mardi 10 janvier 2023
Three-Quarters of Teenagers Have Seen Online Pornography by Age 17
Improved voice typing in Google Docs is coming to more browsers
Google Docs’ voice-typing feature, which lets you “type” and edit text using your voice and a microphone rather than your hands and a keyboard, is getting a couple of key upgrades.
First is that the feature is expanding to “most major browsers.” Currently, Google’s support page notes that it’s “only available in Chrome browsers.” Second is that it is being upgraded to “reduce transcription errors and minimize lost audio during transcription.”
As 9to5Google notes, voice typing has been available in Google Docs for over half a decade, allowing users to get words on the (virtual) page even if their hands are full or otherwise not in a position to be able to traditionally type. It can also work as a handy transcription tool in a pinch, though as our guide explains you might be better off with a dedicated piece of transcription software in most cases.
Frustratingly, although Google’s announcement says the feature is coming to “most major browsers,” it doesn’t specify exactly which browsers these are. At the very least, we hope that it’ll now be officially supported in other Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge (where users report that it hasn’t worked in the past), but “major browsers” would presumably also include Safari and Firefox. We’ve contacted Google for clarification.
As well as the improvements coming to Google Docs, the search giant says that voice-typed speaker notes in Google Slides “will now contain automatically generated punctuation.” The enhanced voice typing features should roll out to all users by the middle of next month.
AI Is Becoming More Conversant. But Will It Get More Honest?
lundi 9 janvier 2023
Google Docs adds a feature we thought it already had: non-printing characters
Google is adding a feature to Google Docs that lets you see non-printing characters such as spaces, tabs, and various types of breaks, the company announced in a blog post on Monday. The option, which will be available in the View menu, can help make editing a document easier by showing you exactly how its formatted rather than making you rely purely on what you can see to tell whether something is a tab or a bunch of spaces. It can also be more helpful when troubleshooting messed up formatting.
Before now, people have had to rely on third-party add-ons for Google Docs to see the non-printing characters. While it’s not a feature that many people will have much use for (more on that in a second), there was definitely demand for it. A request on Google’s IssueTracker received over 80 votes from people saying they were impacted by the inability to see the characters. Some also left impassioned comments: “My team agrees that this is a major issue with google docs,” wrote one user in 2019, while someone asked “How has this not been made available yet??” less than a week ago.
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Gif: Google
On the other side of the coin, I, and several of my colleagues, were surprised to hear that the app didn’t have this feature until now. Apparently, none of us had ever come across the need for it or thought to check for it — and yes, that does seem a bit odd in retrospect, given that we’re all writers, but I guess we just assumed it was there.
I was also surprised that Google Docs didn’t have it given that I remember learning about non-printing characters in an elementary school computer class; Microsoft Word has been able to show them for pretty much the entire time I’ve been alive. (One of my co-workers recalled that his parents had the feature on when he was growing up, which made him think that was just how electronic documents worked.)
Still, the addition is better late than never, and I’m sure there are some Google Docs users that are very excited by this announcement. According to the blog post, the feature will be available to all business, educational, and personal accounts, and should be fully rolled out by February 7th.
Brazil Riot and Jan. 6 Attack Followed a Similar Digital Playbook, Experts Say
YouTube will start sharing ad money with Shorts creators on February 1st
YouTube has announced that creators can start making ad revenue on Shorts starting February 1st, following a promise from September that the monetization option was on its way. The change is coming as part of a broader update to YouTube’s Partner Program, which will require everyone who’s currently part of it to sign new agreement terms, whether or not they’re looking to make money from Shorts.
Creators have been able to make some money from the format that rolled out in 2021 for a while via things like Super Chats and shopping integrations, as well as a creator fund that the company had set up, but that model wasn’t all that much better that TikTok’s monetization scheme. What TikTok doesn’t do, though, is directly share ad revenue with creators — something that YouTube has been doing for years for traditional videos and that it’s now bringing to Shorts.
Creators won’t necessarily have to opt in to shorts monetization if they don’t want to. YouTube says it’s introducing a modular system for the partner program’s terms — everyone in the program will have to sign a base agreement that dictates things like what you can post on the site and how payment works. That goes for creators who are already YouTube Partners; the company says they’ll have until July 10th, 2023, to accept the new terms, or else their ability to monetize with the platform will be turned off, and they’ll have to reapply to the program.
Then there are additional agreements for “Watch Page” and Shorts monetization, which you can agree to separately. The Shorts agreement, which will be available on February 1st, is basically what it says on the tin, giving you a cut of the revenue from “ads viewed between videos in the Shorts Feed.” The Watch Page agreement essentially covers the other stuff; livestreams and traditional “long-form” videos on YouTube, YouTube Music, or YouTube Kids.
Basically, content you watch on a page that looks something like this:
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There’s also an addendum for “commerce products” like memberships, Super Chats, Super Stickers, and Super Thanks, though the company says that you won’t have to re-agree to those terms if you’ve already turned the features on for your channel.
YouTube says this modular approach will let it “add new monetization opportunities in the future without having to update or amend the entire monetization agreement.” The company also says that you can opt out of certain monetization modules after you sign up for them, though I’m struggling to come up with reasons why anyone would — it feels like doing so would just arbitrarily limit your monetization options.
The announcement comes as YouTube is revising the requirements to join the YouTube Partner Program. One of the requirements used to be that you had to get 4,000 public watch hours on your content within the past 12 months. Starting in October 2022, Shorts counted toward that number. As of January 2023, though, that’s no longer the case, according to the YouTube Partner Program overview & eligibility support page. Instead, that part of the eligibility requirement has been tweaked; you now have to get the 4,000 hours on non-shorts content or get 10 million views on your public Shorts within the past 90 days. (Either way, you also have to have at least 1,000 subscribers to be eligible.)
