Illustrators have spent years sounding the alarm about generative artificial intelligence startups training their models on artists' work without permission. They've pointed out how the practice is tantamount to theft, and in response, many gen AI boosters have argued that it's necessary for the technology's evolution. This has led to contentious legal battles, but it's also given rise to a new wave of AI startups like Pippa that market their services as being more ethical than the competition.
Like most companies selling access to text-to-video models, Pippa's main product is short bursts of user-generated footage that can be cobbled toget …
Angela Nissel smiles through the pain. | Image: Angela Nissel
Angela Nissel's latest book, Good Grief, Pass the Bread, Mom Is Dead, is my kind of memoir. Sure, it's a deeply emotional tale about caring for a terminally ill parent. But it's delivered with the sort of gallows humor that I often turn to to get me through tough times.
Of course, that sort of dark humor should come as no surprise from Nissel. She first made a splash with The Broke Diaries, which grew out of a blog she kept in college detailing her daily struggles and, at times, embarrassment at being a broke student. Eventually she went on to produce and write for hit shows including Scrubs and The Boondocks.
That cover art is almost certainly AI, too. | Image: Fenix Flexin
Fenix Flexin is best known as a member of Shoreline Mafia, a rap duo from Los Angeles. But he's recently found solo success with the track "Rubberz," which has climbed to number 58 on the Billboard Hot 100. Almost immediately, though, questions were raised about the song's origins, with many speculating that it was largely, if not entirely, generated by AI. Fenix has denied those accusations, but done little to dispel them.
Part of the suspicion is certainly due to the fact that the song is a dramatic left turn. Fenix has primarily trafficked in trap-influencedWest Coastrap. "Rubberz," on the other hand, is heavily influenced by '80s UK s …
Welcome to Edition 9.05 of the Rocket Report! It was a big week for launch contracts, with both Rocket Lab and SpaceX scoring sizable deals from the US military for their respective Electron and Falcon 9 rockets. The vehicles have been the workhorses for small and medium lift for the United States over the past decade and may remain so for some time. Also, there will be no Rocket Report next week, as I am traveling on assignment, and Stephen is taking a week off.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Rocket Lab wins large Electron deal. Rocket Lab Corporation announced this week that it has been awarded its largest launch contract to date, a $266 million multi-launch contract with the US Space Force. Under the contract awarded by the US Space Force Space Systems Command, Rocket Lab will execute 12 suborbital launches, with up to six additional launches. The first launch of this contract is expected no earlier than the end of 2026.
(Left to right): Annotate, Kickabout, and Undolly.
For the most part, I’m going to focus on Mac apps with these columns, because that’s where the action seems to be these days. But iOS remains a vibrant platform, too, and every now and again, we’ll look at some of the interesting apps being created for iPhones and iPads. This is one of those now and agains.
Want to see your app included in a future round-up? Get in touch at apps@sixcolors.com with a brief description of your app, and you just might make the cut.
Kickabout
The World Cup is just a memory now, but if you’re missing the daily infusion of soccer (or football, depending on what part of the globe you’re reading this from), Kickabout brings the action back to your iOS device in a very condensed form.
Kickabout will be immediately familiar to anyone who’s ever gathered around a foosball table in a rec room, with a look that will bring a smile to the face of Subbuteo tabletop football aficionados. You take charge of an 8-player team, with players only free to move about certain areas of the pitch. (No length-of-the-field Maradona-esque wonder golazos for your squad.) You use your finger to drag your players around, swiping any which way to boot the ball toward the goal as you look to rack up the most goals in each 2-minute match.
Goals and shots off the post earn you points, which translates to tickets that you cash in to collect various national teams, from the U.S. all the way to newly minted world champion Spain. You can also buy gear, including stands for your virtual stadium. It’s a fun element that adds to Kickabout’s replayability as you try to assemble your own World Cup field.
Kickabout has both single-player and dual-player modes, though I found the latter to be a little cramped for my iPhone 17 screen. I imagine head-to-head matches are much more enjoyable on the iPad. Still, Kickabout offers plenty of fun even for single players, as you try to master the game’s different difficulty levels.
Kickabout is free to download, and a $3 in-app purchase gets rid of any ads.
Undolly
The Photos app has a built-in tool to weed out duplicate images, but if you find yourself taking a lot of photos, Undolly brings a whole suite of tools that promise to bring order to your iOS device’s photo library. Besides getting rid of duplicates, the mobile app also lists large videos taking up space in your library, rounds up any screenshots you may have stashed somewhere and keeps tabs on other potential space-takers like RAW, timelapse and animated images.
The value of Undolly will depend heavily on how you use your photo library. For instance, I take a lot of screenshots for articles that I don’t always remember to delete, and the app helped me track down some that were three to five years old. I also appreciate Undolly’s swipable comparisons of similar shots, so you can see for yourself whether the images differ enough to keep. Undolly’s algorithm also rates images by their framing, quality and expressiveness of subject to better help you determine the shots that deserve a place in your library.
While it’s free to download initially, you will have to subscribe to Undolly to use its features, with a free three-day trial letting you get the lay of the land. After that, a monthly subscription costs $4, while annual and lifetime payments go for $15 and $40, respectively.
VWLSS
Nearly five years after Wordle first appeared, we’re still living in a golden age for daily word puzzles. Add VWLSS and its daily serving of mobile word play to the pile, though there are some unique iPhone elements that could help this free offering earn a place in your regular rotation of gameplay.
You have eight words to guess, each tied to a specific category and with all the vowels stripped out. It’s up to you to figure out the actual word, which you can do either by typing in the answer or using a handy speech feature. I prefer talking to typing, though I’m still sore that my guess of “Bob Barker” in the game show hosts category was misheard as “Bob Parker.” Revenge will be mine tomorrow, I guess.
Annotate
Between Notes and the still-new-to-iOS Preview app, you’ve got more than a few built-in tools for marking up documents and images on your iPhone or iPad. The Annotate app looks to expand on that with 17 tools that allow you to crop, blur and add notes to your heart’s content. If you find yourself making a lot of the same annotations, the app lets you create and save templates and there are shortcuts for watermarking and auto-redacting faces and phone numbers.
You can download Annotate for free and export up to five annotated photos and documents. After that, you’ll need to make a one-time $10 payment to use the app. Annotate works well enough on my iPhone, though I suspect iPad users will get more out of using this app’s many features on their larger-screen devices.
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