Ricoh WG-70Ricoh’s latest entoughened camera has special modes for optimizing colorful foliage and pristine snowy vistas, but it loves getting up close too. A “digital microscope” mode shoots detailed macro photographs, thanks to a ring of LEDs around the lens that illuminates intimate encounters. When you take it underwater (it can withstand depths down to…
RtroThis app from Moment—the folks who make excellent snap-on smartphone lenses—comes with prefab filters created by filmmakers (including Shorty Awards finalist Ani Acopian) that give your videos a vintage Hollywood vibe. Swipe to pick a filter, choosing between Noir’s moody monochrome, Aria’s ’60s swank, or the scratchy, desaturated color of Ranger, then shoot your clip.…
MIT has terminated a research collaboration with iFlytek, a Chinese artificial intelligence company accused of supplying technology for surveilling Muslims in the northwestern province of Xinjiang.The university canceled the relationship in February after reviewing an upcoming project under tightened guidelines governing funding from companies in China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. MIT has not said why…
Last month, residents of Santa Clara County, California, stuck at home and newly reacquainted with the Facebook scroll, may have noticed an unusual proposition pop up in their feed: a targeted ad from researchers at Stanford’s medical school offering blood antibody tests for Covid-19. The curious who clicked through were offered a plan to arrive…
It is an invisible, deadly menace. It’s causing almost unfathomable economic destruction. We knew it was coming, but were caught woefully unprepared. It tricked nations into blaming one another—the US being the primary antagonist—instead of working together to stop it. It is the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, and it is climate change. The two are intimately…
Photo: RazerThe Razer Blade Stealth was already one of the best small-but-mighty laptops on the market, and now it’s getting more powerful. Razer’s refresh adds faster CPU and GPU options along with a fix for one of the Blade Stealth’s biggest flaws.While its starting price of $1,800 is a bit steep, even a base-model Blade…
This isn’t the first time Epic has railed against Google’s insistence on a 30 percent take. It pushed for an exemption to the rule and went so far as to call the practice illegal for any platform with a majority of the market. Google rejected the argument, maintaining that its policy lets it “invest” in…
Creative platform Patreon has laid off 30 employees, which is 13% of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned. “It is unclear how long this economic uncertainty will last and therefore, to prepare accordingly, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with 13% of Patreon’s workforce,” a Patreon spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch.…
In late October 2019, Google CEO Sundar Pichai likened the latest result from the company’s quantum computing hardware lab in Santa Barbara, California, to the Wright brothers’ first flight.One of the lab’s prototype processors had achieved quantum supremacy—evocative jargon for the moment a conventional computer does something seemingly impossible by harnessing quantum mechanics. In a…
For years, the words “ Facebook” and “gaming” were more likely to evoke memories of an aunt’s dusty Words With Friends invitation than anything else. And for years, Facebook has been on a journey to change, or at least broaden, its stodgy reputation among gamers young and old with its game-streaming platform, virtual reality technology,…
