iOS 18.4 will be released to iPhone users in just a few weeks. If you arent running the beta, you might have missed whats new. Heres an overview of four new features coming to your iPhone with iOS 18.4 next monthPriority NotificationsWhile Apple has indefinitely delayed its more personalized version of Siri, theres one new Apple Intelligence feature in iOS 18.4. The update adds Priority Notifications, a feature that automatically surfaces your most important notifications. Heres Apples description of the feature: Apple Intelligence can show you notifications that may be important in a separate section on the Lock Screen, so you can catch up on what you may have missed. You can still swipe up to view all notifications.You can manage Priority Notifications by going to the Settings app, including adding or removing specific apps from being included in priority sorting. Keep in mind that Apple Intelligence is supported by the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and all iPhone 16 models. Ambient music One of the most intriguing features of iOS 18.4 is ambient music. The update adds four new Control Center toggles that can start playing ambient music with a single tap: WellbeingChillProductivitySleepThese can be added to Control Center, assigned to your iPhones Action button, and placed on your Lock Screen. Each is assigned to a default Apple Music playlist, but you can customize it to any playlist in your Music library. Playback is controlled via a pared-down Now Playing interface with play/pause, skip, volume controls, and AirPlay controls. New emoji iOS 18.4 beta 2 adds seven new emoji for iPhone users:Face with bags under eyesFingerprintLeafless treeRoot vegetableHarpShovelSplatterDo new emoji matter in the age of Genmoji, which lets you create infinite emoji? Well see.Apple News+ FoodThe Apple News app has a brand new Apple News+ Food feature with iOS 18.4. The feature aggregates thousands of curated recipes from top publishers. Those recipes are presented in a clear and clutter-free interface with filtering options, integration with the Clock app, and more. Apple says:With the new Food feature, users will be able to find stories curated by Apple News editors, as well as browse, search, and filter tens of thousands of recipes in the Recipe Catalog with new recipes added every day. The beautifully designed recipe format makes it easy to review ingredients and directions, and a new cook mode takes step-by-step instructions to the full screen. Users can also save their favorite recipes for later and access them offline.Wrap upThere are other new features in iOS 18.4, and you can find full coverage of the update in our dedicated guide.Apple has confirmed that it will release iOS 18.4 to everyone in April. Are you running the beta? What are your favorite features and changes? Let us know in the comments. My favorite iPhone accessories:Follow Chance:Threads,Bluesky,Instagram, andMastodon.Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Apple has been facing scrutiny in Brazil over the App Store. Earlier this month, a Brazilian court ruled that Apple would have 90 days to allow sideloading on iOS for iPhone users in Brazil but things are about to change. Thats because another judge has now ruled that Apple wont have to implement the requested changes, at least for now.Brazil wont force Apple to enable sideloading, but regulator can still appealAs reported by Brazilian newspaper Estado (via MacMagazine) on Wednesday, a Federal Civil Court judge in Brazil has now ruled that Apple can continue distributing iOS apps exclusively through the App Store without letting developers opt for other platforms (a process known as sideloading).In November last year, the Brazilian antitrust regulator Cade ruled that Apple should allow the distribution of apps outside the App Store in Brazil. The company would have 20 days to comply with the decision. Apple appealed the decision and a judge ruled that the injunction wasnt necessary or urgent, giving the company more time to discuss the case.After a public hearing with Apple and companies like Epic Games, the Brazilian court ordered Apple to allow sideloading within 90 days because it considered that the limitations imposed by the company could jeopardize the entry of new competitors in the segment. The court also claimed that Apple had implemented similar changes in the EU without a significant impact or irreparable damage to its business.At the time, an Apple spokesperson said that the decision would harm the privacy and security of iOS users and that the company would appeal the decision. The appeal had a positive outcome for Apple, as the judge considered that the company was being punished as if it had been convicted, even though the case is not closed.Of course, this doesnt mean that Apple has won once and for all, but it certainly gives the company a lot more time to prepare for the next court battle. Someone who certainly isnt happy with todays result is Epic Games, which announced a few days ago that it would be launching Fortnite for iOS users in Brazil in July.The Brazilian regulator can still appeal the judges decision.Gadgets I recommend:Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Image by Michael Siluk / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty / FuturismRx/MedicinesUp in Canada, students have developed an incredible new way to synthesize drugs on plants and they're using Ozempic as their test case.In a press release, the University of Ottowa revealed that some of its undergraduate students have invented a process that they're calling "Phytogene" turn tobacco cousin Nicotiana benthamiana into a pharmaceutical factory for the popular weight-loss drug.Though it could have lots of use cases in the future, Phytogene's first order of business is synthesizing glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists the class of medications Novo Nordisk's Ozempic belongs to which mimic the stomach's feeling of fullnessto help patients lose weight and lower their blood sugar.Building on so-called "biopharming," or the process of genetically engineering plants to produce pharmaceutical proteins, the group led by bioscience students Victor Boddy and Teagan Thomas was inspired by the recent Ozempic shortage to uncover sustainable and inexpensive alternatives."We aim to create a future where people can reliably grow their own treatments at home," Boddy said, "free from concerns about insurance, cost, or availability."While the nascent field of biopharming has had some success in creating vaccines and cancer treatments with the help of transgenic plants, none have been able to synthesize anything as popular as semaglutide or other GLP-1 drugs. According to a KFF poll released last year, a whopping 12 percent of Americans have taken some form of GLP-1 drug. As such, increasing access to these blockbuster drugs, which are costly and often not covered by insurance, could be a massive breakthrough.On their award-winning "Phytogene" website, the U Ottowa students explained that essentially, the N. benthamianaplant acts as a copy machine for whatever genetic sequence they plug into it."With our 'plug-and-play' design, we can incorporate any peptide sequence into the plant genome," the site detailed. "The plants molecular machinery then transcribes and translates our peptide in impressive quantities."Though the team was successful in "biopharming" GLP-1s on plants, they noted in the school's press release that the resulting compound hasn't yet been tested on humans."We are currently analyzing blood glucose and insulin levels to assess response," said Thomas, one of the project's coleaders. "We also plan to conduct bioactivity assays to test the drug's effectiveness on human cells."More on Ozempic: More and More People Are Microdosing OzempicShare This Article

