Sunday, April 9, 2023

A Pink Heart Isn't the Only New Emoji on Your iPhone - CNET

See the full list of emoji that hit your iPhone with iOS 16.4.

from CNET https://ift.tt/nP9drHO

Latest Tech News

It's time for your daily dose of Quordle hints. And you might need them - because this popular online game takes the Wordle format and quadruples the difficulty. So if you already find yourself searching for Wordle hints, you'll probably need some for Quordle too. 

I'm a Quordle and Wordle fanatic who's been playing since December 2021, so I can definitely help you solve Quordle today and improve your game for tomorrow. Read on for my Quordle hints to game #440 and bookmark this page so you can easily return. 

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers. 

Quordle today (game #440) - hint #1 - Vowels

How many different vowels are in Quordle today?

The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 3*.

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too). 

Quordle today (game #440) - hint #2 - total vowels

What is the total number of vowels in Quordle today?

The total number of vowels across today's Quordle answers is 6.

Quordle today (game #440) - hint #3 - repeated letters

Do any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?

The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 3.

Quordle today (game #440) - hint #4 - total letters

How many different letters are used in Quordle today?

The total number of different letters used in Quordle today is 13.

Quordle today (game #440) - hint #5 - uncommon letters

Do the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?

• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today's Quordle answers.

Quordle today (game #440) - hint #6 - starting letters (1)

Do any of today's Quordle puzzles start with the same letter?

The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 0.

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #440) - hint #7 - starting letters (2)

What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?

• V

• C

• P

• G

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #440) - the answers

Quordle 440 answers on a yellow background

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle, game #440, are…

  • VERGE
  • CAMEL
  • PUTTY
  • GRASS

Another day, another Quordle. And this one appears to have a theme to it - well, to an extent. 

Here goes: VERGE and GRASS go together easily, no explanation needed there. CAMEL? Well, camels eat grass right? Do they? I'm actually not sure. Maybe they prefer hay or something. But I'm sure they'd eat grass if they had the chance. 

And PUTTY? Well, this is even more tenuous but, well, someone on a golf green might be PUTTY when they're using their putter. No? Fair enough, I'm just trying to inject some fun into proceedings.

Not that there's any problem with today's Quordle as such, it's just that it's a fairly standard one without any particularly notable features, and there's only so many times you can say that before your mind starts to wander. There are some repeated letters (three of them in total), but otherwise it's just a standard Quordle, and I solved it with two guesses remaining.

How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.


Quordle answers: The past 20

  • Quordle #439, Saturday 8 April: CRUEL, LIVID, SPIED, BLEND
  • Quordle #438, Friday 7 April: RIVET, VISOR, CEASE, AFOOT
  • Quordle #437, Thursday 6 April: COVEY, BREAK, AWASH, STALK
  • Quordle #436, Wednesday 5 April: SKULL, POLAR, SPREE, THOSE
  • Quordle #435, Tuesday 4 April: OUNCE, WHINE, FROCK, POSIT
  • Quordle #434, Monday 3 April: TURBO, WHOLE, LIGHT, SPRIG
  • Quordle #433, Sunday 2 April: WHOSE, SUPER, SHARK, FABLE
  • Quordle #432, Saturday 1 April: GODLY, MOTOR, EPOXY, HEART
  • Quordle #431, Friday 31 March: CHOIR, TUBAL, SCOUR, PARRY
  • Quordle #430, Thursday 30 March: ALIBI, REACH, ACRID, QUARK
  • Quordle #429, Wednesday 29 March: MOIST, BRAND, FAITH, ADMIN
  • Quordle #428, Tuesday 28 March: SUGAR, FIBRE, DITTY, TRIAD
  • Quordle #427, Monday 27 March: READY, REVUE, BELOW, HASTE
  • Quordle #426, Sunday 26 March: AWAIT, DROVE, MORAL, REEDY
  • Quordle #425, Saturday 25 March: AWOKE, THESE, LEASE, DITTO
  • Quordle #424, Friday 24 March: COUCH, APRON, BROTH, TITHE
  • Quordle #423, Thursday 23 March: CROSS, SAUCE, DOING, USUAL
  • Quordle #422, Wednesday 22 March: FAULT, ADAGE, SOOTH, HABIT
  • Quordle #421, Tuesday 21 March: WRING, SCRAP, THIRD, NOBLE
  • Quordle #420, Monday 20 March: BISON, BOTCH, ABHOR, GLINT

Quordle FAQs: Everything you need to know

What is Quordle?

