Happy Monday! They say looks can be deceiving, and indeed they were during Meta's VR conference. Zuck announced that Meta was shipping its "most requested feature" -legs. As it turns out, Zuck's legs were in fact "animations created from motion capture", so sadly it looks like we won't be walking to work in Horizon Worlds just yet...

Wait... They shipped what!?

NoRedInk shipped Benchmarks, a smart-benchmarking tool for school districts.

Backstory: Pandemic learning loss has been a major issue - student performance has dropped to as low as levels from 20 years ago.

Details: Benchmarks are focused digital tests that let schools assess writing skills at a deeper level. Highlights include:

• Ability to assess specific skills aligned with state and national standards

• Performance data broken down by topic, student, teacher, and school

• Smart-recommendations for teachers to address identified deficiencies

Why it matters: As cheeky students use AI to write essays and overworked teachers quit in droves, schools need to leverage technology to make teachers more effective.

Benchmarks reduces the load while improving results, delivering granularity (e.g. student X needs help on commas) followed by smart-solutions (e.g. tailored quiz on commas).

There's also a financial incentive at play - many districts fund based on results, and schools piloting Benchmarks saw a 35% uplift in state test scores. If these results replicate more broadly, NoRedInk may seriously chip away at Pearson's grip on testing.

Features & products hot off the press

Big tech

• Google introduces new content formats on play-store homepages

• Google Fiber is launching 5-gig and 8-gig plans early next year 

• Twitter tests a feature letting users control who can @ mention them

• TikTok announces new ad tools and performance insights  

• Google replaces "ad" with "sponsored" in search ad labels 

• Instagram rolls out AI age verification to Brazil and India 

General and early-stage

• Spotify appears to be testing a $19.99 / month Platinum plan

• Peacock tests interactive video features on Roku devices 

• Instapaper ships in-article search and text-justification functionality

• GoPuff increases prices to $8 per month 

• Signal to remove support for SMS messages on Android 

• Biden administration ships its student loan relief website in beta

Getting 1% better at building product

• Roadmaps - Building better product roadmaps, by Janna Bastow

• Collaboration - Working with confident people who dismiss you, by John Cutler

Broader tech happenings

• Not fun. Hololens gave most soldiers "mission-affecting physical impairments"

• Dark clouds. TSMC to cut capital spending due to anticipated downturn

• Robo skin. Touchlab begins piloting its robotic skin sensors in hospitals

• Ouch.. Meta's Horizon Worlds VR platform struggles to retain users

• Too far. Nikola Ex-CEO found guilty of defrauding investors re hydrogen truck

Courtesy of mindless Twitter scrolling

@RGIII

@sonofalli

And that’s a wrap for today. Stay tuned for more!

- Amol