Author: zppiot
OpenAI announces that they’re putting the Sky voice option for ChatGPT on pause while they address the issues.If you’re not the type of person to chat with ChatGPT, but you still want to communicate with the AI model, you’ve surely tried the voice options:BreezeCoveEmberJuniperSky (now paused)And, if you’ve watched Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) you’ll be amazed how much Sky sounds like Samantha, the sentient AI that was voiced by none other than Scarlett Johansson.In fact, while listening to Sky, one could get the urge to grow a mustache a la Joaquin Phoenix’s Her character, Theodore. Here, listen to that: Back…
The stimulation won’t work in the small percentage of people who have no remaining connection between the brain and spine below their injury. But for people who still have a connection, the stimulation appears to make voluntary movements easier by making the nerves more likely to transmit a signal. Studies over the past couple of decades in animals suggest that the stimulation activates remaining nerve fibers and, over time, helps new nerves grow. That’s why the benefits persist even when the stimulator is turned off. The big advantage of an external stimulation system over an implant is that it doesn’t…
Summer is just around the corner, and one of the landmark releases during the hottest months will be Samsung’s next crop of foldable devices, consisting of the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and the Galaxy Z Fold 6. Rumors are already piling up about both devices, which is par for the course with most high-profile Samsung phones. However, it’s only the Galaxy Z Fold 6 that is garnering a healthy amount of interesting rumors for potential upgrades, whereas things are abnormally quiet on the Galaxy Z Flip 6. Last year’s Galaxy Z Flip 5 was admittedly a great upgrade, but judging from all…
Pope Francis says hours spent consuming content every day, whether on smartphones or televisions, can take a toll on health — particularly for young people.”What is social media doing to the world and our children?” CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell asked Francis during a recent sit-down interview.Francis said there are some benefits of communication media because they “have a conscience,” knowing how to report the news and also how to render criticism. That can help with development, he explained. But, he admitted, there are also downsides.”There are communication media that alienate young people, don’t they? It…
The Garmin Fenix 7 is a well-known athlete tool: a smartwatch that can be relied on.Not that it hasn’t got its fair share of bugs and problems, but each and every piece of tech out there does so as well.Now, there’s a massive update from Garmin: Software Version 17.20 for the Fenix 7 Pro family series of devices that brings a total of 28 fixes, improvements, and changes that will make Fenix 7 owners happy.Here’s the full list:Added Find My Phone During a GPS activity.Added Garmin Messenger App.Added heart rate dynamic source switching to select the best heart rate data…
WhatsApp, the popular messaging app, is continuously testing new features for its large user base, and it usually does that by pushing them first to its beta app available through the Google Play Store. Recently, according to WABetaInfo, the company has been testing a new preview feature for pinned messages that can be found in the latest beta version 2.24.11.12. This new update aims to make it easier for users to manage and access important messages within their chats.This feature was first spotted in a previous beta version, 2.24.7.27, and it has now progressed to public testing. By incorporating a…
Soon after OpenAI released GPT-4o last Monday, some Chinese speakers started to notice that something seemed off about this newest version of the chatbot: the tokens it uses to parse text were full of spam and porn phrases. Humans read in words, but LLMs read in tokens, which are distinct units in a sentence that have consistent and significant meanings. GPT-4o is supposed to be better than its predecessors at handling multi-language tasks, and many of the advances were achieved through a new tokenization tool that does a better job compressing texts in non-English languages. But, at least when it…
Apple has launched a significant discount campaign with discount offers of up to 2,300 yuan ($318) on select iPhone models. This aggressive price reduction aims to defend its position in the high-end smartphone market, where it faces growing competition from local rivals.”Local rivals” means… Huawei.The discount campaign, running from May 20 to May 28, is more substantial than the one Apple offered in February, which had a maximum discount of 1,150 yuan. This time, the highest discount of 2,300 ($318) yuan applies to the 1TB iPhone 15 Pro Max model. Other models also see significant price cuts, such as the…
