Tech News – Page 63 – by Arlin Schaffel

Humane urges customers to stop using charging case, citing battery fire concerns

“Our investigation determined that the battery supplier was no longer meeting our quality standards and that there is a potential that certain battery cells supplied by this vendor may pose a fire safety risk,” Humane wrote in an email viewed by TechCrunch. “As a result, we immediately disqualified this battery vendor while we work to identify a new vendor to avoid such issues and maintain our high quality standards.”
https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/05/humane-urges-customers-to-stop-using-charging-case-citing-battery-fire-concerns

Study finds 268% higher failure rates for Agile software projects

A study has found that projects adopting Agile practices are 268 percent more likely to fail than those that do not. Even though the research commissioned by consultancy Engprax could be seen as a thinly veiled plug for Impact Engineering methodology, it feeds into the suspicion that the Agile Manifesto might not be all it's cracked up to be.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/05/agile_failure_rates/

Uber Planning to Add Mini Games to iPhone App to Play During a Ride

image via macrumors.com

MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris discovered several references to the ability to load games in the latest version of the Uber app, released on Monday. One line of code says that the gaming feature will require an internet connection. It is unclear when Uber will make the mini games available to the public, and there is no guarantee that the feature will launch.
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/04/uber-planning-mini-games-in-iphone-app/

Instagram tests forcing users to watch adverts

“We’re always testing formats that can drive value for advertisers," it said in a statement, adding that it would provide further updates if the test resulted in permanent format changes. One person on Threads called the move "bonkers" – adding that it "seems like an aggressively pushy move to earn more ad dollars for Meta".
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c877y6mxdp7o

The biggest findings in the Google Search leak

One thing right off the bat: the Google Search algorithm has not leaked, and SEO experts don’t suddenly have all the answers. But the information that did leak this week — a collection of thousands of internal Google documents — is still huge. It’s an unprecedented look into Google’s inner workings that are typically closely guarded.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/31/24167119/google-search-algorithm-documents-leak-seo-chrome-clicks

Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

Social media is abuzz with examples of Google’s new AI Overview product saying weird stuff, from telling users to put glue on their pizza to suggesting they eat rocks. The messy rollout means Google is racing to manually disable AI Overviews for specific searches as various memes get posted, which is why users are seeing so many of them disappear shortly after being posted to social networks.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/24/24164119/google-ai-overview-mistakes-search-race-openai