Latest news with #Luckey
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Week in Review: Perplexity Labs wants to do your work
Welcome back to Week in Review! We've got a ton of stories for you this week, including a new AI-powered browser from Arc; not one but TWO hacks; Gemini email summaries; and much more. Have a great weekend! Look out, Google: AI-powered search engine Perplexity released Perplexity Labs, which gives Pro subscribers a tool that can craft reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and more. Perplexity Labs can conduct research and analysis using tools like web search, code execution, and chart and image creation to craft reports and visualizations. All in around 10 minutes. We haven't had a chance to test it, and knowing the shortcomings of AI, I'm sure not everything will come out flawlessly. But it certainly sounds pretty awesome. Luckey's luck: The feud between Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg appears to be over: The pair announced a collaboration between Facebook and Luckey's company Anduril to build extended reality (XR) devices for the U.S. military. The product family they're building is called EagleEye, which will be an ecosystem of devices. Not awesome: We don't definitively know whether AI is beginning to take over roles previously done by humans. But a recent World Economic Forum survey found that 40% of employers plan to cut staff where AI can automate tasks. That can't be good. This is TechCrunch's Week in Review, where we recap the week's biggest news. Want this delivered as a newsletter to your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Everyone's making a browser: The Browser Company said this week that it's considering selling or open sourcing its browser, Arc Browser, to focus on a new AI-powered browser called Dia. And it's not the only one! Opera also said it's building a new AI-focused browser, and Perplexity teased its browser, Comet, a few months ago. At last: iPad users, rejoice! You can now talk to all your international friends with the new iPad-specific version of WhatsApp. Meta says that users will be able to take advantage of iPadOS multitasking features, such as Stage Manager, Split View, and Slide Over. Oh, great: LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a data broker that uses personal information to help companies spot risks and fraud, reported a security breach affecting more than 364,000 people. A LexisNexis spokesperson told us that an unknown hacker accessed the company's GitHub account, and the stolen data includes names, dates of birth, phone numbers, postal and email addresses, Social Security numbers, and driver's license numbers. And another one: Hackers reportedly accessed the personal phone of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, obtaining contact information used to impersonate her and contact other high-ranking officials. It seems that AI was used to impersonate her voice. Can it cook my meals? Gmail users no longer have to tap an option to summarize an email with AI. The AI will now automatically summarize the content when needed, without requiring user interaction. That means you have to opt out if you don't want Gemini summarizing your stuff. Billion with a B: General Catalyst has invested $1 billion into Grammarly, the 16-year-old writing assistant startup. Grammarly will use the new funds for its sales and marketing efforts, freeing up existing capital to make strategic acquisitions. In the heights: Tinder is testing a new feature that will allow people to add a "height preference" in their search for love. This isn't a hard filter, Tinder says, as it won't actually block or exclude profiles but instead inform recommendations. 10 years in the making: Carma Technology, which was formed in 2007 by SOSV Ventures founder Sean O'Sullivan, filed a lawsuit earlier this year against Uber, alleging the company infringed on five of its patents. The lawsuit is fairly new, but the allegations go back almost a decade. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data
Time of India
2 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Mark Zuckerberg finally found a use for his Metaverse — War
I can't think of any other deal that more encapsulates how Silicon Valley has changed in the past couple of years than this one, announced Thursday in a press release: Anduril and Meta are partnering to design, build, and field a range of integrated XR products that provide warfighters with enhanced perception and enable intuitive control of autonomous platforms on the battlefield. For starters, Anduril Industries Inc. is a defense tech company co-founded by Palmer Luckey , the man who created the Oculus VR headset that was acquired by Meta Platforms Inc. for $2 billion in 2014, only for Luckey to be pushed out when it emerged he had financially backed a pro-Trump campaign group. That he would be welcomed back with open arms is yet another sign that such stances are no longer taboo in the halls of Silicon Valley companies. (It could be argued they never should have been.) Second, developing technology for war had been considered a hard red line for many of the engineers working within those leafy campuses, at least in the era after the dot-com boom. At Google, for instance, workers in 2018 held walkouts and forced executives to abandon projects related to military use. Today, defense applications of technology are something companies want to shout from their rooftops, not bury in the basement. (Again, it could be argued that should have always been the case. Who will create tech for the US military if not US tech companies?) In Meta's case, there's another factor at play. Mark Zuckerberg 's deal with Anduril — which you assume is just the start of Meta's military hardware ambitions — offers a lifeline to its ailing Reality Labs business. The unit has lost more than $70 billion since the start of 2019. Advancements in quality haven't led to jumps in sales. I've written before that fitness applications are a great selling point, but apparently too few people agree with me. A newer form factor, sunglasses made in partnership with Ray-Ban, have shown potential but still represent a niche product. Live Events So instead, maybe the 'killer app' for mixed reality is indeed a killer app. 