Mistral AI has released Voxtral TTS, a high-performance, 4-billion parameter open-weights text-to-speech model that competes directly with proprietary tools like ElevenLabs.

It runs on 3 GB of RAM locally and is free. It supports nine languages, offers 3-second voice cloning with high similarity, and delivers sub-second, low-latency performance suitable for on-device applications.

Key Features of Voxtral TTS:

• Performance: Achieved high win rates in human evaluation against top competitors, with superior speaker similarity.
• Efficiency: The 4B model is lightweight enough to run on consumer hardware (laptops, GPUs).
• Voice Cloning: Requires only 3-5 seconds of reference audio for voice cloning and supports cross-lingual voice adoption.
• Capabilities: Generates highly emotive, expressive, and natural-sounding speech across nine languages including English, German, Spanish, and Hindi.
• License: Released under an open-source, permissive license (Apache 2.0), making it available for developers to deploy freely.

This release is part of Mistral's strategy to move into audio and provide open-source alternatives to premium voice AI services.

Source: Mistral

The Sora team will share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work.

The move signals a major shift in OpenAI’s strategy as it focuses on core AI development amid changing partnerships.

The Sora decision means the end of a blockbuster $1 billion deal between Disney and the ChatGPT maker that was announced a little more than three months ago. As part of the three-year deal, Disney said it would invest $1 billion in OpenAI and lend more than 200 of its iconic characters to be used in short, AI-generated videos. But the transaction between the companies never closed, two other people familiar with the matter said, and no money changed hands. OpenAI executives have been debating Sora's fate for some time.

The studio giant, Disney will no longer move forward with its OpenAI investment, as the AI company exits the video generation business.

Running the AI video app required significant computational resources, a fourth person with knowledge of the matter said, and left other teams with less firepower. Even so, some OpenAI staffers on the Sora team were surprised when they were informed of the changes Tuesday morning, one of the people and another source said. The announcement was made just a day after OpenAI published a blog post about Sora safety standards.

"We're saying goodbye to Sora ... we know this news is disappointing," the Sora team said in a post on X, adding that timelines for the app and API, as well as details on preserving user work, would be shared later.

Source: Sora

A user username is a unique, optional name that WhatsApp users can set in order to display their username instead of their phone number in the app. Usernames can be used in lieu of profile names when personalizing message content for individual users.

Usernames are an optional feature for users and businesses. If a username is adopted by a WhatsApp user, their username will be displayed instead of their phone number in the app. Business usernames are not intended for privacy, however. If you adopt a business username, it will not cause your business phone number to be hidden in the app.

WhatsApp users are limited to 1 username, but are able to change them periodically. Changing a username does not affect the user’s phone number or business-scoped user ID, and does not affect the user’s ability to communicate with other WhatsApp users or businesses on the WhatsApp Business Platform. User usernames have the same format restrictions as business usernames.

Source: META

X is testing a "dislike" or downvote button, likely styled as a broken heart icon, specifically for replies to improve conversation ranking.

Recent code discoveries in the X iOS app suggest this feature is designed to demote low-quality or irrelevant replies, acting as a private sentiment tool rather than a public dislike count.

Key Details on the X Downvote Button:

• Targeting Replies: Unlike previous tests that considered broad downvoting, current development focuses on ranking replies to posts.
• Broken Heart Icon: Evidence spotted in the iOS app points to a broken heart icon next to the "Like" button, allowing users to express disapproval.
• Private Functionality: Similar to the previously tested "dislike" mechanism in 2021, the new downvotes are expected to be used to improve content ranking behind the scenes rather than displaying a public tally, according to Storyboard18.
• Previous Testing: This initiative follows tests from 2021 and 2022 and aligns with current efforts to manage spam and improve reply visibility, notes

Black box testing methods are techniques used to validate software functionality by focusing on inputs and expected outputs without analyzing the internal code. These methods help testers design effective test cases based on requirements and user behavior, ensuring comprehensive functional validation.

