TikTok bid adieu to its US users over the weekend before returning for an encore with no clear ending. But, it's now joined by a few copycats, including X (formerly Twitter). X announced late Sunday night in owner Elon Musk's typical cringy fashion (see here) that its US users now have a dedicated tab for vertical videos.The new video tab exists in the app's bottom bar represented by a play button icon. Previously, users had to click on a video and then scroll up or down to see more content this pretty much just cuts out having to choose a starting video. The development adds to X's existing video push, including its TV app, which is far from impressive.Bluesky is also attempting to capitalize on TikTok's uncertainty by announcing a new vertical videos feed on Sunday. "We had to get in on the video action, too Bluesky now has custom feeds for video! Like any other feed, you can choose to pin these or not. Bluesky is yours to customize," the company said in a post. Users can find trending videos in the Explore tab and pin the feed.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/x-adds-a-dedicated-video-tab-to-fill-the-tiktok-void-150044169.html?src=rss

TikTok might be (sort of) back for now, but that's not stopping other social media platforms from trying to horn in on its business. Bluesky is the latest, introducing a TikTok-like vertical video feature on mobile called Trending Videos, now available in the explore tab, the company announced in a post on its app."We had to get in on the video action too Bluesky now has custom feeds for video! Like any other feed, you can choose to pin these [to your home screen] or not. Bluesky is yours to customize," the company wrote.I was able to access the feature on my Android phone by tapping "Search." In that screen, the Trending Videos (Beta)" section appeared prominently, and hitting "View more" brought up a number of short videos (many imported from TikTok). Swiping up brings up a succession of new videos la TikTok, though Bluesky didn't say what algorithm it uses to suggest them. If you don't see the feature at first, just restart the app, Bluesky suggests.In the same thread, the company shouted out other developers building TikTok rivals using the same AT Protocol used by Bluesky (Tik, Skylight, Bluescreen), most of which are still in closed testing.X introduced its own vertical video feature almost simultaneously, as it also seeks to profit from TikTok's removal from US app stores. "An immersive new home for videos is rolling out to users in the US today," the platform announced in a post. Also announced in the last day or so is Edits, an Instagram video editing tool designed to challenge TikTok's CapCut.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-created-its-own-tiktok-like-feature-called-trending-videos-130056093.html?src=rss

OpenAI debuts o1 Mini AI model for ChatGPT.

Company plans to launch a 100TB HDD in the future

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies sank Tuesday as bullish investor sentiment surrounding cryptocurrencies cooled after President Donald Trump's inauguration.

The Mustard Fish is one of the three secret fish added in the latest Roblox Fisch update. It's a new Bestiary find that can give you around 7,000 EXP, helping you level up quickly in the game. You can also sell it for a lot of in-game money to grab totems and other important stuff.

The launch of Black Ops 6s first season delivered plenty of content, keeping players immersed with the introduction of new weapons, special events, and game modes. A key highlight was the integration with Warzone, which introduced a fresh Resurgence map and incorporated the Omnivemovement system, adding dynamic gameplay options to the battle royale experience.

