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Here’s your first look at smart glasses coming from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, powered by Google and Samsung’s XR platform.

Google’s overhaul of its AI creation software, Flow, includes a new video model and a tool for generating selfie videos called avatars.

Google’s always-running, data-hungry AI agent is designed to spend your money and send your emails.

Cote, the restaurant's manager for 52 years, died last week at age 82.

Microsoft is launching three new Intel-powered Surface devices for businesses: the Surface Pro 12, Surface Laptop 8, and a smaller 13-inch Surface Laptop model. These new machines come equipped with newer Intel chips, a few business-focused upgrades, and notably higher starting prices. "The high pricing of these three new Surface devices is a sign of things to come for whatever consumer models Microsoft is planning this year," notes The Verge. From the report: This time around Microsoft is refreshing its Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models with Intel's latest Core Ultra Series 3 processors first, ahead of similar models with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 processors later this year. The new Surface Pro 12, or as Microsoft calls it the Surface Pro for Business 13-inch (12th Edition), will be available for businesses today, starting at an eye-watering $1,949.99. The base model will include an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor, 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and the regular 13-inch PixelSense LCD display. Businesses will have to pay extra for models with Intel's Core Ultra 7 processor, up to 64GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage. The top spec Surface Pro 12 with a Core Ultra 7, 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage will be priced at $4,399.99, and there are also OLED screen options and models with 5G connectivity. The Surface Pro 12 5G starts at $2,249.99, with a Core Ultra 5, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. [...] Microsoft is also launching two new versions of the Surface Laptop for businesses today. The Surface Laptop 8, or Surface Laptop for Business 13.8 or 15-inch (8th Edition) as Microsoft calls it, will also be available with a range of Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 chips. It launches alongside a smaller 13-inch model, which is confusingly labeled the Surface Laptop for Business 13-inch (1st Edition). The 13.8-inch model starts at $1,949.99, and includes Intel's Core Ultra 5 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. While Surface devices for businesses have typically had higher pricing than consumer models, the $1,949.99 starting price for a Surface Laptop 8 is almost double the original price of the Surface Laptop 7. RAMageddon really has come for Microsoft's Surface Pro and Surface Laptop devices, after recent price increases meant the existing consumer models are now $500 more expensive than their original starting price. The max configuration for the 13.8-inch Surface Pro 8 will include a Core Ultra 7, 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage for $4,299.99. A similar version of the 15-inch model (with an x7 processor) will be priced at $4,499.99.

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Chérie was road-tested in a series of pop-ups starting last summer.

The company Analog Devices is looking at makes a hot commodity: chips for data centers.

Microsoft is turning Azure Linux into a general-purpose, Fedora-based cloud distribution available to all Azure customers, while also productizing Flatcar as Azure Container Linux for immutable container hosts. "When Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation, there was this big conspiracy theory that somehow the Linux Foundation was undermining open source in partnership with Microsoft, and now you announce that you're shipping a Linux distribution," Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation's CEO, said in response to Microsoft's surprise announcement. "That's amazing." ZDNet reports: Until now, [Lachlan Everson, Microsoft's Principal Program Manager on Azure's open-source team] noted, "we had Azure Linux only available to third-party customers through AKS specifically, and that was Azure Linux 3.0." Going forward, this will be ACL. Everson emphasized that Azure Linux 4.0 is the culmination of years of internal usage and the evolution of the earlier Mariner distribution. "So we've been running Azure Linux for many years internally, and we got through to 3.0, and we only allowed it on as a container host on AKS. What we've done is make it a general-purpose, so this is all the learnings that we've had in the heritage of Mariner." Under the hood, Azure Linux 4.0 is based on Fedora Linux and is delivered as an open distribution on GitHub. This code is available now. Yes, Red Hat knows that Microsoft has done this. Everson continued, "So, we made a decision to use Fedora as an upstream, so it's using RPMs in the Fedora ecosystem. Microsoft curates the packages and the supply chain to fit Azure's cloud platform." Microsoft also created "it to be purpose-built for Azure, which integrates vertically into all of our infrastructure to give you the best Azure Linux experience on Azure." While Azure Linux will ship as a VM image, Microsoft is already preparing a developer-friendly path onto Windows desktops: "And as of today, we have it as a VM image for your VM host on Azure. We're going to announce WSL images as well." While developers will be able to run Azure Linux locally through WSL, Microsoft is not positioning it as a traditional desktop Linux. Asked whether he could run it on his laptop, Everson said: "I will be able to run it on my laptop, or what have you. Yes, on Windows 11." However, when pressed about a desktop experience, Everson was clear that there are "no plans" for a graphical environment. "It's optimized for server-side in the cloud," he said, adding that even on a developer machine, users should expect a lean environment. "Minimal packages, yeah. The idea is that we offer you a consistent experience to do your development on your machine, and that you can take your workloads as you develop them on your machine and run them with VS Code. You can run your applications on that, and know that the platform is the same that you're running on the cloud, so that you have that kind of consistency between environments." Flatcar itself remains the upstream project, but Microsoft is packaging it for Azure customers. Everson described Flatcar as "purpose-built, immutable, secure by default, production-ready operating system, and Azure Container Linux is the productization of that, but we're still investing in the upstream Flatcar ecosystem and pulling that downstream into a productized exterior experience just for container workloads, so it's a container hosting in AKS." To underscore the immutable model, he added that "Everything's baked in, so there is no package manager. We bake the bits into the immutable, and they're in the immutable version. So Azure Container Linux is the immutable version. So you shouldn't be changing any system packages or any application packages. Anything that you need to change is customer workloads run in containers."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Meta told employees on Monday that it was reassigning 7,000 workers to focus on new initiatives around artificial intelligence, the latest change in a company transformation spurred by the powerful technology. Employees will be moved to four new organizations focused on building new A.I. tools and apps, Janelle Gale, Meta's head of human resources, said in an internal memo. The organizations will use "A.I. native design structures" and have fewer managers per employee than other parts of the company, she said, adding that company leaders will send details about the new roles on Wednesday. The restructuring "will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding," Ms. Gale wrote. Meta declined to comment further on the changes. The move comes shortly before Meta begins laying off roughly 8,000 employees, or 10 percent of its work force. Ms. Gale also mentioned Wednesday's layoffs in her memo. "We know days like this are extremely hard, and we appreciate you showing up for each other," Ms. Gale said. According to the NYT, employees have been asked to work remotely that day and emails about the layoffs would be sent at 4 a.m. local time. Employees in the United States will receive 16 weeks of severance pay, along with two extra weeks for every year they worked at Meta.

