Keaton Peters reports via the Texas Tribune: Students sitting for their STAAR exams this week will be part of a new method of evaluating Texas schools: Their written answers on the state's standardized tests will be graded automatically by computers. The Texas Education Agency is rolling out an "automated scoring engine" for open-ended questions on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness for reading, writing, science and social studies. The technology, which uses natural language processing technology like artificial intelligence chatbots such as GPT-4, will save the state agency about $15-20 million per year that it would otherwise have spent on hiring human scorers through a third-party contractor. The change comes after the STAAR test, which measures students' understanding of state-mandated core curriculum, was redesigned in 2023. The test now includes fewer multiple choice questions and more open-ended questions -- known as constructed response items. After the redesign, there are six to seven times more constructed response items. "We wanted to keep as many constructed open ended responses as we can, but they take an incredible amount of time to score," said Jose Rios, director of student assessment at the Texas Education Agency. In 2023, Rios said TEA hired about 6,000 temporary scorers, but this year, it will need under 2,000. To develop the scoring system, the TEA gathered 3,000 responses that went through two rounds of human scoring. From this field sample, the automated scoring engine learns the characteristics of responses, and it is programmed to assign the same scores a human would have given. This spring, as students complete their tests, the computer will first grade all the constructed responses. Then, a quarter of the responses will be rescored by humans. When the computer has "low confidence" in the score it assigned, those responses will be automatically reassigned to a human. The same thing will happen when the computer encounters a type of response that its programming does not recognize, such as one using lots of slang or words in a language other than English. "In addition to 'low confidence' scores and responses that do not fit in the computer's programming, a random sample of responses will also be automatically handed off to humans to check the computer's work," notes Peters. While similar to ChatGPT, TEA officials have resisted the suggestion that the scoring engine is artificial intelligence. They note that the process doesn't "learn" from the responses and always defers to its original programming set up by the state.

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Apple’s iOS 17.4 update is now available, introducing new emoji and a cryptographic security protocol for iMessage, alongside some major changes to the App Store and contactless payments for the iPhone platform in Europe. Apple is making several of these changes to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), a law that aims to make the digital economy fairer by removing unfair advantages that tech giants hold over businesses and end users.

iOS 17.4 will allow third-party developers to offer alternative app marketplaces and app downloads to EU users from outside the iOS App Store. Developers wanting to take advantage of this will be required to go through Apple’s approval process and pay Apple a “Core Technology Fee” that charges 50 euro cents per install once an app reaches 1 million downloads annually.

iPhone owners in the EU will see different update notes that specifically mention new options available for app stores, web browsers, and payment options.

The approval process may take some time, but we know that at least one enterprise-focused app marketplace from Mobivention will be available on March 7th. Epic is also working on releasing the Epic Game Store on iOS in 2024, and software company MacPaw is planning to officially launch its Setapp store in April.

iOS 17.4 allows people in the EU to download alternative browser engines that aren’t based on Apple’s WebKit, such as Chrome and Firefox, with a new choice screen in iOS Safari that will prompt users to select a default browser when opened for the first time. While no browser alternatives have been officially announced, both Google and Mozilla are currently experimenting with new iOS browsers that could eventually be released to the public.

Apple is also introducing new APIs that allow third-party developers to utilize the iPhone’s NFC payment chip for contactless payment services besides Apple Pay and Apple Wallet in the European Economic Area. No alternative contactless providers have been confirmed yet, but users will find a list of apps that have requested the feature under Settings > Privacy & Security > Contactless & NFC.

While Apple previously revealed it was planning to drop support for progressive web apps (PWAs) in the EU to avoid building “an entirely new integration architecture” around DMA compliance, the company now says it will “continue to offer the existing Home Screen web apps capability” for EU users. However, these homescreen apps will still run using WebKit technology, with no option to be powered by third-party browser engines.

Outside of its DMA obligations, Apple’s iOS 17.4 update adds some new, widely available features that can be enjoyed globally. The Podcasts app is adding auto-generated audio transcripts for English, French, German, and Spanish-language podcasts, which can be searched for specific phrases or words to go directly to the corresponding point in the episode. A new cryptographic protocol for iMessage, known as PQ3, is also included in the iOS 17.4 update, supposedly bolstering end-to-end messaging encryption against potential quantum computing attacks. No such attacks have been disclosed, but Apple is laying the groundwork to prepare for such an eventuality.

