The fast food giant’s three-pronged plan aims to digitally transform customer experience, franchise operations and core systems, President and CEO Chris Kempczinski said Monday.
The European Commission today recommended reducing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels by 90 percent by 2040 compared to 1990 levels.
At face value, it’s an ambitious target for transforming the European Union’s energy system. As always, though, the devil is in the details. And the proposed plan is already garnering a range of strong reactions.
A formal proposal still needs to be issued, but it has already faced pushback on how much of those pollution cuts should come from risky tactics aimed at capturing rather than preventing pollution. Some environmental groups are also criticizing a glaring omission in the draft: while it mentions phasing out coal, there’s no strategy to phase out oil and gas.
The last several months have been good to Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, as the company revealed on Thursday that its profits tripled year-over-year to $14 billion due to cost-cutting and a rebound in ads.
Meta plans on investing heavily in its virtual reality and AI products, and on the latter point, Zuckerberg said during an earnings call the company is “playing to win.” AI has become a crowded field very quickly, with Meta facing stiff competition from OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. Zuckerberg laid out several components to Meta’s AI “playbook,” not least of which is the fact that billions of people around the world have already given up their data in the form of posts, comments, images, and videos across Meta’s platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram.
“When people think about data, they typically think about the corpus that you might use to train a model up front,” Zuckerbrg said. “On Facebook and Instagram there are hundreds of billions of publicly shared images and tens of billions of public videos, which we estimate is greater than the Common Crawl dataset and people share large numbers of public text posts in comments across our services as well.”
The reference to Common Crawl—a shared dataset that has continuously scraped the web over the years—is likely a shot at OpenAI specifically, since the company’s GPT-3 AI model was trained on Common Crawl in addition to Wikipedia, two datasets containing books, and an internal dataset composed of Reddit links. OpenAI has not made the training sources for its most recent model, GPT-4, public. Meta has also used Common Crawl for its AI projects, and Google maintains its own version of the data set.
While Meta has yet to truly compete with its rivals on the scale of GPT, it’s no secret that the company leverages user data for its AI products. The company already admitted last year that it had used public posts—but, it claimed, not private messages—to train its Meta AI assistant. Much furor has been raised in recent months over the unauthorized scraping of the web to train AI models; OpenAI even thanked the faceless “millions of people” who created the data to train GPT-3 in its paper describing the model. But when it comes to data willingly shared with Facebook and Meta, that Faustian bargain was struck long ago.
Now, along with supposed advantages such as sharing open-source models and taking a long view of product development, Meta is betting that its massive hoard will put it over the top.
Nine experts weigh in on curbing and diffusing your overly negative thoughts.
If you’re a person who spends even a minuscule amount of time consuming news of any kind, you may find yourself in a doom spiral: ongoing war, the upcoming presidential election, climate change, the withering of the media. It isn’t just news that can inspire despair. Life is full of anxiety-inducing interactions, high-stakes scenarios, and unavoidable conflicts that can lead to overthinking, hopelessness, and catastrophic thinking.
Catastrophizing is a common thought pattern where you assume the worst possible scenario. If you fail a test, you might believe you’ll never get a job in the future. When the group chat is silent after you initiate plans, you jump to conclusions and take it to mean everyone hates you. Your boss says she wants to talk and you assume you’re getting fired. Catastrophic thinking escalates the most benign interactions into crises. Very often, though, these predictions do not come to fruition.
People catastrophize in order to prepare for these worst-case scenarios. Catastrophic thinking, however, can lead to heightened anxiety, prolonged feelings of physical pain, risk aversion, and less confidence in problem-solving when big issues do arise. “If you find that you are constantly looking for what could go drastically wrong in your life, this could reflect deeper concerns about safety, security, or self-protection,” says Scott Glassman, director of the master of applied positive psychology program at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. “This style of thinking can emerge if you’ve experienced an unexpected traumatic event, like a loss or serious injury, or if you grew up in an environment where fears were often amplified and responded to with panic or overprotection.”
Climbing out of the spiral that is catastrophic thinking requires both in-the-moment grounding techniques and big-picture reframing. Focusing on the reality of a situation — and not the story you’re telling yourself — can help blunt the anxiety of catastrophizing, experts say. Here are more therapist-approved tactics to help you avoid catastrophic thinking.
Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Catch yourself in the act
“Instead of viewing the [catastrophic] thought as a prediction of the future, you can simply say, ‘This is a catastrophic thought. I’ve had these thoughts before and things have turned out fine.’ Remind yourself of the times that you’ve engaged in catastrophic thinking and survived it. You will survive this one, too.”
“One of my favorite tips for catastrophizing is asking clients, ‘What is the worst thing that could possibly happen?’ and following it up with the powerful question of, ‘Could I survive that?’ Most of the time, we can survive those worst-case scenarios, but our anxiety gets in the way and makes us believe we can’t get through it. When we can slow ourselves down to examine the evidence, I find that we are often in a better place to reason with ourselves and realize that we can get through hard things.”
Follow the negative thoughts to see where they lead
“In the midst of catastrophic thinking, there are two options. One is to create a positive thought (change ‘no one likes me’ to ‘some people like me’) and repeat it. The other is to follow the negative thinking train to the end and see where the illogical thinking takes you. For example, thinking that no one likes me leads to ‘I will die alone,’ which leads to ‘I need to buy a dog because it will bark when I stop responding and the barking will annoy the neighbors and they will call 911.’ When one begins to plan for these negative events, the reality is that these worries are possibilities, not probabilities.”
—Diane Urban, licensed psychologist and adjunct professor at Manhattan College and Southern New Hampshire University
Remind yourself that you are not your thoughts
“Clients who struggle with catastrophizing tend to internalize their thought processes. For example, they may say things like, ‘I am a horrible person,’ ‘Nothing will ever work out for me,’ ‘I am a failure.’ By using these ‘I’ statements, we are allowing our anxious thoughts to become our personality and who we are. One subtle yet effective strategy is creating separation from your thoughts. ‘I am a horrible person’ changes to ‘I am having the thought that I am a horrible person,’ ‘I am a failure’ changes to ‘My brain is telling me that I am a failure.’ This helps to externalize our thoughts so that they do not feel as consuming.”
“One approach that has proven particularly beneficial is grounding techniques. These are simple exercises to help bring your focus back to the present moment when your thoughts start spiraling. For instance, you might engage your senses by naming five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste. This technique can interrupt the cycle of negative thinking and bring you back to reality.”
—Elvis Rosales, licensed clinical social worker and the clinical director at Align Recovery Centers
Pay attention when things go well
“We understandably pay more attention to bad things happening in our lives because, let’s face it, they are upsetting. Catastrophizers, however, have a habit of devoting large amounts of time, attention, and energy to thinking about the worst-case what-ifs, in addition to any bad things that might be happening each day. To neutralize or reverse this tendency, we often need to start taking notice of when things turn out okay or go well. Keeping a daily list can be a reminder of the real rates of good versus upsetting events.
“At the same time, we want to make notes about when our catastrophic predictions don’t come true. The more we see the errors of our predictions, the more likely we will treat them with doubt when they arise. We’ll start to quickly notice when our mind is crying wolf and be better able to stop the ruminative cycle before it has revved up. A core belief that can drive catastrophic thinking is, ‘I can’t handle this.’ It’s important to explore that underlying belief and challenge it with contradictory evidence. Keeping a record of big problems you’ve been able to solve could help weaken that belief.”
—Scott Glassman, director of the master of applied positive psychology program at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
Accept bad things when they happen
“This may sound strange, but I talk with patients about the idea of getting better at suffering. It always elicits a joke: ‘Oh, I’m already great at that.’ But there’s a difference between obsessing about bad things versus accepting them. Catastrophizing seems like an effort [toward] acceptance but it’s actually a strategy for avoidance. The work here is to move toward the very real sadness and stress of uncertainty rather than trying to bargain with it. The world comes with uncertainty, bad things happen, someday we’ll die.”
—Matt Lundquist, founder and clinical director of Tribeca Therapy
Try to problem-solve instead of searching for problems
“If you are engaged in catastrophic thinking, you may have thought about how daunting the situation is and ways you are unable to fix it. Problem-solving may be helpful. Try breaking down the situation into more manageable parts instead of focusing on options that are overwhelming and frustrating.
“For example, if you have the belief that you have no friends, you would first identify the problem. The second step would be to check the facts by finding evidence that supports these thoughts to determine if you are indeed assuming the worst without reason. The third step would be to establish your goal. If your goal is to make friends, engage in more social interaction, or find a sense of community or belonging, then you would establish that goal and brainstorm possible solutions to achieve that goal by breaking down your goal into actionable steps. You would then select your solution and, if necessary, it would be helpful to develop a pros and cons list to help put that thought into action. Most of all, have self-compassion and give yourself grace because breaking negative thought patterns can be very challenging.”
