Category: Technology

What you need to know

• Last month, the Google Pixel 6a launched with a 60Hz refresh rate display.
• A new mod now makes the Pixel 6a run at 90Hz — thanks to developers who tested it.
• Pixel 6 and the Pixel 6a are said to have shared some similarities in their displays.

Since the Google Pixel 6a was announced late last month, there have been several debates about the omissions that Google has made to bring the best of the Pixel at an affordable price. That included the highly argued 60Hz refresh rate display.

That’s because, under $449, there are a couple of other options like the Nothing phone (1) and Samsung Galaxy A53 — both of which offer higher 120Hz refresh rate panels. However, it seems the Google Pixel 6a may have purposefully chosen not to use the faster refresh rate, despite the panel’s compatibility, according to recent discoveries from a developer.

Square Enix has shared details about the latest patch for Final Fantasy 14with 6.2 set to introduce new dungeons, quests and the Island Sanctuary mode – check out the trailer below.

The Buried Memory patch is set for release later in August and will feature the new dungeon The Fell Court Of Troia.

“Having uncovered the voidgate in the undersea treasure vault, you now seek to use it to travel to the Thirteenth. Beyond the emptiness of the rift awaits a shadowed castle swarming with voidsent, and you steel yourselves for a hostile reception,” reads the description in the patch notes.

The 6.2 patch will also bring with it a new high-end raid Pandæmonium: Abyssos, and a new main scenario quest, Buried Memory.

According to the patch notes, “five millennia ago, the great wyrm Azdaja vanished into the void, and for long years Vrtra had despaired of being reunited with his dear sister. With the encouragement of his people from her, however, he has found the resolve to search for her, and sets forth with the Warrior of Light for a world engulfed in Darkness.”

The new patch will also introduce the long-awaited Island Sanctuary mode. Similar to Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, Island Sanctuary is “an island paradise abundant with wildlife, where crops may be sown and minions let to roam. What will you learn in nature’s embrace─and what will you create from this newfound inspiration? Make ready to set sail, for your hideaway awaits!”

Earlier this year, it was confirmed players will be able to invite each other to their respective islands.

You can check out the complete patch notes, which detail new crafting recipes, main scenario revisions and new trials here.

In other news, Geoff Keighley has revealed a little more about what people can expect from Gamescom Opening Night Live, promising a “big spectacle.”

When you search with certain queries on Google, the results will yield a featured snippet – a short paragraph giving you a quick explanation of whatever you were looking for. Sometimes it works great, and sometimes it misses the ball game completely, but now Google is employing its artificial intelligence smarts to improve the quality of the snippets.

In a blog post Thursday, Google explained that it’s now using its latest AI model – the Multitask Unified Model (MUM) – to deliver the featured snippets. This model understands the idea of ​​consensus, meaning that it can cross reference a snippet it found with other high-quality sources online to see whether it fits the bill.

“We’ve found that this consensus-based technique has meaningfully improved the quality and helpfulness of featured snippet callouts,” the company said.

Google’s algorithms will now check several high-quality sources to see whether a snippet is accurate.
Credit: Google

This should also rectify some of those situations when snippets aren’t very helpful. Google provided an example featuring the query “when did snoopy assassinate Abraham Lincoln,” which yielded a snippet giving a date and info about the actual Lincoln assassination. As Google puts it, this “clearly isn’t the most helpful way to display this result.” I’ve tried that query on Google and it yielded no snippet, which should be indicative of Google’s new AI model in action. The company says this update has reduced the triggering of featured snippets in such cases by 40 percent.

Besides this improvement, Google also said it’s expanding its “About this result” to more places, providing additional context on the web pages it used to produce a search result. The feature will be available in eight more languages ​​– Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, and Indonesian – later this year.

Google also said it would start showing content advisories in more places. These warnings are shown when Google’s algorithms aren’t entirely sure of the quality of the search results they produce, often when a topic is fast evolving.

Finally, the company said it has partnered with MediaWise and PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs to develop free information literacy lesson plans for teachers of middle and high school students.

A Waluigi bachelorette party is the talk of the town on TikTok.