Where Wordle challenges you to guess a new five-letter word each day, Quordle presents you with four puzzles to solve. And rather than complete them in turn, you do so simultaneously. You get nine guesses, rather than the six for Wordle, but the rules are otherwise very similar. 

It's played online via the Quordle website and you can also get to it via the Merriam-Webster site, after the dictionary purchased Quordle last year

As with Wordle, the answers are the same for every player each day, meaning that you're competing against the rest of the world. And also as with Wordle, the puzzle resets at midnight so you have a fresh challenge each day.

The website also includes a practice mode - which I definitely recommend using before attempting the game proper! - and there are daily stats including a streak count. You also get Quordle Achievements - specific badges for winning a game in a certain number of turns, playing lots of times, or guessing particularly hard words.

Oh, and it's difficult. Really difficult.

What are the Quordle rules?

The rules of Quordle are almost identical to those of Wordle.

1. Letters that are in the answer and in the right place turn green.

2. Letters that are in the answer but in the wrong place turn yellow. 

3. Letters that are not in the answer turn gray…

4. …BUT the word you guess appears in all quadrants of the puzzle at the same time, so an A could turn green in one square, yellow in another and gray in the final two. 

5. Answers are never plural.

6. Letters can appear more than once. So if your guess includes two of one letter, they may both turn yellow, both turn green, or one could be yellow and the other green.

7. Each guess must be a valid word in Quordle's dictionary. You can't guess ABCDE, for instance.

8. You do not have to include correct letters in subsequent guesses and there is no equivalent of Wordle's Hard mode.

9. You have nine guesses to find the Quordle answers.

10. You must complete the daily Quordle before midnight in your timezone.

What is a good Quordle strategy?

Quordle needs to be approached in a different way to Wordle. With four puzzles to solve in nine guesses, you can't blindly throw letters at it and expect to win - you'll stand a far better chance if you think strategically.

That's the case in Wordle too, of course, but it's even more important in Quordle.

There are two key things to remember. 

1. Use several starting words

Firstly, you won't want just a single starting word, but almost certainly two or three starting words. 

The first of these should probably be one of the best Wordle starting words, because the same things that make them work well will apply here too. But after that, you should select another word or possibly two that use up lots more of the most common consonants and that include any remaining vowels.

For instance, I currently use STARE > DOILY > PUNCH. Between them, these three words use 15 of the 26 letters in the alphabet including all five vowels, Y, and nine of the most common consonants (S, T, R, D, L, P, N, C and H). There are plenty of other options - you might want to get an M, B, F or G in there instead of the H, maybe - but something like that should do the trick.

If all goes well, that will give you a good lead on what one or sometimes two of the answers might be. If not, well good luck!

2. Narrow things down

Secondly, if you're faced with a word where the answer might easily be one of several options - for instance -ATCH, where it could be MATCH, BATCH, LATCH, CATCH, WATCH, HATCH or PATCH - you'll definitely want to guess a word that would narrow down those options. 

In Wordle, you can instead try several of those in succession and hope one is right, assuming you have enough guesses left. It's risky, but will sometimes work. Plus, it's the only option in Hard mode. But in Quordle, this will almost certainly result in a failure - you simply don't have enough guesses.

In the scenario above, CLAMP would be a great guess, as it could point the way to four of the seven words in one go.



from TechRadar - All the latest technology news https://ift.tt/GSY3mlr

Saturday, April 8, 2023

Best 3D Printer Resin - CNET

You'll want a selection of different resins to make the most of your 3D printer.

from CNET https://ift.tt/hKxjDR5

Latest Tech News

Just days after a report from Goldman Sachs saying that 300 million jobs could be at risk of being replaced by so-called generative AI tools such as ChatGPT or solutions from Google or Microsoft (and others), data collected by TechRadar Pro shows that search around jobs most at risk of being replaced by artificial intelligence has increased by an order of magnitude since November 2022 when ChatGPT opened up to the general public.

