Bluesky, one of the most notable alternatives to the platform formerly known as Twitter, has just hit a million users. That's admittedly tiny compared to the number of users on major social networks, but it's a big deal for a service that remains inaccessible to most people until today. Bluesky team member Rose Wang, who has announced the milestone on X, told TechCrunch that the service's app reached a million downloads in July. However, those interested in getting in on the action at Bluesky will have to secure invite codes to log in, and it's only now that enough people were able to create accounts for the social network to be able to announce that it has reached 1 million users. 

Bluesky first burst into the scene as a decentralized social network (previously) funded by Twitter and backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Shortly after it launched in closed beta, it rolled out the ability for users to choose their own algorithms so that they can customize their timelines. And in its bid to remain ad-free, it started offering a paid domain service as a way for users to verify their identity. It's unclear when the app will open to the public, and, upon checking, some codes are still being sold on eBay for hundreds of dollars. 

Meta, on the other hand, chose to make Threads available to everyone from the get-go, even though it was still lacking a number of critical features. Threads reached 100 million users merely a week after it became available in July, but keyword search only started rolling out earlier this month. 

Meta has rolled out software update v57 for its Quest headsets, and one of the biggest changes it brings is giving you the ability to make your avatar a better representative of your true self. When you choose a certain color for your hair and eyebrows, for instance, you'll be able to fine-tune it further through a slider that lets you adjust its depth. Yes, that means you'll now be able to more accurately pick your avatar's skin tone. You can put makeup and face paint on your avatar, in the exact colors you want, as well. 

In addition, update v57 gives you the capability to unsend image messages in virtual reality and the Meta Quest mobile app. When you hover over the image in VR or click on it in the app, you'll see the option to "Unsend a message." If you choose to do so, both parties will get a notification that a message has been removed for transparency. At the moment, this particular feature is available in Australia, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and the US.

If the feed that greets you when log into VR looks different, that's because Meta is also replacing Quest's Explore feed with an updated one dubbed the "Horizon Feed." It still shows content relevant to your interests, though, so long as they're age-appropriate. Finally, update v57 introduces free-form locomotion, which lets you teleport throughout your Home space instead of being confined to predetermined spots. You still can't move through walls, furniture and other objects, but you can now at least explore your environment more freely. 

Apple chief Tim Cook previously announced that the tech giant will be purchasing chips for its iPhones, Macs and other key products made in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) new factory in Phoenix, Arizona. It seemed like a huge win for the Biden administration, which signs the CHIPS Act into law last year to boost manufacturing in the US and lessen its reliance on overseas suppliers. Now, The Information has reported that even though the components for Apple's chips will be manufactured in the US, they'll still have to be sent back to TSMC's home country for assembly. 

Apparently, the manufacturer's factory in Arizona doesn't have the facilities to package its customers' more advanced chips. "Packaging" is what you call the final stage of fabrication, wherein the chip's components are assembled inside a housing as close together as possible to enhance speed and power efficiency. The iPhone, in particular, has been using a packaging method developed by TSMC since 2016. Chips for iPads and Macs can be packaged outside of Taiwan, but the iPhone's will have to be assembled in the country. 

The Information says Apple is the manufacturer's only customer using its packaging method at high volumes, but TSMC has other clients, including NVIDIA, AMD and Tesla. It's unclear how many of those companies' chip models will have to be sent back to Taiwan for packaging, but they reportedly include chips for artificial intelligence, including NVIDIA's H100. The publication also previously reported that Google will be using TSMC's advanced packaging used on the iPhone for its future Pixel phones. 

The government set aside over $50 billion in funding under the CHIPS Act to provide subsidies for companies building chip factories in the US. President Joe Biden and his administration are encouraging the growth of the US semiconductor industry to mitigate fallout from the growing tension between the United States and China over Taiwan. In August, the president even signed an executive order that limits American investments in Chinese tech firms dealing with semiconductors, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

Seeing as the government recently established (PDF) a National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing program to boost chip packaging in the US, it's aware of the need to bring the process into the country, as well. Apple and all the aforementioned TSMC clients aren't the only companies whose chips have to be sent overseas for assembly, since manufacturers aren't making enough products in the US to justify building packaging facilities in the country. However, that program is only getting $2.5 billion in funding under the CHIPS Act, and the Institute of Printed Circuits told the publication that the amount shows packaging isn't being prioritized. As for TSMC, The Information's sources said it has no plans to build packaging facilities in the US due to the huge costs involved, and any future packaging method it develops will most likely be offered in Taiwan. 

In the future, when you need someone's help to get a task done, you might find yourself launching the Uber app on your phone. According to Bloomberg, the company is exploring the possibility of offering a new TaskRabbit-like service. Developer Steve Moser found code hidden within Uber's iPhone app for an offering that's reportedly codenamed "Chore." Based on its current iteration, Chore will let you hire "taskers" and will let you specify in the app what you need help with, how long you think it would take and what time you want the tasker to arrive. 

