Author Archives: Danny Gallagher

Spotify’s AI music DJ can now speak Spanish

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AI seems to be seeping into every facet of society these days, but that may not be the case in communities where English isn’t the dominant language. Spotify is working to correct that by offering a Spanish-speaking version of its DJ feature.

Spotify announced the new Spanish speaking feature for its DJ mode also known as Xavier or “X” on Wednesday. The new DJ is named Livi and Spotify has even given its new DJ a backstory describing her as a “Senior Music Editor at Spotify based out of Mexico City” and “a music expert who has spent her entire career in the music industry.

It’s basically a cruder version of how Jon Hamm can digitally assign backgrounds and perspectives to “cookies” in Black Mirror’s Christmas episode. Does this mean X and Livia will start screaming if we play Wizzard’s “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday” on an endless loop?

DJ is an AI generated list of curated songs based on a Spotify user’s listening history. The DJ feature also includes an AI voice introducing and commenting on some of the songs it picks just like a radio DJ would except this DJ plays songs you actually want to hear. The music streaming service launched DJ last year using OpenAI. Six months later, Spotify expanded DJ’s reach to 50 countries but only in English.

Spotify’s DJ is also starting to get some competition. YouTube Music just announced its own AI-generated conversational DJ radio generator for select users. If they don’t call him “YouGene,” then they are missing out on pure pun gold.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spotifys-ai-music-dj-can-now-speak-spanish-180022156.html?src=rss

Hear Kevin Conroy’s final performance as Batman in Crisis on Infinite Earths

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The sudden and tragic passing of Kevin Conroy, the revered voice actor who voiced Batman/Bruce Wayne for Batman: The Animated Series and the Batman Arkham games and died in 2022 at 66, somehow felt worse with the release of the Suicide Squad game. Rocksteady’s disappointing open world DC Comics game almost marked the last time that Conroy would voice The Dark Knight and an evil Batman at that. Even if the game was good, it wouldn’t feel right letting Conroy’s credit list end on such a down note.

Thankfully, a new Warner Bros. Animation trilogy based on the Justice League: Crisis of Infinite Earths DC comics series will feature the final voiceover performance of Conroy as Batman. The climatic scene showing his final moments found its way to X yesterday.

Conroy's final voiceover occurs in the final film of the trilogy. If you don’t want to know how it ends before you’ve had a chance to watch the whole thing, you should stop scrolling down right now.

The whole scene feels like a purposeful nod and tribute to Conroy and his contributions to the animated and pixelated Batmen. The scene starts with lightning as the virtual camera pans down to Batman. He’s standing on a building overlooking Gotham City just like in the opening credits of Batman: The Animated Series, the 90s afternoon TV cartoon that first glued Conroy’s voice to the image of Batman.

The Joker, voiced by Troy Baker, sneaks up behind ol’ Bats and tries to sucker punch him but fails. He strikes Joker to the ground and Joker says with a smile, “I’m flattered. The end of the world and you wanted to spend it with me. I didn’t know you cared.”

Some kind of destructive force envelopes the city and sky. Batman remarks just before the world implodes, “I care, Joker, about Gotham, about justice and if it has to end, at least I go out like this. Being Batman.”

We also should’ve included a Kleenex warning because it’s such a touching way to pay tribute to Conroy and his legacy to the Batman series.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hear-kevin-conroys-final-performance-as-batman-in-crisis-on-infinite-earths-221556477.html?src=rss

New photos reveal more details about Google’s Pixel 9 Pro Fold

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Google’s secret new line of Pixel 9 phones isn’t that big of a secret anymore. Taiwan’s National Communications Commission (NCC) released new photos of the phones including the Pixel 9 Pro Fold from almost every conceivable angle.

Android Authority found the photos in the NCC archives and uploaded galleries of each of the four phones including the Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL and 9 Pro Fold. They reveal some interesting details about the new Pixel phones.

The charging rates will be a little faster than the last generation of Pixel phones: Taiwanese authorities measured 24.12W for the base model, 25.20W for the Pro and 32.67W for the 9 Pro XL. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold, however, was the slowest of all of them at 20.25W. These numbers don’t often match up perfectly with the advertised ratings, so expect Google to be promoting higher numbers at its event.

Speaking of chargers, it looks like Google needed a bigger charger to power its new phones. Photos included in the NCC leak show each phone will come with a wall charger that’s around 45W depending on which model you purchase. The charger’s plug moved from the middle to the top of the brick.

