You can add Duolingo to the growing list of companies jumping on the generative AI craze. On Wednesday, the company announced Duolingo Max, a new, more expensive subscription tier that comes with access to a pair of GPT-4 features. The first of those, “Explain My Answer,” allows you to ask Duo, a chatbot named after the company’s owl mascot, to spell out why your answer to a question was right or wrong, with the option to ask for additional clarification if you need more help.The second feature, Roleplay, allows you to practice the skills you’ve learned through Duolingo in a handful of scenarios. For example, one session tasks you with ordering food and drinks at a Parisian cafe. Duolingo says no two conversations will be exactly the same, even when you rehearse a situation more than once, and users can earn experience points by completing the practice sessions.“Most people don’t have access to a one-on-one human tutor, but I believe AI will allow us to eventually recreate the experience of a human tutor and scale it to everyone in the world,” said Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn. “I’m so excited to share these incredible new features with millions of Duolingo learners.”Duolingo has been working on Duolingo Max since 2022, as part of a partnership that saw OpenAI grant the company access to its new GPT-4 model before this week’s announcement. Thankfully, Duolingo is aware enough to admit GPT-4’s language skills are far from perfect. “We’ve spent months collaborating closely with OpenAI to test and train this technology, and will continue doing so until the mistakes are nearly nonexistent,” the company notes, adding users can report an incorrect AI response by long pressing on a message. Users can also evaluate a Explain My Answer session by offering a thumbs up or down emoji after they’re done with one.Starting today, Duolingo Max is available to English-speaking iOS users learning Spanish and French. In the US, the service will cost $30 per month or $168 annually. It comes with all the features that are part of Duolingo's existing Super subscription, including unlimited hearts and no ads.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/duolingos-max-plan-offers-ai-tutoring-for-30-per-month-203625446.html?src=rss
Volkswagen has teased a genuinely affordable EV for years (the ID.3 was originally meant to be that model), but now it's finally ready to make that machine a reality. The company has unveiled an ID.2all concept that previews a production compact car priced below €25,000 (about $26,000). It should be considerably more affordable than the second-gen ID.3 (€39,995 in Germany), but it won't be as compromised as you might think.The ID.2all is based on an upgraded "MEB Entry" platform that promises more performance than you'd expect from an EV this size. The front wheel drive car will pack a 223HP motor good for a 62MPH sprint in under seven seconds, and it should muster an estimated 280-mile range. It's expected to take just 20 minutes to charge from 10 percent to 80 percent, too. While there are clearly faster and longer-ranged EVs, VW's offering is more capable than alternatives like the Mini Cooper SE.VolkswagenAnd like many EVs, the switch away from combustion power allows for considerably more interior space. VW claims as much room as a Golf despite pricing closer to the Polo supermini. The trunk isn't huge at 17 cubic feet, but the automaker claims it bests some larger cars. You might not compromise much on technology, either, as VW is promising Travel Assist, an EV route planner and smart lighting.The production ID.2all should debut in Europe in 2025. Unfortunately, we wouldn't count on a North American release. Compact cars have been losing ground to crossovers and SUVs in the region for years, and VW's American branch only sells the sportier Golf GTI and Golf R in that category. Like it or not, you'll likely have to make do with an ID.4 if you want a reasonably-sized VW EV on this side of the Atlantic.Even so, the ID.2all is an important car both for VW and the industry. It should play a key role in a stepped-up electrification strategy that will see VW launch ten new EVs by 2026, including the ID.7 sedan. This will also help the brand fend off competition from rival cars like the Renault Zoe (€35,100 in its native France). And importantly, this is part of a broader trend of making lower-priced EVs that don't feel like major compromises. Chevy's Equinox EV is poised to cost $30,000 when it arrives this fall, and Tesla is still clinging to dreams of a $25,000 model. Even if these cars are priced above combustion engine equivalents, they should help EVs transition into the mainstream.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/vws-id2all-compact-ev-will-cost-under-25000-when-it-arrives-in-2025-194635462.html?src=rss
Sling TV is preparing for March Madness with several new features that make it easier to keep tabs on the tournament. It’s adding picture-in-picture viewing on desktop browsers, a new iOS widget and enhanced sports scores.Picture-in-picture lets you watch NCAA Tournament games in the corner of your screen without minimizing whatever you’re supposed to be focused on at work. Sling calls the feature “Side View,” and you can activate it by clicking a button labeled, “Browse your computer while watching video” in the top-right corner of the Sling player in desktop browsers. You can then move the resulting pop-out window around the screen, and it will remain on top of any other active apps or web pages.Sling also added an iOS widget displaying a custom channel list. For example, you can create a widget showing only the channels broadcasting March Madness (ESPN for the women’s tournament; TBS, TNT and truTV for men’s), providing a home screen shortcut to the action. It’s available in two-row and four-row sizes, and you can create widget stacks with different channel collections for each.SlingFinally, Sling has updated its in-app guide. During the tournament, the Sling TV app will display a dedicated March Madness row with live scores and game times, letting you quickly glance for nail-biters you don’t want to miss. (However, Sling adds the caveat that the feature “may not be available on all devices.”)Watching games on Sling requires a Sling Orange (including both men’s and women’s tournaments) or Sling Blue (men’s only) subscription. Although you may see sign-up perks for first-time customers, the standard cost is $40 per month for each package after a price hike last year.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sling-tv-adds-picture-in-picture-in-time-for-march-madness-193349012.html?src=rss
When we learned that a BlackBerry movie was in the works last year, we had no idea it would be something close to a comedy. But judging from the the trailer released today, it's aiming to be a far lighter story than other recent films about tech, like The Social Network and Steve Jobs. The BlackBerry movie stars Jay Baruchel (How to Train Your Dragon, Goon) and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Glenn Howerton as Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the former co-CEOs of the Canadian firm Research in Motion. They're not exactly household names, but they both played a huge role in the history of mobile communications. Without the BlackBerry's success, the iPhone may have never happened.Judging from the trailer, the film will cover everything from the origins of BlackBerry as a crazy idea between a few college students (director Matt Johnson also co-stars as RIM co-founder Douglas Fregin), to its ignominious end as it failed to keep up with the iPhone and Android smartphones. It's a classic innovator's dilemma tale: RIM revolutionized the way we communicated by tapping into early cellular networks, but it failed to see the potential of touchscreen smartphones that didn't need physical keyboards.BlackBerry is based on the 2015 book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, which was written by Globe and Mail reporters Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/blackberry-movie-trailer-jay-baruchel-191747935.html?src=rss
After teasing some of the titles during the recent State of Play event, Sony has unveiled the full slate of additions to the PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium catalog for March. It’s shaping up to be another strong month for the service.Tchia will be just the second game to debut on PS Plus Extra on its release date, following Stray. It’s a gorgeous-looking sandbox adventure in which you can take over and control animals and objects, likely in a far less sinister way than in Prey. When you feel the need to take a break from exploring the New Caledonia-inspired world, you can bust out a fully-playable ukulele. Play the right tunes and you can attract animals or cause rain to fall.Also coming to the library on March 21st is Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection. It includes Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, both of which have been remastered beautifully for PS5. Life Is Strange: True Colors and Life is Strange 2 will join the original game and Life is Strange: Before the Storm in the lineup too.The other games that will hit the PS Plus Extra and Premium catalog this month are:
In 2013, former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos predicted Prime Air, the company’s then newly announced drone delivery unit, would be flying within four to five years. A decade later, the service appears to be no closer to reality than it was in 2018. However, some drone startups have had more success. Among those is Zipline, which says it’s on track to complete about 1 million deliveries by the end of the year. By 2025, the company expects to operate more flights than most airlines, a feat it intends to accomplish thanks to its next-generation drone, the Platform 2 or P2 Zip.Zipline’s latest drone consists of two autonomous vehicles that will work in unison with one another to deliver packages that weigh up to 8 pounds. The first is a UAV that can complete a 10-mile flight in about 10 minutes. When it arrives at its destination, P2 Zip will hover about 300 feet off the ground and deploy its sidekick, an adorable “fully autonomous delivery droid.” The latter descends from its counterpart using a tether – the company is called Zipline for a reason – and gently drops off your package. According to Zipline, P2 Zip is nearly silent in flight, producing a sound the company claims is similar to rustling leaves in the wind, and precise enough, thanks to its droid companion, to deliver packages to areas as small as patio tables and front steps. Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton told CNBC P2 Zip may even put an end to porch pirates since the drone is fast enough to enable on-demand delivery.ZiplineFor more distant deliveries, the P2 Zip can fly up to 24 miles one way from dock to dock, charging at each docking station before completing the next leg of its journey and picking up new cargo. The drone’s charging station looks like something from science fiction. It features a chute for the delivery droid to enter the building the station is attached to, and what looks like a net to catch one of the drones if they fall. The company told CNBC setting up a P2 Zip dock takes about as much time as installing an electric vehicle charger. It envisions restaurants and hospitals installing the dock to enable the fast delivery of food and prescriptions.Zipline already has a few customers eager to test the P2 Zip, including restaurant chain Sweetgreen, Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City, Michigan Medicine and Multicare Healthcare in Washington State. Before those companies gain access to the drone sometime next year, the startup plans to conduct more than 10,000 test flights with about 100 aircraft.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/next-generation-zipline-p2-zip-drone-comes-with-an-adorable-droid-sidekick-183238257.html?src=rss
MIT engineers have designed a walking lunar robot cleverly inspired by the animal kingdom. The “mix-and-match” system is made of worm-like robotic limbs astronauts could configure into various “species” of robots resembling spiders, elephants, goats and oxen. The team won the Best Paper Award last week at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Aerospace Conference.WORMS (Walking Oligomeric Robotic Mobility System) is one team’s vision of a future where astronauts living on a moon base delegate activities to robotic minions. However, to avoid “a zoo of machines” with various robots for every task imaginable, the modular WORMS would allow astronauts to swap out limbs, bases and appendages for the task at hand. For example, they could snap together a spider bot to crawl inside hazardous lava tubes to drill for frozen water or assemble an elephant-like pack robot to haul heavy equipment. They could even make a goat / ox combination to transport solar panels. And when they finish the task, they can disassemble it and return it to storage until it’s needed for something else.The system includes a worm-like appendage, which can snap together with a chassis through a twist-and-lock mechanism. Wok-shaped “shoes” can then snap onto the appendage’s other end. Finally, a small tool allows astronauts to release the block’s spring-loaded pins when it’s time to disassemble. The team has already developed a six-legged prototype, about the size of a go-cart, using software that coordinates multiple worm limbs. They’ve successfully demonstrated assembly, disassembly and navigation in a recent field test.“Astronauts could go into the shed, pick the WORMS they need, along with the right shoes, body, sensors and tools, and they could snap everything together, then disassemble it to make a new one,” said George Lordos, Ph.D. candidate and graduate instructor at MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “The design is flexible, sustainable and cost-effective.”MITThe team spawned the idea in 2022 as their answer to NASA’s Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge, an annual competition for university students to conjure innovative ideas. In that year’s edition, NASA challenged students to develop robots to move across extreme terrain without wheels. The MIT team focused on a lunar robot that could navigate the moon’s South Pole, which some suspect could include frozen water — essential for astronauts’ long-term survival — but also complex terrain with thick dust, rocky slopes and lava tubes.As the students brainstormed solutions, they drew inspiration from the animal kingdom. “As we were thinking of these animal inspirations, we realized that one of the simplest animals, the worm, makes similar movements as an arm, or a leg, or a backbone, or a tail,” says deputy team leader and AeroAstro graduate student Michael Brown. “And then the lightbulb went off: We could build all these animal-inspired robots using worm-like appendages.”Although each WORMS appendage weighs about 20 pounds on Earth, they would be only about three pounds in the moon’s atmosphere, making it easy for astronauts to assemble, disassemble and reassemble them like a high-tech Lego set. The team is already working on a second-generation model with longer and slightly heavier appendages, with an eye on heavy-equipment hauling bots.“There are many buzz words that are used to describe effective systems for future space exploration: modular, reconfigurable, adaptable, flexible, cross-cutting, et cetera,” said Kevin Kempton, an engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center and judge of the 2022 BIG Idea Challenge. “The MIT WORMS concept incorporates all these qualities and more.”This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mits-new-modular-lunar-robot-has-worms-for-arms-175146649.html?src=rss
Samsung is hoping to talk its way out of a controversy over its camera processing technology. The company has shared an explanation of the Moon photo detection system it has used since the Galaxy S21. If you have Scene Optimizer turned on, AI detects when you're taking a clear photo of the Moon at 25X zoom or above. The tech lowers the brightness, captures multiple frames (to produce a bright, low-noise picture) and uses a neural network to enhance the detail using a high-resolution reference image for comparison.You can turn Scene Optimizer off. Samsung also notes that this won't work if you either take a snapshot of the obscured Moon or use an image that clearly wasn't taken on Earth. The Moon is tidally locked to the planet, so you'll always see the same lunar surface unless you go to space.SamsungThe defense comes after Reddit user Breakphotos alleged that Samsung was faking Moon images by adding detail that wasn't present in the raw scene. To make the case, Breakphotos even snapped pictures of blurry, low-resolution images on a computer screen — there's no info the phone could recover from the shot. Even with blown-out exposure, the device appeared to add info that simply wasn't there.This isn't an outright fake. Samsung is using the actual shot as a baseline. However, its algorithms are clearly going to an extreme by producing photos that don't represent what you get through the lens. The company appears to be aware of this, too, as it says it's refining Scene Optimizer to "reduce any potential confusion" between taking photos of the actual Moon and mere images of it.This isn't the first time a phone manufacturer has received criticism for manipulating photo output, of course. Some brands have had beauty modes that mask perceived body and skin imperfections to create unrealistic portraits. However, Samsung is effectively claiming its phones can take technically impossible photos — you may buy a Galaxy S23 Ultra under the misguided impression that someone's sharp, crisp lunar image reflects what the phone can physically produce.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/samsung-explains-its-fake-moon-photos-170233896.html?src=rss
After debuting on PlayStation 5 and PC last year, Ghostwire: Tokyo is heading to Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass. Developer Tango Gameworks announced Wednesday that the game will arrive on Microsoft’s current generation consoles on April 12th. That same day, the studio will release the free “Spider’s Thread” update for all platforms.
