For years, Google offered a way to disable targeted ads, but it came with an enormous drawback: you had to give up a variety of useful features across the company’s services. Today, that’s changing. In a major revamp of its ads settings, Google will let you use its advertising controls without breaking the apps you…
Google is turning the Messages app into its own bonafide variation on iMessages. The company’s announcement details a bundle of features coming to the Android app, including emoji reactions for iPhone users and voice message transcriptions. But the kicker is that some of the new abilities are only available to other…
The universe is a spooky place, filled with zombie stars, invisible matter, and monster galaxies lurking in the silent darkness of the cosmos.
Google has detailed the new, recent and upcoming changes to its Messages app in an effort to advocate for the more widespread adoption of the RCS messaging protocol. Apple chief Tim Cook recently made clear that the company has no plans to fix the ‘green bubbles’ texting experience anytime soon, but Google’s feature additions improve messaging interoperability between iOS and Android. Earlier this year, it rolled out an update for the Messages app that allowed it to display iMessage reactions as emoji. More recently, it launched the ability to react to SMS texts from iPhone users with emoji reactions, as well.
To make navigating busy group chats easier, the app will soon let users respond to individual messages when RCS is enabled — they simply have to swipe on a particular message to reply. This will begin rolling out in the coming weeks. Google has expanded access to the Voice Message Transcription feature, as well, giving people who own a Pixel 6, Pixel 6A, Pixel 6 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S22 and the Galaxy Fold 4 the option to read the contents of a voice message instead. The feature auto-transcribes voice messages using machine learning and was only previously available for the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro.
Another new feature is the ability to add reminders from right within the Messages app. Users who set reminders for birthdays and anniversaries will even get a notification when they open the application. In addition, the app will now suggest “starring” a message to keep track of important information or scheduling Meet calls and creating Calendar events when appropriate.
Google has also given Messages an in-app YouTube player, so that users won’t have to leave the application when someone sends them a link to a video on the platform. It’s testing the capability that would allow users to chat with businesses on Search and Maps from within the application in some countries, as well. And for those flying United, take note that the tech giant has struck a deal with the airline to offer free messaging for passengers using United WiFi starting this fall.
Finally, Google is updating its Messages, Phone and Contacts icons to “to better reflect today’s modern messaging experience” and to better blend in with Google’s other apps.
Nyong’o could be seen reacting with a shocked face behind the “King Richard” actor as he yelled, “Keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth.”
You may recall last year’s Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, in which squished monkey balls took the top prize. Now, the storied competition is back with a new slate of comedic characters. Coming by land, by sea, and even through the air, the expressive animals in the 2022 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards show how…
This piece is part of Gizmodo’s ongoing effort to make the Facebook Papers available to the public. See the full directory of documents here.
Konami today dropped a ton of news about the future of its iconic horror franchise. Aside from confirming that remake of Silent Hill 2, the studio revealed three new games. Townfall comes from Annapurna Interactive and No Code, a Glasgow studio known for strong narrative titles like Observation and Stories Untold. The short teaser for Townfall looks to be the most traditional Silent Hill game of the trio.
Ascension, due out in 2023, is the least game-like installment, but it will feature the influence of J.J. Abrams. It’s an interactive streaming series with the tagline: Face Your Trauma Together. Ascension comes from Abrams’ studio, Bad Robot, and Genvid, a company that produces interactive live shows.
And then there’s Silent Hill f, coming from Ryūkishi07, a creator known for crafting acclaimed visual novels with psychological horror and supernatural mysteries at their core. The teaser for f is incredibly gruesome, featuring a young woman as she’s consumed from the inside-out by the tentacles of a flesh-eating plant. A YouTube description for the teaser says the game is “set in 1960s Japan featuring a beautiful, yet horrifying world.” There’s no word yet on a release date.
Oh, and of course, there’s a new Silent Hill movie, too. Happy Halloween, everyone.
– Mat Smith
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A company filing with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has revealed plans to build a “next generation” Xbox store that’s available on mobile devices, not just consoles and PCs. The shop would unsurprisingly lean heavily on content from the proposed Activision Blizzard merger. Call of Duty Mobile and King’s more casual mobile games (think Candy Crush) represent more than half of Activision’s revenue.
We’ve tested out some of the most popular Bluetooth speakers in different price ranges, focusing a bit more on audio quality and dynamic range, while considering factors like utility and price. Ultimately, there isn’t one best Bluetooth speaker out there, but we’ve found plenty of good options for a range of uses and price points.
Researchers have captured their most detailed image yet of the Pillars of Creation, a star-forming nursery in the Eagle Nebula roughly 6,500 light-years away. The near-infrared picture shows even more detail than Hubble’s 2014 snapshot, with an abundance of stars (particularly newborns) – there isn’t even a galaxy in sight. The new stars are the bright red points of light and are estimated to be ‘just’ a few hundred thousand years old.
Nearly half of the world’s roughly 7,000 known languages lack a written component. These unwritten languages pose a unique problem for machine learning translation systems, but one that Meta is trying to tackle with its Universal Speech Translator (UST) program. As part of this project, Meta researchers looked at Hokkien, an unwritten language spoken throughout Asia’s diaspora and one of Taiwan’s official languages.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained: “We leveraged Mandarin as an intermediate language to build pseudo-labels, where we first translated English (or Hokkien) speech to Mandarin text, and we then translated to Hokkien (or English) and added it to training data.” Currently, the system allows for someone who speaks Hokkien to converse with someone who speaks English, stiltedly.
Google’s new iOS 16 widgets give you at-a-glance info and shortcuts for some of the company’s core apps. Gmail shows your new message counts, and Maps provides links to your favorite trips (like your commute home). The widgets run the gamut of Google apps, though with diminishing usefulness: Google News shows the latest headlines, while Drive takes you to suggested and starred cloud files. YouTube and YouTube Music also have home screen widgets, so you can jump to your video subscriptions or search for a song on YouTube Music.
The Fox News host targeted MSNBC’s Tiffany Cross to rile his right-wing audience.
JPMorgan Chase has hired former Celsius executive Aaron Iovine to be the executive director of digital assets regulatory policy, according to Iovine’s LinkedIn profile. And if you’re looking for an easy answer as to how anyone could escape from the recent Celsius catastrophe unscathed, we’re sorry to report we don’t…
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