People who visited Lego’s website on the evening of October 4 were welcomed by a banner with illustrated golden coins bearing the company’s logo, claiming that the “Lego coin” is now officially out. It even promised “secret rewards” to those who’d buy some. But Lego wasn’t truly launching an official cryptocurrency coin, and according to The Brick Fan, the button to buy led to an external cryptocurrency website selling “LEGO Tokens” with Ethereum. The website was, seemingly, hijacked by bad actors who switched its banner and used it for some sort of crypto scam.
As users on the Lego subreddit have noted, the incident happened overnight for Lego’s headquarters. The company responded relatively quickly, though, and removed the unauthorized banner and links. As of this writing, the Lego Fortnite collaboration banner is back up, and the “buy now” link leads to the collection. Lego told Engadget that no user accounts were compromised and that it has identified the cause of the issue. It also said that it was implementing measures to prevent anything similar from happening again in the future. However, the company has declined to share details about that “cause” or the measures it’s implementing.
Here’s the company’s official statement:
“On 5 October 2024 (October 4 evening in the US), an unauthorised banner briefly appeared on LEGO.com. It was quickly removed, and the issue has been resolved. No user accounts have been compromised, and customers can continue shopping as usual. The cause has been identified and we are implementing measures to prevent this from happening again.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/legos-website-was-hacked-to-promote-a-crypto-scam-140045757.html?src=rss
Despite the company’s recent decision to abide by the demands of the Brazilian Supreme Court, X still isn’t back online in Brazil — and according to Reuters, that’s at least in part because it paid its fines to the wrong bank. After weeks being banned in Brazil, X in late September named a legal representative for the country as ordered, and took down accounts the court accused of spreading misinformation and hate speech. Its final hurdle was to pay off the fines that it had racked up, reportedly amounting to roughly $5 million.
Citing Friday court filings, Reuters reports that X says it’s paid the fines and requested to have services restored. But, Justice Alexandre de Moraes said the funds went to the wrong bank, and the decision will have to wait until they’ve been transferred. X maintains that it paid its fines correctly, according to Reuters. X has been banned in Brazil since the end of August. While the company initially resisted the court’s orders, it recently changed its tune and said it was working with the Brazilian government to get the platform back online in the country.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-reportedly-paid-its-brazil-fines-to-the-wrong-bank-causing-further-delay-in-reinstatement-case-164959494.html?src=rss
A few months ago, Google introduced a new way to search Gmail with the help of its Gemini AI. The feature, called Gmail Q&A, lets you find specific emails and information by asking the Gemini chatbot questions. You can ask things like “What time is our dinner reservation on Saturday?” to quickly find the information you need. It was only initially available on Android devices, but now Google has started rolling it out to iPhones.
In addition to being able to ask questions, you can also use the feature to find unread emails from a specific sender simply by telling Gemini to “Find unread emails by [the person’s name].” You can ask the chatbot to summarize a topic you know you can find in your inbox, such as work projects that you’ve been on for months consisting of multiple conversations across several threads. And you can even use Gemini in Gmail to do general search queries without having to leave your inbox. To access Gemini, simply tap on the star icon at the top right corner of your Gmail app.
Google says the feature could take up to 15 days to reach your devices. Take note, however, that you do need to have access to Gemini Business, Enterprise, Education, Education Premium or Google One AI Premium to be able to use it.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/gmails-gemini-powered-qa-feature-comes-to-ios-120015661.html?src=rss
We are just a few days from the official kickoff of Amazon Prime Day, but the deals have already been filling up our inbox. This one’s a doozy. Amazon’s well-reviewed Echo Buds earbuds are on sale for $25, which is half off and a record low price.
Amazon’s Echo Buds actually made our list of the best budget wireless earbuds, and that was at the full $50 price. We appreciated the lightweight form factor and the pocket-friendly case, both of which contributed to enhanced portability. There’s also multi-device connectivity and automatic wear detection.
This is an open design, which some people prefer and some hate. Basically, an open earbud design allows for more ambient noise from the world around you. This can be annoying, as it could get in the way of what you’re listening to, but it could also keep you safe while aimlessly wandering a busy city. You’ll be able to hear if a car is careening toward you.
The sound is actually great for budget-friendly earbuds, though it takes a bit of EQ adjusting to get everything perfect. On the downside, the battery life is on the lower side and the water resistance is bare-bones at best. Still, we recommended these earbuds at $50 so we absolutely recommend them at $25.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/pick-up-amazons-echo-buds-while-theyre-on-sale-for-25-for-prime-day-164425885.html?src=rss
We are just a few days from the official kickoff of Amazon Prime Day, but the deals have already been filling up our inbox. This one’s a doozy. Amazon’s well-reviewed Echo Buds earbuds are on sale for $25, which is half off and a record low price.
