App spares users the embarrassment of a blanket notification as part of series of updates over coming month
WhatsApp users will soon be able to avoid social awkwardness by gracefully – and silently – leaving annoying groups, the company has announced.
Currently, if you leave a WhatsApp group, every member is notified, which can be embarrassing for smaller groups and irritating for larger ones.
Continue reading...Billionaire seeks material on how JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs advised platform during negotiations
Lawyers for Elon Musk have subpoenaed JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs for records relating to the billionaire’s plan to buy Twitter.
Musk has requested the banks turn over “documents and communications” relating to how they advised Twitter during negotiations, which Musk abruptly backed out of last month after offering to purchase the website for $44bn in April, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Allow a budget of £4,000 to do-it-yourself, from the editing and design through to marketing
“A top-of-her-game literary agent tells us she receives about 3,000 submissions a year,” says Joe Sedgwick, the head of writing services at The Literary Consultancy. “Of those, she requests to see the full manuscripts of about 70. Of those writers, she will take on maybe five to 10.”
Faced with these odds, many people who dream of getting their writing into the hands of readers are turning to self-publishing.
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As part of Snap’s child safety efforts, Snapchat is launching a new supervision tool on Tuesday that the company says mimics how parents and teenagers interact in the real world.
Snapchat’s new “Family Center” hub allows parents and guardians to keep tabs on who their teens message with on the app without disclosing what it is they’re saying to each other. Both the guardian and the child must accept the Family Center invite before the oversight tools can take effect. Once the invites are accepted, a guardian can see the entirety of their child’s friends list and a list of accounts they’ve interacted with over the last seven days and report concerning accounts to Snap’s Trust and Safety Team.
“Our goal was to create a set of tools designed to reflect the dynamics of real-world relationships and foster collaboration and trust between parents and teens,” Snap said in its Tuesday blog post. The feature is meant to copy real-life relationships, like when a parent lets a kid’s friends come over but doesn’t monitor everything they say.
Snap plans to roll out new Family Center features over the next few weeks, including tools allowing parents to view the new friends their children have added along with additional content controls.
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Image: Snap
Snap’s new parental controls come as lawmakers continue their work to address children’s online safety. After Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked internal documents disclosing how Meta’s platforms can harm young users, some of the largest tech platforms were called in to testify before Congress. Among YouTube and TikTok was a representative from Snap before a Senate committee last October.
At last year’s hearing, Jennifer Stout, Snap’s vice president of global public policy, said, “Snapchat was built as an antidote to social media” — distinguishing how Snap is distancing itself from Facebook and other social media platforms.
Haugen’s disclosures and the following hearings led to the introduction of a number of bills to tackle children’s safety online. Late last month, a Senate panel approved two bills that would restrict how tech platforms can collect and use data from young users, according to The Washington Post.
One bill, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, would ban tech companies from collecting the data of users between 13 and 16 years old without parental consent. A second bill, the Kids Online Safety Act, would create an “eraser” button allowing for young users to easily delete their data from platforms. The measures were approved amid a growing movement of advocates who are calling for lawmakers to raise the age limits in federal law to cover the privacy of children between the ages of 13 and 18 years old, rather than simply children under the age of 13.
Following Snap’s October congressional hearing, the company announced that it was working on the Family Center tool it announced on Tuesday. In a statement to The Verge last year, a Snap spokesperson said, “Our overall goal is to help educate and empower young people to make the right choices to enhance their online safety and to help parents be partners with their kids in navigating the digital world.”
In January, Snap launched a feature limiting the number of friend suggestions teenagers see on its app, via its Quick Add menu. According to the company, kids between the ages of 13 to 17 only receive suggestions for accounts that “have a certain number of friends in common with that person.”
Users also reported problems with Gmail, Google maps and Google images
Google experienced a major international internet outage on Tuesday, technology platforms reported.
The realtime online platform Downdetector reported users had registered problems with Google explorer, the world’s dominant search engine from 2.12am BST (9.12pm EST, 11.12AM AEST.
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Snap is in the early stages of planning layoffs, according to two people familiar with the plans.
The planned cuts come after the company recently delivered disappointing earnings results and didn't forecast earnings for the third quarter — news that sent its stock price cratering to near-all-time lows. It’s currently unclear how many of Snap’s more than 6,000 employees will be laid off, as managers across the company are still planning the full scope of the cuts for their teams.
Russ Caditz-Peck, a Snap spokesman, declined to comment.
Snap’s business has been hurt recently on two major fronts: The first is Apple’s introduction of the “Ask App Not to Track” prompt, which an estimated majority of iPhone owners have opted “Yes” to, making it harder for companies like Snap to as effectively target their ads. The second factor is the broader economic downturn that has especially punished the stock prices of Snap and other cash-burning companies. Snap has been profitable in only one quarter since it went public in 2017.
The last time Snap did layoffs was in 2018, when it was still reeling from the fallout of a poorly executed Snapchat redesign. Since then, its user base has grown to 347 million daily users, surpassing Twitter.
But the company has struggled to build a significant ads business. And its attempts at selling hardware, like a $230 selfie drone, haven’t gone anywhere. In late May, CEO Evan Spiegel told employees that the company would sharply pullback on hiring and “find additional cost savings.”
Snap’s isn’t alone in needing to make cuts: Twitter, TikTok, and a host of other tech firms have either announced layoffs or paused hiring in recent months. Even Snap’s much larger and profitable competitor in social media, Meta, has slowed hiring and warned employees about tough times ahead.
Sent a wildly inappropriate text meant for your boo to, I don’t know, your boss? Now you have some extra time to save face and delete it — well, if you’re using WhatsApp, at least.
WhatsApp users now have a little over two days after sending a message to delete it instead of just one hour, the company announced today.
To start using the new feature right now, open up the WhatsApp group or individual chat where you sent the message(s). Make sure to tap and hold the content you want to get rid of, click “Delete,” and then select either “Delete for everyone” or “Delete for me.”
Yet before you go off on a deleting spree, be aware there’s a (slight) catch: all recipients must be updated to the most recent version of WhatsApp in order for this to actually work — and you won’t actually receive a notification if the message didn’t delete.
Still, this could be a handy new feature that may help WhatsApp gain a slight advantage over Apple’s iMessage instant message service. Apple, after all, still doesn’t offer this capability and only will whenever the heck its new iPhone, iPad, and Mac operating systems are released, possibly this fall.
