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  The Google Jamboard was a big, red touchscreen.

Even more Google products are getting the ax this week. Next up is Google Jamboard, a $5,000 digital whiteboard (and its $600-a-year fee) and software ecosystem marketed to schools and corporations. Google has a new post detailing the "Next phase of digital whiteboarding for Google Workspace ," and the future for Jamboard is that there is no future. In " late 2024," the whole project will shut down, and we don't just mean the hardware will stop being for sale; the cloud-based apps will stop working, too.

Most people probably haven't ever heard of Jamboard, but this was a giant 55-inch, 4K touchscreen on a rolling stand that launched in 2016. Like most Google touchscreens, this ran Android with a locked-down, custom interface on top instead of the usual phone interface. The digital whiteboard could be drawn on using the included stylus or your fingers, and it even came with a big plastic "eraser" that would remove items. The SoC was an Nvidia Jetson TX1 (a quad-core Cortex-A57 CPU attached to a beefy Maxwell GPU), and it had a built-in camera, microphone, and speakers for video calls. There was HDMI input and Google cast support, and it came in whimsical colors like red, gray, and blue (it feels like Google was going for an iMac rainbow and quit halfway).

Google's secret sauce here was that Jamboard was heavily integrated with Google Workspace, so it could pull in items from Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, and all your whiteboard work was saved in a filetype called "Jams" in the usual Google storage. Like the other Workspace apps, this all worked live over the Internet. People not in front of the touchscreen could launch the "Jamboard app" instead, letting them get in on the whiteboard action remotely, complete with live handwriting.

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Like Netflix, Disney+ is getting more stringent about sharing account login information. Disney+'s subscriber agreement already says users can't share account information, but the streaming service on Tuesday informed its Canadian users that it is “implementing restrictions on account sharing.”

As spotted by MobileSyrup Wednesday, Disney+ emailed Canadian subscribers informing them of updates to the subscriber agreement as of November 1, including the addition of an "account sharing" section. Although the rules seem to be launching with Canada first, it's likely they'll eventually roll out to other geographies, like the US. Netflix initially tested its password-sharing crackdown in other countries before bringing it to the US.

MobileSyrup reported the update to Disney+'s Canadian agreement as saying;

Enlarge / Meta's AI characters feature Snoop Dogg playing a dungeon master that dispenses gaming advice. (credit: Meta)

On Wednesday, Meta announced its consumer-friendly entry into the crowded AI chatbot landscape, The Verge reports. During a presentation at Meta Connect 2023, the company said it is launching its own "Meta AI" chat assistant and a selection of AI characters across its messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.

Meta's new AI assistant will likely feel familiar to anyone who has used chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude . It is designed as a general-purpose chatbot that Meta says can help with planning trips, answering questions, and generating images from text prompts. The assistant will also integrate real-time results from Microsoft's Bing search engine, giving it access to current information—similar to Bing Chat, ChatGPT's browsing plugin, and Google Bard.

During demos, The Verge says that Meta's AI was able to quickly generate high-resolution images from short text descriptions using an "/imagine" prompt, and the feature will be free to use. While Meta did not disclose full details of the new AI assistant's training, the company said it's a custom model that is partially based on the company's LLaMA 2 language model, released in July.

Enlarge / A new report claims that last year's iPhone 14 could be the foundation of a new iPhone SE in 2025. (credit: Apple)

I've got a soft spot for Apple's budget phone, the iPhone SE . It has never been technologically impressive, but it has always been a way to get most of what's good about the iPhone ecosystem—an active App Store, Apple services like iMessage, and prompt software updates delivered for a respectable number of years—for several hundred dollars less than whatever the current flagship is.

The downside has been that you need to put up with an older design. In the case of the current iPhone SE and the one before that, that has meant a phone with the same 4.7-inch screen and basic dimensions as the iPhone 6, a design that will be a decade old next year. The SE has waterproofing, wireless charging, a better camera, a faster chip, and some other features that the iPhone 6 never had, but the body-to-screen ratio is much worse than pretty much any other modern smartphone.

For the last year, people who are normally mostly right about Apple rumors have been saying that the next iPhone SE is the one that will graduate to an iPhone X-style design, with a much larger screen and a display notch for the FaceID sensor and webcam. MacRumors published a report yesterday that purports to fill in a few more of the gaps.

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Reddit rolled out some changes this week as its continues its push for revenue and profitability jumpstarted by its API rule changes in July. Among the most controversial, the company will no longer allow users to opt out of ad personalization based on their Reddit activity and started a program that lets users exchange virtual rewards for their posts for real money.

On Wednesday, Reddit announced plans to "improve ad performance," including by preventing users from opting out of personalized ads except for in "select countries." Reddit didn't specify which countries are excluded, but the exceptions could include countries falling under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. Reddit spokesperson Sierra Gamelgaard declined to provide further clarification when reached by Ars Technica for comment.

Reddit's announcement, authored by Reddit's head of privacy, going by "snoo-tuh" on the platform (Reddit has refused to confirm the identity of admins representing Reddit on the site), said that its advertisers look at "what communities you join, leave, upvotes, downvotes, and other signals" to gauge your interests.

Enlarge / The Raspberry Pi 5's custom I/O chip, the RP1, is the result of $15M in investment over seven years. It unlocks far more data and storage capabilities in the single-board platform. (credit: Raspberry Pi)

Nearly everything on the Raspberry Pi 5 has improved over the 4 model, particularly the way you can buy it. In a first for the single-board company, the 5 is available for preorder today from approved resellers , before it's generally available by the end of October.

Perhaps most importantly, the 5 is being prioritized for individual buyers rather than commercial partners.

"We’re incredibly grateful to the community of makers and hackers who make Raspberry Pi what it is; you’ve been extraordinarily patient throughout the supply chain issues that have made our work so challenging over the last couple of years," writes Raspberry Pi founder and CEO Eben Upton. "We’d like to thank you: we’re going to ringfence all of the Raspberry Pi 5s we sell until at least the end of the year for single-unit sales to individuals, so you get the first bite of the cherry."