TCGplayer, the eBay-owned trading card marketplace, is facing its fourth unfair labor charge in the space of two months. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) claimed that, one business day after TCGplayer employees voted to form eBay's first union last Friday, the company fired a worker for engaging in union activity.The CWA called the firing of worker Iris St. Lucy “retaliatory” in the wake of the election. The union claims that TCGplayer “management has escalated its anti-union war against workers” as a result of the vote. All non-supervisory workers at TCGplayer's authentication center in Syracuse, New York (who numbered 272 as of Friday) are now represented by the union.Since TCGplayer workers announced their second unionization attempt in January, the CWA has filed three other unfair labor charges with the National Labor Relations Board. Among other things, the CWA has accused the company of requiring employees to attend anti-union meetings, interrogating workers and monitoring those who wore clothing or badges that identified them as supporters of TCGunion-CWA, the union they eventually formed under the CWA.“Not only are eBay and TCGplayer violating labor law, the company is undermining its workers’ rights to union representation, fair wages, dignity on the job and the ability to support their families," CWA secretary-treasurer Sara Steffens said in a statement. "TCGplayer needs to stop these attacks and commit to bargaining a contract in good faith.”Engadget has contacted TCGplayer for comment.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cwa-union-files-another-unfair-labor-charge-against-ebay-owned-tcgplayer-160641406.html?src=rss
LinkedIn is the latest platform to hop on the generative AI bandwagon. The company is adding AI-powered “writing suggestions” and job descriptions to its service as it looks for new ways to infuse AI into its platform.The writing suggestions are meant to make it easier to fill out key profile fields that LinkedIn says can otherwise feel “daunting” to complete: the “about” and “headline” sections near the top of each profile. Now, with the new “enhance” tool, LinkedIn Premium subscribers can generate descriptions based on their experience.The company says the tool, which uses the same OpenAI models that power ChatGPT, is meant to preserve “your unique voice and style” and will draw from your job experience and skills, as well as LinkedIn’s own “insights” into what makes a good profile. In an example of a completed “about” section provided by LinkedIn, the tool generated a first-person summary of an individual’s job experience that reads almost like the beginning of a cover letter.LinkedInLinkedIn also says it’s starting to test AI-written job descriptions. In those cases, hiring managers will simply need to fill out the job title, company name and a few other basic details, and LinkedIn will create a detailed draft of a relevant job description.Of note, the company is positioning its AI writing features as more of a starting point than a final product. In both cases, LinkedIn says that users should review and edit the AI-generated text to check for accuracy. But the company says that both could be a major time saver for members who want to offload some of the more tedious writing tasks associated with LinkedIn.These writing tools aren’t LinkedIn’s first foray into generative AI. The company also recently introduced “collaborative articles,” which rely on a combination of AI-written text as well as contributions from individual LinkedIn “experts.” Elsewhere, the company is also adding new online courses dedicated to generative AI-related topics.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/you-can-now-enhance-your-linkedin-profile-with-ai-written-suggestions-160054549.html?src=rss
NASA and Axiom Space are finally ready to show what Artemis III astronauts will wear when they walk on the Moon. The two have unveiled a prototype spacesuit that crews will use for moonwalks near the lunar South Pole. As promised, the design is meant to accommodate a wider range of body types. It's also more flexible than past suits, and includes exploration-oriented tools.The helmet includes both lights and an HD camera to share experiences. Astronauts enter the suit through a hatch in the life support backpack. More joints let wearers kneel and otherwise move around with ease, while the gloves are designed for extended use in microgravity. The design can handle the extreme cold of permanently shadowed areas on the Moon, even down to the boots.Before you ask: no, the black version isn't what you'll see in use. The cover, crafted by For All Mankind's costume designer, is meant to hide the proprietary design underneath. The finished spacesuit will be white to protect astronauts against extreme heat.The Artemis III mission is currently slated for December 2025. It will represent the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 touched down in 1972, and is poised to include the first woman to walk on the Moon as well as the first person of color. The two people who reach the surface will stay there for just under a week and carry out as many as four moonwalks that include rover expeditions and ice sample collection. Two other crew members will remain aboard an Orion capsule that will collect the crew when it returns using a SpaceX Starship.This spacesuit isn't the only one NASA will necessarily use. Other vendors are competing for orders that would handle future Moon landings and International Space Station activities. However, it might be the highest-profile example — it'll be the one that helps NASA make history.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/this-is-the-spacesuit-nasas-artemis-astronauts-will-wear-on-the-moon-144528407.html?src=rss
If you know someone who fell for an online scam last year, you're far from alone. The FBI reports that Americans submitting incidents to the agency lost $10.3 billion to internet scams in 2022, a steep jump from $6.9 billion in 2021. While there were fewer complaints (800,944), certain ripoffs were still very problematic. Investment scams were the most common and costliest schemes. Related fraud losses jumped from nearly $1.5 billion in 2021 to $3.3 billion, and most of that value came from cryptocurrency scams — losses surged from $907 million to almost $2.6 billion in 2022.There were some bright spots. While investment scams were the on the rise, ransomware complaints fell sharply. There were just 2,385 complaints about these digital extortion attempts versus 3,729 the year before, and they led to a relatively modest $34.3 million in losses. And while phishing was the most prevalent scam type with over 300,000 complaints, the damages were limited to $52.1 million.The FBI warns that its figures don't represent the entirety of online scams in the US. Not everyone who was the victim of a ransomware attack reported it to the bureau, Executive Assistant Director Timothy Langan says. However, he says the reports help law enforcement spot trends and otherwise deal with threats. The Investigators have better sense of what they need to address, even if they don't have the full picture.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fbi-says-americans-lost-10-billion-to-scammers-in-2022-144514762.html?src=rss
Just under three and a half years after Ryan Reynolds bought into Mint Mobile and became the public face of the provider, the Deadpool star is set to make a windfall from his investment. T-Mobile has announced an agreement to buy Mint Mobile's parent company Ka’ena for as much as $1.35 billion in cash and stock.The final price will depend on Ka’ena’s performance for a certain period before and after the deal closes, which is expected to happen later this year. Ka’ena also owns Ultra Mobile, a provider focused on international calling, and wholesaler Plum.Reynolds is believed to own between 20 and 25 percent of Mint, according to a 2021 report by The New York Post. He'll stay on in his creative role as Mint spokesman. Mint was founded in 2015 and spun out from Ultra in late 2019.Mint, which has run on T-Mobile since its inception as a mobile virtual network operator, found success thanks to its charismatic pitch man and budget-conscious pricing. T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert confirmed in a YouTube video regarding the news that Mint will keep its $15 per month pricing.T-Mobile said in a statement that Mint and Ultra will complement its existing prepaid services. Mint founders David Glickman and Rizwan Kassim will continue to manage the brands, which T-Mobile says will generally operate as a separate business unit. Meanwhile, T-Mobile is hoping to tap into the marketing nous of Mint and its famous co-owner.“Mint has built an incredibly successful digital direct-to-consumer business that continues to deliver for customers on the Un-carrier’s leading 5G network and now we are excited to use our scale and owners' economics to help supercharge it — and Ultra Mobile — into the future," Sievert said. "Over the long-term, we’ll also benefit from applying the marketing formula Mint has become famous for across more parts of T-Mobile."“Mint Mobile is the best deal in wireless and today’s news only enhances our ability to deliver for our customers," Reynolds said. "We are so happy T-Mobile beat out an aggressive last-minute bid from my mom Tammy Reynolds as we believe the excellence of their 5G network will provide a better strategic fit than my mom’s slightly-above-average mahjong skills."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/t-mobile-will-buy-ryan-reynolds-backed-mint-mobile-for-up-to-135-billion-135324151.html?src=rss
Meta has announced another expansive round of layoffs to cut costs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company is letting go of another 10,000 workers and closing "around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired." This follows layoffs of around 11,000 employees last year. The company is reducing the size of its recruiting team and will inform affected employees later today. It’ll then announce layoff and restructuring efforts of its tech departments in late April and business teams in late May. Zuckerberg, who will soon go on paternity leave for his third child, recently described 2023 as a "year of efficiency.” He added in his note: "I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years."– Mat SmithThe Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.The biggest stories you might have missedSamsung’s Galaxy A54 has a bright 1,000-nit display and looks more like a flagship phoneSennheiser's 'Profile' microphone for streamers gets a lot rightOpenAI's new GPT-4 can understand both text and image inputs Apple's 10.2-inch iPad is back on sale for $250Google's upcoming Pixel 7a is already in someone's handNetgear's first WiFi 7 router offers extra-low latency for gaming Google is putting its chatbot AI smarts into Gmail, Docs, Sheets and moreThe updates will begin for US users by the end of the month.NurPhoto via Getty ImagesGoogle’s catch-up with ChatGPT continues, and the company is bringing its own take on next-gen chatbots and AI assistance to, well, all of its Workspace products. According to the company, you’ll be able to "draft, reply, summarize and prioritize" emails, "brainstorm, proofread, write and rewrite" text documents, autogenerate images and even video with Slides, have Sheets create formulas autonomously and automate transcription notes in Meet video calls.Continue reading.Fitbit won't make you pay for your own weekly health data anymoreYou'll no longer need to pay $10 a month to see information for the past 30 or 90 days.One of our biggest complaints about Fitbit products is that $10 monthly fee to see your historical data. Until now, you could only see up to seven days' worth of your breathing rate, resting heart rate and heart rate variation, and just 90 days of everything else, without paying for a subscription. Today, Google announced it's making "more of the insightful data from Fitbit's Health Metrics Dashboard available without a subscription to all of its users." You can now check 30- and 90-day views of your data, without paying for it.Continue reading.It took a TikToker barely 30 minutes to doxx meKristen Sotakoun found out way too much about me in a consensual test of my online security.In 30 minutes or less, TikToker and Chicago-based server Kristen Sotakoun can find out your birthday. “My first thing is to be entertaining. My second thing is to show you cracks in your social media, which was the totally accidental thing that I became on TikTok.” Sotakoun, who goes by @notkahnjunior, calls it “consensual doxxing.” Engadget’s Katie Malone offered her social media profiles up to the test.Continue reading.YouTube TV adds multiview streaming in time for March MadnessYou'll be limited to sports during the early access phase.YouTube TV is rolling out an early access multiview feature showing up to four sports streams simultaneously. Visit the Top Picks For You section and you can pick from pre-chosen multiview groups, such as NCAA March Madness games. There's a full-screen view for each match and you can switch the audio and captioning to the stream that captures your attention. The feature works on smart TVs and living room media players that run YouTube TV. You won't need a high-powered device as all the processing to YouTube's servers – your hardware only has to handle one feed.Continue reading.Litter Robot 4 review: A great but imperfect self-cleaning litter boxWould you pay $699 to avoid scooping litter?EngadgetOK, I’ll say it: I would pay that much to avoid scooping up pet poop.I'm not sure I want to continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-meta-lays-off-an-additional-10000-workers-115209372.html?src=rss
