LONDON—In a stunning reversal of fortune for the controversy-plagued younger brother of King Charles III, Buckingham Palace announced Friday that the former Prince Andrew Mountbatten Windsor has been stripped of his royal computer privileges. “Due to serious lapses in judgment by Mr. Mountbatten Windsor, His Majesty King Charles III has today initiated a formal process […]

The post Prince Andrew Stripped Of Royal Computer Privileges appeared first on The Onion.

“We got hacked,” members of the University of Pennsylvania community were told in the subject line of several emails sent from addresses linked to its Graduate School of Education. The sender, apparently, was the potential hacker or hackers themselves. “The University of Pennsylvania is a dogshit elitist institution full of woke retards,” said the emails, […]

Joanna Stern, writing for The Wall Street Journal (gift link):

It was wild to watch. Sure, Neo nearly toppled over while closing the dishwasher, took two minutes to fold the shirt and twisted its arm attempting to dance the Macarena. But shhh. Remember the rule. Oh, did I mention Neo had a human puppet master, controlling it with a VR headset?

Neo’s creator, 1X Technologies, is making the Rosie-the-Robot dream: some of the first humanoid housekeepers. Starting Tuesday, you can apply to its early adopter program and preorder one for $20,000, with delivery expected in 2026. The company will also offer a $499 monthly rental plan with a six-month minimum commitment.

Just one hidden cost: your privacy. For now, you’ll need to be cool with a company representative potentially peering through the robot’s camera eyes to get chores done. There are guardrails, including controls over when and what the operator can do.

As usual, Stern made a delightful short film to accompany her article, which is also available on YouTube.

The argument from CEO Bernt Børnich is that they’re using the videos from the current state of Neo, where its actions are entirely remote-controlled by employees of 1X Technologies, to train its autonomy. I call bullshit. This looks to me like nothing but a scam. It’s not autonomous at all, I don’t believe this company is going to achieve any practical degree of autonomy with this product, and even while it’s remote-controlled by human operators, it’s slow and clumsy.

See also: Marques Brownlee, who smells vaporware as clearly as I do: “There seems to be a bit of a lost art in waiting for a tech product to be actually finished before announcing and unveiling it.”

Adobe demonstrated some of the experimental AI tools it’s working on at its Max conference that provide new ways to intuitively edit photos, videos, and audio. These experiments, called “sneaks,” include tools that instantly apply any changes you make to one frame across an entire video, easily manipulate light in images, and correct mispronunciations in […]

The Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 will bring Mineru and Tulin from The Legend of Zelda to the game via amiibo, and I can't wait.