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Hollywood audition stories are always a fun joy to hear. So, here are 15 examples of auditions for iconic roles going completely sideways.
Back in the mid-1990s, when The Net was among the top box office draws and Americans were just starting to flock online in droves, kids had to swipe their parents' credit cards or find a fraudulent number online to access adult content on the web. But today's kids—even in states with the strictest age verification laws—know they can just use Google.
Last month, a study analyzing the relative popularity of Google search terms found that age verification laws shift users' search behavior. It's impossible to tell if the shift represents young users attempting to circumvent the child-focused law or adult users who aren't the actual target of the laws. But overall, enforcement causes nearly half of users to stop searching for popular adult sites complying with laws and instead search for a noncompliant rival (48 percent) or virtual private network (VPN) services (34 percent), which are used to mask a location and circumvent age checks on preferred sites, the study found.
"Individuals adapt primarily by moving to content providers that do not require age verification," the study concluded.
Skype, the online video-calling service, is shutting down in May after more than two decades of service. For those of a certain generation, Skype changed everything. Before it launched in...
The European Union has announced details of new mandatory labels for smartphones and tablets sold in the bloc, which include ratings for energy efficiency, durability, and repairability. Hardware will also have to meet new “ecodesign requirements” to be sold in the EU, including a requirement to make spare parts available for repair.
The labels, which will be required for any devices that go on sale from June 20th onwards, are similar to existing ones for home appliances and TVs. They display the product’s energy efficiency rating, on a scale from A to G, along with battery life, the number of charge cycles the battery is rated for, letter grades for durability and repairability, and any applicable IP rating for protection from dust and water.
Alongside the labels the EU is introducing “ecodesign requirements” imposing minimum standards on the same products. Those include protection from splashes of water (and dust particles larger than 1mm for phones), scratch and drop protection, batteries that retain at least 80 percent of their capacity after 800 charging cycles, and making “critical spare parts” available within 5-10 working days. Manufacturers are also required to provide operating system updates within six months of the source code becoming available — a bar that Samsung would have failed to meet with its recent One UI 7 rollout.
Covered products include smartphones and tablets with screens up to 17.4 inches, along with cordless landline phones and feature phones. Phones with rollable displays are exempted — not that any are on sale yet, though they’re coming — while Windows-based tablets will be covered by a separate scheme for computers.
Google Messages has started rolling out sensitive content warnings for nudity after first unveiling the feature late last year. The new feature will perform two key actions if the AI-based system detects message containing a nude image: it will blur any of those photo and trigger a warning if your child tries to open, send or forward them. Finally, it will provide resources for you and your child to get help. All detection happens on the device to ensure images and data remain private.
Sensitive content warnings are enabled by default for supervised users and signed-in unsupervised teens, the company notes. Parents control the feature for supervised users via the Family Link app, but unsupervised teens aged 13 to 17 can turn it off in Google Messages settings. The feature is off by default for everyone else.
With sensitive content warnings enabled, images are blurred and a "speed bump" prompt opens allowing the user to block the sender, while offering a link to a resource page detailing why nudes can be harmful. Next, it asks the user if they still want to open the message with "No, don't view," and "Yes, view" options. If an attempt is made to send an image, it provides similar options. So, it doesn't completely block children from sending nudes, but merely provides a warning.
The feature is powered by Google's SafetyCore system which allows AI-powered on-device content classification without sending "identifiable data or any of the classified content or results to Google servers," according to the company. It only just started arriving on Android devices and is not yet widely available, 9to5Google wrote.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-messages-starts-rolling-out-sensitive-content-warnings-for-nude-images-130525437.html?src=rss
The Trump White House is proposing to eliminate most federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and issued a statement yesterday alleging that NPR and PBS "spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'"
"The NPR, PBS grift has ripped us off for too long," the White House statement said.
White House budget director Russ Vought drafted a memo for a rescission plan that would eliminate funding already approved by Congress, according to multiple news reports. This includes $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), or about two years' worth of funding for the nonprofit group that provides money to public broadcasting stations.
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