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Google announces new SGE and Maps travel features for people who like to plan a little or not at all

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 17:44

Google has some new Maps and SGE features for travel if your summer plans are heating up.

On Wednesday, Google announced the ability to create an itinerary in SGE (Google's experiment for AI-powered search) and new ways to find recommendations and customize lists in Maps.

SEE ALSO: How to save locations in Google Maps

Google SGE, which stands for Search Generative Experience, is a testing platform for Search-related generative AI features. Users can sign up to see what Google is working on for the future of search — specifically AI-generated responses for queries. It's not live yet for users who haven't opted in, but Google is already quietly testing AI-powered search results to non-testers. With SGE's travel planning feature, you can ask it to plan you an itinerary with recommendations pulled from around the web including Business Profiles for restaurants and sites with images and user reviews.

Via Giphy

SGE itineraries include links to sources of travel information, so at least it's citing its work, but we can't imagine travel blogs and publications would be too happy with SGE responses taking up so much search real estate. Plagiarism and its impact on SEO traffic has been a major concern for the tool that has yet to be unleashed to the public. But for users, its potential for finding information more easily across the web is undeniable.

New features for Google Maps also aim to help people plan trips. Now, when you search for a city, Maps will show you "curated lists of recommendations" from top travel sites like Lonely Planet and The New York Times' "36 Hours" series and and Google Maps users. This also works for restaurants lists which Google organizes by "Trending," "Top," and "Gems."

Find recommended lists when you search for a city on Google Maps. Credit: Google

For Maps users who are devoted to curating their own lists, there are also new ways of customizing their favorite places. Now, you can organize places on your list chronologically and rank them so your list can be updated as you go along. Users can also share their curated lists on social.

SGE travel itineraries is available in the U.S. by enrolling in Search Labs. List recommendations will start showing up for users in the U.S. and Canada this week, and list customization will roll out globally on iOS and Android later this month.

Categories: IT General, Technology

Apple Maps could get a custom routes feature in iOS 18

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 17:40

Better late than never.

Apple has a long history of adopting features (and, to be fair, occasionally putting its own spin on them) that competitors have had for years. This time, it might be custom routes on its signature navigation app, Apple Maps. MacRumors spotted a file on the Maps back-end called "CustomRouteCreation" tied to the upcoming iOS 18, which so far is the only evidence we have that this is happening.

SEE ALSO: Apple users targeted by incredibly annoying 'Reset Password' attack

While it's not a lot to go on, the file name is pretty telling, and would provide a feature that Apple Maps frankly should've had a while ago. Google Maps (at least on a browser) gives users the ability to plan out their own custom routes rather than just going with the one the app suggests. If Apple were able to give iPhone users this feature and not require any kind of browser use to make it happen, that could finally give Apple Maps a much-needed leg up over Google's equivalent — especially when there's a chance Apple's default navigation app could have a rocky road ahead in the EU thanks to new Big Tech regulations.

As for when we'll get confirmation of this rumoured Apple Maps feature, it won't be long now. Apple plans to show off iOS 18, as well as the rest of its upcoming software suite, at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Categories: IT General, Technology

Get $20 off a $200 Instacart gift card and save on your next grocery delivery

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 17:32

SAVE $20: A $200 digital Instacart gift card is on sale at Best Buy for $180. That's a 10% discount.

Opens in a new window Credit: Instacart Instacart gift card ($200) $180.00 at Best Buy
$200.00 Save $20.00 Get Deal

There are never enough hours in the day to check off everything on the to-do list. If your fridge is often skint of essentials because you keep running out of time to get to the grocery store, ordering a doorstep delivery could be a time-saving option. And thanks to today's deal, you could get some items in your next Instacart order for free.

As of March 27, a $200 digital Instacart gift card is just $180 at Best Buy. That means you'll save $20, a 10% discount. After ordering, Best Buy will follow up with email instructions on how to redeem the gift card.

SEE ALSO: 40+ deals still live after Best Buy's Member-Exclusive Sale

With the Instacart app, you can order groceries to your doorstep with same-day delivery on many orders. Or, if you prefer, order for curbside pickup at your desired store and staff will load groceries into your car. Over 500 retailers and grocers are linked within Instacart, so you'll have plenty of selection.

After ordering you'll be able to see progress on your order, including when an Instacart shopper has arrived at the store. Through the messaging function, the shopper can ask about preferences and any substitutions, should they be necessary. If you've opted for delivery, you'll also be able to keep tabs on when your groceries will arrive.

If you use Instacart, today's deal is a great way to save some money on your next grocery order.

Categories: IT General, Technology

Save big on household essentials at Amazon: Trash bags, detergent, wipes, and more

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 17:15

UP TP 44% OFF: Amazon is hosting a sale on spring cleaning essentials including laundry detergent, disinfectant wipes, and more. Get up to 44% off your favorite brands.

Our top picks: Best trash bag deal Hefty Ultra Strong tall kitchen trash bags (80-count) $11.98 at Amazon (save $4.01 ) Get Deal Best laundry detergent deal Clean Cult Laundry Detergent Sheets (60-count) $9.99 at Amazon (save $3.99 ) Get Deal Best disinfecting cleaner deal Clorox Disinfecting Wipes 2-Pack (75-count) $9.68 at Amazon (save $1.81) Get Deal

Spring has officially sprung, so you're probably itching to throw out the old and bring in the new. (I just reorganized my entire closet, and even though it took me two days, I'm so proud of the outcome.) But cleaning up means you'll need supplies, which can add up quickly.

SEE ALSO: The best robot vacuum deals this week include every self-emptying mopping Roomba on sale

Thankfully, Amazon is hosting a sale on dozens of spring cleaning essentials including laundry detergent, disinfectant wipes, and more.

Here are some of the best deals we could find:

Best trash bag deal Opens in a new window Credit: Hefty Our pick: Hefty Ultra Strong tall kitchen trash bags (80-count) $11.98 at Amazon
$15.99 Save $4.01 Get Deal Why we like it

It's crazy to think that we spend real money on things we literally throw away. Trash bags, aside from paper towels and toilet paper, are one of the most expensive household essentials and can cost up to $15 at some retail stores (we're looking at you, Target).

But with this limited-time Amazon deal, you can get 80 Hefty Ultra Strong, tall kitchen trash bags (13-gallon) for just $11.98. With a lavender and sweet vanilla scent and Arm & Hammer odor control technology, you can put the stinkiest leftovers in these bags without worrying that your entire kitchen will smell.

Best laundry detergent deal Opens in a new window Credit: Clean Cult Our pick: Clean Cult Laundry Detergent Sheets (60-count) $9.99 at Amazon
$13.98 Save $3.99 Get Deal Why we like it

Laundry detergent is another household essential that can quickly add up in cost. It's also hard to find a detergent without a strong chemical scent or a formula that irritates sensitive skin. But Clean Cult offers a solution with its eco-friendly laundry detergent sheets.

These sheets are free from harsh chemicals, making them a great option for people with sensitive skin or allergies. Plus, they're designed to fight stains and remove odors effectively, so you can trust that your clothes will come out fresh and clean.

You can get them in Free & Clear, Fresh Linen, or Wild Lavender. Each pack contains 60 sheets and is available for just $9.99 with this limited-time Amazon deal. That's 60 loads of laundry for under $10.

Best disinfecting cleaner deal Opens in a new window Credit: Clorox Our pick: Clorox Disinfecting Wipes 2-pack (75-count) $9.68 at Amazon
$11.49 Save $1.81 Get Deal Why we like it

If the pandemic taught us anything, you can never have enough Clorox wipes or disinfecting spray. This two-pack of Clorox disinfecting wipes is a steal for just $9.68. You'll get 75 wipes per canister, so you'll have plenty to go around for various surfaces and high-touch areas. Plus, you can get 5% off your order if you subscribe and save.

With five times the cleaning power of other disinfecting wipes and the ability to kill COVID and other viruses, bacteria, and germs, these wipes are a must-have for keeping your home clean and safe.

Even more deals:
Categories: IT General, Technology

A queer influencer couple broke up with matching Instagram posts. Their fans have thoughts.