'My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers,' Luckey is quoted as saying in a press release. 'And the products we are building with Meta do just that.' Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories A prototype of the 'Eagle Eye' helmet being developed by the companies is due to be delivered to the Pentagon this year, Luckey told journalist Ashlee Vance in a podcast published alongside the official announcement. He compared its utility to what a player wears in the video game Halo — a heads-up display offering reams of intricate information on targets and locations, plus an AI assistant, Cortana, relaying critical and lifesaving directions. What's also striking about this shift is that it is a sign the historical flow of technological innovation is being turned around. Silicon Valley began as a region set up to develop chips for military tech before the assembled talent branched out into making products for businesses and consumers, such as the personal computer. Many breakthroughs have followed this direction of travel — the internet, the microwave, GPS, super glue, to name a few — but it is now increasingly the other way around. As Luckey put it during the podcast discussing the deal, it turns out that Meta's headsets are 'just as useful on the battlefield as they are on the head of any consumer.' See also: artificial intelligence, developed first (and perhaps, at the cutting edge, always) by private sector tech companies. The opportunity is too big to pass up and too lucrative to hold grudges. Luckey says he was willing to work with Meta again because it had become a much different place from the one he was booted out of. Now friends again, he said he believed that Zuckerberg received bad advice when told to fire him and that his coming round to more Republican ways of thinking is genuine — as evidenced by his willingness to make Meta's AI available for government use, too. I've little reason to question Luckey's judgment here, though I wonder if it might be time for Meta to revise its mission statement. 'Build the future of human connection,' it states today, not yet updated to reflect that it's now also working on the future of human conflict. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Dave Lee is Bloomberg Opinion's US technology columnist. He was previously a correspondent for the Financial Times and BBC News.
India Today
2 days ago
- Business
- India Today
Mark Zuckerberg and his former employee Palmer Luckey join hands to make gadgets for military
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is partnering with his former employee Palmer Luckey to make combat VR headsets for the military. This is interesting for more reasons than one. Of course, it is notable that Meta is using its AI tech to power wearables for military equipment. 'Meta has spent the last decade building AI and AR to enable the computing platform of the future,' said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta. 'We're proud to partner with Anduril to help bring these technologies to the American service members that protect our interests at home and abroad.'advertisement'Anduril and Meta are partnering to design, build, and field a range of integrated XR products that provide warfighters with enhanced perception and enable intuitive control of autonomous platforms on the battlefield,' Anduril writes in an announcement post. However, here is what is more interesting: Zuckerberg and Luckey's history. They had a somewhat messy breakup back in 2016. Palmer Luckey, who is the founder of Oculus VR and the designer of Oculus Rift, was fired from Meta nine years ago for donating $10,000 to a pro-Donald Trump group that had run a billboard criticising Hillary Clinton. 'I am glad to be working with Meta once again.' said Palmer Luckey, Founder of Anduril. 'Of all the areas where dual-use technology can make a difference for America, this is the one I am most excited about. My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers, and the products we are building with Meta do just that.'advertisement Luckey's Anduril Industries and Meta will be making rugged helmets, glasses and other wearables for the US military. These wearables will provide a virtual-reality or augmented-reality experience. Anduril and Meta's project together is reportedly being called EagleEye, which will eventually form a full ecosystem of hardware devices, according to TechCrunch. Interestingly, EagleEye was originally the name of a headset concept Palmer Luckey had included in Anduril's early pitch deck. At the time, investors urged him to shift focus away from hardware and concentrate on building software first. 'All of them had worked with me for years via Oculus VR, and when they saw the EagleEye headset in our first Anduril pitch deck draft, they pointed out that it seemed like I was sequencing things irrationally,' Luckey explained in a post on X earlier this year. 'They believed, correctly, that I was too focused on winning a pissing contest over the future of AR/VR, on proving that I was right and the people who fired me were wrong.'Following the announcement of the Meta-Anduril partnership on Thursday, Luckey reflected on the collaboration with another post on X: 'It is pretty cool to have everything at our fingertips for this joint effort – everything I made before Meta acquired Oculus, everything we made together, and everything we did on our own after I was fired.'advertisementA year after Luckey was fired from Meta, he co-founded Anduril Industries in 2017. The company specialises in American defense technology. It specifically makes autonomous systems for the has lately been trying to build a closer relationship with Donald Trump. He has reportedly also been leaning on Trump for favours. Reportedly, just ahead of the ongoing Meta vs FTC trial kicked off, Zuckerberg had requested Trump to step in and help block the monopoly lawsuit. Meta also contributed $1 million to Trump's inauguration and also resolved Trump's $25 million lawsuit.