is now official.While our full review will be out soon, I can already tell you that the 8a is quite likely going to be the most well-rounded mid-range phone money can buy in the first half of 2024 – or maybe even until the end of the year. is a proper, premium flagship phone, which launched at a price of $700.However, the thing is that the “proper” flagship Pixel 8 is no longer $700 – at least if you shop around. And that makes me think that the Pixel 8a might/should be Google’s last $500 Pixel.To be fair, I’ve talked…
Why in the world would you ever consider buying the Apple Watch Series 7 when the much better Series 9 is around… and frequently discounted to killer prices in multiple variants with and without cellular connectivity? The answer is simple and is made up of four letters: w, o, o, t.That’s right, the Amazon-owned e-tailer has the 2021-released intelligent timepiece on sale at a price that’s certainly low enough to make you ignore the Series 7’s advanced age and the Series 9’s obvious strengths over the older edition. If you hurry, you’re looking at paying just $249.99 for what’s undeniably…
The new 13-inch iPad Pro M4 (2024) has arrived at iFixit’s headquarters and this means one thing and one thing only: it’s dismantled.The repairability team calls the slate “an impressive bit of technology”, but the Pencil Pro is called “a disposable piece of …”, so there you have it.On the displayAs tablet (and Apple) aficionados know, the 13-inch iPad Pro M4 (2024) boasts a Tandem OLED, also known as the Ultra Retina panel. This display is accessible only through the screen, much like its LCD predecessors. Although the adhesive securing the screen isn’t overly aggressive, the repair process remains daunting…
Waze has been adding new driving experiences every month and it doesn’t show signs of slowing down. This month’s new driving experience has American YouTube Dashie lending his voice to Google’s navigational app.American YouTuber DashieGames (Charlie Guzman) creates content related to video games. His humor is meant to brighten the driving experience of so many commuters stuck in traffic.Dashie brings his over-the-top personality to your drives with custom directions that include hilarious mispronunciations, “fake furious” outbursts, and his custom “Dashie-Kart” vehicle. Choose Dashie’s “Grumpy” Mood to hear that amusing, cartoonish Dashie rage when things go wrong with prompts like, “Y’all…
We can say a lot of good things about Sony’s new flagship, the Xperia 1 VI. Even though the negatives are probably not that many, they seriously undermine the phone’s chance to become a market success for the Japanese company.In fact, Sony’s marketing strategy regarding the Xperia 1 VI shows once again that it no longer has any ambitions when it comes to smartphones. It’s the main reason the Japanese giant seriously shrunk its mobile business and decided to stop innovating.Introduced last week, the Xperia 1 VI is a camera-oriented flagship that’s seriously overpriced. Sony announced that its new flagship…
Samsung’s A-series mid-range Galaxy handsets usually provide good value for the money. These phones are powered by serviceable Dimensity and Exynos chipsets and have decent cameras and large batteries. Take the Galaxy A15 5G which was released last December with a 6.5-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1080 x 2340 FHD+ resolution with a 90Hz refresh rate, and a 6nm MediaTek Dimensity 6100+ SoC under the hood.Per SamMobile, the Galaxy A15 5G (SM-A156U) has received an update that can be downloaded by carrier-locked variants of the phone in the U.S. This update, surprisingly, is One UI 6.1 and it takes the…
Motorola’s upcoming Razr 50 and 50 Ultra have been in the news quite often in the last couple of weeks. Reports about their specs, along with several pictures showing the phones from different angles, suggest these will be a consistent upgrade in terms of performance and looks compared with the previous models.Both the Razr 50 and 50 Ultra will be advertised as premium mid-range foldable smartphones, so while they’ll cost around the same as some of the latest flagships, they might not be as powerful. On the bright side, these will be cheaper than most other flagship foldable phones in…
Back in 2019, TCL displayed a non-working prototype of a tri-foldable smartphone. When the device was fully open, it formed a tablet-sized 10-inch screen. Now, five years later, TCL CSOT (TCL China Star Optoelectronics Technology) introduced the first tri-foldable phone that delivers a 7.85-inch screen when fully open. The device was on display today at the SID (Society for Information Display) 2024 exhibition held in San Jose, California. The phone uses the tri-fold display, which TCL has named “Free-type,” to fold into “G” and “Z” shaped configurations. When fully flattened, the 7.85-inch display features an aspect ratio in line with…