For now, however, the iOS 16 beta only gives users two minutes to pull the plug — and only so long as recipients have downloaded the beta version as well. Which, let’s face it, isn’t something you can count on.
LG is today announcing two new sets of wireless earbuds. First up are the Tone Free T90 buds, which now become the company’s flagship pair. They still have the signature bacteria-killing UVnano charging case. And like the previous Tone Free FP9, the case can also double as a Bluetooth transmitter, letting you run an aux cable to devices that might lack wireless connectivity — like a treadmill — and still use the earbuds like normal.
According to LG’s press release, the noise-canceling T90s have “a new internal structure with larger drivers that helps generate deeper, more satisfying bass.” But what’s more interesting is that they support Dolby Head Tracking “across your favorite content and devices.” Here’s how LG describes that experience:
Dolby Head Tracking recalibrates the sound as users move their heads for a more natural sound experience. Listeners will feel like they are in the center of the scene and experience a whole new level of audio immersion whether they are listening to music, watching movies, enjoying favorite streaming series or playing video games.
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Image: LG
LG claims that “the T90s are the first wireless earbuds to feature an audio virtualizer designed by Dolby specifically for earbuds” that makes for better immersion and dimensionality to the sound. Apple’s AirPods and Beats earbuds support head tracking spatial audio, as do Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Pro, Buds 2, and Buds Live. Google is planning to add the same feature on its Pixel Buds Pro later this year. In all cases, the audio changes as you move your head around. The T90 earbuds promise up to 9 hours of battery life (with adaptive ANC turned off), plus another 18 hours from the charging case.
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Image: LG
The company is also making a play for the fitness crowd with its new Tone Free Fit (TF8) earbuds. Like other workout-focused buds, these have soft, silicone fins to help ensure they remain in your ears securely even during vigorous exercise. They’re rated IPX7 for water resistance, a step up from the IPX4 in the T90s, and include hybrid ANC. Battery life is also slightly higher, at up to 10 hours of continuous playback.
LG unfortunately hasn’t announced pricing for either pair of earbuds, but they’re both set for release in September.
The beta for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is set to arrive next month, with PlayStation players getting access first, followed by those on Xbox and PC. Infinity Ward shared the news at its CDL Champs (Call of Duty League Championship) tournament. As with its previous betas, the dates are separated by console and whether you preordered the game or not.
The first early access beta kicks off on September 16th to 17th for PlayStation 4 and 5 players who preordered the game. This is followed by the open beta for all PlayStation players, which begins on September 18th and ends on the 20th.
The crossplay beta for players who preordered the game on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC will last from September 22nd to 23rd, while the open crossplay beta for all platforms starts on September 24th and ends on the 26th. Each session begins at 1PM ET.
Pre-Order now for early access to the #MWII Open BETA!
— Call of Duty @ #CDLChamps (@CallofDuty) August 7, 2022
The #MWII @Playstation Early Access Beta starts September 16, with Early and Open access Betas to follow on all platforms. https://t.co/cLMlBb41mV pic.twitter.com/2GZ0laKE9C
At CDL Champs, Infinity Ward also teased a new multiplayer map, Grand Prix, which will have you duking it out on a racetrack. This map will be available to play during the beta.
If you haven’t pre-ordered the game, Infinity Ward says you’ll have the chance to receive a beta code that’ll give you early access. While it already gave some away during the tournament today, there will likely be more chances to snag some from streamers and YouTubers leading up to the beta’s start date.
We got our first glimpse at Modern Warfare II in June, but Infinity Ward’s set to reveal a lot more about the upcoming game at its Call of Duty: Next event (including a full multiplayer reveal), which will take place on September 15th. Modern Warfare II launches on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X / S, and PC (via Battle.net and Steam) on October 28th.
A security vulnerability on Twitter allowed a bad actor to find out the account names associated with certain email addresses and phone numbers (and yes, that could include your secret celebrity stan accounts), Twitter confirmed on Friday. Twitter initially patched the issue in January after receiving a report through its bug bounty program, but a hacker managed to exploit the flaw before Twitter even knew about it.
The vulnerability, which stemmed from an update the platform made to its code in June 2021, went unnoticed until earlier this year. This gave hackers several months to exploit the flaw, although Twitter said it “had no evidence to suggest someone had taken advantage of the vulnerability” at the time of its discovery.
Last month’s report from Bleeping Computer suggested otherwise, and revealed that a hacker managed to exploit the vulnerability while it flew under Twitter’s radar. The hacker reportedly amassed a database of over 5.4 million accounts by taking advantage of the flaw, and then tried to sell the information on a hacker forum for $30,000. After analyzing the data posted to the forum, Twitter confirmed that its user data had been compromised.
It’s still unclear how many users have actually been affected though, and Twitter doesn’t seem to know, either. While Twitter says it plans on notifying affected users, it isn’t “able to confirm every account that was potentially impacted.” Twitter advises anyone concerned about their secret accounts to enable two-factor authentication, as well as to attach an email address or phone number that isn’t publicly known to the account they don’t want to be associated with.
Around the same time Meta hiked up the price on its Quest 2 headsets, it also announced that it’s ending Quest 1 support for Population One, a popular battle-royale shooter set in virtual reality. BigBox VR, the Meta-owned developer behind the game, shared the update in a post on its blog, noting that Quest 1 owners will no longer be able to launch or play the game starting October 31st, 2022.
BigBox VR says the shutdown is necessary so it can focus on developing new experiences “that will push the boundaries of multiplayer VR.” Quest 1 players can still technically play the game if they have a VR-ready PC, however. The game supports cross-buy, which makes the PC version available via Air Link and Oculus Link. This should let you wirelessly play Population: One on your PC from your Quest 1 headset. Players using the Quest 2, Oculus Rift, and Oculus Rift S will still have access to the game.
While Meta’s offering Quest 1 owners a refund for Population: One, there’s a catch: you had to have purchased the game from the Quest Store within the past six months. The policy seems kind of unfair for a game that launched on the Quest nearly two years ago and will likely leave a number of players with a game that they can’t even play (unless, of course, they upgrade to the now-$399 Quest 2 or use Air Link, which requires a pricey VR-ready PC).
