Archive for October 9, 2026

Friday, October 9, 2026

Alexa Tablets

Hartley Charlton:

The flagship Alexa Tablet 12 Pro starts at $499.99 with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, aiming to rival the iPad Pro at a significantly lower price point. It features a MediaTek Dimensity 8400 chip, a 12-inch display with an adaptive refresh rate of up to 120Hz and a 3:2 aspect ratio, a 6.5mm-thick aluminum body, Wi-Fi 6E, and quad Dolby Atmos speakers. Amazon claims that the device has up to 16 hours of video playback.

A $549.99 version adds a “Nanomatte” display, using precision-etched glass developed with Corning to reduce glare. Higher configurations offer up to 16GB of RAM. Unlike Apple’s nano-texture display option, which requires a 1TB or 2TB iPad Pro, Amazon’s matte finish is available with 128GB of storage.

[…]

The Alexa Tablet 11 starts at $329.99 with 8GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, offering an 11-inch 2.5K display with a 90Hz refresh rate. A 128GB version costs $379.99. The smaller Alexa Tablet 8 starts at $229.99 with an 8.7-inch display, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage.

Ryan Whitwam:

Amazon has dropped the Fire branding in favor of Alexa, and the new Alexa Tablets are now Google-certified Android devices.

Throughout the history of Fire Tablets, Amazon downplayed its use of Android. They ran Android apps from the company’s Appstore platform, but there was no Google integration with “Fire OS.” However, Amazon shut down its app store last year. The new Alexa Tablets run full-fledged Google-y versions of Android with the Play Store and all the apps you’d expect.

M.G. Siegler:

So the question is if these new Amazon Alexa Tablets can do what the previous Android tablets never could in tailoring software for the form-factor. I remain skeptical of that but perhaps stock Android plus some good Amazon + Alexa+ (as well as Prime Video) integration will be good enough?

[…]

The screen – namely the fact that it's a matte texture – sounds interesting[…]

Previously:

macOS 27 and External Displays

Jeff Benjamin:

A drawback of using an HDR-ready third-party monitor on macOS 26 Tahoe was the inability to activate High Dynamic Range at the common 2560 x 1440 scaled resolution. Fortunately, the newest macOS release resolves this problem.

Alexander Cohen:

  • Symptom: scrolling is choppy on the Studio Display XDR at 120Hz or Adaptive (47–120Hz). At 60Hz, and on the MacBook’s own screen, scrolling is smooth.
  • What devices are affected: M5 Pro MacBook Pros have reproduced the problem; other repots suggest the Mac mini with M5 Pro chip is also affected. Apple lists M5 Pro MacBook Pro models as supporting the Studio Display XDR at 120Hz.
  • Likely cause: measurements suggest the GPU stays at a low clock speed while scrolling and misses frame deadlines.
  • Workaround: MacRumors Forums poster Tiguanito’s M5ScrollBoost, a small menu bar app that encourages the GPU to run faster while you scroll.

Previously:

OpenAI Marks AI-Generated Content

OpenAI:

Starting today, API customers globally will be able to opt in to text watermarking for select models. Text watermarking will remain off by default in the API.

Over the coming weeks, we will add an invisible watermark to eligible ChatGPT and Codex text output in the European Union.

[…]

More details about how textGrain works can be found in our technical report (opens in a new window), which will be updated with additional details in the coming weeks. We also plan to make the technology available in open source so that others can build on it.

[…]

At a target false positive rate of 1%, our detector identified watermarks in about 80% of 200-token passages, compared with about 95% of 400-token passages, for content such as psychology.

Via John Gruber (Mastodon):

OpenAI has made this available via an API so developers should be able to actually see if this adulterates text output with real-world usage.

Third, none of these companies have yet made their watermark detectors publicly accessible. I remain highly skeptical that they will work as advertised in the real world. I think this is all somewhat of a sham to claim compliance with the EU AI Act without actually providing anything that anyone can actually use in a practical way.

Previously:

OpenAI’s Dots

John Voorhees:

Earlier this week, I was at OpenAI’s annual DevDay conference where it launched Dots, a personal agent that lives inside the ChatGPT app.

[…]

Dots are persistent, cloud-based agents that use the plugins and other tools you’ve connected to ChatGPT, after you allow them to do so. Your Dot has its own virtual Linux computer to assist you with your work. And at first, your Dot, which is depicted by a colorful character you can customize, doesn’t have access to anything else. However, as you give your Dot tasks that need access to other tools, it will ask for your permission to access other tools.

[…]

But being a cloud-based agent has its downsides, too. Out of the box, your Dot can’t access your computer’s files and apps. That’s easily fixed by clicking or tapping on your Dot and granting it access to your Mac, so it can use the Mac alongside its own VM.

Previously:

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