Mic modeling has come a long way in just a few years, and modern software plugins, to these ears, get quite close to the real deal. Universal Audio has been at the forefront of this technology for a while and now the company’s released a new condenser microphone that integrates with its equally new Hemisphere mic modeling plugin.

The SC-1 is a large diaphragm condenser microphone, operating as part of the company’s Standard Series that also includes the pre-existing SD-1 and SP-1. The SC-1 launches alongside the Hemisphere plugin that gives users digital access to a full range of classic mics from big-time companies like Neumann, Telefunken, AKG, Sony and others. The plugin uses a similar technology to the company’s Sphere line of modeling microphones, but with a drastic reduction in cost, as the SC-1 costs $500 and Sphere microphones range from $800 to $1,400.

The Hemisphere plugin lets you instantly audition different microphones to suit the take, tweak proximity, adjust filters and more. All of these adjustments can be done before recording or afterward, just like with the Sphere line. One benefit the SC-1 boasts over the Sphere line is that it requires just a single XLR input, while Sphere microphones require two to properly capture that stereo field.

The Hemisphere modeling plugin also extends to those other Standard Series mics, like the SP-1 pencil microphone and the SD-1 dynamic microphone. As for the SC-1 itself, it’s a standard no-frills large-diaphragm condenser with an extended dynamic range and a frequency response from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. There’s also an emphasis on low self-noise output, which makes it easier to transform via the numerous modeling options.

Universal Audio’s SC-1 is available for preorder right now and ships later in the fall. The microphone includes the Hemisphere modeling plugin, so your wallet won’t have to double dip. Additionally, the plugin is a free upgrade for existing SD-1 and SP-1 owners.

Gemini Trust Company, a cryptocurrency exchange helmed by the infamous Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, just got hit with a lawsuit alleging that it defrauded investors. The suit was brought forth by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the same AG currently prosecuting former president Donald Trump on sweeping charges of fraud.

This isn’t solely directed at Gemini, as cryptocurrency firms Digital Currency Group (DGC) and Genesis Global Capital are also named in the suit. All told, the civil lawsuit alleges that the three companies collectively defrauded 230,000 investors to the tune of more than $1 billion, as reported by Axios. The AG also charged former Genesis CEO Soichiro "Michael" Moro and DCG founder and chief Barry Silbert for trying to conceal the true financial condition of its lending unit.

As for the Winklevoss twins and Gemini, the suit alleges that the digital asset platform didn’t properly disclose the financials of Genesis before partnering with the crypto exchange to form an investment platform called Gemini Earn in 2021. The suit alleges that Gemini announced that Genesis was a “trusted company” despite internal risk analyses to the contrary.

It goes on to allege that in February 2022, Gemini revised its estimate of Genesis’ credit rating, lowering it from the investment-grade BBB to the junk-grade CCC, all without publicly revealing this change to investors and continuing to advertise correlated investments as “low-risk.” Additionally, it’s been alleged that many of the company’s risk assessors took their own money out of Gemini Earn without informing investors.

There are even allegations that more than 60 percent of Genesis’ financials were tied to Sam Bankman-Fried’s disgraced hedge fund Alameda Research. To that end, the connection between Gemini and Genesis is eerily similar to the ties between FTX and Alameda Research, and we all know what happened there.

Gemini took to the preferred social media platform for crypto-enthusiasts, X/Twitter, to refute the allegations, writing that it was simply the victim of fraud on the part of Genesis and DCG. It’s notable the firm didn’t comment on what they knew about Genesis’s poor financial condition and when they knew it, placing the onus of blame on Genesis CEO Moro and DCG founder Silbert.

“Blaming a victim for being defrauded and lied to makes no sense and we look forward to defending ourselves against this inconsistent position,” Gemini wrote.

For his part, DCG founder Barry Silbert penned a statement that completely refuted his side of the allegations, writing that he is “shocked by the baseless allegations in the Attorney General’s complaint” going on to say that he intends to “fight these claims in court.” Cameron Winklevoss hasn’t issued his own statement, but did retweet Gemini’s post on the matter.

Genesis ceased all cryptocurrency trading last month, as reported by CoinDesk, after filing for bankruptcy protection back in January. Today’s lawsuit seeks to recoup the $1 billion in losses and hopes to ban all three companies from the financial industry in New York.

