Netflix’s new prestige sci-fi show is delayed until March 22, 2024. 3 Body Problem was originally scheduled to debut in 2023, before being pushed back to January 2024, and now March. Just as the initial delay was accompanied by a teaser trailer, so too is this one:
3 Body Problem is being adapted by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (who created HBO's Game of Thrones) alongside screenwriter Alexander Woo. The new trailer gives us our first look at the series’ key “video game,” Three-Body, which involves a nebulous and extremely shiny VR headset. According to John Bradley’s character Jack Rooney, the headset has "no screen... no headphone jack... not even a charging port." Donning the headset transports Rooney to a hyper-realistic world, before he’s swiftly ejected and the trailer ends.
The show's source material is The Three-Body Problem, the first novel in Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth's Past series. Originally released in the mid ’00s in China, it gained international recognition and a Hugo award when Tor Books published an English-language translation in 2014. Netflix’s ill-grammared take on the book was announced in 2020, and stars Benedict Wong, Eiza González and several Game of Thrones alums including Jonathan Pryce and the aforementioned Bradley.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflixs-new-3-body-problem-trailer-reveals-a-delay-to-march-2024-004430208.html?src=rss
We all knew it was just a matter of time before one of the world’s richest and most controversial men would get the biopic treatment and now it’s happening. Elon Musk is getting his very own movie, helmed by acclaimed director Darron Aronofsky and produced by A24, as originally reported by the Variety.
The film’s going to be based on Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography, which has received its share of unfavorable reviews, with outlets like the Los Angeles Times suggesting the author “mostly accepts Musk’s confident prognostications as gospel” and The Guardian calling it an “insight-free doorstop.” Not all reviews were that dire, of course, but many point to Isaacson’s book as being a clear example of the perils of access journalism.
Isaacson also wrote a biography on Steve Jobs, which was adapted into the 2015 film starring Michael Fassbender and directed by Danny Boyle. This movie ended up being an incredibly loose adaptation of Isaacson’s book, so we’ll see what Aronofsky does with the material. If anyone can put their personal stamp on things, it’s the director behind Mother!, The Whale, Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan.
This film’s still in early development, so there’s no writer attached yet and there have been no casting announcements. In a recent Reddit thread, commenters' top-voted casting picks for Musk were Nicolas Cage, Rami Malek, Jesse Eisenberg and Robert Downey Jr, as collated by Variety.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/an-elon-musk-biopic-will-be-directed-by-darren-aronofsky-162714444.html?src=rss
We all knew it was just a matter of time before one of the world’s richest and most controversial men would get the biopic treatment and now it’s happening. Elon Musk is getting his very own movie, helmed by acclaimed director Darron Aronofsky and produced by A24, as originally reported by the Variety.
The film’s going to be based on Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography, which has received its share of unfavorable reviews, with outlets like the Los Angeles Times suggesting the author “mostly accepts Musk’s confident prognostications as gospel” and The Guardian calling it an “insight-free doorstop.” Not all reviews were that dire, of course, but many point to Isaacson’s book as being a clear example of the perils of access journalism.
Isaacson also wrote a biography on Steve Jobs, which was adapted into the 2015 film starring Michael Fassbender and directed by Danny Boyle. This movie ended up being an incredibly loose adaptation of Isaacson’s book, so we’ll see what Aronofsky does with the material. If anyone can put their personal stamp on things, it’s the director behind Mother!, The Whale, Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan.
This film’s still in early development, so there’s no writer attached yet and there have been no casting announcements. In a recent Reddit thread, commenters' top-voted casting picks for Musk were Nicolas Cage, Rami Malek, Jesse Eisenberg and Robert Downey Jr, as collated by Variety.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/an-elon-musk-biopic-will-be-directed-by-darren-aronofsky-162714444.html?src=rss
Every now and then, a device comes along and challenges you to consider the viability of an entirely new product category. That’s precisely what Lenovo is doing with the Yoga Book 9i. By replacing the traditional physical keyboard with a second display, the company is rethinking what a laptop can do. In tight confines, you can rely on a virtual keyboard or an included magnetic alternative. But when space isn’t a concern, you can prop the whole system up on its custom folding cover to create an engaging dual-screen workspace. It’s like a miniature all-in-one PC that’s incredibly easy to carry around. And while its software still needs work and it costs twice as much as a standard clamshell, the Yoga Book 9i is proof that it’s worth exploring this new branch of the laptop’s evolutionary tree.
