How to Use Images From Your Phone to Search the Web

A picture is worth a thousand words, but you don’t need to type any of them to search the internet these days. Boosted by artificial intelligence, software on your phone can automatically analyze objects live in your camera view or in a photo (or video) to immediately round up a list of search results. And … Read more

Bluesky Is Turning Into a Strong X Alternative

  After an hour or so of scrolling through Bluesky the other night, I felt something I haven’t felt on social media in a long time: free. Free from Elon Musk, and his tedious quest to turn X into a right-wing echo chamber where he and his friends are the permanent, inescapable main characters. Free … Read more

What to Know About Australia’s Social Media Ban for Children Under 16

Australia has passed a law to prevent children under 16 from creating accounts on social media platforms. The bill, which the government calls a “world leading” move to protect young people online, was approved in the Senate on Thursday with support from both of the country’s major parties. The lower house of Parliament had passed … Read more

The Evolution of Home Beauty Device Trends

But that was specifically for psoriasis, with a limited pool of 783 patients. Popular at-home skin-care devices tend to be less vetted, said the study’s lead author Joel Gelfand, MD, a professor of dermatology and epidemiology at the Perelman School. “If they aren’t studied in a randomized control trial, it makes me skeptical,” he said. … Read more

Fable, a Book App, Makes Changes After Offensive A.I. Messages

Fable, a popular app for talking about and tracking books, is changing the way it creates personalized summaries for its users after complaints that an artificial intelligence model used offensive language. One summary suggested that a reader of Black narratives should also read white authors. In an Instagram post this week, Chris Gallello, the head … Read more

Fitbit Agrees to Pay $12 Million for Not Quickly Reporting Burn Risk With Watches

Reports that Fitbit’s Ionic smartwatch was overheating began in 2018 and continued into 2020. But according to U.S. officials, the company did not quickly report, as the law requires, that the battery inside the watch was creating an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death to consumers. On Thursday, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission … Read more

The Agony of Adoring Online Dogs

When Norbert died last week, just shy of 16 years old, tens of thousands of comments and tributes poured in. “My family is heartbroken,” Steines wrote as part of a lengthy announcement. Pet content remains one of the last bastions of joy on social media. Norbert and many other beloved online dogs — all blissfully … Read more