The British Museum has announced plans to digitize its entire permanent collection, totaling over eight million pieces, as reported by ARTNews. The museum announced the move as part of ongoing efforts to increase security and public access. Back in August, the museum reported the theft of thousands of pieces, including over 1,500 historical artifacts, so this announcement is likely in response to that.

The project will require the documentation and upload of more than 2.4 million records and is estimated to take more than five years to complete, so you’ll have a great time cruising a virtual version of the museum sometime in 2029. Digitization is also an expensive process, which has been one of the primary hurdles when it comes to these projects. British Museum will spend a grand total of $12.1 million on the process.

“It is my belief that the single most important response to the thefts is to increase access, because the better a collection is known – and the more it is used – the sooner any absences are noticed,” interim museum director Mark Jones said in a statement.

Despite the aforementioned theft being the primary motivator behind the digitization project, the museum’s also using this announcement to fend off repatriation requests for the return of items. Museum board chairperson George Osborne told the UK Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee that they plan on using the digitization efforts as a response to these requests, saying the museum has a “pretty good website” that offers digital access “even if you cannot visit.”

However, the museum doesn’t currently have the money to complete the project, though it vows to raise the funds via private investors and not by asking taxpayers or the British government. The museum has already digitized half of its collection as part of a project started back in 2020.

Speaking of 2020, the early days of Covid forced many museums to hasten digitization efforts. The Grammy Museum digitized its entire archives and many NYC-based institutions followed suit, among numerous other instances.

Even before Covid, there were plenty of digitization efforts in place, particularly following a report by the National Science Foundation that urged these projects as part of a comprehensive strategy to protect the actual items from outside elements and to allow increased access for researchers. However, that same report says it’ll take decades before most museums are fully digitized at a global cost of $500 million, as noted by Science.

The humble Amazon Fire TV Stick is on sale for $20, representing a discount of 50 percent. This is the exact same price found during the Prime Day event earlier this month, so if you missed it then, now’s your chance.

This sale is for the latest generation of the entry-level Fire TV Stick, and not the often-discounted 4K Max edition. The standard Fire TV Stick offers streaming in Full HD and ships with an Alexa-enabled remote for voice controls. There’s Dolby Atmos audio support on select titles with compatible home audio systems and an easy plug-and-play installation process, which is the whole point of these streaming sticks. Just pop it into an available HDMI port and you’ll be good to go.

The streaming stick allows access to just about every platform out there, such as Netflix, Disney+, Hulu and, of course, Prime Video and the entire spate of Amazon channels. To that end, you also get six free months of Amazon’s in-house streaming service MGM+. At $6 per month, that’s a $36 value. MGM+ isn’t the most popular streaming site on the block, but does offer some unique original programming, like the surprisingly decent Lost-alike From, the crime drama Godfather of Harlem and the just-announced sci-fi vehicle Beacon 23.

This is part of a larger sale of Amazon-branded products. There are no 4K Fire TV streaming sticks involved, but there are plenty of smart TVs. You can snag a Fire TV 43" Omni Series 4K UHD smart TV for $300, a discount of 25 percent, and an Amazon Fire TV 55" 4-Series 4K UHD smart TV for $270, a massive savings of nearly 50 percent. Check the whole list here, as some TVs go as low as $110.

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Alienware just announced a refresh to the popular m17 R5 gaming laptop. The m17 was already a stellar example of an AMD Advantage system and the m18 kicks this up a notch or two. The Alienware m18 goes all-in with AMD integration, with the company boasting that its the “most powerful 18-inch AMD Advantage laptop” ever made.

The term AMD Advantage is marketing speak for a computer that’s built from the ground up for gaming via various AMD chipsets and technologies. To that end, the m18 is the first computer to feature the all-new AMD Radeon RX 7900M laptop graphics chip. These laptops also come equipped with the well-regarded AMD Ryzen 7945HX CPU. So, yeah, this thing’s a beast, with Alienware calling it a “performance juggernaut.”

