Dennis Loos, a dynamic entrepreneur, has risen to prominence in the world of network marketing through his unwavering determination and strategic vision.
Dennis Loos, a dynamic entrepreneur, has risen to prominence in the world of network marketing through his unwavering determination and strategic vision.
Threads has begun testing swipe gestures to help users improve the algorithm that populates the For You feed. It’s reportedly called Algo Tune as, well, it helps people tune their algorithms. It’s pretty rare when any social media site, particularly one run by Meta, allows users to adjust the parameters by which the great and powerful algorithm operates, so this feature is definitely worth keeping an eye on.
It works a lot like Tinder and other dating apps. If you don’t like something on your feed, you swipe left. If you like a post and want to see more like it, you swipe right. That’s pretty much it. The algorithm is allegedly tuned over time by these responses, adjusting your feed to provide more of the content you want and less of the stuff you don’t want. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls it an “easy way to let us know what you want to see more of on your feed.”
This is just an experiment, for now, so the feature’s only rolling out to a select number of Threads users. The company also hasn’t released any specific information as to how all of the swiping actually influences the algorithm, but that’s par for the course when it comes to these things. The algo must remain protected at all costs.
The social media app sure has been busy lately, adding new tools at a rapid clip. Threads finally rolled out trending topics to all users, after experimenting with the feature since February. Meta also recently previewed fediverse integration, which would allow Threads posts on fellow social media app Mastodon. The company’s also been testing some features that let users save drafts and take photos directly in the app.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/threads-begins-testing-swipe-gestures-to-help-train-the-for-you-algorithm-175004586.html?src=rss
Jake Gyllenhaal brought his girlfriend, Jeanne Cadieu, to the red carpet premiere of his 2024 action movie, ‘Road House.’ See his entire dating history.
Jake Gyllenhaal brought his girlfriend, Jeanne Cadieu, to the red carpet premiere of his 2024 action movie, ‘Road House.’ See his entire dating history.
If you’re looking for a way to turn any screen (including those in hotel rooms) into your own smart TV, you may be interested in this sale on a few Amazon streaming sticks. The discounts come as part of the company’s Big Spring Sale, underway now. One stick to call out is the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, which is down to $40 after a 33 percent discount. That matches the record low we saw for this latest model of Amazon’s most advanced streaming stick, a price it has hit a few times this year.
As the name indicates, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max supports 4K video, as well as Wi-Fi 6E, Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and Dolby Atmos audio. It has more internal storage than the Fire Stick 4K and quicker processor. It comes with an Alexa remote, which lets you find stuff to watch just by talking. Speaking of Alexa, a Fire TV stick also allows your screen to act as a smart home hub of sorts, letting you control your smart lights and check in on your connected cameras.
The Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite is also included in the sale. We named that one the best budget pick in our guide to streaming devices and right now it’s down to $20, a 33 percent discount off the $30 price tag. That’s not an all-time low, we saw it dip to $15 for Prime Day in July. But if you don’t want to wait to see if Amazon discount it again this summer, this is perfectly respectable deal.
The Stick Lite a good way to get access to Amazon’s free content, which is extensive, plus the Fire TV OS interface does a fine job of looping in any streaming app you subscribe too (though it does heavily favor Amazon content). The stick even includes a voice remote. One thing the remote can’t do is control your TV’s on/off switch or adjust the volume. It also doesn’t support 4K video, but if you don’t have a super high-def screen anyway, that point is moot.
If you want even more free stuff to watch, you may want to check out our top pick for free and live content, the Roku Streaming Stick 4K. It’s on sale for 22 percent off, or $39, a price it sells for fairly often.
Your Spring Sales Shopping Guide: Spring sales are in the air, headlined by Amazon’s Big Spring sale event. Our expert editors are curating all the best spring sales right here. Follow Engadget to shop the best tech deals from Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, hear from Autoblog’s car experts on the best spring auto deals on Amazon, and find spring sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-amazon-fire-tv-stick-4k-max-is-33-percent-off-for-the-big-spring-sale-170430703.html?src=rss
Amazon’s Big Spring Sale has slashed prices on some of our favorite cordless vacuums from Tineco. The sale’s headliner is the Tineco Pure One S15, Engadget’s runner-up pick for the best cordless vacuum. Usually $500, the Tineco Pure One S15’s sale price is $349, but the Amazon product page includes a $25 off coupon, bringing it down to $324 — so make sure you click that box before checking out.