‘He gives us every bit of himself’: how God of War’s actors hold the whole game together
The father-son relationship in Sony’s smash hit shows how important actors have become to video games. Its creators discuss their blockbuster success – and the future of gaming
In Los Angeles last month, Al Pacino walked on stage at the Microsoft theatre in front of an audience of video game developers and performers to present a trophy at the Game awards. Looking pleased but mildly baffled, and struggling to read his autocue, he announced the winner: Christopher Judge, for his performance as Kratos in the video game God of War: Ragnarök. Dressed in a sparkling gold suit, Judge enveloped a surprised-looking Pacino in a giant hug before embarking on a 10-minute acceptance speech. “I was the last actor in California to read for this role,” he says. “Back then, if I’d known it was for a video game, I might not have taken it. Boy, how things have changed.”
Back in the 00s, Sony’s God of War games were notable for several reasons – their jaw-dropping scale, the bite and immediacy of their combat, the sheer spectacle of their fantasy violence – but they were not exactly famed for their characters. Kratos, the protagonist, was an angry lump of muscle whose narrative arc mostly involved killing bigger and bigger things and getting more and more furious. So when Kratos and God of War returned in 2018 after a long hiatus, it was a surprise to find that not only had he left the realm of Greek mythology for Scandinavia, but he was now a widower, accompanied by a young son with whom he struggled to connect.
Continue reading...A.I. Turns Its Artistry to Creating New Human Proteins
Behind the scenes of TV’s first deep fake comedy: ‘None of it is illegal. Everything is silly’
Is that Harry Kane and Stormzy arguing over a broken patio tile? This new, CGI-assisted comedy is astonishing to watch – but is it ethically OK?
Spencer Jones beckons me into a Soho editing suite. “Do you want to see some of the stuff we’ve done so far?” he asks, readying a clip of his new ITV sketch show. It’s funny enough; a young impressionist does an impersonation of Tom Holland griping about something in his flat.
But then Jones stands up and walks me through to a different room. He closes the door and opens up a laptop. “Now watch this,” he says, grinning. It’s the same clip: same script, same flat, same line delivery. But there’s one small difference – this time, incredibly, the sketch is being performed by Tom Holland. Except it isn’t. My jaw drops open, and my eyes start flitting around wildly, unable to compute what I’m seeing. In other words, I have just had my first experience of Deep Fake Neighbour Wars.
Continue reading...UK car loans: the little-known clause that means you could walk away from your deal
The right to voluntary termination allows the buyer to escape the agreement provided they have repaid 50% of the total amount due
If you are one of the thousands of people across the UK struggling to meet their car finance repayments, are you aware you can give the vehicle back and walk away debt-free once you have repaid half the amount owed?
Car finance payments are typically the second-largest household expense after mortgage costs, and the car industry is nervously waiting to see how many people struggling with the cost of living default on loans, or use a little-known clause to voluntarily terminate their agreement.
Continue reading...Silvergate forced to cover $8bn worth of crypto-related withdrawals
The US bank was forced to sell $5.2bn worth of assets for cash and booked a loss of $718m on those sales
Customers of the US bank Silvergate, one of the few mainstream financial organisations that focuses on providing services to the cryptocurrency sector, have pulled more than $8bn (£6.7bn) of their crypto-related deposits from the lender.
More than two-thirds of customers’ deposits were withdrawn in the final three months of 2022, as the collapse of the FTX exchange reverberated around the cryptocurrency world.
Continue reading...dimanche 8 janvier 2023
Apple could soon open its first brick-and-mortar stores in India
Apple has already started hiring to fill out its not-yet-announced stores in India, as first reported by The Financial Times. The company’s recent job listings show new openings for 12 retail roles at “various locations” throughout the country, including store leaders, senior managers, Genius Bar workers, and more.
The job listings, which include both full-time and part-time positions, directly refer to the Apple Store, although there’s no indication of how many roles are available. According to The Financial Times, at least five employees located in Mumbai and New Dehli shared on LinkedIn that they have already been hired for the upcoming stores, while Apple’s head of recruiting in India, Renu Sevanthi, “celebrated” the news of their hiring in a post on the network.
This tracks with a July 2022 report from The Economic Times, which indicates that Apple’s planning to open a 22,000-square-foot store in Mumbai at the beginning of this year. The company’s also reportedly working on a 10,000 to 12,000-square-foot store in New Dehli, along with several other stores in the country, but it’s unclear when they will open their doors. Apple didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.
Apple first made its online store available to customers in India in 2020, with CEO Tim Cook hinting at establishing a physical presence during a shareholder meeting around the same time. “I don’t want somebody else to run the brand for us,” Cook said, referring to the third-party retailers that currently sell iPhones to customers at brick-and-mortar stores in India. While Cook initially said Apple would open its first store in India in 2021, these plans were delayed due to the covid pandemic and got pushed back a second time last year.
As Apple looks to expand its retail footprint in the country, it’s bringing more production to India as well. The company first started making iPhones in India in 2017 and shifted production of the iPhone 14 from China to India in the weeks following its release. With Apple trying to distance itself from China due to political reasons, as well as cut costs amidst rough economic conditions, India may be starting to look like an increasingly attractive manufacturing hub. It beats both China and Vietnam as the country with the cheapest manufacturing costs and has a massive smartphone market that Apple has only begun to tap into.
Elon Musk wants to move trial away from San Francisco over ‘local negativity’
Elon Musk has asked a judge to move an upcoming trial for a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco, citing concerns that the jury may have a bias against him, as reported earlier by CNBC. In a Friday filing, Musk requests that the judge relocate the trial to West Texas due to the “local negativity” in the Bay Area surrounding Elon Musk and his businesses, preventing a fair trial.
