In an absolutely bananas turn of events, a typo in an earnings report caused Lyft shares to skyrocket nearly 70 percent after Tuesday’s closing stock market bell, as reported by CBS. There was an extra zero in the report that suggested a five percent margin expansion in 2024, instead of a .5 percent margin. This sent investors into a tizzy, as the company has long struggled to turn a profit.

The mistake was even present in Lyft’s slide deck, which was part of that earnings report, and an accompanying press release. The company quickly corrected the mistake, calling it a clerical error, but the stock surge had already begun. Lyft CFO Erin Brewer addressed the issue in an earnings call yesterday evening which caused the stocks to reverse course. It’s worth noting that the earnings report was still good news for Lyft, even without that mistake, so the stock price experienced a more stable increase of around 35 percent.

Now, onto the blame game. Lyft CEO David Risher appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box to take responsibility for the mistake, saying “look, it was a bad error, and that’s on me.” Risher went on to note that it was “super frustrating” for everyone on the team and said that he could see a fellow employee’s “jaw drop” when discovering the issue.

The good news? Even with that adjustment, this is Lyft’s best day since the company’s initial IPO offering back in 2019. Yesterday’s earnings report indicated $1.22 billion in revenue for the quarter, an increase of four percent from last year. Bookings increased 17 percent for the quarter, accounting for $3.7 billion. Risher called it a “great quarter.”

A misplaced zero on a spreadsheet isn’t the ridesharing giant’s only concern. Thousands of Lyft and Uber drivers are going on strike today to demand better pay and safer working conditions. The striking workers are primarily clustered around ten major US airports, though it’s only planned to last for a few hours.

Nintendo’s next first-party Switch title is almost here. Princess Peach: Showtime will be available on March 22 and the company just dropped a brand new trailer to keep the hype train rolling. The game’s primary hook is that the oft-kidnapped princess can transform into a number of different professions, each with its own move sets and challenges.

The new trailer gives us a look at four never-before-seen transformations, including a figure skater, a superhero, a thief and a mermaid. Each transformation shakes up the gameplay, so while figure skater Peach stars in a 2.5D platformer, superhero Peach pummels her way through a side-scrolling beat-em-up. Mermaid Peach seems to spend most of her time singing.

A previously-released trailer showed Peach turning into a swordfighter, a detective, a pastry chef and a kung-fu master. It remains to be seen just how many other jobs the princess has experience with. Nintendo has shown off ten so far, but it’s likely keeping several as a surprise. Peach sure has a diverse resume, and she does all of it while running a kingdom filled with excitable little fungi. Meanwhile, Mario golfs and plays tennis on his days off.

Princess Peach: Showtime will cost $60 when it hits next month, and pre-orders are open now. To commemorate the release, Nintendo is also dropping a pair of pastel pink Joy-Cons. The controllers will be available on March 22, alongside the game, and will set you back $80.

If you can’t wait until March to dive into some Mario-adjacent tomfoolery, a remake of the Game Boy Advance puzzle platformer Mario vs. Donkey Kong releases this Friday. This updated version includes local co-op.

Retail giant Walmart is reportedly in talks to acquire budget TV maker Vizio, according to The Wall Street Journal. The $2 billion deal would make Vizio a house brand for Walmart and would allow the company to directly compete in the affordable smart TV space currently dominated by Amazon and Roku.

It would also give Walmart access to all of that sweet, sweet customer data collected by Vizio’s smart TV platform throughout the years, which would open up another revenue stream in the form of personalized ads. The company would also be able to sell user data collected by Vizio boxes. Finally, it could use Vizio TVs as ad space in the showrooms of its nearly 11,000 retail locations. The company’s already doing this with display televisions via its current in-house brand Onn.

However, Roku and Amazon have had years to shore up the budget-friendly TV market. Roku started with streaming devices, but transitioned to smart TVs last year, and there’s even a more expensive line of Mini LED TVs coming in a few months. Amazon Fire TVs are just about everywhere, with more than 200 million sales as of ten months ago. So Walmart has a fairly steep hill to climb, should this deal go through.

