Technology

Google Search now has a handy built-in tuner, letting you use the microphone on your phone or computer to tune a guitar, Android Police reports. To access the feature, which was added this week, just search for “Google tuner.” The interface is similar to the dozens of guitar tuning apps that are already available. You play a string on the guitar, and Google will detect the note you’re aiming for, and tell you to “tune up” or “tune down” as required. Like other guitar tuning apps, the effectiveness of Google’s tuner seems to depend a lot on the hardware you’re using it with. My iPhone 12 Pro (via Safari) or Windows desktop with a Blue Snowball USB microphone (via Edge) had no trouble hearing and helping me tune an unamplified electric guitar, but a more affordable Android device I’m current...

TikTok has launched an app for LG’s 2020 and 2021 smart TVs, the TV manufacturer has announced. The app arrived on these recent webOS 5.0 and webOS 6.0 models with a firmware update that started rolling out on October 7th, but will also be coming to older 2019 TVs “in the coming months.” The app is launching in the UK, France, and Germany, a TikTok representative confirmed to The Verge. That’s notable since TikTok’s smart TV apps for Samsung TVs, Android TV, and Fire TV have all focused on those same European countries so far. Meanwhile in the US, TikTok released a more limited “More on TikTok” app on Fire TV devices last year. We have followed up with both LG and TikTok to ask which regions the new smart TV app will be available in. Considering how optimized TikTok is for portrait-orienta...

A developer who made a tool that let people automatically unfollow friends and groups on Facebook says he’s been banned permanently from the social networking site. Louis Barclay was the creator of “Unfollow Everything,” a browser extension that allowed Facebook users to essentially delete their News Feed by unfollowing all their connections at once. Facebook allows users to individually unfollow friends, groups, and pages, which removes their content from the News Feed, the algorithmically-controlled heart of Facebook. Barclay’s tool automated this process, instantly wiping users’ News Feed. As Barclay wrote of his experience using the tool in a recent article for Slate: I still remember the feeling of unfollowing everything for the first time. It was near-miraculous. I had lost nothing, ...

Japan’s first curved LED digital billboard Cross Shinjuku Vision was introduced earlier in July outside Shinjuku station. Since then, the billboard has been used to display a variety of ads and creative visuals including the recent YEEZY Gap drop. A new ultra-realistic visual emerged on the three-story-high 4K display featuring the Dragon Ball antagonist Frieza shouting down at passing pedestrians. The next-gen ad promotes Bandai Namco‘s Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle free-to-play mobile game. While Frieza’s runtime has now expired, the screen now features new visuals of a jaw-dropping gigantic cat. For those currently in Tokyo, Cross Shinjuku Vision screens every 15 minutes from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. JST. Find the Frieda ad video above and the giant cat billboard below. Cross Shinjuku Vision / ク...

Mozilla introduced a new suggested search result feature in the Firefox address bar as part of the 93.0 release of its browser. That’s not too surprising — Firefox Suggest, Mozilla’s feature for “surfacing relevant information and sites to help you accomplish your goals,” is similar to suggestions offered by most browsers. But as How-To Geek spotted in the company’s support pages, it also includes content from paid advertisers. “When contextual suggestions are enabled, Firefox Suggest uses your city location and search keywords to make contextual suggestions from Firefox and our partners, while keeping your privacy in mind,” the support post reads. The “relevant suggestions” from “trusted partners” appear at the bottom of the usual search suggestions pulled from your bookmarks, browser his...

One of the Nintendo Switch’s persistent flaws has been Joy-Con drift, a phenomenon where players observe false inputs when they aren’t even touching the joysticks on the controllers. Nintendo has been relatively quiet on the subject for years, and the company refused to say whether the new OLED-equipped Nintendo Switch OLED had fixed the issue. But today, the company is breaking its silence in a big way — and suggesting that Joy-Con drift may never be fully addressed. In a new Q&A about the development of the Nintendo Switch OLED, the company reveals that it has steadily been making improvements to the Joy-Cons to try and make them more reliable. The joysticks that came with 2019’s Switch Lite aren’t the same as those in the original 2017 Switch, and they’re continually getting refined...