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 17:15

In matching Instagram posts that were in inverse black and white color schemes, Anjali Chakra and Sufi Malik, a queer South Asian couple seemingly birthed by the internet itself, announced the end of their relationship just weeks before they were set to be married. The stark posts read almost identically, disclosing that Malik had cheated and that they decided to end the relationship. 

View this post on Instagram

The reactions were swift on social media, from heartbroken fans who had at one point lauded the couple for the way they bridged religious and cultural divides to posts on the nature of public breakups and cheating. Memes, jokes, and meta-commentary also all popped up in the wake of the breakup, as if to signify that the loss was one big communal experience — a not uncommon reaction in collective-based cultures.

SEE ALSO: What happens when your favourite TikTok couple breaks up

For many queer South Asians, Chakra and Malik were ours, a couple that looked like our friends and found family rather than what the narrow expectation of heterosexuality looked like. 

How a viral moment made a couple famous 

The space that Chakra and Malik occupied was not nominal to fans or to internet users vaguely aware of their existence. It is rare to find an interfaith, intercultural Pakistani-Muslim and Indian-Hindu couple, much less one that is queer and publicly out.

For Devashree Thaker, 24, it's hard to overstate the couple's importance. 

"They were one of the first queer 'mainstream' desi couples I ever saw," they said. "It was honestly so heartwarming to see how Anjali's family supported them and their relationship." 

Examples like this can be few and far-between because of homophobia in South Asia and the diaspora. Just last fall, the Indian Supreme Court refused to recognize same-sex marriage, dealing a blow to activists and lawyers who had spent years organizing around the issue. In the United States, even after the Supreme Court recognized marriage equality, many South Asians still face homophobia and transphobia from family and community members. And then there are the national and cultural differences, which have only worsened amidst rising Hindu nationalism in India

"Pakistan and India have a long history of political, ideological, religious differences," said Nur E. Makbul, assistant professor of communication arts at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. "Even when [people] come to the U.S. those things are still there: the history of war, segregation, communal history." 

What made Chakra and Malik different was their relationship showed that despite rampant homophobia as well as religious division, love could conquer those barriers. 

"It felt like a collective win to see them be so happy and in love at the same time," said Thaker.

The couple first emerged prominently online in the summer of 2019, when they shot what would become a viral ad for a company called Borrow the Bazaar. The photos prominently featured both Malik and Chakra in matching marigold and red floor-length lehengas. While fans online cheered, the couple still had to navigate murky emotional and cultural territory.

Tweet may have been deleted

In those initial days it was impossible to avoid those photos. They represented something much larger than just two queer people in traditional clothing for me: a future, one after difficult conversations and coming out and yelling. Chakra and Malik's relationship felt bigger than the small-mindedness of our relatives — it was a different path; a way out. 

Makbul, who has studied LGBTQ+ breakups, also notes that cultural, religious, and ethnic divisions can prove to be obstacles that other couples within the same community don't have to face.

"[In] the interfaith relationship, [between] a Pakistani-Muslim and an Indian-Hindu, there are more struggles than any kind of [intracommunity] relationship," said Makbul. He noted that besides bridging those cultural divides between themselves individually, intolerance from family members and community also poses a threat. 

Makbul also said that differing values about marrying within one's own community often make it difficult for families to fully accept any relationships that happen across communities in South Asia. 

Serena Zets, 23, remembers the viral moment clearly because it coincided to when they were also dating another queer South Asian person. The only downside? It invited unwelcome comparisons of Zets' relationship to Malik and Chakra's. 

"I started to notice that people who were not South Asian would refer to me and my partner at the time as, 'they're Sufi and Anjali,' which was weird, racist, and uncomfortable," said Zets. 

Still, Zets supported Chakra and Malik's relationship for the most part, only becoming slightly disillusioned as the couple became more like every other influencer couple. 

"I think that the initial photo shoot, which they didn't intend to become as big as it was, people looked at that and saw, like, beauty and love in it," they said. "But over the years, I think that kind of became their livelihood." 

A shocking breakup

For Keerthi, 24, the most interesting part of the breakup has been the way in which they publicly announced it. Keerthi requested to be referred to by their first-name only because they're not out to their family.

"[It was] so jarring for it to be like, matching inverse color palette Instagram posts released at the same time," they said. "It was clearly this, like, planned out, 'okay, you hit post, I'll hit post,' and, you know, that was so weird to me."

They were also struck by how, since their fame was accumulated from showcasing their identities, the breakup also was similarly informed by those same identities. 

"They don't get to be a couple that broke up, they're 'the Indian-Pakistani WLW' couple that broke up." 

View this post on Instagram

Similarly, Thaker is concerned about how Chakra and Malik's public personas mean that it is impossible to ignore the onslaught of social media posts about them. 

"​​Having your relationship be on such public display and under such heavy scrutiny is so intense, and it's a little sad to see how there's a need to be answerable to the larger public during this time," said Thaker.

Even the way that people are communicating about the breakup online and in group chats highlights the found community that many queer South Asians in the U.S. have. Stuti Sharma, 27, found out while preparing to travel to help care for their friend who was about to undergo top surgery. 

"I was getting ready to go on the flight to come and take care of them and that's when I found out all of this, I was on Twitter," said Sharma. Since then there's been group chat messages, Reddit deep dives, and many, many discussions on the topic.

"I understand the deep attachment that people are probably having," they said.

More than the discourse or the drama, Sharma notes that what people loved about the couple was their care and devotion to each other.

"It sucks when there's somebody who you are looking up to and you really love their love, and you're like, 'wow, it didn't work out,'" Sharma said. But, they said, it's important to remember — "love is so real." 

UPDATE: Mar. 27, 2024, 6:02 p.m. EDT This story has been updated from its original version to reflect Stuti Sharma's correct age.

Categories: IT General, Technology

'Godzilla X Kong' in love? Parody reimagines the epic monsters in iconic romances

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 17:00

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is stomping into theaters near you, bringing with it a talented human cast that includes Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, and Kaylee Hottle. But for those of you who can't get enough of towering titans, charismatic kaiju, and ear-splitting roars, Alamo Drafthouse has an amusing appetizer to get you hankering for more monster mashes.

The American movie theater chain famous for their playful PSAs has commissioned stop-motion animator Cressa Maeve Áine to concoct a cheeky short film, "This is Cinema: a GODZILLA x KONG parody" starring the great Godzilla and mighty King Kong.

Employing posable action figures of Godzilla and Kong, plus crucial hand-crafted props, Áine re-imagines scenes from iconic romance movies like Baz Luhrmann's flashy Romeo + Juliet, Jamie Babbit's campy comedy But I'm a Cheerleader, Rob Reiner's classic When Harry Met Sally..., and Ang Lee's heartbreaking drama Brokeback Mountain. Even Greta Gerwig's Barbie rampages into the fun!

Come for the meticulous attention to detail, down to the mirror positioning in the Portrait of a Lady on Fire parody. Stay for the pun-filled movie titles, which will have you wishing some of these spoofs were also hitting theaters soon!

Well, good news for Alamo Drafthouse patrons, "This is Cinema: a GODZILLA x KONG parody" will be playing in the chain's pre-show beginning March 28. So there is the chance to see this comical chaos on the big screen.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire opens in theaters March 29.

Categories: IT General, Technology

Pick up an energy-saving refurbished Amazon Smart Thermostat for $25

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 16:59

SAVE $5: As of March 27, get the Amazon Smart Thermostat (refurbished) for $24.99 at Woot! with coupon code SMARTFIVE. That's $55 less than buying this product new for $79.99.

Opens in a new window Credit: Woot! Amazon Smart Thermostat (refurbished) $24.99 at Woot!
$29.99 Save $5.00 Save $5 when you spend $15 with coupon code SMARTFIVE Get Deal

Things are more expensive these days, no matter where you look. Prices are going up, whether you're buying groceries or paying your electric bill. If you want to shave some cash off of those expenses each month, you might want to make a beeline over to Woot! today.

As of March 27, get a refurbished Amazon Smart Thermostat for just $24.99. Currently listed for $29.99, you'll be eligible for a $5 coupon when you spend $15 at Woot! with promo code SMARTFIVE. That brings the price at checkout down to just $24.99, which is the lowest price we've seen this unit go for — and $55 off what you'd pay for a brand-new unit.