The new software uses AI to help with video editing, writing and recommending where you should eat dinner.

Hints and answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, No. 178, for March 20.

These striped chairs were the perfect addition to the room.Photo: Courtesy of Kenzie ElizabethThe regretsI always pictured navy striped armchairs in this room and recently added two that Im completely in love with. For months, Id look online for and could never find anything similar to what I was imagining, and if I found something close they were always really expensive. Then one day, I saw my current chairs on Wayfair for $300 each, which is a really good deal for this type of chair. Theyre right by my fireplace so Ill go sit in them and read at night, its so cozy. Even though I got these for a good price, I tried a ton of different chairs in the space before I found the striped one. I wish I had waited for what I really wanted and not tried to find something to fit in the interim because I ended up selling them on Facebook Marketplace and feeling like I wasted money.The final lookI didnt want my space to feel like I just moved in and ordered a bunch of stuff on CB2 to the point that it looked like a catalog. It should reflect me, my life, and where Im at. For some reason, my living room has been a space that Ive focused less on in the past, which doesnt really make sense because its the most used room in the house. In fact, I dont think Ive ever been 100% obsessed with any living room Ive had since moving out of my parents house. Really, this has been 10 years in the making. Ever since redesigning it, I spend so much more time here; I love it. It was money well spentso well spent.Shop Products Inspired by Kenzie Elizabeths Living RoomLandry SofaRomines Modern Soft Stripe Upholstered Swivel Barrel ChairFaux Hydrangea Arrangement - 12Softest Knit Wool Rug 9x12Bohemian Frill Striped Pillow CoverCurved Seagrass Baskets43 The Frame TVThis story is a part of Room Receipts, a series where we get real about the costs behind one well-designed room. From big budget spenders to thrifty thinkers, were talking to people from different worlds about their worth-it splurges, budget hacks, and purchase regrets. Were always on the hunt for cool homes with a unique story, so if youre interested in being featured tell us more about your space here.