The shareholder class action lawsuit, which accuses Musk of manipulating Tesla’s stock, stems from the billionaire’s now-infamous 2018 tweet that claimed he had the “funding secured” to take Tesla private. Tesla’s stock reached extreme highs and lows in the weeks following the tweet, and resulted in a $40 million fine from the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to CNBC, the upcoming trial is supposed to determine whether Musk’s 2018 tweet affected Tesla’s stock price, as well as if Tesla and Musk should be held accountable for the alleged damages.
“The recent local media coverage has created an environment that encourages the District’s jury pool to hold negative biases against Mr. Musk’s use of Twitter,” the filing reads. “Potential jurors that hold negative opinions about Mr. Musk’s use and relationship with Twitter generally as a result of this coverage will be unable to separate this baseline bias from the facts in this case and thus be unable to impartially evaluate Musk’s conduct.”
In addition to blaming “inflammatory” local media coverage, the filling adds that Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter, which included mass layoffs at the company’s San Francisco headquarters and other locations “already created substantial bias” in those who have (or know someone who has) been impacted by the job cuts.
It also claims that Musk and his San Francisco offices are often subject to protests that are “encouraged” by local politicians, further cementing this “prejudice” and resulting in an unfair trial. If the judge decides not to move the trial to Texas, where Tesla’s based, Musk and his lawyers ask that the trial get delayed to let the “negative sentiments” surrounding Musk dissipate.
Federal Judge Edward Chen, who’s in charge of this case, ruled last year that Musk knowingly made false statements about taking Tesla private on Twitter. While Musk continues to reaffirm that he struck a deal with investors from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), recently disclosed text messages show Musk’s outrage over the PIF’s lack of support. Musk has subpoenaed Yasir al-Rumayyan, the head of the PIF, for this trial, which was originally set to take place on January 17th. The hearing for the trial’s relocation will happen on January 13th.
Apple may finally debut its mixed reality headset this spring
Apple’s getting ready to launch its long-rumored mixed reality headset this spring, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The company’s reportedly planning to reveal the device ahead of the Worldwide Developers Conference in June and will start shipping it this fall.
The headset, which could cost as much as $3,000, is expected to provide both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences using Apple’s new xrOS operating system. Gurman says Apple has already shown off the Reality Pro-branded device to “a small number of high-profile” developers so they can start creating third-party apps for it.
(2/3)
— 郭明錤 (Ming-Chi Kuo) (@mingchikuo) January 6, 2023
As a result, it is increasingly unlikely that Apple will hold a media event for the new device in January. At this point, it seems more likely that Apple will announce the AR/MR headset at a spring media event or WWDC based on the current development progress.
Gurman’s prediction corroborates rumors from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who said last week that the development of the headset is delayed “due to issues with mechanical component drop testing and the availability of software development tools.” He added that it “seems more likely” that Apple will announce the headset at a media event in the spring or at WWDC.
In recent months, numerous reports have emerged about the headset’s potential capabilities, including iris scanning for logins and payments and a physical dial that will let you switch out of VR. According to a report from The Information, it could also feature an AirPods Pro integration that can enable “an ultra-low-latency mode” when wearing the earbuds with the headset. It may also focus more on work rather than gaming, sort of like the $1,499 Meta Quest Pro, and might not come with a gaming controller.
But there are still “many kinks to work out” with the device’s hardware, software, and services, Gurman says, and this is slowing down Apple’s other projects. We may see a more low-key year for new releases as a result, and it also may be why Apple missed its goal of transitioning away from Intel-powered chips within two years.
Now, Apple’s expected to release a new lineup of MacBook Pros with marginal improvements this year, along with a 15-inch MacBook Air, and a new Mac Pro that will no longer come with the option for an M2 “Extreme” chip with 48 CPU cores and 152 graphics cores. Apple’s instead planning to release a Mac Pro variation with the M2 Ultra chip that eliminates user-upgradeable RAM, as Gurman notes that “the memory is tied directly to the M2 Ultra’s motherboard.” It could also ship with a design that’s “identical” to the $5,999 2019 model, which doesn’t make it much more attractive than the far cheaper (and far less bulky) $1,999 Mac Studio.
Apple’s also expected to reveal a new HomePod this year, but Gurman says not to “expect anything revolutionary about it.” It may just come with a lower price, an updated touch control panel, and an S8 chip. Other devices, like an updated 24-inch iMac and a new round of iPad Pros equipped with OLED displays, aren’t expected to arrive until next year, while iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 could feature more subdued upgrades.
Musk seeks to move trial out of San Francisco, claiming he can’t get fair trial
Musk says negative local media coverage of shareholder lawsuit over 2018 Tesla tweet has biased jurors against him
Elon Musk has urged a federal judge to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco because he says negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him.
Instead, in a filing submitted late Friday – less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin on 17 January – Musk’s lawyers argue it should be moved to the federal court in the western district of Texas. That district includes the state capital of Austin, which is where Musk relocated his electric car company, Tesla, in late 2021.
Continue reading...samedi 7 janvier 2023
Death of the narrator? Apple unveils suite of AI-voiced audiobooks
Exclusive: tech firm quietly launches new audiobook catalogue narrated by AI – but move expected to spark backlash
Apple has quietly launched a catalogue of books narrated by artificial intelligence in a move that may mark the beginning of the end for human narrators. The strategy marks an attempt to upend the lucrative and fast-growing audiobook market – but it also promises to intensify scrutiny over allegations of Apple’s anti-competitive behaviour.
The popularity of the audiobook market has exploded in recent years, with technology companies scrambling to gain a foothold. Sales last year jumped 25%, bringing in more than $1.5bn. Industry insiders believe the global market could be worth more than $35bn by 2030.
Continue reading...Twitter reportedly makes more cuts to online safety teams
A dozen people based in Dublin and Singapore who moderate content and monitor hate speech believed to have been let go
Twitter has made more cuts to its trust and safety team in charge of international content moderation, as well as a unit overseeing hate speech and harassment, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
The move adds to longstanding concerns that new owner Elon Musk is dismantling the company’s regulation of hateful content and misinformation.
