Ikea Dirigera review: the Matter-ready smart home hub is easy to use and works well, but is expensive, lacks a migration tool from Trådfri, and is simplistic (Thomas Ricker/The Verge)

Bill Cusick / Stability.Ai:
Stability AI releases Stable Diffusion 2.0, which can now generate images with default resolution of 512×512 and 768×768, and can upscale images to 2048×2048  —  It is our pleasure to announce the open-source release of Stable Diffusion Version 2.  —  The original Stable Diffusion V1 led …

Dan Seifert / The Verge:
iPad (10th gen) review: great performance and battery, lots of apps, and USB-C, but accessories are confusing and expensive, high price, and average display  —  Apple’s latest base-model iPad cribs a lot of features from the more expensive iPad Air.  But it also is considerably more expensive than before, making it a tough sell.

Kenrick Cai / Forbes:
Sources: Stability AI, the startup behind Stable Diffusion, is in talks to raise $100M; Coatue proposed a $500M valuation and Lightspeed offered a $1B valuation  —  With the image generator Stable Diffusion, you can conjure within seconds a potrait of Beyoncé as if painted by Vincent van Gogh …

Thomas Ricker / The Verge:
Apple Watch Ultra is a serious challenge to Garmin, which dominates the premium active wearables market, and its usability could erode Garmin’s position  —  Apple begins slow-rolling its way onto Garmin’s lucrative turf  —  I had a funny feeling watching yesterday’s announcement of the Apple Watch Ultra: I’ve seen this show before.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Amazon will roll out Matter over WiFi smart home standard to 17 Echo devices in December, initially for Android, supporting smart plugs, bulbs, and switches  —  Amazon will start its Matter journey slowly, bringing support for the new smart home standard to 17 Echo devices in December.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Hands-on with Matter devices at an official launch event; Matter has a long way to go before it delivers on a promise of an interoperable and simple smart home  —  At the official launch event for Matter this week, I saw a lot of exciting things: a Google Nest Hub controlling an Eve Energy smart plug …