In a groundbreaking moment for cancer, Chinese researchers turned the immune response provoked by organ transplants to fight the leading cause of death worldwide.According to Columbia Universitys Department of Surgery, 10-20% of patients who undergo transplant surgery will experience at least one rejection. However, researchers in China ingeniously turned that negative into a positive by directing that powerful impulse to attack cancer cells.Called a tumor-to-pork strategy, a new study published in Cell earlier this year demonstrated immense success in engineering a virus that tricked the human body into believing that cancer cells were pig tissue, according tothe South China Morning Post, thereby triggering a hyperacute inflammatory response. The virus began attacking the tumor with a staggering 90% success rate, to the point of curing a patient with advanced cervical cancer.A new and completely genius pathway opened up in the worlds pursuit of a cure for cancer. Researchers noted, however, that further investigations are necessary as cancers are notoriously clever diseases. Nevertheless, one mechanism could be manipulated to attack a disease with the same fervor as a totally foreign agent, such as pig genes.Disguising cancer as a pig geneProfessor Zhao Yongxiang, director of the State Key Laboratory of Targeting Oncology at Guangxi Medical University, led the inspiring study.In an act of brilliant trickery, he investigated the immune response to transplant failure and engineered a virus that would, hopefully, provoke the body to kill cancer cells.Taking a relatively benign virus, Newcastle disease virus (NDV), which causes little harm to humans, he and his team injected a pig gene to create a mutated new NDV-GT virus, as per South China Morning Post.Infecting cancerous cells with this virus, the pig gene effectively alerted the body to a foreign entity that inspires total rejection, so they pulverized the cancer cell by disguising it.Cancer might be clever, but Zhao strategized a special cloak that made the human body respond differently and more aggressively.First, they conducted a series of animal studies, including monkeys. The results allowed them to move to human trials. Miraculously, even if further work should be conducted on the new approach, the human patients made incredible strides in healing.RECOMMENDED ARTICLESHave we found a cure for cancer?They onboarded 23 patients with various untreatable cancers (liver, ovarian, cervical, lung, etc.) and administered weekly intravenous and intraperitoneal infusions for eight to 12 weeks, as per the study in Cell. South China Morning Post continued that the patients experienced a range of stunning results: partial remission, clinically viable cure, and halted tumor growth. Statistically, the clinical trials showed a 90% success rate with few negative effects.As Zhao concluded, the clinical trials are entering phases 2 and 3, which would move the treatment into the later stages of testing that aim to evaluate its potential and safety profile. We could be at the threshold of actually being able to defeat cancer, and it was born from an idea to direct a powerful response toward an unbeatable enemy.

Some users on Elon Musks X are turning to Musks AI bot Grok for fact-checking, raising concerns among human fact-checkers that this could fuel misinformation.Earlier this month, X enabled users to call out xAIs Grok and ask questions on different things. The move was similar to Perplexity, which has been running an automated account on X to offer a similar experience. Soon after xAI created Groks automated account on X, users started experimenting with asking it questions. Some people in markets including India began asking Grok to fact-check comments and questions that target specific political beliefs.Fact-checkers are concerned about using Grok or any other AI assistant of this sort in this manner because the bots can frame their answers to sound convincing, even if they are not factually correct. Instances of spreading fake news and misinformation were seen with Grok in the past.In August last year, five state secretaries urged Musk to implement critical changes to Grok after the misleading information generated by the assistant surfaced on social networks ahead of the U.S. election. Other chatbots, including OpenAIs ChatGPT and Googles Gemini, were also seen to be generating inaccurate information on the election last year. Separately, disinformation researchers found in 2023 that AI chatbots including ChatGPT could easily be used to produce convincing text with misleading narratives.AI assistants, like Grok, theyre really good at using natural language and give an answer that sounds like a human being said it. And in that way, the AI products have this claim on naturalness and authentic sounding responses, even when theyre potentially very wrong. That would be the danger here, Angie Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter, told TechCrunch.Grok was asked by a user on X to fact-check on claims made by another userUnlike AI assistants, human fact-checkers use multiple, credible sources to verify information. They also take full accountability for their findings, with their names and organizations attached to ensure credibility.Pratik Sinha, co-founder of Indias non-profit fact-checking website Alt News, said that although Grok currently appears to have convincing answers, it is only as good as the data it is supplied with.Whos going to decide what data it gets supplied with, and that is where government interference, etc., will come into picture, he noted.There is no transparency. Anything which lacks transparency will cause harm because anything that lacks transparency can be molded in any which way.In one of the responses posted earlier this week, Groks account on X acknowledged that it could be misused to spread misinformation and violate privacy. However, the automated account does not show any disclaimers to users when they get its answers, leading them to be misinformed if it has, for instance, hallucinated the answer, which is the potential disadvantage of AI.Groks response on whether it can spread Misinformation (Translated from Hinglish)It may make up information to provide a response, Anushka Jain, a research associate at Goa-based multidisciplinary research collective Digital Futures Lab, told TechCrunch. Theres also some question about how much Grok uses posts on X as training data, and what quality control measures it uses to fact-check such posts. Last summer, it pushed out a change that appeared to allow Grok to consume X user data by default.The other concerning area of AI assistants like Grok being accessible through social media platforms is their delivery of information in public unlike ChatGPT or other chatbots being used privately. Even if a user is well aware that the information it gets from the assistant could be misleading or not completely correct, others on the platform might still believe it. This could cause serious social harms. Instances of that were seen earlier in India when misinformation circulated over WhatsApp led to mob lynchings. However, those severe incidents occurred before the arrival of GenAI, which has made synthetic content generation even easier and appear more realistic.If you see a lot of these Grok answers, youre going to say, hey, well, most of them are right, and that may be so, but there are going to be some that are wrong. And how many? Its not a small fraction. Some of the research studies have shown that AI models are subject to 20% error rates and when it goes wrong, it can go really wrong with real world consequences, IFCNs Holan told TechCrunch.AI vs. real fact-checkersWhile AI companies including xAI are refining their AI models to make them communicate more like humans, they still are not and cannot replace humans.For the last few months, tech companies are exploring ways to reduce reliance on human fact-checkers. Platforms including X and Meta started embracing the new concept of crowdsourced fact-checking through so-called Community Notes. Naturally, such changes also cause concern to fact checkers.Sinha of Alt News optimistically believes that people will learn to differentiate between machines and human fact checkers and will value the accuracy of the humans more.Were going to see the pendulum swing back eventually toward more fact checking, IFCNs Holan said.However, she noted that in the meantime, fact-checkers will likely have more work to do with the AI-generated information spreading swiftly.A lot of this issue depends on, do you really care about what is actually true or not? Are you just looking for the veneer of something that sounds and feels true without actually being true? Because thats what AI assistance will get you, she said.X and xAI didnt respond to our request for comment.

