INDIANAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 16, 2023--

Fall is shaping up to be a fantastic month for gaming (and maybe not so

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 6, 2023--

A leaked promo video for Google's upcoming Pixel 8 was shared on the platform formerly

The Air Force formally opened a multibillion-dollar contest to replace the F-22 Raptor fighter jet that’s likely to

Full list of FIFA 23 FUTTIES Best of Batch 3 players available in packs during the Ultimate Team promotion.

JAKARTA A British consortium that includes mining giant Glencore will invest about $9 billion in Indonesia's mining and

Ahead of Global Accessibility Awareness Day on 18 May, Apple has unveiled a host of new iOS features that will be coming to the iPhone, iPad and Mac later this year. The suite of updates announced on Tuesday include accessibility features to help those with cognitive, vision, hearing and mobility disabilities and, for the first time, new tools for those who have lost their ability to speak or are at risk of losing their voice. In the future update, users with a speech disability or a recent ALS diagnosis will be able to use their Apple device to create a digital voice that sounds exactly like them. The feature, called Personal Voice, can be trained in 15 minutes simply by reading a bunch of randomly generated text prompts, and uses on-device machine learning to ensure your data is kept private and secure. The Motor Neurone Disease Association suggests that voice banking takes an average of two hours or longer with current tech, and can cost hundreds of pounds. The Independent got a first look at the new feature in action, and the Personal Voice sounded remarkably similar to the user’s actual voice, albeit with a slightly robotic, synthesised tone. Personal Voice will be available for use with Apple’s new Live Speech feature on iOS, which will let users type what they want to say and have it spoken out loud, during in-person conversations, as well as with phone and FaceTime calls. The feature is said to work with all accents and dialects. As well as features for speech accessibility, Apple announced a cognitive disability setting for the iPhone and iPad called Assistive Access, which essentially lets you pare your device down to a few core apps of your choosing. Arranged in a grid or a list, it simplifies the user interface down to large, easily readable buttons, so you can make calls, access an emoji-only keyboard, and a fuss-free camera, without the clutter. Companies such as Doro and Jitterbug currently have a stranglehold on the “simple phone”, offering devices for senior users that strip away the bulk, and deliver a simple user interface with large high-contrast buttons that make it easy to use a phone. With Apple’s new Assistive Access feature, those with cognitive disabilities will be able to take advantage of a mainstream iPhone device and its features without having to opt for an Android device or one designed for their specific need. In addition, Apple previewed a new feature in the Magnifier app for low vision users called Point and Speak, which makes use of the camera, the LiDAR Scanner and on-device machine learning to read aloud text that a user places their finger on. Plus, the company announced Mac support for Made for iPhone hearing devices, phonetic suggestions for Voice Control users and the ability for Switch Control users to turn their switches into game controllers on the iPhone and iPad. Apple has made it a tradition over the years to unveil new accessibility features ahead of WWDC in June, where it usually reveals the next iOS update, emphasising its prioritisation of accessibility within the iOS ecosystem. While Apple didn’t state when exactly the new updates would be coming to its devices later this year, a rollout alongside iOS 17 seems likely, given previous announcements. Read More Apple iPhone 15 rumours: All you need to know, from release date to price and specs iPhone 15 to add mysterious new button on the side, Apple rumours suggest Inside Apple’s Developer Academy, where future app developers are being taught to put disability first 75% of Irish data watchdog’s GDPR decisions since 2018 overruled – report AI pioneer warns UK is failing to protect against ‘existential threat’ of machines Apple highlights work of small developers amid ongoing questions about the App Store

BERLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 1, 2023--

Nasa has received “puzzling” data from a spacecraft that was studying a distant asteroid. The space agency’s Lucy Spacecraft left Earth in 2021, with the aim of studying “Jupiter trojans”, a set of asteroids that fly around the Sun along Jupiter’s orbit and remain largely mysterious. Recently, scientists decided to send it to visit another small object on its way, largely as a test of the systems on the spacecraft that let it track asteroids for its mission. When Lucy arrived at that object – a main belt asteroid named Dinkinesh – it found a surprise, however. Images taken of the asteroid showed that it had a satellite, which flies around the asteroid like a tiny moon of its own. Now, further examination of those images show that the satellite is not one but two objects. Those objects make up a “contact binary”, or two smaller objects that are touching each other as they fly through space. The unexpected discovery explains some of the strange data that scientists had received as they approached Lucy. But it opens up more confusion about the whole system, which one called “bizarre”. “Contact binaries seem to be fairly common in the solar system,” said John Spencer, Lucy deputy project scientist, in a statement. “We haven’t seen many up-close, and we’ve never seen one orbiting another asteroid. “We’d been puzzling over odd variations in Dinkinesh’s brightness that we saw on approach, which gave us a hint that Dinkinesh might have a moon of some sort, but we never suspected anything so bizarre!” The flyby of Dinkinesh was only intended as a test of the spacecraft’s systems but has now posed new possible research for scientists. “It’s truly marvelous when nature surprises us with a new puzzle,” said Tom Statler, Lucy program scientist from NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Great science pushes us to ask questions that we never knew we needed to ask.” “It is puzzling, to say the least,” said Hal Levison, principal investigator for Lucy, also from Southwest Research Institute. “I would have never expected a system that looks like this. In particular, I don’t understand why the two components of the satellite have similar sizes. This is going to be fun for the scientific community to figure out.” The scientists were only able to confirm the nature of the system with the multiple images that were sent back by Lucy in the wake of its encounter with Dinkinesh. Nasa is working now to get the rest of the data from the spacecraft, which might include yet more surprises. Lucy itself will continue flying through space on a journey that is due to take 12 years. Lucy is actually heading back to Earth, which it will use for a gravity assist to propel it onto the next part of its journey, back through the main asteroid belt and onto the Trojan asteroids. Read More Nasa sending VR headset up to ISS to treat astronaut’s mental health All-UK space mission will ‘push boundaries of human knowledge’ All-female Nasa astronaut team departs International Space Station on spacewalk

BENTONVILLE, Ark.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 26, 2023--

The Xbox September update is coming soon, and Microsoft has released details about what gamers