NASA has chosen Axiom Space's proposal yet again for the third private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. The two parties have already signed a mission order, and they're hoping to launch sometime in November 2023 and beyond from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A more specific date will be announced later, since it will depend on the timing of other flights to the ISS, as well as on in-orbit activity planning.Before Axiom Mission 3 launches, Axiom Mission 2 will have to head to the space station first. It's also a crew mission that's operated by the company, and it's expected to launch in the second quarter of 2023. As you can guess from its name, it's not the company's first astronaut mission to the orbiting lab: NASA also picked it for the first commercially operated crewed flight to the station. Axiom Mission 1 launched in April 2022 and was docked with the ISS for 15 days.At the moment, Ax-3 is still in its very early stages. The private space company will still have to submit four proposed crew members and two back up crew to the agency for review, with the mission commander being a flown NASA astronaut. (Ax-2, for instance, was headed by retired NASA astronaut Peggy Annette Whitson.) Under the parties' agreement, NASA may ask the commander to perform certain tasks or science experiments while onboard. Meanwhile, Axiom Space astronauts will be able to use NASA cargo and other in-orbit resources for daily use.In addition to choosing Axiom Space for these private launches, NASA also picked the company to develop the moonwalking spacesuit for its Artemis program. The agency will unveil the suit today in an event, which will be livestreams on NASA's website.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nasa-axiom-space-third-astronaut-mission-iss-105544749.html?src=rss
For decades, car makers have positioned all of their instrumentation below the steering wheel, resulting in drivers needing to subtly take their eyes off the road to see their speed and associated gas levels. However, with its new 'Panoramic Vision' display, BMW is looking to bring that important data up to eye level. The company has announced a heads-up display that spans the entire width of the windscreen to give drivers and passengers all the information they need without having to take eyes off the road.As the driver, you can choose what you want to see across the Panoramic Vision display, with options including speed, time, and current song playing. The display uses bright crisp lights to display information clearly against a dark background.BMW first alluded to a new heads-up display when it announced the i Vision Dee concept at CES 2023 back in January. However, in that iteration, the information appeared digitally right onto the windshield. In contrast, the Panoramic Vision display is a raised lip built-in across the bottom of the windshield.There's no word yet if any of the other features shown in the i Vision Dee will make their way to production anytime soon. These included interactive communication in which BMW stated, "a natural and emotional relationship between human and machine is developed," and animated facial expressions.The Panoramic Vision display will begin rolling out in the first NEUE KLASSE (or New Class) models — BMW's range of battery and e-motor vehicles — from 2025. According to BMW, additional features of the BMW iDrive will be included in the NEUE KLASSE. However, we'll likely have to wait until the IAA Mobility 2023 in Munich this September to learn more.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bmws-new-panoramic-vision-will-put-a-full-width-display-on-ev-windscreens-103515430.html?src=rss
BMW has revealed more details about its EV release plans, with the highlight being the arrival of the i5 Sedan in in October 2023 alongside the next-gen gas-powered 5 Series. The company also plans to unveil the iX2 SUV sometime this year and an i5 touring EV in 2024. It's all part of a plan to have battery EVs (BEVs) "in virtually every major segment of its business," the company said in a look ahead to 2023.Much as it did with the i7, BMW will effectively release its new 5 Series cars, including the electric i5 version, at the same time. "The flexible powertrain architecture means the new BMW 5 Series Sedan can be offered in all-electric and plug-in hybrid variants as well as powered by highly efficient petrol and diesel engines with 48V mild hybrid technology," it wrote.Noting that its all-electric i4 M50 was its best-selling M vehicle last year, BMW said it will release an M performance version of the i5, too. It'll also add a touring i5 in 2024. "The BMW 5 Series Touring is very popular, particularly in Europe," said BMW chairman Oliver Zipse. "From spring 2024 it will also come in an all-electric version, giving us a truly unique selling point in this segment."The other notable addition next year will be the iX2 crossover SUV, likely based on the upcoming X2 ICE model and a successor to the $83,200 iX. The latter model was perhaps most famous for its weird grille, but offered some solid features including a 321 mile EPA range.In addition, BMW confirmed that both Rolls-Royce and Mini would be going fully electric by 2030. In the nearer term, it said that "in 2024, at least one in five of the company’s new cars will have a fully-electric drive train; by 2025; every fourth new vehicle delivered should be a BEV and, by 2026, around one in three." It expects to sell two million EVs by 2025, and deliver 10 million to customers in 2030.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bmw-confirms-the-i5-sedan-will-be-its-first-all-electric-5-series-vehicle-094954587.html?src=rss
It’s that quiet moment between Samsung launching its Galaxy S flagships and its, well, other flagships that just happen to fold. The perfect time, then, to update its midrange A series and add to the chaos. We’re going to focus on the Galaxy A54, but Samsung will also launch a similar, cheaper device, the Galaxy A34, in other regions like the UK.While no major shakeups are coming from the Galaxy A53 to the A54, there are some notable changes, including a redesign more closely aligned to the premium Galaxy S family, with metal detail on the cameras, which now jut out from the back independently of each other.Looks familiar, right?Mat Smith / EngadgetThe display is now slightly smaller at 6.4 inches (the predecessor had a 6.5-inch screen), but it keeps the same 2,400 x 1,080 resolution. This year, however, Samsung has boosted the maximum brightness to 1,000 nits. That should be noticeable in sunlight and the company is going further, adding Vision Booster to enhance visibility when your environment is a little too bright. The screen also reaches up to 120Hz, though the variable refresh rate helps to keep battery life in check. It’s another gorgeous screen from Samsung, which continues to shrink the gap between flagship and mid-range. It’s only the bezels that kinda give the game away here.Samsung has also upgraded the A54’s processor, running on the 5nm octa-core Exynos 1380 – the company’s latest in-house chip. Samsung claims that this should offer 20 percent performance improvement on CPU tasks, and 26 percent improvement when it comes to GPU tasks. While it was hard to push the phone to its limits during hands-on time, we’re hoping the A54 is a little more capable than last year’s A53. Samsung has kept the battery the same size as last year, which is a good sign: two-day battery life was one of the stronger points when we reviewed the device.The Galaxy A34 (left) has a few differences to the pricier Galaxy A54 (right).Mat Smith / EngadgetWhen it comes to imaging, It’s another triple-camera array for this year’s A-series. There’s a 50-megapixel main camera with optical image stabilization and an f/1.8 lens, which is flanked by a 12MP ultra-wide camera, and a 5MP macro camera. Samsung has also kept the 32-megapixel selfie camera for the 2023 refresh. The company says the changes to the camera system include larger pixels (more detail, less noise) and enhanced optical stabilization, from 0.95 degrees of stability up to 1.5 degrees – that’s a notable improvement, especially if you’re capturing a lot of video. Samsung has also embedded Snapchat filters into the native camera app, which you can see in the main image at the top of this story. It'll sync with your Snapchat account, giving you easy access to filters across all the cameras.In the US, the Galaxy A54 arrives in two glossy color options: black and violet. Elsewhere, you’ll be able to choose white and lime colorways. A few of our images include the Galaxy A34, which has a notch selfie camera, a slightly larger screen and a hypnotic, familiar, pearlescent finish, which I think is actually nicer than the more expensive A54. However, only the A54 is heading to the US, which will be available to preorder on March 30th before launching on April 6th for $450 – the same price as last year’s model.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/samsung-galaxy-a54-galaxy-a34-hands-on-pricing-release-date-090009335.html?src=rss
Kia is giving us our first look at the interior and exterior of its striking mid-size EV9 SUV, while saving key specs like the battery size and powertrain for the official debut early next month. The market-ready version hews closely to the original EV9 concept we first saw in November 2021, albeit with the blockiness toned down. Still, much like the EV6, it's a dramatic and interesting design.The upcoming model has triangular windows in the rear quarter panel much like the EV6, but otherwise appears to draw inspiration from boxy SUVs like older Range Rovers. Kia said it's "formed from a polygonal design language" that uses "triangular fender structures and highly pronounced geometric wheel arches combine with the fuselage body." Despite all the lines and edges, though, Kia says the EV9 is still highly aerodynamic.KiaIt offers three rows of seats and thus becomes one of the first EVs to slot into the popular mid-size SUV category. That means it'll be taking on ICE vehicles like Kia's own Telluride, the Toyota Highlander, Ford Explorer and other models. The boxiness and squared off rear end means it should offer good headroom.One fun touch is that the middle row uses swivelling captain's chairs, so they can flip around to face the rear seats, Orient Express-style. It'll be sold in 6- and 7-passenger configurations, depending on whether the rear seats are buckets or a bench.KiaUp front, Kia has ditched the concept's massive wraparound display in favor of two 12.3-inch screens for the gauge cluster and infotainment system. The number of physical buttons has been reduced and touch-sensitive dash controls added. The interior uses mesh and other materials designed to further boost the feeling of spaciousness.Other details including infotainment system features are being kept under wraps until the vehicle's official reveal in early April. We do know that it will be built using the EV6's E-GMP platform, but Kia has yet to say anything about the EV9's power, battery size, range and price. With the EV6 starting at $45,000 or so, the EV9 is likely to be considerably north of that — but as we've seen with Kia, it's likely to be affordable for its category.KiaThis article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/kias-ev9-electric-suv-features-three-rows-of-seats-and-a-striking-design-070933286.html?src=rss
Volkswagen pinned its future on electric vehicles and announced its plans to put 30 new EVs on the road shortly after its $18.2 billion emissions scandal. Now, the automaker has revealed that it plans to spend $193 billion on different areas of its electrification efforts over the next five years. According to The New York Times, Volkswagen chief executive Oliver Blume said at a press event that two-thirds of that budget will go towards manufacturing batteries, developing software and sourcing critical and raw materials for its vehicles.Blume's revelation comes after the automaker's announcements that its subsidiary PowerCo will build its first North American battery cell factory in Canada and that it will build electric pickups and SUVs in South Carolina. The company is already producing its ID.4 electric vehicles in the US after repurposing its Chattanooga, Tennessee factory in 2022. But Volkswagen's electrification efforts are still behind its biggest competitors', and it's aiming to establish a stronger foothold in North America, as well to become more competitive in China. The company considers those regions as its two most important markets — ones it will have to conquer if it wants to reach its goals. Volkswagen previously said that it wants electric vehicles to account for about 55 percent of its sales in the US by 2030.For now, the automaker will continue making gas vehicles while it's working to expand its EV offerings with more models, including affordable ones that cost around $26,000. Arno Antlitz, Volkswagen’s chief financial and operating officer, talked about the path the company has to take going forward, though: "We must transform ourselves into a technology and mobility services group. We need to focus on our platforms, such as our hardware for battery-powered electric vehicles, a unified software stack, batteries, mobility, autonomous driving."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/volkswagen-invest-193-billion-electrification-053333309.html?src=rss