When we tested cordless vacuums, the Tineco Pure One S15 was only slightly less powerful than the $750 Dyson V15 Detect, making its sale price a terrific value. Tineco’s stick vac includes some nifty smart tech, including a single-button startup, WiFi and app connectivity (displaying battery level, filter status and a cleaning log) and a sensor that detects dirt levels, automatically adjusting its suction. Its filter even attaches magnetically, which is a nice touch. The S15 also has an LED display with a ring that changes color from red to blue when you’ve picked up all the dirt in each spot.
The vacuum includes several attachments: a mini brush to transform it into a hand vac, a 2-in-1 dusting brush and a crevice tool (handy for couch cushions and other hard-to-reach spots). Its built-in brush is designed to avoid pet hair tangles, trapping them without wrapping.
If you want to keep your budget below $250, Engadget’s budget cordless vac pick — the Tineco Pure S11 — is on sale for a record low of $244 (typically $300). It’s a bit clunkier than Tineco’s higher-end models but still relatively lightweight. It also includes the iLoop smart sensor to detect dirt levels, and it has solid suction power (although noticeably less than the S15).
Moving in the opposite direction, if you’re willing to pay more for extra quality and convenience, Tineco’s high-end Pure One Station FurFree is also available for a record low: $599 (down from $799). It includes the company’s strong suction power and debris sensor but adds a self-emptying dock that holds 60 days of dirt while cleaning and charging the stick vac. The Pure One Station FurFree has a 60-minute runtime, more than enough for most people’s homes, and it has bonus attachments that turn it into a pet-grooming tool.
Your Spring Sales Shopping Guide: Spring sales are in the air, headlined by Amazon’s Big Spring sale event. Our expert editors are curating all the best spring sales right here. Follow Engadget to shop the best tech deals from Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, hear from Autoblog’s car experts on the best spring auto deals on Amazon, and find spring sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-tineco-pure-one-s15-cordless-vacuum-is-on-sale-for-324-in-amazons-big-spring-sale-171222091.html?src=rss
It’s been almost three years since we found out that former Naughty Dog and Visceral Games writer and creative director Amy Hennig was working on a Marvel game with her team at Skydance New Media. During Epic Games’ State of Unreal showcase at the Game Developers Conference, a new story trailer shed some more light on the game, which is called Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra.
As the name suggests, it’s set during World War II in Occupied Paris. You’ll play as four characters in this story-driven action-adventure: a young Steve Rogers (better known as Captain America), T’Challa’s grandfather Azzuri (the Black Panther of his era), US soldier and Howling Commandos member Gabriel Jones and Wakandan spy Nanali.
The trailer shows Captain America taking out some foes (presumably Nazis) with his shield as he looks for Black Panther, who we see scampering over rooftops. It ends with the pair clashing on a bridge, but what are the odds that they (along with Gabriel and Nanali) form a shaky alliance to battle a common enemy?
Skydance New Media is using Unreal Engine 5.4 to build the game. The trailer has some striking visual,s including highly detailed facial animations and environments, which are seemingly reflective of what the game actually looks like. “All the sequences you just saw in that trailer are pulled right out of our game, running real-time in Unreal Engine 5,” Hennig said. ‘No smoke and mirrors.” We’ll have to wait a little longer — until Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra arrives in 2025 — to see if Hennig’s claims stand up.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/marvel-1943-rise-of-hydra-from-amy-hennigs-studio-arrives-in-2025-173514552.html?src=rss
The rapper also asked Bey why there wasn’t ‘a little effort into’ creating a ‘more artistic title’ for ‘Cowboy Carter’ in her lengthy public rant.
The rapper also asked Bey why there wasn’t ‘a little effort into’ creating a ‘more artistic title’ for ‘Cowboy Carter’ in her lengthy public rant.
The fashion landscape is witnessing a remarkable transformation with the rise of 300 Oferta, now officially branded as ‘300’ following its registration with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Spearheaded by the innovative Sara Prendi, this fashion label is rapidly becoming a household name across Europe.