Population: One’s shutdown also raises the question of whether other developers will soon ax support for the three-year-old Quest 1. Meta spokesperson Caiti Sullivan said in a statement to The Verge that the company’s currently “working out the details of an ecosystem-wide end-of-support process,” and that “other developers who choose to end support for apps on Quest 1 will be able to do so.” Meta declined to comment further when asked whether any other games will end Quest 1 support in the near future.
I know that games can’t support every older system forever, but doling out a price increase, along with an announcement that will soon leave Quest 1 owners with one less game to play, is like a double punch to the gut. As my colleague Jay Peters points out, Meta could be raising the price of the Quest 2, and perhaps even pushing users towards it, to stem the the losses its virtual reality arm reported in both the first and second quarter of 2022.
Update August 7th, 2:27PM ET: Updated to add that Population: One supports cross-buy.
A bridge between two charging worlds
Your leaf blower battery should be able to charge a laptop. Your drill battery should charge your phone. And while we’re at it, why shouldn’t our ever-more powerful USB-C power adapters be able to charge those power tool batteries as well?
Fundamentally, there’s not much difference between a battery bank you buy from Anker and a power tool battery from DeWalt — both generally contain the same 18650 lithium-ion cells. But to do all that, your power tool batteries would need a powerful USB-C port.
And that hasn’t really been a thing… till now.
@verge Powering hours of play on your Steam Deck with a DeWalt battery? That’s now a thing #techtok #dewalttools #batterylife
♬ original sound - The Verge
The $100 DeWalt DCB094 USB Charging Kit lets you add that port to any DeWalt 20V power tool battery in a literal snap. Slide this quarter-pound adapter onto your battery pack, and you get a bi-directional 100W USB-C PD port. That means not only can you charge up to a MacBook Pro-sized laptop with a big enough DeWalt pack, you can charge those DeWalt packs with your laptop or phone’s USB-C charger as well.
The adapter supports everything from the cheap 1.3Ah packs that came with your loss-leader combo kit to the massive 15Ah FlexVolt packs you’d probably only stick in stationary tools. It’s the biggest gadget charging battery you’re liable to find outside of dedicated power stations.
As someone with a garage drawer full of DeWalt batteries, I couldn’t wait to put it to the test. But it’s also not quite the experience I was dreaming of.
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I’ve been testing the DeWalt DCB094 on and off for months, and here’s the good news: it totally works.
I turned DeWalt’s monster 15Ah pack into a USB-C external battery that was able to charge my wife’s 14-inch MacBook Pro (69.6Wh) three full times and still had gas in the tank. My Steam Deck? I charged up its 40.04Wh pack five full times — that’s 10 extra hours of Elden Ring right there. When I filmed a nearly three-hour timelapse Lego build with my iPhone, I plugged it into a 6Ah DeWalt pack knowing there was no way I’d run out of juice.
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Every DeWalt 20V battery I tried, new or old, large or small, worked with the adapter, too. That includes my two 1.5Ah packs, one 1.7Ah pack, the two 5Ah packs that came with my lawnmower, and the two 6Ah packs I bought about a year ago and rarely use. I clocked them all charging up to 100W in both directions over that USB-C port, enough to keep today’s (but not tomorrow’s) biggest USB-C PD laptops running just like they were plugged into the wall.
When it came time to recharge those power tool batteries, the 100W USB-C port sometimes let me do it faster than DeWalt’s AC adapters, too. While DeWalt unfortunately only ships the DCB094 with a 65W USB-C charger, even that should offer a faster charging rate than the company’s cheaper AC adapters that come with drill or driver kits. And when I added my own separately purchased 100W USB-C charger, I was able to shave off time over my 4A (80W) DeWalt AC adapter when charging the very biggest packs.
Here’s how fast I got these batteries to charge and roughly how much I got out of them:
The only issue I had was that if I fully drained a battery, and I mean fully drained it — ran it all the way down in a leaf blower or drill repeatedly until it would spin no more — sometimes the DeWalt adapter wouldn’t light up to charge when I popped it on. Sometimes I had to trick it by plugging it into a different battery or charger first. Oh, and you can’t charge one DeWalt battery with another DeWalt battery using two adapters. I tried.
So if it largely all works beautifully, why am I giving it this product a 6? Partly because The Verge just moved to a full 10-point scale for review scores to avoid score inflation — a 6 is still good! — but also partly because the DeWalt adapter’s advantages begin to recede when you’re not pairing it with a 15Ah battery that costs $389 all by itself.
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With smaller batteries like my 1.5A, 1.7A and even 4Ah packs, they simply didn’t charge needy devices long enough to justify reaching for them over a traditional battery bank or charger.
Part of that’s likely due to transfer losses, which aren’t unique to DeWalt. You can’t fully charge a 100Wh laptop battery with a 100Wh battery pack like DeWalt’s DCB205 because some of that energy doesn’t make it across. (Some gets expended as heat, and I can attest that charging my 100Wh HyperJuice with the DeWalt adapter made the HyperJuice get uncomfortably hot to the touch.) In general, I saw losses of between 20 percent and 33 percent with my gadgets – for example, the 6Ah (120Wh) DCB206 only gave me 80Wh worth of Steam Deck battery life.
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Photo by Sean Hollister/The Verge
But that 6Ah battery is also a 2.5-pound brick once you add the DeWalt adapter — twice the weight of my HyperJuice, even if we’re assuming I don’t have to buy the DeWalt battery because I already have one for my tools. DeWalt’s 5Ah battery is only a little lighter, but then I might only be looking at 66Wh of power for my gadgets, and so on.
When you consider the fact that DeWalt’s batteries are quite pricey and heavy for the capacity they typically offer, I can’t really recommend someone buy into the DeWalt ecosystem just for this feature, unless you really need rugged batteries that can charge your devices and power tools on the go.
But if you already have a garage full of sizeable DeWalt batteries that don’t get a lot of use? I could absolutely see myself spending $100 if I didn’t already have a capable power bank or two. Between the 5A charging speeds and the 100W output for gadgets, there’s a lot to like.
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Now, though, what I really want is for DeWalt and company to take the obvious next step: stick the USB-C port on the battery itself, so we don’t need to mess with adapters at all. In January, DeWalt product manager Sean Fitzgibbons told me the DCB094 could be a bit of a test balloon: “If we get the interest that I expect we’re going to get, I think that would open the door a lot more to potentially adding that directly to batteries down the road.”