Amazon’s Echo Buds actually made our list of the best budget wireless earbuds, and that was at the full $50 price. We appreciated the lightweight form factor and the pocket-friendly case, both of which contributed to enhanced portability. There’s also multi-device connectivity and automatic wear detection.
This is an open design, which some people prefer and some hate. Basically, an open earbud design allows for more ambient noise from the world around you. This can be annoying, as it could get in the way of what you’re listening to, but it could also keep you safe while aimlessly wandering a busy city. You’ll be able to hear if a car is careening toward you.
The sound is actually great for budget-friendly earbuds, though it takes a bit of EQ adjusting to get everything perfect. On the downside, the battery life is on the lower side and the water resistance is bare-bones at best. Still, we recommended these earbuds at $50 so we absolutely recommend them at $25.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/pick-up-amazons-echo-buds-while-theyre-on-sale-for-25-for-prime-day-164425885.html?src=rss
At this point, you probably either love the idea of making realistic videos with generative AI, or you think it’s a morally bankrupt endeavor that devalues artists and will usher in a disastrous era of deepfakes we’ll never escape from. It’s hard to find middle ground. Meta isn’t going to change minds with Movie Gen, its latest video creation AI model, but no matter what you think of AI media creation, it could end up being a significant milestone for the industry.
Movie Gen can produce realistic videos alongside music and sound effects at 16 fps or 24 fps at up to 1080p (upscaled from 768 by 768 pixels). It can also generative personalized videos if you upload a photo, and crucially, it appears to be easy to edit videos using simple text commands. Notably, it can also edit normal, non-AI videos with text. It’s easy to imagine how that could be useful for cleaning up something you’ve shot on your phone for Instagram. Movie Gen is just purely research at the moment —Meta won’t be releasing it to the public, so we have a bit of time to think about what it all means.
The company describes Movie Gen as its “third wave” of generative AI research, following its initial media creation tools like Make-A-Scene, as well as more recent offerings using its Llama AI model. It’s powered by a 30 billion parameter transformer model that can make 16 second-long 16 fps videos, or 10-second long 24 fps footage. It also has a 13 billion parameter audio model that can make 45 seconds of 48kHz of content like “ambient sound, sound effects (Foley), and instrumental background music” synchronized to video. There’s no synchronized voice support yet “due to our design choices,” the Movie Gen team wrote in their research paper.
Meta
Meta says Movie Gen was initially trained on “a combination of licensed and publicly available datasets,” including around 100 million videos, a billion images and a million hours of audio. The company’s language is a bit fuzzy when it comes to sourcing — Meta has already admitted to training its AI models on data from every Australian user’s account, it’s even less clear what the company is using outside of its own products.
As for the actual videos, Movie Gen certainly looks impressive at first glance. Meta says that in its own A/B testing, people have generally preferred its results compared to OpenAI’s Sora and Runway’s Gen3 model. Movie Gen’s AI humans look surprisingly realistic, without many of the gross telltale signs of AI video (disturbing eyes and fingers, in particular).
Meta
“While there are many exciting use cases for these foundation models, it’s important to note that generative AI isn’t a replacement for the work of artists and animators,” the Movie Gen team wrote in a blog post. “We’re sharing this research because we believe in the power of this technology to help people express themselves in new ways and to provide opportunities to people who might not otherwise have them.”
It’s still unclear what mainstream users will do with generative AI video, though. Are we going to fill our feeds with AI video, instead of taking our own photos and videos? Or will Movie Gen be deconstructed into individual tools that can help sharpen our own content? We can already easily remove objects from the backgrounds of photos on smartphones and computers, more sophisticated AI video editing seems like the next logical step.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/metas-movie-gen-looks-like-a-huge-leap-forward-for-ai-video-but-you-cant-use-it-yet-165717605.html?src=rss
Amazon Prime Day is right around the corner, so the deals are already coming in hot. For instance, the Oura Ring is up to $100 off. The discount depends on which design you go for. The Stealth Horizon design is $350 in all sizes, while many standard colors are $300. The gold option, however, jumps up to $450. The prices also fluctuate depending on if you choose the rounded Horizon design or the more blocky Heritage design.
For the uninitiated, the Oura Ring is a smart wearable that tracks activity, sleep and more. The main benefit of choosing a smart ring over another type of fitness tracker is portability. It’s a lightweight ring, so after a few days you forget it’s even on. We called the Oura Ring the “perfect wearable for people who don’t like wearables” in our official review. It even made our list of the best sleep apps and gadgets.
The device monitors over 20 biometric signals and is particularly precise when reading a pulse. The Oura Ring is also compatible with most of the most popular fitness-tracking apps, like Apple Health, Strava and Google Health Connect. Many of the designs are quite fetching and allow the device to easily pass as a regular non-techy ring.