The fashion landscape is witnessing a remarkable transformation with the rise of 300 Oferta, now officially branded as ‘300’ following its registration with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Spearheaded by the innovative Sara Prendi, this fashion label is rapidly becoming a household name across Europe.
Amazon’s Big Spring Sale is here, and we’re rounding up the best tech deals we can find as it rolls along. If you’re specifically looking for a new gadget on the cheap, though, we’ve sifted through the trash and picked out a few discounted devices that are genuinely worth your time and now available for less than $50. The offers include our favorite pair of budget wireless earbuds, Amazon’s own Echo speakers and Fire TV Stick streamers and a few of our favorite Bluetooth trackers, among others. Here are the best Amazon Spring sale tech deals under $50. As a reminder, Amazon says this sale will run through March 25 and isn’t exclusive to Prime subscribers.
Your Spring Sales Shopping Guide: Spring sales are in the air, headlined by Amazon’s Big Spring sale event. Our expert editors are curating all the best spring sales right here. Follow Engadget to shop the best tech deals from Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, hear from Autoblog’s car experts on the best spring auto deals on Amazon, and find spring sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-amazon-spring-sale-deals-under-50-save-on-earbuds-chargers-streaming-sticks-and-more-160014666.html?src=rss
Picture the scene: Your date has gone well and you and your partner might sleep together. Like any safe adult, you assume there will be a conversation about STI status and the use of protection. Now imagine how you would feel if they asked to take a photo of your penis and upload it to a website you’ve never heard of. That’s the future of intimacy, as imagined by Calmara, a new service launched by “men’s health” startup HeHealth.
Its press release suggests users take a picture of their partner’s penis so it can be run through a deep learning model for visual signs of sexually-transmitted infections. And while the website suggests users should wear protection, a banner atop the HeHealth sites describes the app as “Your intimate bestie for unprotected sex.” Mixed messages aside, you may notice some major issues with the pitch: That this only covers infections that present visually, and that it’s only designed to work with penises.
But even if that use case applies, you might not feel you can trust its conclusions once you’ve looked at the data. The Calmara website claims its scans are up to 90 percent accurate, saying its AI has been “battle-tested by over 40,000 users.” That figure doesn’t match up to its press release, which says accuracy reaches 94.4 percent (a figure cited in this NSFW preprint paper submitted a week ago), but its FAQ says the accuracy ranges “from 65 percent to 96 percent across various conditions.” We’ve reached out to the company and want to learn more about the apparent discrepancy.
It’s not impossible for models to categorize visual information — I reported on how systems like these look at images of cells to aid drug discovery. But there are plenty of reasons as to why visual information isn’t going to be as reliable for an STI test. After all, plenty of conditions don’t have visual symptoms and carriers can often be asymptomatic long after infection. The company admits to this in its FAQ, saying that the app is a “first line of defense, not a full-on fortress.” Not to mention that other factors, like the “lighting, the particular health quirks you’re scouting for and a rainbow of skin tones might tweak those [accuracy] numbers a bit.” Even more alarming, the unpublished paper (which is riddled with typos) admits that a full 40 percent of its training dataset is comprised of “augmented” images, for instance “extracting specific visually recognizable disease patterns from the existing clinical image dataset and layering those patterns on top of images of health (sic) penises.”
The Calmara website’s disclaimer says that its tools are for the purpose of “promoting and supporting general wellness and a healthy lifestyle and are not to be used to diagnose, cure, treat, manage or prevent any disease or condition.” Of course, if it really was intended as a general wellness tool, it probably wouldn’t describe itself as “Your intimate bestie for unprotected sex,” would it.
It doesn’t help that this is a system asking users to send pictures of their, or their partner’s genitalia. Issues around consent and — as writer Ella Dawson raised on Bluesky — age verification, don’t seem to have been considered. The company’s promises that the data is locked in a “digital stronghold” lacks specifics about its security approach or how the data it obtains may be shared. But that hasn’t stopped the company from suggesting that it could, in future, be integrated “directly into dating apps.”
Fundamentally, there are so many red flags and potential vectors for abuse and giving users a false sense of confidence that nobody should try using it.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/friends-dont-let-friends-use-an-ai-sti-test-162354796.html?src=rss