I think DeWalt should just do it. A lot of people would buy a USB-C native power tool battery who’d never consider a $100 adapter you’ve gotta take on and off every time.
Samsung has officially started to roll out its One UI 5 open beta to Galaxy S22 owners in the US, Germany, and South Korea. The update comes only a few weeks ahead of Android 13’s expected release, and just a few days before Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event. Like the operating system it’s powered by, the One UI 5 beta looks like a relatively small update that adds some customization options, tweaks to notifications, as well as new accessibility and security settings.
One UI 5 builds off of Android 13’s theming options by offering up to 16 preset color themes based on your wallpaper and 12 additional color options for your home screen, icons, and quick panels. It also introduces a way to stack similarly-sized widgets on top of one another that’s supposed to help create a less cluttered look.
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Image: Samsung
There are some new accessibility features as well, including a Magnifier tool that uses the phone’s camera to zoom in on real-life objects and text, as well as options to have your phone read your keyboard input aloud.
Samsung details several other features that One UI 5 has adopted from Android 13, such as new notification settings that require app developers to ask for your permission before sending you notifications. The One UI 5 beta also lets you set your preferred language on an app-by-app basis, and gives you access to a redesigned security dashboard that scans your phone for potential issues.
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Image: Samsung
When Samsung released its One UI 4 beta last year, it highlighted how it’s getting updates out earlier each year. This time around, Samsung widened the gap between its previous update even more, beating its One UI 4 beta’s September 2021 launch date by a little over a month. As was the case with Samsung’s previous One UI betas, you can access the One UI 5 update by registering through the Samsung Members app.
While the One UI 5 beta is only available on S22 devices in the US, Germany, and South Korea right now, Samsung plans on rolling it out to more devices and regions in the near future. We might hear more about what One UI 5 has to offer at Samsung’s Unpacked event on August 10th, where Samsung’s rumored to launch a range of new devices, including the Galaxy Z Flip 4, Z Fold 4, Galaxy Watch 5, and Galaxy Buds Pro 2.
Determining the way artificial intelligence is used and governed will be one of the century’s key political battlegrounds. Here’s what everyone needs to know
“Google fires engineer who contended its AI technology was sentient.” “Chess robot grabs and breaks finger of seven-year-old opponent.” “DeepMind’s protein-folding AI cracks biology’s biggest problem.” A new discovery (or debacle) is reported practically every week, sometimes exaggerated, sometimes not. Should we be exultant? Terrified? Policymakers struggle to know what to make of AI and it’s hard for the lay reader to sort through all the headlines, much less to know what to be believe. Here are four things every reader should know.
First, AI is real and here to stay. And it matters. If you care about the world we live in, and how that world is likely to change in the coming years and decades, you should care as much about the trajectory of AI as you might about forthcoming elections or the science of climate breakdown. What happens next in AI, over the coming years and decades, will affect us all. Electricity, computers, the internet, smartphones and social networking have all changed our lives, radically, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, and AI will, too.
Continue reading...The new Eve Motion Sensor is speedy and stable as long as you keep Bluetooth at bay
A smart home without sensors and automations is basically a remote-controlled home. Using your voice or an app to turn lights on isn’t much easier (and in some cases is harder) than flicking on a light switch. Smart is when lights just turn on as you walk into a room. But when you walk in and they don’t turn on, that’s worse. This common smart home frustration is something the Eve Motion Sensor ($39.99), with its shiny new Thread protocol on board, promises to fix.
Thread is a mesh networking protocol designed for the smart home. It claims to be faster, more reliable, and more energy-efficient than the current smart home protocols most sensors run on — Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, and Z-Wave. (Don’t buy Wi-Fi motion sensors. They are not good.) While all of these protocols have mesh components, Thread’s selling point is that it doesn’t have a single point of failure in the form of a single hub or bridge devices need to connect to.
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I have motion sensors everywhere in my house from a number of manufacturers, all working to turn my lights on and off. I also use one to kickstart my morning routine. A sensor in my bedroom tells my kettle to start boiling, turns on the lights, plays my favorite radio station from a smart speaker, and adjusts the thermostat. All I have to do is get out of bed.
But my biggest complaints are that sometimes these sensors aren’t as fast as flipping a switch, and sometimes they don’t work at all. This is often down to how they communicate. In my two weeks with the Eve Motion, I never had this problem. It worked quickly and responded reliably — as long as it was on my home’s Thread network. When it was forced over to Bluetooth (which is what the previous Eve Motion ran on), it was slower and less reliable.
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The new Eve Motion is the second-generation motion sensor from the European smart home company. The biggest changes, beyond the addition of Thread, are size (it’s much smaller), price (it’s a bit cheaper), and a new additional sensor (it can now measure light levels as well). It also uses two AAA batteries instead of two AAs, but battery life is still one year, according to Eve. It keeps the water resistant IPX3 rating of the earlier model, so this is still a good option for use in a bathroom or covered porch.
Currently, Eve’s products only work on Apple’s HomeKit platform, so you need an iPhone or iPad to set this up. You also need an Apple Home hub (such as a HomePod or Apple TV) to create automations and scenes with the Eve Motion. To take advantage of the new Thread protocol, you will need a HomePod Mini or Apple TV 4K (second gen or newer). Without one of those, the sensor will work over Bluetooth LE.
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In testing the Eve Motion to trigger lights to turn on and off based on motion and light levels in various rooms of my house — my laundry room, kitchen, dining room, and an upstairs hallway — response time was impressive. It turned them on instantly when I walked in, even in the farthest corners of my house, where Eve’s earlier Bluetooth motion sensor had struggled to keep up.
But while its reactions were excellent, the Eve Motion isn’t noticeably faster than the Hue and Aqara motion sensors I use. The big difference is it always worked. Both of those Zigbee-based sensors require a dedicated hub — that single point of failure I was talking about. The Eve Motion uses Thread, which — in a robust Thread mesh network — means it has backup options.
A Thread network can have multiple routers (smart plugs, smart bulbs) and border routers (Apple HomePod Mini, second-generation Apple TV 4K) working together to relay messages to devices. If one goes down, the motion sensor can just talk to another one. If my Hue bridge or Aqara hub get disconnected or go down, all my automations stop working.