Sequoia will shutter its D.C. office as well as part ways with the policy team there at the end of March, TechCrunch has confirmed.The news comes and is somewhat in contrast with the other prominent VC firms in Silicon Valley strengthening their ties with Capitol Hill and the new Trump administration. Andreessen Horowitz, for example, has been leaning into its policy team as several of its partners nab roles in the White House. It recently, for instance, hired former Republican congressman Patrick McHenry as an advisor.Sequoia opened its D.C. office five years ago to support companies with regulatory issues and deepen its relationship with policymakers. In a statement to TechCrunch, a Sequoia spokesperson said that thanks to the strategic guidance and efforts, of the policy team on the matter of bolstering relationships and knowledge, Sequoia is now well-positioned to carry these relationships in the U.S. and Europe forward.To that end, we are sunsetting the dedicated policy function and closing our D.C. office at the end of March. We are grateful to the team for their contributions and impact, the spokesperson said.The changes impact the policy fellows at the firm, as well as three full-time employees, sources tell Fortune, which was first to report this news. Though Sequoia is typically politically neutral, its partners have previously expressed political views. Notably, Shaun Maguire, a partner at the firm, is an outspoken supporter of President Trump and is reportedly helping screen candidates for DOGE.

When buildings are no longer occupied, there are remnants of their past: a faded marquee, the sun-bleached outline of what once was, or the telltale geometry of a bygone establishment. At the Twitterrecently rebranded to XSan Francisco headquarters, the social media outlets signature bird logo fascia sign now stands for what the platform once was. And for a lump sum of cashshipping not includeda 560-pound relic of Twitter lore can be yours.One of two 12-foot fascia signs, originally sold at auction by CEO Elon Musk in 2023, is up for bid again along with other technology memorabilia, including an Apple-1 computer with its original operation manual, a miscellaneous group of 18 Apple computer business cards, and a 1991 edition of Fortune Magazine with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates on the cover. RR Auction is managing the lot, the house specializes in Apple products, but also predictably sells music memorabilia, space artifacts, sports cards, and Hollywood costumes.The blue bird, nicknamed Larry after former NBA basketball player Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics, represented the company from the early 2010s to its acquisition into the hands of Elon Musk in 2022.Its such an iconic logo, and its so symbolic of technology and the change that were going through, Bobby Livingston, executive vice president at RR auction shared in a recent radio interview. When they took it off that building, it still has a lot of value, more value than it did as a logo. X, formerly Twitter, moved into its San Francisco headquarters in the citys Mid-Market neighborhood in 2012. As one of the first tech companies on the block, Twitter became a symbol of the citys growing tech industry. This particular avian-shaped sign was mounted on the southeast side of the art-deco building facing Jessie Street.Soon after the corporation was bought by current CEO Elon Musk, the building made headlines when conference rooms and office space were converted into bedrooms without any consideration for building codes or permits. A year later, Musk shuttered the Market Street doors completely to move the operation to Texas, citing personal concerns about California policy.In 2023, a year after Musk acquired the company, and two months after he placed an X logo on top of the building without yet another permit, a rebranding auction was launched to clear out any trace of the blue bird and old energy from company offices. In case you missed it, the sale included wooden Larry-shaped coffee tables, hashtag symbol props, and a whole lot of chairs. Now, the previous collector who acquired the fascia sign is ready for Larry to spread his wings once more.At the time of writing, the highest bid is at $23,831, though the bids are expected to soar before the auction closes tomorrow, March 20, which is guaranteed to ruffle some feathers.