The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold can fully unfold.
NCC/Android Authority

The latest photo dump also shows the 9 Pro Fold unfolded for the first time. Google has moved the selfie camera to the inside screen for a wider field of view. The 9 Pro Fold also has a slimmer top and bottom, a reduced fold crease on the display and a full 180 degree unfolding angle to make a screen that’s just over 250mm or just under 10 inches.

These photos are the latest in a very long list of leaks of Google Pixel 9 photos. The last Pixel 9 leak came down yesterday showing two prototype models of the base and XL models. Google might look into buying a new combination lock for the high school locker where they apparently keep all their unreleased gear.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/new-photos-reveal-more-details-about-googles-pixel-9-pro-fold-213344869.html?src=rss

Meta rolls back restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts

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Meta, the parent company of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, has decided to remove restrictions placed on former President Donald Trump’s accounts.

Meta updated its original statement announcing the end of Trump’s suspension on Facebook and Instagram in January of 2023 to reflect the Republican presumptive presidential nominee’s new online status. Axios first reported on the news.

Meta removed Trump from all of its platforms following the attack on the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 amid “extreme and highly unusual circumstances,” according to Meta’s original statement. 

Seven people were killed as a result of violence on or collateral damage as a result of the attack on the Capitol building.

The following May, the Oversight Board ruled that Facebook failed to apply an appropriate penalty with its indefinite suspension of Trump’s accounts for “severely” violating Facebook and Instagram’s community guidelines and standards. Trump said in a video statement released less than three hours after the violence began “We love you. You’re very special” and called the insurrectionists “great patriots.” Those and other statements made in the wake of the US Capitol attack convinced the board that Trump violated its standard against praising or supporting people engaging in violence on its platforms.

Two years later, Meta restored Trump’s accounts following a time-bound suspension with stricter penalties for violating its terms of service, a standard that was higher than any other user on Facebook and Instagram. Meta noted in its latest update that the ex-president will be subject to the same standard as everyone else.

“With the party conventions taking place shortly, including the Republican convention next week, the candidates for President of the United States will soon be formally nominated,” according to Meta’s statement. “In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis.”

Twitter, now X, also took action against President Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol for three tweets he posted that were labeled for inciting violence. It started with a 12-hour suspension on Jan. 6, 2021. Two days later, Twitter banned him completely after determining that subsequent posts also violated its community standards. The following year, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk conducted an informal poll on his account asking if he should remove President Trump’s ban and reinstated his account a few days later.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-rolls-back-restrictions-on-trumps-facebook-and-instagram-accounts-220203014.html?src=rss

Three senators introduce bill to protect artists and journalists from unauthorized AI use

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Three US Senators introduced a bill that aims to rein in the rise and use of AI generated content and deepfakes by protecting the work of artists, songwriters and journalists.

The Content Original Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media (COPIED) Act was introduced to the Senate Friday morning. The bill is a bipartisan effort authorized by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), according to a press alert issued by Blackburn’s office.

The COPIED ACT would, if enacted, create transparency standards through the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) to set guidelines for “content provenance information, watermarking, and synthetic content detection,” according to the press release.

The bill would also prohibit the unauthorized use of creative or journalistic content to train AI models or created AI content. The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general would also gain the authority to enforce these guidelines and individuals who had their legally created content used by AI to create new content without their consent or proper compensation would also have the right to take those companies or entities to court.

The bill would even expand the prohibition of tampering or removing content provenance information by internet platforms, search engines and social media companies.

A slew of content and journalism advocacy groups are already voicing their support for the COPIED Act to become law. They include groups like SAG-AFTRA, the Recording Industry Association of America, the National Association of Broadcasters, the Songwriters Guild of America and the National Newspaper Association.

This is not the Senate’s first attempt to create guidelines and laws for the rising use of AI content and it certainly won’t be the last. In April, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) submitted a bill called the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act that would force AI companies to list their copyrighted sources in their datasets. The bill has not moved out of the House Committee on the Judiciary since its introduction, according to Senate records.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/three-senators-introduce-bill-to-protect-artists-and-journalists-from-unauthorized-ai-use-205603263.html?src=rss

8BitDo marks its 11th anniversary with gold and silver metal controllers

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The controllers available for consoles like the Xbox Series X and the Nintendo Switch and even some for PC gaming are the peak result of an evolutionary ergonomic transformation. The days of boxy controllers like the NES GamePad and even the Atari 2600 joystick are almost gone from modern gaming but 8BitDo has done a great job of preserving those classic designs without totally sacrificing their functionality.