On the downside, a bunch of the ring’s features are locked behind a subscription paywall. You get a month free with the initial purchase, but after that it’ll cost $6 per month. It’s also worth noting that this deal is for the third-gen Oura Ring. The fourth-gen device officially releases on October 15 and it’s smaller, with more tracking capabilities.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice, and stay tuned to Engadget.com for all of the best tech deals coming out of October Prime Day 2024.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-third-gen-oura-ring-is-up-to-100-off-in-this-early-prime-day-deal-184904718.html?src=rss
Amazon Prime Day will be here in a few days, and we’re seeing a health number of early deals available right now. While we expect to see better TV deals closer to Black Friday, a few decent ones have dropped on LG’s C4 OLED smart TVs. The 55-inch version is just $1,297, which is nearly $700 off, and you’ll find discounts of hundreds of dollars off on most other sizes.
This is the company’s mid-grade line of OLED TVs. Each model includes the updated Alpha 9 Gen 7 chip, which makes menu navigation much snappier. They also boast improved brightness when compared to previous models. These TVs almost hit 1,000 nits of brightness, which is a little dimmer than a Mini LED panel but better than many OLEDs.
There’s a maximum refresh rate of 144Hz, which is perfect for gaming. To that end, these sets are compatible with G-Sync and AMD Freesync. The PC gaming bona-fides are strong with this one.
One of the cool features of this smart TV is enhanced compatibility with LG soundbars. Newly-released soundbars will connect wirelessly to the television, clearing away the endless clutter of cables from the living room.
The 65-inch model is also on sale for $1,697, which is a discount of over $1,000. For the big spenders, the massive 83-inch version is available for $4,297. This is 20 percent off the typical price.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice, and stay tuned to Engadget.com for all of the best tech deals coming out of October Prime Day 2024.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/lg-c4-oled-smart-tvs-hit-record-low-prices-ahead-of-prime-day-184104010.html?src=rss
Samsung will begin using the One UI name for all its consumer devices, now including TVs and home appliances. Executive Vice President Sally Hyesoon Jeong made the announcement at the company’s 2024 developer conference (via9to5Google). The One UI branding was previously exclusive to its Galaxy phones, tablets and wearables.
“One UI now goes beyond mobile as the software experience for all Samsung consumer devices,” Hyesoon Jeong said onstage at the San Jose keynote. It’s part of the company’s aim for more cohesive branding across its consumer ecosystem, especially as its AI approach evolves.
Samsung
Samsung also teased that its next software user experience, One UI 7, will arrive with the 2025 batch of Galaxy S phones. “One UI 7 will bring a fresh, new look to the entire interface,” Hyesoon Jeong said at the conference. She laid out three goals for the upcoming software: simple (with a purpose), impactful (leaving a “signature impression”), and emotive design that elicits a human reaction from the user.
The Samsung VP says the One UI 7 home screen grid represents the more focused design principles. “It’s sleeker and easier to use, giving you a neat home screen no matter which Galaxy device you’re using,” said Hyesoon Jeong.
Although you’ll have to wait until early next year for One UI 7, the company said a developer beta will be available to test-drive by the end of this year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/samsungs-one-ui-now-covers-all-of-its-consumer-devices-including-tvs-and-appliances-201850799.html?src=rss
X has lost a legal fight in Australia in which the company tried to avoid a $400,000 fine by claiming that Twitter no longer exists. The creative legal argument, first spotted byArsTechnica, came amid a more than year-long dispute with Australia’s eSafety Commission.
The commission had asked the company, then known as Twitter, to provide details about its handling of child sexual exploitation on the platform last February. In its response, X failed to answer a number of questions and left “some sections entirely blank,” the commission said in a statement last year. As a result, the eSafety Commission slapped the company with a more than $415,000 fine for non-compliance.
It was an attempt to fight that fine that led to X’s claim that it shouldn’t be responsible since Twitter had “ceased to exist.” From the court filing:
X Corp submitted that, on and from 15 March 2023, Twitter Inc ceased to be a person, and therefore ceased to be a provider of a social media service. It was submitted that Twitter Inc therefore lacked capacity to comply with the notice, and that X Corp was not obliged to prepare any report in Twitter Inc’s place, as X Corp was not the same person as the provider to whom the notice was issued.
The argument isn’t exactly new for the Elon Musk-owned entity. CEO Linda Yaccarino has also repeatedly claimed that X is a “brand new company” in a bid to avoid scrutiny. She repeated the line multiple times earlier this year while testifying at a Senate hearing on child safety issues.
Australia federal Judge Michael Wheelahan, however, found the claim unconvincing, saying that X’s argument required “leaps in logic that were not supported by adequate explanation.” X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, eSafety Commissioner Inman Grant cheered the decision. “Had X Corp’s argument been accepted by the Court it could have set the concerning precedent that a foreign company’s merger with another foreign company might enable it to avoid regulatory obligations in Australia,” Grant said.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-lost-a-court-battle-after-trying-to-claim-twitter-ceased-to-exist-203030765.html?src=rss
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