Theres a sort of evil out there, says Sheriff Truman in an episode of David Lynchs iconic TV series, Twin Peaks.That line gets to the heart of the work of the filmmaker, whose family announced his death Jan. 16, 2025. Lynchs films and TV series reflected the dark, ominous, often bizarre underbelly of American culture one increasingly out of the shadows today.As someone who teaches film noir and horror, I often think about the ways American cinema holds up a mirror to society.Lynch was a master at this.Many of Lynchs filmslike 1986s Blue Velvet and 1997s Lost Highwaycan be unsparing and graphic, with imagery that was described by critics as disturbing and all chaos upon their release.But beyond those bewildering effects, Lynch was onto something.His images of corruption, violence and toxic masculinity ring all too familiar in America today.Take Blue Velvet. The film focuses on a naive college student, Jeffrey Beaumont, whose idyllic suburban life framed with white picket fences is turned inside out when he finds a human ear on the edge of a road. This grisly discovery draws him into the orbit of a violent sociopath, Frank Booth, and an alluring lounge singer named Dorothy Vallens, whom Booth sadistically torments while holding her child and husband whose ear, it turns out, was the one Beaumont had found hostage.Kyle MacLachlan as Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet [Photo: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis/Getty Images]Beaumont nonetheless finds himself perversely attracted to Vallens and descends deeper into the shadowy world lurking beneath his hometown a world of smoke-filled bars and drug dens frequented by Booth and an array of freakish characters, including pimps, addicts and a corrupt detective.Booths haunting line, Now, its dark, serves as a potent refrain.The corruption, perversion and violence depicted in Blue Velvet are indeed extreme. But the acts Booth perpetrates also recall the stories of sexual abuse that have emerged from organizations including the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts.As the exposure of such crimes continue to pile up, they become less an aberration but a dire warning of something thats deeply ingrained in our culture.These evils are sensational and appalling, and theres an impulse to perceive them as existing outside of our realities, perpetrated by people who arent like us. What Twin Peaks, Lynchs hit TV series, and Blue Velvet do so effectively is tell viewers that those hidden worlds where venality and cruelty reside can be found just around the corner, in places that we might see but tend to ignore.In Lost Highway, David Lynch fuses the worlds of good and evil.And then there are the uncanny and eerie worlds depicted in Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. The characters in those searing films seem to live in parallel realities governed by good and evil.Lost Highway begins with a jazz musician, Fred Madison, being convicted of killing his wife. He claims, however, to have no memory of the crime. Exploring the theme of alternate worlds, Lynch thrusts Madison into an illusory realm inhabited by killers, drug dealers and pornographers by merging his identity into that of a young mechanic named Pete Dayton. In doing so, Lynch combines the worlds of normality and perversity into one.In the 1990s, artists like Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, whose music is included on the official soundtrack of Lost Highway, also confronted audiences with images of decadence and social decay, which were inspired by his own disturbing experiences in Hollywood and the music industry.These dark themes have since been personified in rich and powerful men like Sean Diddy Combs, Bill Cosby and Jeffrey Epstein who, for years, skated along the surface of high society with their perversions hidden from the public.In his 2001 film, Mulholland Drive, Lynch turns his attention to Hollywood and the wretchedness that seems baked into its very nature.A wide-eyed and innocent aspiring actress named Betty Elms arrives in Los Angeles with visions of stardom. Her struggle to achieve success one that ends in depression and death is certainly tragic. But its also not very surprising, given that she was trying to make it in a corrupt system that all too often bestows its rewards on the undeserving or those who are willing to compromise their morals.As with so many who go to Hollywood with big dreams only to find that fame is beyond their reach, Elms is unprepared for an industry so consumed with exploitation and corruption. Her fate mimics that of the women who, desperate for stardom, ended up falling into the trap set by Harvey Weinstein.Lynchs death comes at a time when America seems to be hurtling toward an ever-darker future. Perhaps its one foretold by politicians turning a deaf ear to acts of sexual assault, tolerating the vilification of victims or even bragging that they can get away with murder.Lynchs vital body of work warns that the cruelty of such people isnt really what we should fear most. It is, instead, those who laugh, cheer or simply turn away faint responses that enable and empower such behaviors, giving them an acceptable place in the world.When Lynchs films were first released, they often appeared as surreal, funhouse mirror reflections of society.Today, they speak of profound and terrible truths we cant ignore.This is an updated version of an article originally published on Oct. 25, 2019. Billy J. Stratton is a professor of English and literary arts at the University of Denver.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

