Tech Boys

Mark Zuckerberg says he believes most of the Meta's code will be written by AI agents sometime within the next year-and-a-half. Zuckerberg made the prediction during an hour-long interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel.  "I would guess sometime in the next 12 to 18 months, we'll reach the point where most of the code that's going towards these efforts is written by AI," said Zuckerberg, referring to the company's efforts to build internal AI agents. "And I don't mean like autocomplete... I'm talking more like you give it a goal, it can run tests, it can improve things, it can find issues, it writes higher quality code than the average very good person on the team already."  Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg: "within 12-18 months, most of the code is written by AI" It won’t just be autocomplete. AI agents will set goals, run tests, find problems, and write better code than top engineers. pic.twitter.com/2del08UA45 — Haider. (@sl...

With pressure mounting from parents and lawmakers over social media age verification, a legal showdown between tech giants is beginning to take shape in Washington. The showdown centers on a seemingly simple question, but one with huge implications for the future of the web: Who is responsible for age verification? As Emily Birnbaum reports for Bloomberg , a new lobbying group for this issue — backed by industry heavyweights like Meta , Spotify , and Match Group (parent company of Tinder and Hinge) — has launched in Washington, D.C. The lobbying group argues that since Apple and Google control the app stores, they should verify user ages before downloads occur. Unsurprisingly, Apple and Google disagree, arguing that because apps collect and handle user data, the obligation falls squarely on developers. SEE ALSO: Instagram will use AI to identify teens using adult accounts For parents, this brewing fight could reshape who’s responsible for protecting kids online — besides par...

What you need to know Scammers are posing as toll collectors (E-ZPass, FasTrak, etc) Do not click any links Delete the text and mark it as junk or spam You might've heard of those scam texts about tolls. Heck, at this point, you've likely gotten a text pretending to be from E-ZPass or some such entity. We covered these scams at Mashable back in January , and they're back, if they ever left at all. The main points remain the same: Do not click any links and do not engage with potential scammers . If you get a text claiming to be from E-ZPass, FasTrak, or some other toll service, be very skeptical, as this has only become a more pervasive scam. We've got the latest details to keep you up to date. What are the E-ZPass and FasTrak scam texts, and how do you spot them? The E-ZPass toll scam has evolved and shifted over time, but the broad strokes remain the same: a text from a random number claiming you have unpaid tolls or fees, and that ...

Meta has spent the better part of a year integrating Meta AI with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and its other existing services, but hadn’t yet launched a standalone experience for Meta AI fans. That all changed yesterday at LlamaCon , the company's inaugural AI developer conference, when the company finally launched the Meta AI app . The new app is built with Meta's Llama 4 model . It's a full-fledged competitor to ChatGPT, which became the fastest-growing app in history after its launch. Already, AI enthusiasts are digging into the app to see what sets it apart from the competition. Per Meta’s press release, the big takeaway is personalization. Not only does the app integrate with your Facebook and Instagram accounts to give you more personalized responses, but it also has a memory feature, so it can reference past discussions and add more context to future ones. This isn’t necessarily unique to the Meta AI app since Grok also does this with people’s X accounts, and...

X's user base in the European Union is now officially lower than it was prior to Elon Musk's acquisition of the company. And that's according to a new report from Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter , but you knew that). The social media platform now has a total of 94.8 million monthly active users in the EU. That's a loss of roughly 11 million European users from X's previous transparency report, as highlighted by Social Media Today . Mashable previously reported on X's declining user base in the EU last fall. Now, we know that X's European user base has continued to drop. In 2022, before Musk acquired the social media platform, the company had more than 100 million users in Europe. How do we know X's user base is dropping in the EU? As part of the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), tech companies like X are required to provide content moderation transparency reports throughout the year. As a result, X is forced to share internal information,...

OpenAI is rolling back a recent update to GPT-4o, the default model that powers ChatGPT, following complaints from users that it made the chat bot act like a weirdo. "The last couple of GPT-4o updates have made the personality too sycophant-y and annoying (even though there are some very good parts of it), and we are working on fixes asap, some today and some this week," said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a X post spotted by TechCrunch .  As of midday Tuesday, Altman said ChatGPT was running on an older, less sycophantic version of GPT-4o for all free users. The company hopes to get paid users back on an older release of the model by later today. "We're working on additional fixes to model personality and will share more in the coming days," Altman said, adding OpenAI would share more information about what went wrong "at some point."  OpenAI released the new GPT-4o late last week. By the weekend, people began noticing ChatGPT was being overly agreeable...