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When TikToker @cherriesorbet, a burlesque and cosplay costume designer, was getting married, she knew her bachelorette party was going to be special. But few brides would be daring enough to go with a Waluigi theme. For the uninitiated, Waluigi is a villain from the Mario franchise. He’s Luigi’s longtime nemesis and sidekick to Wario.

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The bridal party each dressed up as a different version of Waluigi, with the bride herself going as Elvis Waluigi. There was a Cowboy Waluigi, Pirate Waluigi, Sexy Firefighter Waluigi, Cult Waluigi, Chef Waluigi and a Strong Man Waluigi.

Each Waluigi guessed who would get the drunkest that night, and most of them guessed Elvis, the bride.

“I do a lot of burlesque and cosplay costuming, so there was no way I wasn’t going to do something like this for my Bach,” the bride explained on TikTok.

The video earned nearly 1 million views. People loved the commitment to the theme.

“I think that this is the best event that has ever happened ever,” a person commented.

“Imagine being at a restaurant and just seeing an army of differently themed Waluigi’s pulling up,” a user wrote.

“Everyone brought it with their costumes,” another said.

“I’m so impressed that everyone went ALL OUT with props and everything!” to TikToker replied.

“I’ve never been in love with so many people at once,” someone added.

Watch this living room that hasn’t been updated since the ’60s get a modern redesign:

The post Waluigi bachelorette party dubbed ‘best event that has ever happened’ on TikTok appeared first on In The Know.

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Nintendo Switch Sports launched back in April and has seen a steady-ish stream of updates since, adding in new features like full Leg Strap support and adjusting some ranking stuff, but today they dropped a bombshell feature that wasn’t in the patch notes.

Out of nowhere, the Nintendo of America account tweeted, “Interested in a tougher challenge in #NintendoSwitchSports? Try entering ZR + R + A or ZL + L + ? on the difficulty select screen” along with an in-game screenshot showing them squaring off in Chambara against “Matt”.

Interested in a tougher challenge in #NintendoSwitchSports? Try entering ZR + R + A or ZL + L + ? on the difficulty select screen. pic.twitter.com/UI62lApxvw

—Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) August 12, 2022

If you know your Wii Sports memes well, you’ll know that Matt is a legend among the community for being an absolute menace in Boxing (and Swordplay in Wii Sports Resort). He acted as your trainer in the original Wii Sports, and was the most difficult Boxing opponent in the game – and now he’s back to grind you to dust once again.

We tested this ourselves and, yep, there he is. It’s worth noting that we could only get him to show up in Chambara (which makes sense given Swordplay is his thing) and there’s no prompt or chime to show you’ve entered the code correctly. Doing the same in other sports did pit us against “Legend” opponents, though.

Nintendo Switch Sports is available now for a special price of $57.90 on Amazon with free shipping.

One thing that will help bolster adoption of cloud gaming is by making it as easy as possible to fire up a game. To that end, it is testing a way to start playing something with a single click from results, even if it’s not on the company’s own platform.

The test, which was by Bryant Chapel of The Nerf Report, not only enables folks to directly launch a game on Stadia, but it works with , and as well. If you’re enrolled in the test and search for a game on one of those platforms (such as or ), you may see a Play button in the information panel. Clicking that will either start up the game or take you to a landing page on the respective streaming platform.

and saw the feature in action too. The latter noted the search results can show if a game has a timed trial on Stadia or if it’s available for free or as part of a premium subscription.

It’s not incredibly surprising to see Google testing out such functionality. For several years, it has shown folks where they can. For instance, if you have a Netflix subscription and search for stranger things on Google, you’ll be able to start watching the show with a single click.

In hindsight, it’s a little odd that Google hasn’t offered this feature for Stadia from the jump in order to promote its cloud gaming service. On the other hand, Stadia’s store didn’t have a search function for a year and a half, which offered further evidence that the platform isn’t exactly one of Google’s highest priorities. However, Stadia is not shutting down and Google is slowly adding more features to it.

Qualcomm announced its latest Wear OS chipsets in July this year: the W5 Gen 1 and W5+ Gen 1. Both SoCs are a massive upgrade over their predecessor and give Wear OS a fighting chance against the Apple Watch for the first time in years. Oppo was quick to confirm that it would be the first to launch a W5 Gen 1 smartwatch on the market, with a leak indicating the wearable would have an Apple Watch-y design. The Chinese smartphone maker has officially taken the wraps off the Oppo Watch 3 in China, with a claimed battery life of up to four days.

