Tech Talk

Decide whether you want to see captions or not. Twitter has announced that a button to toggle captions for its video player is now available for everyone on iOS and Android. The button, which shows up in the top-right corner of the video if it has captions available, lets you choose whether you want to see written descriptions. Twitter started testing this feature in April , but it was only available to a limited number of iPhone users. For years , whether subtitles show up or not on your mobile device has been determined by a variety of factors, like if you’ve turned closed captions on in your phone’s accessibility settings, or if you’re watching the video with your sound off. While those are still taken into account, now you can easily turn them on or off whenever you want, just like you already could on Twitter’s website and many other video platforms. The choice is now yours: the closed caption toggle is now available for everyone on iOS and Android! Tap the “CC” button o

Chris Pratt, the voice of Mario. And Garfield . | Image: Nintendo I know it’s been nine months, but I’m honestly still reeling from the announcement that Chris Pratt will be voicing Mario in the upcoming Mario movie . What on earth is that going to sound like??? Pratt, at least, seems to think it’s going to be something special. “I worked really closely with the directors and trying out a few things and landed on something that I’m really proud of and can’t wait for people to see and hear,” Pratt said in an interview with Variety . “It’s an animated voiceover narrative. It’s not a live-action movie. I’m not gonna be wearing a plumber suit running all over. I’m providing a voice for an animated character, and it is updated and unlike anything you’ve heard in the Mario world before.” Nintendo, please, release a trailer That last sentence appears to mean that Pratt won’t be imitating Charles Martinet’s iconic take on Nintendo’s famous plumber. While we kind of already knew that

On Wednesday, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) found a surprising way to develop her upcoming cryptocurrency regulation bill: she put it on GitHub . “As promised, you can now contribute comments on my bill establishing a framework for digital assets with [Sen. Gillibrand],” Lummis wrote in a tweet sharing the news . “Civil comments and criticisms welcome. Please share widely. We want to get this right. Help us iterate publicly on policy.” Best known as a repository for open-source code, GitHub includes a number of tools for that could be useful in developing public proposals — particularly the ability to publicly comment on, revise, and fork the text into different versions. As of press time, Github users have commented on 24 issues in the bill and made eight pull requests – some of which have proposed meaningful additions to the bill. One user asked the senators to “increase the value of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies with a tax on mining.” Another thread raised concerns about algorit

As part of its twentieth anniversary, the Google News redesign has officially launched adding a bigger emphasis on accessibility and customization. Google states the redesign “was inspired by feedback [they] received from readers” as the desktop site aims to make catching up on the news easier. Major stories will have a bigger thumbnail and adjacent articles next to them for different types of coverage. The new Google News (Image credit: Google) Rearranged sections Immediately upon opening Google News on the desktop, you’ll be greeted with the top stories of the day with a Local News section (no longer tucked behind menus) and personalized picks to the right. You can add multiple locations to Local News if coverage for one city isn’t enough for you. And the menu bar that was on the left-hand side now makes its home at the top of the page. Scrolling down past the initial sections, you’ll come across Your Topics which are six different categories that you can select out of

Fitbit has introduced a new Sleep Profile feature for Fitbit Premium users, a feature that collects long-term Sleep Metrics to tell you more about your bedtime habits.  The feature is compatible with the best Fitbit devices including the Fitbit Sense , Versa 3 , Versa 2 , Charge 5 , Luxe , and Inspire 2 devices, and is set to launch during the week of July 4. The feature is designed to offer “a new longitudinal analysis of your sleep patterns” after a minimum of 14 days of use, and is used to help “calculate trends and compare them to what is typical for your age and gender”. It does this by collecting different sleep metrics over those two weeks, including sleep schedule variability, time before sound sleep, disrupted sleep, sleep duration, restfulness, and REM sleep. Once it has all this data, it will assign you to one of 10 kinds of sleep categories, represented by illustrations of very cute animals. Do you sleep like a giraffe in short bursts, in need of a quality sleep sched

“Cash-flow is the lifeblood of any business” - we have all heard the phrase, to the point that it has become accepted common wisdom bordering on a cliché. It is easy to understand why when you break it down to the most basic business principle. No matter how great your business is, if you run out of cash the game is up.  Add to this that virtually every business decision culminates in the transfer of value, usually represented by the need to collect or pay out money, and it becomes clear why cash flow is so closely correlated to the health and well-being of any business. Whether you are selling the latest smartphone , purchasing stock from a supplier, acquiring a new office block, or funding a subsidiary in a foreign market, every transaction needs a way to get settled. Yet markets are complex, global, and competitive. There is a vast ecosystem of suppliers and a myriad of payments and financial services solutions catering to this most simple problems: How to move money from A to B

If, like this writer, your Google TV  recommendations have been sullied by your kid’s viewing habits, the great news is that your next suggested show to watch will likely be something more fitting than Puppy Dog Pals or Blippi. Much to the relief of parents and apartment sharers alike, Google TV is at last rolling out multiple user profiles to people in a free update. The software upgrade now enables every member of a household to have their own profile, meaning each person will be shown relevant recommendations based on their previous individual viewing on that profile. It’s been one of the most requested features from users, and had been initially announced as being added to the platform all the way back in October last year, before being shelved a couple of months later.  During the wait, Google did add kids' profiles, but today’s update at last brings the platform into line with the likes of Netflix and Disney Plus which have offered multiple user profiles pretty much sinc