Now that Bluesky has opened itself up to the public and introduced some new moderation options, the team’s decided it’s finally time to allow world leaders on board, too. A post from the official Bluesky account on Friday notified users, “By the way... we lifted our ‘no heads of state’ policy.” The policy has been in place for the last year as Bluesky worked through all the early growing pains of being a budding social network.
Bluesky remained an invite-only platform from its launch in February 2023 until February of this year, when it finally ditched the waitlist. Bluesky had said last May that it wasn’t ready for heads of state to join, and even asked users to give its support team notice “before you invite prominent figures.” It’s since grown to more than 5 million users, gaining roughly a million alone in the day after it stopped requiring invite codes.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bluesky-now-allows-heads-of-state-to-join-the-platform-202700504.html?src=rss
It’s somehow been almost 10 years since Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi odyssey Interstellar was first released in theaters, and to celebrate the upcoming anniversary, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. are bringing it back to the big screen. Per Variety, Paramount announced at CinemaCon this week that Interstellar will be re-released on September 27, 2024 in IMAX 70mm and digital. Interstellar, starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain, debuted in the US in fall 2014.
In true form for Nolan, the film is a bit of a mind-bender. Interstellar presents us with a near-future Earth that is becoming uninhabitable due to an unbeatable blight that’s wiped out nearly all food crops. A team of astronauts sets out to space in search of another planet that could support life, using a wormhole to reach a galaxy beyond our own, and space-time weirdness ensues. It’s a great movie and was well-received at the time of its release (even if it left a ton of people confused about what had actually happened), going on to rake in roughly $731 million globally, according to Variety.
If you didn’t get a chance to catch it in IMAX the first time around, it’s definitely worth taking a trip to the theater for this one.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/interstellar-is-coming-back-to-theaters-in-september-for-its-10-year-anniversary-173427501.html?src=rss
It’s somehow been almost 10 years since Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi odyssey Interstellar was first released in theaters, and to celebrate the upcoming anniversary, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. are bringing it back to the big screen. Per Variety, Paramount announced at CinemaCon this week that Interstellar will be re-released on September 27, 2024 in IMAX 70mm and digital. Interstellar, starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain, debuted in the US in fall 2014.
In true form for Nolan, the film is a bit of a mind-bender. Interstellar presents us with a near-future Earth that is becoming uninhabitable due to an unbeatable blight that’s wiped out nearly all food crops. A team of astronauts sets out to space in search of another planet that could support life, using a wormhole to reach a galaxy beyond our own, and space-time weirdness ensues. It’s a great movie and was well-received at the time of its release (even if it left a ton of people confused about what had actually happened), going on to rake in roughly $731 million globally, according to Variety.
If you didn’t get a chance to catch it in IMAX the first time around, it’s definitely worth taking a trip to the theater for this one.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/interstellar-is-coming-back-to-theaters-in-september-for-its-10-year-anniversary-173427501.html?src=rss
If you’ve been eyeing Sony’s WF-1000XM5 earbuds but were put off by the steep price tag, now would be the perfect time to pick up a set. The premium earbuds, normally $300, are down to a record low price of $230 on Amazon, for a savings of $70. This deal only applies to the earbuds in black. The Sony WF-1000XM5 earbuds were released in summer 2023 and brought major upgrades over the previous model. They boast the best noise cancellation and call quality of Sony’s earbuds lineup, and have built-in Alexa support.
The Sony WF-1000XM5 earbuds are our top pick for the best earbuds for this year. They’re more comfortable than the WF-1000XM4s, being 25 percent smaller and 20 percent lighter for a much better fit. The charging case, too, is more compact than its predecessor. In terms of sound quality, they further improve upon the already impressive capabilities of the 1000X line. The speakers are slightly larger than the previous model’s, and their Dynamic Driver X drivers make for rich, clear sound and bassier bass. Sony WF-1000XM5 scored an 87 in our review last year.
The earbuds offer Adaptive Sound Control, which will automatically adjust your noise cancellation settings to work best for the environment you’re in or activity you’re doing. You may want active noise cancellation on when you’re working from home, but switch to transparency mode when you’re going out for a run. You’ll need to enable location services for this feature using Sony’s Headphones Connect app.