Not surprisingly, programmers were the ones most attuned to the risk of losing out to AI with will chatgpt replace programmers, will ai replace programmers and can chatgpt replace programmers seeing search queries increase by almost 20x over the past four months to tens of thousands of searches per month. 

It’s almost been two years since Microsoft released Copilot on Github, a tool developed with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, which helps programmers code better and as of February 2023, accounts for almost half of all the code written on Github (up from 27% in June 2022).

Artists have also been particularly intrigued by the arrival of a plethora of AI tools like Dall-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion or Adobe Firefly, tools that offer a new sort of challenge for thousands of freelancers, small businesses, creatives and professionals worldwide. Search for will ai replace artists shot up by 3100% but even that was dwarfed by the 64x rise in search for will AI replace designers.

AI will surpass human beings at, well, being what makes us humans at the core

Large language models and chatbots that can not only converse like humans do (ChatGPT has passed the Turing test) but can also deliver results in a variety of forms (images, text, audio, videos).

And yes, there’s some buzz amongst a lot of my colleagues as to how this new technology can help empower rather than replace journalists, how it can become an exoskeleton for us humans rather than a super soldier. Fittingly enough, we’ve also written a best AI writer buying guide.

The common denominator of the above job categories is creativity and it seems inevitable that given enough time and resources, AI will surpass human beings at, well, being what makes us humans at the core, our ability to create new things using nothing more than our imagination and life experience.

Other jobs singled out during my keyword research include software designers, graphic designers, web developers but also accountants, lawyers, data analysts, radiologists and doctors. I used an SEO keyword tool called Keywordtool.io to extract the data from Google global search database with the latest numbers as of the end of February 2023.




from TechRadar - All the latest technology news https://ift.tt/54W7fB8

How Fast Is Your Internet, Really? Here's How to Find Out - CNET

Are you getting the internet speeds you're paying for? Here's how to tell, and what you can do about it.

from CNET https://ift.tt/nxG2AQy

Full-Electric Ram 1500 REV Debuts at New York Auto Show - CNET

Ram's first BEV, the REV, claims a class-topping 500-mile range thanks to its massive battery pack.

from CNET https://ift.tt/i5fv0ER

Everything We Know About the iPhone 15 and USB-C - CNET

There are still plenty of questions about how Apple will handle the iPhone's switch to USB-C.

from CNET https://ift.tt/bhwfQaY

Friday, April 7, 2023

These Sustainable Products Make Going Green Easier Than Ever in 2023 - CNET

Reduce your environmental impact with reusable straws, solar-powered gadgets, and planet-friendly shoes.

from CNET https://ift.tt/JiwBcWn

Sleep Problems Like Snoring Linked to Increased Stroke Risk, Researchers Find - CNET

Snoring, sleep apnea, snorting, long naps and too much or too little sleep may play into your likelihood of a stroke.

from CNET https://ift.tt/BR6qCGN

Latest Tech News

Canada’s PSB Speakers is a company best known for making loudspeakers, but it’s also been designing and manufacturing headphones for the past 10 years. The latest additions to its portable audio lineup are the M4U TWM true wireless earbuds and M4U 9 wireless ANC headphones, both of which feature the company’s proprietary RoomFeel processing and Audiodo Personal Sound technology.

We’ll cover both those features in a bit and lay out what makes them special, but let’s first discuss details of the new models, which offer many of the conveniences we expect of the best wireless earbuds and best wireless headphones.

The M4U TWM true wireless micro planar earphones ($199 / £199 / around AU$300) use “powerful Magneto-Static technology in a Hybrid Planar dual driver design,” according to PSB. Separate transducers deliver the high and low frequencies, and aptX Adaptive Bluetooth enables a latency-free wireless connection. Both earbuds feature hard click buttons for playback and volume control and a USB-C charging case allows for a maximum 32 hours of playtime with up to 8 hours out of the case.

PSB’s M4U 9 premium wireless active noise-canceling headphones ($499 / £449 / around AU$750) are an over-ear closed-back design that uses new graphene-infused drivers which the company says “improve on damping, stiffness, and efficiency.” Like the M4U TWM these have aptX Adaptive Bluetooth for a wireless connection, while 4 digital MEMS microphones deliver noise-free ANC listening and two extra mics enhance voice clarity during phone chats.