As of Monday, April 28, OpenAI is experimenting with new ways to recommend products to ChatGPT users. OpenAI announced the update on Monday, saying the ChatGPT search tool will now make it "simpler and faster to find, compare, and buy products in ChatGPT." In a post on X , OpenAI said that the AI chatbot can now show product images, comparisons, pricing, reviews, and even a direct link to various retailers. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Mashable was able to generate the new features using the ChatGPT 4o model . The new "shopping improvements" make ChatGPT a stronger competitor to Google's search product, which searchers often use to find product recommendations. However, while Google's search results generate almost instantly, ChatGPT's shopping recommendations took up to 40 seconds to generate. In addition, the experimental feature often linked to questionable, little-known retailers in Mashable'...

A group of unidentified researchers, allegedly affiliated with the University of Zurich, conducted a months-long AI experiment on the users of Reddit’s r/changemyview (CMV) debate forum, according to the subreddit’s moderators. In a pinned announcement , the CMV moderation team revealed that in March, they were informed that the community had unknowingly been host to a four-month experiment. Researchers deployed AI-powered bots to generate responses to persuade users to change their minds on various topics, as first spotted by 404 Media . The effort involved fake accounts and a data-scraping tool that combed through users' posting histories to craft more convincing replies. SEE ALSO: Google reveals Reddit Answers is powered by Gemini AI r/changemyview is one of Reddit’s most well-known debate spaces. Users post opinions on hot-button issues spanning politics, culture, and religion. Others then engage with counterarguments; if the original poster changes their mind, they aw...

Wholesome Direct, an annual showcase of cute and cozy games, is returning on Saturday, June 7 at 12PM ET / 9AM PT. This year's event will show off "a vibrant lineup of artistic, uplifting, and emotionally resonant games from developers of all sizes from around the world," according to Wholesome Games' announcement post .  Last year's Wholesome Direct covered over 30 games, including updates to already released titles and the reveal of entirely new games. The definition of "wholesome" is generally as broad as event organizer Wholesome Games needs it to be, but Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge   from the 2024 Direct is a good example of the kind of game this showcase likes to feature. It's a cute concept (a management game about running a wildlife refuge), has a beautifully illustrated art style and features relaxed, but deep gameplay. Many of the projects that fill out the average Wholesome Direct lineup fit a similar description. Wholesome Games hasn't...

TL;DR: Get access to 1TB of secure and private data storage with this lifetime subscription to Koofr Cloud Storage , now A$187 with code KOOFR through June 1. Trying to consolidate your monthly subscription expenses? If you're tired of shelling out a small fortune on your cloud storage solution, a swap to Koofr Cloud Storage can help.  Keep 1TB of your important data safe for life with this deal on Koofr Cloud Storage, now just A$187 (reg. A$1,267) with code KOOFR through June 1. Stop the madness of monthly cloud storage fees Koofr is a trusted cloud storage option that's been around since 2013. And though it may not have the same brand recognition as the big names, there's another thing it doesn't have — monthly storage fees. With Koofr, you can secure a lifetime subscription for 1TB and pay once. That's enough room for 250,000 12MP photos, 500 hours of HD video, or 6.5 million PDF files. There are other great perks to swapping to Koofr, like their uni...

We're still not over the death of Joel (Pedro Pascal) but, like it or not, The Last of Us is entering a new chapter — and that means some brand new opening credits. The change in opening credits between Season 2 , episode 2 and episode 3 isn't a big revamp, but it's still pretty devastating in a subtle way. So what's the difference? SEE ALSO: 'The Last of Us' Season 2: How does that big death compare to the game? How are The Last of Us Season 2, episode 3 opening credits different? Aside from the crushing absence of Pedro Pascal's name at the very start of The Last of Us ' opening credits, the sequence in Season 2, episode 3 looks pretty much the same as usual: The camera winds through a morphing, cordyceps-inspired tapestry, with fungal plants sprouting into the shape of a city alongside the names of the cast and crew. The change, however, comes right at the very end. In previous episodes, the camera moved through a spiral of fungus to sh...

