Friend is an "AI companion Avi Schiffmann has been building, and it lives in a pendant hung around his neck" according to The Verge. They describe it as "an AI friend that can go with you anywhere, experience things with you, and just be there with you all the time", with Schiffmann adding "it's also super intelligent, it's a great brainstorming buddy. You can talk to it about relationships, things like that". The promo video looks like a bastard child pisstake of The Curse and Her, but no, it's real and something you can pay $155 for. You talk to it and it responds as a message on your phone. I kinda feel sorry for anyone that wants this. You'd have to be very lonely.
The US Senate passed the much maligned Kids Online Safety Act last night. If you're unfamiliar, it's a US law that "would require social media platforms to reduce online dangers by changing their design or opting out of algorithm based recommendation systems" and creates a "duty of care" for apps and platforms used by kids. It all sounds nice on the surface, but as the ACLU explains, the law is "defined so broadly that platforms are likely to censor content that could prove objectionable to the government, which could include anything from sexual health resources to information about gender identity, or how to get help for an eating disorder". It'll likely do more harm to kids by making it hard for them to get reliable information about things they're naturally curious about. The law still has to pass the US House of Representatives.
ANCAP put out a press release last week saying that they have "embarked on a new research project designed to intentionally capture the steering force, intervention timing, and correction severity of Lane Keep Assist (LKA) and Emergency Lane Keeping (ELK) on vehicles already star rated". This is due to "feedback ANCAP has received from consumers concerned that the safety systems fitted to their new cars are providing an adverse driver experience", which if you've driven a modern car with LKA & ELK, won't surprise you at all. Some are great, most are simply annoying, but a couple of implementations are downright dangerous.
Future Sex was a 1990s magazine based in San Francisco and published by Kundalini Publishing. The magazine was glossy with four-color printing and featured articles, interviews, reviews, erotica, and erotic photography celebrating the zeitgeist of technological revolution, body modification, sexual liberation, and the mainstreaming of sexual proclivities previously considered taboo—from bondage to fetishes to "teledildonics." (Famicoman / Internet Archive)
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