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These realityOS trademarks hint at an imminent Apple AR/VR headset launch

Amidst the growing list of leaks surrounding the rumored Apple AR/VR headset , we've heard mentions of a realityOS platform that will supposedly provide the software foundations for the device – and now trademark filings are popping up that register that very name. As spotted by Parker Ortolani , a consumer product manager at the Verge, Polygon, and the Vox Media Podcast network, there are now two US trademarks for the "realityOS" name, held by a company called Realityo Systems LLC. These are the only two trademarks held by that company, and there's no information about it online. The filings were made in December 2021, and reference the "design and development of computer hardware, software, peripherals, and computer and video games" – and there's also a specific mention of "wearable computer hardware". It cannot be a coincidence that the “realityOS” trademark owned by a company that seemingly doesn’t exist and is specifically for “weara...

Here's why an Amazon Fire tablet, not an iPad, should be your Prime Day buy

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People often use our Amazon Prime Day list of the best iPads to buy a brand-new Apple tablet. The slates are often so expensive that even a slight discount can result in lots of money saved. There's a lot to be said for purchasing an iPad – they're popular, powerful and pretty, and so it isn't surprising to find a number of iPad models sitting on our list of the best tablets .  But you could save yourself huge sums of money if you pushed Apple's super-expensive slates and bank-breaking accessories from the forefront of your mind, and instead looked at the other end of the price spectrum. Amazon's Fire tablets The Amazon Fire range of slates are the epitome of what you'd class as " cheap tablets ". They come with tacky-feeling plastic bodies, weak chipsets, and software that's so full of pre-loaded apps that most people don't even realise that, at its core, they're Android devices. Yet for most folk, they deliver all you'll need–...

I tried Google's text-to-image AI and was shocked by the results

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Text-to-image artificial intelligence programs aren’t anything new. Indeed, existing neural networks like DALL-E have impressed us with their ability to generate simple, photorealistic images from brief yet descriptive sentences. But this week I was introduced to Imagen . Developed by Google Research’s Brain Team, Imagen is an AI similar to that of DALL-E and LDM. However, Brain Team’s aim with Imagen is to generate images with a greater level of accuracy and fidelity, using that same short and descriptive sentence method to create them. An example of such sentences would be – as per demonstrations on the Imagen website – “A photo of a fuzzy panda wearing a cowboy hat and black leather jacket riding a bike on top of a mountain.” That’s quite a mouthful, but the sentence is structured in such a way that the AI can identify each item as its own criteria. The AI then analyzes each segment of the sentence as a digestible chunk of information and attempts to produce an image as closely ...

One of our favorite Microsoft Word features is coming to the web app

Microsoft Word is set to receive an update that will extend a fan-favorite feature to the web application. According to a roadmap entry released by Microsoft, those that use the word processor exclusively on the web will soon benefit from the popular dark mode feature . "Dark Mode in Word for Web will provide a modern look for documents while giving users the ability to reduce eye strain and accommodate light sensitivity from long hours at a computer screen," the company explains.  The roadmap says the feature is currently in development, although it lists the general availability as May 2022, which either suggests the rollout is imminent or that the release timeframe is a little longer than stated. Easy on the eyes  Microsoft Word is easily among the best office software products going right now, especially if you work at a big organization or study as a student. It's ubiquitous, with good reason.  While Google Docs is really good (and, obviously, free), Word...

AMD could be readying a super-cheap GPU to tackle Nvidia’s rumored GTX 1630

AMD might have a new graphics card planned as a super-cheap GPU , slotting under the current RX 6400, or that’s one theory being bandied about via the rumor mill right now. This comes from Phoronix.com which reported on findings in AMD’s Linux graphics driver (for Linux 5.19) which adds a new device ID for a ‘Beige Goby’ card. The Beige Goby family is low-end RDNA 2 (current-gen cards) built with the Navi 24 GPU, like the existing RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 graphics cards. We don’t know for sure what a potential new Navi 24 GPU might be: it could simply be a refresh of an existing model, the RX 6400 arguably, though we’re not sure how much sense it would make to jam another GPU into the line-up here – or it could be an entirely new product. So one theory as mentioned suggests that AMD could be preparing an RX 6300 model to sit underneath the RX 6400 at an even more wallet-friendly price point. Plenty of salt must be added at this point, because this is obviously just speculation – ...

Google Assistant could soon get even better at understanding your voice

Google Assistant can already recognize your voice from others and pick up what you're saying pretty well, but even more improvements look to be on the way: references to "personalized speech recognition" have started popping up in the code of the Google app for Android. This is courtesy of some keen-eyed observations from the team at 9to5Google , who found that the latest version of the app will offer to "store audio recordings on this device to help Google Assistant get better at recognizing what you say". While we don't have too much to go on here, it looks as though the feature could be similar to something Google already does on some of its smart speakers: processing some common queries locally on a device to speed up recognition and processing. Knowing your voice Based on the snippets of information found hidden in the app, if this functionality is turned off by the user then Google Assistant "will be less accurate at recognizing names and oth...

Samsung Galaxy S22 FE: what we want to see

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If the Samsung Galaxy S22 , Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus and Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra didn’t quite do it for you, there might be one more member of the S22 line left to consider, as we’re likely to see a Samsung Galaxy S22 FE. This would probably be an upper mid-range handset, designed to slot in at the bottom of the line. But given that the Galaxy S22 will have seen some price cuts by the time it lands, that may not neatly pan out. In any case, below we’ve collected everything that we’ve heard so far about the Samsung Galaxy S22 FE, and we’ve also included a wish list of things that we want from the phone. Cut to the chase What is it? A more affordable member of the S22 line When is it out? Probably October or later How much will it cost? Likely at least £699 / $699 / AU$999 Samsung Galaxy S22 FE release date and price It’s hard to predict when the Samsung Galaxy S22 FE might launch, as while the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE landed in January 2022, the Galaxy S20 FE hit stores i...