Tag: tech

Microsoft is rolling out a preview for one of the experimental AI features it previewed in October. Copilot Vision, which scans your web browsing and has a chat with you about it, is available for testing in Copilot Labs.

Copilot Vision has strict limits, at least at first. It only works in Microsoft Edge and only on “a select set of websites.” (The company says it will carefully expand that list over time.) Even the trial has restrictions: It’s only available to a limited number of Copilot Pro ($20 monthly) subscribers in the US. Like the available websites, Microsoft will expand access to more users over time.

Microsoft says Copilot Visions sessions are “opt-in and ephemeral,” so you’ll have to activate it manually, and each session’s data is wiped as soon as you’re done. The company says the feature only interprets text and images from browsed websites and doesn’t process content beyond that or train on web publishers’ data.

The cautious approach seems to be a course correction from the company’s sloppy Recall launch. That “photographic memory” feature, which snaps screenshots of everything you do on your PC, drew the ire of security and privacy experts, who called our Microsoft for — in a baffling decision — leaving the feature’s data unencrypted. It’s finally available for Windows Insiders to try after three delays and security adjustments.

If you’re a Copilot Pro subscriber, you can sign up to request access to Copilot Vision through Copilot Labs today. You can check out Microsoft’s demo video below.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/microsoft-starts-testing-copilot-vision-in-edge-170033830.html?src=rss

If you’re an Android user, today is your lucky day; Google has announced a swath of new AI features for the entire ecosystem. Broadly speaking, the features make Android devices more accessible, but there’s something here for everyone.

For instance, one of the new enhancements, Expressive Captions, automatically generates subtitles that attempt to capture the emotion and intensity of what’s being said. So, let’s say you’re video chatting with a friend who groans after you make a lame dad joke. The feature will not only transcribe what they said, but it will also include “[groaning]” in the transcription. This works for other subtleties of human speech, too, such as when someone gasps or whispers something, and is compatible across Android, including streaming and social media apps. Per Google, Expressive Captions are available on Pixel 6 and newer Pixel phones, as well as “other compatible” Android devices.

Separately, Google has enhanced Android’s Image Q&A in Lookout feature. The latest version of the tool makes use of the company’s Gemini 1.5 Pro model to provide more helpful image descriptions. Image Q&A is primarily designed to assist blind and low-vision users, but in reality, anyone can use the feature to get Android to describe a picture in a natural-sounding voice.

Speaking of Gemini, Google is supercharging the AI agent with new extensions that provide better integration with some of the most popular Android apps. For instance, a new Spotify plugin allows Gemini to play your favorite songs for you and find playlists that suit your current mood. In the future, the company is promising tighter integration with Google Maps and even smart home devices that are linked to your Google account.

Additionally, Gemini now features the capability to remember things about you so that it can provide more personalized responses. For example, you can tell Gemini you’re a vegetarian, and the agent will remember that about you the next time you ask it to recommend a new dinner recipe. Google notes it has made it easy to view, edit and delete any personal information you’ve told Gemini to remember.

Google

Another more practical update comes in the form of a Google Drive feature called auto-enhancements. The next time you upload a scanned document to the service, it will automatically edit the image to optimize the contrast and adjust the white balance, as well as remove any shadows and blurring.

And if you want to share a file with someone, Google has made that easier, too, with an improvement to Android’s Quick Share functionality. There’s a new feature that allows you to transfer pictures, videos and documents by displaying a QR code on your phone. Using this tool, you don’t need to add the recipient as a contact or fiddle with your Quick Share settings.

Lastly, if you’re a Pixel user, you can look forward to all of the above features and more. Most notably, there are improvements to the Pixel Screenshots app. For one, now you can save things you find with Circle to Search directly to the software. Google suggests this feature will be handy for holiday gift ideas. Pixel Screenshots will now also automatically categorize your snaps for you and provide suggestions, such as calendar invites and directions, based on the information you saved. 

As with most Android updates, it can take some time for Google to roll out all the new features it announced today to every user, so be patient if you don’t see them on your device right away.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/androids-latest-round-of-ai-features-improve-accessibility-file-sharing-and-more-170020518.html?src=rss

Samsung’s One UI 7 operating system is finally out in the wild, albeit in a beta format. The updated UI focuses a lot of its improvements on security and privacy, which is never a bad thing in today’s world.

There’s further integration with the company’s Knox Matrix security protocol, which began popping up in Samsung devices back in 2023. Knox Matrix continually monitors devices via a “secure private blockchain” and shows all connected gadgets on a dashboard.

This dashboard lets users instantly see the security status of various Samsung smart devices, including other Galaxy handsets, tablets, TVs and appliances. If a device shows as green in the dashboard, that means that it’s “up to date and no risks are detected.” If something is at risk, Knox Matrix will provide actionable recommendations. All Samsung devices will soon fall under the One UI umbrella, which should make this integration more seamless.