On April 3, 1968, standing before a crowded church, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. painted his vision for justice. Ive seen the Promised Land, he said. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.Twenty-two hours later, he was assassinated.Kings prophetic words express the virtue of hope amid hardship. He was not optimistic that he would reach the Promised Land, yet he was hopeful about the ultimate goal.In conversation, hope and optimism can often be used as synonyms. But theres an important gap between them, as psychology research suggests.One of the most common tools to measure optimism asks people how much they agree with statements such as, In uncertain times, I usually expect the best. Those who strongly agree are regarded as highly optimistic.But optimism can rely on a sense of luck over action. Self-help books on optimism are lined with hackslike imagining your greatest possible self or focusing on the best-case scenario.My psychology research studies how people perceive hope and justice. Long-term hope is not about looking on the bright side. It is a mindset that helps people endure challenges, tackle them head-on and keep their eyes on the goala virtue that King and other community leaders exemplify.We, not meHope is often defined in psychological research as having a strong will to succeed and plans to reach a goal.Hope is stronger than optimism at predicting academic success and peoples ability to cope with pain. Plenty of scientific evidence suggests that hope improves individuals health and boosts their well-being.But branding hope as a self-improvement tool cheapens this long-established virtue. Hope has benefits beyond the self. Thus, many psychologists are expanding the study of hope beyond personal success. My research team defines this virtuous hope as striving toward a purposeful vision of the common gooda hope often shaped by hardship and strengthened through relationships.Many leaders, including King, have channeled that lesson to inspire change. Centuries of spiritual and philosophical work describe hope as a virtue that, like love, is a decision, not a feeling.The myth of timeKing wasnt known for looking on the bright side or expecting the best from others. He faced repeated waves of criticism, and, at the time of his death, fewer Americans approved of him than of the Vietnam War.In Letter from a Birmingham Jail, King lamented the optimism of moderate white Americans who said they supported his goals but took little action. There is a strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills, he wrote. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively.He chastised society for believing that improvement would simply happen on its own. When he said, The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice, he was not describing its natural trajectory, but what people have the power to change. You cannot expect greener pastures if they are not tended today.King was not alone in leveraging virtuous hope for justice. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire described hope as an existential imperative that promotes action. Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison, called hope a powerful weapon.Forged in adversityWhat makes hope a virtue is not its ability to promote happiness and success but its commitment to a greater good beyond the self.I study virtuous hope in a South African Zulu community, where there are few reasons for optimism. South Africa has the worlds steepest inequality. Unemployment is high, and social mobility is low. This is the part of the country where HIV is most widespread, with the percentage near 50% in some communities.We studied several people seen as embodying hope, based on their reputation and community suggestions. These individuals demonstrated an unwavering focus on striving for a better future, often unglued from expectations of personal success.One local farmer nominated by his community struggled to buy seeds for his crops but still helped others apply for grants to buy them. Even when his own future was uncertain, he was not hoarding. He described his hope as a commitment to help others. His hope is not a positive expectation but a moral commitment.Our interviewees did not describe hardship as a suppressor of hope but as its context to grow.One unemployed young woman said she had applied for jobs for four years and would continue, though she was not nave about the tough future. She said applying for jobs and reading to her child were her acts of hope. Her hope didnt expect a quick improvement, yet it warded off paralysis.Many of our interviewees anchored their hope in their Christian faith, as did King. King often referenced St. Paul, one of the first Christian writers, who wrote, Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Now this hope does not disappoint us.Hope, in other words, plays the long game: enduring suffering with integrity. Like Kings, it manifests in hardship and is refined in adversity. Hope enables communities to march for justice and democracy even while tasting the danger of dictatorship, apartheid, or oligarchy.Hope knows it may take another generation to reach the Promised Land, but it acts today to bend the moral arc toward justice.Kendra Thomas is an associate professor of psychology at Hope College.