hightechz.net

20 Jun

The best Apple deals you can shop ahead of Amazon Prime Day

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Apple’s latest iPad Air is an even better value now it’s $100 off. If you want to get a head start on back-to-school shopping — or upgrade your Apple gear — there are already some great deals worth exploring ahead of Amazon Prime Day. From earbuds and laptops to tablets, the early deals are already starting to trickle in. Prices might drop even further during Amazon’s four-day sales event, sure, but gadgets like the latest AirPods and iPad Air are already matching their all-time low, giving you a solid chance to save before the four-day shopping event officially kicks off…

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20 Jun

28 Years Later is a bleak fever dream with rage pumping through its veins

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While it wasn't the first film to feature fast-moving ghouls, there is no denying how much of an impact 28 Days Later had on modern zombie movies. It was a gripping and nauseating wonder, whose action felt uniquely visceral thanks, in part, to director Danny Boyle's inspired use of a digital video camera. And there was a gut-wrenching sense of hopelessness baked into writer Alex Garland's script that made 28 Days Later feel far more grounded than most of the zombie films that inspired it. Boyle and Garland stepped back from the franchise as it continued with a graphic novel…

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20 Jun

Apple’s tiny M4 Mac Mini has dropped to its lowest price yet

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If you’ve been curious about trying out a Mac for the first time or need a small computer powerful enough to be your home media server, we strongly recommend the latest Mac Mini. Thankfully, the step-up M4 model with 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM is on sale at Amazon and B&H Photo for $689 ($110 off), which marks its lowest price ever. The entry-level model with 256GB of storage is also on sale at Amazon and B&H Photo for $469 ($130 off) — another all-time low. Former Verge staffer Chris Welch called the machine “a tiny wonder” in…

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19 Jun

SpaceX Starship explodes again, this time on the ground

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Late Wednesday night at about 11PM CT, SpaceX was about to perform a static fire test of Ship 36, ahead of a planned 10th flight test for its Starship, when there was suddenly a massive explosion at the Massey’s Testing Center site. SpaceX says “A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for,” and that there are no hazards to residents in the area of its recently incorporated town of Starbase, Texas. “After completing a single-engine static fire earlier this week, the vehicle was in the process of loading…

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19 Jun

Adobe launches a new ‘computational photography’ camera app for iPhones

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A photo taken by Project Indigo. | Image: Adobe Adobe has a new computational photography camera app for iPhones – and one of its creators, Marc Levoy, helped make the impressive computational photography features that made some of Google’s earlier Pixel cameras shine. The new app, called Project Indigo, was released last week by Adobe Labs. It’s free and available for the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max, and all iPhone 14 models and above. (Though Adobe recommends using an iPhone 15 Pro or newer.) It also doesn’t require logging into an Adobe account to…

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19 Jun

Spotify’s HiFi lossless streaming might really, finally, actually be coming soon

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We’ve been waiting for Spotify’s lossless streaming for more than four years, but there are some new and promising hints that the feature might finally arrive sometime soon. The X account for Spicetify, a command-line tool that lets you customize the Spotify client, says that a new version of Spotify includes some hidden mentions of lossless. In a screenshot the account shared, for example, lossless appears in the sidebar to connect a device. Another screenshot shows lossless as an option for streaming quality in the app’s settings. The Spicetify account also says it has seen code that lossless will be…

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19 Jun

Eufy’s X10 Pro Omni mopping robovac has returned to its best price to date

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Now that warmer weather is here, spring cleaning duties are likely falling by the wayside. But the good news is you can enjoy the outdoors and clean your home with zero effort by letting a robot vacuum do the hard work for you. For that, we recommend a versatile model like the Eufy X10 Pro Omni, which is currently on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy to $549.99 ($250 off), matching its all-time low. The X10 Pro Omni, one of our favorite midrange vacuum / mop combos, boasts an array of features to help it tackle daily messes, including oscillating dual spinning…

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19 Jun

Elden Ring Nightreign is getting even harder bosses

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The bosses in Elden Ring Nightreign are already pretty tough. But if you’ve gotten good and need a harder challenge, you’ll be able to take on “Everdark Sovereigns,” which are more difficult versions of the game’s Nightlord foes you face to conclude a run. “These limited-time versions of the Nightlords are extremely challenging and pose an even greater threat to the Nightfarers with new moves and increased power,” according to a blog post from Bandai Namco. The first Everdark Sovereign you can fight is a new version of Adel, Baron of the Night, aka Gaping Jaw. If you’ve beaten the…

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18 Jun

Ancestra actually says a lot about the current state of AI-generated videos

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After watching writer / director Eliza McNitt's new short film Ancestra, I can see why a number of Hollywood studios are interested in generative AI. Many of the shots were made and refined solely with prompts, in collaboration with Google's DeepMind team. It's obvious what Darren Aronofsky's AI-focused Primordial Soup production house and Google stand to gain from the normalization of this kind of creative workflow. But when you sit down to listen to McNitt and Aronofsky talk about how the short came together, it is hard not to think about generative AI's potential to usher in a new era…

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18 Jun

YouTube is plugging Veo 3 AI videos directly into Shorts

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YouTube is bringing its Veo 3 AI video generation model, which my colleague Allison Johnson recently called “a slop monger’s dream,” to YouTube Shorts later this summer, according to a Cannes Lions keynote from YouTube CEO Neal Mohan. Shorts creators can already take advantage of the previous-generation Veo 2 model to generate backgrounds with Dream Screen as well as standalone clips. Mohan didn’t specify exactly what Veo 3 will enable in Shorts, but he did mention Veo 3’s improved video quality and that it can incorporate audio, so presumably those upgrades will be coming to Shorts. It’s also unclear if…

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