Category: Technology

Apple Music users have had access to the Replay feature throughout 2024, but now Apple has wrapped up all of your stats in a bow with its annual recap of your entire year in streaming. This time, you’ll be able to view the full Replay experience in the Apple Music app via the home, new and search tabs. You’ll need to be on iOS 18.1 or later to see it there. In previous years, you had to go to a microsite to get the Replay lowdown, though that’s still an option on the web.

As always, you can save a playlist of your most-played songs in 2024, though that and your stats will be finalized in January. Also, if you missed them or want a point of comparison, you can still access your Replays from previous years (something Spotify doesn’t offer with Wrapped).

Along with the usual details about your top artists, songs, albums, genres and playlists — as well as the total number of minutes you’ve listened to Apple Music — there are some new features this year. You’ll now see if you’re in an artist’s top 500 or 1,000 listeners, expanding beyond the top 100 limit from previous years. You can check out the longest streak of consecutive days you’ve streamed from Apple Music. There’s the option to view your top song, artist and album by month. You’ll also see the first date that you listened to your top artist, song and album of the year. 

Artists, meanwhile, have access to their own version of Replay for the first time. Via the dashboard, they can see the total number of minutes that subscribers have listened to their music, total listeners, top cities and most-shazamed song.

The most-listened to song on Apple Music overall this year was Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” the hook-laden diss track that utterly ethered Drake. Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” meanwhile, was the most identified song on Shazam.

For what it’s worth, I’ve had 55,265 minutes of Apple Music listening time so far this year. To my complete lack of surprise, Chappell Roan is my top artist and “Pink Pony Club” is my most-listened-to song. My other top three artists are Charlotte Cardin (who you should check out since she’s fantastic) and Queens of the Stone Age, which I’m completely happy with because I have impeccable music taste. I won’t mention who’s in fourth place or the fact her Eras Tour wraps up this weekend.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/apple-music-replay-is-here-to-highlight-your-impeccable-or-terrible-taste-161402068.html?src=rss 

Indonesia’s investment minister, Rosan Roeslani, said that the country is expecting $1 billion from Apple as an investment. It’s important to note that Indonesia has banned iPhone 16 sales locally because the smartphones must contain at least 40 percent locally-made parts. Apple doesn’t have any manufacturing facilities in Indonesia, so it cannot meet this requirement.

Roeslani further said that Apple should invest even more in the future if it intends to make Indonesia a part of its supply chain. He also remarked on how an Indonesian Apple plant can create jobs.

Previously, Apple had proposed to invest $100 million in building an accessory and component plant in Indonesia. The Indonesian government rejected it due to not meeting “principles of fairness.”

While Apple still doesn’t have local plants to meet the 40 percent local content requirement, it does have application developer academies in Indonesia. That was why older iPhone models could be sold in the country. They remain on sale as of now, and there’s been no indication that Indonesia is looking to ban them currently.

Reuters had contacted Apple for comment on the situation but has yet to receive a reply.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/indonesia-expects-apple-to-invest-1-billion-to-get-the-iphone-16-back-on-sale-162906748.html?src=rss 

As of today, Chinese gallium, germanium and antimony are no longer being exported to the US. Germanium and gallium exports had already ceased in October, and antimony exports have dropped by 97 percent since September. This official declaration comes a day after the US announced it would further tighten technological exports to China, particularly referring to computer chips.

This ban includes materials that have “potential military applications,” as per Reuters.

The Chinese export ban primarily concerns what the government calls “dual-use items,” which are objects both the military and civilians can use. Due to this ban, graphite exports to the US from China must also undergo stricter reviews. However, they aren’t outright banned from exporting yet.

Gallium and germanium are used to make semiconductors, and the latter can also be found in fiber optic cables and solar cells. As for antimony, you may find it in shotgun shells, nuclear weapons, night vision goggles and some batteries.

These export bans are significant because China has been outputting 48 percent of globally mined antimony, 59.2 percent of refined germanium and 98.8 percent of refined gallium production. The US must now scramble to locate new deposits containing these materials, as the ban has already affected prices. Antimony trioxide has been 228 percent more expensive since the beginning of this year.

China has been finding ways to be technologically independent since the US banned exports to the Central Nation. The result of such efforts include HarmonyOS, Huawei’s chips being used in AI development and the Beidou Navigation Satellite System.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/china-has-banned-certain-metal-exports-in-retaliation-to-the-us-chip-restrictions-144005531.html?src=rss 

The Twitch subscriber crown is back in Kai Cenat’s hands, with the creator ending his month-long subathon at almost 727,700 subscribers, CNBC reports. He more than doubled the record of 326,650 subscribers VTuber Ironmouse set in September, who had, in turn, overtaken Cenat’s number one spot — a competition I am suddenly very invested in. 

