Posts

The Virtual Reality Church only meets using headsets. It’s part of a growing movement to expand religious services to an increasingly tech-savvy religious audience. There may even be benefits to virtual services over in-person ones, observers say. “VR has no physical restrictions and allows for hosting services for as many people as you need,” virtual reality developer Yury Yarmalovich of HQSoftware said in an email interview. “On top of that, virtual spaces can be customized in whatever way the user wants....

PayPal recently began allowing customers to purchase some cryptocurrencies as part of a growing movement to make investing in crypto easier. But be careful whose advice you take when investing. “There seems to be no shortage of self-styled crypto investment ’experts’ offering advice on social media and forums, all promising to know the secret formula to crypto investment success,” David Janczewski, co-founder and CEO of crypto software firm Coincover, said in an email interview....

Twitch emailed its users last week to inform them it’s recently received 1,000 new DMCA takedown requests relating to the unlicensed use of music, all of which were related to VODs. In general, this means fan-created clips and archived recordings of live footage. This is the latest chapter in an ongoing struggle between Twitch, its users, and the music industry, which has seemingly been scouring Twitch for any sign of unlicensed music for most of the last year....

Apple and other companies are warning of manufacturing constraints due to a shortfall in critical components. Microprocessors, essential to smartphones and many other electronics, are in high demand and in short supply. “Overall, consumers should be prepared to pay more for smartphones and wait for some time to get the phones they want,” Nir Kshetri, a business professor who studies chip supplies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, told Lifewire in an email interview....

Many people avoid the number 13. But will this really impact the sales of the next iPhone? And what about other parts of the world? Is 13 considered unlucky everywhere? And how has Apple handled odd product numbering in the past? “There are a few instances where people have to avoid using the number 13 for superstitious reasons,” Katherine Brown, founder of remote monitoring company Spyic, told Lifewire via email....

When Was the Xbox Series X Released? The Xbox Series X became available worldwide on November 10, 2020. Its sister console, the Xbox Series S, was released the same day. The Series X is fast-loading with truly stellar graphics. We tested it out and were impressed with it over the PS5. Xbox Series X Pricing The Xbox Series X is priced at $499. While that’s how much it will cost to buy the system outright, it isn’t your only option....

The Japanese tech giant is looking to change that perception as they finally wade into the wide world of gaming. The company just announced a gaming headset and a mixer, along with some nifty software to go along with each device. First up, the ZG01 gaming mixer, which is Yamaha’s first-ever audio mixer designed with gamers in mind. This USB-accessible mixer provides full controls over game sounds, voice chat, and personal voice levels, in addition to offering various vocal effects, 3D surround sound, and modes dedicated to competitive gaming....

A new study finds that home internet speeds routinely fail to match the advertised “up to” speeds of several ISPs. Experts say that numerous issues on the ISP side could be the culprit for slower than advertised speeds. “Most ISPs oversubscribe their connections,” Ritesh Mukherjee, the senior vice president for enterprise networking at Inseego, a 5G networking company, told Lifewire in an email interview. “As a result, every customer in the area does not get the advertised rates during peak usage periods....

A survey by consumer electronics and appliances extended warranty service provider Allstate Protection Plans about people’s attitudes to appliance breakdowns, shared with Lifewire, found that only half of the respondents admit to picking up the manual when they need to learn how to use a certain function in an appliance or troubleshoot an issue. Interestingly, just as many people choose to head to YouTube or Google instead of referring to the user manual....

Take the recent case of a Cleveland man who was on the verge of divorcing his wife but says that his virtual bot girlfriend powered by artificial intelligence saved his marriage. It’s an example of how virtual conversations can lead to real feelings. “Using AI, chatbots are able to detect user sentiment and adjust their responses, accordingly displaying cheerfulness, empathy, or sensitivity as required,” Beerud Sheth, the CEO of Gupshup, a company that makes AI-powered chatbots, told Lifewire in an email interview....

A security researcher, Felix Krause, has shown that Meta’s Instagram and Facebook apps on iOS add some JavaScript code to third-party websites when you visit them using the app’s custom in-app browser. In-app browsers allow people to visit websites without leaving their apps. The inserted code allows the apps to potentially track all your interactions with external websites, bypassing iOS’ App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature. Apple added ATT specifically to force app developers to get people’s consent before tracking data generated by third parties....

A new study shows that social media sites have a huge carbon footprint. Few of us think about the hidden costs of “free” internet services, but their data centers require vast amounts of energy to run and to cool. Electricity is such a significant cost that server farm locations are often chosen based on its local cost, near relatively cheap hydroelectric plants, for example. “From an engineering standpoint, a data center can switch to renewable power even if it did not figure in the center’s original design,” Ari Bernstein, founder of a carbon capture company, told Lifewire via email....

A team of Australian researchers has created semi-transparent solar cells which they fathom could one day allow skyscrapers to generate their own power. The transparent solar cells are made from perovskite cells, which are often hailed as the future of solar cells. “This work provides a major step forward towards realizing high efficiency and stable perovskite devices that can be deployed as solar windows to fulfill what is a largely untapped market opportunity,” Professor Jacek Jasieniak from the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at Monash University, said in a university press release....

A new system called MCUNet allows the design of tiny neural networks on IoT devices, even with limited memory and processing power. According to a paper by MIT scientists published on the preprint server Arxiv, the technology could bring new capabilities to smart devices while saving energy and improving data security. The research “is one of those brilliant ideas that seems obvious when you hear it,” John Suit, advising CTO at robotics company KODA, said in an email interview....

Lines in the Sand One of the key mechanics that makes New World stand out is its use of Factions to create a constantly warring world for players to explore. Of course, you can choose whether or not you want to partake in player versus player (PVP) combat, but you’ll still need to choose a Faction and start working towards helping your particular group establish its power in this, ahem, new world....

It’s an experimental Japanese RPG that originally debuted in 1998, back on the first PlayStation. Despite being glitchy and distinctly unfinished in its original edition, Frontier became a hit in Japan and a cult classic everywhere else. It’s traditionally been divisive; you either love it or hate it. For its 2021 remaster, Square Enix has fixed much of what was broken about the original game, aside from a few fan-favorite bugs, and added a new playable character who was edited out of the original release....

Use Emojis on Messages for Web If you have an Android phone, enable Messages for Web to text from your computer. In addition to regular text messages, the web interface contains an emoji gallery you can use to send emojis from your computer to any phone. Messages for Web also displays emojis sent to you and replaces the blank boxes with the corresponding emoji. Look for an Emoji Icon Many web-based messengers and desktop-based texting platforms support emojis....

How Do I View EXIF Data on iOS? EXIF data is in the info pane of the Photos app in the same place you look to see when you took a photo or the file’s name. In addition to the date and name of the file, you can also see what type of camera or phone took the photo, the resolution of the picture, and metadata about the camera settings, like shutter speed and aperture settings....

Many of the movies on YouTube are listed on various channels because users can upload their own content, which means new movies are added frequently. Some films have advertisements before or during the video, but this is a small price to pay for free movies. YouTube’s Free Streaming Movies The movies are in various genres, including comedy, action and adventure, animated, crime, documentaries, horror, and classics. Despite the many videos in those genres, there aren’t any genre menus to sift through to find them easily....

Watch Spider-Man Movies in Order of Release The simplest way to watch all of the Spider-Man movies is in the order that they came out. However, this can also be a little confusing because all of the movies don’t tell one, cohesive story. It’s more like three separate series of movies. Each of the series is about the same Spider-Man/Peter Parker and the same supporting characters: Aunt May, Uncle Ben, Mary Jane Watson....