Design and displays
There’s a profound elegance to the Yoga Book 9i’s design. Though the laptop’s bottom half is a bit thicker than the top, it feels like Lenovo has boiled the device down to its most basic components: two halves (in this case, screens) joined by a hinge in the middle. The dual 13.3-inch displays (2,880 x 1,800) look great too, boasting OLED panels with rich colors and a tested brightness just shy of 400 nits.
Around the outside, the Yoga Book features a polished metal frame with three Thunderbolt 4 ports, which is nice to see on a system this size. Unfortunately for fans of wired audio, you don’t get a 3.5mm audio jack. Thankfully, Lenovo’s 5-megapixel IR webcam is sharper than what you get on most competing devices, and holding everything together is the company’s signature speaker bar hinge, which is impressively loud and punchy. All told, despite being slightly heavier than a typical 13-inch ultraportable due to that second layer of glass, it’s still very easy to carry around.
The remaining pieces of the Yoga Book 9i’s kit are its accessories, which include a stylus, a detached magnetic physical keyboard, a folding kickstand cover and even a sleek travel mouse. The keyboard communicates via Bluetooth and has its own USB-C port for charging. Despite its size, it doesn’t feel cramped and offers more key travel than you might expect. During transport, the cover wraps around the keyboard to keep it protected, while Lenovo’s Digital Pen 3 can be stashed in the attached loop.
The mouse is the odd one out because while it's a handy inclusion, it’s also rather basic (its only noteworthy characteristic is having a toggle on the bottom for quickly switching between two paired devices). Plus, it doesn't attach to the rest of the system in any way. However, what you can create when you put these pieces together is when things get really interesting.
A dual-mode machine
In clamshell mode, the Yoga Book 9i looks and functions like a regular laptop. But of course, it’s missing a discrete keyboard and touchpad, so what do you do when you need them? That’s easy, you just tap eight fingers on the bottom panel and instantly you get virtual stand-ins. And for times when you only need to mouse around, you can use a three-finger tap instead, which summons a floating touchpad that leaves room for Lenovo’s widgets (weather, news, etc.) or anything else you’d like to put down there.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Surprisingly, typing on a touchscreen isn’t as bad as you might think. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still not nearly as fast or accurate as using a physical keyboard. But it’s serviceable, as long as you’re willing to make some adjustments. You can’t slam your fingers down because there are no switches or actual keys with depth to cushion every strike and you need to be more aware of when your hands start to drift lest your sentence devolves into a jumble. But after a little practice, I’m able to hit 60 to 65 words per minute, which is down from around 85 wpm normally. As for mousing, the tackiness of the glass means swiping around isn’t quite as fluid either. But that’s OK, because if you don’t want to rely entirely on a virtual keyboard or touchpad, you don’t have to.
Dropping Lenovo’s keyboard on the bottom screen instantly converts the Yoga Book into a more traditional setup. The magnets inside even help align it properly. From there you can type away on physical keys if you prefer. Just don’t forget to remove the accessory before you close the lid.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
What’s most impressive about the Yoga Book 9i’s is its ability to transform into a portable all-in-one PC when it’s propped up on its kickstand cover. In this mode, there are two options for its displays: a stacked setup with one screen on top of the other and a side-by-side arrangement. Both configurations have their uses. Dual portrait-mode panels are great for quickly referencing materials like spec sheets while writing. Alternatively, the vertically stacked orientation is excellent for keeping an important project open up top while the bottom screen is reserved for email or messaging apps.
Regardless of your preference, simply having the ability to use two displays on a device gives the Yoga Book 9i a unique advantage over pretty much every normal laptop. Sure, you can recreate a similar situation using a bunch of add-ons, but it’s never going to be quite as sleek.
Software
The biggest downside to the Yoga Book 9i is that while its hardware is solid, its software is hit or miss. Lenovo attempts to mitigate this with its User Center, which does a great job of showcasing the laptop’s dual-screen features and is an easy place to adjust settings like display modes, brightness and more.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Unfortunately, even with the extra assistance, it’s clear Windows 11 isn’t designed for laptops like this. Sometimes when launching full-screen apps like a game, the Yoga Book gets confused and puts the window on the wrong panel. Other times, like when you’re installing a program or logging in, a prompt pops up that completely disables the lower display, which is kind of annoying when you’re relying on a virtual keyboard and touchpad. I can understand that it's hard to optimize software when you don’t have a device to test things on. But even so, there’s no hiding that this creates a stilted experience compared to a standard laptop, and if you’re considering buying a Yoga Book 9i, this is a truth you’re going to have to live with (at least for now).
