Category: Technologies

  • Nintendo Is Charging $70 for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

    Nintendo Is Charging $70 for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

    Already set aside $60 for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom? You’ll have to cough up a bit more if you plan on buying it from Nintendo’s eShop.

    Following Wednesday’s Nintendo Direct presentation, the eShop displayed a price of $70 for the upcoming blockbuster.

    Stores like Best Buy and GameStop offered the option to preorder the game for $60 before halting preorders Tuesday, as documented by Twitter user @Wario64. As of Wednesday evening, preorders are back for $60 at GameStop and $70 at Best Buy.

    Tears of the Kingdom, the sequel to 2017’s acclaimed Breath of the Wild, is scheduled to launch on May 12. Nintendo revealed a new trailer for Tears of the Kingdom during Wednesday’s presentation as well as a collector’s edition that will release on launch day.

    Other notable announcements from Nintendo Direct include Pikmin 4’s July 21 release date, the surprise reveal of Metroid Prime Remastered, and the Nintendo Online service getting a slate of Game Boy and Game Boy Advance classics.

  • Disney Plus Lost Subscribers for the First Time

    Disney Plus Lost Subscribers for the First Time

    Disney Plus lost 2.4 million subscribers in the three months ended Dec. 31, Disney said Wednesday, as the subscriber base of its flagship streaming service fell for the first time since the company launched it in 2019.

    Disney‘s deepest streaming-subscriber losses were at its Disney Plus Hotstar service, which is an Indian offering priced way lower than the company’s streaming services elsewhere. There, its member base dropped by 3.8 million accounts.

    And Disney Plus also lost 200,000 subscribers in the US and Canada. But growth internationally elsewhere offset some of the declines. Overall, Disney Plus has 161.8 million subscribers as of the end of December.

    By comparison, Netflix, the biggest subscription streaming service of its kind, has amassed more than 230 million global subscribers in the decade-plus since it started streaming. But Netflix recorded its deepest subscriber losses in a decade during the first half of last year, a sign that the competition for streaming customers was stretched to a breaking point.

    Disney also noted Wednesday that Hulu subscribers grew to 48 million and that ESPN Plus membership rose to 24.9 million, both increases of 2%.

    Early on, Disney Plus proved to be the standout success of the so-called streaming wars, a period when seemingly every major media company (and some tech ones) rolled out their own streaming-video services. Disney Plus’ growth has far outstripped that of all the new competitors from Apple, HBO, NBCUniversal, Discovery and others. One media analyst called Disney Plus “one of the greatest product launches of all time.”

    Disney has estimated that Disney Plus will have between 215 million and 245 million global subscribers by the time the service is five years old, in late 2024.

    Now playing:Watch this:Amazon’s MGM takeover is big for Prime Video — but not…

    3:34
  • Meta Completes Acquisition of VR Fitness Company Within

    Meta Completes Acquisition of VR Fitness Company Within

    As the VR headset race heats up in 2023, Meta has been slowly acquiring many of the bigger developers in the field. Now it finally has a fitness platform that it’s been trying to acquire for two years.

    Meta announced Wednesday that it closed on the acquisition of Within, maker of the subscription fitness app Supernatural. Meta originally announced its intent to acquire the developer back in 2021. The Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint to stop the deal last year on grounds of Meta building a “virtual reality empire,” but it was reported last week that Meta had won approval for the acquisition.

    “Today marks an exciting new chapter for Supernatural, as we officially join Meta,” Within CEO Chris Milk said in a statement. “We’re elated for the opportunity to bring joy, awe, wonder, and a happier, healthier life to more people around the world.”

    Supernatural pairs with smartwatches to measure heart rate, and uses video scans of trainers overlaid in game-like training settings to create workouts that can feel like a VR version of Peloton. Fitness has been a major interest of Meta for the future of its VR and AR platforms, along with subscription services. Supernatural looks like a building block to fill both needs. CNET’s Joan Solsman has given it several in-depth tests over the last few years.

    The closing of the deal happens amid a number of other VR headsets arriving in the next year, including the PlayStation VR 2, HTC Vive XR Elite and Apple’s expected mixed reality device.