I tested Thread’s robustness by disabling the Eve smart plug and HomePod Mini that the Eve Motion was relying on and retesting. (I can see the Thread network topology in Eve’s app.) It always continued to work, and while the network did take a few moments to reconfigure when a device went offline, I didn’t have to do any troubleshooting other than waiting a few seconds.
The only time I had any other issues with the Eve Motion was when I disabled all my Thread devices. Then the sensor kicked over to Bluetooth, and the reaction speed dropped dramatically — taking over five seconds in some places to respond to motion.
Eve has said all its Thread devices will support Matter when the smart home standard is released later this year. And when it arrives, there will be many more Thread border routers and devices the Eve Motion can rely on — including smart speakers from Google and Amazon. You’ll also be able to use Eve’s motion sensor and its other Thread products with those smart home platforms when Matter launches. But for now, it’s Apple HomeKit only.
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Setting up the Eve Motion was simple, open the Apple Home app or Eve app and scan the HomeKit code. You can then set up automations using the sensor. The Home app will suggest some for you based on which room you’ve placed it in. You can also create your own using “motion detected” or “no motion detected” as triggers.
The new LUX sensor in the Eve Motion also lets you create automations based on how bright it is in a room. For example, you can set it not to trigger lights on motion if the room is bright enough already. It can also pair with smart shades, such as Eve’s MotionBlinds, to adjust the shades based on the light level in the room.
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Here is where I would have liked to see a temperature sensor included — which is in the Philips Hue sensor, this model’s closest competition. I live in the South, where it gets very hot, and I like to create automations that close the shades in a room if both the light level is high and the temperature rises above 78 degrees Fahrenheit. You could do this with Eve by adding an Eve Room or Eve Weather sensor, both of which detect temperature, but those cost $99 and $80, respectively, whereas the Hue Motion Sensor is $45.
Bear in mind that the more advanced automations work best when set up in the Eve app, as the Home app is limited when it comes to setting multiple conditions (unless you use the complicated Shortcuts workaround). The Eve app adds more options, such as only triggering motion in darkness, adjusting the motion sensitivity (low / medium / high), and changing the motion re-trigger time. This last one is helpful to tweak if you find your lighting automations keep turning off sooner than you want.
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Overall, I was impressed with the Eve Motion and can see how this type of reliability and speed can make the smart home a better experience. But while there are more Thread border routers and compatible devices today than there were just a year ago, there still aren’t enough to make this an unequivocal recommendation. And Thread border routers from different manufacturers still can’t talk to each other (although a fix is coming).
If you don’t have any type of Thread network set up in your home, don’t buy this. Without Thread, the Eve Motion reverts to Bluetooth LE, which is nowhere near as fast or reliable as Zigbee or Thread. If all you want is to turn lights on and off, you’ll be better off with the excellent Philips Hue Motion Sensor ($45 plus a Hue bridge). The Hue app has much simpler automation options for lighting control, and it works with Apple’s HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings.
However, if you are like me and are gearing your smart home up to work with Matter when the standard arrives later this year, this little gadget will be an excellent block on which to build a truly smart home.
Photos by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
‘Black-box’ AI-based discrimination seems to be beyond the control of organisations that use it
It started with a single tweet in November 2019. David Heinemeier Hansson, a high-profile tech entrepreneur, lashed out at Apple’s newly launched credit card, calling it “sexist” for offering his wife a credit limit 20 times lower than his own.
The allegations spread like wildfire, with Hansson stressing that artificial intelligence – now widely used to make lending decisions – was to blame. “It does not matter what the intent of individual Apple reps are, it matters what THE ALGORITHM they’ve placed their complete faith in does. And what it does is discriminate. This is fucked up.”
Continue reading...The Go 2 is the rare, premium sub-compact laptop left
Small, premium laptops — truly small ones — have fallen out of fashion in recent years. The smallest computer Apple sells has a 13.3-inch screen. Dell’s tiniest XPS comes with a 13.4-inch panel. HP’s Spectre X360 line scales down to 13.5-inch screens, which the company lists as a 14-inch class. The 11- or 12-inch laptops you can buy (the ones that aren’t tablets trying to masquerade as something else) are typically cheap and slow. Modern laptops have trimmed weights and bezels and frames considerably, making it easier to tote around those 13-inch or larger screens, finding a premium, consumer laptop with 12-inch or smaller screen for the ultimate in portability is a challenge.
That’s where Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Go 2 comes in. The least expensive laptop Microsoft sells (not counting the education-only Laptop SE), the $599-and-up Laptop Go 2, is also the smallest and lightest, with a 12.4-inch screen and weight of just under two and a half pounds. But it maintains the Surface design aesthetic and features, including a comfortable keyboard, clear speakers and microphones, a smooth trackpad, and 3:2 aspect ratio.
Of course, that portability doesn’t come without compromise. The Go 2 doesn’t have the range of processor, RAM, and storage options of larger laptops, sticking with an 11th Gen Core i5 processor and maxing out at 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Battery life doesn’t even reach half a day of work for me. This isn’t a computer for heavy, demanding workloads (and certainly not gamers or those doing creative visual work). It’s meant for someone who just needs to stay on top of email, compose some documents, and browse the web and wants a small, light on-the-go machine. After all, it’s right in the name.
How we review and rate devices
The Surface Laptop Go 2 maintains Microsoft’s minimalist Surface aesthetic: its squared-off wedge shape is identical to the first-generation Go, from 2020, or a slightly shrunken-down Surface Laptop 4. This time around, you can get it in a sage green in addition to the light blue, gold, or silver options. My review unit has this green color, and it’s quite nice. I’m not mad that this year’s green phone trend is bleeding over to laptops now.
Though this is Microsoft’s least expensive laptop, it doesn’t look or feel like a cheap computer, with tight tolerances, lack of chassis flex, and a stiff hinge with perfect one-finger opening. (The lack of tacky stickers on the deck is also rare in this price range.) Like the larger Surface computers, the Go 2 has an aluminum lid and deck — though Microsoft does use a plastic panel on the bottom, instead of aluminum like the Surface Laptop 4, it never once had a negative impact on my experience. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a nicer-feeling computer in this price range.