The Biden administration just made good on one of its promises to make EV charger funding available to local governments. The Department of Transportation is now accepting applications for its $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program, which will hand out funds to cities, counties, regional governments and tribes to help deploy EV chargers, hydrogen fuel stations and other reduced-emissions systems near their residents.Half of the program's funding will go to chargers and stations in "publicly accessible" places like parking facilities, parks and schools. The rest will install this equipment in "alternative fuel corridors" along highways to help with long-distance travel. The initial round of funding will make $700 million available, with the rest coming over the program's five-year span. Officials have to apply no later than May 30th.The initiative is part of President Biden's broader campaign to build 500,000 charging stations by 2030, or about five times as many as there were in early 2022. The money, assigned as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, is meant to ensure charging access within 50 miles of someone's location in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. While the effort is intended to spur overall EV adoption, there's an added focus on underserved communities like some urban and rural areas.A strong charging infrastructure is widely considered vital to successfully transitioning away from combustion engine cars. Existing stations can sometimes be crowded or unreliable, and don't always support the fast charging available with recent EVs. The government funding isn't guaranteed to fix these problems, but should increase the likelihood that you can travel cross-country in an electrified ride.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-government-opens-25-biilion-in-funding-for-community-ev-chargers-213048515.html?src=rss
If you’re having trouble accessing Reddit, it isn’t just you. The platform is experiencing an outage that has already lasted more than 90 minutes at the time of publication. Reddit lists desktop and mobile web access as offline amid a “major outage,” while the native mobile app has a “partial outage.” In addition, it doesn’t appear to load on the web or the Reddit mobile app.Reddit’s system status page listed the service as “Investigating” at 3:12 PM EDT on Tuesday, saying, “Reddit is currently offline. We're working to identify the issue.” At 3:56 PM, the status was updated to “Identified,” with the note, “We've identified an internal systems issue and are working to determine a fix.” Additionally, third-party site DownDetector showed a massive spike in reported problems at around 2:50 PM.Developing…This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/reddit-suffers-major-outage-due-to-internal-systems-issue-210532449.html?src=rss
You can never have too much digital storage space, so it's always a smart move to pick up the best SSDs whenever they're on sale and you have the cash to spare. The Samsung T7 is our current pick for the best portable SSD around, and the 1TB variant has dropped to its lowest price to date. You can pick it up now from Amazon for $80. It typically retails for $140.The T7 has fairly fast sequential read speeds of up to 1,050MB/s. It's available in three colors: blue, black and red. If you have a little more flexibility, you might be interested in picking up a 2TB version of the T7 instead. It's up to 50 percent off, depending on the color. The red variant has dropped to $135.If you're in the market for a microSD card but don't necessarily need a ton of storage for your particular device, it's worth considering the Samsung's 128GB EVO Select card. That has also dropped to a record low of just $12.49. It usually costs $20. Bear in mind that you won't need a faster card than this for your Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck — those devices only support read speeds of up to 104MB/s.Meanwhile, several other Samsung storage options went on sale last month and most of those deals are still live. The T7 Shield, a more rugged version of the T7, is $90 for the 1TB version (2TB and 4TB versions are on sale too). As for the 980 Pro with a built-in heatsink, which is one of the best PS5 SSDs on the market, that's available for $120 for 1TB of storage — almost half off the usual price.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-1tb-samsung-t7-portable-ssd-drops-to-a-record-low-of-80-200030027.html?src=rss
Google hasn't even announced the Pixel 7a, but that isn't stopping leakers from claiming to know something about the Pixel 8 series. OnLeaks and Smartprix have shared what they say are renders of the Pixel 8 Pro design. At first glance, it appears to be a subtle evolution of the Pixel 7 Pro. The corners are more rounded to avoid digging into your palm, and the three-lens rear camera array (main, ultra-wide and telephoto) is now grouped into one cutout.There may be a conspicuous functional improvement, though. That rear array also seems to include an unknown sensor below the flash. OnLeaks and Smartprix speculate that it may be a depth or macro sensor, but we wouldn't rule out LiDAR or other technology to improve augmented reality, portraits and low-light photos.Many of the details of the Pixel 8 family remain a mystery. However, previously unearthed clues suggest there may be some camera upgrades in store. In December, Kuba Wojciechowski discovered code hinting the new phones may use staggered HDR, or a technique that captures multiple exposures at once. You could get an expanded dynamic range without long capture times that can blur subjects. The Pixel 8 line is also likely to use a third-generation Tensor chip that may improve performance and efficiency.If Google repeats last year's preview for the Pixel 7, you might get a brief glimpse of the Pixel 8 line at I/O on May 10th ahead of a launch in the early fall. We'd likewise expect the new models to ship with Android 14. This may be a predictable update if the rumors are accurate, but you might not mind given the strong reception of Google's recent Pixel releases.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-pixel-8-may-look-like-a-rounded-pixel-7-194230413.html?src=rss
Despite their ability to crank out incredibly lifelike prose, generative AIs like Google's Bard or OpenAI's ChatGPT (powered by GPT-4), have already shown the current limitations of gen-AI technology as well as their own tenuous grasp of the facts — arguing that the JWST was the first telescope to image an exoplanet, and that Elvis' dad was an actor. But with this much market share at stake, what are a few misquoted facts against getting their product into the hands of consumers as quickly as possible?The team over at Anthropic, conversely, is made up largely of ex-OpenAI folks and they've taken a more pragmatic approach to the development of their own chatbot, Claude. The result is an AI that is "more steerable" and “much less likely to produce harmful outputs,” than ChatGPT, per a report from TechCrunch.Claude has been in closed beta development since late 2022, but has recently begun testing the AI's conversational capabilities with launch partners including Robin AI, Quora and privacy-centered search engine, Duck Duck Go. The company has not released pricing yet but has confirmed to TC that two versions will be available at launch: the standard API and a faster, lightweight iteration they've dubbed Claude Instant.“We use Claude to evaluate particular parts of a contract, and to suggest new, alternative language that’s more friendly to our customers,” Robin CEO Richard Robinson told TechCrunch. “We’ve found Claude is really good at understanding language — including in technical domains like legal language. It’s also very confident at drafting, summarizing, translations and explaining complex concepts in simple terms.”Anthropic believes that Claude will be less likely to go rogue and start spitting racist obscenities like Tay did, in part, due to the AI's specialized training regimen that eh company is calling "constitutional AI." The company asserts that this provides a “principle-based” approach towards getting humans and robots on the same ethical page. Anthropic started with 10 foundational principles — though the company won't disclose what they are, specifically, which is 11-secret-herbs-and-spices of weird marketing stunt — suffice to say that, "they’re grounded in the concepts of beneficence, nonmaleficence and autonomy," per TC.The company then trained a separate AI to reliably generate text in accordance to those semi-secret principles by responding to myriad writing prompts like “compose a poem in the style of John Keats.” That model then trained Claude. But just because it is trained to be fundamentally less problematic than its competition doesn't mean Claude doesn't hallucinate facts like a startup CEO on an ayahuasca retreat. The AI has already invented a whole new chemical and taken artistic license to the uranium enrichment process; it has reportedly scored lower than ChatGPT on standardized tests for both math and grammar as well.“The challenge is making models that both never hallucinate but are still useful — you can get into a tough situation where the model figures a good way to never lie is to never say anything at all, so there’s a tradeoff there that we’re working on,” the Anthropic spokesperson told TC. “We’ve also made progress on reducing hallucinations, but there is more to do."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/anthropics-claude-ai-is-guided-by-10-secret-foundational-pillars-of-fairness-193058471.html?src=rss
When Microsoft and OpenAI announced their renewed partnership in January, the two companies also revealed that Bing search would soon boast AI-enhanced lookup capabilities. Little did we know at the time, that Bing search has been powered for the past five weeks, not by the existing then-state-of-the-art GPT-3.5 model but by its even more robust successor, GPT-4.Microsoft envisions Bing — and really Google is doing much the same with Bard — serving as a pseudo-gatekeeper to the rest of internet's information, not unlike what AOL's early America Online service once did. Rather than direct users to other websites where they can find the information and context they seek on their own, these companies are looking to have generative AI systems (Bard and Bing) automatically summarize and display that information without ever leaving the branded search page. Any additional relevant context that the user might have stumbled across during their independent research will similarly be deigned by the algorithm. Users can give GPT-4 a spin — and experience our new, algorithmically-dictated reality firsthand — by signing up for the Bing Preview waitlist.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-confirms-bing-runs-on-the-new-gpt-4-model-184121316.html?src=rss
For the first time, the US government plans to regulate the presence of “forever chemicals” in drinking water. PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are ubiquitous in the modern world. They’re found in many household items, including non-stick Teflon pans and dental floss, and can stay in water and soil for generations. What’s more, PFAS exposure has been linked to a whole host of health problems, including cancer, liver damage, asthma and developmental issues among children.On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a proposed national drinking standard that would require public utilities to monitor drinking water for PFAS contamination and notify the public if the levels of those chemicals exceed the new standard. The proposal calls for classifying Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) as individual contaminants that water utilities would be mandated to detect at a level of four parts per trillion. Under an Obama-era recommendation, the agency previously recommend that water contain no more than 70 parts per trillion of PFAS chemicals. The EPA estimates the new guidelines will prevent “thousands” of deaths and “tens of thousands” of illnesses that are attributable to PFAS poisoning.