One widely used method is equivalence partitioning, where input data is divided into groups that are expected to behave similarly. Instead of testing every possible value, testers select representative values from each group, improving efficiency while maintaining coverage. Another important method is boundary value analysis, which focuses on testing values at the edges of input ranges where defects are more likely to occur.

Decision table testing is another useful approach, especially for systems with multiple conditions and rules. It helps testers evaluate different combinations of inputs and their corresponding outcomes in a structured way. Additionally, state transition testing is used to validate how a system behaves when moving between different states based on user actions or events.

By applying these black box testing methods, teams can systematically design test cases that cover a wide range of scenarios. This structured approach improves defect detection, ensures better requirement validation, and enhances the overall reliability of the software.

my.WordPress.net gives you a complete, private WordPress environment with no sign-up and no hosting plan needed.

Everything stays on your device. You can use it to write, learn, experiment, or build with pre-configured apps like a personal CRM or RSS reader.

Built on WordPress Playground, my.WordPress.net takes the same technology that powers instant WordPress demos and turns it into something permanent and personal. As you don’t need to choose a hosting provider, your WordPress belongs entirely to you. In a publishing environment, you’d briefly interact with WordPress as you prepare your next post. In a personal setting, it becomes a place you shape and return to.

Because sites on my.WordPress.net are private by default and not accessible from the public internet, they don’t behave like traditional websites. They aren’t optimized for traffic, discovery, or presentation, and they don’t need to be. Instead, WordPress becomes a personal environment where ideas can exist before they are ready to be shared, or where they may never be shared at all.

my.WordPress.net includes an App Catalog with pre-configured experiences designed specifically for personal use, built with WordPress plugins. Contacts can be grouped, enriched with personal details, and paired with reminders to reconnect.

What you should know:

• Storage starts at roughly 100 MB
• The first launch takes a little longer while WordPress downloads and initializes
• All data stays in your browser and is not uploaded anywhere
• Each device has its own separate installation
• Backups should be downloaded regularly

Source: WordPress

As per a forbes report, cost remains an ever present challenge which does not seem to pass over to the user yet.

Cursor’s larger rivals are willing to subsidize aggressively. According to a person familiar with the company’s internal analysis, Cursor estimated last year that a $200-per-month Claude Code subscription could use up to $2,000 in compute, suggesting significant subsidization by Anthropic. Today, that subsidization appears to be even more aggressive, with that $200 plan able to consume about $5,000 in compute, according to a different person who has seen analyses on the company’s compute spend patterns.

Cursor also subsidizes some users, though it appears it doesn’t do so as much as Anthropic. Cursor has negative margins for consumer subscriptions, but its business plans operate on positive margins, according to a person familiar with its finances. Businesses that use Cursor can use the Teams plan, which is targeted at startups and is easy to cancel, or negotiate an enterprise contract, which is targeted at larger organizations.

Source: Forbes

GPT-5.4 brings advances in reasoning, coding, and agentic workflows into one frontier model.

GPT-5.4 is also now available in the API and Codex.

GPT-5.4 is OpenAi's most factual and efficient model: fewer tokens, faster speed.

In ChatGPT, GPT-5.4 Thinking has improved deep web research, better context retention when it thinks for longer—and oh—you can now interrupt the model and add instructions or adjust its direction mid-response.

Steering is available this week on Android and web. iOS coming soon.

GPT-5.4 Thinking and Pro are rolling out gradually starting today across ChatGPT, the API, and Codex.

Source: OpenAi

Apple announced its new slate of laptops on Tuesday morning, including new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models that use Apple’s M5 chips. The Pro models were unveiled alongside the brand new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, which Apple describes as its most advanced CPU cores yet.

The company said these updated M5 chips were specifically designed to make the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops better at handling intensive AI tasks, which are becoming more of a focal point for new Apple hardware. Both the new Air and Pro laptops can handle AI tasks up to 4x faster than their respective M4 predecessors, according to Apple.

These AI-centric upgrades may not be immediately noticeable for more casual users who aren’t trying to run a computationally intensive network of AI agents or generate fast 3D renderings. But these advancements permeate other aspects of the laptops as well.

