TechDesk

TechDesk, 2 days ago to tech

Microsoft has made the white version of the Xbox Series X official. The new console option won’t include a disc drive and will be entirely digital. Learn more from @theverge. https://flip.it/.C4ZJX
#Tech #Technology #Microsoft #Xbox

TechDesk, 3 days ago to tech

New York’s state legislature has passed a bill that would prohibit social media companies from showing “addictive feeds” to children under 18 without parental consent. Tech Crunch has more, including where the bill goes next and how “addictive feed” is being defined.
https://flip.it/8cubJE
#Tech #Technology #SocialMedia #Law #Politics #NewYork

TechDesk, 4 days ago to tech

Siri was always supposed to be more than it was. Since the voice assistant’s initial launch in 2011, Siri has become, for most people, either a way to set timers or a useless feature to be avoided at all costs. Now, 13 years later, it sounds like it might actually be ready. @theverge has more: https://flip.it/eLOXuz
#Tech #Technology #AI #Apple #Siri

TechDesk, 5 days ago (edited 2 days ago) to ai

Microsoft has announced it is making its controversial Recall feature, announced alongside its new Copilot+ PCs last month, something you will have to opt-in to use.

The feature, which will screenshot everything you do on your computer, is something privacy advocates and security experts have warned could be a “disaster” for cybersecurity. Microsoft had originally planned to turn Recall on by default, but now the company says users will need to “proactively choose to turn it on.” @theverge has more.

https://flip.it/l7foLL

#AI #Microsoft #Cybersecurity #Tech

TechDesk, 5 days ago to ai

Have you ever wished you could understand what your dog is saying? AI could be the answer. The researchers involved in a new study say that AI models like Wav2Vec2 can identify a dog’s “gender, emotion, and breed” based on their bark. To test the accuracy of the models, they used two different sets of data to train the AI models and then compared the results.

One was trained on human speech and then fine-tuned with the barks, while the other was trained only on the barks. The researchers found that the model pre-trained with human speech did better at understanding and identifying the secret language of dogs. BGR has more.

https://flip.it/6t-R8r

#AI #Tech #Dogs

TechDesk, 6 days ago to Tamagotchi

A 27-year old mystery was solved this week when a collector figured out how to unlock secret characters on the Mothra Tamagotchi, first released in Japan in 1997.

@404mediaco reports a Discord user named rhubarb_pie found out how to unlock the “Moll & Lora” twins as playable characters through a very specific three-week gaming process, something that was previously thought to have occurred through a “battery glitch.”

https://flip.it/d22tOS

#Tamagotchi #RetroTech #Tech

TechDesk, 6 days ago (edited 2 days ago) to ai

An artist-run, anti-AI social platform called Cara has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users in just a week, as artists leave Instagram in their thousands to protest against Meta’s AI policies.

Artists aren’t happy that the social media giant is using public posts on its platforms to train its generative AI systems, with no way to opt out for U.S. users. Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain, but such a jump in users hasn’t come without its challenges. @TechCrunch has more.

https://flip.it/Ibdy_2

#AI #Meta #Instagram #Art #Tech

TechDesk, 6 days ago to tech

Microsoft announced that it’s reopening a Windows Insider Beta Channel for PCs still running Windows 10, which will be used to test “new features and more improvements to Windows 10 as needed.” This comes despite the company’s intention to end support for the aging yet stubbornly popular operating system in October 2025. Read more from Ars Technica: https://flip.it/xCtSdz
#Tech #Technology #Microsoft #Windows

TechDesk, 6 days ago to tech

Call it the battle of the voice assistants. A Tech Radar editor tested Apple’s Siri against Google Gemini and Samsung’s Bixby. He made a list of 25 tasks he expected the AI to complete and graded them all on each. One of them easily outdid the others. Take a guess as to which one it was. https://flip.it/gqv-IQ
#Tech #Siri #Gemini #Bixby #AI