Continue reading...Disney’s Magical Companion debuts at CES with some help from Amazon
Alexa’s got some company. I met Disney’s new voice assistant at CES this week, and it’s pretty cute. Called “Disney’s Magical Companion,” the disembodied voice is born from fairy dust and lives inside Amazon’s Echo smart speakers and displays. Its purpose is to call up various characters — including Disney, Pixar, and Star Wars faves — to help you out with common voice assistant chores (timers, alarms, weather), as well as entertain with stories, games, and other sprinkles of Disney magic.
You conjure the assistant with the phrase “Hey Disney!” — here’s a quick demo I did at CES this week:
One neat thing about the integration is you never know which character will answer your query — it could be Dory from Finding Nemo or Olaf from Frozen one moment, then Mater from Cars or Animal from The Muppets the next.
First announced in 2021, “Hey Disney!” was built using the Alexa Custom Assistant voice AI foundation, which allows third parties to create custom voice assistants that can coexist with Amazon’s Alexa assistant in Echo speakers. It’s similar to the celebrity voices you can download from the likes of Samuel Jackson, but with more customized games and integrations.
Currently, “Hey Disney!” is in limited hotel rooms at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort as part of a phased rollout across Disney’s hotels, where it also helps as a sort of virtual concierge. But the Magical Companion is also coming to your home in 2023, through the Alexa Skills store. No pricing has been announced, but it will be included free with an Amazon Kids Plus subscription.
The Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola is a ThinkPad owner’s dream
I’m generally a Windows user, but one of the things that’s always sorely tempted me about the Apple ecosystem is the interconnectedness. Not only are macOS and iOS comfortably similar in form and function (and getting moreso every year), but there are so many easy ways to transfer content between a Mac and an iPhone. That’s why I enjoyed testing out Lenovo’s ThinkPhone by Motorola, which is supposed to be — and I never thought I’d be writing this phrase — the smartphone version of a ThinkPad.
The ThinkPhone has a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, a 6.6-inch OLED screen, a 5,000mAh battery, a bunch of fancy enterprise security features (a phrase ThinkPad enthusiasts will certainly be familiar with) and two rear cameras including a 50-megapixel stabilized standard wide and a 13-megapixel ultrawide (plus a depth sensor). It’s MIL STD 810H certified and IP68 rated for dust and water resistance. It ships with Android 13. But the coolest part, and the differentiating feature in my opinion, is how much fun it is to use with a ThinkPad.
My favorite software feature is called Unified Clipboard. When you have this enabled, any photo you take, text you copy, documents you scan, or video you take with the ThinkPhone is automatically copied to a clipboard that your ThinkPhone shares with your ThinkPad. You can then paste that media instantly on your connected ThinkPad, which seems very handy for dropping photos into presentations and documents as you’re creating them. This was fun to use, and worked perfectly each time I tried it. (And I did try many times...it was really fun.)
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Image: Motorola
This Unified Clipboard feature is part of a whole suite of features called the Think 2 Think connectivity (come on, that’s cute) that connects the ThinkPhone and the ThinkPad. You can also drag and drop files, and the two devices can quickly discover each other and connect over Wi-Fi while nearby.
You can even use the ThinkPhone as a webcam while taking conference calls on the ThinkPad. The latter works with any video conferencing software, Lenovo told me, so it’s not like some other fancy webcam features companies have come out with this year where your company’s conferencing software of choice needs to decide to support them.
I was able to fairly easily set the ThinkPhone as the ThinkPad’s conferencing webcam directly from Lenovo’s software settings, but I’m told that you can do it from individual applications (Zoom, etc.) as well.
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Image: Lenovo
Physically, there are some other touches that make this phone look blissfully ThinkPad-y. The black textured back... come on, you can’t miss that similarity. But the most striking homage to Lenovo’s premium business laptops is the red button on the side of the ThinkPhone — which isn’t quite a keyboard nub but, you know what, it’s close. You can map both a single and double tap of this button to shortcuts of your choice, which I’m sure some ThinkPad users (who may, for example, have experience remapping some of the ThinkPad’s unconventionally placed keyboard keys) will appreciate.
All in all, this phone seems like a fun idea to me. There are lots of ThinkPad lovers out there. Why not give them a phone to match?
The Hottest Gen Z Gadget Is a 20-Year-Old Digital Camera
‘Alexa, Why Do We Keep Buying You?’
vendredi 6 janvier 2023
Creative founder Sim Wong Hoo, the man behind Sound Blaster, has died
Creative Technologies founder, CEO and chairman Sim Wong Hoo has died, his company has confirmed. He “passed away peacefully on 4 January 2023,” according to a press release. He was 67 years old.
It might seem hard for younger readers to believe, but there was a time that computer sound wasn’t guaranteed. If you wanted to plug in headphones or speakers that could do more than bloops or bleeps, you probably needed a sound card — and none were as successful as Creative Labs’ Sound Blaster. It sold over 400 million units as of its 30th anniversary in 2019.
In the pre-Windows 95 / DirectX era, few words in PC gaming were as important as the phrase “Sound Blaster compatible,” allowing players to hear the dogs bark in Wolfenstein 3D, or mess around with the synthesized voice in Creative’s Dr. Sbaitso demo (you can play it on the web these days).
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Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge
The company was also huge in the MP3 player space with its Creative Nomad and Zen line of players and successfully sued Apple over its iPod, obtaining a $100 million settlement.
Success wasn’t immediate. Originally, Hoo set out to build an entire computer that could talk, according to 1993 and 1994 profiles of the man at Bloomberg and The New York Times. He founded Creative Technologies in Singapore in 1981, and yet by 1986 — two years after Steve Jobs let the Macintosh “speak for itself” — the company’s PCs had sold so poorly that he was reportedly down to just a handful of engineers.
