List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

By Sam Nussey TOKYO Sony Group Corp said on Wednesday that its status as an independent provider of

Netflix says it has begun sending emails to UK customers who are sharing their accounts with people “outside their household”. The streaming giant said a Netflix account was “for use by one household” and those wanting to share theirs must pay £4.99 to do so. It comes after the company, which has lost subscribers amid stiffer competition and rising inflation, began a crackdown on account sharing last year in countries including Chile, Costa Rica and Peru. On Tuesday, Netflix posted a statement online which read: “Starting today, we will be sending this email to members who are sharing Netflix outside their household in the United Kingdom. “A Netflix account is for use by one household. Starting today, we will be sending this email to members who are sharing Netflix outside their household in the United Kingdom. A Netflix account is for use by one household. Netflix statement “Everyone living in that household can use Netflix wherever they are – at home, on the go, on holiday – and take advantage of new features like Transfer Profile and Manage Access and Devices. “We recognise that our members have many entertainment choices. “It’s why we continue to invest heavily in a wide variety of new films and TV programmes – so whatever your taste, mood or language and whoever you’re watching with, there’s always something satisfying to watch on Netflix.” An attached screenshot of the email detailed ways customers could share their accounts. These included allowing users to “transfer a profile” to a “new membership that they pay for” or buying an extra member for the price of £4.99 extra per month. Netflix has changed its tune since joking on Twitter that “Love is sharing a password” as it was quickly expanding in the UK in 2017. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

Sony Group Corp. is gearing up for a push into cloud gaming in the coming months as it

On a recent Sunday morning, I found myself in a pair of ill-fitting scrubs, lying flat on my back in the claustrophobic confines of an fMRI machine at a research facility in Austin, Texas. "The things I do for television," I thought.

Male characters in role-playing video games have 50% more dialogue than females, highlighting a “stark gender imbalance” in the gaming genre, scientists have said. In role-playing games (RPGs), the gamer controls one or more characters undertaking quests or missions in an imaginary world. Researchers from the Universities of Glasgow and Cardiff analysed the dialogue of 50 RPGs from 1986 to 2020, including Final Fantasy, Skyrim and Mass Effect. This encompassed 6.2 million spoken words from 13,000 characters. The results, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, suggest 94% of the games studied had more male dialogue than female dialogue, including ones with multiple female protagonists such as Final Fantasy X-2 or King’s Quest VII. They also found that the proportion of female dialogue is slowly increasing in RPGs at a rate of 6.3 percentage points per decade – from a mean of about 18% in the 1980s to about 40% by 2020. While we expected to find a larger proportion of male dialogue overall, we were surprised to discover how few games - just three of 50 - had more than 50% female dialogue Dr Stephanie Rennick, University of Glasgow However, the researchers said that if this rate were to continue, gender balance would not be reached until 2036. Dr Stephanie Rennick, research associate in philosophy, school of humanities at the University of Glasgow, said: “While we expected to find a larger proportion of male dialogue overall, we were surprised to discover how few games – just three of 50 – had more than 50% female dialogue. “I was also surprised that the lack of female characters compared to their male counterparts persisted at every level, from main player characters through to background NPCs (non-player characters).” For the study, the researchers obtained the transcripts of dialogue used in the games and identified which character said what. Dr Sean Roberts, lecturer at the school of English, communication and philosophy at Cardiff University, said: “We categorised the gender of each character, not assuming binary gender. “This allowed us to count how many words were available for each gender in each game. “For example, we can compare the number of words spoken by female characters to the number of words spoken by male characters.” The researchers found only 35% of words were spoken by female characters and they were more likely to apologise, hesitate or be polite, compared with their male counterparts. They said the proportion of female dialogue ranged from 6% (King’s Quest VI) to 80% (King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella). They discovered one game, Monkey Island, did not pass the Bechdel test, which requires two named female characters to talk to each other about something besides a man. Around half of gamers are female, but they experience a lot of abuse and exclusion. More diverse representation is being called for by players and developers Dr Sean Roberts, Cardiff University The team also found examples of stereotyped gendered behaviour. The researchers said that in Stardew Valley, characters respond differently depending on the player character’s gender. For example, they said, female players are offered a salad, wine, repeatedly described as beautiful and assumed to have little experience of video games, while male players are offered pasta, ale, described as “full of energy” and are assumed to be good video game players. Analysis also showed only 30 out of 13,000 characters belong to the non-binary gender categories, which is about half as much as in real life, the researchers said. Dr Roberts said: “Around half of gamers are female, but they experience a lot of abuse and exclusion. “More diverse representation is being called for by players and developers. “So we hope that developers will consider addressing the imbalances we found in order to create more inclusive games.”

Elon Musk’s plan to host Ron DeSantis’ 2024 presidential campaign announcement on Twitter will mean promotion of the

Social media can profoundly harm the mental health of youth, particularly adolescent girls, the U.S. Surgeon General warned

Jack Sweeney, the 20-year-old college student who was once banned from Twitter for posting the real-time movements of Elon Musk’s jet, has a new target: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

Washington's efforts to limit China's access to crucial cutting-edge technology continue.

Some Amazon corporate workers have announced plans to walk off the job next week over frustrations with the company's return-to-work policies, among other issues, in a sign of heightened tensions inside the e-commerce giant after multiple rounds of layoffs.

By Stephen Nellis and Karen Freifeld WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Commerce Department should put trade curbs on Chinese memory chip

Elon Musk has hinted that Twitter might not keep its headquarters in San Francisco forever