“The minute your train of thought starts to get off the rails, force yourself to think that you are not the master. You do not have control over the future. But you do have the power to either fight it or accept it. So think about all the positive ways you will deal with that catastrophic event.”
Allegations that Tesla mishandled hazardous waste point to a systemic failure at the company’s California facilities. This was no simple accident or one-off event.
No less than 25 counties sued Tesla this week for allegedly illegally disposing of hazardous waste. Within a couple days, the Elon Musk-led company agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle the suit that says the company “intentionally” and “negligently” disposed of materials that should have been handled with care.
Waste management experts tell The Verge that a large company like Tesla should have known better. On top of the trouble it’s facing in California, the company might even have run afoul of federal regulations for handling hazardous waste.
Zoom’s Vision Pro app will launch alongside Apple’s new headset on February 2nd and let wearers use its “persona” (a digital avatar based on their face scans) during video calls. Whoever they’re calling will see their facial expressions and hand movements as if they’re not wearing a headset, much like Apple’s FaceTime app for the Vision Pro.
The upcoming Zoom app will also take advantage of the Vision Pro’s augmented reality capabilities, allowing it to blend in with users’ physical environments while surfacing as a floating window. These features will be available when the app launches with the headset on Friday, February 2nd.
However, Zoom says it plans on bringing more features to the app later this spring, including something called...
Last week, I turned on my PC, installed a Windows update, and rebooted to find Microsoft Edge automatically open with the Chrome tabs I was working on before the update. I don’t use Microsoft Edge regularly, and I have Google Chrome set as my default browser. Bleary-eyed at 9AM, it took me a moment to realize that Microsoft Edge had simply taken over where I’d left off in Chrome. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I never imported my data into Microsoft Edge, nor did I confirm whether I wanted to import my tabs. But here was Edge automatically opening after a Windows update with all the Chrome tabs I’d been working on. I didn’t even realize I was using Edge at first, and I was confused why all my tabs were suddenly logged out.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Beeper announced it’s removing the Beeper Mini app from the Google Play Store and moving the iMessage bridge to the “Labs” section of its cloud version. No new users will be able to use Beeper Cloud to gain entry into Apple’s messaging service, but the chat app acknowledged that iMessage may still work on Beeper Cloud for some existing users. Beeper also made the iMessage bridge (which it noted cost $750,000 to build) open source.
The company doesn’t plan to provide help or troubleshooting to current users who run into problems with the iMessage fix, as it’s now fully focused on “our mission beyond iMessage” and building “a universal, multi-network chat app.”
Was it a joyous outage where you got to relax, or did something mission-critical go wrong? Either way, “a portion” of Microsoft Teams went down Friday for over eight hours — with outages in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, according to status updates from Microsoft’s official account.
At 8:17PM ET Friday, Microsoft tweeted that the worst is over, but that the company was still mopping up, with a handful of issues still ongoing. Shortly after midnight Saturday, the company called the all-clear: “we’ve confirmed that our Microsoft Teams service and features have been restored or have returned to optimal health,” it writes.
So yeah, if you couldn’t communicate with your colleagues via Microsoft’s biz comm...
Martin Pope/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Don’t let climate doom win.
It’s no secret that the environmental health of the planet is in dire straits right now. The Earth was its hottest in recorded history in 2023. Our winters are shorter, our summers hotter, and our natural disasters more extreme.
The doom and gloom around climate change is understandable when you take it all into account. Global governments struggled to stay under the goal of 1.5 Celsius temperature increase last year, meaning we could be barreling toward even worse outcomes. There’s a sense of existential dread, a feeling that we’ve gone too far and that there’s no stopping the inevitable demise of Earth and all the creatures that inhabit it, including us.
But one expert says it doesn’t have to be that way. Hannah Ritchie — deputy editor at Our World in Data — argues that climate “doomerism” leads people astray from meaningful action. In her debut book, Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet, she says we should reframe the way we talk about climate change. Hope, informed by data, can be a helpful tool for mobilizing the masses, who range from climate deniers to the most devoted of environmentalists.