8BitDo has been making these modern throwback peripherals for 11 years and it’s marking this anniversary with a pair of limited edition gold and silver SN30 Pro controllers.

These controllers aren’t just matte painted in gold and silver. They are made with a “zinc-alloy metal” so they weigh a hefty 381 grams. They also cost just under $100 each. They are compatible with the Nintendo Switch and computers running Microsoft Windows, according to 8BitDo’s website.

The new gold and silver limited edition controllers have the same layout as the original SN30 Pro with a Super Nintendo-esque button layout and two analog sticks. A metal version may give it the little bit of extra weight the original needs so it feels a little more balanced. Plus, a metal controller that looks like gold or silver just makes you feel like a total baller. Such a confidence boost could transfer from your brain to your hands and may improve your game. So it could be an effective controller or just a cool looking paperweight that you might find on Elon Musk’s desk (assuming he stops tweeting long enough to notice it exists).

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/8bitdo-marks-its-11th-anniversary-with-gold-and-silver-metal-controllers-195616688.html?src=rss

A new spacesuit design can recycle astronauts’ urine into purified, drinkable water

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The life of an astronaut may sound like a glamorous career but it requires a lot of hard work and sacrifice. They have to spend weeks or even months at a time away from Earth, their loved ones and the warm embrace of gravity. They have to endure an endless stream of “Tang” jokes. Sometimes they even have to drink recycled wastewater.

We say “sometimes” because not every drop of astronaut urine is recycled into palatable water. The urine they expel into their spacesuits is simply flushed away or discarded when they return to the spacecraft. A new space suit designed by scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell University inspired by Frank Herbert’s Dune novels could make spacewalks longer and less disgusting by recycling their expelled urine in a special filtration backpack. The research and design teams from both schools published a paper of their findings in the scientific journal Frontiers.

These suits are referred to as “stillsuits” in the Dune universe and can capture moisture to recycle it into drinkable water as soldiers trek and battle across the barren desert world of Arrakis. The real-life, proposed stillsuits do roughly the same thing. The new stillsuits have a “vacuum-based external catheter leading to a combined forward-reverse osmosis unit” that astronauts carry on their back, says the study’s lead author and research staff member Sofia Etlin in a press release.

stillsuit
Karen Morales

The suits were designed with future NASA space missions in mind including the Artemis II and Artemis III missions that will orbit the moon and touch down on its south pole in the next two years. NASA and Axiom Space have already approved a spacesuit design for its moon missions but it looks like this new filtration system could be added to them. The stillsuits can also be used for the manned Mars space mission in the early 2030s.

The stillsuits will not only quench the astronauts’ thirst during spacewalks but it will also make them more hygienic. The traditional NASA spacesuit design that’s been in circulation since the 1970s only comes with a superabsorbent polymer to catch astronauts’ urine. That means pretty much every astronaut who’s gone on a space or moon walk has peed in their space pants.

This outdated waste system has also led to hygiene and medical issues for astronauts like urinary tract infections (UTIs) and gastrointestinal problems. That’s why you’ve never seen Paul Atreides struggling with diverticulitis.

NASA hasn’t officially adopted Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell University’s new spacesuit design for any of its upcoming space missions. We imagine that we’d urge NASA to fasttrack it if we had been on the International Space Station and ever had to endure a long spacewalk after drinking too much Tang.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/a-new-spacesuit-design-can-recycle-astronauts-urine-into-purified-drinkable-water-175235587.html?src=rss

German Navy looks to replace its outdated floppy disk system for its frigate fleet

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The German Navy is in need of a serious upgrade for its fleet of submarine frigates and we’re not talking about a digital upload or some kind of software patch. The country’s fleets of submarine frigates have operated on old-fashioned, 8-inch floppy disks since they were commissioned back in the 1990s.

Now the German Navy is trying to find a way to replace the outdated disk system that are “vital to the running of its Brandenburg class F123 frigates,” according to Tom’s Hardware.

Replacing the floppy disk system won’t be an easy task. These disks pretty much control everything on the ships from airflow systems to power generation. Does the German Navy still use Palm Pilots to organize its codewords and Tamagotchi to train its recruits in marine wildlife preservation?

Saab has been in charge of maintenance for Germany’s F123 frigate fleet since 2021, according to a press release. The frigates are designed to hunt for submarines so they’re also getting upgrades for its weapons and weapon control systems. Hopefully, they’ll also throw in one of those cool, luxurious night panel dashboards for free.