    The bigger question is whether Meta enables Supernatural to work across other VR headsets and platforms, and whether the app as it currently exists will change significantly now that it’s officially part of Meta.

    The terms of the deal were not disclosed by Meta.

  • Nintendo Direct Start Time: When Should You Tune In?

    Nintendo Direct Start Time: When Should You Tune In?

    Nintendo will tease games coming to Switch in its February 2023 Nintendo Direct on Wednesday, it said in a tweet Tuesday. The Feb. 8 livestream will include “roughly 40 minutes of information” about titles launching in the first half of the year, a lineup that includes the highly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

    When does the Nintendo Direct start?

    The Nintendo Direct livestream starts at 2 p.m. PT (5 p.m. ET) on Wednesday, which is 10 p.m. GMT or 9 a.m. Thursday AEST.

    How to watch the Nintendo Direct

    The event will be streaming from Nintendo’s YouTube channel. We’ve embedded the YouTube link above, so you can watch right here.

    What games will Nintendo show during its Nintendo Direct?

    The majority of Switch owners are eagerly awaiting The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the sequel to 2017’s Breath of the Wild, which got a trailer during last September’s Nintendo Direct. It’s out on May 12, so we can expect details about that game’s story and gameplay mechanics. The game briefly appeared on Nintendo’s digital eShop for $70 on Tuesday, instead of the usual $60, but that figure has since been removed.

    Pikmin 4 is scheduled for release in 2023, so Nintendo will likely give us a look at the colorful real-time strategy game and narrow down the release date.

    Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp screenshotAdvance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp screenshot

    The delayed Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp will probably resurface in Wednesday’s livestream.

    Nintendo

    Nintendo will probably announce a new release date for Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, the remake collection featuring two Game Boy Advance turn-based strategy games. It was originally scheduled to come out last April, but was delayed due to the war in Ukraine.

    It could reveal details of an expansion or update for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, since those games are expected to add compatibility with the Pokemon Home mobile app soon. That might be held for Pokemon Day, Feb. 27, since the company typically announces something big in a livestream celebrating the series’ anniversary.

    Immediate upcoming titles include Theatrhythm Final Bar Line on Feb. 16, Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe and Octopath Traveler 2 on Feb. 24 and Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon on March 17.

    We’ll probably get hints about Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s next batch of downloadable tracks, since wave 4 should be arriving soon, as well as updates about when Mario Party 3, Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2, 1080 Snowboarding and Excitebike 64 will be added to the N64 retro library in the Switch Online subscription service.

    It’s also possible the company will look at upcoming nongame projects: its first US Super Nintendo World theme park opens next week and the Super Mario Bros. movie hits theaters on April 7.

    People anticipating Metroid Prime 4 probably shouldn’t get their hopes up though — it’s been nearly six years since that game was announced and we have yet to see gameplay. At least we got Metroid Dread.

    Could a Switch successor be revealed during the Nintendo Direct?

    It’s unlikely that Nintendo will take the focus away from Tears of the Kingdom and other upcoming games, but we’ll likely see the company’s next console soon. The Switch will be six years old in March, and the technical issues of games like Pokemon Scarlet and Violet have highlight the hardware’s advanced age (along with Sony and Microsoft’s technically superior rivals, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X).

    Now playing:Watch this:Nintendo Switch, 5 Years In: What Comes Next?

    8:02

    The Switch sold 122.55 million units overall as of the end of 2022, the company announced its latest earnings report on Tuesday, putting it ahead of the PS4 and making it the No. 3 bestselling console of all time. It’s now behind only the Nintendo DS (at 154 million) and PS2 (155 million).

    Despite hitting this milestone, Bloomberg noted Nintendo missed console sales targets toward the year’s end. Company boss Shuntaro Furukawa didn’t answer questions about its next console, it noted. Last year, VGC reported that Furukawa said that a smooth transition to the next generation of hardware is “a major focus” for the company — we can expect to get a firmer sense of its plans this year.

  • Netflix’s Biggest Hit Movies and Shows, Ranked (According to Netflix)

    Netflix’s Biggest Hit Movies and Shows, Ranked (According to Netflix)

    Netflix, for years, was notoriously tight-lipped about its viewership. But after a few years of dropping stats for some of its programming, Netflix launched a website in mid-November posting charts of its most popular shows and movies from the past week, as well as a global ranking of its all-time most watched titles.