“I think tailoring messaging to different audiences is really, really crucial,” the Future Perfect 50 honoree says. “I think some people do actually just respond to the fear or the catastrophic messages. But I think there’s also a big group of people that don’t like that. I’m trying to bridge that ground a little bit and get people that might be on the fence or a bit disengaged to engage a bit more.”
In this episode of The Weeds, we sit down with Ritchie to discuss the current state of climate change, why the planet has actually never been “sustainable” for all of human history, and why shifting toward an optimistic (but realistic) narrative can help keep the planet from warming.
Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to The Weeds on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get podcasts.
Jonquilyn Hill
I want to get into something you spend time in the book discussing, and that’s what you consider ineffective policies like that around plastic straws, for instance. I’m curious why you think it’s ineffective, and also why there’s so much focus on these policies that aren’t maybe the most effective.
Hannah Ritchie
There are two reasons to counter some of the ineffective stuff. One is that some of this stuff that people think makes a positive difference actually makes a negative difference. We should just call that out.
But the other dimension to this is that people often become so overwhelmed with the number of decisions they should be making about environmental stuff. They go through their day questioning every little decision. That can become overwhelming. There are probably like five big decisions that make a big impact on your carbon footprint. Then the rest of the decisions really make very little difference at all, and you can do those if you want.
But there’s also this effect, which is called moral licensing, where if you have done a behavior that you think has made a positive difference, often you kind of let other things fall by the wayside. So you might think, “Oh, I used a paper straw at dinner. Therefore, it doesn’t matter that I take the car or I take the flight or I eat the meat because I’ve done my bit because I used a paper straw.” The impact of the paper straw is so incredibly small compared to the other decisions.
Jonquilyn Hill
What are some of those things that we think have a positive impact but actually are not helpful at all?
Hannah Ritchie
One that comes up a lot is local food. If you ask people, “What’s the best way to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet?” they’ll often say, “Eat local.” The rationale for that makes sense: Transporting stuff obviously emits CO2 emissions, whether on a truck or on a plane or by boat.
But the key thing when you break down the data on emissions from food is that what you’re eating matters more than how far it’s traveled to reach you. If you look at the carbon footprint of different foods across the world, the average percentage that the transport part makes up is just 5 percent.
Most of the impacts of your food are coming from a land use change, or they’re coming from emissions on the farm. You’ll often hear people say, “My local beef is obviously much lower carbon than your avocados shipped in from a given country.” And actually, that’s just not true. The beef versus the avocados matters much, much more than whether it’s local.
There are reasons why someone would want to eat local, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s just not necessarily the best way to reduce your carbon footprint. So if there’s other reasons to eat local, like supporting your local community, then go ahead and do that.
Jonquilyn Hill
What are some of the things we could be doing that are actually helpful?
On energy, it’s largely about travel: walking, cycling, and public transport is best. If you have a car — if you need a car, then an electric car is definitely better than a [gas] car. And then in your home, it’s not necessarily stuff like your lights or plugging your phone charger, [but] often heating and cooking.
What’s really effective is an electric heat pump that tends to be much better than a boiler. And then putting in a solar panel on your roof massively reduces your energy footprint.
Jonquilyn Hill
It’s very easy to spiral when you think about the state that the world is in, and I’m wondering how you keep from spiraling. Because it’s very easy to start panicking. It’s understandable why the doom-and-gloom messaging takes over.
Hannah Ritchie
I’m definitely not saying that you’re going to be okay. It depends on what we do.
It’s not like we’re going to have no impact and things are all going to be fine. But the gradient of how okay things will be will depend on our actions. We have this opportunity here to really take strong action.
The balance there is really important. You do need to not necessarily panic, but you do need concern and you need a sense of urgency. It’s also important to focus on the solutions. If you just tell people this is a massive problem and leave them with it, what are they supposed to do with that?
I often try to highlight signs of progress, and that’s not necessarily to congratulate ourselves about how well we’ve done. But it’s all often about building momentum and showing people this can change.
Jonquilyn Hill
It’s this idea of celebrating small wins so that people don’t feel despondent.
Hannah Ritchie
You can relate it to even really small personal stuff in your own life, like, say, training for a marathon and you’ve never been a runner. The most demotivating thing ever is if you’ve been training for three months and you’ve made no progress. Then you just stop because you think, “I’ve been doing this for three months. I’m wasting my time. I’m just going to stop.”