SEE ALSO: Amazon Pharmacy launches same-day prescription delivery in New York and LA

In addition to saving big on the thermostat itself, you'll sweep up the savings after installation, too. The Energy Star Certified unit allows you to control the temperature in your home via the Alexa app even when you're away. You can also set custom heating and cooling schedules the same way.

As far as smart features go, the thermostat can display detailed information about your usage broken down per day, week, and month so you can track your usage and find times of day you can try to cut energy usage. You can also compare energy expenditures from other billing periods.

If you're ready to take control of your energy bill and put your home temperature on autopilot, grab this refurbished smart thermostat and start saving.

Categories: IT General, Technology

World’s tallest wooden wind turbine promises a cleaner future

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 16:58

The world's tallest wooden wind turbine (standing 150 metres high), located just outside Gothenburg, Sweden, has been in operation since the end of 2023. Its thick walls are supported by 144 layers of thin, laminated veneer lumber pressed together, which are created in a factory and then transported on site, where they are assembled and glued together.

According to the turbine's creators at tech engineering company Modvion, the wooden tower’s modularity allows for easier construction of tall wind turbines, which are more efficient at capturing strong winds.

Emitting around 12 grams of CO2 per kilowatt, wind power is one of the cleanest sources of electricity currently available. Modvion, which makes its turbines using sustainably farmed spruces, says that wood can eliminate wind power’s negative environmental footprint, the majority of which comes from the carbon-intensive steel production.

Categories: IT General, Technology

Here's why '3 Body Problem' is set in the UK

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 16:37

3 Body Problem has left us with plenty of burning questions, from that intriguing conversation between Dr Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao) and Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo) to the mystery of what the San-Ti aliens might actually look like.

But anyone who's read Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past novel trilogy, which is set mostly in China and upon which the show is based, may have had another question: Why is the Netflix adaption set largely in the UK?

SEE ALSO: '3 Body Problem': What's the deal with everyone smoking?

With the majority of the show either taking place in the '60s and '70s in China and Mongolia or present-day Oxford, London, and the southeastern English coast near Seven Sisters, Mashable put the show's UK setting to showrunners David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo during a recent interview. The main takeaway was that the choice wasn't so much a stylistic one as it was a logistical one.

"I think part of it was just familiarity," said Benioff. "I mean Dan [Weiss] and I had worked there for many years. Not in England but in Northern Ireland, and worked with a mainly UK crew."

Plenty of recognisable UK landmarks pop up in the show, from the colleges of Oxford University to the headquarters of the fictional Strategic Intelligence Agency on London's south bank, through to the capital's bustling Piccadilly Circus during the "you are bugs" scene.

Benioff said that they worked with a UK casting director and a largely UK cast on Game of Thrones and had a great experience — many of whom, such as John Bradley, Liam Cunningham, Conleth Hill, and Jonathan Pryce, turn up in 3 Body Problem.

"I don’t know if it’s superstition or a feeling of they really know what they’re doing over there, that made us want to get back together with a bunch of the same people we worked with before," he said. "Some of it's just that you start working with these people and you know that they're incredibly good at their jobs, and you develop a shorthand with them. So for us, even though it's a long trip and it would be a lot more convenient to work at home, we had such a great experience the first time around that we thought well, let's try this again."

How to watch: 3 Body Problem is now streaming on Netflix.

Categories: IT General, Technology

Grab the Roku Express 4K on sale for under $35 and upgrade your streaming experience

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 16:37

SAVE 30%: The Roku Express 4K streaming device is just $34.99 at Amazon, down from the regular price of $49.99. That's a savings of $15.

Opens in a new window Credit: Roku Roku Express 4K streaming device $34.99 at Amazon
$49.99 Save $15.00 Get Deal

Streaming your favorite shows and movies in 4K brings a whole new life to the experience. If your content and TV can handle 4K resolution, but your streaming device isn't up for the job, today's deal is your signal to upgrade.

As of March 27, the Roku Express 4K streaming device is $34.99, marked down from the regular price of $49.99. That's a 34% discount or a savings of $15. This sale price matches the lowest we've ever seen at Amazon.

SEE ALSO: Watch movies at home with this smart projector on sale for $286

Whether you're streaming from Netflix, Prime Video, or Hulu, the quality of the picture makes a difference to your immersive experience. The Roku Express 4K streaming device means your 4K content won't show up in lower quality thanks to an outdated streaming device — it streams in 4K HDR for sharp resolution and color optimized for your TV.

The Roku Express 4K also comes with the Roku Voice Remote Pro which has hands-free capability so you can ask Roku to stream your latest binge-worthy find. The remote is rechargeable so you'll never need to dig through the junk drawer to find new batteries. Plus, Roku can find the remote should it get misplaced. Just say, "Roku, where's my remote?" and the remote will play a sound to help you locate which couch cushion to look under.

If you want to watch the latest blockbuster while everyone else in your house is sleeping, just plug headphones into the Roku remote and you won't disrupt anyone's slumber. You can also control your TV with the Roku remote to power it on and off and adjust the volume.

If you've been watching 4K content without a streaming device that's capable of handling 4K resolution, upgrade to the Roku Express 4K. Thanks to today's deal, you'll score the lowest price we've ever seen on this product at Amazon.

Categories: IT General, Technology

Get 'Alan Wake II' for 20% off and experience an acid trip of a detective story

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 16:26

SAVE $12: As of March 27, get a digital copy of Alan Wake II for PlayStation 5 for $47.99 at the PlayStation Store. That's a 20% discount off the original price of $59.99.

Opens in a new window Credit: PlayStation Store 'Alan Wake II' (PlayStation 5) $47.99 at PlayStation Store
$59.99 Save $12.00 Get Deal

If you bought a PlayStation recently and want to find a great game to lose yourself in, Alan Wake II is the way to go. You can't go wrong with the 2023 Mashable Game of the Year, after all. If you've been waiting for the perfect time to grab your own copy on sale, today's a great time to do so.

As of March 27, you can score a digital copy of Alan Wake II from the PlayStation Store for just $47.99. That's $12 off the usual price of $59.99 and a discount of 20%. You can also snag the Deluxe Edition for $63.99, which is $16 off the usual price of $79.99. The Deluxe Edition gets you the Alan Wake II Expansion Pass for additional story content and some in-game items that protagonists Alan and Saga can use.

SEE ALSO: Sony PlayStation 5 Pro leak: New PS5 Pro console may arrive for the 2024 holiday season

You don't need to have played the first Alan Wake to enjoy Alan Wake II, but it will certainly help. This sequel picks up where the original ended, but contains a sprawling psychological mystery that you can dive right into: the Dark Place. Alan Wake will work to find his way out of the terrifying miasma between nightmares and reality with the help of FBI Agent Saga Anderson. You'll play as both characters while Anderson investigates a string of murders in the fictional town of Bright Falls, Washington.

If horror and surrealism are up your alley, you'll find plenty to love about this game — and it's even sweeter now that you can get it at a discount.

Categories: IT General, Technology

Why '3 Body Problem' picks the perfect gamer names

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 16:23

Picking a name for your character in a game is a high-pressure decision. Honestly, I'll sit there for at least 30 minutes, scanning my bookshelves for a glimmer of half-baked inspiration that isn't straight-up naming my newly minted elven warrior mage Sally Rooney. Perhaps you use the same pseudonym across all your games — I almost always resign to either Juno or Artemis; sue me, I love a fierce classical bitch. But whatever you pick, often your moniker will pop up in conversations, giving you the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever, especially in deadly serious games.

However, no game really has higher stakes than the VR immersive action-adventure gifted by the San-Ti to Earth's scientists in 3 Body Problem. In Netflix's adaptation of Liu Cixin's novels, several characters including Dr Jin Cheng (Jess Hong) and Jack Rooney (John Bradley), find these slick, sliver headsets turning up in their lives, throwing them into a way-too-real world where their mission appears to be solving the titular three-body problem of a doomed alien home planet.

SEE ALSO: '3 Body Problem' showrunners discuss what the aliens might really look like

But before they can do that, Jin and Jack are required to give themselves a "better" name than the real-world one they arrived with. And it's these names that provide a neat connection between the characters and their role in solving the game — and the very real connection with the fate of the San-Ti.

