Tag Archives: author_name|Sarah Fielding

The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Essentials bundle drops to its lowest price of the year ahead of Prime Day

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If you're on the hunt for a new ereader, early Prime Day deals might have just what you're looking for. The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Essentials bundle is down to $203 right now, which is $55 off and the best price we've seen all year. It includes Amazon's higher-end ereader with 32GB of storage along with a fabric cover and its own wireless charging stand, so you'll have an attractive and dedicated spot to place the ereader for charging when you're not using it.

The Kindle Paperweight Signature Edition launched in 2021 and we called it "The best e-reader. Period." While other e-readers have come into the picture, it's still a great option — especially for Prime members. We gave it a 97 in our review thanks to features like a larger, more responsive screen and smaller bezels. The combination of the two gives this device an extra lux feel compared to alternatives. This edition also includes 17 individual LEDs, up from the five in its predecessor. The lights let you adjust the warm hue, similar to Apple's Night Shift.

It also has some logistical benefits like USB-C charging and wireless charging — with the e-reader lasting up to ten weeks on just one charge. The addition of the fabric case and wireless charging dock make it easy to keep your Kindle juiced up and damage free for only $13 more than buying the Paperwhite Signature Edition on its own. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice in the lead up to October Prime Day 2024.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-kindle-paperwhite-signature-essentials-bundle-drops-to-its-lowest-price-of-the-year-ahead-of-prime-day-141717270.html?src=rss

Watch the trailer for Squid Game 2

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We are so close to getting season two of Squid Game — the show famously rejected for nearly a decade before becoming a sensation on Netflix. The streamer has just shared a full-length trailer ahead of the season's December 26 premiere, calling for viewers to "Get back in the game."

It features Gong Yoo reprising his role as the salesman. Yoo starts his day calmly, looking at the cityscape and getting ready alongside cheery music before the atmosphere turns sinister as he opens a safe, grabbing ddakji pieces. He then heads to the subway and approaches a new player, asking, "Sir, would you like to play a game with me?"

Netflix first announced Squid Game season two in 2022 but only set a release date in August — nearly three years after the first season came out. Next time, there shouldn't be as large a gap as Netflix also shared that the show's third and final season should arrive in 2025. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/watch-the-trailer-for-squid-game-2-133047996.html?src=rss

Football Manager 25 is out on November 26

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Football Manager 25 is finally on its way, with Sports Interactive confirming the news and announcing a release date. The game will arrive for PC, Mac, Xbox and PS5 on November 26, just in time for some Thanksgiving gameplay. At the same time, FM25 Mobile is launching exclusively on Netflix, while FM25 Touch should come to Nintendo Switch on December 3.

FM25 comes with two big updates: a switch to the Unity engine (everywhere except mobile) and women's football (or soccer, depending on where you're reading this from) arriving into the same world as the men's teams. Sega-owned SI first announced the development of women's games in 2021, claiming it would take a while to do in order to provide the same depth as the men's ones. Last year, it confirmed women's teams would be in FM25.

In a statement, Sports Interactive Studio Director Miles Jacobson said, "The world gets to see two of our multi-year projects come to fruition: the switch to the Unity engine and the introduction of Women's Football. It gives us a real sense of achievement to begin sharing our hard work with you and we're really looking forward to showing you more of the game in the weeks before the game's release."

Right now, anyone who pre-orders FM25 for PC or Mac from a SEGA-approved digital retailer will get 10 percent off. SI will announce pre-orders for Xbox and PS5 editions later.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/football-manager-25-is-out-on-november-26-140032348.html?src=rss

The UK says goodbye to coal production

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The UK's last coal plant will sigh out its final pollutants Monday before shutting down for good and officially ending the country's century and a half of coal production. Nottinghamshire's Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant was the last of its kind following Britain's 2015 commitment to close all coal power plants by 2025. Ratcliffe was originally scheduled to shut down in 2022 but stayed open after Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe entered a gas crisis.

The Ratcliffe plant once had 3,000 engineers but only employs 170 staff now. That group will gather to watch a livestream of the plant being turned off, and over 100 of them are set to work on decommissioning the plant over the next two years. Many of the other employees will enter new jobs at different power plants owned by Uniper, Raticliffe's German owner, while others will enter training programs to work on other aspects of the industry.