If you’ve been training for three months, you’re not at the marathon-level standard. And that’s where we are on climate change. But you have gotten fitter over that period of time and you can now run a 10k. It’s about building on that momentum to say, “Okay, if I can build up to 10k, then with more training and with much more effort, then I can get to the marathon distance.” It’s about using momentum to drive more progress rather than just clapping and saying, “That’s kind of where we are.”
Jonquilyn Hill
I think for a lot of people who care about the environment, these small actions matter. It offers a sense of control in a world where so much feels out of our control. These are small steps that we can take without the backing of companies or federal governments.
What advice do you have for people who you know want to make a change but aren’t in power or don’t have proximity to power?
Hannah Ritchie
We often envision this as very top-down, but I think many of the successes on this have come from more community efforts.
[Efforts like] building wind power in Texas, for example, have come from small communities saying, “We’re going to build a wind farm for our community.” So often, it can start to come from the grassroots and build up.
There’s a lot of that in environmentalism where it’s often pointing fingers, and I think that’s really ineffective at getting people to change. But change in yourself can often be really infectious and people get interested.
Jonquilyn Hill
What do you think the role of optimism is in our climate future?
Hannah Ritchie
It needs to be balanced with a sense of urgency and the need to act.
A lot of people are feeling quite paralyzed at the moment. I think they are, in some sense, disengaging because they feel like we’re making no progress and we probably won’t make any progress. And this is such a critical time. We need to really get moving on this stuff. This is the worst time for people to disengage and look away. So, for me, the role of optimism is to drive people to actually take action.
City council members in Laguna Beach, California met last night prepared to approve a request (PDF) from Rivian to park six vehicles on the grass in a city park for a March 7th “R2 launch.” The company appears to be planning to officially announce its forthcoming electric SUV, the R2, which is supposed to be smaller and more affordable than its current lineup of EVs.
A local community publication called Stu News Lagunareported yesterday that a small item on the city council’s consent calendar showed that it was planning to approve the event in a single motion along with many other agenda items. The six vehicles Rivian wants to park are “for informational purposes only,” Stu News writes.
You can now purchase the entire slate of LG’s webOS-powered MyView monitors, which debuted at CES earlier this month, including one with a 31.5-inch 4K IPS panel (model 32SR85U) that starts at $599.99. Sure, gamers can find better value for their money than a monitor that maxes out with 5ms response times and a 60Hz refresh rate, but visual creatives might appreciate a 95 percent DCI-P3 color gamut. And when your office work is done, you can fire up a full suite of entertainment apps or stream directly from another device with AirPlay 2 and Miracast support.
It could be an ideal monitor for movie watching at your desk without loud fans (or Slack notifications) ruining the immersion, and it’s easier to fit into your home office than...
Demands placed on offices in the hybrid working era have forced a technological re-think on organisations as they seek to ensure their workers can participate in rich, collaborative experiences that accommodate both physically present and remote workers. Inevitably, this demands usage of UC platforms and results in the need to enable audio and video equipment that can maximise interaction and deliver high quality meetings. However, in the rush to reconfigure spaces and adjust processes and working practices, the basics are often overlooked.
If a user can’t hear their co-workers clearly, communication becomes challenging, nuances can be lost and productivity falters. It’s therefore essential that audio quality is prioritised and that starts with selecting optimised microphones for meeting rooms to ensure that users’ voices are picked up clearly, while consistent, reliable audio performance is achieved for every session. Providing this across various UC platforms, with their different settings and criteria, is challenging for IT professionals and AV managers but there are growing options for professionals to consider.
Shure, for example, added the Microflex® Advance MXA902 Integrated Conferencing Ceiling Array to its Microflex Ecosystem line of products. The MXA902 is the world’s first conferencing ceiling array microphone with integrated loudspeaker and IntelliMix® DSP, which makes it the ideal audio solution for small and medium-size meeting rooms.
The MXA902 is certified for Microsoft Teams and Zoom Rooms when paired with the USB Audio Network Interface with Matrix Mixing (ANIUSB-MATRIX). This is a crucial factor to keep in mind, as seamless collaboration with other UC platforms is essential to ensure an outstanding user experience in conferencing.
It also has Works with Google Meet certification which means the ceiling array interoperates with Google Meet simply and flexibly to provide consistent and reliable experiences in hybrid environments.
“We understand how critical it is to ensure seamless conferencing performance, which requires solid collaboration with UC platforms,” explains Julie Crawford, the Strategic Alliance Senior Marketing Manager at Shure.