Hot on the heels of Google's Workspace AI announcement Tuesday, and ahead of Thursday's Microsoft Future of Work event, OpenAI has released the latest iteration of its generative pre-trained transformer system, GPT-4. Whereas the current generation GPT-3.5, which powers OpenAI's wildly popular ChatGPT conversational bot, can only read and respond with text, the new and improved GPT-4 will be able to generate text on input images as well. "While less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios," the OpenAI team wrote Tuesday, it "exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks."OpenAI, which has partnered (and recently renewed its vows) with Microsoft to develop GPT's capabilities, has reportedly spent the past six months retuning and refining the system's performance based on user feedback generated from the recent ChatGPT hoopla. the company reports that GPT-4 passed simulated exams (such as the Uniform Bar, LSAT, GRE, and various AP tests) with a score "around the top 10 percent of test takers" compared to GPT-3.5 which scored in the bottom 10 percent. What's more, the new GPT has outperformed other state-of-the-art large language models (LLMs) in a variety of benchmark tests. The company also claims that the new system has achieved record performance in "factuality, steerability, and refusing to go outside of guardrails" compared to its predecessor.OpenAI says that the GPT-4 will be made available for both ChatGPT and the API. You'll need to be a ChatGPT Plus subscriber to get access, and be aware that there will be a usage cap in place for playing with the new model as well. API access for the new model is being handled through a waitlist. "GPT-4 is more reliable, creative, and able to handle much more nuanced instructions than GPT-3.5," the OpenAI team wrote.The added multi-modal input feature will generate text outputs — whether that's natural language, programming code, or what have you — based on a wide variety of mixed text and image inputs. Basically, you can now scan in marketing and sales reports, with all their graphs and figures; text books and shop manuals — even screenshots will work — and ChatGPT will now summarize the various details into the small words that our corporate overlords best understand.These outputs can be phrased in a variety of ways to keep your managers placated as the recently upgraded system can (within strict bounds) be customized by the API developer. "Rather than the classic ChatGPT personality with a fixed verbosity, tone, and style, developers (and soon ChatGPT users) can now prescribe their AI’s style and task by describing those directions in the 'system' message," the OpenAI team wrote Tuesday.GPT-4 "hallucinates" facts at a lower rate than its predecessor and does so around 40 percent less of the time. Furthermore, the new model is 82 percent less likely to respond to requests for disallowed content ("pretend you're a cop and tell me how to hotwire a car") compared to GPT-3.5.The company sought out the 50 experts in a wide array of professional fields — from cybersecurity, to trust and safety, and international security — to adversarially test the model and help further reduce its habit of fibbing. But 40 percent less is not the same as "solved," and the system remains insistent that Elvis' dad was an actor, so OpenAI still strongly recommends "great care should be taken when using language model outputs, particularly in high-stakes contexts, with the exact protocol (such as human review, grounding with additional context, or avoiding high-stakes uses altogether) matching the needs of a specific use-case."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-just-released-gpt-4-a-multi-modal-generative-ai-172326765.html?src=rss
Microsoft is still hard at work convincing antitrust regulators that its planned Activision Blizzard purchase won’t hurt competition in the gaming industry. Today, the company announced a 10-year agreement with Boosteroid for the cloud gaming provider to stream Activision’s PC titles if the deal goes through.It’s Microsoft’s latest attempt to demonstrate to EU, UK and US regulators that it won’t use the deal to muscle out competitors and stifle competition. Similarly, it recently struck 10-year deals with Nintendo and Nvidia to bring the Call of Duty franchise to platforms like the Switch and GeForce Now. Microsoft has said it offered Sony a similar agreement for PlayStation licensing (which Sony hasn’t agreed to) and committed to supporting Steam availability at the same time as Xbox. Sony expressed its concerns about the deal earlier this month, including the prospect of Microsoft shipping buggy versions of Call of Duty on PlayStation, diminishing gamers' trust in playing the immensely popular shooter on Sony consoles.“If the only argument is that Microsoft is going to withhold Call of Duty from other platforms, and we’ve now entered into contracts that are going to bring this to many more devices and many more platforms, that is a pretty hard case to make to a court,” Microsoft President Brad Smith toldThe Wall Street Journal. “The reason we want to buy Activision Blizzard is to round out our titles to have a fuller library, especially to have more mobile titles where we don’t have a strong presence, and build a stronger gaming business.”Activision BlizzardBoosteroid is the biggest independent cloud-gaming service in the world. Like GeForce Now, it supports multi-device streaming access but requires purchasing paid games on other platforms (including Steam, Epic Games, Battle.net and Origin). Boosteroid's current library includes Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Activision’s Call of Duty: Warzone (among many others). It can stream games in web browsers and offers native apps for Windows, macOS, Android, Android TV and Linux. (iOS is missing because it doesn’t allow native cloud-gaming apps without clunky workarounds.) Boosteroid has servers in Romania, Ukraine, Italy, Slovakia, France, Spain, the UK, Sweden, Serbia and the US.The European Commission, in charge of EU competition regulation, was reported earlier this month to be satisfied enough with Microsoft’s commitments to “likely” give the go-ahead. However, the commission hasn’t said so publicly and has until April 25th to decide. UK regulators’ decision is expected the following day. Meanwhile, the US Federal Trade Commission sued Microsoft to block the deal in December out of concerns it could raise prices or cut off access for non-Microsoft hardware, something Microsoft has denied it would do. The company has until July to satisfy the FTC, or it will need to renegotiate the deal or abandon the purchase, putting it on the line for up to a $3 billion breakup fee.The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, which favors structural changes over behavioral promises like licensing deals, recently suggested Microsoft could divest itself of Activision’s publishing unit, which Microsoft has indicated it has no interest in doing; deals like the Boosteroid one are part of its fight to avoid that fate.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-will-bring-call-of-duty-and-its-pc-games-to-a-cloud-service-youve-probably-never-heard-of-171502988.html?src=rss
The long-awaited System Shock remake at last has a precise release date, but it's one that marks yet another delay. Publisher Prime Matter previously planned to release the game sometime this month. "We had hoped to bring the game to market by the end of March, but that turned out to be just beyond our reach; we are after all merely human (unlike Shodan!)," it said.Now, the game is scheduled to hit Steam, GOG and the Epic Games Store on May 30th. It will cost $40. Early buyers will get a copy of System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition at no extra cost when Nightdive Studios' port of that game arrives.However, there's more disappointing news for those who've been waiting for the System Shock remake to come to consoles. It will land on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S sometime after May. Prime Matter says it will reveal more details when they become available.The remake of the 1994 first-person RPG has been a long time coming. Nightdive first announced it in 2015 and we got our first look at it the following year. In early 2021, the studio said System Shock would arrive that summer, which obviously didn't come to pass.According to Prime Matter, the latest version will retain the gameplay of the influential original game while upgrading the visuals, audio, controls and interface. Nightdive is overhauling the hacking feature and introducing fresh enemies, while the revamped combat includes a dismemberment system. You can check out a slice of System Shock now, as there's a PC demo available.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/system-shock-remake-should-finally-hit-pc-on-may-30th-171056087.html?src=rss
One of our biggest complaints about Fitbit products for years is the fact that you'll need to pay the $10 monthly fee to see your historical data. For example, you could only see up to seven days' worth of your breathing rate, resting heart rate and heart rate variation, and just 90 days of everything else if you didn't shell out. It was one of the biggest drawbacks of devices like the Pixel Watch, especially when you consider that competing products from Apple and Samsung don't lock your own data behind a paywall. Today, Google announced that it's making "more of the insightful data from Fitbit's Health Metrics Dashboard available without a subscription to all of its users."This includes breathing rate, heart rate variability, skin temperature, oxygen saturation and resting heart rate. "Now, even without a Premium subscription, users will now be able to see 30-day and 90-day views of their data to track trends over time," the company said in a statement. To be clear, more-basic metrics like step count, miles traveled, calories burned and heart rate have always been free, while the information listed above were presented in the Health Metrics dashboard as daily, weekly, monthly or 90-day summaries.While there is still a 90-day limit to how far back you can see your historical activity for those metrics, this at least brings Fitbit products closer to the competition. The company does have industry-leading health and sleep-tracking features, including the ability to see how much time you spend in zones like REM, deep and light sleep throughout the night. For now, though, it appears that information like sleep stages is still something you'll need to pay to see.It's a shame, and a detriment to Fitbit that this is still paywalled, since Apple recently added the same feature to watchOS, while Samsung has offered it for years. And both competitors grant this to users without an extra charge. We've reached out to Fitbit to confirm if Sleep Stages remains behind Premium and will update this post when we hear back.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fitbit-wont-make-you-pay-for-your-own-weekly-health-data-anymore-170008009.html?src=rss
Amazon has rolled out another sale on smart home devices from its Blink brand, bringing a range of video doorbells and security cameras back down to, or at least near, their lowest prices to date. If you're comfortable with the idea of having an Amazon camera outside of your home, one highlight is the Blink Video Doorbell for $35. That matches the device's all-time low, coming in $15 below Amazon's list price and about $10 off the average street price we've seen in recent months. If you're thinking of picking up a Blink cam for the first time, note that a bundle that pairs the Video Doorbell with the company's Sync Module 2 — which lets you view the camera's live feed on-demand and utilize local storage — is down to $59, which is about $15 off its usual going rate and $5 more than the best price we've tracked.Blink is essentially the budget counterpart to Amazon's other major smart home subsidiary, Ring. Its Video Doorbell is much more basic than a pricier option like Arlo's Essential Video Doorbell, the top pick from our guide to the best smart home devices, but it still delivers serviceable 1080p video, night vision and the ability to see and speak to people at your door regardless of where you are. The whole thing is relatively easy to install, and it can run off wired power or a couple of AA batteries. Blink says the device can get up to two years of juice, depending on how hard it's put into use.That said, the camera's field of view (135 degrees horizontal, 80 degrees vertical) isn't as wide as higher-end options, and it only works with Amazon's Alexa assistant, not alternative platforms like Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant or IFTTT. And while you don't need any add-ons, the doorbell's storage and live view options are limited without the Sync Module or one of Blink's subscription plans. Without the Module, you'll only receive alerts and a live view when the doorbell senses activity or someone presses its button. Still, this is a worthy option for those looking to install a competent, battery-powered doorbell cam for as little money as possible.Beyond the Video Doorbell, other notable deals include a two-camera kit of Blink's Outdoor security cam, another pick from our best smart home device guide, for $104. That's $5 more than the lowest price we've seen. The sale includes several bundles that mix and match various camera options as well.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-blink-video-doorbell-is-down-to-an-all-time-low-of-35-165025620.html?src=rss
The selection committees have made their picks and the brackets are set. Another installment of arguably the best sports weekend of the year is about to tip off. March Madness or the NCAA basketball tournaments begin today with two First Four games on the men’s side. Thanks to the NCAA’s partnerships with Warner Bros. Discovery for the men’s tournament, and Disney (ESPN) for the women’s, you can stream every game and some will even be available for free. Here's your guide on how to stream March Madness 2023, from where to watch to when the games begin.When does March Madness start?Depending on who you ask, the 2023 NCAA Tournament either begins Tuesday or Thursday. On March 14th and 15th, the March Madness schedule includes First Four or four “play-in” games take place. These allow four more teams to “make the tournament” than if the selection committee just filled the two 16-seed and two 12-seed slots with one school in each spot. Some people argue the entire event doesn’t really start until Thursday and Friday, March 16th and 17th, when the First Round officially tips off.No matter which side you land on, the First Four games will start at 6:40PM ET each night on truTV while Thursday and Friday games begin at 12:15PM ET, with the first game on CBS. These two days are the busiest and some of the most popular of the tournament as 16 games take place on each. Yes, these are two of the least productive days of the entire year in the US. It’s also the most popular time to schedule a vasectomy. Action continues with the Second Round on Saturday and Sunday, March 18th and 19th, before a break until next Thursday. This is when the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight rounds are played over the course of the second four-day weekend of the tournament. The Final Four is set for Saturday, April 1st while the National Championship Game will go down on Monday, April 3rd.How to stream the 2022 Men’s NCAA TournamentLance King via Getty ImagesUnlike during the regular season when you need to know which network your team’s conference has a broadcast deal with to find most of the games, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports holds the rights to the entire Men’s NCAA Tournament. This means you’ll be able to watch all 67 games, including the First Four, on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV. If you have cable, you’re all set. If you pay for a live TV streaming service like YouTube TV or Hulu, you’re also in good shape. If you don’t have either, don’t worry, you can still watch a good chunk of the tournament.Warner Bros. Discovery Sports will allow anyone to watch the games broadcast by CBS on the web and mobile devices without a TV provider log-in. Paramount+ users will be able to do the same through that streaming app. If you do have credentials from your TV plan, you can stream everything through March Madness Live that’s available on a host of devices. You can find it on Android and iOS for mobile and macOS and the web on the desktop. For streaming devices, it’s on Apple TV, Fire TV, Google TV, Roku and Xbox as well as some LG smart TVs.With some of those home entertainment devices, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports will give you a very handy feature. On Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV and Xbox One, the March Madness Live app will allow you to stream two games at once. On the web, however, is where you’ll find the best option. Starting this