We're back with The Last of Us Season 2, with mysterious new characters and geared-up new factions to avoid like the plague or join, depending on your priorities in the apocalypse.  In Season 1 of Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann's Naughty Dog game adaptation, it was all about FEDRA and the Fireflies . But now, with the majority of Fireflies sent into oblivion by Joel (Pedro Pascal) in the Season 1 finale , the faction has evolved elsewhere. SEE ALSO: 'The Last of Us': What you can expect from Season 2 In Season 2, episode 1, we meet Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and her crew, who are members of a group with a wolf logo on their gear. But who is this new faction? Are they good or bad? Now, it'll be unfeasible for me to tell you everything about this group — if you've played the games, you'll know what happens with this group in The Last of Us Part II . But here's what I can tell viewers of the HBO series about the WLF as it happens in Season 2 (with n...

Picture this: you’re zooming through space in a torpedo-shaped ship doing the dangerous job of salvaging material in a planet’s cluttered orbit when some giant, alien cousin of a fangtooth fish pops up out of nowhere and starts chomping at your tail. Pretty stressful day at work if you ask me. One might even be forgiven for, ahem, accidentally crashing the ship in such conditions. In the Playdate game Suborbital Salvage , though, your supervisor isn’t so sympathetic. Slam into an asteroid or drone and you’ll be ridiculed ‘til kingdom come by the snarky cat who writes your performance reports. If the fish catches you with one of its enormous teeth, any resulting losses are your fault for “feeding” it (a violation of company policy). That cat has something to say about every slip-up you make, and it’s hilarious. In a weird way, it almost becomes part of the reward for finishing a run. Every time I catastrophically ended my turn, I wasn’t only eager to see my scores, but also what new...

If you like playing daily word games like Wordle , then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine. There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it'll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown. An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle. If you find yourself stuck at any step of today's Hurdle, don't worry! We have you covered. SEE ALSO: Hurdle: Everything you need to know to find the answers Hurdle Word 1 hint Cadence. SEE ALSO: Apple’s new M3 MacBook ...

The Curiosity Mars rover covers a lot of ground for a robot that only moves at a max speed of .1 mph. A photo snapped recently by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provides a pretty cool visualization of what the rover has been up to so far this year, showing the tracks Curiosity left behind as it journeyed from its previous science target — an area called the Gediz Vallis channel — to its next destination. The rover itself is just a tiny speck at the front of the roughly 1,050-foot-long trail, and according to NASA , this snap “is believed to be the first orbital image of the rover mid-drive across the Red Planet.” The image was captured on February 28 by the orbiter’s HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera, and shows Curiosity’s movement over 11 drives starting at the beginning of that month. While a few weeks might seem like a long time for tire tracks to stick around in the dirt, this is normal for Mars. The tracks are “[l]ikely to last for months before bein...

If you like playing daily word games like Wordle , then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine. There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it'll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown. An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle. If you find yourself stuck at any step of today's Hurdle, don't worry! We have you covered. SEE ALSO: Hurdle: Everything you need to know to find the answers Hurdle Word 1 hint A plant native to Mexico. SEE ALSO: Apple’...

After a couple years of having its open-source Llama AI model be just a part of its Connect conferences, Meta is breaking things out and hosting an entirely generative AI-focused developer conference called LlamaCon on April 29. The event is entirely virtual, and you'll be able to watch along live on the Meta for Developers Facebook page. LlamaCon kicks off at 1PM ET / 10AM PT with a keynote address from Meta's Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, Vice President of AI Manohar Paluri and research scientist Angela Fan. The keynote is supposed to cover developments in the company's open-source AI community, "the latest on the Llama collection of models and tools" and offer a glimpse at yet-to-be released AI features. The keynote address will be followed by a conversation at 1:45PM ET / 10:45PM ET between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi on "building AI-powered applications," followed by a chat at 7PM ET / 4PM PT about "the latest...