    The charts, which are updated every week and ranked by the total number of hours that subscribers spent watching them, represent an unprecedented trove of data about what’s popular on Netflix. The site details the most popular titles in the last week not only globally but also for more than 90 countries. And it’s meant to help subscribers like you get a better sense of the biggest hits on the world’s largest subscription streaming service, in the hopes you’ll discover something new to watch.

    The company updates its weekly “Top 10 on Netflix” every Tuesday, based on hours viewed from Monday through Sunday the previous week for original and licensed titles. Netflix’s rankings are broken down into top 10 charts for films in English, TV in English, films in non-English languages and TV in non-English languages.

    A ranking of all-time most watched titles also lives on the site, detailing shows that have the most viewing hours in their first 28 days of release. Netflix also has these split into films in English, TV in English, films in non-English languages and TV in non-English languages — but for our charts below, we don’t differentiate between language.

    If a new season releases its episodes in two parts on different dates, Netflix counts the watch time of the first volume’s episodes for their first 28 days, then it counts the watch time of the second volume’s episodes for their first 28 days. These all-time rankings are also updated every Tuesday, whenever any programs make it into the charts during the week prior.

    Why the all-time rankings don’t include You People (yet)

    Shows and movies need sustained popularity in many countries to crack into the all-time most watched charts. That means you can see titles with “Top 10” badges in Netflix’s app for days, but they still may not be generating enough hours of viewing to make the all-time rankings.

    For example, You People, a romantic-comedy movie, has generated 121.3 million hours of watch time in just its first 10 days. But TV shows need to eclipse half a billion hours to make it onto the all-time list, and films need more than 200 million.

    Even the most popular shows and movies need multiple weeks and enduring attention to accumulate enough.

    Netflix’s most watched films, ranked

    The following are Netflix’s most watched movies, based on Netflix’s own reporting of total hours viewed in the first 28 days of each titles’ release. Any changes are in bold text.

    1. Red Notice, an action movie starring Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds — 364 million hours.
    2. Don’t Look Up, a dark comedy with a star-packed cast — 359.8 million hours.
    3. Bird Box, a post-apocalyptic movie starring Sandra Bullock — 282 million hours.
    4. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, a whodunit sequel — 279.7 million hours.
    5. The Gray Man, a CIA action thriller — 253.9 million hours.
    6. The Adam Project, a sci-fi adventure comedy — 233.2 million hours.

    7. Extraction, an action movie starring Chris Hemsworth — 231.3 million hours.
    8. Purple Hearts, a romantic drama about a musician marrying a Marine — 228.7 million hours.
    9. The Unforgivable, a drama about a woman rebuilding her life after prison — 214.7 million hours.
    10. The Irishman, a period Mafia epic directed by Martin Scorsese — 214.6 million hours.

    Former top-ranking movies that have been bumped out of Netflix’s official all-time charts:

    • The Kissing Booth 2, a teen rom-com sequel — 209.3 million hours.
    • 6 Underground, a Michael Bay explosion-fest starring Ryan Reynolds — 205.5 million hours.
    • Spenser Confidential, an action-comedy starring Mark Wahlberg — 197.3 million hours.

    • Enola Holmes, a period detective film — 189.9 million hours.
    • Army of the Dead, a heist set in a zombie apocalypse — 187 million hours.

    • The Old Guard, an action-thriller starring Charlize Theron — 186 million hours.
    • Murder Mystery, a comedy starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston — 170 million hours.

    Netflix appears to have never released a non-English-language film that generated enough viewing hours to make it into an overall top-watched ranking. But additional widely watched non-English language movies on Netflix have included:

    • Troll, a Norwegian monster movie — 155.6 million hours.
    • Blood Red Sky, a German/British action horror film set during a plane hijacking — 110.5 million hours.
    • The Platform, a Spanish social commentary wrapped in a horror film — 108.1 million hours.
    • All Quiet on the Western Front, a German war drama — 101.4 million hours.
    • Black Crab, a Swedish apocalyptic war thriller starring Noomi Rapace — 94.1 million hours.
    • Through My Window, a Spanish teen romance — 92.4 million hours.
    • The Takedown, a French cop comedy — 78.6 million hours.
    • Below Zero, a Spanish action thriller about a breakout from a prison transport vehicle — 78.3 million hours.
    • My Name is Vendetta, an Italian crime/action film — 68.7 million hours.
    • Loving Adults, a Danish thriller about an extramarital affair — 67.3 million hours.