The Hindu
2 days ago
- Business
- The Hindu
Meta and Anduril join forces on battlefield tech
Meta and defence tech startup Anduril Industries on Thursday announced a partnership to build mixed reality gear for "warfighters" (soldiers) to control autonomous systems on battlefields. Meta will incorporate augmented reality and artificial intelligence (AI), presumably in the likes of glasses, goggles, or visors, with an Anduril data analytics platform called Lattice, the companies said in a joint release. "Meta has spent the last decade building AI and AR to enable the computing platform of the future," Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in the release. "We're proud to partner with Anduril to help bring these technologies to the American servicemembers that protect our interests at home and abroad." Since Trump took back the White House, Zuckerberg has courted the president with frequent visits and notable changes to corporate policies on matters like content moderation, aligning himself politically with the Republican administration. Zuckerberg also bought a $23 million residence in the U.S. capital. The Anduril alliance will have Meta taking part in courting the U.S. military. "I am glad to be working with Meta once again," said Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, who also co-founded virtual reality startup Oculus, bought in 2014 by what was then Facebook. "My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers, and the products we are building with Meta do just that," he said, referring to the idea of magicians who combine magic and technology. Luckey left Facebook in 2017, his departure coming after the social networking giant was hit with a big tab in a lawsuit over Oculus Rift virtual reality technology, and after he was criticized for covertly helping an online "troll" group that promoted memes in favor of Trump during the U.S. election a year earlier. Open support for Trump in Silicon Valley was scarce during that election, and some developers vowed not to create software for Rift virtual reality gear because of Luckey's pro-Trump efforts. Luckey went on to co-found California-based Anduril. Anduril describes its Lattice platform as an AI-powered command and control system that integrates data from thousands of sources to provide real-time battlefield intelligence for decision making. Big tech companies are increasingly waving the U.S. flag in Washington with Trump pushing his America First agenda. Leading this performance of nationalism are Meta, OpenAI and, more predictably, Palantir, the AI defence company founded by Peter Thiel, the conservative tech billionaire who has played a major role in Silicon Valley's rightward shift. Meta has touted AI models like its own as "essential for the US to win the AI race against China and ensure American AI dominance."
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Meta Partners With Anduril to Develop XR Headsets for US Military
This story was originally published on Social Media Today. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Social Media Today newsletter. Yeah, this sounds totally normal and safe and not a risk to anybody or anything at all, while also being totally on-brand for 2025. Today, Meta, in partnership with XR company Anduril, has announced a new project which will see the two companies design new VR and AR elements for American military troops. As per Anduril: 'Anduril and Meta are partnering to design, build, and field a range of integrated XR products that provide warfighters with enhanced perception and enable intuitive control of autonomous platforms on the battlefield. The capabilities enabled by the partnership will draw on more than a decade of investment by both companies in advanced hardware, software, and artificial intelligence.' So Meta's now building tech to help the U.S. Defense Force in field battles. Sounds fine, all good, should be a good use of Meta's data. And the deal does, of course, make logical sense. Meta's made significant advancements in AR and VR technologies, especially in regards to compacting the key elements of such into smaller, more lightweight units, primarily to enhance consumer utility. Anduril, meanwhile, is focused on developing the next generation of military technology, and was founded by former Meta VR chief Palmer Luckey, who brings vast expertise and experience on this front. Though Luckey also has a controversial history, which includes being fired from Meta back in 2016 for making donations to a questionable pro-Trump group. Well, Luckey claims that was the reason, though Meta has refuted the idea that his political leanings were to blame for his unscheduled departure. But either way, Meta and Luckey moved away from each other due to differences in opinion of some sort, which they're now seemingly willing to work through as part of this new project. So what, exactly, will Meta and Anduril be working on? According to The Washington Post, the main initial focus will be a new military headset, as part of a project called 'EagleEye.' Anduril, which took over development of the U.S. Army's Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) from Microsoft in February, is looking to advance the project beyond Microsoft's original version, which had been built upon Microsoft's HoloLens 2 device. The Anduril version will incorporate night-vision and thermal-sensing, along with advanced augmented reality capabilities. Which is where Meta comes in. As noted, Meta has already developed a range of new chips and processing units for its coming AR glasses, and has made significant advances in compact AR tech. Meta's main aim with this is to build AR glasses that can be worn around in your day-to-day life, reducing weight, while also making them more stylish looking. And while style is less of a concern in combat situations, weight and processing power is important, which is why the new partnership with Anduril makes sense. It just feels a little off to be letting Meta into the military, right? Like, they already have all of our data, and they're building AI systems on the back of such. If there were ever a pathway to T-800 type Terminator robots, this could well be it (T-800 being the Arnold type, not the shapeshifting T-1000). Sci-fi hypotheticals aside, the partnership will be beneficial, and both Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and Luckey have expressed their excitement in working with each other again. So, soon soldiers will be able to post IG Stories updates from the field, by simply speaking a few commands into their headset. Should be fine. Right?
