important application for autonomous robot systems, sparing humans from having to make the trip into dangerous areas following natural or human-made disasters.
Meta’s X rival Threads is rolling out a new “activity status” feature that will let you see when someone on the social network is online. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the feature on Tuesday in a Threads post, noting that it’s meant to act as “a way to help you find others to engage with in real-time.”
Thankfully, you can turn the setting off, and only users who have the feature turned on will be able to see when you’re online.
Since its launch last year, Threads has lagged behind X (formerly Twitter) when it comes to surfacing real-time events and trends. It’s easier to find real-time reactions and responses to live events like awards shows and earthquakes on X than it is on Threads. With this new feature, Threads is attempting to boost real-time activity on its app.
Image Credits:Threads
Activity status could also be seen as Threads’ answer to the platform’s lack of DMs (direct messages). On X, when you want to start a conversation with someone, you can just send them a message. Since you can’t do that on Threads, Meta is looking for ways to facilitate conversations on the social network. Mosseri says that the company hopes “that knowing when your people are online makes it easier to have conversations.”
Of course, not everyone will want others to know when they’re online, as activity status features are traditionally reserved for messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger and Discord, not platforms like X.
A quick look at the responses to Mosseri’s announcement post indicates that many users don’t actually want this feature, with some asking for DMs instead, noting that an activity status feature doesn’t make sense if you can’t directly message the person.
Some also point out that the feature could put some users at risk. For instance, if you’re being harassed by a troll, they may harass you even more knowing that you’re currently active on the platform.
The feature is rolling out starting today, so you might not see it just yet. Mosseri didn’t inform users on how to turn off the feature, but users will likely have to navigate through the app’s settings page to do so.
The big day is here: Android 15 is out. That means Pixel owners everywhere lining up to download Google’s latest updates for their phones, and everyone else counting the days until we start seeing other OEMs begin to follow suit — though maybe we shouldn’t hold our breath.
Even with many of you in for a wait, Android 15’s release gives us a lot to look forward to. This year’s build doesn’t really represent a major overhaul to the platform itself, and instead feels like a boatload of smaller changes, all arriving en masse.
Today’s a bit complicated, though, for anyone keeping score, as we’re also getting Google’s latest Pixel Drop, armed with a bunch of new features for the company’s own phones. And while stuff like the Pixel 9’s new underwater photography mode sounds cool, it’s important to keep track of what’s an Android 15 change, and what’s a Pixel change.
Luckily for you, we’ve been keeping track — and there are a lot of them to look forward to. While you should absolutely check out the full list of Android 15 features, we’ve picked a few of our favorites to help us get a sense of which you’re anticipating the most:
Which Android 15 feature are you most excited about?
2711 votes
You may have seen this poll on a couple of our other Android 15 stories, and that’s because we’re trying to get it in front of as many eyes as possible, all in the interest of collecting the biggest, most useful data set. If you’ve already participated, we appreciate you taking the time, and if you haven’t yet — well, no time like the present!
Are you a fan of Android 15’s new theft-deterrent protections? Are you interested in hiding sensitive apps from prying eyes? Or maybe you’re into foldables and are looking forward to saving your favorite split-screen app combos?
If you’re a big video-shooter, are you excited about Eyes Free videography? And we have to admit, it’s hard not to be impressed by the basic idea of our smartphones talking to satellites. Some of these changes are a lot less flashy than others, but nonetheless pretty important-sounding; have you ever made a screen recording and captured more than you meant to? Maybe you just appreciate how Android is finally formalizing the idea that not all notifications are created equal (and some should be kept closer to the vest than others).
Way too few of you have probably even bothered using your Android phone as a USB webcam — will Android 15 change that? And how has it taken this long for a smartphone platform to address the problem of preposterously loud vibrations when we’re trying to keep our phone silent during a meeting?
Like we said, there’s just mountains of changes to look forward to with this release. Let us know which you’re most eager to try out for yourself, and hop into the comments to spell out just why. We can’t wait to hear from you!
Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at [email protected]. You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it’s your choice.
YouTube has announced a bunch of new features and improvements for YouTube across all platforms.
The company is rolling out a new miniplayer, improved landscape browsing, and a sleep timer on the mobile app.
The platform is also getting fine-tunable playback controls, custom playlist thumbnail support, and a few interface improvements for the TV app.
