TechRadar

Google is search. It has competitors, but they're like barnacles on the base of a mighty ship, slicing through the internet. No one does search better and yet, Google insists on mucking up its stellar results with, naturally, artificial intelligence. If you know me – and by now I assume you do – I'm no Luddite. I love new technology and am especially intrigued by AI, which I've been covering for almost 20 years. Granted the last two years have been almost nothing like the preceding 18, where AI was understood as a powerful and growing tech sector that could automate processes, manage simple tasks behind the scenes, and to a very limited degree power chatbot conversations. Now, AI is like the Frank's Red Hot Sauce tagline: "I put that sh*t on everything." The algorithm and machine-learning-driven technology is everywhere, an inescapable fact of modern life and a potential disrupter to the established way of doing almost anything… #google #search #ai #tech

The dirty secret about Google Gemini (and probably all AI) is that it's built for lazy people like me. At the Google I/O keynote on Tuesday, Google spent hours showing us the myriad ways Gemini and its associated technologies could pick up the slack for us – or, more specifically, me, the laziest person you'll ever meet. I know what you're thinking, "No, no, Lance, you seem like a real hardworking guy." It's a lie. I've spent my decades-long career finding shortcuts - and AI is my white whale. Instead of riding a giant vessel into an uncertain fate, Google has handed me the whale...er...AI on a platter the size of a typical smartphone. In Google's developing vision, there are so many things I no longer have to do for myself. This is laziness nirvana… #google #googleio #ai #gemini #tech

Before we were obsessed with AI, the world was mesmerized by Aibo, a robotic dog whose name was short for "artificial intelligence robot" and also had the same pronunciation in Japanese as the word "friend". Aibo was doing AI before it was cool and it was a sophisticated consumer robot dog long before SPOT was a gleam in Boston Dynamics' eyes. My history with the pint-size bot goes way back. I've tested or tried virtually every Sony AIBO robot since its introduction 25 years ago. Somehow, I never owned one, perhaps because much in the way I'm allergic to real dogs, I'm allergic to the price of this mechanical one. Ignoring the robot pup's early and continuing innovation is impossible, even as Sony sometimes denied it… #aibo #sony #robot #technology

When I first tried the iPhone 17 years ago, I described it as a "think-do" device. It was a beautiful yet complex piece of technology so intuitive that it required no manual or real guidance from anyone. Somehow, in the development of the Rabbit r1 pocketable AI assistant, Rabbit missed this lesson and delivered a beautiful mess. There is something compelling about the 3-in x 3-in x 0.5-in, 115g, pocket-friendly gadget. It looks like half a phone or a device that might be at home in the Fallout TV show's pre-apocalyptic world. The bold, orange paint job signals Rabbit's intention to deliver a simple, yet quirky experience. But all I get are the quirks… #rabbitr1 #ai #tech

Sora fans just learned a hard lesson: filmmakers will be filmmakers and will do what's necessary to make their creations as convincing and eye-popping as possible. But if this made them think less of OpenAI's generative AI video platform, they're wrong. When OpenAI handed an early version of the generative Video AI platform to a bunch of creatives, one team – Shy Kids – created an unforgettable video of a man with a yellow balloon for a head. Many declared Air Head to be a weird and powerful breakthrough, but a behind-the-scenes video has cast a rather different spin on it. And it turns out that as good as Sora is at generating video from test prompts, there were many things that the platform either couldn't do or didn't produce just as the filmmakers wanted. The video's post-production editor Patrick Cederberg offered, in an interview with FxGuide, a lengthy list of changes Cederberg's team made to Sora's output to create the stunning effects we saw in the final, 1-minute, 22-second Air Head video… #sora #ai #video #filmmaking #tech

Let’s talk sustainability on TV with Live with Kelly and Mark! #sustainable #ecycling

It might surprise you to know that becoming a sustainability warrior doesn't necessarily take a calling. Sometimes, it just needs to start as a hobby that you can share with someone you love. That's how Retrospekt, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based technology refurbishment firm got its start – and how, somewhat improbably, I'm now playing with what is essentially a 35-year-old Game Boy that looks as if it was made yesterday. "It's actually quite fun being able to stay in the midwest and bring something unique to the midwest," Retrospekt co-owner and CEO Adam Fuerst told me during a lengthy conversation, adding that partner and licensee companies are often surprised at their location. Dressed in an open plaid shirt and white T-shirt, Fuerst, 37, described the unassuming nearly decade-old beginnings of a company that would go on to recover, refurbish, and resell everything from aging Game Boys and 4th-gen iPods to Polaroid cameras and Sony Walkman cassette players… #nostalgia #nintendo #technology #sustainability

Most of the best robots, ones that can walk, run, climb steps, and do parkour, do not have faces, and there may be a good reason for that. If any of them did have mugs like the one on this new research robot, we'd likely stop in our tracks in front of them, staring wordlessly as they ran right over us. Building robots with faces and the ability to mimic human expressions is an ongoing fascination in the robotics research world but, even though it might take less battery power and fewer load-bearing motors to make it work, the bar is much much higher for a robot smile than it is for a robot jump. Even so, Columbia Engineering's development of its newest robot, Emo and "Human-robot Facial Co-Expression" is impressive and important work. In a recently published scientific paper and YouTube video, researchers describe their work and demonstrate Emo's ability to make eye contact and instantly imitate and replicate human expression…. #robot #robotics #tech

I had three flagship phones on three different tripods all aimed at a sun rapidly being crowded by a nuisance moon, and all I wanted was one or two excellent eclipse shots. Turns out that photographing a solar eclipse with your smartphone is not that easy. In fact, figuring out a repeatable process without cauterizing your retinas is downright challenging. But I did it. I grabbed some of the best smartphones money can buy, the iPhone 15 Pro Max, Google Pixel 8 Pro, and the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, and prepared for 180 minutes of celestial excitement. That last selection might turn a few heads. It is, after all, a now aging flagship Android phone that does not have the latest image processing or even the fastest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip found in the Galaxy S24 Ultra (the S23 Ultra has the Gen 2). However, one thing it has that none of my other flagship smartphones offer is a 10X optical zoom (not even the S24 Ultra has that)…. #eclipse #technology #smartphone #cameras #photography