Volkswagen Passes Toyota For Global Sales Lead In First Half

Enlarge / The Clip attached to a late-90s vintage mountain bike. (credit: Eric Bangeman) Shortly after World War II, a French manufacturer by the name of Solex started selling mopeds. These were not your "typical" moped that looks kind of like a motorcycle with pedals—the mopeds made by Solex were essentially bicycles with a small, two-stroke engine mounted over the front wheel that could propel the rider around 100 km on a single liter of gas mixture.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) On Wednesday, Axios broke the news that OpenAI had signed deals with The Atlantic and Vox Media that will allow the ChatGPT maker to license their editorial content to further train its language models. But some of the publications' writers—and the unions that represent them—were surprised by the announcements and aren't happy about it.

Enlarge / Yes, there are bigger monitors, but is there a better way to have a tri-monitor setup? (credit: Getty) In a technical disclosure published this month, HP explored a Micro LED monitor concept that would enable consumers to easily use various multi-monitor configurations through the use of "Lego-like building blocks." HP has no immediate plans to make what it has called "composable Micro LED monitors," but its discussion explores a potential way to simplify multitasking with numerous displays. HP's paper [PDF], written by HP scientists and technical architects, discusses a theoretical monitor that supports the easy addition of more flat or curved screens on its left, right, or bottom sides (the authors noted that top extensions could also be possible but they were "trying to keep the number of configurations manageable").

Enlarge / The Google "G" logo surrounded by whimsical characters, all of which look stunned and surprised. (credit: Google) On Thursday, Google capped off a rough week of providing inaccurate and sometimes dangerous answers through its experimental AI Overview feature by authoring a follow-up blog post titled, "AI Overviews: About last week." In the post, attributed to Google VP Liz Reid, head of Google Search, the firm formally acknowledged issues with the feature and outlined steps taken to improve a system that appears flawed by design, even if it doesn't realize it is admitting it. To recap, the AI Overview feature—which the company showed off at Google I/O a few weeks ago—aims to provide search users with summarized answers to questions by using an AI model integrated with Google's web ranking systems.

Enlarge (credit: Future Publishing / Contributor | Future Publishing) TikTok is now disputing a Reuters report that claims the short-video app is cloning its algorithm to potentially offer a different version of the app, which might degrade over time, just for US users. Sources "with direct knowledge" of the project—granted anonymity because they're not authorized to discuss it publicly—told Reuters that the TikTok effort began late last year.

Enlarge / Someone really likes Google Chrome. (credit: Isaac Bowen / Flickr) Google Chrome will be shutting down its older, more capable extension system, Manifest V2, in favor of exclusively using the more limited Manifest V3. The deeply controversial Manifest V3 system was announced in 2019, and the full switch has been delayed a million times, but now Google says it's really going to make the transition: As previously announced, the phase-out of older Chrome extensions is starting next week. Google Chrome has been working toward a plan for a new, more limited extension system for a while now.