Author: dailyguardian.ae
Apple TV has emerged as the quiet winner of the streaming wars over the past few years, but it seems the growing slate of its critically-acclaimed films and TV shows is going to cost you more going forward. Apple has just raised the subscription price of its streaming platform. The monthly plan now costs $14.99, up from the previous $12.99 fee. Apple TV now costs three times what it did at launch The annual plan, on the other hand, has climbed from $99 to $199 for users in the US. This is the fourth price hike for Apple TV in…
We have entered the age of biohacking now. And no, I am not talking about the extreme cases like Bryan Johnson, who is spending millions of dollars on ambitious health and de-aging goals. The average audience for wearables is now asking for more. They are feeding the sensing data collected by smartwatches, bands, and rings to AI agents, and pulling in more insights about their bodies. I created one such dashboard for myself using Claude in less than 10 minutes to make sense of the data collected by my smart ring. But there is only so much you can do…
South Korea wants to make access to artificial intelligence as easy as electricity or public transit. Instead of leaving premium AI tools behind a subscription, the government plans to pay for them, giving every citizen free access through a new initiative called ‘AI for All’. According to the Wall Street Journal, the program is designed to boost the use of homegrown AI chatbots while reducing the country’s dependence on models developed in the US and China. ‘AI for All’ aims to put premium chatbots in everyone’s hands The AI tools will go well beyond answering questions. They will integrate with…
Meta’s smart glasses have a nickname now, and it’s not a compliment. People are calling them “pervert glasses,” a label earned through months of secret filming, harassment, and creeps using the camera to record strangers without consent. Now Meta appears to have a fix in the works. Buried in a newly granted patent is Meta’s possible answer, and it’s about time. What Meta’s new patent promises The patent describes a “hardware privacy mute circuit,” filed earlier this year and granted just last week. It never names Meta’s glasses directly, but the illustrations look unmistakably like the Ray-Ban partnership currently on…
Meta’s smart glasses have already started facing restrictions in pubs, restaurants, theaters, and courtrooms across the UK. Now, one of New York City’s better-known nightclubs is bringing the same privacy fight to the US. Basement has announced that smart glasses are not allowed inside the venue because of its existing no-photo and no-video policy (via Futurism). Anyone who brings them in, whether they are wearing the glasses or simply carrying them in a bag, will be asked to leave and could even be permanently banned. People generally do not like being filmed by strangers. Being recorded without realizing it is…
Smartphone cameras have become remarkably good at squeezing detail out of difficult scenes, but there is still one familiar enemy: darkness. When the light disappears, even expensive phones can produce grainy images, muddy shadows and smeared fine details. A new AI-based image enhancement technique could offer a different way forward. Researchers from Wuhan University in China have developed LL-Refiner, a two-stage machine-learning system designed to improve ultra-high-definition low-light images without sacrificing the small details that make photographs look natural. The work was reported by Tech Xplore and published in the IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica on July 3, 2026. Instead…
Drive down almost any main street in the US, and chances are an AI-powered camera is taking notice. Over the past few years, police departments across the country have quietly installed thousands of automated license plate readers to monitor daily traffic. But while law enforcement pitched these as simple crime-fighting upgrades, growing fears over constant location tracking and unauthorized police misuse have triggered a massive backlash. At the center of the conflict is Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company whose roadside units scan and log billions of vehicle details every month. Police departments argue these automatic license plate readers are vital…
There’s a specific kind of dread that comes with posting something small and watching it explode to a million strangers who missed all the context. Thankfully, Bluesky just built an escape hatch to avoid this horror. The platform now lets you opt out of its algorithmic Discover feed, meaning your posts stop getting pushed to people who don’t already follow you. How Bluesky’s algorithmic opt-out feature works Even Bluesky’s announcement states not everyone wants to go viral; sometimes you’re just posting for your people. To be clear, this option doesn’t make your account private. Anyone can still visit your profile…
Solid-state batteries have long been promised as the holy grail of energy storage. They promise to double energy density compared to traditional options, slash charging times, and eliminate the risk of thermal fires. Despite that, the technology has yet to achieve widespread commercial adoption, and the main culprit is dendrites. These microscopic, needle-like structures form inside solid-state batteries during charging, bore through the solid ceramic electrolyte, and bridge the electrodes, causing a short circuit. Now, researchers from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have discovered a surprisingly simple fix for this persistent problem. According to a paper published in…
Apple TV is home to a handful of beloved original TV shows and an increasingly wide slate of films, including some classics. On the same day the streaming service is hiking up the fee, we are hearing news of yet another heavy-hitting addition to the content portfolio. According to Deadline, Apple has acquired worldwide rights for streaming “Small Prophets,” which first made its premiere on BBC iPlayer and BBC TV earlier this year. And before we dig into more details, here is the interesting part. Small Prophets currently has a rating of 100% freshness on Rotten Tomatoes, which is pretty…