What names do Jin and Jack pick in the VR game? "Pick a better name." Credit: Netflix

Putting on the VR game, Jin lands near the court of ancient Chinese Emperor Zhou (Russell Yuen). In episode 2, she meets the formidable Count of the West (Tom Wu), who instructs her to pick a different name for her character — "one befitting a hero". Jin suggests "Copernicus". In Jack's game, confronted in Tudor England with Henry VIII's Lord High Chancellor Sir Thomas More (Kevin Eldon), he selects "Sir Francis Bacon" as his moniker (after punching Sir Thomas in the face, of course).

Fittingly, Jin picks the 15th century Polish mathematician and astronomer who developed the extremely important model that demonstrated Earth isn't the centre of the universe — a lesson we all need to learn, really, the characters of the 3 Body Problem included. Specifically, Nicholaus Copernicus was the guy who told the world we revolve around the sun, not the other way around, and that the Earth turns once daily on its unique axis. It's a perfect pseudonym for Jin, who pores over charts, measurements, and data, trying to figure out what initially appears to be the game's main mission: to predict the movements of the sun to determine whether a civilisation is about to enter into an era defined by Chaos or Stability.

Meanwhile, Jack's namesake is the 16th century English philosopher and politician who was King James I's Lord Chancellor, but more importantly for our purposes, Bacon is referred to as the "father of empiricism" who championed the scientific method, much like Jack does in the game.

Credit: Netflix

Both of these figures are crucial to the history of science and discovery, the likes of which the San-Ti want to both test and destroy in order to dominate humankind on Earth — "We're going to kill your science" is quite the threat. Copernicus' heliocentric theory about the sun being the centre of the solar system would have a massive influence on later major scientific players in the Scientific Revolution including one Sir Isaac Newton, whose own work led to the core scientific quandary that Jin eventually wades into: the three-body problem (wey-oh!). In the 17th century, revolutionary research by Newton would show the world how gravity holds the universe together, and in doing so, he unlocked the dilemma that would perplex scientists to this day. In a fittingly Newton move, Jin demonstrates the three-body problem to Pope Gregory (Conleth Hill) in the game by holding an apple.

Nice Newton nod. Credit: Netflix

We see other figures throughout the series turn up in the game with their own theories to solve the Chaos/Stability mystery, all named for famous scientific figures. In the level with the Pope, players named for Aristotle (Phil Wang) and Galileo (Adrian Greensmith) battle for His Holiness' approval. In the level featuring the Great Khan, they challenge players named for Professor Alan Turing (Reece Shearsmith) and Sir Isaac Newton (Mark Gatiss).

Do Jin and Jack's gamer names appear in Liu Cixin's books? Credit: Netflix

Mashable's Chris Taylor describes just where the gamer names came from in Cixin's novels in this excellent explainer of the book vs show. Jin's gamer name, Copernicus, is the one chosen by book-only character Wang Miao, as are the names of the figures Jack and Jin encounter while meeting the Pope, as Taylor writes:

"Wang calls himself Copernicus in the game, and encounters many more historical figures that we assume to be NPCs. One level contains Pope Gregory, Galileo, and Aristotle, and deals with a pre-computer technical solution to the three-body problem. Another level that Wang plays after the giant human computer features Einstein, who points to a large moon that was created when the gravitational effect of the three suns ripped it out of the planet itself."

So, there you have it, an understanding of the names in 3 Body Problem and a handful of potential monikers you can take to your next game character that aren't your regular go-tos.

How to watch: 3 Body Problem is now streaming on Netflix.

Categories: IT General, Technology

The Gozilla X Kong cast reveal which past characters would crush against a Kaiju

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 16:19

Mashable's Kristy Puchko sits down with Dan Stevens, Rebecca Hall, and Brian Tyree Henry to discuss which past characters would help them get through a Godzilla vs. Kong scenario. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire hits theaters on March 29, 2024.

Categories: IT General, Technology

'Finfluencers' and firms warned by UK that crypto meme ads can't be misleading

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 16:10

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) — the UK's financial services regulator — put out a statement this week warning influencers and firms alike that crypto memes used in an ad need to be lawful. In other words, a "finfluencer" isn't legally allowed to mislead people about crypto in an ad.

If a firm uses an influencer to get out their message — whether that's using memes, short-form video, or gaming streams — then the influencer has to follow regulations. A person working for a firm understandably doesn't have the same freedom of expression as someone giving their own, non-compensated-for opinion.

"Any marketing for financial products must be fair, clear and not misleading so consumers can invest, save or borrow with confidence," Lucy Castledine, director of consumer investments at the FCA, said in a statement. "Promotions aren’t just about the likes, they’re about the law. We will take action against those touting financial products illegally."

SEE ALSO: John Oliver takes a deep dive into a murky online crypto scam

Any company advertising a financial product is responsible for how an influencer does that marketing. It's also up to the firm and influencer to check with the FCA that the advertisement, even something like a meme on Reddit, is allowed.

"Firms are on the hook for all their promotions and the FCA has warned they need to ensure influencers they work with communicate to their followers in the right way," the regulator's release read. "And influencers are reminded that promoting a financial product without approval from an FCA-authorised person with the right permission could be a criminal offence."

It's not like this is an uncommon problem the FCA is tackling. Crypto is a major topic of discussion online and scams are incredibly common. So many people are trying to hype their preferred crypto or other financial service, sometimes at the cost of telling the whole truth. The FCA noted it removed 10,000 misleading financial advertisements in 2023 alone.

Categories: IT General, Technology

Best Buy Video Game Spring Sale, day three: Save $30 on 'Skull and Bones' and a pro PS5 controller

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 16:06

UPDATE: Mar. 27, 2024, 10:15 a.m. EDT This story has been updated with the latest drops from Best Buy's Video Game Spring Sale.

Quick links: Today's game deal 'Skull and Bones' Limited Edition (PlayStation 5) $39.99 at Best Buy (save $30) Get Deal Today's game deal 'Skull and Bones' Limited Edition (Xbox Series X) $39.99 at Best Buy (save $30) Get Deal Today's game accessory deal Nacon Revolution 5 Pro $169.99 at Best Buy (save $30) Get Deal

When one sale ends, another begins.

Best Buy's Video Game Spring Sale is here, bringing seven days of gaming-centric deals with it. It's basically a warmer-weather version of the 12 Days of Gaming Sale the retailer hosts around the holidays. New offers are popping up on its website every single day from March 25 to March 31, with each deal available for one day only.

Day three of the Video Game Spring Sale features two such deals. One is a big discount on Skull and Bones for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, which brings it down from $69.99 to $39.99. That's 42% off and a record-low price for Ubisoft's new pirate RPG. (Also note that this is the Limited Edition version, which includes a bonus Highness of the High Sea Pack with an exclusive in-game skin and firework cosmetic.)

SEE ALSO: Gaming starter kit: All the gear you need to play like a real gamer

As part of today's festivities, Best Buy has also marked down the Nacon Revolution 5 Pro, a premium wireless controller for PS5, PS4, and PC. It comes with customizable components including swappable weights, D-pads, and thumbstick sizes and heads, plus analog sticks with Hall effect sensors that make drift a non-issue. It's usually priced at $199.99, but you can snag it on sale from Best Buy today for $169.99.

Best Buy's sale page specifies that each deal featured in its Video Game Spring Sale will cover "a featured video game and/or gaming accessory," and that "[saving] amounts will increase each day," but we don't know the full lineup ahead of time. Be sure to keep checking back with us daily to get the lowdown on what's discounted.

Previous Best Buy Video Game Spring Sale deals

Note: Anything marked with a strikeout was sold out or unavailable at its Video Game Spring Sale price at the time of writing.

Day one:Day two:
Categories: IT General, Technology

Score a free sex toy when you spend $79+ at Lovehoney

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 15:53

GET A FREE SEX TOY: Spend $79 at Lovehoney and get a free sex toy (you get to choose one of three options worth $45-$90) added to your cart automatically at checkout.

Opens in a new window Credit: Lovehoney Get a free sex toy when you spend $79 at Lovehoney No code required Get Deal

If you need a little extra self-care this week (I mean, who doesn't?), Lovehoney's got you covered. Lovehoney, a leader in sexual wellness, is basically giving away free sex toys — when you spend some money on the site first, of course.