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Image: Sound Blaster Gaming
But when they took the Cubic CT’s music board to a computer exhibit in the United States, the company found its footing. “The money we made on a few hundred boards was the equivalent to the money we made on the PC,” he told the NYT.
Even then, the idea hadn’t quite congealed. Creative’s first sound card was sold as the Creative Music System before it realized that PC gamers would become its biggest audience. In 1987, Sierra On-Line wowed the gaming industry by releasing King’s Quest IV with an actual soundtrack score, designed to be played on early sound cards like the AdLib and Roland MT-32, and the publisher went on to advertise those PC parts for sale in its own catalog of games.
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Image via The Digital Antiquarian
Creative got a piece of that action by rebranding its card the “Game Blaster” in 1988, and in 1989, the company’s first Sound Blaster added a dedicated game port to plug in a joystick. That’s something that PC gamers usually had to buy separately and helped make the Sound Blaster look like an excellent deal over the AdLib.
Hoo’s determination made him a rare symbol of Singaporean startup success, as Creative became the first Singapore company to be listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. In 1994, The New York Times’ headline was literally “Entrepreneurial Company Defies Singapore Model,” and he went on to author a book called Chaotic Thoughts from the Old Millennium where he coined a phrase, No U-Turn Syndrome, to describe an underlying difficulty in becoming an entrepreneur in that era of Singapore culture.
Was incredibly shocked to hear about the passing of Sim, founder of @CreativeLabs this morning.
— Min-Liang Tan (@minliangtan) January 5, 2023
I just met him 2 weeks ago, like all our meetings, we talked for hrs about audio technology and products. Will miss him - the technology world and Singapore has lost a legend. pic.twitter.com/By1kZstelh
Razer CEO and co-founder Min-Liang Tan, who turned Razer into a Singaporean company, took to social media to say that “the tech world and Singapore have lost a legend.” Razer purchased an audio company of its own, the George Lucas-founded THX, back in 2016.
Even after PCs began to be able to play quality audio by themselves — every modern consumer motherboard comes with integrated sound — Creative kept gamers interested with features like the Sound Blaster Crystallizer, a dynamic range enhancer that “applies the audio boost (an audible effect) to the lower, transient, and higher frequency regions on demand.”
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I still remember how proud I was to install a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro in a desktop gaming PC and what it unlocked for me at the time — I ran three game consoles into my PC monitor, using the card to handle sound, and marveled at how this one gadget could take an optical audio signal from my PlayStation 2 and convert it into great-sounding analog audio for my headphones and digital 3.5mm audio for my Boston Acoustics 4.1 surround sound speakers, all at the same time. (Yes, I had those Gateway pack-in speakers that only accepted digital input over a 3.5mm jack and the Audigy was very handy.)
Creative hasn’t exactly been a household name in recent years, but it still sells popular soundbars like its Sound Blaster Katana, speakers, webcams, and earbuds. There’s even still a dedicated Sound Blaster sound card in its lineup.
And, I hear, the Audigy 2 is still going strong in some people’s PCs.
Update, 8:32PM ET: Added more images and info about the Cubic99, an earlier Creative computer.
What Are Your Tech Resolutions for 2023?
The LG Gram Style might be the prettiest laptop of 2023
For the past few years, I’ve been a big fan of the LG Gram 17. It’s got great battery life, a massive screen, and it feels like it weighs basically nothing. But if there’s one hesitation I sometimes have about the line, it’s the aesthetic. The Grams of the past have just looked a bit... boring. Which is fine — many laptops are — but also means there’s a fashion-conscious audience out there they potentially aren’t reaching.
Enter the LG Gram Style. This, as the name implies, might be the first LG laptop I’ve ever seen that I’d really consider calling “stylish.” It’s unbelievably thin, it’s mind-blowingly light, and it’s covered in a lustrous color-changing finish. My hands-on time with this device was in LG’s very dimly lit booth at CES 2023, but it was certainly one of the most unique-looking laptops I’ve had the opportunity to try so far this year.
That does not mean that this is a laptop that will work for everyone. But it’s certainly one that might turn heads at the coffee shop. And it’s a bold new look for an established line, which is always fun to watch unfold.
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The first thing to talk about is that finish. It’s iridescent, changing color depending on lighting and viewing angle. In LG’s words, the laptops “shine and shift dynamically; moving and changing depending on the light and angle.”
Up close, this looks like a silvery white. But I can confirm that as I moved the device around, it flashed and signed in different hues, looking blueish and even orange at times. I wish I’d been able to better capture that on camera — again, a challenge with the lighting.
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That luster extends to the bottom part of the Style’s keyboard deck, which is one smooth surface — there is no touchpad visible. There is a touchpad under there, in the location where you’d expect a touchpad to be, but it’s haptic and hidden.
We’re seeing more and more of these types of trackpads on laptops this year, and they generally help companies get them thinner (which remains a major draw of the Gram line). Dell’s XPS 13 Plus also had a hidden touchpad last year, and I had mixed results with it. In general, my right hand (I’m right-handed) knew where to click from experience without needing the touchpad delineated, but my less experienced left hand had misclicks here and there when it needed to sub in.
What the Gram Style does have (that the XPS 13 Plus didn’t) is LEDs around the touchpad that illuminate after you touch the area. They stay on for what can’t be more than a few seconds after you click, and then they disappear. So, I mean, that’s better than nothing, but still doesn’t help you find the thing when you need to click it. The lights do look pretty, though. I’m not sure why there couldn’t be an option to leave them on.
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A third very pretty thing: the screen. Each Style model (there’s 14-inch and a 16-inch options) has a 16:10 OLED display, and despite the odd lighting, they looked great in LG’s demo area. The keyboard was also fun, with quite a nice click. I like Gram keyboards in general, but there’s always a worry that a super thin laptop might not have room for great switches.