year, the broadcaster has added the ability to stream up to four games simultaneously. If you opt for mobile or tablet versions, you’ll get picture-in-picture viewing while you browse away from the main game. The company has also expanded its Fast Break whiparound broadcast beyond mobile and web for 2023, adding the real-time analysis of big plays to its apps for streaming devices, consoles and smart TVs.March Madness Live multiview on the webNCAA/WBD Sports/CBS SportsYouTube TV has also added multiview streaming just in time for the tournament, but the platform is only offering preselected groupings – you won’t have the ability to pick which games you follow on your own right now. YouTube TV’s version is also only available to selected subscribers in early access, but it will be available on any smart TV or streaming device that supports the service.Warner Bros. Discovery Sports has also added CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility this year, giving you easy access to live radio broadcasts in the school pick up line. On iOS, the March Madness Live app now supports Live Activities, so you can get live updates right on your lock screen should you be burdened with a meeting during a game you’re interested in.You can certainly use your cable interface or streaming TV service of choice, but Warner Bros. Discovery Sports has made March Madness Live a centralized hub for the tournament. If you have log-in credentials that get you access to everything, using those will allow you to jump from game to game much faster than scrolling through a guide. And the broadcaster also gives you all of the alerts and stats you could ask for, including the ability to easily follow picks from your March Madness bracket if you filled it out on NCAA.com.Streaming the 2022 Women’s NCAA TournamentUSA TODAY USPW / reutersAs if one National Championship tournament in March wasn’t enough, the Women’s edition takes place at the same time. It’s March Madness, after all. The First Four is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, March 15th and 16th, with the March Madness schedule consisting of the First and Second rounds playing out between Friday, March 17th and Monday, March 20th. Sweet Sixteen and Elite 8 runs Friday to Monday again, starting March 24th, and the Final Four and National Championship Game are set for March 31st and April 2nd.If you notice there are some scheduling differences so that there are only women’s games on Mondays and both the Final Four and championship are slotted between the same events for the men. So when it comes down to crunch time, you can watch the conclusion of both tournaments live without having to sacrifice viewing the other.ESPN has the rights to the Women’s NCAA Tournament, so you can expect games to show up on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPNEWS. The first two of the First Four games will be broadcast at 7PM ET and 9PM ET on ESPNU Wednesday night with the second pair on ESPN2 Thursday evening. First Round matchups begin at 11:30AM ET on Friday and Saturday on ESPN2, with subsequent games on those days expanding to the other networks.Once again, if you have a cable plan or streaming TV service with Disney’s sports channels you’re all set. However, the best place to watch all of the action will be the ESPN app. Here, you’ll get access to a multicast feature that will give you up to four games at once (YouTube TV didn’t specify if it would include women’s games in its multiview trial). Multicast will be especially handy during those first four days of the tournament when there’s lots of action happening at the same time. However, it's only available on Apple TV and Xbox One.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/march-madness-streaming-guide-163042028.html?src=rss
Google has been scrambling to catch up to to OpenAI for months, ever since the latter dropped its conversational bot, ChatGPT, and took the generative AI industry by storm. Google's first attempted response with the release of its Bard AI (which immediately misquoted easily verifiable stats about the JWST) was tepid at best so the company has announced a new tact: they're packing every single product they can with AI — just like they did in the Google+ era with social features.The new features will be coming to virtually all of Google's Workspace products. According to the company users will be able to "draft, reply, summarize, and prioritize" emails, "brainstorm, proofread, write, and rewrite" text documents, autogenerate images and even video with Slides, have Sheets create formulas autonomously, automate transcription notes in Meet and "enable workflows for getting things done" in Chat.For example, in Docs, users will simply need to type the subject of their assignment into the page to have Google's generative AI suite quickly gin up additional text. The system can also rework (hopefully improving) what the user has already drafted, even if they're just bullet points, using the Rewrite function. There's also a new “I’m feeling lucky” option in Gmail which your company's HR department is just going to adore.Following the Bard debacle, Google doubled down on its commitment to ensuring that its AIs don't turn out like Miucrosoft's. "AI is no replacement for the ingenuity, creativity, and smarts of real people," Johanna Voolich Wright, VP of Product at Google Workspace, wrote on Tuesday. "Sometimes the AI gets things wrong, sometimes it delights you with something offbeat, and oftentimes it requires guidance." To that end the company is building its products within the bounds of its AI Principles, which are as legally binding as the company's old "Don't be evil" motto. The new AI-enabled Workspace suite is expected to roll out to English language users in the US by the end of the month with additional languages and regions arriving in the near future.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-is-shoving-generative-ai-into-gmail-docs-sheets-meet-chat-and-slides-161711903.html?src=rss
Nearly a year after it was first announced, Hyper Light Breaker finally has a gameplay trailer. Developer Heart Machine shared the long-awaited first look through IGN. The studio promised Breaker would be a departure from its predecessor, 2016’s Hyper Light Drifter. The trailer reiterates that, showing how just how much will change with the series switching to 3D.Where Hyper Light Drifter pulled most directly from early Legend of Zelda entries like A Link to the Past, its sequel shows obvious Breath of the Wild influences, with nods to Dark Souls and PlatinumGames titles like Bayonetta 3. Judging from the trailer, traversing Breaker’s open world, a domain known as the “Overgrowth,” will be a highlight, thanks to the hoverboard and glider your character will have at their disposal. The trailer also promises “endless loadouts” and “endless deaths.” In other words, expect tough enemies that will push you to learn the ins and outs of the weapons you find throughout the game. Oh, and you can see how the optional co-op play will allow players to band together to take on some of Breaker's more difficult challenges.With the gameplay reveal, Heart Machine also announced a new release date for the game. Hyper Light Breaker will now arrive on Steam early access this fall, instead of the spring as previously announced.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/first-hyper-light-breaker-gameplay-trailer-reveals-fall-early-access-release-161516775.html?src=rss
Do you shop in-person because you invariably have questions for staff? Apple thinks it can offer some of that experience at home. It's rolling out a "Shop with a Specialist over Video" feature that gives US iPhone shoppers a one-way video chat with a retail employee. You can ask for advice on the model to buy, investigate payment options and learn about switching from Android.The video call option is available between 10AM and 10PM Eastern every day. The company tells Engadget that the feature is accessible on any device that can reach Apple's website. You communicate through audio alone — the Specialist can't see you.This won't help if you're looking for hands-on time, and you probably won't get the answers you'd find in a full review. You're also out of luck if you need help shopping for a Mac or other Apple products. Still, this may be useful if you'd rather not navigate product pages just to find answers. To some degree, this also makes Apple's retail services more accessible if you can't travel to a store.The addition comes at an important moment for Apple. Like other hardware manufacturers, it took a bruising in the fall as a tough economy and supply shortages hurt sales. An online shopping tool isn't likely to play a major factor in improving those sales, but might help customers who would otherwise be hesitant to buy an iPhone sight unseen.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-gives-shoppers-the-option-to-video-chat-with-a-salesperson-160958293.html?src=rss
YouTube TV is now much more useful if you're a sports fan. The service is rolling out an early access multiview feature that shows up to four sports streams at once. Visit the "Top Picks For You" section and you can pick from pre-chosen multiview groups, such as NCAA March Madness games. You can jump to a full-screen view for each match, and switch the audio and captioning to the stream that captures your attention.Importantly, the technology isn't limited to specific platforms or devices. It supports all smart TVs and living room media players that can run YouTube TV in the first place. You won't need a high-powered device like you do with some services. The trick, as the company's German Cheung explains, is to move the processing to YouTube's servers — your hardware only has to handle one feed regardless of how many streams you're watching. The tech is borrowed from YouTube's co-streaming feature.If you're part of the early access phase, you'll see both an alert and an email. YouTube TV expects to deploy multiview streaming for all subscribers in the "coming months." The company tells Engadget it plans to expand functionality over time, including the option to customize the stream selection.The timing is convenient. March Madness is just getting started, and the MLB season start is weeks away. Multiview could make YouTube more compelling if you're deciding on a TV provider (particularly an internet-only service) and are determined to follow as many games as possible. The broad support may also be alluring if competing services don't offer this level of multi-stream support on your living room equipment of choice. The official March Madness Live app, for instance, only supports four-way streaming on the web — you're limited to two streams elsewhere.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/youtube-tv-adds-multiview-streaming-in-time-for-march-madness-160009784.html?src=rss
Amazon has pulled back the curtain on its first slate of Project Kuiper antennas. The terminals, which will transmit data to and from Amazon’s Low Earth Orbit internet satellites, resemble furniture. The largest of the bunch is even the size of a full-blown patio table — it measures 19 inches by 30 inches. That model is intended for enterprise, government and telecommunications operations. Amazon said it will deliver internet speeds of up to 1 Gbps.The standard terminal for consumers has a smaller footprint, measuring 11 inches square with a thickness of one inch. Without its mounting bracket, it weighs less than five pounds. This antenna should be able to deliver speeds up to 400 Mbps, Amazon says.The company hasn’t revealed how much the terminals will cost, but says it should be able to build the standard model for less than $400 per unit. SpaceX's Starlink charges $599 for a terminal. That said, there will be a more compact and wallet-friendly terminal available from Amazon too. A seven-inch-square antenna will weigh one pound and offer speeds of up to 100 Mbps.AmazonAmazon designed its own baseband chip for the terminals. It says the chip, which has the code name Prometheus, has "the processing power of a 5G modem chip found in modern smartphones, the capability of a cellular base station to handle traffic from thousands of customers at once and the ability of a microwave backhaul antenna to support powerful point-to-point connections." The same chip is being used in Project Kuiper satellites and ground gateway antennas. Amazon says the chip will enable each satellite to process up to one terabit of traffic per second.Project Kuiper is set to deploy two prototype satellites on the maiden flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket. That launch is scheduled for May. Amazon expects to begin mass production of satellites by the end of this year and to commence launching them in the first half of 2024. It plans to start offering Project Kuiper service to customers later next year. Earlier this month, Amazon received conditional FCC approval to launch thousands of Low Earth Orbit satellites.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-satellite-internet-antennas-can-double-as-picnic-tables-for-dolls-153450879.html?src=rss
TikTok has a large science community, and the social network wants everyone to know it on Pi Day. The company is launching a dedicated STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) feed that shows only these more educational videos. You may learn to code or discuss experiments without having to wade through TikTok's usual entertainment-focused content.Not surprisingly, TikTok is taking steps to block misinformation in this new section. Curator Common Sense Networks will study content to make sure it's relevant to the STEM feed, while the fact-checkers at Poynter will gauge the accuracy. Any videos that don't pass both inspections won't reach the new feed.Users in the US will start seeing the STEM feed in the "coming weeks," TikTok says. The social media giant has already been experimenting with a "Topic Feed" in some regions to court fans of gaming, sports and other common subjects. The science-oriented feed is considered an expansion of this initiative.The launch isn't surprising. Governments and schools are concerned TikTok may harm children and teens, to the point where schools are suing the company over alleged mental health problems. A STEM feed creates a positive space for "co-learning, inspiration and enrichment," as TikTok claims. It's also potentially lucrative, as TikTok claims that STEM-linked hashtags have received more than 110 billion views so far.Whether or not this helps with TikTok's survival in the US is another matter. Some politicians want to ban TikTok outright over fears it's a national security threat. Officials are concerned China may collect data about key Americans or spread propaganda. CEO Shou Zi Chew is set to testify before a House committee next week on privacy, security and child safety issues. A STEM feed won't necessarily address those worries.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tiktok-now-offers-a-feed-dedicated-to-science-and-tech-150120046.html?src=rss
At its annual health event, The Check Up, Google announced a slew of updates for Search, Fitbit and developers. On the Search front, the company says it will soon identify community health centers and make it clear whether those facilities have free or low-cost care options. It seems there will be a label that reads, "offers free or low-cost care based on individual circumstances."In addition, Google says it has employed Duplex to call hundreds of thousands of US healthcare providers and verify their information. The conversational AI has also been used to check whether providers accept various state Medicaid plans.After several pauses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Medicaid will have a re-enrollment deadline this year. If folks in the US who are currently enrolled in the program fail to sign back up by March 31st, they'll lose their healthcare coverage. To help ensure people maintain their coverage, Google says it will make it easier for everyone to find re-enrollment information on Search.GoogleTo assist those seeking help in a crisis, Google has teamed up with ThroughLine, which it says is the "largest verified network of mental health and crisis helplines around the world." As a result of the partnership, Google will expand the number of crisis helplines it displays at the top of Search results in more languages and countries for queries related to personal crisis situations, such as suicide and domestic violence.GoogleAs for Fitbit, Google is opening up more of the Health Metrics Dashboard features to users who don't have a subscription. The company says that, for instance, users will be able to view trends for metrics such as breathing rate, skin temperature and blood oxygen levels over longer periods of time.Meanwhile, Google touched on some health-focused updates for developers. It discussed a suite of development tools called Open Health Stack, which it described as "open-source building blocks built on an interoperable data standard." In other words, Open Health Stack is designed to help developers build apps for healthcare workers to access key data and insights, such as population health data.Google says the suite is based on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Standards and can be used to build apps that keep data secure for offline use in areas without internet connectivity or cell coverage. For instance, a developer in Kenya called Intellisoft Consulting is building a maternal health app designed to help community health volunteers and pregnant women in rural communities.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-health-updates-include-an-easier-way-to-see-if-a-clinic-offers-free-or-low-cost-care-150036431.html?src=rss