As of March 27, spend $79 or more (shipping is free!) at Lovehoney and you'll get the option to add one of three sex toys to your cart for free, no code required.

SEE ALSO: The best sex toy deals to shop this week

We went through the checkout process to make sure the freebie toys were actually worth it and were pleasantly surprised. Instead of throwing a cheap Screaming O vibe or Ring O in your cart, Lovehoney lets you choose from the Lovehoney Bed Ringer (a rechargeable double cock ring worth $49.99), the Lovehoney Jessica Rabbit 10-function rabbit vibrator (worth $44.99), or the Lovehoney Dream Wand mini wand vibrator (worth $89.99). Sure, they're all Lovehoney brand toys, but they're quality products. No matter what product you choose as your freebie, you're basically buying one toy (or whatever you purchase to total $79) and getting a second toy for free — and if you choose the Dream Wand your freebie might be worth even more than your initial purchase.

To make things even sweeter, Lovehoney has hundreds of toys on sale for up to 50% off right now, so you can stock up on your favorites and score that free toy at the same time. (The clearance section is up to 70% off, but it's mostly lingerie and accessories, just FYI.)

Spring into action and take charge of this deal — and your pleasure — while you still can.

Categories: IT General, Technology

I tried using ChatGPT to help me move across the country

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 15:40

When you hit your 20-somethings, nobody tells you how to adult. So now, four months away from the end of my lease, I need to figure out how to move across the country for the first time by myself. I could ask my parents, but where's the fun in that — I am a big boy after all. This means obviously, as a reporter for an esteemed tech outlet, the solution is artificial intelligence.

I mean why not, right?

Big Tech has spent billions of dollars trying to find meaningful ways for us to incorporate generative AI into our lives. So, why not use generative AI as my personal assistant and financial planner during my cross-country move from Austin to Chicago?

In theory, moving to a new city is an ideal test of the tools OpenAI claims ChatGPT to be good at, especially now that it can access the internet, users can upload attachments and photos, and can be custom-built for specific needs. If ChatGPT can't ease some of my burdens when it comes to budgeting, searching for, financing, and driving to a new apartment that's more than 1,100 miles away, then perhaps it's not worth the GPUs it's built with.

SEE ALSO: I spent a week using AI tools in my daily life. Here's how it went. Step 1: Budgeting

Even before we look at apartments, I need ChatGPT to help me save money. On top of paying rent and utilities between now and June 1, I also started paying back my student loans in January, which runs me a cool $200 a month until the 2040s.

My goal is to paint a broad picture of what I need to do financially to have the money to make my move as stress-free as possible. ChatGPT — and, thus, this experiment — is inherently limited because the AI can't do all the financing for me. As much as I would love, in theory, for this AI to take care of my budgeting fully, it can't; nor do I feel comfortable allowing OpenAI to have access to my sensitive financial data.

Truly, this might be way above ChatGPT's pay grade considering it's a conversational AI with a hallucination problem (and not an arithmetic machine), but I gave both AIs the prompt specifying what I'm trying to achieve and asked it to calculate "how much I need to save from each paycheck to reasonably move to Chicago."

The AI was game to help.

You gotta be as specific as possible. The AI's don't appreciate having to do financial guesswork. Credit: OpenAI via screenshot

The big challenge was getting numbers that were realistic to my current situation — especially when it came to dates. Between the time this was written and when my July 1 move-in date arrives, I'll receive 7 paychecks. During testing, if my prompt didn't specify July 1, 2024, ChatGPT would assume I meant July 1, 2025, and calculate for a year's worth of money. And even when I am specific about the dates, the AIs may still just hallucinate random numbers, like when ChatGPT randomly calculated for 10 pay periods instead of the 7 I'd specified.

The math was a little spotty, but with some tweaking to the prompts, ChatGPT gave me the ideal number that I should save based on my income and recurring payments. This matched up with the math I did by hand, which admittedly doesn't mean much — that's why my degree is in journalism and not STEM.

Step 2: Finding a place

Now that I know how much I need to save, I need to get a shortlist of places that fit within my budget. My range for rent for my next apartment is $1,000-$1,500. I'm not looking for anything fancy in the Windy City, but a studio/1 bed with an in-unit washer/dryer would be perfect.

Unfortunately, OpenAI has slowly wound down plugins so we're going to have to rely on CustomGPTs, an evolved version of plugins that allows users to create their own chatbots, to specify our real estate needs for this experiment. I used three different CustomGPTs: Apartment/House Rental Finder, Apartment Scout, and Apartment Finder.

So far, the running trend with these GPTs and this experiment, in general, is I need to be extremely specific — which ruins the fun for me, because I'm trying to offload all my thinking to the robot. It's clearly a worse experience than just Googling. For instance, Apartment Scout gives a bulleted list of neighborhoods, and when I tell it which one I like, it goes:

It looks like I'm encountering some technical difficulties accessing the specific rental listings directly from the sources I usually rely on. However, you can find suitable studio or 1-bedroom apartments within your price range and criteria by checking out popular rental websites such as Zillow, Apartments.com, and Realtor.com.

What do you mean go somewhere else? Credit: OpenAI via screenshot

On another attempt, it provides a few links to actual apartment listings.

Now it wants to act right. Credit: OpenAI via screenshot

At least this GPT provides a link for me, unlike Apartment/House Rental Finder, which uses Craigslist to find apartments that specify my needs and then will tell me to go there myself if I ask for links to the apartments it listed.

Very helpful. Credit: OpenAI via screenshot

Ultimately, Apartment Finder was also not of much help and also told me to go somewhere else to find what I needed.

Credit: OpenAI via screenshot

The results (or lack thereof) are not surprising. ChatGPT was designed to tell the user whatever will make the user feel happy or smart, rather than be any sort of leader or authority, so if you are unsure about the broad strokes of where you want to live, then you're not gonna have much luck.

I'll guess I'll stick to late-night scrolling on Zillow.

Step 3: Packing and Planning

The final step of this move is the packing and planning of the drive. One of the perks of ChatGPT is that you can upload pictures now, so I decided to see if showing ChatGPT my room would help it give me advice on how to pack up my belongings for the move.

Short answer: It didn't. Long answer: It didn't, and instead gave me generic advice on how to rip apart my room:

First, declutter the room, separating items to keep, donate, or discard. Gather moving supplies: boxes, bubble wrap, packing paper, tape, and markers. Pack items from least used to most used, labeling boxes with contents and destination room. Dismantle furniture, wrapping pieces in moving blankets or bubble wrap. Protect the electronics with bubble wrap and place them in boxes. Roll up the rug and secure with tape. Pack the artwork with bubble wrap and place in picture boxes. Use wardrobe boxes for hanging clothes and suitcases for others. Pack a box of essentials separately. Clean the room once emptied.

This advice, especially that neat tidbit about rolling up the rug in my room, wasn't all that useful (hint: my floor is carpeted).

Don't mind my room, it's a little dirty Credit: OpenAI via screenshot

Okay, well, that was a bust, so what about the drive? Unsurprisingly, this is where ChatGPT was the most helpful. I gave it two scenarios: one where I use a rented U-Haul to drive to Chicago, and another where I keep my car. According to the U-Haul website and the math done by ChatGPT, renting and driving a U-Haul costs around $700+.

The mover's dilemma: Sell all my stuff or spend $700 on a U-Haul? Credit: OpenAI via screenshot

If I drive my car, a 2012 Dodge Durango, the cost of just the gas is only around $240.

After calculating costs, ChatGPT gave me some routes to take. Of course, that information is superfluous since I can use Google Maps anyway, but it's nice to know now where my little adventure will take me. According to my friend from Illinois, the drive from Austin to Chicago is not great, so I'm glad ChatGPT told me to have some podcasts on deck to keep me entertained.

Conclusion

Here's the TL;DR: Don't use ChatGPT to plan a move across the country.

It's not that ChatGPT can't be helpful, cause it can. The chatbot helped me visualize a broad overview of my finances and gave me some useful tips and tricks for packing and route-planning. However, you need to be so hyper-specific with the prompts that all that time tinkering could be spent, you know, planning your move yourself.