Performance
Packing an Intel Core i7-155U chip, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, the Yoga Book 9i can handle most productivity needs. Even when multitasking across both displays, performance felt relatively snappy. However, if you’re planning on regularly doing more demanding things like video editing, you’ll probably want a beefier machine. On our video encoding test, the laptop took a minute and a half to convert a one-minute movie trailer from 4K to 1080p. That’s not great when compared to systems with faster chips that can perform the same task in 30 to 40 seconds.
Battery life
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Even with a relatively large 80Wh battery, for a system with two screens, the Yoga Book 9i fared better than expected on our standard video rundown test. It posted a time of eight hours and 12 minutes, which is a couple hours shorter than traditional similarly-sized rivals like the Asus ZenBook S 13 (10:39). But it’s longer than what you get from more powerful thin-and-light gaming notebooks, which often struggle to get north of five hours on a charge.
Wrap up
As the first laptop to feature two displays, the Yoga Book 9i is a rather divisive machine. Starting at $2,000, not only is it really expensive, its performance is also slower than more traditional competitors in this price range. However, for people like me who constantly yearn for more screen real estate when I’m away from home, Lenovo has created something that is more than the sum of its parts. When space is limited, the Yoga Book 9i’s clamshell mode feels right at home on an airplane tray table. But when it's not, it can expand into a portable dual-screen workstation–complete with all the fixings of your desktop at home. And when you need to pack up, everything collapses into a neat, semi-self-contained bundle that fits in the smallest of laptop bags.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
The Yoga Book 9i is a nifty little transformer that’s more engaging than anything Michael Bay has directed in the last two decades. With how little laptops have changed recently, it feels like the Yoga Book has even more room to grow in the years to come. Sure, it’s still a bit awkward, but as the starting point for a new type of notebook, Lenovo’s debut dual-screen convertible has me convinced.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/lenovo-yoga-book-9i-review-the-world-isnt-ready-for-dual-screen-laptops-but-lenovo-is-163009289.html?src=rss
Every now and then, a device comes along and challenges you to consider the viability of an entirely new product category. That’s precisely what Lenovo is doing with the Yoga Book 9i. By replacing the traditional physical keyboard with a second display, the company is rethinking what a laptop can do. In tight confines, you can rely on a virtual keyboard or an included magnetic alternative. But when space isn’t a concern, you can prop the whole system up on its custom folding cover to create an engaging dual-screen workspace. It’s like a miniature all-in-one PC that’s incredibly easy to carry around. And while its software still needs work and it costs twice as much as a standard clamshell, the Yoga Book 9i is proof that it’s worth exploring this new branch of the laptop’s evolutionary tree.
Design and displays
There’s a profound elegance to the Yoga Book 9i’s design. Though the laptop’s bottom half is a bit thicker than the top, it feels like Lenovo has boiled the device down to its most basic components: two halves (in this case, screens) joined by a hinge in the middle. The dual 13.3-inch displays (2,880 x 1,800) look great too, boasting OLED panels with rich colors and a tested brightness just shy of 400 nits.
Around the outside, the Yoga Book features a polished metal frame with three Thunderbolt 4 ports, which is nice to see on a system this size. Unfortunately for fans of wired audio, you don’t get a 3.5mm audio jack. Thankfully, Lenovo’s 5-megapixel IR webcam is sharper than what you get on most competing devices, and holding everything together is the company’s signature speaker bar hinge, which is impressively loud and punchy. All told, despite being slightly heavier than a typical 13-inch ultraportable due to that second layer of glass, it’s still very easy to carry around.
The remaining pieces of the Yoga Book 9i’s kit are its accessories, which include a stylus, a detached magnetic physical keyboard, a folding kickstand cover and even a sleek travel mouse. The keyboard communicates via Bluetooth and has its own USB-C port for charging. Despite its size, it doesn’t feel cramped and offers more key travel than you might expect. During transport, the cover wraps around the keyboard to keep it protected, while Lenovo’s Digital Pen 3 can be stashed in the attached loop.
The mouse is the odd one out because while it's a handy inclusion, it’s also rather basic (its only noteworthy characteristic is having a toggle on the bottom for quickly switching between two paired devices). Plus, it doesn't attach to the rest of the system in any way. However, what you can create when you put these pieces together is when things get really interesting.