Of course, you'll be able to input the address of where you want the person to go before you submit your request. Uber will then compute a payment that's commensurate with the time required to finish the task, but you will have to pay for a minimum of one hour no matter what it is. Bloomberg says the code Moser unearthed didn't have hints on what types of help you can ask from providers, but the potential service's rival TaskRabbit has a wide range of categories to choose from. These include cleaning, furniture assembly, electrical help, plumbing, TV mounting, packing and moving, snow removal, computer assistance, pet sitting and even senior care. 

Like any other unconfirmed feature still in development, though, Chore may not even make it to public release. If it does, it'll be a huge new undertaking for Uber, which is known for its ride-hailing and restaurant delivery services. Over the past months, Uber rolled out Carshare, which lets users borrow cars from private owner, to more locations as part of its efforts to become a zero-emission platform by 2040. It also started testing a toll-free number — 1-833-USE-UBER (1-833-873-8237) — that you can call to schedule an immediate or a future ride.

Tesla and Hilton have struck a deal to make EV charging more accessible while attracting guests to the latter's hotels at the same time. The companies have announced that starting in 2024, they will install 20,000 Tesla Universal Wall Connectors at 2,000 Hilton properties across the US, Canada and Mexico. This deal expands a previous partnership between the two and will see each chosen property get at least six new chargers. 

Matt Schuyler, Hilton's chief brand officer, told CNBC that the second most searched attribute for its hotels is EV charging. Using the "EV charging" filter on its website, we found that there are 1,148 Hilton hotels with EV chargers in the US at the moment, along with 67 properties in Canada and 22 in Mexico. That's but a fraction of what this expansion entails — according to The Points Guy, it would put Hilton ahead of Los Angeles County for having the most chargers in the continent by the time the project is done. 

While the companies didn't give a timeline for the installations, their deal has the potential to assuage a lot of people's range anxieties, especially since Tesla's Universal Wall Connectors are designed to work even with EVs from other brands. According to the automaker's website, the wall connector has the capability to add up to 44 miles of range per hour. It's also not exclusively available to big companies like Hilton. Tesla is selling the device for $595, and orders for it will start shipping in October. 

There was a time when Walgreens championed Theranos' blood tests and offered them at "wellness centers" in its stores. That was before it came to light that Theranos' tests were faulty, leading to a bitter breakup between the two companies. Now, according to Bloomberg, Walgreens has agreed to pay $44 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by customers who received flawed Theranos blood tests through its centers in Arizona and California. 

Lawyers for both sides struck a deal after a US district judge ordered the case to go to trial, and they filed a notice for a tentative settlement back in May. A court still has to approve the proposal, but based on the court filing by the plaintiffs, those customers will receive around double their out-of-pocket damages if the terms remain unaltered. 

The lawsuit accused Walgreens of being "willfully blind" to its partnership with Theranos, alleging that it had good reason to be suspicious of the latter's fingerprick testing method. Bloomberg says the plaintiffs' lawyers have acknowledged, however, that Walgreens had a "potent" defense argument when it said that it was also defrauded by the blood-testing company. 

Walgreens took Theranos to court in 2016 for a reported $140 million shortly after it formally ended their relationship. They eventually settled the lawsuit in a way that "resolve[d] all claims," but details about that agreement were undisclosed. As for Theranos, well, the company is now dead, with company founder Elizabeth Holmes currently serving time in prison with a scheduled release date of December 29, 2032.

Opera has rolled out a new version of its browser for gamers with the same generative AI features that launched with its One browser. The company debuted its Aria AI with the One browser that came out in June. At the time, Opera also gave its Android browser the AI treatment, but the GX browser for gamers remained AI-less. Now, the company is giving GX users the choice to use Aria's features — if they want. They'll have to enable "Early Bird" in settings and then switch on "Aria Extension" and "Aria Command Line" to be able to use the AI assistant. And, like in the other versions of the company's browser, users will have to log into their Opera account. 

Once they activate the AI, though, they'll get a new command line where they can type ctrl+ / on Windows or cmd+ / on Mac to display an overlay where they interact with Aria. They can then ask Aria questions through that overlay, which they can also launch from the sidebar. Opera said users can ask Aria gaming-related questions, such as "Has [a certain game] finally launched yet?" and "How can I kick off my streaming career?" Of course, users can easily find the answers to those questions by using a search engine the old way, but Aria provides an in-browser alternative in the same way Edge's AI co-pilot does. 

In addition, users can take advantage of Aria's AI Prompt capability by highlighting any text in the browser to bring up contextual information. When Opera introduced its browser's generative AI features, it included examples in which Aria turned chunks of text on the page into soap opera dialogue or into quiz questions. Aria AI is now available in over 180 countries, so most people can access it with GX and Opera's One browsers. Those interested can download the browser for gamers if they want to give it a try from Opera's website. 