Wanna use the CustomGPTs to help find apartments? Sorry, they'll just tell you to use Zillow. Wanna use ChatGPT to pin down how much to save out of your paychecks? Unless you're willing to get into the weeds about your financial security, good luck getting it to not just make shit up — and even then it still might. Of course, these chatbots aren't designed to do life for you, but this exercise was somehow more frustrating than I thought it would be.

I guess I'll call my parents for help after all.

Categories: IT General, Technology

Where's the AI in these 'AI-powered' products for your home? An explanation.

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 15:40

Around the release of ChatGPT in 2022, AI became the buzzword du jour for tech investors and startups, so it's only natural that in our tech-saturated consumer world, AI would become a buzzword in home electronics and appliances just a short time later. And boy is it ever a buzzword. If you're shopping for an appliance with "AI" shoehorned into its specs, someone will sell you something. 

But you may find yourself the proud owner of say, an artificially intelligent toaster, and be left with some regular old hot bread, and a few questions about where all that supposed AI went. 

Artificial intelligence is a capacity or an attribute, not a thing, and it's highly subjective: the ability to simulate human intelligence, more or less covers it. Philosophers and computer scientists still have to hash out the finer points of what counts as artificial intelligence, what its potential is or is not, and how contemporary "generative AI" applications like ChatGPT fit into the picture, but that's above my pay grade as a tech journalist. What I can tell you, however, is what companies currently market as artificial intelligence. 

So a quick look at some home appliances is a fantastic way to see what companies think AI is, and what they think consumers want AI to be. Keep in mind that anything automated or capable of performing a calculation can be considered AI if you broaden your definition enough, but that's an obvious cop-out. If you buy one of these devices for its AI capabilities and feel like you didn't get any actual AI, it's doubtful you can get a refund, but at least after reading this, you'll have an overview of how much, or how little, intelligence you can really expect from a gadget. 

Here's where the AI is in five pieces of technology for your home: 

Nest Learning Thermostat

What it is: Google's Wi-Fi enabled thermostat that looks like a giant, glowing watch battery, found in approximately 100 percent of Airbnb units, and approximately zero percent of rented homes. 

What it does: When you first use it, by turning its ever-so-satisfying wheeled exterior to dial in your preferred temperature, it learns how hot or cold you want it to be at different times of the day. Then, if all goes according to plan, it optimizes your A/C and heater to fit your preferences without your constant input. If you have a smart home system and you integrate your Nest thermostat into it, you can do things like use voice commands to change the temperature. 

Where the AI is: Google's overview of the Nest thermostat actually doesn't mention AI (perhaps because Google is still struggling to get its story straight about the topic in general) but AI is nonetheless a huge part of the marketing for Nest products, and shows up in all sorts of pages about Nest and Google Home, including an explainer on using AI-generated scripts to generate climate-control-centric Google Home Routines. So it really can integrate with generative AI.

As far as AI in the classic functions of the Nest itself goes, Google software engineer Ramya Bhagavatula told an official Google blogger in 2020, "We’re using people’s preferences and adding machine learning to find you ways to help save energy." Optimizing temperature with a Nest thermostat involves AI algorithms that used to run on the device, and now run in the cloud. "Originally, each thermostat operated on its own, but now we have the power to make intelligent decisions based on anonymized data, which might not have been possible if we were just looking at each individual device," Bhagavatula explained.

Google Nest Thermostat $99.99 at Amazon
$129.99 Save $30.00 One of the most popular thermostats in the world. Shop Now Samsung 2024 Bespoke 4-Door Flex Refrigerator with AI Family Hub Plus

What it is: A refrigerator with one of its four doors almost entirely taken up by what looks like an iPad the size of a coffee table. 

What it does: Most users treat Samsung's Family Hub-enabled refrigerators — or any smart fridges — like refrigerators that can also play MrBeast videos. But they can be integrated with the rest of your smart home if you have one, so if you're a virtuosic tech adopter, you can use it to do all sorts of gee-whiz things like answer your door via your smart doorbell while standing in your kitchen. 

Where the AI is: Samsung's Family Hub predates the 2022 AI explosion. It has always included a system for streamlining the process of turning your refrigerated ingredients into meals using software that, say, suggests recipes based on foods you've indicated are inside it, automates shopping lists to suit those recipes, and orders the food you need via in-fridge versions of shopping apps. That's not the AI part.

The new AI Family Hub feature announced at CES 2024 puts AI front and center in its marketing, but if you're imagining an artificially intelligent voice assistant who helps you cook, it doesn't look like Samsung has even tried to do that. The legitimate, unambiguous use of contemporary AI in this fridge appears to be a new camera with integrated AI computer vision so that your fridge can independently recognize ingredients inside of it, such as a tomato. This saves you the trouble of manually informing the fridge you're a tomato owner. Your tomato can then be swept up into the broader, non-AI, Family Hub software ecosystem.

Opens in a new window Credit: screenshot via Samsung Samsung Bespoke 4-Door French Door Refrigerator
Note: This is not the still-unreleased AI version Shop Now CatGenie A.I. Self-Washing Cat Box

What it is: An automated cat box hooked up to your house's plumbing system that can pipe cat urine and feces into a nearby toilet or wastewater let-out. 

What it does: Even for an automated cat box, this is a surprisingly sophisticated device in terms of its setup and number of moving parts. Once the CatGenie detects a cat has conducted its business and left, liquid waste is drained through the bottom, thanks to proprietary non-clumping granules in place of litter, which the mechanism then washes and dries. Solids are sifted out, and shunted up a chute into a sort of macerator, where they're turned into a slurry that can then be delivered to a toilet bowl with the liquid waste. What a time to be a cat parent. 

Where the AI is: To my surprise, the basic mechanics of the CatGenie haven't really changed in over a decade. Nonetheless, according to the website, the "A.I." version, "uses artificial intelligence to give you and your cat the most customized and personalized waste management system ever invented for cats." The AI version also seems to be the only type of CatGenie sold new on the CatGenie website, so there may well not be a regular CatGenie anymore — only CatGenie A.I.

It's a mystery which CatGenie capabilities should be thought of as AI. There's no evidence that it has — or would benefit from — computer vision rather than something simpler like an infrared sensor to recognize that a cat has entered and exited. It does now come with an app, allowing you to look over a log of your cat's litter box visits, and control how often it scoops and self-cleans, but a clear AI-enhancement within the app for optimizing your cat's usage of the box relative to the number of cleans is not in evidence. The device's manual does say "machine learning" is involved in computing the fact that a manually activated cleaning cycle is needed, noting that "one key factor is based on how often your CatGenie cleans per cat visit."

After this article was published, CatGenie returned our request for a comment. Their statement emphasized the fact that the CatGenie AI comes with app integration. "As a connected device, it offers unprecedented insights into machine and cat usage through its accompanying app, allowing for detailed customization and monitoring. Leveraging machine learning, we continuously enhance cleaning performance and recently introduced new custom cycles tailored to specific customer needs." We asked follow-up questions about how integration of what CatGenie calls "machine learning," impacts the actual operation of the device, and will include more information if we receive it.

CatGenie A.I. Self-Cleaning, Fully-Flushing, Self-Scooping, Automatic Cat Box Small $479.00 at Amazon
A sophisticated, self-cleaning cat box, AI or not. Shop Now Roborock S7 MaxV Robot Vacuum (featuring ReactiveAI 2.0 Obstacle Avoidance)

What it is: A robot vacuum purporting to have a particularly easy time avoiding obstacles and pet poop compared to similar products.

What it does: If you can't wrap your head around the idea of getting a robot vacuum, that may be because like most people, you're more of a slob than you would care to admit, and your floors aren't reliably clear enough of junk to give a robot free reign without worrying that it will, say, choke to death on a sock. This robot will actually avoid said sock. 

Where the AI is: ReactiveAI 2.0 Obstacle Avoidance is a somewhat controversial feature, because it doesn't just use something like LIDAR, infrared, or photocell censors, which are more for detecting boundaries than for avoiding objects that shouldn't be vacuumed over. Instead, it sees into the nooks and crannies of your filthy house with an old-fashioned RGB camera. Roborock's S7 MaxV features actual AI-based computer vision that "knows" its looking at a cat turd, and will give that sucker the wide berth it deserves. Reviews suggest it's the real deal, again, if you don't mind the intrusive RGB camera, which is currently a necessity for enabling AI image detection. 

