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Stability AI CEO resigns to ‘pursue decentralized AI’

2024-03-23T07:23:52-04:00

Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Emad Mostaque is stepping down from his role as CEO of Stability AI, the startup that helped bring Stable Diffusion to life. In a press release late on Friday night, Stability AI says Mostaque is leaving the company “to pursue decentralized AI.” Mostaque will also step down from his position on the board of directors at Stability AI.

The board has appointed two interim co-CEOs to lead Stability AI — COO Shan Shan Wong and CTO Christian Laforte — while it conducts a search for a permanent CEO. “As we search for a permanent CEO, I have full confidence that Shan Shan Wong and Christian Laforte, in their roles as interim co-CEOs, will adeptly steer the company forward in developing and commercializing industry-leading generative AI...

Asus’ tiny 2.5-liter gaming NUC tentatively starts at $1,629 in the US

2024-03-22T19:35:22-04:00

The Asus ROG NUC. | Image: Asus

When Asus rescued Intel’s NUC brand of compact computers from the dumpster, I held out hope that the company might also revive Intel’s ambitious miniature gaming PCs. It did, but prepare for a little sticker shock — these systems may cost as much or more than a comparable gaming laptop.

The company’s website currently lists two models of the ROG NUC, with what Asus tells us are tentative prices of $1,629 and $2,199. The entry-level model sports an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, Nvidia RTX 4060 graphics, 16GB of 5600MHz DDR5 RAM and 512GB of NVMe SSD storage, while the advanced config bumps that up to an Core Ultra 9 185H, RTX 4070, and 32GB / 1TB of RAM and storage respectively.

Since you can easily find Asus’ popular Zephyrus G14 and G16...

US v. Apple: everything you need to know

2024-03-22T17:56:43-04:00

Cath Virginia / The Verge

It’s all about Apple’s vise grip over the smartphone market and the iPhone’s locked-down ecosystem.

United States v. Apple is pure nerd rage

2024-03-22T17:33:47-04:00

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge

United States v. Apple is a lawsuit written for the general public, an 88-page press release designed to be read aloud on cable news shows.

A lawsuit is, functionally speaking, a communication between lawyers and a judge. Because it is a specialized missive to a specialized audience, it can become highly technical and jargonistic — this is especially so when it comes to niche areas of law like antitrust or complex sectors of litigation like technology. Tech lawsuits are often obscure even to techies, interspersed with bizarre software terminology that is pretty much meaningless outside of a court of law. (For example, antitrust law loves “middleware,” and copyright law loves “technological protection measure.”)

Although the dreaded...

Mozilla just ditched its privacy partner because its CEO is tied to data brokers

2024-03-22T17:20:30-04:00

Image: Mozilla

Mozilla is ending its partnership with Onerep after the company’s CEO admitted to having ties to a data broker, as first reported by Krebs on Security. “Though customer data was never at risk, the outside financial interests and activities of Onerep’s CEO do not align with our values,” writes Mozilla’s vice president of communications Brandon Borrman, in a statement provided to The Verge.

In February, Mozilla bundled Onerep’s data removal service into its new $8.99 per month Monitor Plus subscription. The service let users hunt down their personal information on the web and submit takedown requests across dozens of websites — all through Mozilla’s partnership with Onerep.

However, an in-depth report from Krebs on Security found that...

Mint is going away, but these easy budgeting apps can take its place

2024-03-22T17:12:30-04:00

Image: Mint

If you’ve been using Intuit’s Mint app to help you budget, automatically collect your expenses, put them in useful categories, and remind you to pay them, then you were probably a bit shocked to find out that Intuit will be folding Mint into its other financial service, Credit Karma. Originally, the final date was going to be January 1st, 2024, but now, Mint will officially disappear on March 23rd, 2024.

Credit Karma’s main service is to offer advice about financial products based on your credit score, which means this may be a good fit depending on how many of Mint’s features will be moved to Credit Karma. But it’s too soon to tell. (According to Intuit, “some of the most popular Mint-like features are available on Intuit Credit Karma,”...

Joni Mitchell is back on Spotify just like Neil Young — because Joe Rogan isn’t going anywhere

2024-03-22T16:51:07-04:00

Photo by Taylor Hill / WireImage

Two years after several legendary musicians broke with Spotify in protest over controversial remarks made on podcaster Joe Rogan’s show, most have now returned to the music service — with Joni Mitchell as the latest example. As noted by The New York Times, several of the singer-songwriter’s most pivotal albums, including Blue, are once again available to stream on Spotify. Mitchell’s representatives haven’t offered any comment on her quiet comeback.

“Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives,” Mitchell wrote in 2022 amid an uproar directed at Rogan for misinformation that was repeated on his podcast.

Neil Young, the musician who was most vocal in his criticism of comments on The Joe Rogan Experience...

How an artificial tooth monopoly put the DOJ’s blockbuster Apple antitrust suit in New Jersey

2024-03-22T16:45:00-04:00

Image: The Verge / Getty Images

So, what do artificial teeth have to do with the Department of Justice’s massive lawsuit against Apple? Well, they may be one of the reasons why the DOJ decided to file its lawsuit in the state of New Jersey — instead of, say, Virginia or Washington, DC, like it did for Google and Microsoft.

The DOJ previously filed — and won — a similar antitrust case against a company that makes fake teeth in the Third Circuit, which includes New Jersey.

In an interview with The Verge, William Kovacic, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission and a professor at the George Washington University Law School, explains that “the Third Circuit is a jurisdiction with some pretty good law for plaintiffs on monopolization issues.” He points to the DOJ’s...

‘Even stronger’ than imagined: DOJ’s sweeping Apple lawsuit draws expert praise

2024-03-22T16:17:57-04:00

Cath Virginia / The Verge

The Department of Justice’s antitrust division has come into its own, having filed its third tech monopoly lawsuit in four years.

The accumulated experience shows up in the complaint, according to antitrust experts who spoke with The Verge about the complaint filed Thursday accusing Apple of violating antitrust law. The DOJ describes a sweeping arc of behaviors by Apple, arguing that it adds up to a pattern of illegal monopoly maintenance. Rather than focusing on two or three illegal acts, the complaint alleges that Apple engages in a pattern of behaviors that further entrench consumers into their ecosystem and make it harder to switch, even in the face of high prices and degraded quality.

“I think that they made an even stronger case...

Apple reportedly gives up on its MicroLED dream for now

2024-03-22T15:10:12-04:00

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple is scrapping plans to build a MicroLED display for the Apple Watch, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The company reportedly stopped working on the display “around the same time as the company’s decision to cancel work on a self-driving car,” writes Gurman, after finding it too costly and complex to develop.

This corroborates an earlier rumor from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who said the company canceled the in-house MicroLED display because “the production costs are too high to make it economically viable.” As a result of the project’s discontinuation, Apple cut “several dozen” engineering jobs, some of which were at the company’s own screen manufacturing facility in California, Bloomberg reports.

Rumors about...