Month: September 2024
Apple may release an iPad-like smart home display next year
The StandBy feature of iPhones offers a hint of how an Apple smart home display could work. | Image: David Pierce / The Verge
Apple is preparing to take a fresh run at the smart home that starts with a rumored smart display that it may release next year. That’s according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who writes in his Power On newsletter today that the display will use a new operating system, called homeOS, that’s based on the Apple TV’s tvOS (much like the software that drives HomePods now.)
Gurman reports that the display will run Apple apps like Calendar, Notes, and Home, and that Apple has tested prototypes with magnets for wall-mounting. And it will support Apple Intelligence — something Apple’s HomePods don’t currently do.
Rumors of such a device have been going around for some time now, with form factors ranging from a HomePod with a screen to a display attached to a robotic arm that swivels to face you on video calls. But products along those lines have been sounding more real, lately.
Another recent rumor suggested that a “HomeAccessory” device coming soon would be square-shaped, and that users might be able to use hand gestures from afar to control it, as 9to5Mac wrote earlier this week. And MacRumors has reported on apparent code references to the device and homeOS.
A display like this sounds more down-to-Earth than Apple’s robotic screen idea. It could also be less fiddly and hopefully less expensive than trying to use an iPad as a dedicated smart home controller (I’ve tried; it’s not a great experience!) We’ll find out if and when it launches — which doesn’t sound terribly far off.
The StandBy feature of iPhones offers a hint of how an Apple smart home display could work. | Image: David Pierce / The Verge
Apple is preparing to take a fresh run at the smart home that starts with a rumored smart display that it may release next year. That’s according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who writes in his Power On newsletter today that the display will use a new operating system, called homeOS, that’s based on the Apple TV’s tvOS (much like the software that drives HomePods now.)
Gurman reports that the display will run Apple apps like Calendar, Notes, and Home, and that Apple has tested prototypes with magnets for wall-mounting. And it will support Apple Intelligence — something Apple’s HomePods don’t currently do.
Rumors of such a device have been going around for some time now, with form factors ranging from a HomePod with a screen to a display attached to a robotic arm that swivels to face you on video calls. But products along those lines have been sounding more real, lately.
Another recent rumor suggested that a “HomeAccessory” device coming soon would be square-shaped, and that users might be able to use hand gestures from afar to control it, as 9to5Mac wrote earlier this week. And MacRumors has reported on apparent code references to the device and homeOS.
A display like this sounds more down-to-Earth than Apple’s robotic screen idea. It could also be less fiddly and hopefully less expensive than trying to use an iPad as a dedicated smart home controller (I’ve tried; it’s not a great experience!) We’ll find out if and when it launches — which doesn’t sound terribly far off.
Clean Energy Should Get Cheaper and Grow Even Faster
J. Doyne Farmer is the director of the complexity economics program at the Institute for New Economic Thinking in Oxford’s research and policy unit. And he reminds us that solar and wind energy “are very likely to get even less expensive and grow quickly,” pointing out that “the rate at which a given kind of technology improves is remarkably predictable.”
The best-known example is Moore’s Law… Like computer chips, many other technologies also get exponentially more affordable, though at different rates. Some of the best examples are renewable energy technologies such as solar panels, lithium batteries and wind turbines. The cost of solar panels has dropped an average of 10% a year, making them about 10,000 times cheaper than they were in 1958, the year of their pioneering use to power the Vanguard 1 satellite. Lithium batteries have cheapened at a comparable pace, and the cost of wind turbines has dropped steadily too, albeit at a slower rate.
Not all technologies follow this course, however. Fossil fuels cost roughly what they did a century ago, adjusted for inflation, and nuclear power is no cheaper than it was in 1958. (In fact, partly due to heightened safety concerns, it’s somewhat more expensive.)
The global deployment of technologies follows another pattern, called an S curve, increasing exponentially at first and then leveling out. Careful analysis of the spread of many technologies, from canals to the internet, makes it possible to predict the pace of technological adoption. When a technology is new, predictions are difficult, but as it develops, they get easier. Applying these ideas to the energy transition indicates that key technologies such as solar, wind, batteries and green-hydrogen-based fuels are likely to grow rapidly, dominating the energy system within the next two decades. And they will continue to get cheaper and cheaper, making energy far more affordable than it has ever been. This will happen in electricity generation first and then in sectors that are harder to decarbonize, including aviation and long-range shipping.