YouTube rolled out support for custom playlist thumbnails last month, but the feature wasn’t exactly what users wanted. It only allowed users to create playlist thumbnails using AI instead of letting them upload custom images for their playlists, leaving many playlist curators disappointed. Fortunately, YouTube has listened to user feedback and is rolling out custom image uploads for playlist thumbnails along with a host of other highly requested features and improvements.
YouTube says the custom thumbnail feature now lets you upload images from your camera roll and personalize them with text, filters, or stickers. In addition, the platform is adding a feature that makes it easier to collaborate with friends and create new playlists using a shareable link or QR code. Later this year, YouTube will add a new voting system and corresponding filter to playlists, allowing users to vote on videos in playlists and make the best video in the playlist easier to discover.
Along with the playlist improvements, YouTube is adding fine-tunable playback speed support that allows for adjustments in 0.05-second increments, a revamped miniplayer for the mobile app that you can resize and move around while browsing other videos, and a new Sleep Timer that will automatically pause videos after a predefined time. YouTube tested the Sleep Timer feature with YouTube Premium subscribers earlier this year, and it’s now rolling out to all users on the mobile app.
For creators and artists, YouTube is introducing new badges that will let viewers celebrate milestones, like being the first set of paid members of a creator’s channel, correctly completing quizzes, or being a top listener of an artist on YouTube Music. These badges will roll out to users over the coming weeks and will be available in the “You” tab on the mobile app.
Lastly, the YouTube app for TVs is getting a new UI for Shorts and subtle interface changes that should give videos a more cinematic feel. These changes join the immersive channel pages for YouTube on TV that rolled out last month.
Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at [email protected]. You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it’s your choice.
Are you constantly running out of battery? It might be time to invest in a good power bank, and Anker has some of the best. The Anker Prime 27,650mAh Power Bank (250W) is the company’s higher-end model that is still portable. Right now, this portable battery is $60 off, the biggest discount we’ve seen on it. This brings the total cost down to $119.99.
This offer is available from Woot!, an Amazon-owned website that specializes in deals. There’s a limit of five units per customer, and the discount is scheduled to expire in three days, or “until sold out.”
As already mentioned, the Anker Prime 27,650mAh Power Bank (250W) is Anker’s best portable battery pack. Anything better is put into the Anker SOLIX sub-brand, which specializes in much more capable and expensive power stations. This is a great deal, considering the all-time low on Amazon is still $143.99, so you’re saving more by going with Amazon’s subsidiary brand.
This is a very powerful portable power bank. As its name implies, it has a large 27,650mAh battery, which should charge the average smartphone about four to five times. It is also very fast, with a maximum output of 250W. You’ll get access to two USB-C ports and a single USB-A connection. Both USB-C ports can reach up to 140W, while the USB-A port is limited to 65W, which is still very fast. 140W is enough to charge smartphones, tablets, and most modern laptops. Of course, wattage gets divided as you connect more devices simultaneously.
Raw capabilities aside, the Anker Prime 27,650mAh Power Bank (250W) has other great features you’ll love. It has an integrated screen that will give you the live status of the battery and ports. Additionally, you can connect to it over Bluetooth and use the official app to see more stats and information. You can even locate the battery using the app, if you happen to misplace it.
Make sure to buy your power bank soon. Remember, the deal ends in a few days or until stock runs out, which could happen at any time.
Alert management for developers and ops teams may seem like a solved problem. Notifying an on-call engineer isn’t exactly difficult anymore, after all. But the real question has become when to alert the right person and how to help them when a service goes down, for example. Many are turning to AI to solve some of those issues, including Keep.
The company offers an open source version that uses a rule-based system, but what’s more interesting is its paid enterprise offering, which also uses AI models to reduce notification fatigue by deduplicating and correlating alerts.
The Y Combinator-backed company, which announced a $2.5 million pre-seed round today, leverages AI to help ops teams manage and prioritize their alerts. The service aggregates data from a variety of monitoring tools, prioritizes and manages alerts, and then helps those teams diagnose the issue that led it to wake up the on-call engineer in the first place.
Image Credits:Keep
“We saw that observability platforms became more or less a commodity. They unified features. They gave great access to metrics, logs, etc.,” Keep co-founder Matvey Kukuy told me. “So you can access this data, but it’s really hard to interpret it — and especially interpret during hard times when something is happening. When you manage a large enterprise infrastructure, where something is always happening, you’re likely dealing with 1,000s of events.”