Cenat not only streamed every day during “Mafiathon 2” in November, but did so 24 hours a day. He was joined by a cast of characters that feels like the lead up to a bad joke: What do Snoop Dogg, Bill Nye the science guy and Kevin Hart all have in common? They were guests on Cenat’s livestream — I warned you it would be bad. But, seriously, he managed to stream for 30 days thanks to these guests and takeovers from his team that allowed him to sleep or go to the bathroom without a camera joining. 

Twitch subscribers pay $5 for ad-free viewing and exclusives and, even with Twitch taking a serious cut, Cenat likely made upwards of $3 million. He stated that 20 percent of his proceeds will go towards a school he’s building in Nigeria. Cenat currently holds 15.4 million followers on Twitch and 6.79 million followers on YouTube. We’ll have to wait and see whether Ironmouse tries to reclaim the crown. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/kai-cenat-takes-back-his-twitch-subscriber-record-during-month-long-livestream-143006215.html?src=rss 

AI-generated content played a much smaller role in global election misinformation than what many officials and researchers had feared, according to a new analysis from Meta. In an update on its efforts to safeguard dozens of elections in 2024, the company said that AI content made up only a fraction of election-related misinformation that was caught and labeled by its fact checkers.

“During the election period in the major elections listed above, ratings on AI content related to elections, politics and social topics represented less than 1% of all fact-checked misinformation,” the company shared in a blog post, referring to elections in the US, UK, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, France, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil, as well as the EU’s Parliamentary elections.

The update comes after numerous government officials and researchers for months raised the alarm about the role generative AI could play in supercharging election misinformation in a year when more than 2 billion people were expected to go to the polls. But those fears largely did not play out — at least on Meta’s platforms — according to the company’s President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg.

“People were understandably concerned about the potential impact that generative AI would have on the forthcoming elections during the course of this year, and there were all sorts of warnings about the potential risks of things like widespread deepfakes and AI-enabled disinformation campaigns,” Clegg said during a briefing with reporters. “From what we’ve monitored across our services, it seems these risks did not materialize in a significant way, and that any such impact was modest and limited in scope.”

Meta didn’t elaborate on just how much election-related AI content its fact checkers caught in the run-up to major elections. The company sees billions of pieces of content every day, so even small percentages can add up to a large number of posts. Clegg did, however, credit Meta’s policies, including its expansion of AI labeling earlier this year, following criticism from the Oversight Board. He noted that Meta’s own AI image generator blocked 590,000 requests to create images of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, JD Vance and Tim Walz in the month leading up to election day in the US.  

At the same time, Meta has increasingly taken steps to distance itself from politics altogether, as well as some past efforts to police misinformation. The company changed users’ default settings on Instagram and Threads to stop recommending political content, and has de-prioritized news on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has said he regrets the way the company handled some of its misinformation policies during the pandemic. 

Looking ahead, Clegg said Meta is still trying to strike the right balance between enforcing its rules and enabling free expression. “We know that when enforcing our policies, our error rates are still too high, which gets in the way of free expression,” he said.” I think we also now want to really redouble our efforts to improve the precision and accuracy with which we act.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-says-ai-generated-content-was-less-than-1-precent-of-election-misinformation-130042422.html?src=rss 

Three years after buying Crunchyroll for over $1 billion, Sony plans to capitalize on its purchase (and piss off countless anime fans) by shutting free users out of one of its most popular series. The company said that starting soon, you’ll need a paid subscription to watch past the first 206 episodes of One Piece. Cue the obvious jokes about locking a show about pirates behind a paywall. (Yo ho!)

Crunchyroll will use a tiered rollout to block free members from most of the anime, which has been in production since 1999. On December 23, the Water 7 to Fishman Island story arcs will become paywalled. On January 20, Punk Hazard to Whole Cake Island (and six specials) will be locked behind subscriptions, followed by Reverie and Wano Kuni to Egghead Island on February 17.

Until Sony’s new content lockdown takes effect, free users can (as they always have been able to) watch the entire series with ads. Snippets of One Piece are also available on Hulu and Netflix (the latter also hosts the live-action version). But Hulu’s library only reaches episode 384, while Netflix’s goes to 238. The series currently has over 1,100 episodes.

Sony is reportedly in talks to buy Japanese publisher Kadokawa. In addition to games like Elden Ring, Dark Souls and Bloodborne, the studio produces anime like Overlord and The Rising of the Shield Hero. If today’s news is any indication, watching much anime in the West that doesn’t go through Sony may soon require the digital equivalent of the Straw Hat Pirates.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/crunchyroll-will-soon-paywall-most-of-one-piece-214652714.html?src=rss