Oh, and this thing is so light. It’s one of those devices that messes with your mind when you pick it up. At 2.2 pounds (999 grams), you could fool me into thinking that this was an empty chassis. That’s nothing new for LG laptops but is a nice assurance that the Style, despite its various oddities, remains very much a part of the Gram line.
One other hot tip: There are even wilder designs coming. LG had a bunch of patterned Gram Style lids on display — purples, pinks, polka dots galore — and was taking a poll at their booth where attendees could vote for their favorite one. Representatives claim that the company will bring the winner to market. I voted for the purple one, so I hope that one wins. Stay tuned.
Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge
The best laptop deals you can get right now
If you want a great laptop, you’re going to have to fork over a ton of money, right? Not necessarily. There are dozens of good laptops on the market at various price points. However, it can feel overwhelming to find the right one for your needs (some are better suited for, say, college students, whereas others are ideal for gamers).
That’s why we’ve come up with this list of some of the best laptop deals available right now. In addition to the latest discounts, we’ll share each discounted model’s best features (and downsides) to give you more clarity during your shopping journey. And if you need to do more research, you can also check out our guides to the best laptops on the market and the top cheap laptops as well.
The best laptop deals
Apple deals
Macbook Air (M2 model)
We consider the newest MacBook Air with Apple’s M2 processor to be the best laptop for most people, one that offers all-day battery life and a combination of features that should more than suffice for the average user. Plus, Apple’s new MacBook is powerful enough that it can even handle some light gaming and even demanding photo and video editing apps like Photoshop and Adobe Premiere. It’s also faster than its predecessor thanks to Apple’s new M2 chip and offers a 1080p webcam, which is a welcome improvement given the disappointing camera on the 2020 M1 model. It’s much lighter and thus more portable as well, yet it retains features like MagSafe charging and Touch ID, as well as a nice display.
While a terrific laptop overall, there is one key area where Apple’s M1 model is better: storage. The base M2 MacBook Air with 256GB of storage is actually slower than its predecessor because it’s stored in a single NAND chip. Also, be aware as well that port selection isn’t great, and the included display notch — which is also found on both the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros — can make using the menu bar more challenging.
If that doesn’t bother you, however, we’re currently seeing a good discount on the M2- powered MacBook Air. Now through January 22nd, Costco is selling the laptop in select colors with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, an eight-core CPU and GPU, and a 30W power brick for $999.99 ($150 off), though this deal is available to members only. If you’re not a member, you can either pay a five percent surcharge (so $57.50 extra) or buy the same model from B&H Photo for $1,149 ($50 off). B&H is also selling the same configuration in silver with a 10-core GPU for $1,199 ($100 off), or you can buy the silver model at Adorama with an eight-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 8GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 30W power brick starting at $1,349 ($150 off).
MacBook Air (M1 model)
For a cheaper alternative to our favorite laptop for most, look to the base MacBook Air with the M1 chip, which is the best cheap laptop. Like its successor, it offers everything you need. It’s also faster than most Windows laptops at this price point, and handles demanding photo and video editing apps like Photoshop and Adobe Premiere with finesse, especially compared to its Intel-powered predecessors. Thankfully, all that power doesn’t come at the cost of battery life either. While not as good as the M2 model’s, we found that it lasted between eight and ten hours — even when we played the game Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
In addition to offering excellent performance, the laptop also comes with other nice-to-have features, including a comfortable keyboard and an excellent trackpad. Just note its 720p webcam isn’t particularly good, so if a high-resolution webcam matters a lot to you, you may want to buy one separately. Also, be aware that, due to the limitations of the M1 chip, you can only use one external display at a time and port selection is also limited.
Right now, you can buy the M1-powered MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage in select colors at Amazon, B&H Photo, and Adorama for $899 ($100 off).
13-inch MacBook Pro (M2 model)
At the moment, the MacBook Pro lineup consists of the newer 14- and 16-inch models released in late 2021 and the 13-inch MacBook Pro that just saw a revision with the M2 processor in mid-2022.
The new 13-inch MacBook Pro is similar to the M2 MacBook Air but geared toward more demanding use cases. It’s equipped with an M2 processor, unlike its predecessor, but still offers a fan and excellent performance that slightly outshines the M2 Air. Its battery — which we struggled to drain — remains one of its more impressive features, one that allows for up to 18 hours of usage on a single charge. Unfortunately, the laptop still suffers from the same outdated design (and Touch Bar) from 2016, as well as a mediocre, 720p webcam. Plus, there’s no MagSafe charging and you only get a pair of USB-C ports.
Regularly $1,299, the 256GB M2-equipped MacBook Pro with an eight-core CPU and 10-core GPU is on sale at Amazon, B&H Photo, and Best Buy for $1,149 ($150 off). The 512GB is also marked down by $150 and selling for around $1,349 at Amazon and Best Buy.
14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro (M1 Pro models)
On the other hand, the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros are equipped with faster M1 Pro processors, and you can go up to an M1 Max CPU if you’d like to spend more money for even faster performance. They offer a nice selection of ports as well, including multiple Thunderbolt 4 ports and a MagSafe power connector. No matter what you get, these laptops boast incredible performance with some of the longest-lasting batteries we’ve tested yet.
Right now, the 14-inch model with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage is on sale for $1,599 ($400 off) in silver at Best Buy. You can also buy the M1 Pro model with 1TB of storage for $2,099 instead of $2,499 at Best Buy and Amazon. If you prefer the 16-inch model, you can get it with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for the same price ($400 off) at Amazon and Best Buy.
Lenovo deals
Lenovo Yoga 9i
Lenovo’s 14-inch Yoga 9i is our favorite laptop for multimedia entertainment. The convertible is equipped with fantastic speakers that deliver the best sound we’ve ever heard for a laptop this size. It also has an excellent 1080p touchscreen and other perks, including a built-in stylus and a battery life that will last all day. Just note, however, that it does come with bloatware that can be challenging to uninstall, and we found the 16:9 screen relatively cramped and dim.