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Plus eight additional recommendations for can't-miss food in the city and beyond.

A 2-year contract to use the OpenAI artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT Edu is likely to start July 1.

Gearing up to shred the slopes or dive into the seas? These photography tools are made for danger.

The trial in Oakland, California has helped lift the veil on the AI sector - and the huge egos of the men at the heart of it.

Amazon is adding AI-generated "podcasts" to Alexa+, letting users request custom audio explainers on any topic featuring two synthetic co-hosts. Variety reports: Seemingly to dispel the notion that these "podcasts" will be AI audio slop, Amazon emphasized that it has deals with major news organizations to ensure "accurate, real-time news and information." Those include the Associated Press, Reuters, the Washington Post, Time magazine, Forbes, Business Insider, Politico and USA Today; publications from Conde Nast, Hearst and Vox Media; and more than 200 local newspapers across the U.S. In an example clip shared by Amazon of the new Alexa Podcasts feature, the two AI-generated hosts discuss "the latest music releases." A male Alexa+ narrator says more than 50% of music listening now comes from unsigned artists. "The monoculture is just gone," a female-voiced Alexa+ narrator chimes in. The male Alexa+ host says there has been "stoner metal," indie pop and experimental hip-hop music "all dropping on the same Friday," and adds, "That's not chaos -- that's the healthiest the music ecosystem has ever been." [...] To use Alexa Podcasts, users can simply tell Alexa what topic they're curious about and "it does the rest in minutes." Alexa+ will provide an overview of what it plans to cover, and let you adjust the length and direction before it generates the podcast. When your episode is ready, you'll get a notification on your Echo Show device and the Alexa app.

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The Coyl uses a coil design for the power cable, keeping it neat and taut between the desk and the wall. And instead of relying on boring levers to adjust the height, it has a nifty rotary dial.

Break the pattern of unlocking your phone for one thing and then getting sucked into something else. Set up your lock screen to show all the information you need at a glance.

Follow our live coverage of Google’s annual developer keynote, where the company will announce updates to its Gemini suite of AI tools and more details about Android XR smart glasses.

A Boston and Kansas City based duo have launched a new investment firm focused on funding tech-enabled healthcare companies.

Europe is testing laser-based satellite communications through a new mountaintop ground station in Greece, aiming to deliver faster, more secure links than traditional radio systems as bandwidth demand grows. The Register reports: Lithuanian space and defense biz Astrolight says that it has commissioned a new optical ground station in Greece that will support ESA-backed CubeSat missions testing laser-based communications between satellites and Earth. The Holomondas Optical Ground Station was built through the PeakSat project, led by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with backing from the European Space Agency and Greece's Ministry of Digital Governance. Its job is to receive data from satellites via infrared laser links rather than the radio systems that space operators have relied on for decades. PeakSat and ERMIS-3, two Greek CubeSats launched in March under ESA's wider Greek IOD/IOV mission program, both carry Astrolight's ATLAS-1 optical communication terminal. Astrolight also built the ground segment, giving the project a fully integrated end-to-end optical communications setup. [...] The company says the station uses an 808-nanometer laser beacon and an optical C-band receiver capable of receiving data at up to 2.5 Gbps. Unlike traditional RF systems, optical links use tightly focused infrared beams that are harder to intercept or jam while also supporting significantly higher throughput.

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