Samsung

There are also new security measures put in place for recovering data from the cloud. Enhanced Data Protection makes sure that all connected devices are synchronized and secure and helps users make a backup plan in the event of data loss. To that end, One UI 7 lets users sign in to a new device by verifying the credentials of their previous device.

One UI 7 lets people create and use passkeys to log into a Samsung account and gives users more control over network connections. To the latter point, folks can block 2G service, which is not that safe, and make it so phones won’t automatically connect to unknown networks.

Text messages and photos have even gotten a bit of tough love to improve security. Users can remove location data from photos and block hyperlinks from text messages. Shared photo albums can also be blocked, as can automatic attachment downloads. Users can block USB connections for an added security boost. The port will still work for charging, but not for anything else.

Samsung

Finally, there’s a new theft protection tool. Samsung devices could already be remote locked, but now there’s a feature called Identity Check. This opt-in software forces users to prove they are who they say they are if a PIN becomes compromised.

The new UI also brings a simplified design, broader availability of AI tools and a redesigned camera app. The full release will also include something called the Now Bar, which is a new notification system that Samsung promises will “transform the lock screen experience.” It sounds a lot like Apple’s Dynamic Island and Live Activities feature. Samsung’s Now Bar isn’t part of the beta, so we have to wait a bit longer to get our hands on it. 

The One UI 7 beta program is available now for Galaxy S24 series devices in a bunch of different countries, including the US, Germany, India, South Korea and Poland. Users have to apply via the Samsung Members program. The full version of UI 7 drops sometime in the first quarter of 2025.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/samsungs-one-ui-7-is-out-in-beta-and-its-chock-full-of-security-features-163820698.html?src=rss

It’s Thursday, which means that Epic Games has a fresh pair of PC games on its storefront for folks to claim for free. One of this week’s options is a humdinger. Until 11AM on December 12, you can snap up Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga for exactly zero dollars.

This is easily the best Lego game I’ve played, and probably the best Star Wars title. You don’t have to start with The Phantom Menace if that name still causes you anguish 25 years later, though you’ll play through the stories of all nine core Star Wars films. The game has that trademark Lego brand of silly humor with clever (and often very funny) riffs on famous moments from the movies. As you might imagine, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is packed with Easter eggs. It looks terrific too. There are a lot of reasons why this was one of my favorite games of 2022.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is not perfect, though. Reports that developers at TT Games were pushed to work long hours to finish the game cast a dark shadow over it. In addition, the collectathon aspects may start to feel like a slog if you plan to reach 100 percent completion. Still, there’s potentially dozens of hours of family fun here, and you’ll be able to hop in gratis.

There’s one other free title on the Epic Games Store this week in the form of Bus Simulator 21 Next Stop. I hope that’s also a fun game for people who check it out, but I’ll never know myself!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/lego-star-wars-the-skywalker-saga-is-free-on-the-epic-games-store-160712375.html?src=rss

Oura is moving a respiratory sickness detection feature out of beta and rolling it out to Ring Gen 3 and Ring 4 wearers. Users with an active subscription should be able to take advantage of Symptom Radar by December 9.

Oura started publicly testing the feature earlier this year. The idea is that Symptom Radar looks at metrics including resting heart rate, skin temperature, sleep data and breathing rate to see if there are any differences from your baseline stats. If there are, Oura may let you know that it has detected possible common cold- or flu-like symptoms and offer suggestions on how to rest up and recover, such as putting your device into rest mode so you aren’t prompted to meet activity goals.

Following feedback from beta testers, Oura has added a couple of extra features to Symptom Radar. It now has a history graph showing wellness trends and whether the daily Symptom Radar result has been recorded (this should happen when a ring syncs with the Oura app each morning). There’s also a breakdown of each biometric input for those who want more granular detail on which markers have changed and by how much.

Like wellness detection features on other wearables, such as electrocardiogram readings on smart watches, this isn’t designed to make any kind of diagnosis. Instead, the aim is notify you of warning signs that a cold or flu may be about to hit so you can take action. Oura claims “Symptom Radar can detect signs of strain accurately and precisely, up to two days before a member selects an illness-related tag” in its tagging feature.

Symptom Radar stems from Oura’s work on COVID-19 detection, in which researchers found that the company’s smart rings were able to predict symptoms of the virus up to three days early with 90 percent accuracy. That led into the creation of Oura’s health management platform and then to a refined algorithm “based on a vastly increased data set, inclusive of millions of tags, that has significantly up-leveled accuracy to produce the new Symptom Radar feature.”

