The 2024 Toyota Highlander crossover was presented in the United States. The car has become more expensive, but only due to the fact that the basic L version has been abolished. Now the LE version opens the model range with better equipment, but also a higher price of 39.1 thousand dollars (2.5 thousand dollars more expensive than the L version).

The second innovation is the appearance of the Nightshade styling package, available for the LE and XLE trim levels. It includes a lot of black elements: radiator grille, mirror housings, door handles, antenna, rear spoiler, rims. And the XLE with the Nightshade package also has black roof rails. The 2024 Toyota Highlander LE Nightshade has black seat upholstery (it’s cloth, not leather), while the XLE Nightshade has two-tone seat upholstery. The cost of Nightshade versions ranges from 41.2 to 46.5 thousand dollars.

The engines have not changed with the transition to the 2024 model year: the base version has a 269 hp turbo engine, and the top version has a hybrid power plant based on a 2.4 liter naturally aspirated engine. The basic versions of the Toyota Highlander 2024 are single-wheel drive, the more expensive ones are all-wheel drive.

New research from cybersecurity company Kasada claims resellers are using bots to pre-order iPhone 15 smartphones, ordering millions of dollars worth of goods from Apple’s website and carriers. This complicates the task for ordinary buyers and delays delivery times.

The whole situation allows resellers to profit from the initial rush of demand by reselling devices for hundreds of dollars more than the recommended retail price. Resellers have long been a problem during the iPhone launch days, going back to the iPhone 4.

As noted by Kasada, trading bots, also known as All-In-One or AIO bots, have repurposed from buying in-demand sneakers to placing orders for the iPhone 15. This is especially aggravating the situation with the most in-demand iPhone 15 Pro Max. Kasada cites the example of one of the bots that made more than 3,000 checks or orders for the iPhone 15.

AIO bots are so called because they control the entire purchasing process, from determining the availability of new products to placing them in the cart and completing the order. These “batch transactions” can take anywhere from 10 to 0.2 seconds.

As with retail sales, Apple and other companies are continually cracking down on this practice with tools designed to detect the use of bots. Resellers respond by improving their tools.

The American company OpenAI has announced the release of a useful update to its generative artificial intelligence system, ChatGPT. According to the official blog, ChatGPT can search the web for the latest information, suggesting answers from “relevant and authoritative” sources.

The search is performed in the Microsoft Bing search engine. After receiving a response from the network, the user can click on the link and check the information provided. The feature, called Browse with Bing, is currently only open to those with Plus and Enterprise subscriptions, but the company says it will soon make it available to “all users.”

As the developers note, OpenAI has lifted the temporary restriction on data – previously, ChatGPT users had access to the amount of information until September 2021. Now the ChatGPT search engine can freely search for the latest information.

As a reminder, OpenAI added the ability to browse the internet to its iOS app ChatGPT at the end of June 2023, but quickly removed it. The reason turned out to be that users quickly found a loophole – the chatbot could be “persuaded” to provide paid content by entering the full URL.