Speaking of deals going through, this isn’t Vizio’s first acquisition rodeo. The company’s been looking for a buyer for years. Vizio was nearly purchased by Chinese media conglomerate LeEco back in 2016, which was another $2 billion deal, but things went south quickly. LeEco, once called the “Netflix of China," ran into serious financial troubles and backed out of the deal, leaving Vizio in the lurch. This caused Vizio to sue LeEco for $100 million, which was eventually settled for $60 million. Shortly after that, Vizio went public with an IPO.

If the deal goes off without a hitch, Vizio will join other tech companies under Walmart’s global umbrella. These include content delivery platform Vudu, AR optical tech company Memomi, banking app ONE and a whole bunch of digital retailers, like Shoes.com and Bare Necessities.

Slack has finally unleashed its generative AI toolset on the world, after teasing it last year. The vast majority of these features look to simplify your day-to-day life when using the work-focused chat platform.

First up, the AI will auto-generate channel recaps to give you key highlights of anything you missed while away from the keyboard or smartphone. Slack says the algorithm that generates these recaps is smart enough to separate the content from the various topics discussed. In other words, if your co-workers launched into a debate about coffee beans and also talked about third-quarter earnings or whatever, you should get a paragraph on both.

There’s a similar tool available for threads, which are basically just one-on-one or group conversations that don’t occupy an entire channel. This lets users “get up to speed on any thread in just one click.” Now you can safely ignore that one colleague who messages you eight times in a row when one short paragraph would absolutely suffice.

Another cool feature here is conversational search. This allows you to ask a question using natural language instead of using Slack’s pre-existing search bar to slowly crawl through previous chats. The algorithm does the crawling for you, providing you with a “clear, concise answer based on relevant conversational data.”

It remains to be seen just how much time these tools will save the average user throughout the workday, but Slack says it remains committed to artificial intelligence. To that end, the company is prepping more native AI features, including the ability to generate personalized summaries of channels that users don’t check daily but want to keep an eye on. Additionally, Slack says it’ll soon integrate some of its most-used third-party apps into the AI ecosystem.

One of the big drawbacks of talking to an AI chatbot is that everything resets once the conversation is done. It won’t remember who you are or what you previously queried. This is by design, for privacy reasons, but it really hampers the tech from growing into a true digital assistant that knows you well enough to actually help with stuff. 

OpenAI is trying to fix this issue and is finally adding a memory feature to ChatGPT. This will allow the bot to remember important personal details from prior conversations and apply that context to current queries.

Here’s how it works. You can actually tell ChatGPT to remember something specific, like that your child is allergic to peanuts or how you prefer to sign emails. It’ll automatically store this data as requested and apply it to future conversations and tasks.

Beyond that, the system will pick up stuff over time. It’ll naturally store data as you perform queries. The goal is for the chatbot to become smarter and, more importantly, attuned to your specific needs.

Additionally, each custom GPT will have its own unique memory. OpenAI gives Books GPT as an example, as the bot will remember which books you’ve already read and what genres you like. The GPT Store is filled with unique chatbots that would absolutely benefit from this memory feature.

This doesn’t seem too different from how the internet already works. Apps store personal data, as do websites and social networks. This data is then leveraged to create a unique user profile, which is used to develop personalized algorithms. However, there are significant privacy concerns with the standard way of doing things that absolutely carry over to this memory feature.

OpenAI

To that end, OpenAI says users will have control over ChatGPT’s memory and that the system has been trained to not automatically remember certain sensitive topics, like health data. The company says you can simply tell the bot to forget something and it will. There’s also a Manage Memory tab included in the settings for more nuanced adjustments. If the whole idea skeeves you out, just shut the feature off entirely.

This is a beta service, for now, and is rolling out to a “small number” of ChatGPT free and Plus users this week. The company will share plans for a broader release in the future. In the meantime, you can rewatch the movie Her to see where this all ends. 

The Playdate console has been tough to get a hold of since being released back in 2022, as pre-orders have vastly outnumbered current orders. This has led to lengthy waiting periods when placing an order for the crank-adjacent portable. That all changes today, as the manufacturer has announced the console is available for immediate shipment upon purchase.