Opens in a new window Credit: Sscreenshot via Amazon Roborock S7 MaxV Robot Vacuum and Sonic Mop Note: This model was out-of-stock as of this writing Shop Now Briiv Pro 2.0 'The World's First AI Powered Air Purifier'

What it is: A tabletop air purifier that draws in air through some nice green moss and a disc of coconut fibers, followed by a conventional filter. It's also "The World's First AI Powered Air Purifier."

What it does: It purifies indoor air and the moss looks nice. 

Where the AI is: This product's successful Kickstarter page says it works by "harnessing a unique AI machine learning algorithm," making it "the most advanced air quality monitoring system on the planet." However, it's not abundantly clear that there is anything about this device that would qualify as more "artificially intelligent" than any other air purifier with an air monitor that allows it to respond to pollutants in the air by turning on.

A representative from Briff using the name Serena Nash told Mashable that Briiv does use AI. In an email, they explained that the device "has the library of information we have been teaching it built in and then it’s running an algorithm with that data, but the active part of the machine learning is cloud based." The model itself is "not a large language model like IBM or chat GPT, so we can’t just talk to it with text prompts like the big mainstream models, we are more like a neural network model," Nash explained.

This email left us with further questions — particularly whether or not Briiv is claiming to be using neural networks for deep learning, or not. Or alternatively, whether the company is using terms like "AI" and "algorithm" in some other way. As of this writing Briiv still had not expanded after a request for clarity.

Opens in a new window Credit: an air purifier Briiv Pro 2.0 - AI Powered Air Purifier at Indiegogo
Shop Now

UPDATE: Mar. 27, 2024, 10:31 a.m. PDT This article has been updated to include comments from CatGenie.

Categories: IT General, Technology

Why don't we have AI-powered robot butlers yet? An investigation.

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 15:40

In a very telling interview at Davos earlier this year, Bill Gates spelled out who AI is meant to help: "It is so dramatic how it improves white collar productivity. And later, with the robotics — not yet — but eventually, blue collar productivity," Gates told Bloomberg. AI that can make you a hundred times faster at writing emails? Your wish is Big Tech's command. AI that can build an entire car? Hold that thought. They're working on it.

But if you're like most people — meaning nothing like Bill Gates — the biggest productivity suck of all is your endless list of chores. And in this regard, AI is decidedly not coming to our rescue anytime soon, even if the business world is hyping up humanoid robots like crazy right now.

For instance, a startup called Figure released a demo the other day of what seems like the humanoid robot of my dreams: when asked for something to eat, it hands the user an apple, and it uses an integrated OpenAI large language model to explain why it made that decision while it puts some trash in a bin. Then it puts some dishes away.

Figure's concept robot makes for an impressive demo, but unless this company has some truly unique engineering going on behind the scenes, it's probably just a demo. The robot doesn't walk, and sticks to a narrow and tightly scripted routine. This might be the mechanical chosen one, but probably not. Decades of demos like this have come and gone, and we still don't have robots in our homes that actually pick up trash and do the dishes.

This notion has existed since the conception of "robots" as an idea — by which I mean the 1920 Czech play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which coined the term "robot" in the first place. R.U.R.'s robots were humanoid figures, a.k.a. androids, meant to toil away while their human overlords chillaxed. But even though technology has accelerated to the point where we now have machines that can respond to simple written prompts with vibrant moving images of, say, fictional humanoid robots, or any other fantasy scenarios we care to conjure, physical robots only seem to bring joy to real-world humans if the human in question is named Jeff Bezos. Meanwhile, for average individuals, robots are mostly objects of frustration, if not outright fear.  

As for literal robot servants to act as our in-house butlers, it's begun to feel like that century-old idea needs an additional century to percolate down from concept to consumer reality.

To the world's estimated 10,000 actual human butlers, that must feel like good news. AI automation seems to be jeopardizing a lot of gigs right now, so who wants to consign yet another category of flesh-and-blood people to the dustbin of permanent unemployment? At the risk of splitting hairs, though, come on: that's just not what we're talking about when we talk about the conspicuous absence of robot butlers. The world has about eight billion people, most of whom are plagued by chore loads that seem to only ever grow and never get finished (particularly if they are women).

If they were actually useful, robot butlers would be chore-killing appliances rather than snooty status symbols. I'm pretty confident the remaining butlers in the world — highly skilled managers of palatial estates who know which freshly polished rifle is for pheasants and which one is for foxes — would get to keep their weird antique jobs, even if Apple really did start manufacturing iJeeves.

Ideally, then, the robot butler revolution wouldn't be an example of automation wrecking lives. It could instead be a true example of progress — technology for the people. And yet, there's no sign of it anywhere. 

Here are the reasons why:

Robots move... robotically

In 1988, Carnegie-Mellon roboticist Hans Moravec, writing in his book Mind children: the future of robot and human intelligence, stumbled upon a key piece of robot wisdom. A misconception by snobby software programmers at the time held that robots were clumsy because they were being built by troglodyte gearheads, and once intellectuals took over, robots would be performing brain surgery on their own in no time. However, he wrote, "it has become clear that it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult-level performance in solving problems on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility."

This excerpt inspired what's now known as Moravec's Paradox: the idea, paraphrased from Moravec, that what's hard for humans is easy for robots, and vice versa.

So while you may have seen plenty of footage of Boston Dynamics robots, such as the humanoid prototype Atlas, performing tasks with eerie precision, that's just because you're seeing the product of hours of rehearsals in which the robot botched something basic countless times before finally getting it right a single time while the camera was rolling. Boston Dynamics doesn't hide this fact, by the way, but its videos of clumsy robots don't go as viral — because they don't prompt thousands of social media posts all making the same "we're all gonna die" joke.

In short, even as we begin to imagine — and struggle to clearly define — "general artificial intelligence," any AI that wants to be embodied in the physical world will still need to share the actual environments we humans inhabit, which include irregular and diverse surfaces and objects, occasional wetness, things with unevenly dispersed holes and protrusions in them, softness, mushiness, lumpiness, breakability, and crumbliness. This is good for anyone who worries about an AI apocalypse, but it's bad for anyone worried about remembering to put laundry in the dryer while a toddler has a tantrum. As things stand today, the helpers and the hurt-ers will instantly be defeated by banana peels.

Robot arms and hands are built for fumbling

In a 1952 episode of I Love Lucy, Lucy and Ethel were given the prototypical factory job: picking up little chocolates with their hands, wrapping them in paper, and putting them back down on a conveyor belt. Only a real goofball could screw up something so basic.

But today's robot hands remain hilariously clumsy, even in basic situations like this one. In a TEDx talk from earlier this year, UC Berkeley roboticist Ken Goldberg explains that robotic hands and arms have to deal with a multifaceted problem he reduces down to the word "uncertainty." Robots, Goldberg says, are "uncertain" about their own controls, uncertain about what they can "perceive" with their onboard cameras, and uncertain about physics, meaning they're forced to deal with "microscopic surface topography" that makes objects in the real world behave in totally novel ways even when seemingly all variables are removed (Try sliding your smartphone from one side of your desk to the other with one finger, and then imagine a robot trying to do what you just did).

Goldberg is partially using his TEDx talk to pitch his own robot company — designed to perform tasks almost exactly like Lucy's — picking up diverse objects from bins in warehouses, scanning them, and putting them in smaller bins. It's downright astonishing that robots narrowly targeted at such basic tasks remain so cutting edge.

A brand new paper by Stanford roboticist Cheng Chi and seven coauthors explains why, 72 years after Lucy's candy factory job, robot hands are still even clumsier than a screwball comedian's. The paper, a sort of open-source manifesto for robot builders is called, "Universal Manipulation Interface: In-The-Wild Robot Teaching Without In-The-Wild Robots," and it vividly describes today's state-of-the-art tools for these sorts of tasks: simplified, viselike "grippers" trained by humans holding them like little puppets and performing tasks — things like picking up a chocolate, putting it in a wrapper, and setting it back down. Unfortunately, the paper notes, "While users can theoretically collect any actions with these hand-held devices, much of that data can not be transferred to an effective robot policy."