    Former top-ranking non-English movies that have been bumped out of the non-English top 10 include:

    • Rogue City, a French action thriller about an unorthodox team of cops — 66.6 million hours.
    • Carter, a South Korean action thriller about a man who wakes up with no memories and a voice in his ear — 65.4 million hours

    • The Forgotten Battle, a Dutch World War II film — 60.9 million hours.
    • Restless, a French action thriller — 59.1 million hours.
    • Lost Bullet, like a Fast & Furious movie but French — 58.3 million hours
    • Spoiled Brats, a French comedy about rich siblings tricked into earning their own living — 56.9 million hours.
    • #Alive, a South Korean movie about a gamer’s bid to survive the zombie apocalypse — 54.6 million hours.
    • Space Sweepers, a South Korean space western with a weaponized child-android — 53.3 million hours
    • The Last Mercenary, a French action movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme — 52.1 million hours.
    • Just Another Christmas, a Brazilian Christmas comedy — 48 million hours.

    Netflix’s most watched TV shows, ranked

    The following are Netflix’s most watched series, based on Netflix’s own reporting of total hours viewed in the first 28 days of each titles’ release. Again, if a new season releases its episodes in two volumes on different dates, Netflix counts the watch time of the first volume’s episodes for their first 28 days, then it counts the watch time of the second volume’s episodes for their first 28 days.

    Any changes in the rankings from the previous week are in bold text.

    1. Squid Game (season 1), a Korean survival thriller — 1.65 billion hours.

    2. Stranger Things (season 4), a retro sci-fi series — 1.35 billion hours.
    3. Wednesday, a coming-of-age supernatural dark comedy — 1.24 billion hours
    4. Dahmer, a true-crime serial killer series — 856.2 million hours.

    5. Money Heist (part 5), a Spanish-language thriller — 792.2 million hours.
    6. Bridgerton (season 2), a period romance — 656.3 million hours.
    7. Bridgerton (season 1) — 625.5 million hours.
    8. Money Heist (part 4) — 619 million hours.
    9. Stranger Things (season 3), a retro sci-fi series — 582.1 million hours.
    10. Lucifer (season 5), a fantasy police procedural — 569.5 million hours.
    11. All of Us Are Dead, a Korean zombie thriller taking place in a high school — 560.8 million hours.
    12. The Witcher (season 1), a fantasy show — 541 million hours.
    13. Inventing Anna, a true-crime limited series about a fake socialite — 511.9 million hours
    14. Ginny & Georgia (season 2), a mother-daughter dramedy — 504.8 million hours.

    Former top-ranking shows that have been bumped out of Netflix’s official all-time charts:

    • 13 Reasons Why (season 2), a controversial teen drama — 496.1 million hours.
    • Ozark (season 4), a crime drama series — 491.1 million hours.
    • The Witcher (season 2) — 484.3 million hours.
    • 13 Reasons Why (season 1) — 475.6 million hours
    • Maid, a limited series about a young mother fleeing abuse — 469.1 million hours.
    • You (season 3), a psychological thriller — 467.8 million hours.
    • You (season 2) — 457.4 million hours.
    • Stranger Things (season 2) — 427.4 million hours.
    • Money Heist (part 3) — 426.4 million hours.
    • Sex Education (season 3), a British teen dramedy — 419 million hours.
    • Ginny & Georgia (season 1), a dramedy about a young mom and kids — 381 million hours.
    • Extraordinary Attorney Woo (season 1), a South Korean legal drama — 402.5 million hours.

    • Café con Aroma de Mujer (season 1), a Colombian telenovela — 326.9 million hours.

    • Lupin (part 1), a French heist show — 316.8 million hours.
    • Elite (season 3), a Spanish teen drama — 275.3 million hours.

    • Who Killed Sara? (season 1), a Mexican mystery thriller — 266.4 million hours.
    • Elite (season 4) — 257.1 million hours.
    • The Queen of Flow (season 2), a musical Colombian telenovela — 230.3 million hours.