Keep was originally co-founded by CEO Tal Borenstein and CTO Tal Glazner. The two first met 13 years ago in the Israeli Defense Force’s Unit 8200 and stayed in touch ever since. In the years since, Borenstein has worked at the cybersecurity skills platform Cyberbit and compliance service Anecdotes, while Glazner worked at Cyberark before reuniting with his co-founder at Anecdotes. Earlier this year, they brought on Kukuy as their third co-founder. Before joining Keep, Kukuy was the CEO of Amixr, a startup that was building a product to compete with PagerDuty and which was later acquired by Grafana Labs.
Image Credits:Keep
At its core, Keep is an integration service that pulls in data from a wide variety of infrastructure services and observability tools and then uses all of this data to enrich the individual alerts with more context. In the open source version, this is mostly done by using Keep’s workflow tooling to create triggers and their corresponding actions.
The company uses its AI platform on top of this open source tooling to monetize its service. Keep’s AI models provide support for things like noise reduction, event correlation, and automated root cause analysis, for example. Like most other open source startups, Keep reserves some features like expanded data retention, single sign-on support, and private deployments for its paying enterprise customers.
“We found this works surprisingly well because when enterprises try us, it’s very easy for [an engineer] to start with the open source and to deploy Keep — even on a laptop with the Docker compose or Kubernetes — and just see what Keep gives them out of the box and to see the value of it in two hours. We find that these folks become our champions in the organization,” Kukuy explained.
Image Credits:Keep
As for the competitive environment, Keep CEO Borenstein believes there is currently an opportunity window for startups in this space that will remain open for another year or two. He acknowledges that there are some “big, non-modern companies” working in this field, but in his view the incumbent observability tools most see alerting as a feature inside their platform. And the AIOps startups that launched earlier are now “locked into their old propositions.”
“The current AIOps market has a lot of potential but has been narrowed down technically to alerts due to early entrants that didn’t perform well product-wise and corrupted it,” Borenstein said. “We believe the AIOps market has a lot of potential, and a new category is incoming based on intelligence layered on top of the observability stack.”
The company’s pre-seed round was led by Runa Capital, with participation from a number of undisclosed angels who previously built tech companies in adjacent areas.
Nothing started a project asking its community to help it codesign a Phone 2a back in March.
The company has now teased October 30 as the launch for the community edition Phone 2a.
The Phone 2a features a glow-in-the-dark back panel.
The Phone 2a launched back in March, giving Nothing fans a new mid-tier device to jump on. Around the same time, the company started a community-focused project asking members to chip in on codesigning a Phone 2a Community Edition. We’re now close to seeing this Community Edition device launch.
On X (formerly Twitter), the UK-based brand teased that a big reveal would be coming our way on October 30, 2024. The teaser includes a video of a firefly landing on the ground and glowing green before walking off-screen. The teaser is for the Phone 2a Community Edition and the unusual green glow is referencing a unique feature on the device.
If you go on to Nothing’s website, you can get a preview of the soon to be announced handset. The website lists out the separate stages of development the community helped with, which include the design, wallpaper, packaging, and marketing.
As far as the device is concerned, it looks like a normal Phone 2a. What sets the Community Edition apart from the normal Phone 2a, however, it the glow-in-the-dark back panel. You’ll also notice that the device will get new wallpapers and revamped packaging that highlight the device’s neon green hue.
The marketing has also been designed to point out the difference between this model and the normal Phone 2a. Although the website appears to make it pretty clear what we’re going to get, it’s important to note that there’s a possibility Nothing could make slight tweaks before launch.
Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at [email protected]. You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it’s your choice.
The Biden administration has privately discussed capping sales of advanced AI chips from Nvidia and AMD to certain Persian Gulf countries in the interest of national security, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The restriction could put a ceiling on export licenses for certain countries, potentially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are heavily investing in AI data centers.
The White House increasingly views American AI chips as a key advantage on the global stage. Last year, the United States banned the sale of Nvidia and AMD’s advanced AI chips to China, and placed export restrictions on 40 other countries around the globe to close loopholes where AI chips could indirectly get to China.
The latest reported discussions could indicate that U.S. officials are worried about the Persian Gulf’s global influence over the AI industry. This year, Saudi Arabia reportedly planned to launch a $40 billion fund to invest in AI technology, while OpenAI reportedly held discussions with a UAE-backed investment fund over participating in its latest $6.6 billion funding round.
