Backlash over Meta’s ad-free subscription model in the European Union has begun just one month into its launch.
On Thursday, Europe’s largest consumer group, the European Consumer Organization (BEUC), filed a complaint with the network of consumer protection authorities. In a press release, BEUC alleges that Meta’s subscription fees for ad-free access to Facebook and Instagram are so unreasonably high that they breach laws designed to protect user privacy as a fundamental right.
“Meta has been rolling out changes to its service in the EU in November 2023, which require Facebook and Instagram users to either consent to the processing of their data for advertising purposes by the company or pay in order not to be shown advertisements,” BEUC’s press release said. “The tech giant’s pay-or-consent approach is unfair and must be stopped.”
Apple continues to improve the accessibility features available for all of its devices, and the Mac is no exception. macOS Sonoma ships with a few accessibility features that launched earlier in iOS and iPadOS, but never on the Mac. This version of macOS comes with unique and useful features, such as the ability to create and store your own voice—invaluable to people who are at risk of losing their voice. Let’s take a look at the best new accessibility features on the Mac.
Easily set up custom font sizes for Apple’s apps
macOS Sonoma has a new accessibility feature which lets you force apps to use a larger or smaller size depending on your preferences. You can check this out by going to System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Text Size. This page allows you to set a default text size for all apps and lets you customize preferred sizes for some Apple apps. You can also adjust the font size in any app by pressing Command + or Command –.
Create your own voice
If you’re at risk of losing your voice entirely, you can now use your Mac to create a voice that sounds like you. Apple allows you to use this voice with the Live Speech accessibility feature on phone and FaceTime calls that you answer on your Mac. Go to System Settings > Accessibility > Personal Voice to set this up. You can check out our guide for this feature on iPhone to see how it works.
Use your voice on calls
To use the voice you’ve created with the Personal Voice feature, you should enable the Live Speech feature too. You can go to System Settings > Accessibility > Live Speech and enable Live Speech. This will allow you to type out your replies and your Mac will convert it to speech in your voice.
More natural sounding voices for VoiceOver
VoiceOver is essential for people who live with low vision. With VoiceOver enabled, your Mac will read out descriptions for all items on the screen and allow you to use the computer much better if you can’t see the screen clearly. In macOS Sonoma, the Siri voices that are used with VoiceOver sound far more natural particularly at high rates of speech.
Customize Siri voices for VoiceOver and Spoken Content
For VoiceOver and Spoken Content—a new macOS feature that lets you ask Siri to read articles out loud—you can set up AI voices to your liking. macOS Sonoma allows you to tweak the pitch range. You can adjust these for Spoken Content by going to System Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content. Similarly for VoiceOver, you can go to System Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver and click Open VoiceOver Utility. Go to the Speech tab and hit Edit to make the changes you need.
On a related note, Apple also claims that navigating your code in Xcode is now a much smoother experience with Voice Control.
Enhanced Voice Control features
Controlling your Mac with your voice is becoming easier with Sonoma. When you fire up Voice Control, your Mac will give you tutorials to learn how to make the most of this feature. You’ll also notice that text editing with Voice Control is more accurate as you can use phonetic corrections to pick the correct word from a list of similar-sounding words.
Animated images are paused automatically
Some people find it hard to look at continuously looping GIFs and macOS Sonoma has a solution for that problem. Animated images will no longer loop forever in Messages and Safari. They pause automatically and you can click these images to keep viewing their animation.
Set a custom zoom level for each monitor
For those who use multiple monitors, macOS Sonoma has a new feature that allows you to set up a custom zoom level for each monitor. This will allow you to make text easier to read on the monitor you use for reading, without affecting the UI elements on other monitors.
Switch Control lets you create a virtual game controller
Gaming is pretty difficult for people who have motor control challenges. You can use the Switch Control feature in macOS Sonoma to turn your facial expressions or other actions into controls on a virtual game controller. You can configure this by going to System Settings > Accessibility > Switch Control.