Japan's space agency has launched a rocket on September 6 at 7:42 PM EDT carrying a telescope that's more advanced than NASA's Chandra and other X-ray observatories already in orbit. The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission — or XRISM but pronounced as "crism" — is a mission led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in collaboration with NASA and with contributions by the European Space Agency. Lia Corrales, a University of Michigan astronomer and mission participant, told The New York Times that XRISM represents "the next step in X-ray observations."

The telescope is considered more powerful than its predecessors because of its tools. One of them, called Resolve, is a microcalorimeter spectrometer with the capability to measure tiny increases in temperature when X-rays hit its 6-by-6-pixel detector. It must operate in an environment that's a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, enabled by a multistage mechanical cooling process inside its refrigerator-sized container with liquid helium. But so long as it's working, the tool can measure each individual X-ray energy and can provide information on its source's composition, motion and physical state. 

The Times says the mission team expects Resolve's spectroscopic data to be 30 times sharper than what Chandra's instruments can provide. It can detect X-rays with energies that range from 400 to 12,000 electron volts, which NASA says can give us the data needed to know more about the hottest regions, the largest structures and the objects with the strongest gravity pull in the universe. XRISM's science operations won't begin until January, though, since scientists still have to switch on its instruments and tune them in the next few months. 

In addition to XRISM, the rocket also blasted off to space carrying the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission. The small-scale lander was nicknamed "Moon Sniper," because it was designed to demonstrate that a pinpoint landing within 100 meters of a specific target is possible. Based on the latest information from JAXA, XRISM had already separated from its rocket and had already been inserted into orbit. Meanwhile, SLIM will keep traveling for months until it reaches the moon. 

After introducing the generative AI capabilities it was developing for Slack at World Tour NYC earlier this year, Salesforce has revealed as part of its Dreamforce announcements that it's now gearing up to pilot the new features this winter. Slack AI, as the capabilities are collectively called, is built natively into the platform to make it easy to access. One of its abilities is to instantly generate channel highlights that can immediately tell users the most important part of conversations, which they can then use for reports or to simply read what they might have missed. 

Slack AI can also generate summaries for threads in just one click for people who just want to get the gist of specific conversations and not the channel a whole. As shown in the image above, AI-generated summaries don't just come with highlights, but also lists of what next steps users can take based on concerns, comments and suggestions posted by people in the conversation. In addition, Slack AI can produce elaborate answers when people search for information on the platform. At the moment, searching on Slack can only bring up messages, files and channels with the keyword, but Slack AI can wrap all those information up in a package with a summary that makes them easier to parse. 

Salesforce's latest announcements come nearly a month after it started rolling out a new look for its business-focused messaging app. The redesigned interface is meant to help users focus more by removing clutter that may be distracting to some people. Slack's new sidebar, for instance, collapses all of a user's workspaces into a single tile and adds buttons for Home, DMs and Activity, as well as buttons for Search and Create. The dedicated DM tab lists a user's private chats and allows them to preview the most recent message for each conversation without opening it. Users can also toggle on an option to only see unread messages if they want to get rid of more clutter. 

The company is expected to reveal more about Slack AI and other new products at its Dreamforce event, which will take place from September 12 to September 14 and will be available to stream on Salesforce+.

Those firing up Airbnb to look for a short-term rental in New York City right now may find the pickings a bit slim. Officials in the city have started enforcing new regulations mandating that hosts will have to file a registration application — and meet a set of requirements — to be able to rent homes to guests for less than 30 days. Hosts can only rent out homes for short-term stays if they're also staying there, and only two guests are allowed at a time. These requirements are part of old and existing rules on rentals, however, and only the Short-Term Rental Registration Law itself is new.

NYC's Office of Special Enforcement said on its website that on September 5, it started collaborating with booking platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo to ensure that they're honoring the city's verification system. These companies will now have to check whether hosts listing their homes for stays less than 30 days have been approved by authorities. According to The New York Times, only 257 application registrations have been approved so far out of the 3,250 that were lodged as of August 28. That would mean thousands of listings could be removed from Airbnb, seeing as the company estimates that almost 15,000 hosts had short-term rental listings across NYC as recent as last month. 

Airbnb called the law a "de facto ban" on short-term rentals and filed a lawsuit, which was dismissed last month, to try and block its enforcement. Theo Yedinsky, the company's global policy director, said the rules "are a blow to [NYC's] tourism economy" and that "[t]he city is sending a clear message to millions of potential visitors who will now have fewer accommodation options when they visit New York City: you are not welcome." 

The city's authorities argued that enforcing the new law would help prevent housing "being lost to the practice of illegal" short-term rentals. Hosts renting out homes for short periods contributes to the housing shortage, they said, and makes it more expensive to live in the city as a result. 

Airbnb told The Times and CNN that reservations with a check-in on or before December 1 will not be cancelled, but the company will refund the fees it received related to those stays to comply with the new rules. Meanwhile, all bookings starting on December 2 will be cancelled, and guests will be refunded. In addition, hosts will find their listings converted to long-term rentals only if they allow bookings of 30 days or more on the platform. All listings that only allow short-term bookings will be deactivated.