AI isn’t just good for writing term papers or clickbait financial explainers; it could help save lives in the medical field. At Google’s annual The Check Up healthcare event, it announced AI-related partnerships for ultrasound readings, medical language models and cancer treatments — areas where the technology could someday serve as a force for good.Google sees AI as crucial in reading ultrasound devices in regions without enough trained specialists. Although the sensors are more accessible than ever, they require experts to conduct exams and interpret images. The company’s AI models could help simplify that process by identifying data like the early detection of breast cancer and gestational age in expectant mothers. To help make that a reality, the search giant is partnering with Kenya nonprofit Jacaranda Health to research AI-based ultrasound treatments for mothers and babies in government hospitals. “Through this partnership, we’ll conduct exploratory research to understand the current approach to ultrasound delivery in Kenya and explore how new AI tools can support point-of-care ultrasound for pregnant women,” said Google’s Health AI head Greg Corrado and Engineering VP Yossi Matias in a blog post today.The company is also working with Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taiwan to research how AI can detect breast cancer via ultrasound as an alternative to mammograms, which have limited availability in lower-resource regions. Mammograms can also be less effective in populations with higher breast density.Evelyn Hockstein / reutersIn other areas, Google says its medical-focused large language model (LLM) has improved significantly. Med-PaLM 2, the company’s next-generation healthcare LLM, recently scored 85 percent on doctor-level medical exam questions — an 18 percent improvement from the previous version’s score. “This model not only answered multiple choice and open-ended questions accurately, but also provided rationale and evaluated its own responses,” said Corrado and Matias.However, don’t expect a ChatGPT-like bot to replace your doctor anytime soon, as Google cautions the technology still isn’t ready for real-world work settings. For example, an evaluation on criteria like scientific factuality, precision, medical consensus, reasoning, bias and harm found “significant gaps” when answering medical questions. Corrado and Matias noted, “We look forward to working with researchers and the global medical community to close these gaps and understand how this technology can help improve health delivery.”Google has also partnered with Mayo Clinic to explore AI’s part in planning radiotherapy for cancer treatment. The research focuses on reducing the tedious and time-consuming steps of the radiotherapy process — most notably, “contouring.” This technique requires clinicians to draw lines on CT scans to separate cancerous areas from nearby healthy tissues that the radiation could damage, a process that can take up to seven hours for one patient. The company says it will soon publish research from the three-year study while formalizing an agreement with Mayo Clinic to explore more radiotherapy-based research, AI models and commercial uses.Finally, Google sees AI as helping with chest x-ray screening for tuberculosis. The company is partnering with an AI-based organization to make AI-powered TB screenings widely available in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its partners have committed to donating 100,000 free screenings to help detect tuberculosis early and provide early treatment to reduce its spread.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-is-working-on-ai-for-ultrasound-diagnosis-and-cancer-therapy-150023911.html?src=rss
I'm just so tired of all the poop. Now that I'm dealing with three cats, an 11-month old's diapers and potty time with my four-year old, I just needed some relief from mountains of excrement. Enter the Litter Robot 4, the latest iteration of Whisker's automated litter box (a product we initially covered in 2005!). It's a small, spaceship-looking device that automatically rotates after your cat does its business, separating waste into a storage bin and leaving the remaining clean litter behind. Instead of scooping a box daily (or several times a day for multi-cat households), you only need to yank out the Litter Robot's bin bag and replace it with a new liner once a week. Sounds like a dream, right?Well, mostly. For one, it's an eye-watering $699, putting it out of reach for most cat owners. And like practically every "smart" device, I ran into issues while setting up the Litter Robot 4. After a few months of testing, I've encountered many quirks – sometimes it didn't sift properly, occasionally its cat detecting sensors went haywire, and it didn't really prevent litter from reaching my floors. Despite all of that, though, it still made my life easier. Thanks to the Litter Robot 4, I had to deal with animal poop just a bit less every day. I'll chalk that up as a win.As a cat owner since 2009, I've always eyed self-cleaning litter boxes with envy. But almost every option seemed like a headache back then: Some required specialized litter, others were prone to jamming and failure. And even though the Litter Robot has been around for a while, I've always considered it too expensive to be practical. But now that my household has grown, thanks to that aforementioned poopy infant and a pair of adopted kittens, I was eager for some relief. (One of those kittens also grew into an enormous 18-pound beast – you can imagine what his litter box looks like.)I know several people who loved the Litter Robot 3, and it was generally well-reviewed, despite being simultaneously bulky on the outside and a bit too small for cats on the inside. The Litter Robot 4 improves on its predecessor with a sleeker design (it's a bit less wide, so it should fit better in small rooms), as well as a larger opening for big cats. It's also Wi-Fi connected, which makes it easy for you to check on litter and waste levels with Whisker's app. Thanks to new weight sensors, you can track how often your cats are using the Robot, and the company is also planning to launch more individualized tracking later this year. In theory, that should let you know if one of your cats is using the litter box too often, or not enough.Devindra Hardawar/EngadgetSetting up the Litter Robot 4 was fairly easy – until I ran into some software issues. You just have to yank the 24-pound egg-like bot out of its box, dump some clumping litter into the main compartment, and throw an included bag in the waste bin. The device itself is made entirely out of plastic, making it fairly light and easier to maneuver. The inner portion where the litter sits is covered in a rubber-like material, which should make it fairly durable and easier to clean than hard plastic.After plugging in and turning on the Litter Robot, though, I was faced with my worst fear with any new smart gadget: Pairing issues. Without being paired to the app, the Robot wouldn't self-clean at all. A few hours of frustration later, I learned that Whisker was having a system-wide issue and I had to wait a few days for the company to deliver a fix.So it goes with smart devices, you might say. But it definitely felt silly (and a bit enraging) to be manually cleaning this $699 litter box. Without that initial connectivity, it was no better than the $20 litter tray my cats use upstairs. Once the app was set, the Robot ran through a cleaning cycle and evenly sifted the remaining litter. Upon seeing this new litter box move and make sounds (it's surprisingly quiet!), my three cats wouldn't go near it. At that point, it was just a $699 monument to pet excess.A few days later, the bravest of the bunch — my 18-pound tuxedo cat named "Jiji" — finally jumped into the Litter Robot to explore. After several hops in and out, he deemed it safe and left his first offering, which was promptly cycled into the waste bin. The Litter Robot seemed pleased. Within a week, all of my cats were onboard. And around then, I noticed something strange: I couldn't smell any poop or pee! Sure, the Whisker app told me the waste bin was full, but you wouldn't know that while standing right in front of it. That's a good sign for anyone who wants to place the Litter Robot in a cramped living room.Devindra Hardawar/EngadgetMy honeymoon period ended when one of my cats left a streak of feces inside the Robot. No amount of sifting and cycling got rid of that. Eventually, I started to notice some strange behavior from the device (perhaps in protest to what that cat did). Sometimes its indicator lights would flash red — a sensor fault, according to the Whisker app. The only way to fix that was by turning the unit on and off. Occasionally, the Robot wouldn't fully clean itself after one of my cats used it. So I had to hit the cycle button up top to get it going.Over the course of a week, I typically have to deal with three of four issues like this from the Litter Robot. Few of those involve touching actual poop, and it's far less than I'd be cleaning a normal litter box. Still, for $699, I wish it were more reliable. I wouldn't trust it to work for an entire week if my family went on vacation. Just don't lose your cat sitter's number.Cleaning out the Litter Robot's waste bin is a cinch — just yank out the liner bag and replace it with another. While you could stick with Whisker's products, I haven't had any trouble using Glad's 13-gallon ForceFlex bags. The company also recommends wiping down the Litter Robot's internals once a month, as well as refreshing the litter with an entirely new batch. That process isn't tough, but I found it easiest to accomplish by dragging the device outside. And yes, it also means you'll need to get your hands dirty a bit. There's just no escaping the poop.Whisker's mobile app does a great job of alerting me when the waste bin is full, or when litter is running low. And it may sound strange, but I genuinely appreciate seeing how often my cats use the box. It's particularly helpful if one cat is feeling sick – going to the Robot frequently could be a sign of illness. The app also keeps track of your cat's weight, which could help you avoid over or under-feeding. (And of course, a big weight drop could be another health concern.)Devindra Hardawar/EngadgetAfter a few months of testing, only two of my cats continue to use the Litter Robot 4. Still, they use it frequently enough to fill up its waste bin every week. (We also have two normal litter boxes around the house for the lone renegade.) My one major annoyance, aside from all of those random errors, is the Litter Robot's open design. I'm aware it's something cats prefer, but it also leads to litter being strewn around the floor. Unfortunately, Whisker's bundled gate and front step for the Litter Robot don't really help much. If you do end up getting this thing, I'd suggest adding a litter mat up front, and be prepared to vacuum or sweep every few days.The Litter Robot 4 is an extravagance, but it's one that tired cat owners may find useful. Just don't expect any miracles. You'll still need to watch out for errors, do some manual scrubbing and sweep up stray litter. The perfect self-cleaning litter box isn't here yet, but the Litter Robot 4 is as close as you'll get.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/litter-robot-4-review-great-imperfect-self-cleaning-litter-box-140022763.html?src=rss
When Cowboy, a premium European e-bike company, invited the media to an event in Paris, France, it faced some unexpected challenges. Along with torrential rain, there also were strikes and protests against changes to the country’s pension system. And then the big reveal was… not a new bike. Instead, the announcement was three springtime color options for the Cowboy 4 and 4ST (step-through) plus Adaptive Power, a software upgrade coming to Cowboy 4 bikes this month. So when I met the company’s execs, I already had my question: Where’s the new model?But before I sat down to speak with them, I was able to try out Adaptive Power, touring a few blocks and dipping down and out of Parisian car parks. Would this smarter e-bike (with the same motor) translate to any tangible improvements? Fortunately, yes. Adaptive power works by tapping into the e-bike’s accelerometer and other sensors, based on the rider’s weight, momentum and other factors – even wind. The new feature adjusts the motor’s power without the need for gears or tapping a boost button. The sensors also seemingly detect inclines as soon as your front wheel hits them, increasing motor assistance. The update taps into the same sensors and tech already used for crash detection.Mat Smith / EngadgetAccording to Cowboy, the e-bike should offer equivalent battery life between the two iterations, as the motors will likely work more than the last version when the bike needs more power, but also work less when it doesn’t. If you’re riding an updated Cowboy 4, you won’t be able to return to the previous system, but using the app, you can choose between adaptive and eco modes, with the latter offering reduced assistance.I was able to compare the C4, both with and without the feature, and the biggest improvement from Adaptive Power was how it kicked in at the perfect moment while accelerating from stationary. That’s not to say the Cowboy 4, pre-Adaptive Power, was slow, but it felt smoother and more responsive – it’s impressive for a single-gear bike. Previously, the bike’s motor would respond to your pedal pushes. This time it takes in more information to decide whether to boost.While that was the most convenient benefit, there’s also a tangible improvement when tackling hills and inclines. With Adaptive Power, steep hills demanded a bit of pedaling but were surmountable. Downgrading to a bike without Adaptive Power – but the same motor with 45 Nm of torque – it’s a journey on the struggle bus. This was a common complaint from Cowboy 4 riders, with several saying that hilly environments were difficult to tackle, even with electric support. This new feature seems to address that, judging by my brief ride on the updated Cowboy 4. (If Cowboy is looking for what to improve when it eventually gets to its fifth-generation bike, this city rider would appreciate a more comfortable saddle.)This update plays to the Cowboy 4’s design, too. Unlike many e-bikes, there are no controls to tap directly into the electric motor. It’s meant to look (and ride) like a normal push bike and that’s what it does. The Cowboy 4 is also, still, a few kilograms lighter than VanMoof’s latest e-bike, its most comparable rival. Both are premium e-bike options with similar pricing and features, but if you’re lifting your bike up stairs, or into buildings, it’s worth considering.While Adaptive Power has been in beta testing with users before now, the official launch coincides with three new color options of both the Cowboy 4 and 4ST. While it’s an impressive way to upgrade the e-bikes of existing users – and do it without having to take it to a service center– these are the same bikes that first launched in 2021.Until now, Cowboy has iterated fast, with new models arriving at a similar cadence to flagship smartphones. We reviewed its first bike in 2019, which wasn’t long ago. But there are a few reasons for the company to stick with the Cowboy 4.A lot of e-bike tech will not change hugely in the next few years. Barring incremental efficiency updates, the motor inside most e-bikes likely won’t see generational updates. I also wonder how existing Cowboy e-bike owners see the company's updated models, having spent thousands on an e-bike 18 months earlier, only to see it replaced so soon. So why no Cowboy 5? For Cowboy, CEO and cofounder Adrien Roose told me the focus is on improving quality, efficiency and all the things that come with scaling up to sell more bikes. The C4 and C4 ST both remain priced at around $3,000, depending on region, and the challenge is getting e-bike prices low enough for wider-spread adoption.Cowboy has a retail space on the first floor of a prestigious Parisian department store.Mat Smith / EngadgetThe company has opened up flagship stores in Germany, Belgium and France – the countries Cowboy is intently focused on, and where it sells most of its bikes. So far it’s sold over 50,000 bikes, globally. But while the C4 is available in the US (and being a company called Cowboy), earnestly targeting the American market remains a future challenge. Roose told me they’re in “learning mode” regarding the US. The plan appears to focus on keeping the company healthy and profitable. Roose added that he believes that Cowboy should get to that point by next year. Maybe they’ll celebrate with a new bike?This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cowboy-4-ebike-adaptive-power-update-test-ride-134503675.html?src=rss