A dual-mode machine
In clamshell mode, the Yoga Book 9i looks and functions like a regular laptop. But of course, it’s missing a discrete keyboard and touchpad, so what do you do when you need them? That’s easy, you just tap eight fingers on the bottom panel and instantly you get virtual stand-ins. And for times when you only need to mouse around, you can use a three-finger tap instead, which summons a floating touchpad that leaves room for Lenovo’s widgets (weather, news, etc.) or anything else you’d like to put down there.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Surprisingly, typing on a touchscreen isn’t as bad as you might think. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still not nearly as fast or accurate as using a physical keyboard. But it’s serviceable, as long as you’re willing to make some adjustments. You can’t slam your fingers down because there are no switches or actual keys with depth to cushion every strike and you need to be more aware of when your hands start to drift lest your sentence devolves into a jumble. But after a little practice, I’m able to hit 60 to 65 words per minute, which is down from around 85 wpm normally. As for mousing, the tackiness of the glass means swiping around isn’t quite as fluid either. But that’s OK, because if you don’t want to rely entirely on a virtual keyboard or touchpad, you don’t have to.
Dropping Lenovo’s keyboard on the bottom screen instantly converts the Yoga Book into a more traditional setup. The magnets inside even help align it properly. From there you can type away on physical keys if you prefer. Just don’t forget to remove the accessory before you close the lid.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
What’s most impressive about the Yoga Book 9i’s is its ability to transform into a portable all-in-one PC when it’s propped up on its kickstand cover. In this mode, there are two options for its displays: a stacked setup with one screen on top of the other and a side-by-side arrangement. Both configurations have their uses. Dual portrait-mode panels are great for quickly referencing materials like spec sheets while writing. Alternatively, the vertically stacked orientation is excellent for keeping an important project open up top while the bottom screen is reserved for email or messaging apps.
Regardless of your preference, simply having the ability to use two displays on a device gives the Yoga Book 9i a unique advantage over pretty much every normal laptop. Sure, you can recreate a similar situation using a bunch of add-ons, but it’s never going to be quite as sleek.
Software
The biggest downside to the Yoga Book 9i is that while its hardware is solid, its software is hit or miss. Lenovo attempts to mitigate this with its User Center, which does a great job of showcasing the laptop’s dual-screen features and is an easy place to adjust settings like display modes, brightness and more.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Unfortunately, even with the extra assistance, it’s clear Windows 11 isn’t designed for laptops like this. Sometimes when launching full-screen apps like a game, the Yoga Book gets confused and puts the window on the wrong panel. Other times, like when you’re installing a program or logging in, a prompt pops up that completely disables the lower display, which is kind of annoying when you’re relying on a virtual keyboard and touchpad. I can understand that it's hard to optimize software when you don’t have a device to test things on. But even so, there’s no hiding that this creates a stilted experience compared to a standard laptop, and if you’re considering buying a Yoga Book 9i, this is a truth you’re going to have to live with (at least for now).
Performance
Packing an Intel Core i7-155U chip, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, the Yoga Book 9i can handle most productivity needs. Even when multitasking across both displays, performance felt relatively snappy. However, if you’re planning on regularly doing more demanding things like video editing, you’ll probably want a beefier machine. On our video encoding test, the laptop took a minute and a half to convert a one-minute movie trailer from 4K to 1080p. That’s not great when compared to systems with faster chips that can perform the same task in 30 to 40 seconds.
Battery life
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Even with a relatively large 80Wh battery, for a system with two screens, the Yoga Book 9i fared better than expected on our standard video rundown test. It posted a time of eight hours and 12 minutes, which is a couple hours shorter than traditional similarly-sized rivals like the Asus ZenBook S 13 (10:39). But it’s longer than what you get from more powerful thin-and-light gaming notebooks, which often struggle to get north of five hours on a charge.
