Technology

Microsoft’s AI-powered “eye contact” feature for the Surface Pro X is finally starting to roll out, months after it was originally announced for the ARM-powered Surface laptop last year. The new feature is rolling out now as part of Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20175, which means that it likely isn’t too far from a broad release. According to Microsoft, the new feature relies on the “artificial intelligence capabilities of the Microsoft SQ1 processor” to adjust where your eyes are looking in a video call or chat to make sure that you always appear to be making eye contact with the camera — even if the lens is off to the side or you’re looking down at your display. When enabled, the eye contact correction will automatically apply to any app that uses the front camera (like Zoom, Skype, ...

The New York Times has acquired the audio production company behind the popular podcast series Serial, which is widely credited with helping popularize the modern narrative podcast movement. The company, called Serial Productions, was formed in 2017 by Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder, and Ira Glass after the success of the podcast’s initial season three years prior, and the team has gone on to produce two follow-up seasons of Serial and a standalone podcast called S-Town. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. As part of the deal, The Times is entering into what’s being described as an “ongoing creative and strategic alliance” with This American Life, the syndicated radio program from which Serial was originally spun off and for which Glass still works as a host. The parent company of This Ameri...

Twitter believes the perpetrators of last week’s unprecedented attack on the company accessed the direct message (DM) inbox of an elected official in the Netherlands, the company said Wednesday evening. The revelation comes as part of the company’s ongoing investigation into last Thursday’s attack that allowed attackers to hijack the accounts of some of the service’s most high-profile users, including politicians Barack Obama and Joe Biden, to tweet a bitcoin scam. In total, Twitter said it believes attackers accessed the DMs of up to 36 of the 130 targeted accounts, including that elected official. Twitter has “no indication” that other elected officials had their DMs accessed as part of the attack, however. We believe that for up to 36 of the 130 targeted accounts, the attackers accessed...

Thirteen years after the game’s original release, the question “But can it run Crysis ” continues to be an in-joke among gamers, referring to whether any new piece of hardware is powerful enough to run Crytek’s graphically demanding game. Now, we have proof that Nintendo’s handheld Switch is capable of the task; Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry, an outlet renowned for their technical breakdowns, created a video that shows the differences between every version of Crysis released thus far and how the Nintendo Switch runs the game. I myself was kind of shocked that Crytek managed to create a competent port of Crysis Remastered on Switch. It’s not all good, though. Here are a few takeaways from Digital Foundry’s video: It’s fairly crisp for a Switch game! While the game can sometimes drop to an ugl...

Samsung’s August Unpacked event is getting closer, and today, there’s a thorough spec dump for the standard Galaxy Note 20. We’ve already gotten the full rundown for the top-tier Note 20 Ultra, but now we can get a fuller picture for just what differences there are between the two — and the sacrifices Samsung made on the “smaller” phone. WinFuture has published the specs, just as it did for the bigger upcoming Note. The most significant downgrade is definitely the screen. The regular Galaxy Note 20 will have a 6.7-inch, 1080p display that tops out at a very traditional refresh rate of 60Hz. (The Note 20 Ultra is believed to have an enormous 6.9-inch 3200 x 1440 display that runs at 120Hz like the Galaxy S20.) On the plus side, images make clear that the Note 20 has a flatter display than t...

Microsoft posted fiscal fourth quarter earnings on Wednesday, beating Wall Street expectations on both sales and profit for the past three months amid the economic downturn caused by COVID-19. In fact, it appears many of Microsoft’s various divisions are benefiting from the effects of the pandemic, with the shift to remote work and shelter-in-place orders around the world pushing people toward gaming, video conferencing, and other virtual pastimes. “The last five months have made it clear that tech intensity is the key to business resilience. Organizations that build their own digital capability will recover faster and emerge from this crisis stronger,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement. He goes on to say Microsoft is in the unique position of being able to “help every organi...

Tesla turned a profit of $104 million in the second quarter of 2020 despite shutting down its electric vehicle factory in Fremont, California, for roughly seven weeks because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, Tesla has now been profitable for four straight quarters for the first time in company history — an elusive benchmark the company has long sought. But perhaps more importantly, Tesla says it has a “site selected” for its next Gigafactory in the US. During a call with investors, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced the factory would be located in Austin, Texas. He described it as an “ecological paradise… with birds in the trees, butterflies, fish in the stream.” The factory will also be open to the public, he said. The company is on track to receive several tax incentive packages f...

Tesla will build its next US factory in Austin, Texas, CEO Elon Musk announced today, wrapping up a months-long search for a location to build the upcoming Cybertruck. Construction work is “already underway,” Musk said. “It started this weekend.” Tesla was recently granted tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks from the county in Texas where the factory will be built, and from a local school district. The company was also considering Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Musk said Tesla would keep it in mind for future projects. The factory will be open to the public, Musk said. ‘It’s going to basically be an ecological paradise.” Developing… You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to ...

Early on July 23rd, China is slated to launch its most ambitious space mission yet, sending a trio of spacecraft to Mars — including a rover to explore the planet’s surface. If successful, China will become the second nation to land and operate a rover on the Red Planet. The mission is named Tianwen-1 — after the long poem “Tianwen,” which means “Questions to Heaven” — and it entails sending an orbiter, a lander, and a rover to Mars. The three spacecraft will launch on top of one of China’s most powerful rockets, the Long March 5, and then travel through deep space together to the Red Planet. While the orbiter studies Mars from above, the lander and rover will make the daring plunge to the surface. The lander is tasked with touching down gently on the ground in one piece, keeping the rover...

It looks like many of us are going to be pretty much stuck at home for the foreseeable future, and it’s possible that you’ve already binged all of the series that your friends and family have recommended. Don’t despair! If you’re still looking for series to lose yourself in, there are still plenty out there. We went to the staff of The Verge to ask what they recommended for a solid week, month, or (gulp!) year of indoor viewing. Here’s what we came up with. Bunheads Photo by Adam Taylor / ABC Family Is there anything Sutton Foster can’t do? I saw her tear up the Broadway stage in Anything Goes, and she made me tear up at her off-Broadway performance in Sweet Charity. I am currently loving her in the long-running series Younger, in which she plays a 40-something posing as a 26-something in ...

Ubisoft team leads will now be given bonuses according to “their ability to create a positive and inclusive workplace environment” following widespread harassment allegations. The company announced the changes today during its Q1 sales call as part of a larger initiative to address systemic problems within its studios. “Each time we have been made aware of misconduct, we made tough decisions and we made sure that those decisions had a clear and positive impact,” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said during the call. “It has now become clear that some individuals betrayed the trust I put in them. I have never compromised on my core values and ethics, and I never will.” In June, workers across the game industry came forward on Twitter with stories of abuse, harassment, and misconduct; several of t...

Ubisoft has publicly committed to keeping prices for new games released on next-gen consoles this fall at $60, the company said in an earnings call on Wednesday. That diverges from the strategy of fellow video game publisher Take-Two Interactive and its subsidiary 2K Games, which are planning to charge an extra $10 for next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of the upcoming NBA 2K21. “We plan to come with the same price as the previous generation of consoles” were the company’s words, though in reference only to its fall slate of new releases. While this is Ubisoft’s first time saying aloud it will not raise prices for next-gen games released this holiday season, its Xbox preorder pages for games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Watch Dogs Legion already indicated that prices w...