The paper then goes on to provide a sort of open-source recipe for a better gripper training system, including a universal physical gripper anyone can make with consumer-grade tools. Cheng's hope is that robot labs around the world can work together to build vast public datasets of "policy" for robots to follow, and with a little luck, the Universal Manipulation Interface (UMI) will take over the space, perhaps enabling robot hands in the near future to do, say, a tenth of what one Lucy can do with her human hands. Even that would be a colossal achievement.

Robot "thinking" is too rigid for the real world

"Err-or. Err-or."

The idea that a robot will break (or explode) if slightly confused is a well worn trope known among trope aficionados as the "Logic Bomb." It appeared five times in Futurama alone. The thing about logic bombs, though, is that they're pretty close to robot reality.

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In 2019, the East Coast supermarket chain Stop & Shop rolled out a line of robots that endlessly navigated the store purportedly scanning the floor for messes, and then... cleaning them up? Nope. It just sounds the alarm for a human employee to come fix the problem. This often meant the robot would just stall in an aisle for long stretches of time, emitting an audible "danger" alarm over a non-hazard like a single tissue or a lid on the floor. Employees reported finding it pretty useless.

In our age of generative AI, it feels particularly absurd that the latest models can differentiate photos of mutts from those of purebred dogs, or hold court about the intricacies of translating Proust, but physical robots are still limited to one or a handful of very basic functions, and they still constantly glitch out when trying to carry out the same basic tasks as a 20 year old Roomba.

A concept called "open-vocabulary" robot manipulation, however, is supposed to act as something like a bridge between Roombas and ChatGPT. The models can process natural language prompts into computer-friendly ones and zeroes. Those ones and zeroes can then turn all that information into robot commands. In theory.

But another brand new paper, "MOKA: Open-Vocabulary Robotic Manipulation through Mark-Based Visual Prompting," by a four-person team led by Berkeley's Fangchen Liu, describes the problem. The authors note that "large models pre-trained on Internet-scale data still lack the capabilities to understand 3D space, contact physics, and robotic control, not to mention the knowledge about the embodiment and environment dynamics in each specific scenario, creating a large gap between the promising trend[s] in computer vision and natural language processing and applying them to robotics."

In the new, endlessly flexible system the authors propose, images are tied to the actual movements a given robot either requires – or is capable of – given its environment. Images are described with words, allowing the model to use vision not just to predict limitations and parameters for action, but to identify possibilities. That is to say, if the Stop & Shop robot were equipped with this system, it could identify a "hazard" like eleven spilled jellybeans, but then also something in the environment like a "broom," capable of "sweeping" the jellybeans up. If it were equipped with some arms, and a nice pair of grippers, the possibilities would be endless. Again, in theory.

But that may not matter much, because...

The economics of robot butlers just don't add up

To paraphrase a saying often attributed to sci-fi author William Gibson, the robot butlers of the future may arrive soon, but that doesn't mean they will be evenly distributed.

The current crop of cutting edge consumer robots doesn't leave me with much hope that I'll ever be able to afford a functional robot butler. For example, products in the "Sanbot" line of robots from Qihan Technology can do some cool stuff, but they're explicitly designed to replace retail and concierge workers and point of sale systems, and those are priced at around $10,000 (though I wasn't able to find a retailer with a website I would rate as trustworthy). Practically speaking, Sanbot devices aren't even functional workers though. They seem to be more like marketing gimmicks — a hi-tech inflatable tube man, essentially.

Meanwhile, a Segway Loomo, which is basically a smartphone attached to a miniature Segway scooter that can follow people around a stair-free environment would set me back $2,055.30 if I bought one right now on Amazon, which I currently feel no inclination to do. A Unitree Go2, which is a pretty amazing knockoff of Boston Dynamics' robotic dog Spot — minus the all-important arm — would cost me $2,399. These are the closest things to butlers I can buy right now, but they can't be of any real help around the house.

Goldman Sachs, for its part, predicted "a market of up to US$154bn by 2035 in a blue-sky scenario" for humanoid robots according to a 2022 report from the banking firm's research department. Goldman also pointed out that "robot makers will need to bring down production costs by roughly 15-20% a year in order for the humanoid robot to be able to pay for itself in two years." That's for business robots, not butlers.

The point is that robots are way outside my price range, and seem like they will be for the foreseeable future. Roughly speaking, $10-20,000 seems to be the price range companies have in mind. At these prices, they'd better not chip my ceramics when they do the dishes, but if they truly crushed my household to-do list flawlessly, I might save up. I doubt I'm alone in that.

Still, the most depressing omen of all — and the one that might best sum up the whole state of robot butlers — is the fact that Elon Musk has a division of Tesla chipping away at a humanoid robot called Optimus. Musk says Optimus will cost $20,000, and at an event where he talked about his robots, he said "the robots will be able to do everything, bar nothing." Considering the apparent truth value of the average statement from the richest man in the world, all of his promises about robots fill me with certainty that even way-too-expensive robot butlers are never going to arrive.

Categories: IT General, Technology

How to watch IPL 2024 live streams online for free

Mashable - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 15:28

TL;DR: JioCinema is offering free live streams of every IPL cricket match this season. Access this free streaming platform from anywhere in the world with ExpressVPN.

Cricket is such a divisive sport. Some dedicated followers of almost every kind of sport simply can't understand the appeal of the game. And then there are the cricket fanatics, who follow every form of cricket with a passion that's unmatched.

The IPL might represent a sweet spot for both camps. It's got all the top players in one place, competing in a fast-paced form of the game surrounded by some of the most passionate fans in the world. The IPL is simply electric.

If you're interested in watching the IPL 2024 for free from anywhere in the world, we have all the information you need.

What is the IPL?

The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a men’s T20 cricket tournament first held in 2008. Since it's inception, it has quickly become one of the most popular sporting events in the calendar, with a host of stars taking part every year.

Chennai Super Kings are the current champions, beating Gujarat Titans in the 2023 final.

When is the IPL 2024?

The 2024 Indian Premier League is the 17th edition of the competition. The tournament features 10 teams and runs from March 22 to May 26.

How to watch the IPL for free

JioCinema is offering free live streams of every IPL cricket match this season in 4K resolution on its app. Users can select multiple camera angles, check live scores, stats, and even heat maps of IPL games. Games can even be streamed in 12 languages (including English, Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, and Bhojpuri).

JioCinema is geo-restricted to India, meaning you'll be blocked if you attempt to access this platform from outside the country. Fortunately, you can bypass this online blockade with a VPN. These tools can hide your real IP address (digital location) and connect you to a secure server in India, meaning you can stream with JioCinema from anywhere in the world.

Unblock JioCinema to stream the IPL 2024 by following these simple steps:

  1. Sign up for a streaming-friendly VPN (like ExpressVPN)

  2. Download the app to your device of choice (the best VPNs have apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and more)

  3. Open up the app and connect to a server in India

  4. Visit JioCinema (you will need an Indian phone number to sign up)

  5. Watch the IPL for free from anywhere in the world

Opens in a new window Credit: ExpressVPN ExpressVPN (1-Year Subscription + 3 Months Free) £82.82 only at ExpressVPN (with money-back guarantee) Get Deal

The best VPNs for streaming are not free, but they do tend to offer free trials or money-back guarantees. By taking advantage of these offers, you can watch IPL live streams without committing with your cash. This is clearly not a long-term solution, but it does mean you can watch select IPL fixtures for free.

If you want permanent access to free streaming platforms from around the world, you'll need a subscription. Fortunately, the best VPN for streaming sport is on sale for a limited time.

What is the best VPN for streaming the IPL?

ExpressVPN is the best service for streaming the IPL, for a number of reasons:

  • Servers in 105 countries including India

  • Easy-to-use app available on all major devices including iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and more

  • Strict no-logging policy so your data is always secure

  • Fast connection speeds

  • Up to eight simultaneous connections

  • 30-day money-back guarantee

A one-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for £82.82 and includes an extra three months for free — 49% off for a limited time. This plan also includes a year of free unlimited cloud backup and a generous 30-day money-back guarantee. You can use that guarantee to recover your cash after watching the IPL. This is sneaky, but it works because ExpressVPN returns your cash without hassle.

Watch the IPL 2024 for free from anywhere in the world with ExpressVPN.

Categories: IT General, Technology
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