Christmas is just around the corner, and with it comes the need to find the perfect gift for the nerd in your life. Thankfully, Amazon has some left-over deals from Black Friday and Cyber Monday that may just get the job done. There should be something for nearly anyone, from smartwatches to speakers and tablets to laptops.
YouTube Music users who have seen their Spotify- and Apple Music-using friends share their listening stats from this year can now join the party. YouTube Music Recap is now live and you can access it from the 2023 Recap page in the app. You’ll be able to see your top artists, songs, moods, genres, albums, playlists and more from 2023. There’s also the option to view your Recap in the main YouTube app, along with some other new features for 2023.
This year, you’ll be able to add custom album art. YouTube will create this using your top song and moods from the year, as well as your energy score. The platform will mash together colors, vibes and visuals to create a representation of your year in music.
YouTube Music
YouTube says another feature will match your mood with your top songs of the year. You might see, for instance, the percentages of songs you listened to that are classed as upbeat, fun, dancey or chill. Last but not least, you can use snaps from Google Photos to create a customized visual that sums up your year in music (and perhaps your year in travel too).
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/youtube-music-brings-personalized-album-art-to-its-2023-recap-182904330.html?src=rss
For the past number of months AMD has been actively working on enabling AMD P-State Preferred Core functionality for Linux so that their modern processors can communicate “preferred” cores to the Linux kernel scheduler for making better decisions around task placement and ultimately ensuring best performance of Ryzen and EPYC processors running on Linux. This week they are up to their 11th take on these kernel patches…
Here at Gizmodo, we love an ugly holiday sweater, and it seems like Microsoft has outdone itself with another must-have nostalgia grab for Windows fans, specifically Windows XP fans. And here I thought there was no way it could top last year’s Clippy sweater.
It’s been a number of years since many in the Linux/open-source space have been excited by the Jolla smartphone efforts with their failed smartphone/tablet devices and more recently focusing their Linux-based Sailfish OS devices for running on existing devices. The latest chapter in Jolla is the former management acquiring the Jolla business…
When you make the third highest-grossing film of all time, the first thing people will ask about is a sequel. That’s exactly what happened when 2021’s Spider-Man No Way Home had its incredibly successful run. For the film’s star though, Tom Holland, a sequel isn’t a sure thing. To him, there’s more to it than money.…
A reportedly leaked survey from Blizzard indicates that the developer is looking at different possible prices for its upcoming Diablo IV expansion, and one of these potential packages is priced at $100.
Astronomers have discovered six planets orbiting a bright star in perfect resonance. The star system, 100 light-years from Earth, was described on Wednesday in a paper published in the journal Nature. From a report: The discovery of the system could give astronomers a unique opportunity to trace the evolution of these worlds to when they first formed, and potentially offer insights into how our solar system got to be the way it is today. “It’s like looking at a fossil,” said Rafael Luque, an astronomer at the University of Chicago who led the study. “The orbits of the planets today are the same as they were a billion years ago.”
Researchers think that when planets first form, their orbits around a star are in sync. That is, the time it takes for one planet to waltz around its host star might be the same amount of time it takes for a second planet to circle exactly twice, or exactly three times. Systems that line up like this are known as orbital resonances. But, despite the theory, finding resonances in the Milky Way is rare. Only 1 percent of planetary systems still preserve this symmetry.
Most of the time, planetary orbits get knocked out of sync by an event that upsets the gravitational balance of the system. That could be a close encounter with another star, the formation of a massive planet like Jupiter, or a giant impact from space on one planet that causes a ripple effect in other orbits. When this happens, Dr. Luque said, planetary orbits become too chaotic to mathematically describe, and knowledge of their evolution is indecipherable. Astronomers are lucky to find even one pair of exoplanets in resonance. But in the newly discovered star system, there are a whopping five pairs, because all six planets have orbits that are in sync with one another. Dr. Luque described it as “the 1 percent of the 1 percent.”
Rusted tools, cars, bolts or even your stainless steel appliancescan often be salvaged—if the rust is caught early enough. At those early stages, rust is more of an aesthetic issue and an annoyance. But rust is a process of corrosion that will eventually render its victims unusable and unrepairable, making any effort to clean them up and protect them against further ruin a waste of time. The trick is knowing when rust has won and you’re better off replacing that car panel, old power tool, or kitchen utensil.