The app allows for other types of customization as well, like changing the controls assigned to the touch sensors on the earbuds. Sony’s WF-1000XM5 earbuds also support multipoint Bluetooth connections, which means you can pair them with two devices at the same time. There’s a Speak-to-Chat mode that pauses audio when it senses you’ve started a conversation, and an equalizer in the app where you can adjust your sound settings.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/our-favorite-sony-wireless-earbuds-are-on-sale-for-a-record-low-price-145310563.html?src=rss
If you’ve been eyeing Sony’s WF-1000XM5 earbuds but were put off by the steep price tag, now would be the perfect time to pick up a set. The premium earbuds, normally $300, are down to a record low price of $230 on Amazon, for a savings of $70. This deal only applies to the earbuds in black. The Sony WF-1000XM5 earbuds were released in summer 2023 and brought major upgrades over the previous model. They boast the best noise cancellation and call quality of Sony’s earbuds lineup, and have built-in Alexa support.
The Sony WF-1000XM5 earbuds are our top pick for the best earbuds for this year. They’re more comfortable than the WF-1000XM4s, being 25 percent smaller and 20 percent lighter for a much better fit. The charging case, too, is more compact than its predecessor. In terms of sound quality, they further improve upon the already impressive capabilities of the 1000X line. The speakers are slightly larger than the previous model’s, and their Dynamic Driver X drivers make for rich, clear sound and bassier bass. Sony WF-1000XM5 scored an 87 in our review last year.
The earbuds offer Adaptive Sound Control, which will automatically adjust your noise cancellation settings to work best for the environment you’re in or activity you’re doing. You may want active noise cancellation on when you’re working from home, but switch to transparency mode when you’re going out for a run. You’ll need to enable location services for this feature using Sony’s Headphones Connect app.
The app allows for other types of customization as well, like changing the controls assigned to the touch sensors on the earbuds. Sony’s WF-1000XM5 earbuds also support multipoint Bluetooth connections, which means you can pair them with two devices at the same time. There’s a Speak-to-Chat mode that pauses audio when it senses you’ve started a conversation, and an equalizer in the app where you can adjust your sound settings.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/our-favorite-sony-wireless-earbuds-are-on-sale-for-a-record-low-price-145310563.html?src=rss
xAI, the OpenAI competitor founded by Elon Musk, has introduced the first version of Grok that can process visual information. Grok-1.5V is the company's first-generation multimodal AI model, which cannot only process text, but also "documents, diagrams, charts, screenshots and photographs." In xAI's announcement, it gave a few samples of how its capabilities can be used in the real world. You can, for instance, show it a photo of a flow chart and ask Grok to translate it into Python code, get it to write a story based on a drawing and even have it explain a meme you can't understand. Hey, not everyone can keep up with everything the internet spits out.
The new version comes just a couple of weeks after the company unveiled Grok-1.5. That model was designed to be better at coding and math than its predecessor, as well as to be able to process longer contexts so that it can check data from more sources to better understand certain inquiries. xAI said its early testers and existing users will soon be able to enjoy Grok-1.5V's capabilities, though it didn't give an exact timeline for its rollout.
In addition to introducing Grok-1.5V, the company has also released a benchmark dataset it's calling RealWorldQA. You can use any of RealWorldQA's 700 images to evaluate AI models: Each item comes with questions and answers you can easily verify, but which may stump multimodal models like Grok. xAI claimed its technology received the highest score when the company tested it with RealWorldQA against competitors, such as OpenAI's GPT-4V and Google Gemini Pro 1.5.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-latest-version-of-xais-grok-can-process-images-120025782.html?src=rss
xAI, the OpenAI competitor founded by Elon Musk, has introduced the first version of Grok that can process visual information. Grok-1.5V is the company's first-generation multimodal AI model, which cannot only process text, but also "documents, diagrams, charts, screenshots and photographs." In xAI's announcement, it gave a few samples of how its capabilities can be used in the real world. You can, for instance, show it a photo of a flow chart and ask Grok to translate it into Python code, get it to write a story based on a drawing and even have it explain a meme you can't understand. Hey, not everyone can keep up with everything the internet spits out.
The new version comes just a couple of weeks after the company unveiled Grok-1.5. That model was designed to be better at coding and math than its predecessor, as well as to be able to process longer contexts so that it can check data from more sources to better understand certain inquiries. xAI said its early testers and existing users will soon be able to enjoy Grok-1.5V's capabilities, though it didn't give an exact timeline for its rollout.
