Spotify's real-time lyrics feature is now available on Google's Nest Hub smart display. The feature lets users listen to music while watching a stream of lyrics on screen. It was rolled out to Android, iOS, smart TVs, game consoles, and desktops back in November. Google’s smart display is available in a range of sizes, including a 10-inch version.
Amazon is offering 30 free games for Prime Day 2022. The list includes BioWare's Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Grid Legends. There are also three Star Wars games and Need for Speed Heat. You can download all the games for free if you're a Prime subscriber.
YouTube suspended the Lofi Girl channel's popular "lofi hip hop radio" streams. The stream was one of the most popular places to listen to calming music while studying. YouTube said the streams were taken down due to a false copyright complaint from a Malaysian label. The company said the complaints were leveraged as an attack against the channel, not a concern for copyright laws.
The Wikimedia Foundation and Facebook parent company Meta have developed an AI model to check citations. The tool can automatically scan citations at scale to verify their accuracy. It can also suggest alternative citations when it finds a poorly sourced passage. Meta hopes to build a platform Wikipedia editors can use to verify and correct footnotes systematically.
Oracle is reportedly considering cost-cutting measures to the tune of $1 billion. The measures could result in thousands of job cuts by August, according to a report. The cuts come after the tech giant's $28.4 billion acquisition of healthcare IT giant Cerner. Oracle CEO Safra Catz said in June that the company's revenue growth in the cloud unit was poised to “accelerate substantially” in the coming year.
YouTube announced last June that Picture-in-Picture was coming to its iPhone and iPad apps. Google let YouTube Premium subscribers manually enable the feature two months later. PiP is now available to Premium subscribers globally and free users in the United States. It's not live on several devices we checked today.
The cryptocurrency rout has spread to startups that offer users digital tokens, pushing down digital asset prices and driving away hordes of users. The startups—part of what has been called Web3—allowed users to play virtual games and collect digital assets, and the companies’ growth was hinged on interest from people eager to wade into blockchain-based assets. The broader cryptocurrency downturn this year is causing a downturn in users in many Web3 companies, and players and investors are re-evaluating the utility of token-based business models.
WatchOS 9 is available to the public beta starting today. It's the most substantive and cohesive update to watchOS that we've seen in a while. The update lets the Apple Watch compete with niche sports watches from Garmin and Polar. It wouldn't be surprising to see a major shake-up to the Watch line this fall.
NASA and President Joe Biden shared the first image from the James Webb Space Telescope on Monday. The image is a snapshot of a cluster of galaxies known as SMACS 0723 as they appeared 4.6 billion years ago. NASA says it's the sharpest and "deepest" image of the distant universe to date.
Rivian Automotive is planning layoffs that could trim its workforce by about 5%. The company grew too quickly in some areas, Bloomberg reported. Rivian’s shares were down about 7% in mid-afternoon trading following the news. The Irvine, California-based company has about 14,000 employees.
Twitter shares closed down 11% Monday after Elon Musk said he wants to end his $44 billion takeover bid. Musk is upset with the number of bots and fake accounts on Twitter. Twitter says it will pursue legal action in Delaware court to enforce the deal. Musk could be forced to pay a $1 billion breakup fee for walking away.