Stages of rust
The first thing to know is that rust goes through several distinct stages as it quietly consumes your beloved stuff:
Surface rust. The earliest stage of rust shows up as isolated reddish-brown patches, often quite small. This surface rust is generally harmless and doesn’t penetrate below the surface of the metal, so it can be scraped away pretty easily—and if you take steps to protect the metal by keeping it away from moisture and adding a coating of lubrication (WD-40 will work), it will be just fine.
Scale rust. If left to its own devices, the rust will keep eating away at the iron in your tool or component. The brown, dusty discoloration will spread—but more importantly, pitting will start to show up. These tiny pinpricks in the metal are where the rust process has started to invade below the surface. Your stuff can still be saved, but it’s going to take more work.
Structural rust. At this stage, literal holes have begun to appear in the metal. In sheet metal, like a car panel, this usually means the metal is thin and papery, and might have been eaten away entirely. In thicker components, the structural integrity may still be viable, but the pitting is probably so severe that any attempt at repair will be futile.
If the rust is very severe, you can often tell visually—at a glance—that the thing you’re trying to save is a lost cause. But with more complex things, like tools, it sometimes takes a bit more investigation.
Assessing rust
When it comes to rusted stuff, the “lost cause” stage often depends on its role. Car panels, for example, are usually designed more for aesthetics than safety or strength, and thus can often be filled in, sanded, and painted, and still perform their basic functions. Stuff like metal furniture that gets badly rusted can often be salvaged by applying a rust-specific primer that stops the oxidation process.
For anything that requires a high level of strength, like a car’s rocker panels or tools, however, cosmetic repairs won’t be sufficient. A few considerations:
Pitting. If the metal is visibly pitted and etched by rust, the process of reduced structural integrity has already begun. If the component is intended to be load-bearing or needs to apply a lot of torque (like a wrench or power drill), severe pitting is a sign that it probably needs to be replaced.
Thickness. The use and thickness of the metal is a factor, too. A hammer that’s suffered a lot of rust may still be usable as long as a stable core remains in the head and you repair it properly. A badly rusted drywall knife, on the other hand, might not be salvageable at the same level of damage.
Power tools. If rust on a power tool has compromised its moving parts, it can be dangerous to operate even if you manage to remove the caked-on surface rust and get it moving again. A good rule of thumb is if the power tool won’t initially work due to thick rust deposits, it’s probably best to just replace it unless you’re willing to put in a lot of work to salvage it.
The Armbian project announced today the release and general availability of Armbian 23.11 as the latest version of this GNU/Linux distribution tailored for ARM-powered embedded devices based on Debian GNU/Linux and Ubuntu.
Research published this week describes a promising start to using stem cell therapy for multiple sclerosis. In a small Phase I trial, patients who had stem cells directly injected into their brain appeared to tolerate it well and experienced no serious adverse effects. The treatment may have also stopped or slowed the…
The holiday season is upon us, and Google has some early presents for Android fans. A raft of new features are beginning to roll out today. They run the gamut from phones, to TV, to wearables, to the Google Messages app.
Google has split its surprise feature drop into two parts, with a special focus on Google Messages to celebrate 1 billion
Minthara is one of Baldur’s Gate 3’s most interesting companions, but only a select few people tend to see much of the Drow Paladin in their playthrough because recruiting her typically requires you to help her slaughter Tiefling refugees. Despite this, fans have found creative workarounds to recruit her without…
Evernote has confirmed the service’s tightly leashed new free plan, which the company tested with some users earlier this week. Starting December 4, the note-taking app will restrict new and current accounts to 50 notes and one notebook. Existing free customers who exceed those limits can still view, edit, delete and export their notes, but they’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan (or delete enough old ones) to create new notes that exceed the new confines.
