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Legend will only be available for a “limited time,” and you’ll have to be ready to hear the regular Google Assistant voice for those many queries where the crooner isn’t available. It still beats hearing the same old dialogue for everything, though, and hints at a future where there’s considerably more variety in voice assistants.
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According to IRENA, 171GW of renewable energy was added to the global mix in 2018, marking an annual increase of 7.9 percent, and accounting for two-thirds of new power generation capacity altogether. Hydropower takes the largest share with 1,172GW worldwide, followed by wind at 564GW and solar with 480GW, although solar saw the largest growth in 2018.
However, despite this growth — which IRENA says “continues the remarkable trend of the last five years” — it appears that our appetite for fossil fuels hasn’t subsided. In fact, it’s increased. As the IEA report demonstrates, natural gas emerged as the planet’s fuel of choice in 2018, posting the biggest gains and accounting for 45 percent of the rise in overall energy consumption. Add coal to the mix, and fossil fuels accounted for nearly 70 percent of the additional growth for the second year running. This all adds up to a 1.7 percent rise in CO2 emissions, which reached 33 Gigatonnes in 2018.
The IEA’s executive director, Dr Fatih Birol, noted that 2018 marked another “golden year” for gas, and said that action is desperately needed to mitigate devastating climate damage. “Despite major growth in renewables, global emissions are still rising, demonstrating once again that more urgent action is needed on all fronts — developing all clean energy solutions, curbing emissions, improving efficiency, and spurring investments and innovation, including in carbon capture, utilization and storage,” she said.
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‘Iron Man VR’ is as close to being Tony Stark as you’re likely to get
This game puts players behind the mask in a wild first-person adventure facing off against marquee Marvel villains. According to Andrew Tarantola, “You can’t ask for a more immersive superhero experience.”
Farewell, Google+: You didn’t fail, you just didn’t succeed
Google’s attempt at a social network wasn’t a complete failure — we still have Photos and Hangouts.
‘No Man’s Sky VR’ is the purest way to explore the universe
This summer, the gigantic No Man’s Sky Beyond update goes live, bringing three major features to the game, two of which are public knowledge: MMO-style mechanics and, announced just last week, VR support. According to creator Sean Murray, VR “just feels like a good fit.”
Nokia’s X71 phone has a hole-punch display and a 48-megapixel camera
The X71 is a mid-range Android One phone throughout, from its Snapdragon 660 processor and LCD display right down to its near-stock version of Android Pie. It also packs 6GB of RAM, 128GB of expandable storage and a 3,500mAh battery. But the major talking points are its hole-punch camera in front and 48-megapixel Zeiss camera on the back.
‘Avengers: Endgame’ pre-sales crashed movie ticket sites
Many of those trying to make sure they can see the Marvel blockbuster as soon as possible were greeted with error codes on several ticket sites in the US, UK and Canada (including AMC and Cineplex), while others were faced with virtual lines of more than an hour.
Boston Dynamics’ acquisition will help its robots see in 3D
Boston Dynamics took a big step toward bringing its box-moving (and running, jumping, dishwashing) robots into the real world with its acquisition of Kinema Systems, the Menlo Park-based company that uses deep learning to give robotic arms the 3D vision they need to locate and move boxes. The robot can recognize different products and handle boxes of different sizes, even if they’re not perfectly level.
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As much as technology has advanced in the last couple of decades, the ability to automatically skip commercials has remained mostly in the past. Now Zatz Not Funny says — based on a Facebook post by an employee and confirmation with a source — that TiVo’s DVRs will get an upgraded version of their SkipMode feature that bypasses commercials automatically.
Because of the way SkipMode works, it will still only apply to recordings of primetime shows on channels that have their commercials marked, unlike the fully automated systems that the Channels app and Tablo boxes are testing. It’s also apparently only going to work on boxes upgraded with the latest “Hydra” interface when it rolls out later in the spring.
ReplayTV pushed automatic commercial skipping years ago and fights over the feature with broadcasters and cable companies helped hasten its demise. When Windows Media Center was still supported, the DIY-minded could use ShowAnalyzer, but a fully-supported version of the feature from TiVo would make using it easier than ever, plus it makes watching network TV more like Netflix, Amazon Prime or ad-free Hulu. Our question is whether or not the TV networks will let it go this time around — even if, or perhaps especially because statistics show DVR owners don’t manually skip ads as much as you might think.
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Vulture says One Day at a Time producer Norman Lear asked Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos to waive the company’s veto rights. Lear was also the person behind the original version of the show from the ’70s and was the one who approached Sony with the idea of remaking it with a Hispanic family. The new version of the show revolves around a Cuban-American family in LA and their struggles with mental illness, homophobia and racism in the US — all timely issues that made the sitcom a critical success.
Netflix has yet to veto CBS’ bid, but the publication says there’s no indication that it’ll say yes either. Sony hasn’t closed its doors to other outlets in case the service says no, though: a move to cable and broadcast companies won’t need an approval from the platform. In addition, Netflix will no longer have exclusive rights to the show by mid-June.