    • Lupin (part 2) — 214.1 million hours.
    • Dark Desire (season 1), a Mexican dramatic thriller — 213 million hours.

  • Galaxy S23 vs. iPhone 14: Comparing Samsung and Apple’s Newest Flagship Phones

    Galaxy S23 vs. iPhone 14: Comparing Samsung and Apple’s Newest Flagship Phones

    This story is part of Samsung Event, CNET’s collection of news, tips and advice around Samsung’s most popular products.

    Last week at its Samsung Unpacked event in San Francisco, Samsung revealed the new Galaxy S23 line, introducing the S23, S23 Plus and S23 Ultra. The new phones, the latest in Samsung’s popular Galaxy S line, have a host of features and camera improvements, and on paper they seem poised to be among the top phones of the year.

    Samsung/CNET

    Samsung’s all-new Galaxy S23 flagship lineup is now available to preorder, with devices shipping on Feb. 17. You can save on the latest devices with several Galaxy S23 preorder deals already available at Samsung, Best Buy, all the major phone carriers and more.

    Though the line is one of the first major tech launches of the year, the phone space is quite competitive. Apple and Google just refreshed their respective flagship lineups last fall, with Apple unveiling the Phone 14 and Google touting the Pixel 7. And new devices, including the OnePlus 11 5G, are right around the corner.

    Samsung’s devices are often directly compared to Apple’s, so we’re going to take a look at how the base S23 and the base iPhone 14 stack up when it comes to specs.

    iPhone 14 ProiPhone 14 Pro
    James Martin/CNET

    Samsung Galaxy S23 specs vs. Apple iPhone 14

    Galaxy S23 iPhone 14
    Display size, resolution, brightness 6.1-inch AMOLED; FHD+ (1,080×2,340 pixels); 120Hz Adaptive Refresh Rate; 1,750 nits 6.1-inch OLED; 2,532×1,170 pixels; 1,200 nits
    Pixel density 425 ppi 460 ppi
    Dimensions (Inches) 2.79 x 5.76 x 0.3 inches 5.78 x 2.82 x 0.31 inches
    Dimensions (Millimeters) 70.9 x 146.3 x 7.6mm 147 x 72 x 7.8mm
    Weight (Ounces, Grams) 5.93 oz.; 168.1g 6.07 oz.; 172g
    Mobile software Android 13 iOS 16
    Camera 50-megapixel (wide), 12-megapixel (ultra-wide), 10-megapixel (telephoto) 12-megapixel (wide), 12-megapixel (ultrawide)
    Front-facing camera 12-megapixel 12-megapixel
    Video capture 8K at 30 fps 4K at 60 fps
    Processor Galaxy-optimized Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Apple A15 Bionic
    RAM/Storage 8GB RAM + 128GB8GB RAM + 256GB 128GB, 256GB, 512GB
    Expandable storage None None
    Battery/Charging speeds 3,900 mAh (25W wired charging) Undisclosed; Apple claims 20 hours of video playback (25W wired charging)
    Fingerprint sensor In-display None (Face ID)
    Connector USB-C Lightning
    Headphone jack None None
    Special features 5G, 120Hz display, water-resistant (IP68), wireless PowerShare to charge other devices 5G enabled; MagSafe; water-resistant (IP68); wireless charging; dual-SIM capabilities (e-SIM)
    Price off-contract (USD) $800 (8GB/128GB) $799 (128GB), $899 (256GB), $1,099 (512GB)
    Price (GBP) 769 (8GB/128GB) 849 (128GB)
    Price (AUD) AU$1,249 (8GB/128GB) AU$1,399 (128GB)
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    6:08

  • Nintendo Direct: How to Watch, What Games to Expect from Wednesday’s Livestream

    Nintendo Direct: How to Watch, What Games to Expect from Wednesday’s Livestream

    Nintendo will offer a taste of the games coming to Switch in a Nintendo Direct on Wednesday, it said in a tweet Tuesday. The Feb. 8 livestream will include “roughly 40 minutes of information” about titles launching in the first half of 2023, a lineup that includes the highly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

    When does the Nintendo Direct start?