The Laptop Go 2 has the same port selection as its predecessor, which is to say, it’s kinda lousy. There’s a single USB-A port, a single USB-C port (not Thunderbolt, sadly), a 3.5mm headphone jack, and Microsoft’s magnetic Surface Connect port for charging and docking. You can use that USB-C to connect to external displays or charge the device, but you won’t get the benefits of superfast data transfer that Thunderbolt brings. Microsoft’s larger Surface Laptops are similarly port-limited, so this isn’t a surprise, but another couple USB ports here would really let you leave the dongle life behind.
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The screen on the Laptop Go 2 is also unchanged from its predecessor — a 12.5-inch, 3:2, 1536 x 1024 touch panel. It’s not the brightest or most pixel-dense screen you can get, but in my testing, peak brightness hit a respectable 360 nits, which is enough to let me use the laptop outdoors under an umbrella without much issue. In normal indoor situations, comfortable brightness (about 200 nits) was around 70 percent on the slider. (One aside: if you do plan to use the Go 2 outdoors, you might want to leave the polarized sunglasses at home. The polarization on the screen means the display was black when I wore my sunglasses, unless I rotated the computer 90 degrees. I do not have this issue with MacBooks and the same sunglasses, so it’s possibly something Microsoft could fix for next time.) Touch response on the screen is right in line with expectations, though it is not compatible with Microsoft’s Surface Pens for stylus input.
Like other Surface computers, the Go 2’s screen is well-calibrated and color-accurate out of the box. It covers 99 percent of the sRGB spectrum, 74 percent of AdobeRGB, and 76 percent of P3, according to my colorimeter, which means it could be used for photo editing work without much issue. But most people buying this computer will just appreciate the screen’s pleasing colors and contrast and lack of color shifting or ghosting. They will also appreciate the 3:2 aspect ratio, which provides more vertical real estate than the typical 16:9 screens you get in this price range, ideal for web browsing and document work.
The Laptop Go 2 has an excellent keyboard, despite the laptop’s smaller dimensions, with well-spaced keys, comfortable travel, and quiet feedback. My only real complaint is the lack of keyboard backlight, which should be non-negotiable at this price and is found on many other popular laptops in this price range. The trackpad is smaller than you’ll find on a modern MacBook or XPS laptop, but it works perfectly fine for tracking, scrolling, and other multifinger gestures, and I had no issues with palm rejection.
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The power button, in the upper-right-hand corner of the keyboard, has an integrated fingerprint scanner for Windows Hello authentication (on upgraded tiers, not the base model). More expensive Surface computers use facial recognition cameras, but the fingerprint sensor is quick and easy to use; I didn’t miss facial recognition at all. There’s even a little light around the scanner to help you find it easily when you open the lid.
The camera uses a 720p sensor instead of the 1080p one found in other Surface computers. It’s not stunning by any means, but it isn’t the worst either, with sharper images and more detail than Dell’s XPS cameras or the 720p camera on Apple’s latest 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro. It’s flanked by two microphones that, along with the Laptop Go 2’s speakers under the keyboard deck, provide clear video call audio.
All Surface Laptop Go 2 models have the same Core i5-1135G7 quad-core processor inside. It’s a capable chip and had no issues handling my typical workload of dozens of browser tabs, Slack, Twitter, email, Zoom, and other work apps spread across multiple virtual desktops. It is not, however, useful for AAA gaming or creative work. For fun, I ran the PugetBench benchmark for Adobe Premiere Pro that we use to evaluate more powerful laptops, and it scored a 155. We typically see scores in the 700 and up range in laptops that have discrete graphics cards and more powerful processors. Don’t buy this if you plan on editing 4K video; this isn’t the laptop for you.
The $599 base configuration comes with just 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which isn’t enough. My $799 review unit has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage; that’s the only model I recommend buying. Any less RAM or storage and you’ll run into performance issues or storage problems relatively soon. That price is $100 less than a similarly equipped first-gen Surface Laptop Go, but it’s still far from cheap. (As of this writing, both Microsoft and Best Buy have discounted the range from $40 to $100, which means you can get a top spec one for about $700. That’s not a bad deal.)
Despite its small size and weight, the Laptop Go 2 is not a fanless computer, and its small fan is audible and often annoying. My first review sample had a clicking sound when the fan was at a low speed (which it frequently spins at) that was quite irritating while in a quiet room. A replacement didn’t have that problem, so it’s possible it’s limited to that specific unit. Higher fan speeds present a more common whooshing sound, but I typically only heard those when in Zoom calls or running benchmark tests. The bottom of the laptop also gets warm, but the deck and palm rests remain comfortably cool.
Battery life is perhaps the biggest problem I have with the Surface Laptop Go 2, however. With my standard workload and the screen set to about 200 nits, I averaged less than five hours of use between charges. Many days I had to plug in before noon to ensure it didn’t die in the middle of a meeting or working on a document. I have the uncanny ability to kill laptop batteries faster than a lot of my colleagues, but many 13-inch laptops can easily last twice as long with my workload, so you really have to value the slightly smaller size and lighter weight to accept this kind of battery performance.
Between the fan noise, noticeable heat, and lousy battery life, I wish Microsoft had just used an Arm-based processor in this computer. Plenty of Arm chips, like what’s in the Surface Pro X, Apple’s latest computers, and a few Chromebooks, have enough power to match the usage profile of a computer like this, plus run cooler, don’t need fans, and have much better battery life. Windows 11 continues to get better with Arm too, and this feels like the right kind of computer to leverage that.
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During my entire time using the Surface Laptop Go 2, I was reminded of Apple’s 11-inch MacBook Air and 12-inch MacBook from 2015. Both of those were high-end, small computers that were designed to be as light and portable as possible, while still providing excellent keyboards, trackpads, and capabilities. They also had compromises when it came to battery life and power (and ports).
The Surface Laptop Go 2 feels like a modern version of those compact laptops, complete with many of the same limitations. It’s too expensive to be a real budget option, not powerful enough to be for demanding users, and doesn’t have the battery life to last all day away from an outlet. You can pay less money and get more performance, battery life, and computer from a Chromebook or even another Windows laptop.
What the Laptop Go 2 is, though, is a small, lightweight computer with a comfortable keyboard, trackpad, and screen, wrapped in a nice-looking and -feeling package. It also comes with a real processor and enough RAM and storage to do real work, unlike other subcompact computers. If those are the specific things you value and are looking for in a laptop, well… the Surface Laptop Go 2 is basically your only option right now.
The Stealth line has outgrown its name
Don’t let the name fool you — there is nothing stealthy about this device.
