Новости за 02.11.2022

AI-powered image generators have been getting most of the press recently. But musical machine learning models have quietly been making great strides in recent years. Holly Herndon has been at the forefront of that revolution. She co-developed (along with partner Mat Dryhurst) Spawn, a singing neural network, for her last album Proto and released Holly+ (in partnership with Never Before Heard Sounds) to the public last year, which allows anyone to use a model of Holly's voice. Now she's released a new single... Читать дальше...

New Yorkers are used to ads dotting the landscape, but now they can't even look to the skies for refuge. As Gothamistreports, mobile developer King and show organizer Pixis are flying a swarm of at least 500 LED-equipped drones over New York City's skyline on November 3rd to advertise Candy Crush. They'll take off from and remain in New Jersey for the 10-minute presentation, but you'll spot them if you're within a one-mile radius of Battery Park.

Say hello to Xumo, the new branding for Comcast and Charter's recently announced joint streaming venture. It's an evolution of the previous Xumo, the ad-supported streaming service Comcast bought two years ago, that's aiming to be "an entire entertainment ecosystem inclusive of streaming devices, content, and a platform for partners to reach audiences at scale," according to the companies. Comcast's Flex streaming device will now be called Xumo Stream Box, while XClass TV, the company's push to... Читать дальше...

Workers at an Apple Store in Glasgow, Scotland, voted on Wednesday to unionize. The vote came after “several” months of negotiations that eventually saw Apple agree to recognize the ballot voluntarily. According to The Herald, employees at the company’s Buchanan Street location, one of two stores Apple operates in Scotland’s most populous city, voted “overwhelmingly” in favor of joining the GMB Union. With the historic vote, the retail location is now on track to become the first unionized Apple Store in the United Kingdom. Читать дальше...

Google Play Games has arrived on PC in more countries, including the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. The app, which is available in beta, allows you to play a selection of Android games on your PC with a mouse and keyboard. Google started testing the app in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan in January (and later in Australia and Thailand) after promising at the tail end of last year that Google Play Games would come to PC in 2022.

Last week, Elon Musk officially completed his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. But Musk’s path from Twitter super-user to Twitter owner and CEO was anything but straightforward.

You might not have to jump between your email client and a web browser just to find out if a holiday gift will arrive on time. Google is updating the Gmail app with simple package tracking. If your order email has a supported tracking number (more on that in a moment), you'll see the shipping status at the top of the message. If your must-have item arrives tomorrow, you may know without having to plug digits into a web link or dedicated app.

For the last several years, Google has been using artificial intelligence to develop a system that can predict floods. It has also been working on wildfire tracking tools. Ahead of the COP27 climate conference taking place next week, the company announced that it is expanding those tools.

When we put together our ultimate list of current-model smartphones, Samsung's Galaxy S22 Ultra easily won out as the best Android option. It's on sale at Amazon right now for $300 off the list price, bringing it down to just $900. That's only ten bucks more than its lowest ever price during October's Prime Day — still a strong deal. We deemed the S22 Ultra "an excellent phone and the best premium Android flagship you can buy," before awarding it a solid score of 89. And because Samsung has promised at least four years of updates/support... Читать дальше...

Following a slip-up, HBO has confirmed a release date for its long-expected The Last of Us TV series. The video game adaptation will debut through HBO and HBO Max on January 15th at 9PM Eastern. You'll have something to watch while you wait for Succession, then, although you may want to pace yourself when there are 10 episodes in this initial season.

Etsy has begun testing visual search. The company suggests the feature is ideal for those situations where you’re not quite sure how to describe something. Whereas in the past you had to rely on keywords and a bit of luck, you can now tap the new camera icon in the search bar and snap a photo of a product in hopes of finding similar items.

Tidal has already been closing gaps with the competition by adding a free tier and similar upgrades, but its latest improvement may be one of the most important. The streaming music service has finally introduced user profiles that let you easily share your playlists. Make a playlist public and Tidal users can discover your musical tastes through search, or share that track listing through links. You could technically share before, but it was much more difficult until now.

A former Apple employee has pled guilty to defrauding the company out of over $17 million. Dhirendra Prasad, who spent most of his decade at Apple working as a buyer in the Global Service Supply Chain department, admitted to "taking kickbacks, inflating invoices, stealing parts and causing Apple to pay for items and services never received,” according to the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. Prasad started these schemes in 2011 and continued them until 2018. 