Siri has a new option to read incoming messages in any Siri-supported language, which includes Spanish, French, German, Chinese, and more. Over 100 new emoji — such as a lime, broken chain, brown mushroom, and nodding / shaking heads — are also being added following the Unicode 15.1 update last September.

iPhone 15 devices will now display more battery-related information under the Battery Health settings, including cycle count, manufacture date, and when the battery was first used. And finally, the music recognition feature introduced in iOS 14.2 will now let users add identified songs to their Apple Music library and playlists.

iOS 17.4 is compatible with the same range of iPhone models as iOS 17, going back to the iPhone X range and second-generation iPhone SE. The rollout may be gradual, but you can check if it’s available on your device by heading into Settings > General > Software Update.

For some Apple Vision Pro buyers, the honeymoon is already over.

It’s no coincidence that there’s been an uptick on social media of Vision Pro owners saying they’re returning their $3,500 headsets in the past few days. Apple allows you to return any product within 14 days of purchase — and for the first wave of Vision Pro buyers, we’re right about at that point.

Comfort is among the most cited reasons for returns. People have said the headset gives them headaches and triggers motion sickness. The weight of the device, and the fact that most of it is front-loaded, has been another complaint. Parker Ortolani, The Verge’s product manager, told me that he thought using the device led to a burst blood vessel in his eye. At least one other person noted they had a similar experience with redness. (To be fair, VR headset users have anecdotally reported dry eyes and redness for years.)

“Despite being as magical to use as I’d hoped, it was simply way too uncomfortable to wear even for short periods of time both due to the weight and the strap designs. I wanted to use it, but dreaded putting it on,” says Ortolani, who also posted about returning the device.

“It’s just too expensive and unwieldy to even try to get used to the constant headaches and eye strain I was experiencing. I’ll be back for the next one.”

This isn’t surprising. Every human body is unique, which is a problem when you’re scaling wearable production for the mass market. Comfort is inevitably sacrificed — and it affects people disproportionately. With smartwatches, it often boils down to the size and weight of the case compared to your wrist. With smart rings, it’s the size of your finger. Many people are unfortunately between sizes or have issues with finger swelling. For smart glasses and headsets, having a low nose bridge can mean the device just slips off your face or fails to adequately block out light.

But the hardware isn’t the only issue. Another common complaint is the Vision Pro doesn’t offer enough productivity relative to the price. One user noted on Threads that looking at Figma screens made them feel dizzy but that the device also wasn’t applicable to their work. Another engineer wrote on the social media platform X that the “coding experience failed to convince [him]” and focusing issues caused headaches.

“If I’m not using this for productivity, and if I don’t love it for entertainment, and if there aren’t enough games to play on it - I just can’t justify keeping it,” one Reddit user wrote.

For Carter Gibson, a senior manager working on community management and moderation at Google, it’s the finer details. Things like futzing around with windows and file management are productivity deal-breakers.

“It’s difficult to multitask between ‘windows’,” Gibson told me in an exchange on Threads. “Several file types simply aren’t supported on the Vision Pro. I also can’t see how creating a slide in the VP would be less energy than doing so w/ mouse and keyboard — even if does feel like you’re in Minority Report.”

It’s hard to say how this vocal subset of early adopters will impact the Vision Pro going forward. Many folks who said they’d be returning the device also noted they’d be eager to try a second-gen Vision Pro. Others emphasized that the tech wasn’t the issue at hand so much as the lack of a killer app or comfort. It’s also hard to say how widespread of a phenomenon this is. While these users are speaking out on social media, we have no idea of the actual return rate — or what Apple’s internal expectations for the Vision Pro are.

Microsoft is adding a dedicated "Copilot" key to PC keyboards, adjusting the standard Windows layout for the first time since 1994. The key will open its AI assistant Copilot on Windows 10 and 11. On Copilot-enabled PCs, users can already invoke Copilot by pressing Windows+C. On other PCs, the key will open Search instead. ArsTechnica adds: A quick Microsoft demo video shows the Copilot key in between the cluster of arrow keys and the right Alt button, a place where many keyboards usually put a menu button, a right Ctrl key, another Windows key, or something similar. The exact positioning, and the key being replaced, may vary depending on the size and layout of the keyboard. We asked Microsoft if a Copilot key would be required on OEM PCs going forward; the company told us that the key isn't mandatory now, but that it expects Copilot keys to be required on Windows 11 keyboards "over time." Microsoft often imposes some additional hardware requirements on major PC makers that sell Windows on their devices, beyond what is strictly necessary to run Windows itself.

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