While features such as Symptom Radar could be helpful in detecting respiratory sickness, it’s still worth listening to your intuition and trusting your knowledge of your own body. After all, Shyamal Patel, Oura’s head of science, told The Verge that the algorithm isn’t 100 percent accurate, and as such false positive and negative readings are possible. The company has yet to disclose accuracy data for Symptom Radar.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/oura-is-rolling-out-its-sickness-detection-feature-to-ring-gen-3-and-ring-4-users-155820702.html?src=rss

Bitcoin has passed the $100,000 threshold for the first time. At approximately 9:39PM ET this evening, the cryptocurrency’s value hit six figures, moving it past the milestone for the first time in its nearly 16-year history. As of the morning of December 5th, the price has stayed well above that $100,000 mark, and Bitcoin’s value has generally been steadily increasing over the past month or so. That’s no guarantee it’ll stay where it is, but it’s clearly having a moment.

That also means the legendary Bitcoin pizza order is now worth $1 billion. For those not in the loop, a Florida man — because, of course it was a Florida man — paid 10,000 BTC for two Papa John’s pizzas over 14 years ago in what’s considered the cryptocurrency’s first commercial transaction.

“I’ll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas … like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day,” Laszlo Hanyecz posted in a crypto forum on May 18, 2010. Four days later, a British man took him up on the offer. That amount was only worth $45 at the time. (And the UK man only paid Papa John’s $25!) But only nine months later, the transaction’s value had skyrocketed to $10,000.

Hanyecz told The New York Times in 2013 that he had no regrets about the then-$6 million pizza order. “It wasn’t like Bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool,” he said. “No one knew it was going to get so big.”

I wonder if Florida Man has any regrets now that his fee for those two Papa John’s pizzas is worth a billion dollars.

Looking at it another way, Papa John’s current market cap is $1.567 billion. So, had Hanyecz saved his crypto instead of ordering those two pizzas, he could have bought nearly two-thirds of the company that baked his pie today.

Then, there’s the story of a writer who, in 2017, helped a friend recover (at the time) $200,000 worth of Bitcoin from a broken laptop. Those 40 Bitcoins stuck in a MultiBit wallet for three-and-a-half years are worth more than $4 million today (so long as the cryptocurrency stays above the $100,000 mark).

Update, 10:35AM ET: This story has been updated with details about Bitcoin’s current value after it hit the $100,000 mark. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/bitcoin-price-breaks-the-100000-barrier-for-the-first-time-042918884.html?src=rss

You know that feeling when the snow is falling outside but you’re inside curled up or cooking something warm as music plays around you? That movie moment is reason enough to invest in a good speaker but, by invest, I mean shop a great deal on one of our favorite Bluetooth speakers for 2024. Marshall’s Emberton II Portable Bluetooth Speaker is currently down to $100 from $170 — a 41 percent discount. 

Marshall’s Emberton II Speaker is one of our top picks thanks to its 360-degree sound that provides a good quality listening experience for any small gathering (or solo dance party). It offers 30 hours of battery, charges up in only three hours and is IP67 dust and water resistant so you don’t have to be too precious with it. 

In August, Marshall did release a new version of this speaker, aptly named the Emberton III. It has a few upgrades from its predecessor, including an extra two hours of battery life, a built-in microphone and taking only two hours to fully charge. It’s normally the same price as the second generation Emberton but, since it’s not on sale, we’d say the Emberton II is a much better buy. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/one-of-our-favorite-bluetooth-speakers-is-41-percent-off-right-now-150156828.html?src=rss

We’ve got a little bit longer to wait until Secret Level, the gaming-inspired animated anthology series from the Love, Death and Robots team, debuts on Prime Video. But Amazon is ramping up to the launch by offering some solid freebies for Prime members on many of the games that inspired episodes in Secret Level. Roguelike masterpiece Spelunky and story-laden space adventure The Outer Worlds are must-haves if they aren’t already in your library. Here’s the full list of free titles:

• Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition (GOG code)

• Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition (GOG code)

• Necromunda: Hired Gun (Epic Games Store)

• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition (GOG code)

• The Outer Worlds (GOG code)

• Space Hulk: Deathwing – Enhanced Edition (Amazon Games App)

• Spelunky (GOG code)

• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (Amazon Games App)

• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (Amazon Games App)

And if that wasn’t enough free stuff, a code for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II in the Amazon Games App will also drop on December 12. Those Prime Gaming members using the Amazon Luna streaming service will also see the addition of Mega Man 11. 

The final facet of this announcement is some steep discounts on retail purchases of games through Amazon’s platform. Most notably in this batch is up to 65 percent off God of War: Ragnarok for the PlayStation 5 and up to 80 percent off the PC version of Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut. These titles are all in addition to the previously announced free games lineup Prime Gaming members can add to their collections this month.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/amazon-is-giving-away-games-to-promote-its-secret-level-anthology-series-150033246.html?src=rss