“By certifying the Shure MXA902 for different communication platforms, we support IT and AV professionals with reliable and innovative technology for enhancing the end-user experience.”
The Shure MXA902 is designed to support small and medium-sized spaces. It incorporates an advanced array microphone alongside a wide-dispersion loudspeaker for natural sounding speed capture and reproduction. The MXA902 features Shure’s Single Zone Automatic Coverage technology which is optimised to capture audio from a 6m x 6m space. Thanks to the onboard Intellimix DSP it delivers echo and noise-free audio.
Part of the appeal of the MXA902 is that it removes clutter on tables or walls, allowing for a cleaner interior design and, a single device requires only one network cable, minimising installation time in comparison to installing separate components. In addition, the next generation array architecture that the MXA902 incorporates delivers enhanced low frequency directionality plus natural speech quality.
Shure emphasises that, unlike wall-mounted soundbar devices, a ceiling-mounted array microphone and loudspeaker provide more consistent sound quality for every participant in the room – not just those near a table or wall microphone.
The MXA902 will be present at ISE 2024 among other innovative audio solutions. Visit Shure at booth #3N300 and learn more about enhancing your audio experiences.
BluIP has been certified as a Microsoft Operator Connect Provider, through which it will provide new and existing customers with PSTN calling in Teams.
The cloud communications and AI solutions provider, BluIP, can utilise its membership to Microsoft’s program to help Teams’ users expand their calling options beyond the Teams platform to include any phone number worldwide, which it believes will drastically lower operational costs and enhance collaboration.
The Microsoft Operator Connect Accelerator Partner, AudioCodes, along with its AudioCodes Live Cloud platform, reportedly assisted BluIP to successfully complete the necessary review and testing processes to demonstrate its compatibility with Teams and meet Microsoft’s security and performance requirements.
In his reaction to the news of its certifcation to join the Operator Connect program, Armen Martirosyan, BluIP CEO, also referenced the assistance it had received from AudioCodes: “We are excited to add the Microsoft Operator Connect solution to our robust cloud-based communication platform.
“BluIP has earned a reputation across the industries we serve as a leader in delivering reliable solutions with a deep commitment to white-glove customer care.
“Our partnership with AudioCodes helped us to offer our customers fast, easy, affordable deployment of the Operator Connect solution, with the additional peace of mind that Microsoft Certification brings.”
To coincide with its new membership, BluIP has launched a 30-day free trial of Operator Connect.
The trial offer makes moving to Operator Connect quick, easy, and “risk-free”, according to BluIP. It also includes the company’s year-round support and personalised approach to customers.
BluIP made a similar offer with its Enhanced Cloud Calling for Microsoft Teams solution around this time last year by making the app free for the first 100 users for 100 days.
Enhanced Cloud Calling for Microsoft Teams
BluIP offers a lengthy portfolio for customers to choose from, including cloud UCaaS, enhanced SIP trunking, BluIP Connect with Webex, an advanced call centre, a Cisco Webex Contact Centre, and various AIVA Connect solutions.
The company’s voice calling services for Teams have been available since 2018, at which time it launched a phone system for both Teams and Skype before Microsoft had fully formed its Teams telephony strategy.
Now, as an official Operator Connect provider, BluIP will gain greater exposure to its PSTN calling services as Microsoft directs its customers to it.
Key features of BluIP’s Enhanced Cloud Calling for Microsoft Teams includes an easy-to-use interface, advanced telephony features, a minimal downtime guarantee, consolidated billing, extension dialling to non-Teams users, and analogue device support.
The Enhanced Cloud Calling application provides a feature-rich calling experience with flexibility to adapt to different regions with limited connectivity, devices, and non-Teams users.
Lior Aldema, Chief Business Officer at AudioCodes, spoke about the benefits BluIP have gained by choosing to implement its Live Cloud platform: “We are thrilled that BluIP selected our Operator Connect Accelerator platform, AudioCodes Live Cloud, to provide their customers a wider variety of solutions for connecting to the Microsoft Teams Phone System.
“By facilitating fast onboarding to Operator Connect with enhanced user management tools, Live Cloud boosts the service provider’s value by delivering outstanding performance and reliability.”