The M4U’s three-position switch will let listeners easily select between ANC with RoomFeel, Active with RoomFeel, or passive modes, and listening time extends up to 25 hours with the headphones in active mode.

RoomFeel Tuning and Audiodo Personal Sound 

PSB’s proprietary RoomFeel tuning, now in its second generation, is designed to eliminate the “in the head” effect many headphones create and instead make it seem like you’re listening in an actual room with the best stereo speakers. Part of this process is applying the “energy and warmth” that a typical room adds to the sound response curve, which in turn makes music sound more natural.

Audiodo Personal Sound is a tool that uses algorithms to calibrate sound output independently for the listeners’ left and right ears. The process is carried out via a hearing assessment using the PSB Headphones app, which will then create a sound compensation curve customized to the listener’s personal hearing abilities.

Woman wearing PSB M4U 9 headphones in outdoor setting

PSB's M4U 9 over-ear headphones (Image credit: Future)

Analysis: Headphones that get you out of your head are good 

PSB’s new M4U TWM and M4U 9 are packed with most of the features listeners love about portable headphones. There’s active noise canceling tech on the M4U 9 to block out external sound when out and about and aptX Adaptive Bluetooth on both models for a low-latency, better-quality than regular Bluetooth wireless audio connection. And even though they arrive from a specialist audio manufacturer, prices for the new headphones are competitive with similar options like the  AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Max.

What’s most intriguing to me, however, is PSB’s proprietary RoomFeel feature.

Many headphones in my experience really do create an “in the head” effect where it seems like the sound is centered in your skull. That’s not the way we encounter sound in the real world, of course, and it’s not the way we typically experience music at home on speakers, or out at concert venues where there are musicians performing onstage.

Dolby Atmos music (aka Spatial Audio) makes the experience of listening with headphones more engaging because the presentation becomes 3D-like, with sound expanding outward from the zone between your ears and also seeming to emerge from positions in front of and behind your head. But not all music is available in Spatial Audio format, so it’s only a partial solution to the “in the head” effect at present.

I tried PSB headphones with the first generation of RoomFeel and immediately appreciated how that tech transformed the soundstage, positioning it forward in space in much the same way as I would listen to music at home on my stereo speaker system. The presentation was more natural than what I had heard from many other headphones, and having the ability to easily switch it on and off to make listening comparisons helped to confirm my preference for RoomFeel.

This next generation of RoomFeel tech doesn’t appear to be essentially different from what I’d previously experienced – the main difference is that it’s now available for wireless earbuds as well as over-ear headphones. But getting to hear stereo music on the go in a manner similar to listening with speakers at home is a winning proposition and one that should be equally impressive as Spatial Audio on my AirPods Pro 2.



from TechRadar - All the latest technology news https://ift.tt/jrUSVgi

Latest Gadgets News

Because of the popularity of smartphones and tablets, as well as the growth of television channels, computer games, and educational applications, children and teenagers are spending more amount of time gazing at screens, sometimes with poor posture, which can lead to back pain and other issues. A study by Brazilian researchers, funded by FAPESP and reported in an arti...

from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/AyDMGSu

Your Venmo Privacy Could Be Compromised. How to Protect Your Account - CNET

When it comes to your funds, it's important to be aware of privacy risks for payment apps.

from CNET https://ift.tt/6PqIRtg

Thursday, April 6, 2023

How to Find Last Year's Adjusted Gross Income to File Your Taxes - CNET

You need your AGI from last year's tax return to file electronically this year.

from CNET https://ift.tt/Osdx20y

SofaBaton U2 Remote Gets Better IR Range, Is Already 15% Off - CNET

The new version of SofaBaton's universal remote is available now, and includes better infrared range.

from CNET https://ift.tt/eafj0v3

Latest Gadgets News

The Wikimedia Foundation, owner of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, was fined by a Russian court on Thursday for failing to delete content considered extremist as Moscow pursues a drive to crack down on independent sources of information. Wikipedia, which says it offers "the second draft of history", is one of the few surviving fact-checked sources of information in...

from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/5FPTZda

Heat Domes and Surging Grid Demand Threaten US Power Grids with Blackouts

A new report shows a sharp increase in peak electricity demand, leading to blackout concerns in multiple states. Here's how experts say ...