Fujifilm is delivering a follow-up to the well-received X-T4. The company has introduced (what else?) the X-T5, a sequel to the higher-end APS-C mirrorless camera that delivers some major technical upgrades — the largest in five years — while refining the basic formula. The new model now packs Fuji's current 40MP sensor (up from 26MP) that can shoot 6.2K video at 30 frames per second. You don't need to buy a top-tier cam like the X-H2S to venture beyond 4K. You can also expect a jump in computing... Читать дальше...

Sony has finally revealed when its next-gen virtual reality headset will arrive and how much it will cost — the price is far higher than many people will have been expecting. Playstation VR2 will be available on February 22nd (exactly a year after Sony revealed the design of the device) and it will cost an astonishing $550. That’s more than the price of a PlayStation 5, the base hardware you’ll need to use the headset, even after Sony jacked up the cost of the console in many countries. Folks... Читать дальше...

DJI's Mavic 3 is a useful cinematic drone, but its steep price ($1,899 as we write this) can be off-putting compared to the $1,449 of the older Mavic 2 Pro. The company thinks it has a simple solution, though: offer a trimmed-back version. DJI has introduced the Mavic 3 Classic, a new variant that drops the telephoto lens in exchange for a better $1,469 starting price (more on that later).

Tumblr changed enormously in 2018 after it started blocking all adult content, reportedly because images of child sexual abuse were posted on the website. It deleted tons of sex blogs and communities to comply with its new rule, and its already dwindling community never quite recovered since. Now, the website has updated its community guidelines so that the naked human form is once again allowed. Under its new policy, users can post images and videos with nudity, as well as text with mature subject matter and sexual themes... Читать дальше...

What’s stopping me (or you) getting an iPad Pro? The cost, for one. And a belief that anything I’d want to use an iPad for, I can already do with my eighth-generation vanilla model. That said, Nathan Ingraham’s review of the M2 iPad Pro did make me check if my bank balance could sustain the purchase. It can’t.

You can add the standalone Street View app to Google's growing product graveyard. Upon decompiling the latest version of the application for Android, 9to5Google found shutdown notices that the company has yet to publish. In those notices, the tech giant is announcing that the Street View app is going away and that support will end on March 21st, 2023. Spokesperson Madison Gouveia has confirmed to The Verge that the app truly is getting the ax. Gouveia also told the publication that Google will... Читать дальше...

Kids love to use smart speakers, but it's all too easy for things to go horribly wrong — including content that's decidedly not family-friendly. Google is trying to address those worries by both revising parental controls for Assistant and providing more child-oriented responses. To start, an update will let you disable some Assistant features, restrict the services children can use and establish downtime hours. You can bar kids from making calls, or limit them to watching YouTube Kids on a Nest Hub. Читать дальше...

The Xiaomi 12S Ultra surprised us with its 1-inch camera sensor and Leica co-branding back in July, but it turns out that the Chinese brand was working on something far more ambitious at the same time. Earlier today, the "Xiaomi 12S Ultra Concept Phone" was unveiled with an appearance almost identical to the namesake flagship device, but with a second 1-inch 50.3-megapixel sensor occupying the middle of the camera island instead. Let that sink in for a bit. Not only that, but this new sensor is... Читать дальше...

T-Mobile may be joining rivals Verizon and AT&T by introducing an $35 charge for all new postpaid activations and upgrades, according to The T-Mo Report and some Redditors. According to T-Mobile internal documents, it's introducing a "Device Connection Charge" for "all activations and upgrades for mobile, Beyond the Smartphone and broadband devices."

Google has laid Hangouts to rest, a couple of years after it first announced that it was going to push people to use Chat, its Slack-like app, instead. After allowing users to move to Chat on their own in 2021, Google phased out the Hangouts Chat app for Android and iOS in July. Users were shown a prompt telling them that "Hangouts has been replaced by Google Chat" and to switch to either the standalone Chat app or the Chat experience within Gmail. As TechCrunch notes, the last version of the messaging service... Читать дальше...

Just two years after the launch of the original EOS R6, Canon has unveiled its successor, the $2,500 EOS R6 Mark II. It brings a number of key improvements, like a higher-resolution 24.2-megapixel sensor and faster shooting speeds. Most importantly, Canon has significantly reduced the previous model’s issues with overheating.

Twitter may soon charge users $8 a month for verification, but Elon Musk reportedly plans to give all users a long-requested feature for free: the edit button. According to Platformer’s Casey Newton, the move is in the works alongside the more sweeping changes to Twitter Blue that Musk previewed Tuesday.