The MSI GS77 Stealth has long been the portable option among MSI’s gaming elite, and while that fact remained dubiously true with last year’s 5.4-pound GS76 Stealth, this year’s 0.79-inch-thick, 6.17-pound GS77 has effectively launched that idea into the sun. This laptop is big, thick, and bulky, and while it lacks the light strips and LED grids that other showy gaming laptops boast, its RGB keyboard still makes very clear that it’s for gaming above all else.
This isn’t necessarily a huge knock against the device — the GS76 was quite light for what it was, and the GS77 has brought the Stealth series back in line with the rest of the 17-inch market. It now weighs a bit more than Razer’s Blade 17 and Asus’ Zephyrus S17. And it’s almost the same weight as MSI’s more powerful GE76 Raider.
One can see why MSI may have wanted to go bigger because the chips inside have been frying just about every chassis they touch this year. The model we were sent includes a 12th Gen Core i7-12900H — one of the most powerful mobile chips in Intel’s history — paired with Nvidia’s RTX 3070 Ti, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage, all powering a 240Hz QHD screen.
But the new girth takes away a major advantage that the GS77 used to have over these models: the GS77 Stealth appears to have lost some of what made it desirable as a “portable” buy. The keyboard is on the flat side, the touchpad is uncomfortably stiff, the battery life isn’t good, and the device is too big and too heavy to reliably bring anywhere. What we’re left with is a computer that asks many of the same compromises as the most powerful gaming laptops on the market without bringing the same exceptional frame rates.
For more information on our scoring, see how we rate.
The primary advantage the Stealth has now is its price. My test unit is currently listed for $2,899. To get this GPU in the GE76 Raider (which has an even beefier Core i9 as well as a fancier design) would be $100 more, while a QHD Razer Blade 17 with the 3070 Ti would be a whole $3,399.99. I’ve also been able to find GS77 models for as low as $1,799 (for a 144Hz 1080p screen, an RTX 3060, and 16GB of RAM), while the cheapest Blade on Razer’s site is $2,799 and the 12th Gen Raider starts at $2,299. Still, $2,899 is hardly a budget price, and it’s worth knowing what compromises you’re making for that lower cost.
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First, the aspect of the GS77 that’s an unquestionable improvement over last year: build quality. I’ve had gripes about MSI’s chassis in the past, but the GS77’s base and lid are both sturdy and unyielding. The trackpad collected some fingerprints fairly easily, but the rest of the chassis wasn’t too much of a magnet for them. It’s a nice-looking computer, and it didn’t pick up any scratches or dents after being battered around in a suitcase for a few days.
Other perks of previous models remain. There’s a good range of ports including two USB-C, two USB-A, a headphone jack, HDMI, ethernet, and an SD card reader. (The SD reader is weirdly slower than it was last year, however, as other reviewers have noted.) The QHD display does make games look great. There are a whopping six speakers inside, and while they don’t deliver the best audio on the 17-inch market, my games still sounded pretty good. I had no trouble with the microphones, which support AI noise cancellation, and the webcam has a physical shutter switch on the side for some peace of mind.
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That said, I really can’t see myself using this device as a daily driver for two important reasons: the keyboard and touchpad. The keyboard has pretty lighting, but it is quite thin to type on, with more of a spongy than a clicky feel. And while there is a number pad, the keys are all a bit cramped as a result. The arrow keys, in particular, feel small.
And the touchpad is where I really had trouble. It’s large but was as difficult of a click as I’ve ever experienced on a touchpad. (And it’s quite loud as well.) I felt like I really had to thunk my finger down to get a click registered. I was close to plugging in a mouse (something I don’t do when I’m testing for productivity use cases, as a general policy) because of how much I hated navigating with it. These aren’t unheard-of compromises when it comes to 17-inch gaming laptops, but they do underscore how little I’d recommend this to double as a daily driver.
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When it comes to frame rates, how do these specs stack up? With all sliders maxed out, Red Dead Redemption 2 ran at an average of 60 frames per second at native resolution (technically 59.3, but we can call it 60). That jumped up to 65 at 1080p. On Shadow of the Tomb Raider in 1080p, we saw an average of 83 frames per second with ray tracing on Ultra (its maximum setting) and 121 with the feature off. At native resolution, these translated to 58 frames per second (another number we can loosely call 60) and 86, respectively. All in all, more than playable.
The GS77 put up an absurd 400 frames per second on the CPU-heavy CS:GO in 1080p and a still quite high 286 at native 1440p. The only title that gave the game any trouble was Cyberpunk 2077, which — at native resolution, at maximum settings, with ray tracing cranked up to “Psycho” — ran at 19 frames per second (but achieved 33 at those settings in 1080p).
All in all, these are certainly an improvement over the results from last year’s model, and they show that you shouldn’t have trouble running most modern games at QHD resolution, though they’re below what you can get out of pricier Core i9 and RTX 3080 machines. There’s a disappointing omission, though: the GS77 doesn’t support MUX. This component (which both the Raider and the Blade do have) allows laptops to support adaptive features like G-Sync and can also lead to a substantial performance difference. It’s an odd thing to exclude at this price point and something I’d imagine many folks who are willing to pay $2,900 won’t be keen to compromise on.
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When it comes to other workloads, the Stealth was more competitive. It completed our five-minute, 33-second 4K Adobe Premiere Pro video export test in two minutes and 15 seconds. The Raider beat this time, clocking in at one minute and 56 seconds, but it’s one of very few laptops that has ever done so. Last year’s 3070 GS76 was 12 seconds slower. (These aren’t meant to be apples-to-apples comparisons, as different versions of Premiere can change over time; they’re more meant to give you an idea of how long an export might take.)
The GS77 also beat the GS76, as well as the Blade and other creative workstations like the Gigabyte Aero 16, on the Puget Systems benchmark for Premiere Pro, which tests live playback and export performance at 4K and 8K. (It did lose to the Raider by a lot). This isn’t a laptop I’d recommend people use for office workloads, so the GS77’s good performance here isn’t the biggest point in its favor.
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MSI’s software is definitely not as glitchy as it has been in the past few years, which is an encouraging sign. I had no problem adjusting fan profiles and such with the preinstalled programs. I did run into one glitch where the screen started turning off when I tried to run games (a problem on a gaming laptop). MSI sent me a replacement unit, which didn’t exhibit that problem. Still, it’s not the sort of thing we love to see on $2,900 products.
