People who drink tea regularly appear less likely to develop heart and vascular disease than people who don’t, according to a new study published today in the Journal of Internal Medicine.
The post Tea Drinkers May Have Fewer Heart and Blood Vessel Problems, Large Study Finds appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Smart TVs running operating systems from Samsung, Vizio, and Roku continue sending data to automatic content recognition (ACR) endpoints after users opt out of tracking in the devices’ settings, according to research published on Monday. The paper from Northeastern University researchers points to potential privacy violations from some of the biggest TV brands.
ACR captures video screenshots or audio clips from smart TVs and sends the data to remote servers, where it's used for things like measuring content viewership and serving targeted ads.
The paper, "Watching the Watchers: Privacy Analysis of US Smart TV Automatic Content Recognition," examined eight smart TV OSes across 12 smart TVs from 10 manufacturers (Amazon, Hisense, LG, Roku, Samsung, Sony, Supersonic, TCL, Vizio, and Westinghouse) to examine when smart TVs use ACR and how effective opting out of user tracking is.
© https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/modern-living-room-with-smart-tv-and-remote-control-royalty-free-image/2226225055
Smart TVs running operating systems from Samsung, Vizio, and Roku continue sending data to automatic content recognition (ACR) endpoints after users opt out of tracking in the devices’ settings, according to research published on Monday. The paper from Northeastern University researchers points to potential privacy violations from some of the biggest TV brands.
ACR captures video screenshots or audio clips from smart TVs and sends the data to remote servers, where it's used for things like measuring content viewership and serving targeted ads.
The paper, "Watching the Watchers: Privacy Analysis of US Smart TV Automatic Content Recognition," examined eight smart TV OSes across 12 smart TVs from 10 manufacturers (Amazon, Hisense, LG, Roku, Samsung, Sony, Supersonic, TCL, Vizio, and Westinghouse) to examine when smart TVs use ACR and how effective opting out of user tracking is.
© https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/modern-living-room-with-smart-tv-and-remote-control-royalty-free-image/2226225055
Apple’s new true-crime podcast Heart, hosted by Karen Kilgariff, released all eight episodes on October 19, 2026 on Apple Podcasts for Apple TV subscribers. According to Apple, nonsubscribers could hear the first three episodes free that day, with one new episode released weekly through the finale on November 23, 2026. Content note: Heart deals with […]
The post Heart podcast episode guide: what all eight episodes of the Apple Original cover appeared first on The Mac Observer.
Just when you thought the holiday season couldn’t arrive any earlier this year, here comes an AI-generated Christmas movie.
Titled “Merry the Christmas Witch,” it’s based on a children’s book and will inspire awe in its young audience about the magic of the holidays — through ghoulish and uncanny AI imagery (you can see footage here). The film — which currently has no distributor — cost $1.5 million to make, but its director brags that using AI actually saved him tens of millions of dollars.
“We would never have gotten a movie like ‘Merry’ made if we didn’t take that chance,” Tom Walsh, CEO of the indeopendent production company TW3 Entertainment, and who directed and co-wrote the film, told Variety.
According to Walsh, when he was inspired to make a movie out of author Bobbi Hess’s original book, he realized that it would cost $80 million to make. An “unknown property” like this one would be a hard sell to studios, he explained.
“We were kind of stuck,” Walsh told Varietey. “The doors are not very open to new kind[s] of ideas and new kind[s] of stories and everything, and that makes it a little tough for independent filmmakers, so that’s where AI came in.”
You can sympathize with his position. A movie industry obsessed with intellectual property and averse to risk-taking has made it harder than ever for independent creatives to fund their projects and reach an audience.
Still, many filmmakers dedicated to the art form figure out a way to do it, and by and large, they’re not relying on AI to generate their movies wholesale. This year’s breakout hit “Obsession,” for example, made half a billion dollars on a budget of less than a million with an original story, becoming even more profitable than the 1999 found-footage sensation “The Blair Witch Project.”
I need someone to tell me with a straight face that they'd sit in a theater to watch this pic.twitter.com/BbpJfHXSe6
— Nuñez (@guycen) October 13, 2026
In all, roughly 50 people worked on “Merry the Christmas Witch” for 10 months in what Walsh described as a “hybrid AI production.” But really, it sounds like it was mostly AI. Walsh hired human actors to record the script and help guide how the characters moved and sounded. In the end, though, he decided to replace their performances with AI-generated voices using ElevenLab’s AI voice synthesizer, alongside video generators like Seedance and Nanobanana for the imagery.
The human element, he insists, was still important.
“The quality of your AI production depends on the quality of your traditional production staff,” he told Variety. “If you have inexperienced people who don’t know production…and timing and how shots should look, it’s going to look like garbage.”
Of course, relying on AI probably did save him millions of dollars. But the end result is that the million and a half he did put in was to churn out obvious slop.
More on AI: AI Agent Blamed for Deleting Entire Upcoming Season of TV Show
The post Director Blows $1.5 Million Generating Horrendous AI Slop Movie, Says AI Actually Saved Him Tens of Millions appeared first on Futurism.
Rapid AI adoption left workers cleaning up a flood of errors and low-quality work
Employers around the globe are grappling with the fallout from rushing to adopt fast-changing artificial intelligence tools.
Meta has scaled back plans to axe staff and use more AI agents after the company found employees were spending more and more time cleaning up technical and security errors, Reuters reported. And after thinning its workforce, especially middle managers, in a 2023 efficiency push, the company is expanding its managerial ranks again, LinkedIn posts from workers show.
Continue reading...
© Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images
© Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images
© Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images
Smart is back in the two-seater business. The Mercedes-Benz and Geely joint venture unveiled the all-electric Smart #2 at the Paris Motor Show today, with a 35.8 kWh LFP battery, up to 290 km (180 miles) of WLTP range, and a starting price of €19,990.
That’s more than double the range of the last Smart EQ Fortwo, which never got DC fast charging. Early orders open in Europe tomorrow, and deliveries start in 2027.
more…A while ago I experimented with an iPhone 3Gs and a color diffraction grating, just see what different lights would look like through the filter; no art intended. One experiment led to another, and suddenly a series of photos with an LED flashlight turns into a new Photoshop project. (Above: Also seen on “about […]
The post The making of the new Low End Mac “Lightning” wallpaper appeared first on Low End Mac.
Login