And in addition, “The future savings more than offset present investments to the extent that the transition would make sense from a purely economic standpoint even if we weren’t worried about climate change.
“The sooner we make investments and adopt policies that enable the transition, the sooner we will realize the long-term savings.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
J. Doyne Farmer is the director of the complexity economics program at the Institute for New Economic Thinking in Oxford’s research and policy unit. And he reminds us that solar and wind energy “are very likely to get even less expensive and grow quickly,” pointing out that “the rate at which a given kind of technology improves is remarkably predictable.”
The best-known example is Moore’s Law… Like computer chips, many other technologies also get exponentially more affordable, though at different rates. Some of the best examples are renewable energy technologies such as solar panels, lithium batteries and wind turbines. The cost of solar panels has dropped an average of 10% a year, making them about 10,000 times cheaper than they were in 1958, the year of their pioneering use to power the Vanguard 1 satellite. Lithium batteries have cheapened at a comparable pace, and the cost of wind turbines has dropped steadily too, albeit at a slower rate.
Not all technologies follow this course, however. Fossil fuels cost roughly what they did a century ago, adjusted for inflation, and nuclear power is no cheaper than it was in 1958. (In fact, partly due to heightened safety concerns, it’s somewhat more expensive.)
The global deployment of technologies follows another pattern, called an S curve, increasing exponentially at first and then leveling out. Careful analysis of the spread of many technologies, from canals to the internet, makes it possible to predict the pace of technological adoption. When a technology is new, predictions are difficult, but as it develops, they get easier. Applying these ideas to the energy transition indicates that key technologies such as solar, wind, batteries and green-hydrogen-based fuels are likely to grow rapidly, dominating the energy system within the next two decades. And they will continue to get cheaper and cheaper, making energy far more affordable than it has ever been. This will happen in electricity generation first and then in sectors that are harder to decarbonize, including aviation and long-range shipping.
And in addition, “The future savings more than offset present investments to the extent that the transition would make sense from a purely economic standpoint even if we weren’t worried about climate change.
“The sooner we make investments and adopt policies that enable the transition, the sooner we will realize the long-term savings.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The future of AI might look a lot like Twitter
The Verge
Roughly a month ago, Michael Sayman realized he could finally build the app he’d been thinking about for years: a social network where everyone but you is an AI bot. Large language models are finally good enough and cheap enough that the experience might actually feel social and useful, and not like a gimmick or a game. And so, after years of waiting and months of testing the latest models, Sayman got to work.
The app he built is called SocialAI, and it has become something of a viral phenomenon since it launched. (All he’d tell me is that it was downloaded 20,000 times in the first couple of days — but says the number has gone up substantially since then.) Some people thought it seemed fun and useful; other people thought it felt deeply dystopian. Is a social network still a social network, they wondered, if you’re the only human present? Still others thought the whole thing was an art project of sorts, a social commentary on the state of the online world.
On this episode of The Vergecast, Sayman says it’s really all of the above. But most of all, it’s an attempt to build an entirely new way to interact with AI models. Instead of a chatbot, which tries to deliver you the single best response to your prompt, SocialAI offers you options and filters in the form of replies. When you respond to a bot, or favorite a reply, that teaches the model more about what you’re looking for — and lets you choose your own AI adventure instead of just hoping the model gets it right.
“Over the past 10 years, we’ve had social media giants iterating relentlessly,” Sayman says, “with all the data in the world, to try and perfect an interface where people can interact with as many people and points of view as possible, right?” SocialAI looks like Twitter or Threads, he says, not to trick you into forgetting all the reply guys are AI but because we all know exactly how social networks work. “It’s not social for the sake of the social network, but social for the sake of social interface.”
SocialAI is still in its very early stages, which you’ll be able to tell immediately from the quality of some of the replies. Still, Sayman says he’s already seeing encouraging usage and feedback — and he has lots of ideas about where to take the app next. The future of AI probably isn’t a text box, but it also probably isn’t exactly a Twitter clone, either. We talk through some of the features he’s planning on launching, how the interface might change over time, why he thinks of social network design as the new skeuomorphism, and whether there’s a business in SocialAI over time.