And then we get to what I see as the biggest compromise here: the battery life. I was only averaging about two hours and 16 minutes of continuous use on this thing, with some trials even lasting under two hours. That’s got to be close to the worst battery run I’ve ever gotten out of a gaming laptop. While it’s generally understood that cheaper laptops will have less powerful chips in them, having to give up battery life in addition to that power (the Raider lasted me about two hours longer with the same workload) is a tough pill to swallow.
If you’re looking purely at frame rates on paper, this laptop is a fine buy. It can run all kinds of games at QHD resolution without burning your basement down.
But the Stealth moniker, and the way the line has historically been positioned, might imply to some people that this device is a good pick for more than just gaming. It’s not; MSI’s changes to the Stealth line have made it more powerful at the expense of other features that made it, well Stealthy. It’s too big and heavy to be consistently carrying around in a briefcase or backpack, the battery life isn’t usable for daily work away from an outlet, and the keyboard and touchpad just wouldn’t be my choice to use every day. This is no longer really a portable alternative to the Raider. It’s just a more affordable version of the Raider.
Which is fine, if that’s what you’re after. But with the Raider delivering more powerful specs, better battery life, more RGB, and an MUX switch for a couple hundred dollars more, I think it delivers an all-around better experience that will be worth the money for people shopping in this range.
A California-based organisation wants to harness the power of machine learning to decode communication across the entire animal kingdom. But the project has its doubters
A dolphin handler makes the signal for “together” with her hands, followed by “create”. The two trained dolphins disappear underwater, exchange sounds and then emerge, flip on to their backs and lift their tails. They have devised a new trick of their own and performed it in tandem, just as requested. “It doesn’t prove that there’s language,” says Aza Raskin. “But it certainly makes a lot of sense that, if they had access to a rich, symbolic way of communicating, that would make this task much easier.”
Raskin is the co-founder and president of Earth Species Project (ESP), a California non-profit group with a bold ambition: to decode non-human communication using a form of artificial intelligence (AI) called machine learning, and make all the knowhow publicly available, thereby deepening our connection with other living species and helping to protect them. A 1970 album of whale song galvanised the movement that led to commercial whaling being banned. What could a Google Translate for the animal kingdom spawn?
Continue reading...As Craig Wright’s legal tussles pile up, the world is no closer to knowing who the currency’s inventor really is
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? The mysterious inventor of bitcoin is a renowned figure in the world of cryptocurrency but his true identity is unknown.
However, the British blogger Peter McCormack was certain about one thing: the answer isn’t Craig Wright.
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A Texas jury has ordered Alex Jones to pay around $45.2 million for spreading a false conspiracy theory about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The punitive damages come on top of a $4.1 million verdict from yesterday, potentially marking a major blow to Jones’s Infowars media empire. But the number could be vastly reduced by limits built into the Texas legal code, which caps damages on defamation punishments.
The jury handed back its verdict on Friday after hearing testimony about Jones’s finances — something he’s allegedly taken significant steps to obscure. It included an assessment that Jones’ company Free Speech Systems was worth at least $130 million; previous testimony indicated its annual revenue in recent years has been $50 million or above. Jones claimed in court that a fine of $2 million or more could “sink” Infowars.
As Bloomberg explains, Texas law caps punitive damages at twice the level of compensatory economic damages per defendant plus a maximum of $750,000 for non-economic damages. Jones’ attorneys plan to file for a reduction of the fine based on that rule, something the plaintiffs’ attorneys told Bloomberg they will “certainly litigate” if necessary.
This concludes one of three trials involving the parents of children who were killed at Sandy Hook in 2012, an event Jones and other Infowars employees claimed had been staged. The plaintiffs — Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin — had asked for $150 million.
A Forbes report raises questions about how TikTok’s moderation team handles child sexual abuse material — alleging it granted broad, insecure access to illegal photos and videos.
Employees of a third-party moderation outfit called Teleperformance, which works with TikTok among other companies, claim it asked them to review a disturbing spreadsheet dubbed DRR or Daily Required Reading on TikTok moderation standards. The spreadsheet allegedly contained content that violated TikTok’s guidelines, including “hundreds of images” of children who were nude or being abused. The employees say hundreds of people at TikTok and Teleperformance could access the content from both inside and outside the office — opening the door to a broader leak.
Teleperformance denied to Forbes that it showed employees sexually exploitative content, and TikTok said its training materials have “strict access controls and do not include visual examples of CSAM,” although it didn’t confirm that all third-party vendors met that standard.
The employees tell a different story, and as Forbes lays out, it’s a legally dicey one. Content moderators are routinely forced to deal with CSAM that’s posted on many social media platforms. But child abuse imagery is unlawful in the US and must be handled carefully. Companies are supposed to report the content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), then preserve it for 90 days but minimize the number of people who see it.
The allegations here go far beyond that limit. They indicate that Teleperformance showed employees graphic photos and videos as examples of what to tag on TikTok, while playing fast and loose with access to that content. One employee says she contacted the FBI to ask whether the practice constituted criminally spreading CSAM, although it’s not clear if one was opened.
The full Forbes report is well worth a read, outlining a situation where moderators were unable to keep up with TikTok’s explosive growth and told to watch crimes against children for reasons they felt didn’t add up. Even by the complicated standards of debates about child safety online, it’s a strange — and if accurate, horrifying — situation.
A California-based organisation wants to harness the power of machine learning to decode communication across the entire animal kingdom. But the project has its doubters
A dolphin handler makes the signal for “together” with her hands, followed by “create”. The two trained dolphins disappear underwater, exchange sounds and then emerge, flip on to their backs and lift their tails. They have devised a new trick of their own and performed it in tandem, just as requested. “It doesn’t prove that there’s language,” says Aza Raskin. “But it certainly makes a lot of sense that, if they had access to a rich, symbolic way of communicating, that would make this task much easier.”
Raskin is the co-founder and president of Earth Species Project (ESP), a California non-profit group with a bold ambition: to decode non-human communication using a form of artificial intelligence (AI) called machine learning, and make all the knowhow publicly available, thereby deepening our connection with other living species and helping to protect them. A 1970 album of whale song galvanised the movement that led to commercial whaling being banned. What could a Google Translate for the animal kingdom spawn?
Continue reading...