The company says most free accounts are already inside those lines. “When setting the new limits, we considered that the majority of our Free users fall below the threshold of fifty notes and one notebook,” the company wrote in an announcement blog post. “As a result, the everyday experience for most Free users will remain unchanged.” Engadget reached out to Evernote to clarify whether “the majority of Free users” staying within those bounds includes long-dormant accounts that may have tried the app for a few minutes a decade ago and never logged in again. We’ll update this article if we hear back.
Evernote’s premium plans, now practically essential for anything more than minimal use, include a $15 monthly Personal plan with 10GB of monthly uploads. You can double that to 20GB (and get other perks) with an $18 tier. It also offers annual versions of those plans for $130 and $170, respectively.
The company acknowledged in its announcement post that “these changes may lead you to reconsider your relationship with Evernote.” Leading alternatives with more bountiful free plans include Notion, Microsoft OneNote, Google Keep, Bear (Apple devices only), Obsidian and SimpleNote.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/evernote-officially-limits-free-users-to-50-notes-and-one-measly-notebook-174436735.html?src=rss
Voicemod, the real-time AI voice-changing app, is now letting anybody craft whatever kind of voice they want, though limited by a selection of preset baseline vocals.
This article descibes how to find an application to add to your ostree based system (such as Silverblue and Kinoite) using rpm-ostree. One of the main benefits of the Fedora ostree-based systems is the immutability of the system. Not only is the image read-only, it’s also pre-built on the Fedora servers. Thus, updating a running […]
You may have heard ads promising that professional bill negotiation services can help you save big money on your medical bills, credit card statements, cable bills, and more. While it’s a promising offer, the truth is negotiating bills on your own is simple, effective, and most importantly: free. You may be surprised at how willing many companies are to reduce your rates, especially for long-time loyal customers. With some preparation and persuasive negotiation tactics, you can trim hundreds of dollars from your annual expenses. Follow these simple steps to start saving—without paying any unnecessary fees.
How to lower your bills for free
Bill negotiation works because companies have incentives to keep customers happy and retain business. It costs more for them to acquire new customers than to keep existing ones. As long as you make reasonable requests and politely threaten to take your business elsewhere, many service providers will offer discounts or perks.
Contact service providers yourself
Don’t wait for a third party to step in—contact providers directly to dispute problematic charges or rates. Call their billing department about discrepancies or overcharges on your statements, armed with your notes from reviewing the itemized bill. Ask about applying for hardship assistance programs or discounts. Service representatives are often authorized to make adjustments to retain you as a customer.
Know your stuff
Request an itemized bill from any provider to scrutinize the charges in detail. Identify overcharges, duplicate charges, and services you did not receive. Federal law also allows you to request interest rate reductions on credit card bills.
Send formal dispute letters
If a phone call yields unsatisfactory results, follow up with a formal dispute letter stating which charges you disagree with and why. Provide evidence of errors or unfair rates by including notes from researching reasonable costs or comparing with past statements. Request that the disputed charges be removed and clearly communicate you expect a response by a specific date.
Use free templates and tools
Instead of paying steep sign-up and commission fees for bill negotiation services, use free scripts, online dispute letter templates, and cost-of-living calculators to bolster your case. Seek form letters specific to cable bills, hospital bills, credit card statements, phone bills, etc. to save time and effort.
How to tell if a bill negotiation service is worth it
Of course, negotiating your own bills is not nearly as effortless and appealing as downloading an app that does all the work for you. The thing is, bill negotiation services aren’t worth it if their fees exceed the savings you get from lowered billed. To evaluate if an app is going to be worth it for you, compare the fees with the potential benefits.
For most these apps, the fees will be any combination of the following:
Service fees (monthly, one-time, or annual)
Membership fees (usually annual or recurring/monthly)
Bill negotiation fee (percentage of your savings)
Let’s take a look at an example of how these services make money while cutting down your bill costs: BillShark is one that negotiates monthly bills and doesn’t charge customers upfront fees. Instead, it charges a one-time fee of 40% of the savings it creates. If you don’t have time to hop on the phone and negotiate your bills yourself, that 40% may be worth it. Otherwise, that’s a decent chunk of savings that could be all yours, if you use the tips above. The bottom line is before you pay for these services, remember that you have the power to effectively negotiate your own bills without an expensive middlemen.