Apple’s traditional sport bands are reliable and functional, but the company’s FineWoven Magnetic Link band elevates the Apple Watch Series to a more refined aesthetic. It’s also extremely comfortable for all-day wear and offers a fantastic, customizable fit to wrists of all sizes. It’s well worth forking over extra cash if you want a neater look beyond the gym.
First, let me preface this review by saying I am neither especially fashion-forward nor someone who enjoys spending money. Most often, I can be found in a T-shirt and gym shorts, rummaging through Bulleye’s Playground (the dollar section at the front of every Target). Yet, when this year’s Apple Watch Series 10 landed, I found myself attracted to a somewhat pricey upgrade. After more than a week with the FineWoven Magnetic Link band, I have absolutely no remorse.
Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
Anyone who has experienced the joy of ordering a smartwatch knows there are a series of decisions to consider. Typically, this starts with choosing a case material followed by a case size, then deciphering connectivity, and finally, picking a band style. Some models are covered under the original list price, while upgrades incur an additional fee. For as long as I’ve been testing Apple’s devices, I’ve always opted for the basics, which means sporting one of the included, affordable watch band options. Like most shoppers, I hit check out with a flexible, fluoroelastomer Sport Band in my cart. Usually in gray because I am joyless.
Call it boredom or just the itch to try something different (probably because the Apple Watch design continually fails to offer novelty), but this year, I decided to look closer at the company’s newer band styles. When I spotted the fresh Magnetic Link bands listed under Apple’s Textile category, I was sold (well, once my Editor graciously approved). The suede-like band is available in just three colorways — Black, Dark Taupe, and Blackberry — but each is a rich, deep Autumn hue. I branched out and went with the Blackberry selection, and I have to say, I didn’t know a Plum-colored accessory could look so tasteful in both senses of the word. Does it look good with outfits for all occasions sans maybe your own wedding? Yes. Does it make me crave plums? Also yes. Paired with the slightly thinner case and attractive display of the Series 10, the band is truly elevated.
Apple’s FineWoven material is comfortable and classy, and available in three rich hues.
The material is also incredibly soft and quite comfortable, both for daily wear and overnight while tracking sleep. I haven’t found it to attract a conspicuous amount of dust and the toothpaste I got on it day one rinsed right off. I’ve worn the band while washing dishes, napping on the beach, and completing a variety of light workouts. Personally, I’d swap into a sports band if I were going to take on a particularly sweaty gym session or dip in the ocean, but that’s because I hate wearing wet things, and the FineWoven material doesn’t dry instantly like rubbery options. Fortunately, the Series 10 is still compatible with older bands.
Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
However, it isn’t the look or even the inherent feel of the Magnetic Link band that has really won me over. My obsession is with the fit. Cursed with a wrist size that consistently falls right between pinhole options, I’m often left wearing watch bands that are either slightly too loose or uncomfortably too tight. (I have the same problem with sneakers so I’m pretty sure this is a me problem, not an industry one.) The Magnetic Link band makes customizing my fit absolutely open-ended. I can align the magnets to the exact overlap that feels right on my wrist and even adjust for different scenarios as needed. When working out, I tighten the band slightly. Before bed, I give my skin a little more breathing room.
The FineWoven Magnetic Link’s design offers the best adjustable fit I’ve experienced from any Apple Watch band.
Sure, you can accomplish a similarly fine-tuned fit with Apple’s Sport Loop band. However, that design uses a hook and loop enclosure (commonly known as Velcro), and the audio experience of removing the band takes me right back to kindergarten when my mother threatened to put me back into Velcro sneakers if I kept haphazardly knotting my shoestrings. Velcro is the ripping sound of regression. I know not everyone will have a visceral reaction to hook-and-loop closures, but a silent magnetic one just exhibits class a bit more effectively. More importantly, the magnets are sufficiently strong enough to keep the band in place but not so strong that I need any extra oomph to remove my watch in a hurry. Instead of fumbling with a pin and hole, I basically equip my watch like an adult version of a slap bracelet and head out.
FineWoven Magnetic Link Apple Watch band review: The verdict
Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
Style is subjective, and not everyone will love the same look for their everyday wearable. After years of rocking a sporty silicone strap, though, I feel like I’ve sprung for a major upgrade with Apple’s FineWoven Magnetic Link band. It’s comfortable, attractive, and, most importantly, provides a great fit. With that said, the band does come in limited colorways, so anyone looking for more variety and more energetic colors probably won’t be satisfied with the options. It’s also not the best pick for fitness tracking, unless you are one of God’s favorites and hardly sweat.