Britain opened the world's first coal power plant in 1882, London's Holborn Viaduct, with the help of Thomas Edison's Edison Electric Light Company. Coal has played a major part in the UK until very recently. According to a report from energy think tank Ember, coal was responsible for 39 percent of the UK's energy supply in 2012 but shrunk to just two percent in 2019. The decrease in coal production was reportedly equal to double the amount of all greenhouse gases used in the UK in 2023. Between 2012 and 2023, wind and solar generation also increased from six percent to a 34 percent share of the UK's energy. Britain still has a long way to go, but this step has made it the first G7 country to remove all coal power production.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-uk-says-goodbye-to-coal-production-114520865.html?src=rss

NotebookLM can now summarize YouTube videos

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You can now upload YouTube videos and audio files to NotebookLM, an AI-powered summarizing tool for education and research. The update means Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro-powered virtual assistant can now handle Google Docs, PDFs, text files, Google Slides, YouTube video URLs, audio files and web pages. This expands NotebookLM's potential sources to include lecture recordings, informative YouTube content and group discussions. Google claims that it securely stores all information uploaded to NoteBookLM and does not use it to train AI.

Google launched the virtual research assistant in the summer of 2023 and upgraded it to run on Gemini 1.5 Pro this past June. Alongside the AI-powered bump, Google expanded NotebookLM to be available in over 200 countries and territories. Most recently, Google added Audio Overview to NotebookLM. The tool has two AI hosts — hopefully not foreshadowing what hosting will look like in the future — discuss your sources, summarize material and "banter." Google is now adding the ability to share Audio Overviews with others through a public URL. 

The irony here is that the reason we'd need an AI to briefly summarize a YouTube video in the first place is because Google incentivized the creation of ever-longer videos.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/notebooklm-can-now-summarize-youtube-videos-160037375.html?src=rss

Google Maps will flag businesses with potentially fake reviews

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I have slowly turned into that frustrating person who won't go somewhere before checking its reviews on Google Maps. However, I also get suspicious when the reviews are too good — there's no pleasing me, apparently — so I'm relieved to hear that Google is making it easier to spot fake ones. Google is now issuing a warning for applicable businesses, stating, "Suspected fake reviews were recently removed from this place." 

Google has previously come under fire with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which opened an investigation into their handling of fake reviews in 2021. A user on X (formerly Twitter) first spotted the change in review handling on a Maps page for a company in the UK (possibly a coincidence).

Google has yet to confirm the feature or where it will be available, but Search Engine Roundtable reports Google recently updated its relevant support page to apply globally.

Google outlines possible restrictions that can be placed on businesses violating its Fake Engagement policy. One point is that the "business profile will display a warning to let consumers know that fake reviews were removed." Other temporary restrictions include not receiving new ratings or reviews, or having existing ones unpublished. If any of these actions occur, business owners will receive an email from Google and can appeal the decision.

While fake reviews can come from businesses in an attempt to boost their ratings, they can also derive from people hoping to tank them. If a business reports these fake reviews, it's unclear whether the same warning will come up (as the wording certainly makes the business seem at fault).

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-maps-will-flag-businesses-with-potentially-fake-reviews-123133579.html?src=rss

Reddit is rolling out AI-powered translations to 35 countries

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As world wide as the web is, language barriers still often limit how much of a site people can explore. Well, Reddit is using AI in an attempt to lessen this issue. The company announced Redditors across more than 35 countries will soon be able to automatically translate their entire feeds. The tool first launched in France earlier this year. 

The machine learning-powered feature is now available in Brazil and Spain, where Redditors can click a translate icon displayed in the overflow menu. This move will translate their entire feed, including comments, into Portuguese and Spanish, respectively. The setting also allows people to post and comment in their language and have it auto-translated into the community's set language. The key here is that unlike platforms like Instagram, for instance, which require you to click translate for each post, Reddit is automating the process. Redditors can access this feature on the app, mobile browser or desktop.

