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If you look at your Roomba with disgust, thinking about what a far cry it is from the Jetsons Rosey the Robot, help is on the way. Bloomberg reported on Friday that Meta plans to leverage its advances in AI and augmented reality to build a platform for futuristic humanoid robots that can help with household chores like folding laundry. Meta is reportedly creating a new team within its Reality Labs hardware division, which handles Quest VR headsets and the long-term Orion AR glasses project. Although it will build robot hardware during development, Metas long-term goal is more like Android, where Google makes the software platform that almost all of the industry (outside of Apple) uses. Meta would make the underlying sensors, AI and software for other companies to put inside their hardware. In other words, it wants to be the Android of androids. Like The Jetsons Rosey the Robot, Metas version would help with household chores.Warner Bros. / YouTube At least initially, Meta plans to make household chores the projects central focus. Bloomberg lists folding laundry, carrying glasses of water, putting dinnerware in the dishwasher and other home chores as examples to build excitement around what could be an unsettling product category for many people. (For examples of why those concerns may be warranted, look no further than the Unitree G1 robot that ran full-speed at Engadgets Karissa Bell at CES, momentarily pinning her against the onlooking crowd.) Speaking of Unitree, Meta has reportedly held early discussions with the Chinese robotics company, which also makes a quadruped "robot dog" that can run around, climb stairs and sit on its hind legs like a good girl. Meta is also said to have discussed its plans with California-based humanoid robot maker Figure AI, which can count OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft, Intel and Jeff Bezos among its investors. Karissa Bell for Engadget Todays humanoid robots arent advanced enough to pitch in around the house like Rosey, but Meta believes all the resources its sinking into AI and XR are paving a road to that destination. Although the company thinks it will be a few years before useful humanoid robots are widely available, Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth reportedly views the companys progress in hand tracking, low-bandwidth computing and always-on sensors as advantages. "The core technologies weve already invested in and built across Reality Labs and AI are complementary to developing the advancements needed for robotics," Bosworth reportedly wrote in a memo. "We believe that expanding our portfolio to invest in this field will only accrue value to Meta AI and our mixed and augmented reality programs." Meta isnt alone in raising its eyebrows at the prospect of home robots for (likely rich) consumers. Last year, news broke that Apple was working on robotics. Ditto for Google. Both companies have published research papers on their robotics work. Flying cars may have to wait, but Rosey is looking a lot less like a pipe dream.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-is-reportedly-working-on-humanoid-robots-that-help-with-chores-192453416.html?src=rss
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Instagram is testing a new dislike button, which the company has signaled is a way for users to effectively downvote a distasteful or irrelevant comment. The dislike button is only for comments, and not the actual content itself. The platform is testing this with both Reels and Feed posts. The service will not show a dislike count, though Instagram head Adam Mosseri says that dislikes will eventually contribute to comment ranking. In other words, this feature is most like the Reddit downvote button. "This gives people a private way to signal that they dont feel good about that particular comment," Mosseri wrote on Threads. "Our hope is that this might help make comments more friendly on Instagram." A Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch that the primary purpose of the dislike button is to improve the quality of the comment section, echoing Mosseris post. This is just a test for now, so the button is only available to a very small group of people. It may get a broader rollout down the line. Instagram has been busy in recent months. Platform representatives announced that it was working on a video-editing app that looks eerily-similar to TikToks sibling app, CapCut. The platform even expanded the length of Reels to three minutes, which was seen as another TikTok mimic. It also recently got rid of third-party fact checkers because of freedom or something.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-is-testing-a-dislike-button-but-only-for-comments-192130246.html?src=rss
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After being rumored to be in the early stages of the project last year, Meta confirmed today that it's building "Project Waterworth," an over 50,00 km subsea cable that will connect five continents. The company has partnered on other cable projects previously, but this would be the first piece of subsea infrastructure it owns outright. The project touches land in the US, Brazil, India, and South Africa, and is apparently breaking new ground technically, too. Meta claims Waterworth is the longest 24 fiber pair cable project in the world, and the company is using "first-of-its-kind routing" to place the cables as deep as possible, "at depths of up to 7,000 meters." If cables aren't deep enough, undersea hazards, like boats dropping and dragging their anchors, can cause permanent damage, disrupting service. Meta Meta's announcement doesn't go into detail about how the cable will be used, beyond noting that subsea cables enable "digital communication, video experiences, online transactions and more," and that high-speed connectivity is a necessity for "AI innovation." On their own, Meta services and platforms are said to account for about 10 percent of global fixed internet usage and 22 percent of mobile traffic, so at the very least the company's existing businesses stand to benefit from a stable connection. Interestingly, Meta isn't only one backing the new project. A United States-India joint statement released after Prime Minister Modi visited the US revealed that India is financially involved in Waterworth, too. The country plans on helping to finance, maintain and repair the portions of the cable that are in the Indian Ocean.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-confirms-its-building-its-own-subsea-cable-190153227.html?src=rss
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