Hulu’s prices are going up beginning Friday, October 8th for both its monthly and annual subscription tiers. It was initially reported in September that Hulu’s monthly cost would increase by $1 per month or $10 per year (ad-supported) to $7 monthly (ad-supported), $13 monthly (no-ads), and $70 per year, respectively. Both Hulu’s base ad-supported and ad-free monthly subscription prices are going up in price by a dollar, but neither of its live TV tiers will be impacted. (Those plans got a price increase late last year.) In a recent email to subscribers, Hulu wrote that the price hike “will be reflected in your first billing cycle on or after October 8.” Users will be charged the new price unless they cancel their subscription on or before Friday. Hulu has said that those subscribed through...

California governor Gavin Newsom signed the Silenced No More Act on Thursday night— a historic piece of legislation, authored by state senator Connie Leyva (D-Chino), that should protect workers who speak out about harassment and discrimination even if they’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement. Pinterest whistleblower Ifeoma Ozoma began pushing the bill forward last year, after coming forward with allegations of racism against the tech company. She knew she was partially protected by the Stand Together Against Non-Disclosures Act, a Me Too-era law that banned NDAs in sexual harassment cases, but soon realized the bill did not provide protections for other forms of abuse. Now, that’s changing. Workers in California will be legally protected for speaking out about discrimination based on rac...

YouTube has announced that its automatic livestream captions should now be available for all creators, instead of being limited to channels with more than 1,000 subscribers like they were during the feature’s initial rollout. This change, along with some future improvements the company details in its blog, should help make the platform more accessible to deaf or hard-of-hearing people. Some of those updates include making live auto captions available to 12 more languages instead of just English (including Japanese, Turkish, and Spanish), the ability to add multiple audio tracks to a video to support multiple languages (and audio descriptions for those with limited eyesight), and the expansion of the auto-translate captions feature to support mobile devices, too. The expanded language suppo...

In a tweet earlier today, Google SVP Hiroshi Lockheimer called on Apple to support RCS, the next-generation texting standard that’s supposed to supplant SMS. He offered an “open invitation to the folks who can make this right” and said “we are here to help.” Translation: the “folks” are Apple and “we are here to help” is Google’s offer to assist Apple in implementing the new standard. RCS is finally starting to gain traction around the world. Its biggest champion has been Google, which finally landed on using it as the default texting solution for Android phones after trying every other solution. RCS is far from perfect, but it’s clearly superior to SMS (which is, of course, a low bar). After securing deals from US carriers to commit to the standard in the next year, Google is setting its ...

Did you take one look at our hefty Windows 11 upgrade checklist and nope right out of there? It turns out there’s a dramatically easier way to install Windows 11 on computers with older CPUs — with no need to reformat your drive, erase your files, or even burn the ISO to an external USB drive. If you’re currently seeing “This PC doesn’t currently meet Windows 11 system requirements” or “The processor isn’t currently supported for Windows 11,” there’s a Microsoft-approved registry hack that should instantly make it better. <div class="c-imageslider" data-cid="apps/imageslider-1633645054_8251_32090" data-cdata="{"caption":"You can go from “doesn’t meet requirements” to “ready to install” in a single minute.","image_left":{"ratio&...

Ireland said Thursday it would join an international agreement that sets taxes on profits for multinational corporations at a minimum rate of 15 percent. This is a major shift for the country that is the European headquarters for many large US pharmaceutical companies, as well as tech firms, including Google, Apple, and Facebook. An increase from Ireland’s current 12.5 percent to 15 percent may not seem that large by itself. The so-called Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Inclusive Framework agreement, outlined in July, is actually a two-pillar plan aimed at helping end tax avoidance and making international tax rules fairer and more transparent. The OECD has estimated that a 15 percent tax rate would generate some $150 billion in global tax revenue annually and ...