At the moment, Lenovo is taking hundreds of dollars off various configurations of the Yoga 9i. Right now, for instance, you can get the model with 8GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and an Intel Core i7 processor for $1,354.99 instead of $1,699.99 from Lenovo. Lenovo is also throwing in a three-month subscription to Xbox Game Pass with each purchase.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano is the lightest ThinkPad you can currently buy from Lenovo, yet it still offers great performance in a light package. With its exceptional build quality, along with business-targeted security and management features, we think it’s particularly ideal for business travel. Other features we liked include its 16:10 display and the physical privacy shutter for its webcam, although we wished there were more ports and the battery life was less than average.
Right now, Lenovo is selling the ThinkPad X1 Nano for $1,309.50 instead of $2,619 when you use promo code BYOTHINKP2023 and buy the model with 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and an Intel Core i5 processor.
Asus deals
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14
Asus’ entry-level ROG Zephyrus G14 is currently our favorite laptop for gaming on the go. It’s powerful yet it also boasts all-day battery life, which is unusual for a gaming laptop. It also features a solid webcam and a bright, 16:10 QHD display, though we wish it didn’t cap out at 120hz. We also enjoyed using the keyboard and had no complaints about the port selection. It’s chunky for a 14-inch laptop, sure, but if you’re a gamer who often travels or commutes, it’s relatively lightweight and thus could be a good buy.
Regularly $1,649.99, you can currently buy the Zephyrus G14 with an AMD Ryzen 9 processor, 16GB of memory, and 1TB of storage for $1,199.99 ($450 off) at Best Buy.
LG deals
LG Gram 15
LG’s Gram 15 laptop is the smaller, 15-inch version of the 17-inch LG Gram 17, which we think is the best laptop for fans of big screens. While we haven’t tested the LG Gram 15, we have reviewed the 17-inch model, which we found to be a powerful yet quiet laptop boasting a good 12-hour battery life and a terrific keyboard. The 15-inch IPS display features a lower 1920 x 1080 resolution than the 17-inch one, but also shares a backlit keyboard, high-capacity battery, a decent port selection, and is lightweight so you should be able to lug it about easily. Plus, it’s cheaper than the 17-inch version.
Right now, you can buy the model with 16GB of RAM, an Intel Core i5-1135G7 CPU, and 512GB of storage for $999 from Adorama ($101 off). You can also buy it with 32GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, and an Intel Core i7 1260P processor for $1,799 ($100 off) on Amazon.
Acer deals
Acer Aspire 5
The Acer Aspire 5 is a good budget-friendly laptop to consider. The 15.6-inch laptop doesn't offer Thunderbolt support, but it does feature a wide port selection that includes one USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 1, two USB 3.1 Gen 1, one USB 2.0, one HDMI 2.0, one Ethernet, and a power port. The affordable laptop also features a terrific backlit keyboard that’s comfortable to use and sound quality that punches above its weight class.
There are trade-offs, of course. The battery life is quite poor — the Intel model we tested only lasted around five hours — and it’s loaded with some bloatware. The touchpad can also be hard to use, and the sheer width of the laptop means it might be challenging to store in a backpack. Still, if you just need a laptop that gets the job done, the Aspire 5 is on sale in various configurations and processors at Amazon. Right now, for instance, you can buy it with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a Ryzen 5 5500U processor for $449.89 instead of $529.99.
Flutes, synths, a human voice – how should electric vehicles sound?
As Australia looks to the US and Europe on electric vehicle safety rules, carmakers are experimenting with sounds that will effectively warn pedestrians
- Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates
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Take a walk down any busy street and the noise can hit like a speaker accidentally left on full volume. The growls of engines accelerating when the traffic light turns green, motorbikes vying for position in the traffic, buses whizzing past and the odd rev-head all compete to be heard.
The sound generated by the internal combustion engine has shaped urban life for a century but that is gradually going to change: by 2050, 90% of cars in Australia will be electric.
Continue reading...jeudi 5 janvier 2023
Hackers reportedly leak email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users
Information posted on a hacking forum in ‘one of the most significant’ breaches of users’ email addresses and phone numbers
Hackers stole the email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users and posted them on an online hacking forum, a security researcher said Wednesday.
The breach “will unfortunately lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing and doxxing”, Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity monitoring firm Hudson Rock, wrote on LinkedIn. He called it “one of the most significant leaks I’ve seen”.
Continue reading...Razer Blade 16 hands-on: a dream gaming laptop
Razer has given us a first look at the Razer Blade 16 and Razer Blade 18, which will be released in the next few months. And I will say right now: I am impressed.
The Blade 18 is the biggest and most powerful Razer Blade that has ever been released, which is neat in itself. But I’m actually even more excited about the Blade 16, which is debuting some never-before-seen on a Razer Blade.
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First, there’s a Mini LED screen. And it looks great. On the screen, some shades looked blindingly bright against black backdrops, where they might’ve looked washed out on other gaming displays. Black areas, speaking of, looked gorgeously black.
Next to the Blade 16 model in its demo area, Razer actually had a separate panel made of Mini LEDs that mirrored what the Blade 16 was doing. When local dimming zones brightened and dimmed on the Blade, the corresponding diodes brightened and dimmed on the panel. (I know it’s hard to picture, but you can see what I’m talking about in the photo below.) We were told that the Blade 16’s screen had 1,000 local dimming zones, and that feels like a big number on paper — but this panel really highlighted (heh) just how many teensy, independent lights are crammed into that laptop, and how much work they’re all doing.
We weren’t actually able to play any titles on these Blade models, since they were pre-production units — Razer only showed us a video of game footage. This meant I was not able to try the intriguing toggle feature (which allows you to easily swap between 4K/120Hz and 1920 x 1200/240Hz modes), but my colleague Cameron Faulkner wrote about that earlier today if you want to know more.