Playdate also passed a significant milestone, as over 70,000 preordered units have shipped, up from 50,000 last year. Manufacturer Panic says it has finally “caught up” to all Playdate preorders, but that this wide availability may not last forever. The company says just a “limited number” of consoles are available for immediate purchase. The online store currently says shipments go out in two to three days.

Panic says that, moving forward, it’ll notify the public whenever Playdates are in-stock and ready to ship. On the other hand, the store will clearly note when stock is low and when there’s a waiting period.

The manufacturer has also opened up shipments to a number of new countries, including Hungary, Greece, New Zealand, South Korea and Malaysia. That last one is particularly important, as Malaysia is where the console is actually manufactured. It’s always nice when the people who make the thing can use the thing.

Panic is planning another video showcase to unveil forthcoming games for the system. More details on this event will come at a later date. The last showcase happened in August and featured an array of bizarre, yet engaging, titles.

For the uninitiated, the Playdate is a portable gaming console unlike any other. It’s cute and bright yellow, with a manually-operated crank that can be used as a control mechanism. Each $200 console comes with 24 free games, with two unlocking each week for 12 weeks. You can also purchase games via the Playdate Catalog online store.

United Airlines briefly grounded its fleet of brand-new Airbus A321neo planes, according to a report by Gizmodo. This had nothing to do with safety, as was the case with that recent Boeing controversy. Rather, it was due to the aircraft running afoul of a 1990 regulation regarding “no smoking” signs.

The 1990 ruling mandates that “no smoking” signs found on aircraft must be manually operated by the crew. The newly-designed Airbus A321neo features software that automatically displays the signage during a flight, so the crew doesn’t switch it on and off. That’s pretty much it. Meanwhile, smoking itself was fully banned from both domestic and international flights nearly 25 years ago.

Automated signage systems are not new. Many air travel companies bypass the 1990 regulation by applying for an exemption with the Federal Aviation Authority. United filed for this exemption on behalf of its entire fleet back in 2020, which was granted. There’s just one problem. The company's Airbus A321neo is so new that it doesn’t fall under the protection of that exemption. These planes just started flying the friendly skies two months ago.

United is seeking permission from the FAA to add the Airbus A321neo to the pre-existing exemption. The federal agency has given United permission to fly its fleet of A321neos, five in all, while evaluating this request.

“As the FAA noted, this is not a safety of flight issue. Our five A321neos were briefly out of service on Monday while we worked through this issue with the FAA, resulting in a handful of delays but no cancellations as we swapped that flying to other aircraft types in an effort to minimize disruption for our customers,” United wrote in a statement.

There’s just one question left to ask. It costs around $130 million to manufacture just one A321neo aircraft, so United spent $650 million to make this fleet. That’s a whole lot of cheddar, so why didn’t it get this exemption stuff sorted before the company started booking flights?

NVIDIA just released a free demo version of a chatbot that runs locally on your PC. This is pretty neat, as it gives the chatbot access to your files and documents. You can feed Chat with RTX a selection of personal data and have it create summaries based on that information. You can also ask it questions, just like any chatbot, and it’ll dive into your data for answers.

The company says it allows users to “quickly, easily connect local files on a PC as a dataset to an open-source large language model like Mistral or Llama 2.” NVIDIA gives an example of a user asking the chatbot about a restaurant their partner recommended while in Las Vegas. The software scans local files to find the answer. It supports a whole bunch of file formats, including .txt, .pdf, .doc/.docx and .xml. The company says it’ll load relevant files into its dataset “in seconds.”

Chat with RTX also integrates YouTube videos and playlists. You can add a video URL into the dataset and it’ll integrate the knowledge contained in the clip for contextual queries. NVIDIA says this will be useful when asking for travel recommendations “based on content from favorite influencer videos” or when looking for tutorials and summaries derived from educational resources.

The Verge had some hands-on time with the chatbot and came away impressed, writing that they could see it as “a valuable part of data research for journalists or anyone who needs to analyze a collection of documents.”