Jeep’s all-electric Wagoneer S to hit US dealerships in the fall. | Image: Jeep
Jeep’s first all-electric vehicle for the US, the midsize Wagoneer S, will be available for purchase this fall, according to a press release.
The vehicle’s specifications are similar to when Jeep first teased the Wagoneer S in 2022: 600hp, a zero to 60mph time of about 3.5 seconds, and a grille lit by LEDs. But as Car and Driver notes, Jeep owner Stellantis has yet to confirm whether the Wagoneer S includes the 400-mile target range the company announced when it first showed off the vehicle. The Verge has reached out to Stellantis for comment.
The all-electric 2025 Jeep Recon is also slated to go on sale sometime in 2024, according to Jeep’s website. Unlike the more modern-looking Wagoneer S, the Recon evokes the old-school era of...
Users can disable the feature within their account settings, and restrict who can contact them when it’s enabled. | Illustration: The Verge
X (formerly Twitter) is now rolling out its audio and video calling capabilities to Android users following their iOS launch last October. Users may need to update the app to see the feature, according to X developer Enrique Barragan, who also says that any user can receive calls, but only X Premium subscribers can place them.
It’s unclear how long the rollout will take to reach all Android users, though we’ve confirmed that at least one of The Verge’s Android devices is showing the feature after the X app was updated. X Premium subscriptions start at $3 per month for the “Basic” tier, but it isn’t clear from X’s Help Centrewhich tier the outbound video and audio calling perk is locked behind.
Controlling your smart home on your TV — something Samsung’s new SmartThing’s Map View lets you do more intuitively — could make it simpler for everyone in the home to use smart devices. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
From map views and smart TVs to smart buttons and generative AI, controlling your smart home is getting simpler and smarter — and less dependent on your smartphone.
The European Parliament has made its case — now, it’s up to the European Commission to decide whether to initiate legislation proceedings. | Image: The Verge
The EU has proposed sweeping changes within the music streaming industry to promote smaller artists and make sure underpaid performers are being fairly compensated.
A resolution to address concerns regarding inadequate streaming royalties for artists and biased recommendation algorithms was adopted by members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on Wednesday, highlighting that no existing EU rules currently apply to music streaming services, despite being the most popular way to consume audio.
The proposition was made to ensure European musical works are accessible and avoid being overshadowed by the “overwhelming amount” of content being continually added to streaming platforms like Spotify. MEPs also called for outdated “pre-digital”...
Notion Calendar is just Cron, reskinned and deeply integrated with Notion. | Image: Notion
Notion users have been asking for an integrated calendar system for years. Now, Notion is delivering: it’s launching Notion Calendar, a standalone app that integrates with all of your databases and notes in Notion. It’s yet another way Notion is attempting to be the only app your company needs to do pretty much everything.
If you’ve ever used Cron, the calendar app Notion acquired in 2022 and has been operating ever since, you basically already know the deal with Notion Calendar. It’s just a redesigned, Notion-ified version of the app. Cron was always a fast, simple, nice-looking calendar with some clever features like Calendly-style booking tools and a command bar you can use for quickly setting up recurring meetings and the like. One...
Google CEO Sundar Pichai. | Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge
Google has laid off over a thousand employees across various departments since January 10th. CEO Sundar Pichai’s message is to brace for more cuts.
“We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year,” Pichai told all Google employees on Wednesday in an internal memo that was shared with me. “The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices.”
So far, those “tough choices” have included layoffs and reorganizations in Google’s hardware, ad sales, search, shopping, maps, policy, core engineering, and YouTube teams.
“These role eliminations are not at the scale of last year’s reductions, and will not touch every team,” Pichai wrote in his memo — a reference to when G...
The era of AI on our phones is upon us, and it’s Samsung’s turn to show us a vision for the future. | Image: Samsung
Samsung is announcing new phones this week, and they’re going to be the most AI phones that ever AI’ed. That’s not a guess, although it would be an easy one coming off the heels of “Put a ChatGPT on it” CES 2024. No, Samsung is telling us in the loudest ways possible — including putting it on the Sphere, which is the 2024 equivalent of shouting it from the rooftops. But what exactly does AI on a phone look like? So far, it has amounted to a handful of tech demos. This week’s Galaxy Unpacked event is an opportunity to show us the potential of AI on a mobile device. And unlike a washing machine with ChatGPT preinstalled, AI could be really useful on our phones.
AI showed up in a big way in 2023, but as a tool on our mobile devices, it’s...
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