Wrap up
As the first laptop to feature two displays, the Yoga Book 9i is a rather divisive machine. Starting at $2,000, not only is it really expensive, its performance is also slower than more traditional competitors in this price range. However, for people like me who constantly yearn for more screen real estate when I’m away from home, Lenovo has created something that is more than the sum of its parts. When space is limited, the Yoga Book 9i’s clamshell mode feels right at home on an airplane tray table. But when it's not, it can expand into a portable dual-screen workstation–complete with all the fixings of your desktop at home. And when you need to pack up, everything collapses into a neat, semi-self-contained bundle that fits in the smallest of laptop bags.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
The Yoga Book 9i is a nifty little transformer that’s more engaging than anything Michael Bay has directed in the last two decades. With how little laptops have changed recently, it feels like the Yoga Book has even more room to grow in the years to come. Sure, it’s still a bit awkward, but as the starting point for a new type of notebook, Lenovo’s debut dual-screen convertible has me convinced.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/lenovo-yoga-book-9i-review-the-world-isnt-ready-for-dual-screen-laptops-but-lenovo-is-163009289.html?src=rss
It certainly didn't take long for AI's other shoe to drop, what with the emergent technology already being perverted to commit confidence scams and generate spam content. We can now add censorship to that list as the Globe Gazette reports the school board of Mason City, Iowa has begun leveraging AI technology to cultivate lists of potentially bannable books from the district's libraries ahead of the 2023/24 school year.
In May, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed, and Governor Kim Reynolds subsequently signed, Senate File 496 (SF 496), which enacted sweeping changes to the state's education curriculum. Specifically it limits what books can be made available in school libraries and classrooms, requiring titles to be "age appropriate” and without “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act,” per Iowa Code 702.17.
But ensuring that every book in the district's archives adhere to these new rules is quickly turning into a mammoth undertaking. "Our classroom and school libraries have vast collections, consisting of texts purchased, donated, and found," Bridgette Exman, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction at Mason City Community School District, said in a statement. "It is simply not feasible to read every book and filter for these new requirements."
As such, the Mason City School District is bringing in AI to parse suspect texts for banned ideas and descriptions since there are simply too many titles for human reviewers to cover on their own. Per the district, a "master list" is first cobbled together from "several sources" based on whether there were previous complaints of sexual content. Books from that list are then scanned by "AI software" which tells the state censors whether or not there actually is a depiction of sex in the book.
“Frankly, we have more important things to do than spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to protect kids from books,” Exman told PopSci via email. “At the same time, we do have a legal and ethical obligation to comply with the law. Our goal here really is a defensible process.”
So far, the AI has flagged 19 books for removal. They are as follows:
The Apple TV+ film Tetris was copied from a book written years ago, according to a lawsuit filed against the tech giant and the Tetris Company. Dan Ackerman, the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo, has accused the plaintiffs of ripping off his book The Tetris Effect, which tells the history of the game in the form of a Cold War-era thriller. In his lawsuit (PDF, via Reuters), Ackerman said he sent the Tetris Company and its CEO Maya Rogers a pre-publication copy of his book back in 2016. Later that year, his agent received a "strongly worded Cease and Desist letter" to stop him from pursuing film and TV opportunities.
Ackerman accused Rogers of working with screenwriter Noah Pink to develop a screenplay using content taken from his book without his knowledge or consent. Apparently, numerous producers showed interest in adapting his book, but the Tetris Company refused to license its IP for the project. "This was done at the direction and behest of Ms. Rogers so that she and the Tetris Company could pursue their own project and opportunities based on Mr. Ackerman's book without compensating him," the lawsuit reads.
In his complaint, Ackerman explained that for writers, the option to license their work for film and TV is typically a major source of revenue. That's why he takes the Tetris Company's actions not as a means to prevent the unauthorized use of its IP, but as an "economic attack" on his business. To drive the point home, Ackerman included quite a lengthy list of "glaring similarities" between his book and the film in his lawsuit. Several items in the list explain how scenes in the movie mirrored his versions of events. That said, those events were based on scenarios that happened in real life, so it remains to be seen if the court will agree with him. Ackerman is asking for actual, compensatory and punitive damages equivalent to 6 percent of the film's $80 million production budget.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/author-says-the-apple-tv-tetris-movie-ripped-off-his-book-061744399.html?src=rss
Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI. On Friday, the comedian and author, alongside novelists Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey, filed a pair of complaints against OpenAI and Meta (via Gizmodo). The group alleges the firms trained their large language models on copyrighted materials, including works they published, without obtaining consent.