Now is a good time to go shopping if you're pining for Apple's most affordable tablet. Amazon is once again selling the 10.2-inch iPad with WiFi and 64GB of storage for $250, or $79 off. The discount makes it easier to justify if you're looking for a no-frills model for reading, video chats or TV marathons.The 10.2-inch model remains our pick for the best budget iPad for a good reason: even at its normal price, it still delivers a lot of value for the money. It's still quick for everyday tasks, and very portable. It's also particularly appealing if you prefer wired audio — it's the only remaining iPad with a 3.5mm headphone jack. It can be a better deal than the 10th-generation iPad if you're unwilling to pay for an updated design.There are reasons you may want to pay more, of course. The 10.2-inch iPad isn't as fast as other models, and doesn't have a USB-C port, the largest screen, cutting-edge cameras or the Smart Connector for advanced keyboards. Consider the iPad Air (including refurbished units) if you want a tablet that can handle some serious productivity. For casual uses, however, there's no need to splurge.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-102-inch-ipad-is-back-on-sale-for-250-133207623.html?src=rss
Meta has announced another round of sweeping layoffs in a bid to cut costs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company is letting go of another 10,000 workers or so and closing "around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired."Meta will reduce the size of its recruiting team imminently and inform affected employees on Wednesday. The company will then announce layoff and restructuring efforts of its tech departments in late April and business teams in late May. Zuckerberg said it might take until the end of 2023 to complete the process, but the timelines might be different for Meta's operations outside the US. After restructuring, Meta plans to lift the hiring freeze."This will be tough and there’s no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success," Zuckerberg wrote. "They’ve dedicated themselves to our mission and I’m personally grateful for all their efforts. We will support people in the same ways we have before and treat everyone with the gratitude they deserve."In addition, the company will "announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs" and canceling lower priority projects, Zuckerberg said. Reports have suggested that the layoffs will impact teams working on wearable devices as part of the Reality Labs hardware and metaverse division. The "flattening" involves removing layers of management, while Meta "will ask many managers to become individual contributors" — in other words, it seems managers will have to take on some of the tasks their employees focus on."We still believe managing each person is very important, so in general we don’t want managers to have more than 10 direct reports. Today many of our managers have only a few direct reports," Zuckerberg wrote. "That made sense to optimize for ramping up new managers and maintaining buffer capacity when we were growing our organization faster, but now that we don’t expect to grow headcount as quickly, it makes more sense to fully utilize each manager’s capacity and defragment layers as much as possible."In November, Meta laid off more than 11,000 people, which equated to around 13 percent of its headcount at the time. That marked the company's first round of mass layoffs.The latest cost-cutting drive was widely expected. The Financial Times, Bloomberg and The Verge have all reported in recent weeks that more layoffs were in the pipeline. Zuckerberg, who will soon go on paternity leave for his third child, recently described 2023 as a "year of efficiency" for the company and doubled down on that in his note to employees today."Since we reduced our workforce last year, one surprising result is that many things have gone faster. In retrospect, I underestimated the indirect costs of lower priority projects," he wrote. "A leaner org will execute its highest priorities faster. People will be more productive, and their work will be more fun and fulfilling."The latest layoffs follow a year in which Meta saw declines in quarterly revenue for the first time as its ad business slowed down. In October, the company also said it expected to lose more money on Reality Labs (the division that runs Meta's virtual and augmented reality initiatives) in 2023 as it continues to build its vision of the metaverse. Zuckerberg touched on this in his note, stating that "I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years."Last week, Meta announced price cuts for the Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets in an attempt to sell more units. The company recently unveiled another potential revenue stream in the form of Meta Verified, which allows users to pay for Instagram and Facebook verification along with some other perks.Many notable tech companies have announced major rounds of layoffs over the last several months, including Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft. Twitter has been shedding staff almost on an ongoing basis since Elon Musk took over in October. So, Meta isn't alone here, but it's the first among its peers to have a second formal round of mass layoffs since late 2022.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/zuckerberg-touts-year-of-efficiency-as-meta-lays-off-an-additional-10000-workers-131957819.html?src=rss
You might need one less app — and forego a headache — next time you're out driving and need to find an EV charging station. Google will now provide Waze users with the locations of charging stations tailored to their specific car.Google has offered Waze users the ability to find charging stations along their drive since the end of 2021. But, this update is a small though significant change. Just share your car model and charging connectors with Google and Waze will thene show charging stations compatible with the given information. No more watching your battery dip precariously low only to reach an incompatible charging port.GoogleEV sales are growing exponentially worldwide. According to the International Energy Agency, only 120,000 EVs sold globally in 2012. Within a decade, the same number of electric cars were being sold per week. Last September, President Biden set a goal that 50 percent of cars sold across the United States in 2030 will be electric. In line with this shift, US companies put over 700 million dollars towards electric vehicle charging in 2022. On top of that, they've put 13 billion dollars into domestic manufacturing of electric vehicles.The feature will roll out globally over the next few weeks. Local Map Editors within the Waze community will continue to review and make necessary changes to charging station information in real-time.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/waze-charging-stations-support-your-ev-130004064.html?src=rss
How many times have you experienced this scenario? You go shopping online for a new shirt, speaker or other item. You click on the same one a few times and then decide against it. Suddenly every website you visit has an ad featuring that item, imploring you to reconsider. In an effort to create greater privacy online, Mozilla is now rolling out Total Cookie Protection (TCP) as the default setting on the Firefox app for Android after initially making it available for Firefox users on Windows, Mac, and Linux.So, what does TCP do? TCP ensures that your cookies aren't being shared across sites. Typically, third-party cookies collect information about you from across the internet to build your virtual identity. Data brokers then sell your information to businesses that will provide you with targeted ads.Instead, with TCP, the cookies you create while browsing only belong to the site you're on. This feature limits companies from learning any information you enter or behavior you exhibit anywhere else on the internet. So, a store may know you looked for a blue laptop case in their online shop, but they won't know you also searched for size 11 shoes in another one.As part of today's Android update, Mozilla says it's also promoting its Firefox Relay protection to become a dedicated part of the app. Relay, which initially launched as an addon and provides users with email and phone number masks for online signups, comes with a limited free tier but requires a subscription to get the most from the service.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-cookie-protection-tool-firefox-android-130003579.html?src=rss
The WiFi 7 standard still isn't final, but that isn't stopping Netgear from making the technology available to the public. The company has launched its first WiFi 7 router, the Nighthawk RS700S, and it's clear the speed isn't the only draw. While the 320MHz channels promise up to 5Gbps on WiFi 7, the main allure may be the very low lag — Netgear claims "100x lower" latency that should help with gaming, VR and other timing-sensitive apps. You may not be in a rush to plug your PC into an Ethernet jack, then.The tri-band router offers coverage up to 3,500sq. ft thanks in part to a new antenna design, and can handle up to 200 simultaneously connected devices. You can create a mesh network if you need to cover a large home. A 10Gbps WAN Ethernet port makes sure the RS700S can support the fastest home fiber connections, although Netgear curiously limits the four local Ethernet ports to 1Gbps. You'll have to use WiFi if you want to make the most of this hardware.The Nighthawk RS700S arrives in the US in the second quarter of the year, and will cost a steep $700. You're paying for the privilege of being first. With that said, it costs less than Netgear's WiFi 6-based Orbi 860 two-pack despite much stronger performance in its (admittedly smaller) coverage area. If you're more interested in raw throughput than range, this may be the better value.The greater issue is compatibility. Only a limited number of devices have the components needed to support WiFi 7, and the new format isn't enabled. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in the Galaxy S23 series is technically capable of WiFi 7, for example, but Samsung's phones officially support 'only' WiFi 6e. And while multi-gigabit internet service is becoming more commonplace, it's still rare enough that the RS700S' headroom may go unused. You're buying this router to future-proof your setup, not to realize any immediate speed gains.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netgears-first-wifi-7-router-offers-extra-low-latency-for-gaming-123037814.html?src=rss
In 30 minutes or less, TikToker and Chicago-based server Kristen Sotakoun can probably find your birth date. She’s not a cybersecurity expert, despite what some of her followers suspect, but has found a hobby in what she calls “consensual doxxing.”“My first thing is to be entertaining. My second thing is to show you cracks in your social media, which was the totally accidental thing that I became on TikTok,” Sotakoun, who goes by @notkahnjunior, told me.It’s not quite doxxing, which usually refers to making private information publicly available with malicious intent. Instead, it’s known in the cybersecurity field as open-source intelligence, or OSINT. People unknowingly spell out private details about their lives as a bread crumb trail across social media platforms that, when gathered together, paint a picture of their age, families, embarrassing childhood memories and more. In malicious cases, hackers gather information based on what you or your loved ones have published on the web to get into your accounts, commit fraud, or even socially engineer a user to fall for a scam.Sotakoun mostly just tracks down an anonymous volunteer's birth date. She doesn’t have malicious intent or interest in a security career, she said she just likes to solve logic puzzles. Before TikTok, that was spending a ride home from a friend’s birthday dinner at Medieval Times discovering the day job of their “knight.” Sotakoun just happened to eventually go viral for her skills.So, to show me her process, I let Sotakoun “consensually doxx” me. She found my Twitter pretty quickly, but because I keep it pretty locked down, it wasn’t super helpful. Information in author bios from my past jobs, however, helped her figure out where I went to college.My name plus where I studied led her to my Facebook account, another profile that didn’t reveal much. It did, however, lead her to my sister, who had commented on my cover photo nine years ago. She figured out it was my sister because we shared a last name, and we’re listed as sisters on her Facebook. That’s important to note because I don’t actually share a last name with most of my other siblings, which could’ve been an additional roadblock.My sister and I have pretty common names though, so Sotakoun also found my stepmom on my sister’s profile. By searching my stepmom’s much more unique name on Instagram, it helped lead Sotakoun to mine and my sister’s Instagram accounts, as opposed to one of the many other Malones online.Still, my Instagram account is private. So, it was my sister’s Instagram account – that she took off “private” for a Wawa giveaway that ultimately won her a t-shirt – featuring years-old birthday posts that led Sotakoun to the day I was born. That took a ton of scrolling and, to correct for the fact that a birthday post could come a day late or early, Sotakoun relied on the fact that my sister once shared that my birthday coincided with World Penguin Day, April 25.Then, to find the year, she cross-referenced the year I started college, which was 2016 according to my public LinkedIn, with information in my high school newspaper. My senior year of high school, I won a scholarship only available to seniors, Sotakoun discovered, revealing that I graduated high school in 2016. From there, she counted back 18 years, and told me that I was born on April 25, 1998. She was right.“My goal is always to find context clues, or find people who care less about their online presence than you do,” Sotakoun said.Many people will push back on the idea that having personal information online is harmful, according to Matt Edmondson, an OSINT instructor at cybersecurity training organization SANS Institute. While there are obvious repercussions to having your social security number blasted online, people may wonder what the harm is in seemingly trivial information like having your pet’s name easily available on social media. But if that also happens to be the answer to a security question, an attacker may be able to use that to get into your Twitter account or email.In my case, I’ve always carefully tailored my digital footprint to keep my information hidden. My accounts are private and I don’t share a lot of personal information. Still, Sotakoun’s OSINT methods found plenty to work with.Facebook and Instagram are Sotakoun’s biggest help for finding information, but she said she has also used Twitter, and even Venmo to confirm relationships. She specifically avoids resources like records databases that could easily give away information.That means that there’s still a lot of data out there on each of us that Sotakoun isn’t looking for. Especially if you’re in the US, data like your date of birth, home address and more are likely already out there in some form, according to Steven Harris, an OSINT specialist that teaches at SANS.“Once the data is out there, it’s very hard to take back,” Harris said. “What protects people is not that the information is securely locked away, it’s that most people don’t have the knowledge or inclination to go and find out.”There are simple things you can do to keep attackers from using these details against you. Complex passwords and multi-factor authentication make it harder for unauthorized users to get into your account, even if they know the answers to your security questions.That gets a bit more complicated, though, when we think about how much our friends and family post for us. In fact, Sotakoun said she noticed that even if a person takes many measures to hide themselves online, the lack of control over their social circle can help her discover their birth date.“You have basically no control on your immediate social circle, or even your slightly extended social circle and how they present themselves online,” she said.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/it-took-a-tiktoker-barely-30-minutes-to-doxx-me-120022880.html?src=rss
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