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Commentary: Widow's Bay is a wicked smart genre mashup that delivers epic scares and laughs, and pays tribute to Stephen King, Twin Peaks and Jaws.
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 Rumors suggest Apple plans to expand Apple-designed modems to the entire iPhone 18 lineup, ending support for Qualcomm modems. The transition will bring speed and efficiency improvements, along with a little-known privacy benefit.
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 Apple is introducing an overhauled version of Siri in iOS 27, evolving the personal assistant into a more capable chatbot and AI agent able to compete with ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. With ?Siri?'s transition, Apple will be making multiple Siri-related design changes in ?iOS 27?, according to a new report from Bloomberg. ?Siri? will largely live in the Dynamic Island in ?iOS 27?, but there will also be a dedicated ?Siri? app for the first time.
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In the months ahead, the company will add AI-powered voice search for its smart TVs and streaming players. While Roku's existing voice search can find specific programs, actors, or genres, the upgrade will allow for more conversational queries, such as "What's the Barbie movie about?" or "How scary is The Shining." It will also support follow-up questions.
Other forthcoming Roku features include a "What do you like to watch?" feature to tweak Roku's home screen recommendations, live scores in the Sports section, and a search function in Roku's live TV guide. Roku is also updating its recently-launched Streaming Stick and Streaming Stick Plus to support private listening through Bluetooth headphones and earbuds.
TV-focused AI
Unlike rivals Amazon and Google, Roku isn't trying to launch an all-purpose AI that also happens to work on TVs. Roku doesn't sell its own smart speakers, and users primarily interact with voice control through the mic button on Roku remotes. The new AI-powered assistant will only respond to entertainment-related queries, Roku says.
"Even in this case, with us evolving Roku voice to now answer entertainment Q&A, we are specializing in a TV-related solution only," Amit Desai, Roku's director of product and UX for voice and conversational AI, told reporters. He added that the feature will use a combination of in-house and commercial AI technology.
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 Image Credit: GoogleGoogle has been publicly building tiny radar chips since 2015. They can tell you how well you sleep, control a smartwatch, count sheets of paper, and have you play the world's smallest violin. But the company's Soli radar hasn't necessarily seen commercial success, primarily in an ill-fated Pixel phone. Now Google has launched an open source API standard called Ripple that could theoretically bring the technology to additional devices outside of Google, possibly even a car, as Ford is one of the participants in the new standard.
Technically, Ripple is under the auspices of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the same industry body that h
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