    The Nintendo Direct livestream starts at 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET on Wednesday, which converts to 10 p.m. GMT or 9 a.m. Thursday AEST.

    How to watch the Nintendo Direct

    The event will be streaming from Nintendo’s YouTube channel. We’ve embedded the YouTube link above, so you can watch right here.

    What games will Nintendo show during its Nintendo Direct?

    The majority of Switch owners are eagerly awaiting The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the sequel to 2017’s Breath of the Wild, which got a trailer during last September’s Nintendo Direct. It’s out on May 12, so we can expect details about that game’s story and gameplay mechanics.

    Pikmin 4 is scheduled for release in 2023, so Nintendo will likely give us a look at the colorful real-time strategy game and narrow down the release date.

    Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp screenshotAdvance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp screenshot

    The delayed Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp will probably resurface in Wednesday’s livestream.

    Nintendo

    Nintendo will likely reveal the new release date for Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, the remake collection featuring two Game Boy Advance turn-based strategy games. It was originally scheduled to come out last April, but got delayed due to the war in Ukraine.

    It could reveal details of an expansion or update for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, since those games are expected to add compatibility with the Pokemon Home mobile app soon. That might be held for Pokemon Day, Feb. 27, since the company typically announces something big in a livestream celebrating the game series’ anniversary.

    Other upcoming titles include Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe (an enhanced port of the 2011 Wii game) and Octopath Traveler 2 on Feb. 24, as well as Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon on March 17.

    We’ll probably get hints about Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s next batch of downloadable tracks, since wave 4 should be arriving soon, as well as updates about when Mario Party 3, Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2, 1080 Snowboarding and Excitebike 64 will be added to the N64 retro library in the Switch Online subscription service.

    It’s also possible the company will look at upcoming non-Switch projects: its first US Super Nintendo World theme park opens next week and the Super Mario Bros. movie hits theaters on April 7.

    People anticipating Metroid Prime 4 probably shouldn’t get their hopes up though — it’s been nearly six years since that game was announced and we have yet to see gameplay. At least we got Metroid Dread.

    Could a Switch successor be revealed during the Nintendo Direct?

    It’s unlikely that Nintendo will take the focus away from Tears of the Kingdom and other upcoming games, but we’ll likely see the company’s next console soon. The Switch will be six years old in March, and the technical issues of games like Pokemon Scarlet and Violet highlight the aging hardware (along with Sony and Microsoft’s technically superior PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X competitor consoles).

    Now playing:Watch this:Nintendo Switch, 5 Years In: What Comes Next?

    8:02

    The Switch sold 122.55 million units overall as of the end of 2022, the company announced its latest earnings report on Tuesday, putting it ahead of the PS4 and making it the third best-selling console of all time. It’s now behind only the DS (at 154 million) and PS2 (155 million).

    Despite hitting this milestone, Bloomberg noted Nintendo missed console sales targets toward the year’s end. Company boss Shuntaro Furukawa didn’t answer questions about its next console, it noted. Last year, VGC reported that Furukawa said that a smooth transition to the next generation of hardware is “a major focus” for the company — we can expect to get a firmer sense of its plans this year.

  • Microsoft’s New AI-Powered Bing: Here Are 5 Things You’ll Be Able to Do

    Microsoft’s New AI-Powered Bing: Here Are 5 Things You’ll Be Able to Do

    Microsoft on Tuesday announced an enhanced Bing, detailing how it’s using the AI tech behind ChatGPT to add in a slew of new capabilities to the longtime second-place search engine. There’s a waiting list for the service now, and Microsoft says it will be available broadly in the coming months. There’ll be no charge for the service.

    CEO Satya Nadella said the juiced-up search service aims to take on queries that aren’t getting good results on today’s search engines. People increasingly use search engines to get advice and information on complex topics, not just a link to a website, and the AI boost to Bing aims to make it more usable.

    “It’s a new day in search,” Nadella said during the event on Tuesday.

    ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot from a company called OpenAI, burst onto the scene in November with a breathtaking capacity for drawing information from the web and presenting it in plausible essays, poems and other formats. It set off an intense interest in AI that has captured the attention of millions, including the Big Tech players. Last month, Microsoft said it would be investing billions of dollars into the company. Meanwhile, Google, the dominant search engine on the web, on Tuesday announced Bard, its ChatGPT challenger.

