Zuck Says Brain Signal Reading Wearable is Coming; Google Launches 2 New Open LLMs; iPhone 15 Quietly Got Battery Upgrade; Signal Adds Support for Usernames

We have Apple’s Vision Pro headset, and the Metaquest from Meta. Elon Musk put a brain implant in some poor soul that allegedly lets the guy move a mouse with his thoughts. As if that and AI weren’t enough, now Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is working on an electromyography neural interface wristband for tracking gesture controls via your brain waves! Androidcentral.com reports that Zuck mentioned the device on a podcast when asked about a future AI app that would ‘blow their minds’ The Meta CEO says that Meta is “kind of close to having something here that we’re gonna have in a product in the next few years.” He went on to say “In the future, you’ll essentially be able to type and control something by thinking about how you want to move your hand, but it won’t even be big motions, so I can just sit here, basically typing something to an AI.” Welcome to the brave new world!

Only a little over a week after unveiling the latest version of its Gemini AI, Google has announced the launch of Gemma, a new family of lightweight open-weight models. Starting with Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B, these new models were “inspired by Gemini” and are available for commercial and research usage. According to techcrunch.com, Google called the models ‘state of the art,’ but didn’t give much detail. Google also noted that these are open weights models, but not open source. They are available to developers and researchers to customize and fine tune, but not for redistribution…with ownership remaining with Google. Google is also releasing a new responsible generative AI toolkit to provide “guidance and essential tools for creating safer AI applications with Gemma,” as well as a debugging tool.

Here’s an upgrade iPhone 15 users got over previous iPhones that Apple never crowed about…and is actually quite useful. Through iPhone 14 models, iPhone batteries have been able to keep “80 percent of their original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles under ideal conditions.” Now, mashable.com says a support page indicates that the iPhone 15 battery can keep 80 percent of its capacity at 1,000 charge cycles. I didn’t know this, but did find out a few weeks ago that the battery lasts a lot longer on a charge than my old iPhone 12. I packed 2 battery packs to do Disneyland with family…and never used them. In fact, I had plenty of juice left in the phone…over 25%…after 12 hours at the Happiest Place on Earth. The 2nd day, I appreciated not having to schlep 2 hefty batteries with me in the parks. Now, let’s hope for a breakthrough for EVs that will let the cars run even 8 hours on a charge…at 60 mph, that would be a 480 mile trip. I’ve driven lots further in the past, but these days, that’s far enough for my tired backside!

Signal is adding support for usernames and dropping requirements to use a phone number for conversations. Signal has been useful as an encrypted chat platform, but cnet.com reports that the latest beta lets you hide your phone number from others in the app by default…unless a previous contact already has it stored in their own phone’s contact app. Making it impossible for others to find you on Signal by phone number and only searchable by username will make the app more secure for users that crave or need encrypted chats. Note that you will still need to give your number to set up your account…so  the platform will have it. Signal is also adding a QR code option…like WhatsApp has…that will direct others to your username. Usernames must be unique and have 2 numbers at the end to minimize spoofing. The usernames are changeable, too. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Techinfied’ for now.