In the year 2000, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich answered questions from Slashdot’s readers. Late Friday night, the AV Club described Metallica’s appearance at the opening ceremonies for the (now online) version of Blizzard Entertainment’s annual event BlizzCon: The opening ceremonies were being broadcast online, both through the official BlizzCon page, YouTube, and Twitch. And you know what happens when licensed music…
Tag: MP3
10 Years After Its Discontinuation, Some Fans Still Love Microsoft’s Zune Mp3 Player
“It was weird to own a Zune in 2005,” remembers a new article in the Verge. “It is even weirder to own a Zune in 2021 — let alone 16 of them. And yet, 27-year-old Conner Woods proudly shows off his lineup on a kitchen table.”
They come in all different colors, shapes, and sizes, and each can be identified by that…
Can Chatbots Simulate Conversations with Dead People?
The author of the book Online Afterlives describes the unusual projects of people like Eugenia Kuyda, co-founder of Luka, an AI-powered chat simulator that books restaurant reservations and makes recommendations. Kuyda worked with computer scientists to convert several thousand text messages between deceased tech entrepreneur Roman Mazurenko and his friends and relatives into a chatbot simulation: “How are you there?” asks…
RIAA Takedowns Backfire as Pirated MP3s Now Surface on GitHub
Two weeks ago the RIAA asked GitHub to remove the open-source stream-ripper software youtube-dl. This request wasn’t well-received by developers, many of whom retaliated by posting copies of the code. Yesterday, things went from bad to worse when a user with the name ‘FuckTheRIAA’ uploaded three MP3s of the songs the RIAA mentioned in its takedown notice. TorrentFreak reports: A few…
‘youtube-dl’ Downloading Software Removed From GitHub By RIAA Takedown Notice
Jahta writes: The GitHub repository for the popular youtube-dl utility is offline after GitHub received a DMCA takedown notice from the RIAA. The notice claims that “The clear purpose of this source code is to (i) circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube, and (ii) reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by…
Private Intel Firm Buys Location Data to Track People to their ‘Doorstep’
A threat intelligence firm called HYAS, a private company that tries to prevent or investigates hacks against its clients, is buying location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on peoples’ phones around the world, and using it to unmask hackers. The company is a business, not a law enforcement agency, and claims to be able to track people to their “doorstep.”…
Microsoft’s Transcribe in Word Gives Office 365 Subscribers 5 Hours of Transcription a Month
Last October, Microsoft unveiled a transcription feature — Transcribe in Word — that is designed to let users leverage the power of the cloud to transcribe audio. After nearly a year in development, Transcribe in Word is now generally available in U.S. English at no cost to existing Microsoft 365 subscribers. It will come to Android and iOS later this year….
We Lose A Lot When Podcasts Go Closed Instead Of Open
Mike Masnick, writing at TechDirt: Last year, when Spotify purchased a bunch of podcast companies, we worried that it foretold the end of the open world of podcasting. You can get a Spotify account for free, but unlike most podcast apps, you can’t get any podcast you want via Spotify. Spotify has to agree to host it, and as a podcast…