The complaints center around the datasets OpenAI and Meta allegedly used to train ChatGPT and LLaMA. In the case of OpenAI, while it's "Books1" dataset conforms approximately to the size of Project Gutenberg — a well known copyright-free book repository — lawyers for the plaintiffs argue that the “Books2” datasets is too large to have derived from anywhere other than so-called "shadow libraries" of illegally available copyrighted material, such as Library Genesis and Sci-Hub. Everyday pirates can access these materials through direct downloads, but perhaps more usefully for those generating large language models, many shadow libraries also make written material available in bulk torrent packages. One exhibit from Silverman’s lawsuit involves an exchange between the comedian’s lawyers and ChatGPT. Silverman’s legal team asked the chatbot to summarize The Bedwetter, a memoir she published in 2010. The chatbot was not only able to outline entire parts of the book, but some passages it relayed appear to have been reproduced verbatim.
Silverman, Golden and Kadrey aren’t the first authors to sue OpenAI over copyright infringement. In fact, the firm faces a host of legal challenges over how it went about training ChatGPT. In June alone, the company was served with two separate complaints. One is a sweeping class action suit that alleges OpenAI violated federal and state privacy laws by scraping data to train the large language models behind ChatGPT and DALL-E.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sarah-silverman-sues-openai-and-meta-over-copyright-infringement-175322447.html?src=rss
Netflix just dropped the first reveal trailer for the forthcoming 3 Body Problem science fiction series at its Tudum fan event, along with a premiere month of January. This is a short delay for the anticipated series, as it was originally supposed to air this year.
If the name of the show sounds familiar, it’s likely for two reasons. First of all, the showrunners are the former Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, along with Alexander Woo. Despite the bone-deep hatred among viewers for the final season of HBO’s fantasy epic, Benioff and Weiss are still a known quantity that could draw in some eyeballs.
Secondly, 3 Body Problem is based on a highly successful book series, just like Game of Thrones, only this one is already finished. Let’s hear it for pre-existing endings! The book series, authored by Chinese writer Liu Cixin, is one of the most celebrated sci-fi epics of recent years, so we could be in for something special here.
To that end, Netflix dropped a trailer that’s heavy on eye candy and light on story. That’s okay, though, as those who want spoilers can just read the books. Some of the actors set to star in the series include Benedict Wong (The Martian, Doctor Strange), Eiza González (Baby Driver) and Game of Thrones veterans John Bradley and Liam Cunningham.
January is not that far off, so we don’t have long to wait until we learn all about the titular three bodies and any associated problems. Here’s hoping Benioff and Weiss earn back some goodwill with this show. At any rate, this is a much cooler idea than that weird alt history/slavery thing that the duo almost pushed through at HBO.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflixs-3-body-problem-first-look-confirms-january-2024-premiere-213927002.html?src=rss
We were enamored with the Kindle Scribe when we reviewed it, but we weren't blind to its shortcomings, including its limited editing capabilities. Now, Amazon has rolled out an update for the device, which solves some of the issues we had with it and makes it a much better option for note-taking. One of the new features is the ability to write directly on page. It's still not available for every book, but the Kindle Store on the Scribe now has a new section called "Write-on Books" where you can find titles that support the feature.
At the moment, the selection of books with direct on-page writing is mostly made up of guided journals, as well as games like crossword and sudoku. In other words, books that don't make sense on a device where writing on them is not supported. If you're checking out titles on a laptop or a phone, you can also see if they support the feature by looking for "On-page writing" under their product details section. For books that don't support on-page writing, you'll still have to create a sticky note and write within a designated rectangle. You'll have to keep your fingers crossed for the ability to doodle and take notes on the margin of a book if that's something you've been wishing for.
If you want to share or upload notes you've written on the Scribe, the update also gives you the capability to easily convert them to text. You'll find a new option that reads "Convert to text and quick send" in the share menu and another that says "Convert to text and email." Both options share your handwritten notebooks as a .txt file, but for the latter, you'll be given the the chance to review and edit the converted text before sharing them via email to five addresses.
There's also a new lasso select tool to move your notes and doodles around. You simply have to circle your handwritten text or drawings with it to resize them, drag them to another location or to cut, copy and paste them within a sticky note, a notebook or a PDF. Speaking of PDFs, files with the format uploaded through Send to Kindle are now more customizable. You can crop their margins to make their text easier to read, select text to highlight it and add text notes. You'll now also be able to look up the definitions, translations and Wikipedia results for text found in PDF files, as well as switch between portrait and landscape view.
These features will roll out to all Kindle Scribes in the coming weeks, but you can manually download the latest software update to get them right now.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-kindle-scribe-updates-include-support-for-direct-on-page-writing-051753157.html?src=rss