In the coming weeks Reddit will expand its translation feature to Germany, Italy, the Philippines and countries across Latin America. The platform will also be adding a banner on any translated posts and a quick button to see the original content — helpful if a sentence gets a bit wonky in translation. Plus, Reddit is planning to roll out translated content on search engines. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/reddit-is-rolling-out-ai-powered-translations-to-35-countries-143055337.html?src=rss

How to watch Xbox’s Toyko Game Show livestream

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Xbox is releasing new content this week. This Thursday, September 26, you can catch the Xbox Tokyo Game Show 2024 Broadcast, which will feature announcements from Xbox Game Studios, Activision, Blizzard Entertainment and Bethesda. The broadcast will also feature new games from Xbox's third-party retailers — primarily those based in Asia. Last year's show included a list of new titles coming to Game Pass and first looks at a few games.

The Xbox Tokyo Game Show 2024 Broadcast will be available to watch on Tokyo Game Show's YouTube channel in Japanese, English and a range of other languages. It will also offer audio descriptions in both languages and Japanese and American Sign Language. You might have to wake up pretty early for it, though, as the broadcast airs at 7PM JST, which is 6AM ET or 3AM PT. Anyone based in the UK can catch it at a more reasonable 11AM. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/how-to-watch-xboxs-toyko-game-show-livestream-140057083.html?src=rss

Google Earth will show historical imagery dating back to World War II

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Google has just made the history and geography nerd in me very happy. The company has announced that Google Earth is getting historical imagery of areas through satellite and aerial captures dating back 80 years. Google previously released a Timelapse tool that shows satellite images from 1984 to 2022. 

The new shots will include everything from changes in a California reservoir over five years to images of cities like London, Berlin and Warsaw at the start of World War II. There are also photos of American cities like San Francisco in 1938 and images of the city in 2022. It reminds me of another site I've spent much too much time on, 1940s.nyc, which uses the NYC Municipal archives to show photographs of buildings from 1939 to 1941.

In addition to letting me nerd out about changes in water lines and cityscapes, Google is introducing new Street View images across nearly 80 countries. These photos show places such as Logstor, Denmark (pictured above), Oaxaca, Mexico and Tasman, New Zealand. According to Google, its newest camera weighs 15 pounds and can be mounted onto any car, allowing the company to expand Street View even further. Currently, Street View has over 280 billion images. 

Then, of course, it wouldn't be a tech update in 2024 without mentioning AI. Google has trained its AI model Cloud Score+ to recognize and get rid of things such as mist, cloud shadows and haze while creating brighter, sharper images on Google Earth and Maps. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-earth-will-show-historical-imagery-dating-back-to-world-war-ii-140028597.html?src=rss

Mozilla faces a privacy complaint over Firefox’s tracking

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Mozilla is the latest company to get in trouble with the EU. Austrian advocacy group Noyb has filed a complaint against Mozilla for setting a Privacy Preserving Attribution (PPA) feature to default without informing its users. Noyb claims the setting impacts millions of Europeans.

According to Mozilla, PPA involves websites asking Firefox to remember ads they show and to potentially generate an interest report. Firefox creates the data but then submits it to an aggregation service, where the report is combined with similar ones. The company claims individual's browsing activity isn't shared with any third-parties, making it a safer system.

Noyb's complaint alleges that this still interferes with EU users' GDPR-confirmed rights — while taking a dig at widespread tracking being the "norm" in the US. "Mozilla has just bought into the narrative that the advertising industry has a right to track users by turning Firefox into an ad measurement tool," said Felix Mikolasch, a data protection lawyer at Noyb, in a statement. "While Mozilla may have had good intentions, it is very unlikely that 'privacy preserving attribution' will replace cookies and other tracking tools. It is just a new, additional means of tracking users." Users wanting to turn PPA off must navigate to the browser's settings and click opt-out in a sub-menu. 

The complaint ends with Noyb requesting that the Austrian data protection authority investigates Mozilla's privacy settings. It also states that Mozilla should alert users about its data processing steps, use an opt-in system and delete "unlawfully" processed data. Noyb has previously lodged complaints against tech companies such as Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI.  

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/mozilla-faces-a-privacy-complaint-over-firefoxs-tracking-134047980.html?src=rss