Technology

The first season of For All Mankind, the science fiction alternate history show from Battlestar Galactica creator Ron D. Moore, is now available to stream free of charge — no Apple TV Plus subscription required. The limited time promotion coincides with the release of the show’s third season, which premiered on June 10th on Apple’s video streaming service. While Ted Lasso and Severance have arguably been the biggest breakout TV show hits from Apple TV Plus, my colleague Alex Cranz would have everyone believe that For All Mankind is better than both. Here’s how she recently described it: [Warning: Season 1 spoilers ahead] The show started as an almost rote alternate history, where the USSR beat the USA to the Moon, and in a bid for a Cold War PR win, the US opted to send a woman to the moon...

TP-Link has finally added HomeKit to one of its products, and it’s a serious bargain. The new version of its very good mini smart plug has Apple HomeKit support and energy monitoring all for just $12.50 per plug. The Kasa Smart WiFi Plug Mini with Energy Monitoring and Apple HomeKit, EP25 is available on Amazon for $49.99 for a four-pack (a two-pack at $29.99 is coming in Q4). There are a lot of smart plugs out there but very few with energy monitoring and HomeKit compatibility, and none as cheap as $12.50 that offer both. TP-Link’s Kasa line also works with Amazon Alexa and Google Home, but this is the first device with HomeKit. The company had originally promised the mini plug would get HomeKit in January 2019 but then changed its mind a few months later. TP-Link has an existing mi...

Microsoft has spent the past two years adding flashy new productivity features to Teams, and now the company is overhauling how the fundamentals work thanks to AI. We’ve all been on a call where someone has poor room acoustics making it hard to hear them, or seen two people try to talk at the same time creating an awkward “no, you go ahead” moment. Microsoft’s new AI-powered voice quality improvements should improve or even eliminate these day-to-day annoyances. Microsoft is now using a machine learning models to improve room acoustics so you’ll no longer sound like you’re hiding in a cave. “While we have been trying our best with digital signal processing to do a really good job in Teams, we have now started using machine learning for the first time to build echo cancellation where you ca...

On Sunday night, the Celsius Network, one of the largest crypto lending platforms, abruptly announced a “pause” on withdrawals and transfers, citing “extreme market conditions.” Celsius announced its halt as markets in Asia opened on Monday morning, and the price of its CEL token — worth nearly $7 a year ago — lost a third of its remaining value, falling to just 21 cents. In the hours that followed the pause, prices of other cryptocurrencies have also tumbled. CoinMarketCap’s global cryptocurrency tracker showed the total market cap of crypto assets (including stablecoins and tokens) below $1 trillion as of 8:53AM ET, falling from its peak of $3 trillion last November. The price of Bitcoin on Coinbase as of 9:33AM ET.Image: Coinbase The price of Bitcoin has fallen nearly 12 percent in the ...

In what ways has the ASUS Vivobook expanded the scope of your creative process?I work a lot in the digital medium, and I think it’s very much the medium of our time. It’s the most defining artistic movement of our time. I think digital art — the metaverse, Web3 — all this new technology is evolving new systems. I work a lot in that dimension, and I think the laptop, to some extent, is like the new studio; it’s a sort of democratic art platform for all. Through the laptop, one can enter different worlds, create different identities and have different avatars and, in a way, interact with the global connectivity of creation. Computers are very much the gateway into these new creative worlds. To make my own like laptop as an artwork in itself is like having a gateway into my metaverse. It seem...

Philip Colbert‘s lobster is a mystical symbol emblematic of the Dutch Golden Age, a period of Baroque painting roughly spanning the 17th century. Colbert’s cartoonish application of the crustacean features the animal as a symbol of mortality and telepathy, not so much the fixings of a Southern seafood boil. The virtual exhibition “Lobsteropolis,” held at Saatchi Gallery in 2020, was the largest UK survey of Colbert’s artistic universe and allowed guests to interact with digital and physical artifacts dominated by Colbert’s self-described “Neo-Pop Surrealism.” The show featured lobster telepresence robots, which guests could operate from home while viewing the exhibition. “It was the first time in the world a community of art viewer robots simulated a large-scale art opening,” said Co...

Its LaMDA system is built to make AI more conversational. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google has placed one of its engineers on paid administrative leave for allegedly breaking its confidentiality policies after he grew concerned that an AI chatbot system had achieved sentience, the Washington Post reports. The engineer, Blake Lemoine, works for Google’s Responsible AI organization, and was testing whether its LaMDA model generates discriminatory language or hate speech. The engineer’s concerns reportedly grew out of convincing responses he saw the AI system generating about its rights and the ethics of robotics. In April he shared a document with executives titled “Is LaMDA Sentient?” containing a transcript of his conversations with the AI (after being placed on leave, ...

Telegram is set to introduce a premium feature onto its platform. The new paid features is set to give users “additional features, speed, and resources.” Pavel Durov recently announced in a post that the messaging service is launching a paid Telegram Premium subscription, hinting that some of the features coming with the platform includes the ability to upload larger files, early access to new features, premium-only stickers and reactions. He stated that the existing features on the platform will stay free, and paid features will not affect the experience of users who aren’t subscribed. With the larger files, Durov claimed that non-subscribed users can access larger files sent to them and view premium stickers and reactions. The idea of having a premium subscription would help with some of...