🎬Cake for auction

November 14, 2024

Good morning. It’s that time of the year when you wish you could snap your fingers and fast forward one month. But until Elon Musk invents time travel…send in that out-of-office request today. That should give you 10 days or so to catch up on your leftover Too Hot to Handle episodes before Christmas cooking starts.

— Chibuike Uzor, Tayo Davies, Geraldine Ndzomo

TECH
Apple’s AI updates are unintentionally hilarious

Emily Parsons

What’s worse than getting broken up with over text? Getting broken up with over-summarized text. Apple rolled out its Apple Intelligence suite of AI tools in October, and one feature has made headlines over and over again for its absurdity: Apple Intelligence notification summaries.

What it is: Apple Intelligence summarizes notifications and gives you the SparkNotes version of what you missed when your phone was tucked away. It may show that you have a text from a friend with a summary like, “Proposes dinner plan.” But there’s a high chance that the AI will misread tone, context, and sarcasm. Many people have reported incorrect summaries—it may tell you that someone is dead if, in response to a funny meme, they say, “I’m dead.” On Reddit, there’s a sizeable compendium of near-misses.

Over it? If Apple’s been summarizing your notifications and you haven’t been loving it, you can opt-out. Go to Settings → Notifications → Summarize Previews and toggle off Messages.

Big picture: Apple Intelligence is only available on new models of the iPhone, iPad, and iMac, so Apple’s hoping that people want the new AI features, like text proofreading and photo editing, badly enough that they’ll shell out some cash for an upgrade. If you’re not convinced, there’s more to come next month when the latest software update will give you the ability to make your own emoji and use a ChatGPT integration with Siri. -GN

TRENDING
Royal cake might need some dusting

The Sunday Times

Fuel your body this week. Just preferably not with food that’s 77 years old, like the slice of wedding cake from Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip’s wedding that sold at auction for $2.8k+. Queen Elizabeth, who was still Princess Elizabeth at the time, married Prince Philip on November 20, 1947, and the couple would have celebrated their 77th anniversary next week.

While other pieces of The Queen's wedding cake have been sold before, according to James Grinter of Reeman Dansie (via the BBC), this one is especially rare as it’s the first to be sold "in its completeness." Grinter also quipped, "I don't think I'd particularly want to eat it, I must admit." Let's just hope no one digs in for an anniversary tribute on Nov. 20.

SHOWER THOUGHTS

“Silent is an anagram of listen”

NEWS
Round the continent

  • Somaliland kicked off its presidential elections yesterday. The elections which had been delayed for two years are seen as a last-ditch effort to get international recognition for the breakaway country.

  • Senegal and the European Union have ended their fishing agreement over the perception of Senegal’s non-cooperation in the fight against illegal fishing.

  • Nigeria’s NNPC has signed a 10-year gas sale deal with the Dangote refinery. The oil subsidiary only recently shunned all oil imports into the country.

  • South African soccer chief Danny Jordaan, who helped bring the first-ever FIFA World Cup tournament to Africa, has been arrested on fraud and theft charges.

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