    Microsoft says its technology makes Bing your co-pilot on the web. Here’s a taste of what you can try out with the AI-powered search.

    Search

    You can search on Bing.com, as always. What’s new here is that Microsoft has applied OpenAI’s model to its search ranking engine. That led to a huge leap in the relevance of search results, the company says, so Microsoft believes you’ll find better responses to your basic searches on Bing.

    The AI also augments the search results with written summaries. A use case Microsoft predicts will be popular is planning a trip. If you’re going to New Orleans for three days, for example, what should you do? A search on Bing will show you not just links to sites with sight-seeing and museum suggestions for the Big Easy, but also a sidebar with a summary of information from around the web, written by AI. The sidebar will link to sources that can let you explore further.

    Ask for more details

    If you want to ask more questions after your initial Bing search, you can click the chat icon near the top of the search page. Here you can refine the results. In the trip planning example, you can do things like clarify that you’re visiting New Orleans with kids, or ask for a three-day itinerary for your visit.

    Bing can offer pretty fine-grained results in this conversational format. In addition to a detailed itinerary with descriptions of the places you’ll visit, you can ask for travel times between activities in New Orleans, for example.

    This also applies to searching for advice on a home improvement project, like installing air conditioning in your house. If you clarify that you have air ducts in your home already, for example, it can give you information more relevant to your project.

    Write something

    The new Bing can write for you. After you research your home improvement project, for example, you ask Bing to write an email to your partner summarizing what you found. You can edit the writing, click into the text box of a new email and have Bing insert it there.

    You can also ask Bing to write something with a fresh prompt, similar to many examples of ChatGPT’s writing that users have shared online recently. Anything from the whimsical “write a story about a curious dog who goes to the moon for preschoolers” to the more serious “write a letter to my apartment contesting an upcoming increase in rent” can generate text. You can also tweak the tone of the writing, like requesting it be funny.

    Get context for a website

    On the newly revamped Edge browser, you’ll be able to open a Bing sidebar and get more information about something you’re looking at online. You can open a product listing on Amazon, for example, and then open up the sidebar to ask Bing to tell you about the product. It’ll give you a summary of the product’s specs, cost and use cases.

    For a specific iRobot vacuum, for example, you can also ask Bing for examples of reviews from cat owners. That’ll pull up quotes from Amazon reviews for the vacuum that mention cats and some summary from Bing.

    You can also ask Bing to give you the key takeaways from a long document, and then compare it to another document.

    Ask a broad question

    If you’ve ever typed a query like “who are some famous Mexican painters?” into a search engine, you’re probably familiar with the experience of getting an excerpt from one website, a list of relevant people and a link to Wikipedia. The request is so broad that you typically have to leave the search page to get the answer. The new Bing wants you to stay, at least for a while.

    Ask about Mexican painters on the new Bing and you’ll get a written summary of the key players and a description of their work. You can click on links to sources to learn more, if you like, or you can ask for more fine-grained results in the chat function.

    Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personal finance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. For more, see this post.

  • The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite Is Back to Its All-Time Low, Get It for Just $215

    If you’re in the market for a new tablet, it may be easy to gravitate towards an iPad if you’re a die-hard Mac fan. But if you prefer Android and you want to stick with what you know, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite is a great option. We tested an older version of this tablet and were impressed by its performance.

    While it typically costs $350, we’ve seen the price drop significantly on this tablet on occasion — and right now, you can get it for just $215 — which is the lowest price we’ve seen. That’s a $135 savings.

    The Samsung Galaxy S6 Lite tablet has a speedy Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G Processor and flexible storage with 64GB or128GB, which can both be expanded up to 1TB with a microSD card. Thinner and lighter than the previous Tab S4, it comes with a 10.4-inch LCD display, thinner bezels and rounded corners.

    You can sign in with on-screen fingerprint scanner and a two-tap gesture to wake the tablet. There’s no headphone jack, but there are dual speakers that are tuned by AKG and Dolby Atmos. And it comes with an S Pen. Though the tablet came out in 2020, this model is the 2022 version so you’re getting the latest update.


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