Oppo’s 2022 smartwatch lineup consists of two models: the Watch 3 and the Watch 3 Pro (via GSMArena). Both wearables feature a 5ATM-certified aluminum chassis with easily replaceable bands. Qualcomm’s W5 Gen 1 chip is ticking inside them. Unlike the W5+ Gen 1, the non-plus model lacks a low-power coprocessor, which is handled by Oppo’s Apollo 4 Plus chip.

While the best Android smartwatches feature a circular display, the Oppo Watch 3 takes design inspiration from the Apple Watch. It has a rectangular chassis housing a 1.75-inch AMOLED panel with 3D glass on top and a rotating crown on the right. Other specs include 1GB RAM, a 400mAh battery, 32GB storage, Bluetooth 5.0, eSIM support, NFC, and 100+ workout tracking modes. A 400mAh battery powers the watch, which can seemingly last up to four days. This can be extended to ten days when the watch is used in light mode. A full charge takes around 60 minutes, while a 10-minute top-up will allow the wearable to last for a day.

The Oppo Watch 3 Pro lives up to its ‘Pro’ moniker with a bigger 1.91-inch AMOLED LTPO display—a first for a wearable. The superior display tech also allows the watch to support Always-on Display. It packs a massive 550mAh battery for a claimed battery life of up to five days. With LTE, the battery life drops to four days, while in light mode, the smartwatch can last up to 15 days. Despite the larger battery, the company says topping up the cell takes just over an hour.

Both smartwatches house an array of sensors, including an accelerometer, gyroscope, optical heart rate monitor, SpO2, ECG, barometric, and ambient light sensor. They are already up for preorder in China and will go on sale starting August 19. Prices for the Oppo Watch 3 start at CNY 1,499 (~$220), with the Pro model carrying a CNY 1,899 (~$275) price tag.

In China, the Oppo Watch 3 lineup runs on proprietary software. If it makes its way to other international markets, it should run Wear OS 3, which could lead to its battery life taking a hit.

When someone passes you care about – it’s a sad time. Did you know if you’re a relative or executor, then you can close their social media accounts?

Here’s how we closed a friend’s Facebook page:

Facebook has a dedicated space for Managing a deceased person’s account.

You can fill in an online form for a Special request for a medically incapacitated or deceased person’s account https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/228813257197480

You’ll need to add your contact details, and the person you would like to remove or memorialize. Add in the URL link to the person’s profile and the account’s email address.

Then you have a couple of options:

• Please memorialize this account
• Please remove this account because the account owner is deceased
• Please remove this account because the account owner is medically incapacitated
• I have a special request.

I submitted my friend’s details and Facebook account. It took around an hour or two for my application to be processed.

I received a confirmation email from Facebook titled ‘Memorialise Request’.

I’m very sorry for your loss. As you requested, we’ve memorialized your loved one’s account.
You can learn more about memorialization by visiting the Help Center: https://www.facebook.com/help/103897939701143?ref=cr

My thoughts are with you and your loved ones.
Please let me know if there are any questions I can help answer.

You can still find this person on Facebook. There is a message that says:

Remembering Person Name

We hope that people who love FirstName will find comfort in visiting her profile to remember and celebrate her life.

You can your own Tributes: Share stories, commemorate a special day or let friends and family know that you’re thinking about her.

Here I uploaded two of my favorite photos of my friend. Her mother de ella uploaded a copy of the funeral order of service de ella. I hope over time, it becomes a place where all of her relatives and friends of her can go and remember her fondly.

You might like to leave instructions in your will on how you’d like your social media accounts handled.

For more information:

Hard Questions: What Should Happen to People’s Online Identity When They Die? https://about.fb.com/news/2017/08/what-should-happen-to-online-identity/

Adding a Legacy Contact
https://about.fb.com/news/2015/02/adding-a-legacy-contact/

Remembering Our Loved Ones
https://about.fb.com/news/2014/02/remembering-our-loved-ones/