When I first got to see the Expressive E Osmose way back in 2019, I knew it was special. In my 15-plus years covering technology, it was one of the only devices I’ve experienced that actually had the potential to be truly “game changing.” And I’m not being hyperbolic.
But, that was four years ago, almost to the day. A lot has changed in that time. MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) has gone from futuristic curiosity to being embraced by big names like Ableton and Arturia. New players have entered and exited the scene. More importantly, the Osmose is no longer a promising prototype, but an actual commercial product. The questions, then, are obvious: Does the Osmose live up to its potential? And, does it seem as revolutionary today as it did all those years ago? The answers, however, are less clear.
Terrence O’Brien / Engadget
What sets the Osmose ($1,799) apart from every other MIDI controller and synthesizer (MPE or otherwise) is its keybed. At first glance, it looks like almost any other keyboard, albeit a really nice one. The body is mostly plastic, but it feels solid and the top plate is made of metal. (Shoutout to Expressive E, by the way, for building the OSMOSE out of 66 percent recycled materials and for making the whole thing user repairable — no glue or speciality screws to be found.)
The keys themselves have this lovely, almost matte finish and a healthy amount of heft. It’s a nice change of pace from the shiny, springy keys on even some higher-end MIDI controllers. But the moment you press down on a key you’ll see what sets it apart — the keys move side to side. And this is not because it’s cheaply assembled and there’s a ton of wiggle. This is a purposeful design. You can bend notes (or control other parameters) by actually bending the keys, much like you would on a stringed instrument.
This is huge for someone like me who is primarily a guitar player. Bending strings and wiggling my fingers back and forth to add vibrato comes naturally. And, as I mentioned in my review of Roli’s Seaboard Rise 2, I find myself doing this even on keyboards where I know it will have no effect. It’s a reflex.
It’s a very simple thing to explain, but very difficult to encapsulate its effect on your playing. It’s all of the same things that make playing the Seaboard special: the slight pitch instability from the unintentional micro movements of your fingers, the ability to bend individual notes for shifting harmonies and the polyphonic aftertouch that allows you to alter things like filter cutoff on a per-note basis.
These tiny changes in tuning and expression add an almost ineffable fluidity to your playing. In particular, for sounds based on acoustic instruments like flutes and strings, it adds an organic element missing from almost every other synthesizer. There is a bit of a learning curve, but I got the hang of it after just a few days.
What separates it from the Roli, though, is its formfactor. While the Seaboard is keyboard-esque, it’s still a giant squishy slab of silicone. It might not appeal to someone who grew up taking piano lessons every week. The Osmose, on the other hand, is a traditional keyboard, with full-sized keys and a very satisfying action. It’s probably the most familiar and approachable implementation of MPE out there.
If you are a pianist, or an accomplished keyboard player, this is probably the MPE controller you’ve been waiting for. And it’s hands-down one of the best on the market.
Where things get a little dicier is when looking at the Osmose as a standalone synthesizer. But let’s start where it goes right: the interface. The screen to the left of the keyboard is decently sized (around 4 inches) and easy to read at any angle. There are even some cute graphics for parameters such as timbre (a log), release (a yo-yo) and drive (a steering wheel).
Terrence O’Brien / Engadget
There aren’t a ton of hands-on controls, but menu diving is kept to a minimum with some smart organization. The four buttons across the top of the screen take you to different sections for presets, synth (parameters and macros), sensitivity (MPE and aftertouch controls) and playing (mostly just for the arpeggiator at the moment). Then to the left of the screen there are two encoders for navigating the submenus, and the four knobs below control whatever option is listed above them on the screen. So, no, you’re not going to be doing a lot of live tweaking, but you also won’t spend 30 minutes trying to dial in a patch.
Part of the reason you won’t spend 30 minutes dialing in a patch is because there really isn’t much to dial in. The engine driving the Osmose is Haken Audio’s EaganMatrix and Expressive E keeps most of it hidden behind six macro controls. In fact, you can’t really design a patch from scratch — at least not the synth directly. You need to download the Haken Editor, which requires Max (not the streaming service), to do serious sound design. Then you need to upload your new patch to the Osmose over USB. Other than that, you’re stuck tweaking presets.
