Activision Blizzard announced that the Call of Duty League will shift to an online-only competition, shedding the in-person events because of the coronavirus.
The fear of COVID-19 is taking its toll on esports events held in live venues, where there are risks of the virus spreading from person to person. Yesterday, Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch League also announced that it would cancel all…
Amazon’s AI predicts context from search queries
March 12, 2020
Amazon is using AI and machine learning to predict context from customers’ queries. In a preprint paper accepted to the ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval scheduled to take place this month, Amazon researchers describe a system that…
Esports is tough: Super League Gaming lost $30.6 million on $1 million in revenue in 2019
March 12, 2020
Super League Gaming, an esports company that holds events for amateurs, reported that it lost $30.6 million in 2019, on revenues of $1 million.
That illustrates the reality of how it isn’t easy to make money in the fledgling esports market, at least for some…
After being in beta for shy of two years, YouTube is finally rolling out its “Explore” tab on both Android and iOS, a new home for trending content and much more.
In a post today, YouTube confirms that the Trending tab is being replaced with Explore and the change is rolling out now to all users. What’s different about Explore? Instead of just showing the most popular content on YouTube…
Samsung ‘Galaxy Sanitizing Service’ will disinfect your smartphone to fight coronavirus
March 12, 2020
Hand sanitizer, masks, and gloves are all good ways of combatting germs and viruses, but they’re all rendered irrelevant if you touch your dirty, germ-ridden smartphone. To help combat the coronavirus’ spread, Samsung is apparently kicking off a new “Galaxy Sanitizing…
Pixelmator gives sneak peek at upgraded iPhone app, new color picker on Mac, Split View on iPad, more
March 12, 2020
Pixelmator makes great image software for Mac and iOS and a round of major updates are coming to Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator Photo, and Pixelmator for iOS. The company teased some of the new features that will be arriving soon including a new color picker on Mac, Split View…
Google today penned an explainer on the Soli radar-based technology that ships inside its Pixel 4 smartphones. While many of the hardware details were previously known, the company for the first time peeled back the curtains on Soli’s AI models, which are trained to detect and recognize motion gestures with low latency. While it’s early days — the Pixel 4 and the Pixel 4 XL are the first…
Official iPhone cases on sale from $24, plus $300 off MacBook Pro, and Apple Watch band starting at $6
March 12, 2020
Thursday’s best deals include fresh price drops on official Apple iPhone cases, plus markdowns on 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Apple Watch bands. Hit the jump for all that and more in the latest 9to5Toys Lunch Break.
Save on official iPhone cases
Amazon is once again…
Epic Games has acquired Cubic Motion, a provider of automated performance-driven facial animation technology for video games, film, broadcast, and immersive experiences such as virtual reality.
Cubic Motion has helped Epic on its quest to create graphically realistic virtual…
Juice jacking has become more prevalent in the news over the last year. The term refers to hackers setting up malicious code in free public USB chargers at malls, hotels, airports, etc. to read and steal data from mobile devices. But is juice jacking something iPhone owners need to worry about? Let’s look at how susceptible iOS is and how to prevent juice jacking on iPhone.
Duck Duck Go, the…