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Design studio Inxects has developed a wearable that translates environmental stress signals into physical sensations to let users feel humanity's impact on nature.The Gaia Communication System (GCS) incorporates a sensor-laced vest and wrist sleeves that gather data about the health of plants, soil, air and ecosystems before translating these readings into haptic feedback in the form of vibrations.The Gaia device is packed with sensors for collecting environmental dataDanish studio Inxects designed the system to give people an intuitive and visceral way of understanding the suffering of plants and animals due to pollution, climate change and habitat destruction.The expectation is that this kind of sensory engagement will have a deeper impact on the human psyche than the mere reading of facts and data.The vest translates environmental data into vibrationsIn particular, the studio envisions Gaia being used by architects, who could walk through project sites listening, testing and feeling the natural environment before they begin designing.Inxects founder Pavels Hedstrm, an architect himself, said he was inspired to create Gaia while he was working in the corporate building industry, which he saw as prioritising human growth and industrial progress over concerns for other forms of life.The sensors include one that can detect early signs of plant stress"Despite attempts to create 'sustainable architecture', I noticed a significant disconnect," Hedstrm told Dezeen. "We were designing projects for tropical climates while sitting in an office in Denmark completely removed from the ecosystems we were impacting.""This experience revealed a larger issue: the gap between humans and nature. While we have access to vast amounts of environmental data, we struggle to change our behaviour largely due to a fundamental lack of empathy for non-human life."When conceptualising the communication system, Hedstrm drew on the behaviour of animals such as ants, who can detect carbon dioxide levels through specialised organs and use this information to clean or otherwise change their nests.Creators Inxects imagine the vest being used by architects to connect with natureThe sensors built into Gaia can measure carbon dioxide levels, temperature and relative humidity to identify changes in air quality, while clarity and pH are measured to determine the water quality of rivers and wetlands.There is also a spectral sensor that analyses light wavelengths invisible to the human eye to detect early signs of plant stress and a bioacoustic sensor that captures animal and insect communication to monitor biodiversity."I found inspiration in the insect world species like ants, which detect CO2 changes, and bees, which sense temperature and humidity," said Hedstrm. "They rely on these specialised environmental sensory systems to make decisions vital for their survival."The system is meant to enable a more intuitive form of communication"The GCS builds on this biomimetic principle, providing humans with an extended sensory system to reconnect with the environments we inhabit," he added.Hedstrm also sees a connection between Gaia and the "deep listening" practices of many indigenous cultures, where people adjust their behaviour around small changes they detect in the natural environment."The ultimate vision is a world where we no longer need to rely heavily on technology to connect with nature," he said. "But until then, projects like the GCS can help minimise the gap between humans and the rest of nature."Read: Ford's Feel the View smart window lets blind passengers enjoy the landscapeIn addition to the sensors, the Gaia vest contains a battery and solar panels for power, a microcontroller, an LED light and five haptic motors on the heart, upper back, lower back and kidneys spots selected for their high sensitivity to vibrations.The vibration patterns are modelled on the human pulse, with faster, irregular rhythms indicating signs of stress such as polluted water or declining biodiversity.At the moment, these line up to whichever sensor the user has manually selected, but in the future Inxects hopes to create a more complex feedback system where multiple sensors can operate simultaneously and different rhythms and intensities represent different indicators.Inxects has developed a functional prototype of the deviceThe studio says that it expects users to be able to learn to intuitively "read" these overlapping patterns over time, similar to how blind individuals have been able to learn to "see" images through vibration patterns on the tongue through devices like Wicab's BrainPort.Scientific studies support the idea that humans can learn a new sensory language based on haptics, said Hedstrm. He has tested the Gaia system himself and said he found the initial sensations surprisingly powerful."The vibrations resembled stress signals, triggering a physical response like an adrenaline rush," said Hedstrm."Over time, with repeated exposure, the feedback became less shocking and began to feel more like a form of communication as if the system was relaying messages from the lifeforms being observed."It includes haptic motors on the heart, upper back, lower back and kidneysThe Gaia prototype was featured in the exhibition Strange Adaptations at the Copenhagen Architecture Forum in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the end of 2024.Inxects intends to continue testing and refining the device, which Hedstrm sees as sitting somewhere between a conceptual exploration and a functional product.Aside from architects, he says he can see Gaia being used by urban planners, politicians and other decision-makers.Inxects was founded by Hedstrm in 2021 to explore the intersection of architecture, wearble design, technology and ecological awareness. His previous work includes a jacket that can make drinking water from fog, which won the Lexus Design Award in 2023.The post Gaia vest gives architects an "extended sensory system" to feel the health of a site appeared first on Dezeen.