In addition to introducing Grok-1.5V, the company has also released a benchmark dataset it's calling RealWorldQA. You can use any of RealWorldQA's 700 images to evaluate AI models: Each item comes with questions and answers you can easily verify, but which may stump multimodal models like Grok. xAI claimed its technology received the highest score when the company tested it with RealWorldQA against competitors, such as OpenAI's GPT-4V and Google Gemini Pro 1.5.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-latest-version-of-xais-grok-can-process-images-120025782.html?src=rss
Microsoft is exploring the idea of putting ads in your Windows 11 Start menu. To be specific, it's looking to place advertisements for apps you can find in the Microsoft Store in the menu's recommended section. I could hear you sighing in defeat if you've used Windows 10 extensively before — the older OS serves ads in the Start menu, as well, and they're also for apps you can download. At the moment, Microsoft will only show ads in this version if you're in the US and a Windows Insider in the Beta Channel. You won't be seeing them if you're not a beta tester or if you're using a device managed by an organization.
Further, you can disable the advertisements altogether. To do so, just go to Personalization under Settings and then toggle off "Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more" in the Start section. Like any other Microsoft experiment, it may never reach wider rollout, but you may want to remember the aforementioned steps, since the company does have history of incorporating ads into its desktop platforms. Last year, Microsoft also deployed experimental promo spots for its services like OneDrive in the menu that pops up when you click on your profile photo.
Microsoft
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-windows-11-beta-testers-may-start-seeing-ads-in-the-start-menu-032358394.html?src=rss
Microsoft is exploring the idea of putting ads in your Windows 11 Start menu. To be specific, it's looking to place advertisements for apps you can find in the Microsoft Store in the menu's recommended section. I could hear you sighing in defeat if you've used Windows 10 extensively before — the older OS serves ads in the Start menu, as well, and they're also for apps you can download. At the moment, Microsoft will only show ads in this version if you're in the US and a Windows Insider in the Beta Channel. You won't be seeing them if you're not a beta tester or if you're using a device managed by an organization.
Further, you can disable the advertisements altogether. To do so, just go to Personalization under Settings and then toggle off "Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more" in the Start section. Like any other Microsoft experiment, it may never reach wider rollout, but you may want to remember the aforementioned steps, since the company does have history of incorporating ads into its desktop platforms. Last year, Microsoft also deployed experimental promo spots for its services like OneDrive in the menu that pops up when you click on your profile photo.
Microsoft
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-windows-11-beta-testers-may-start-seeing-ads-in-the-start-menu-032358394.html?src=rss
On Friday, people around the web noticed a new addition to their Instagram: Meta AI, the company’s general-purpose, AI-powered chatbot that can answer questions, write poetry and generate images with a simple text prompt. The move isn’t surprising. Meta revealed Meta AI in September 2023 and has spent the last few months adding the chatbot to products like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, so adding it to Instagram seems like a no-brainer.
“Our generative AI-powered experiences are under development in various phases, and we’re testing a range of them publicly in a limited capacity,” a Meta spokesperson told Engadget, which suggests that not everyone has the feature available yet. TechCrunch, which first noted the news, said that Meta AI was showing up in Instagram’s search bar. But for some of us at Engadget, the feature actually showed up in the search bar in Instagram’s Direct Messaging inbox.
Tapping it let me start a conversation with Meta AI just I would DM a friend on Instagram. I was able to ask the chatbot to give me definitions of words, suggest headlines for some stories I’m working on, and generate images of dogs on skateboards. I was also able to ask Meta AI to recommend Reels with cats in them, which it was able to do easily.
But when my colleague Aaron Souppouris asked Meta AI in WhatsApp to recommend Reels, it showed him some Reels in that app too — suggesting that the bot in Instagram isn’t really doing anything specific to Instagram. Instead, Meta is simply shoehorning the same chatbot into every app it owns.
If you tap a hamburger menu within the bot, Meta AI will also show you a long list of possible actions you ask the bot to take.
Aaron Souppouris
Why would you want a chatbot in Instagram to suggest tips for dealing with credit card debit, have a debate about cardio versus weights, or suggest hacks to travel with points, I do not know. But the point is that if you want to, you can.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-is-stuffing-its-ai-chatbot-into-your-instagram-dms-231855991.html?src=rss