Ultimately, Sayman doesn’t think of SocialAI as a dystopian nightmare. The truly dystopian thing, he says, is the current state of things, in which you never know who’s human and who’s not, and everyone’s just posting through it all the time on increasingly dangerous and problematic platforms. “I’m not trying to replace the human to human connection,” he says. “I’m trying to help people find a way to have a secondary option when that human isn’t around for them, so that they don’t have to rush to social media.” Next time you need to vent, he hopes you might decide to tell the bots instead. They’ll be there for you.
If you want to know more about everything we dicuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
SocialAI
Michael Sayman on LinkedIn
SocialAI: we tried the Twitter clone where no other humans are allowed
From TechCrunch: Friendly Apps raises $3 million, pre-product, for apps that improve people’s well-being
From Wired: I Stared Into the AI Void With the SocialAI App
From New York Magazine: Does Anyone Need an AI Social Network?
From Ars Technica: “Dead Internet theory” comes to life with new AI-powered social media app
The Verge
Roughly a month ago, Michael Sayman realized he could finally build the app he’d been thinking about for years: a social network where everyone but you is an AI bot. Large language models are finally good enough and cheap enough that the experience might actually feel social and useful, and not like a gimmick or a game. And so, after years of waiting and months of testing the latest models, Sayman got to work.
The app he built is called SocialAI, and it has become something of a viral phenomenon since it launched. (All he’d tell me is that it was downloaded 20,000 times in the first couple of days — but says the number has gone up substantially since then.) Some people thought it seemed fun and useful; other people thought it felt deeply dystopian. Is a social network still a social network, they wondered, if you’re the only human present? Still others thought the whole thing was an art project of sorts, a social commentary on the state of the online world.
On this episode of The Vergecast, Sayman says it’s really all of the above. But most of all, it’s an attempt to build an entirely new way to interact with AI models. Instead of a chatbot, which tries to deliver you the single best response to your prompt, SocialAI offers you options and filters in the form of replies. When you respond to a bot, or favorite a reply, that teaches the model more about what you’re looking for — and lets you choose your own AI adventure instead of just hoping the model gets it right.
“Over the past 10 years, we’ve had social media giants iterating relentlessly,” Sayman says, “with all the data in the world, to try and perfect an interface where people can interact with as many people and points of view as possible, right?” SocialAI looks like Twitter or Threads, he says, not to trick you into forgetting all the reply guys are AI but because we all know exactly how social networks work. “It’s not social for the sake of the social network, but social for the sake of social interface.”
SocialAI is still in its very early stages, which you’ll be able to tell immediately from the quality of some of the replies. Still, Sayman says he’s already seeing encouraging usage and feedback — and he has lots of ideas about where to take the app next. The future of AI probably isn’t a text box, but it also probably isn’t exactly a Twitter clone, either. We talk through some of the features he’s planning on launching, how the interface might change over time, why he thinks of social network design as the new skeuomorphism, and whether there’s a business in SocialAI over time.
Ultimately, Sayman doesn’t think of SocialAI as a dystopian nightmare. The truly dystopian thing, he says, is the current state of things, in which you never know who’s human and who’s not, and everyone’s just posting through it all the time on increasingly dangerous and problematic platforms. “I’m not trying to replace the human to human connection,” he says. “I’m trying to help people find a way to have a secondary option when that human isn’t around for them, so that they don’t have to rush to social media.” Next time you need to vent, he hopes you might decide to tell the bots instead. They’ll be there for you.
If you want to know more about everything we dicuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
SocialAI
Michael Sayman on LinkedIn
SocialAI: we tried the Twitter clone where no other humans are allowed
From TechCrunch: Friendly Apps raises $3 million, pre-product, for apps that improve people’s well-being
From Wired: I Stared Into the AI Void With the SocialAI App
From New York Magazine: Does Anyone Need an AI Social Network?
From Ars Technica: “Dead Internet theory” comes to life with new AI-powered social media app
Jaguars vs. Texans: How to Watch NFL Week 4 Online Today
Jacksonville head to Houston looking to avoid a fourth straight defeat.
Jacksonville head to Houston looking to avoid a fourth straight defeat.
Vikings vs. Packers: How to Watch NFL Week 4 Online Today
Minnesota look to maintain a perfect start to the season at Lambeau Field.
Minnesota look to maintain a perfect start to the season at Lambeau Field.