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Privacy would play an important role. The check-ins would only work between people who’ve shared their locations. And you alone could see your Passport, a diary of where you’ve been and who you were with. You could also go into a “ghost mode” (what else?) when you want to remain temporarily inaccessible. You can find out who saw your location or Status.
Snap confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s conducting the test, but it stressed that it’s only available for “a percentage” of Australian users. There’s no guarantee you’ll see the feature become widely available.
It might make sense to add this to Snapchat, though. Status would not only provide a reason to keep coming back to the app, it’d give Snap a feature that Facebook can’t easily duplicate with its own check-in system — not until it fully embraces privacy, at least. That could keep Snapchat relevant at a time when many are questioning its long-term future.
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Nintendo’s ever-growing library of NES classics that are playable on Switch will add two more entries on the 10th: Punch-Out!!!, Star Soldier and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. Punch-Out!!! swaps in Mr. Dream for the game’s original boss Mike Tyson — hopefully without the Wii’s scaling-induced lag issues on HDTVs and with all of the Easter eggs — while SMB: The Lost Levels makes the original 8-bit release (which was released in Japan as SMB 2) playable, but now with easy cloud saves so you don’t have to call your brother to get past a tough level.
Star Soldier is a classic scrolling shoot-em-up, and all of them will be available if you subscribe to Switch Online. As a reminder, if you have Amazon Prime, you can unlock a free year of access via Twitch, whether or not you’ve already paid for online service to the console.
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Zhang got in after the resort’s Beach Club manager said there was a member sharing her family name, leading to the belief she was a relative. A receptionist caught Zhang after she talked about attending the bogus event and wasn’t on the property’s access list. Trump was staying at the resort a the time, but was at his International Golf Club when Zhang showed up.
On top of the USB drive, Zhang was also carrying an unusual amount of gear that included four cellphones, a laptop, an external hard drive and two “Republic of China” (Taiwan) passports. To add to the mystery, she acted as if she had a poor grasp of English when she first arrived, but later revealed that she could understand even “subtle nuances” of the language.
It’s not clear what Zhang’s true intentions were. The malware and the pattern of behavior have raised concerns this was an attempt to compromise systems, whether for the Trump family or Mar-a-Lago as a whole. Thumb drives are frequently used in state-backed campaigns to breach computers that aren’t connected to the internet or are otherwise hard to attack from the outside. If there was malicious intent, Zhang could have swiped sensitive info had she continued further. However, this wasn’t exactly a subtle, well-planned infiltration attempt — it’s entirely possible that there are other motivations.
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Twitter claims that its new in-app reporting feature will cut down response times by 60 percent. If Twitter decides you broke its rules, you receive a notification with the tweet in question, along with the rule in violation and a link to its guidelines. You then have the choice of either removing or appealing the tweet. If you choose the appeals process, a write-in box appears that lets you add any context that the moderators may have missed.
In an example GIF, Twitter shows a user being suspended after making a violent threat. In their appeal, the user explains that the “threat” was actually a joke about a video game directed at a friend.
We move quickly to enforce our rules, but sometimes we don’t have the full context and can make mistakes.
To fix that, we added a way for people to appeal our decision in the app and have been able to get back to people 60% faster than before. pic.twitter.com/0BWBnff9lt
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) April 2, 2019
A faster, in-app appeal feature is part of a larger effort by Twitter to be more transparent about how it manages harmful behavior. The company has been struggling for years on how best to get a hold on the rampant abuse that pervades on its platform. Twitter has finally been more active in the last year or so, and more changes are sure to follow. Labeling tweets that violate its abuse terms was one method recently discussed by Twitter’s head of legal Vijaya Gadde. Color-coded replies, which can help you ignore replies by users you don’t follow, are being tested as part of an overall initiative to make the site more conversational.
Some tactics already explored by the social media giant included changing its algorithm to rank the health of conversations and purging accounts by white nationalists and other hate groups. The company also changed the way it displays reported tweets so people can understand why enforcement actions were taken. As Twitter ramps up its enforcement efforts, more benign behavior inevitably will get swept up in the process. The new reporting feature will likely make it easier for innocent users to make a fast return online.
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According to an email seen by The Guardian, the company’s Adrienne Crowther told workers the delay was necessary. “We wish it was as easy as flipping a switch and turning this on tomorrow,” she wrote. A spokeswoman confirmed the changes, but said they’d been in development “for a while” and that most partners would honor the new terms by 2020.
The uproar stemmed in part from Google’s March 8th decision to shorten the contracts of 34 temp workers on the Google Assistant “personality” team (that is, the ones determining how the AI responds to questions). This not only left them scrambling for work, but highlighted the absence of safety nets. Google didn’t even let full-time staff offer support out of concerns the company could be held “legally liable,” the workers’ letter said. A manager eventually cleared full-timers to sympathize with temps.
This won’t necessarily satisfy contractors, though. They’ve noted that Google didn’t address key demands in the letter, including requests to pay the length of the original contracts and convert temporary workers to full-time status. Google said it already “work[s] to transition” temporary staff to full-time positions, but that doesn’t appear to be the case for the 34 losing their work. In that light, the new standards are unlikely to represent an end to the issue.
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