Terrence O’Brien / Engadget
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because, frankly, EaganMatrix feels less like a musical instrument and more like a PHD thesis. It is undeniably powerful, but it’s also confusing as hell. Expressive E even describes it as “a laboratory of synthesis,” and that seems about right; patching in the EaganMatrix is like doing science. Except, it’s not the fun science you see on TV with fancy machines and test tubes. Instead it’s more like the daily grind of real life science where you stare at a nearly inscrutable series of numbers, letters, mathematical constants and formulas.
I couldn’t get the Osmose and Haken Editor to talk to each other on my studio laptop (a five-year-old Dell XPS), though I did manage to get it to work on my work-issue MacBook. That being said, it was mostly a pointless endeavor. I simply can’t wrap my head around the EaganMatrix. I was able to build a very basic patch with the help of a tutorial, but I couldn’t actually make anything usable.
There are some presets available on Patchstorage, but the community is nowhere near as robust as what you’d find for the Organelle or ZOIA. And, it’s not obvious how to actually upload those handful of presets to the Osmose. You can drag and drop the .mid files you download to the empty slots across the top of the Haken Editor and that will add them to the Osmose’s user presets. But you wont actually see that reflected on the Osmose itself until you turn it off and turn it back on.
Honestly, many of the presets available on Patchstorage cover the same ground as 500 or so factory ones that ship with the Osmose. And it’s while browsing those hundreds of presets that both the power and the limitations of the EaganMatrix become obvious. It’s capable of covering everything from virtual analog, to FM to physical modeling, and even some pseudo-granular effects. Its modular, matrix-based patching system is so robust that it would almost certainly be impossible to recreate physically (at least without spending thousands of dollars).
Now, this is largely a matter of taste, but I find the sounds that come out of this obviously over-powered synth often underwhelming. They’re definitely unique and in some cases probably only possible with the EaganMatrix. But the virtual analog patches aren’t very “analog,” the FM ones lack the character of a DX7 or the modern sheen of a Digitone, and the bass patches could use some extra oomph. Sometimes patches on the Osmose feel like tech demos rather than something you’d actually use musically.
Terrence O’Brien / Engadget
That’s not to say there’s no good presets. There are some solid analog-ish sounds and there are a few decent FM pads. But it’s the physical modeling patches where EaganMatrix is at its best. They definitely land in a kind of uncanny valley, though — not convincing enough to be mistaken for the real thing, but close enough that it doesn’t seem quite right coming out of a synthesizer.
Still, the way tuned drums and plucked or bowed strings are handled by Osmose is impressive. Quickly tapping a key can get you a ringing resonant sound, while holding it down mutes it. Aftertouch can be used to trigger repeated plucks that increase in intensity as you press harder. And bowed patches can be smart enough to play notes within a certain range of each other as legato, while still allowing you to play more spaced out chords with your other hand. (This latter feature is called Pressure Glide and can be fine tuned to suit your needs.)
The level of precision with which you can gently coax sound out of some presets with the lightest touch is unmatched by any synth or MIDI controller I’ve ever tested. And that becomes all the more shocking when you realize that very same patch can also be a percussive blast if you strike the keys hard.
But, at the end of the day, I rarely find myself reaching for Osmose — at least not as a synthesizer. I’ve been testing one for a few months now, and while I have used it quite extensively in my studio, it’s been mostly as a controller for MPE-enabled soft synths like Arturia’s Pigments and Ableton’s Drift. It’s undeniably one of the most powerful MIDI controllers on the market. My one major complaint on that front being that its incredible arpeggiator isn’t available in controller mode.
The Osmose is a gorgeous instrument that, in the right hands, is capable of delivering nuanced performances unlike anything else. Even if, at times, the borrowed sound engine doesn’t live up to the keyboard’s lofty potential.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/expressive-e-osmose-review-a-game-changing-mpe-keyboard-but-a-frustrating-synthesizer-170001300.html?src=rss