Though pricey, the FineWoven Magnetic Link band is worth grabbing at checkout.
Still, given the compatibility of bands and older devices, most people have a silicone option lying around. If you don’t, you can always get a band for activity tracking for very cheap on Amazon. Outside of the gym, the FineWoven band is a great accessory and my new favorite look. If you choose the band when buying a new watch, it adds $50 to your total. Purchased as a standalone product, though, it’ll run you a hefty $100.
Elon Musk’s plan to reduce X’s dependence on advertising revenue by increasing paid subscriptions is still not taking off. According to a new, third-party analysis of the X Premium subscription service by app intelligence firm Appfigures, X has pulled in approximately $200 million in in-app purchase revenue across iOS and Android since the original 2021 launch of the subscription formerly known as Twitter Blue.
There are some caveats to this figure. For starters, the sum is based only on those purchases made via the mobile app, not the mobile web or desktop web. That means the true sum is likely higher, especially given X offers a discount for web purchases.
Then there are the commission fees to consider.
After paying app store commissions, X will have made a minimum of $140 million, the firm estimates. However, that figure will also likely be higher because Apple and Google discount commissions from 30% to 15% in year two. (Appfigures doesn’t have a way to reliably calculate how many subscriptions are associated with each commission rate, we’re told).
While there’s no way to definitively determine how many of X’s users are paying for X Premium subscriptions, there are ways to back into some estimates here, at least in terms of native mobile subscribers.
Currently, X continues to offer three subscription tiers: Basic, Premium, and Premium Plus with varying access to advanced features, like Grok AI, a blue Verified checkmark, and fewer ads, among others. The top in-app purchase (based on App Store data) is X Premium, which costs $11 per month on mobile.
In September 2024, X grossed $14.7 million through in-app purchases on mobile devices, according to Appfigures.
Since X is a private company with no obligation to share its user numbers publicly, one can only guess how many people are buying which subscription tier.
But if that revenue was generated mostly by its top in-app purchase, X Premium, that would equate to roughly 1.3 million paying users (i.e., $14.7M / $11).
If, instead, all the sign-ups were for X’s lowest tier, the $4 per month X Basic, then X could have gained as many as 3.7 million paid users during the month.
If we were to estimate that X’s paid users broke down by 70% on Premium, 20% on Premium Plus, and 10% on Premium Basic, that would equate to about 940K Premium users, 134K Premium Plus users, and 368K Premium Basic users. This split seems reasonable since X’s top three subscriptions (in order) are Premium, Premium Plus, then Basic. In total, those numbers combined would come to around 1.4 million paid users added during September.
Quarter-by-quarter, the picture does look a bit rosier for X Premium, as Appfigures’ estimatesindicate that in-app purchase revenue growth jumped 30% from Q2 to Q3 after staying relatively flat in the prior period.
There are other in-app purchases available beyond X Premium to consider, like those for subscriptions to top creators on the platform. Elon Musk himself has a large following, for instance. Fortune reported last year that Musk was the most-followed user with 155 million followers, of which over 40,000 were subscribers — or .025% of his followers had subscribed. Today, Musk has 200 million followers. Assuming roughly the same percentage were subscribed, that would work out to around 50,000 subscribers. At $4 per month for the subscription, that would pull in around $200,000 per month in gross revenue.
Image Credits:X screenshot
Another user with a large subscription base is @stevewilldoit, as he follows anyone who subscribes to him. He currently follows 10.4K people on X. If three-fourths were subscribed, that would equal around 7.8K subscribers paying $5 per month, bringing in gross earnings of $39K/month before X’s cut is removed.
Though rough estimates, these additional figures are also important because they’re a part of X’s plan to grow its user base via creator content.
Last week, the company announced it would begin to pay creators based on engagement they receive from X’s Premium subscribers, instead of a cut of ad revenue — a change clearly meant to boost X subscribers. On the one hand, given that X had reduced the ad load for Premium+ subscribers to zero, this could open up more possibilities for creators to make money. But paying for engagement also often incentivizes clickbait or controversial content, designed to get replies.
Regardless, Bloomberg reported earlier this year that X generated $1.48 billion in total revenue during the first 6 months of 2024, according to financial documents shared with regulators. In other words, subscriptions are still a very small piece of X’s pie.