This sounds like a big step toward something resembling an actual digital assistant that works within the contextual framework of your personal data. With most chatbots, the data is sent off to the cloud, but Chat with RTX “lets users process sensitive data on a local PC without the need to share it with a third party or have an internet connection.” So it’s safer and more contextually aware.

There are some limitations. This is a demo product so you should expect plenty of bugs, though NVIDIA should start squashing them once users begin issuing error reports and the like. There are also some strict hardware limitations here. Chat with RTX only works on Windows PCs with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs or higher and at least 8GB of VRAM.

NVIDIA has really been showing off its AI prowess lately, as the company just launched its next-generation of artificial intelligence supercomputer chips. It’s absolutely swimming in profits, due primarily to the company’s AI and data center segments.

The Flipper Zero digital multi-tool already has tons of uses, from hacking to controlling home systems. Now it can even play games, thanks to a partnership with Raspberry Pi. This comes in the form of a new add-on for the device, appropriately called the Video Game Module.

The module is powered by the Raspberry Pi-developed RP2040 microcontroller and it can run games programmed in C, C++ and MicroPython. To suit the quirkiness of Flipper’s device, however, the module goes a few steps further. It features sensors for hand-tracking, a 3-axis gyroscope and a 3-axis accelerometer, so games can include tilt and shake functionalities.

Now, you may be wondering why you would play real games on the Flipper Zero’s teensy-tiny screen. The 1.4-inch monochrome display may work for the hacking minigame often associated with the device, but would likely struggle with anything beyond that. Luckily, the Video Game Module allows for video output to external displays.

In other words, the module’s suite of sensors combined with the video output turns the Flipper Zero itself into a controller, with the game being played on an actual screen. It’ll be really cool to see what the open source community does with this thing. It could end up like the famously-derided Ouya console only, you know, good.

Flipper Devices

This is the latest Flipper Zero module and programmers will likely have a field day experimenting with the hardware. There’s a built-in USB-C connector to interface with the microcontroller for making changes and the whole thing can actually work on its own, without any need to connect to Flipper’s gadget. Think of it as one-part Flipper module and one-part Pico-type device with an onboard IMU.

Alex Kulagin, founder and COO of Flipper Devices, hopes that this accessory will “unlock new ways of using Flipper Zero” and “bridge the gap between retro-gaming nostalgia and cutting-edge research.” The Video Game Module costs $49 and the Flipper Zero costs $169.

Gaming is just the latest use for the Flipper Zero. This digital Swiss army knife was originally pitched as a multi-tool for hackers, but it’s fully open source and is capable of interacting with devices via IR, NFC, RFID, Bluetooth and physical connections. Users have turned these cute Dolphin-inspired gadgets into universal remotes, key fob testers, GameShark-like cheating devices and much more. They can also unlock certain safes, but you didn’t hear that from us.

Lyft is expanding its Women+ Connect program to a bunch of new cities. This initiative originally launched in a limited number of locations back in September, but now it's getting a much larger rollout.

Women+ Connect does exactly what the name implies. It connects women and nonbinary riders to similarly identifying drivers, and vice versa. This is an opt-in feature that aims to bolster safety during rides, in addition to enticing women and nonbinary people to become drivers for the platform. Lyft says that nearly half of riders are women, but they only make up 23 percent of drivers.

Here’s how it works: You turn on the feature and it’ll connect you to an appropriate driver based on the gender you entered when signing up. For drivers, it uses the gender associated with the license on file. If there’s no women or nonbinary drivers looking for fares, you’ll still get matched with a male driver, so you won’t be standing around outside in the cold.

The program started in just a few cities, including Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco. It’s apparently been a huge success for Lyft, with the company noting that 2.4 million riders have turned on Women+ Connect since the September launch and more than half of eligible drivers have begun using the service. It also says that this feature has the highest satisfaction rate of any driver tool the company has ever launched.

Women+ Connect releases today in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Las Vegas, Dallas, Washington D.C. and other places. Check the app to see if the feature is available where you live.

This is the latest tool employed by ridesharing platforms to increase safety and reduce instances of sexual assault and other violent encounters. Uber recently made it easier for riders and drivers to contact 911 and live safety agents. The platform has also begun allowing both riders and drivers to record audio during trips.