MacBook Air users get perks like 18 hours of battery life (a six-hour improvement compared with the last Intel-based Apple laptops from 2020), as well as a 12MP Center Stage camera for video calls, a three-mic array, and a sound system that supports Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos. The MacBook Air has two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a MagSafe charging port, and a classic 3.5mm headphone jack.

The new MacBook Air lineup comprises a 13-inch model (starting at $1,099) and 15-inch model (starting at $1,299), with color options in sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver. The Air also now comes with starting storage of 512 GB, doubling the previous model’s base storage capacity.

As usual, the MacBook Pro is geared toward more technical users, especially developers working with AI. The M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are up to 4x faster at LLM prompt processing than the M4 Pro and M4 Max, and up to 8x faster at AI image generation than the M1 Pro and M1 Max.

Apple says this makes it possible for AI researchers and developers to train custom models on their device, and creative users could benefit from faster 3D rendering, video editing, and music production work.

The MacBook Pro also features up to 2x faster read/write performance than the last generation, and will start at 1TB of storage for the MacBook Pro with M5 Pro, and 2TB for the MacBook Pro with M5 Max. Apple says these laptops have up to 24 hours of battery life, and with a 96W or higher USB-C adapter, users can charge to 50% battery in 30 minutes. The laptops support Thunderbolt 5 and have a six-speaker sound system.

The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with the M5 Pro chips start at $2,199 and $2,699, respectively, whereas the models with the M5 Max chips start at $3,599 and $3,899, available in either black or silver colorways.

All of these laptops will be available for preorder on Tuesday, March 4, and will available beginning on Wednesday, March 11.

Source: TechCrunch

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Supabase.co is inaccessible to users across multiple Indian ISPs, including Jio, Airtel, and ACT Fibernet, due to a ministry order.

Supabase is used by millions of developers worldwide, and millions of users in India are currently unable to access our platform due to these blocks.

The block stems from a Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) order under Section 69A of India's IT Act 2000, enforced at the ISP level (Jio, Airtel, ACT Fibernet, etc.) on supabase.com and *.supabase.co domains.

No public details on the order number, date, or exact reason have been released by the government. Supabase reports their backend is fully operational and is engaging MeitY for resolution. Common workaround: switch DNS to 1.1.1.1 or use a VPN.

Source: Supabase

State transition testing is a technique used to verify how a system behaves when it moves from one state to another. Many applications operate based on conditions, statuses, or sequences of events. This method ensures that each valid transition produces the correct outcome and that invalid transitions are handled properly.

In real-world systems, behavior often depends on previous actions. For example, an account may move from “active” to “suspended,” or an order may progress from “pending” to “processed” to “shipped.” State transition testing validates these flows to ensure that the system responds accurately at every stage.

The process typically involves identifying all possible states, defining allowed transitions between them, and designing test cases to verify both valid and invalid movements. This structured modeling helps uncover logic errors that might not appear in simple functional testing.

Key benefits of state transition testing include:

Improved validation of complex workflows

Detection of incorrect state handling

Better coverage of conditional logic

Reduced risk of unexpected system behavior

This approach is particularly useful in applications such as financial systems, embedded software, authentication mechanisms, and workflow-driven platforms. By validating how the system behaves across transitions, teams strengthen reliability and ensure predictable behavior under varying conditions.

State transition testing adds depth to functional validation by focusing on how the application reacts over time, not just at a single point of interaction.

Pomelli is an AI marketing tool that helps small businesses create scalable, on-brand content to elevate their marketing.

Here are a few tips to get started:

• Start by entering your website URL and Pomelli will identify your unique business identity to build on-brand campaigns for your business
• Add motion to any campaign with our ‘Animate’ feature powered by Veo 3.1
• Finally, with ‘Photoshoot’ you can easily turn a single image of your product into custom, stylized product shots

Source: Google Pomelli

Build, edit, and share AI mini-apps using natural language

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• No-Code Creation: Build powerful AI mini-apps using natural language.
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