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I’m also thrilled — thrilled, I tell you — that these laptops have 16:10 screens; it really does make the 16-inch panel seem endless compared to Blades that I’ve used in the past. As a bonus, the taller screen makes for a longer chassis, which gave Razer room for a large 95.2Wh battery — which, with all the fancy screen features this device needs to power, may be a real necessity.
I was also able to take the keyboard and touchpad for a spin, and I can confirm that they are the same old large, sturdy keyboard and touchpad that we’ve seen on Razer Blades past. Inside, configurations come with Intel’s 13th-Gen Core i9-13950HX and up to Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 graphics. The Blade 16 starts at $2,699.99.
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Now, all of these additions do come with a grand total of one change that I consider a compromise. That’s the size. The Blade 16 is 5.4 pounds and 13.98 x 9.61 x 0.87 inches. That’s almost a full pound heavier and over a tenth of an inch thicker than last year’s Blade 15 (which this isn’t replacing, per se, but they’re clearly in a similar category).
This is a heavy device; it was a pain for me to lift up, and it certainly doesn’t feel quite as slim and sleek as the Blade 15 did last year. But that’s a compromise some folks will be willing to make in order to get this Mini LED screen (as well as the improved performance the Blade 16 brings), and that’s fair enough.
Snap’s shutting down the app that put cool filters on your Zoom calls
On January 25th, Snap will be shutting down its camera app for Mac and PCs. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, you may remember it as the program that let you apply silly filters to your face while you were on Zoom or other video conference calls. It’s also, as Verge alum Billy Disney pointed out on Mastodon, the reason a boss accidentally showed up to a work meeting as a potato in 2020:
my boss turned herself into a potato on our Microsoft teams meeting and can’t figure out how to turn the setting off, so she was just stuck like this the entire meeting pic.twitter.com/uHLgJUOsXk
— clegg (@PettyClegg) March 30, 2020
Snap announced the change on its support page for Snap Camera, saying that it’ll “no longer be available to use or download” later this month. While the company points out that you can still access a wide array of Snapchat filters on the web version of the app, that’s not quite the same as being able to show up to your next daily standup using the dog filter.
Snap Camera was introduced in 2018, with the company pitching it as a way to spice up your Twitch streams. But it really came into its own as the pandemic started, when many people suddenly found themselves in video calls all day and got tired of staring at an unfiltered version of themselves. Snap’s fortunes have turned since then, though — in 2022, the company laid off 20 percent of its employees, and canceled projects like its Pixy drone.
Snap didn’t immediately reply to The Verge’s request for comment on why it was discontinuing Snap Camera. Part of the reason may be that it’s no longer as essential as it once was. Not only have many companies returned to in-person work, making video conferencing less of an everyday affair, but video chat apps have also been building in their own filters. Zoom has long let you dress up as an animal, or apply bizarre facial effects, and on Thursday it announced it was adding customizable human avatars as well. Perhaps it’s a bit too soon to compare the feature to Snap’s Bitmoji.
OLED plus E Ink: Lenovo’s ThinkBook Twist is halfway to my dream laptop
Last month, I spent 15 whole minutes hunched over an HP Spectre x360 in a drafty Best Buy store — agonizing over whether its amazing OLED screen would destroy the laptop’s battery life and repeatedly googling for the answer. When I found out the answer was “yes, substantially less battery,” I had to walk away.
But why should I have to choose between a great screen and one I use all day? Why not both? That’s the idea behind the ThinkBook Plus Twist, a new laptop that Lenovo’s announcing at CES 2023.
Not only does it have a 13.3-inch, 400-nit, 60Hz 2.8K OLED touchscreen that covers 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut, you can swivel its screen around to reveal another 12-inch, color E Ink touchscreen around back — one that refreshes 12 times a second (12Hz), which definitely felt slow in a demo but isn’t bad for E Ink technology.
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Image: Lenovo
In case you need a refresher, E Ink is an ultra-low-power screen tech, thanks to dye-filled microcapsules that largely stay stable, continually displaying an image until you refresh the screen to show something else instead. They’re used in e-readers like the Amazon Kindle that measure their battery life in months instead of hours but can’t display many colors or offer smooth refresh rates.
But with Lenovo’s laptop, they don’t necessarily need to — because you’ve also got that glorious OLED panel on the other side. As a writer who sometimes needs my laptop to go a full workday and beyond but also sometimes watches video, this could be the best of both worlds: Windows on E Ink for reading and writing, Windows on OLED for everything else.
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Image: Lenovo
Just don’t expect Kindle battery life out of a laptop like this since you’ve got the overhead of running Windows on its 13th Gen Intel processor (and up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of PCIe Gen 4 storage) rather than a simple e-reader chip. Lenovo’s estimating up to 21 hours of battery life from its 56Wh battery using the E Ink screen, and it isn’t providing context about what kind of content can run for 21 hours at a time.
This also isn’t quite my next laptop because it’s lacking any full-size ports, with just a pair of Thunderbolt 4 USB-C jacks and a 3.5mm audio jack to its name, and I hesitate to buy a laptop with a squared-off front edge that’ll likely dig into my wrists... plus the OLED screen should probably be a high-refresh-rate 120Hz 16:10 panel like the ones that Asus is shipping if you really want my money.
This isn’t the first Lenovo laptop with an identically twisty hinge or the first to add a second E Ink screen, but I’ve always been mystified by where Lenovo chose to put those secondary screens in the past. First, it tried to replace the keyboard with E-Ink, and then it effectively stuck an e-reader on the lid of a laptop that you could only really use closed.
Now, it feels like it’s finally in the right place — and even if it’s not my dream laptop, it’s a working blueprint.
Lenovo says the ThinkBook Plus Twist has a starting price of $1,649, and it should ship in June 2023.
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