A lot of government institutions and programs have been on the floppy disk system for decades and long after the outdated computer storage system has fallen out of general use. Japan’s Digital Agency announced at the beginning of the month that it eliminated the use of floppy disks in its government systems. Does that mean that somewhere in the world, a core government agency is still using those Commodore cassette tapes to store its most vital data? Let's hope those disks aren't tied to nuclear weapons access... like they were in the US.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/german-navy-looks-to-replace-its-outdated-floppy-disk-system-for-its-frigate-fleet-211609734.html?src=rss

Amazon is giving away 3 more free PC games during Prime Day next week, including Rise of the Tomb Raider

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One of the holiest but non-religious days of our economic year is just around the corner and Amazon will mark the occasion by giving away three AAA titles during Amazon Prime Day through its Prime Gaming service. The online retailer announced it will offer free copies of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Chivalry 2 and Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration Edition for 48 hours starting on Tuesday July 16.

Amazon’s early Prime Day deals will also give away 15 PC games ahead of this year’s Prime Day including titles like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 - The Sith Lords, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge and Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX.

Rocksteady’s open world Suicide Squad game is the one game in Amazon’s free games pack that sounds most like an even trade giving how hard it tanked with players on day one. It took seven years to make the game and expectations were high since it came from the same studios that made the brilliant Batman Arkham trilogy but it seemed doomed from the start of its release date.

Rocksteady pulled the game offline just one hour after its launch due a strange bug that let players beat the game after just a few minutes of gameplay. The reviews also weren’t all that kind even among gamers.

We know we’re not doing a good job of selling the game but the fact that it’s free and you get to be a giant anthropomorphic shark should be enough to get it across the line.

Tom Banner Studios’ medieval multiplayer brawler Chivalry II fared much better among critics and players. Imagine Star Wars: Battlefront if it was set in medieval times (the time period, not the dinner theater chain). It’s basically a big bloody sandbox where you get to hack, stab and slash strangers online in epic medieval battles, the kind you’ve seen in movies like Braveheart, Willow and The Lord of the Rings trilogy before they got way out of hand.

Easily the best free deal in this batch is the 20th anniversary edition of Rise of the Tomb Raider. Lara Croft, played by Camilla Luddington, returns to PCs in this epic tale of archaeology and survival as she treks across the freezing tundra of Siberia to continue her late father’s research. She’s also racing against an evil shadow group called Trinity who are pursuing her and a fabled secret to immortality that may be more material than myth than Lara might realize.

If you can’t wait just a few more days for Prime Day to start, there are plenty of other free game deals you can score right on Amazon Games, GOG and the Epic Games Store.

Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Amazon Prime Day deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-is-giving-away-3-more-free-pc-games-during-prime-day-next-week-including-rise-of-the-tomb-raider-050047723.html?src=rss

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 stores will close up shop on July 29

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Get ready to feel old and/or cluttered, depending on how many consoles are hooked up to your game room TV right now. The Xbox 360 Store and Marketplace are coming to a close later this month. Microsoft announced this last year and put an official end date of July 29, according to its official FAQ page. In case you didn’t notice, the end of July is fast approaching.

All of the games, DLC and any gaming tidbits for Microsoft’s second generation console won’t be available to purchase or download on the Xbox 360 console. Your games and movie purchases are still safe, however, if you’ve got any throwback titles on your Xbox One or Series X/S console. You can also still watch your purchased movies and shows on Windows 10 and 11 devices.

Phew! For a minute there, I thought I might not be able to play NBA Jam: On Fire Edition on my Xbox One. Running an even bigger headed Dirk Nowitski up and down the court is the only way to let out the frustrations from my day (and the last NBA Finals) without breaking stuff.

Microsoft first announced the shuttering of the Xbox 360 Store and Marketplace last year. It may be unrelated, but Microsoft has had a tough year on the Xbox side. Most recently, the company announced a price increase for its Game Pass Ultimate game buffet and online live plan from $17 a month to $20 and its Game Pass Core plan from $60 to $75. The Game Pass Core plan also includes access to PC games and comes with an EA Play membership.

So basically, the Xbox 360 is being taken off life support right now and we’re all just waiting for it to pass on to that great, big used game store in the sky. You’ve only got a few weeks left to offer your condolences.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-xbox-360-stores-will-close-up-shop-on-july-29-195630594.html?src=rss