The Radeon RX 7900M has been engineered to deliver “desktop-class” visuals even when playing power-hungry AAA titles. The GPU is filled with techy features, like second-gen raytracing accelerators, 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM and other “advanced capabilities to push the limits of gaming and content creation on the go.”

The Ryzen 9 7945 CPU helps everything move along thanks to 16 performance cores, 32 processing threads and AMD’s proprietary Zen 4 chiplet technology. The CPU was manufactured using the new 5nm design, the first for gaming laptops, which promises better power efficiency and faster performance.

These laptops ship with AMD’s Adrenaline Edition software suite, so you can access the SmartShift tool to shift power between the GPU and CPU in real-time to boost performance. Additionally, the company’s proprietary SmartAccess graphics tech automatically prioritizes game performance and reduced latency when using FreeSync.

Alienware

Laptops are more than just numbers on a spreadsheet, however, and the m18 has some other perks worth mentioning. These computers come equipped with Alienware’s Cryo-tech thermal regulation technology. This thermal interface material extends to both the CPU and GPU, with an expanded vapor chamber covering each component, helping to dissipate heat across the entire system. Four thin fans finish this process by pulling heated air through eight heat pipes and out via five vents.

You also get an 18-inch display panel equipped with both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, with a 16:10 aspect ratio, QHD+ resolution and a maximum refresh rate of 165Hz. You can overclock this refresh rate all the way to 480Hz at the expense of resolution for competitive gaming scenarios. An FHD webcam and an IR camera for facial recognition are also on board.

As for RAM and storage, there’s user-replaceable dual-channel DDR5 memory and you can shop options with up to three M.2 SSDs for a combined total of 8.5TB of storage. The laptop boasts some aesthetic flourishes, like an aluminum lid and bottom cover, an aluminum die-cast inner frame and an embossed "18" on the exterior. The m18 is available today with a starting price of $2,800.

Adobe just released the latest iterations of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. These 2024-branded versions feature plenty of new features that streamline the creative process, many of them aided by, wait for it, artificial intelligence. Beyond AI-powered tools, there’s also some other stuff for photo and video editors to get excited about.

Let’s start with AI features, all of which are powered by Adobe’s new Sensei AI platform. On the Photoshop side of things, there’s a new tool that automatically selects objects and backgrounds for removal, editing or replacement. This looks to be a more nuanced take on Google’s Pixel Magic Eraser tech.

The company says you can use this tool to swap out the sky, which should come in handy for those looking to turn standard outdoor photos into a fiery hellscape. The AI tools even let you smooth out a subject’s skin and complete a number of automatic smart fixes. Additionally, Photoshop Elements 2024 uses AI for its brand-new Artistic Effect options, allowing you to completely transform images into something resembling a famous work of art.

Adobe’s Sensei AI also lets you upscale JPEGs to remove artifacts, creating a more “smooth, natural look.” This should give editors more control over this file type, as it has never been anyone’s first choice when it comes to making image adjustments.

Adobe

As for Premiere, the popular video-editing software suite now uses AI to automatically create highlight reels culled from uploaded footage. The company says that these AI-created clips will “draw people in by focusing on motion, close-ups and your highest quality footage.”

Of course, this is a proper Elements update, so there’s all kinds of features that don’t dive into the AI well. Photoshop gets updated color and tone presets, photo reels that can be saved as MP4s or GIFs, a bunch of new one-click editing options and an aesthetic facelift to tie everything together. There’s even something called Guided Edits, that teaches you how to do things as you go.

Premiere gets a suite of new audio effects, like reverb, and a number of built-in presets to create a unique vibe. Just like Photoshop, there’s a visual redesign that offers a “fresh look” and access to a similar collection of tutorial-based Guided Edits. Both software suites are available now as solo purchases or in a bundle.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) have become an essential tool for many web surfers, for a wide variety of reasons, and one of the most popular services is offering a great deal to entice new customers. NordVPN is selling two-year subscription plans for up to 69 percent off, depending on which tier you choose. You also get three free months of service when you sign up, which is always a nice bonus. This is actually a slightly better deal than last month’s 68 percent discount on two-year subscription plans.

Here’s how it all breaks down. The company’s flagship Complete plan is 69 percent off when you buy into two years of service, totaling $5 per month or $135. The Plus plan is 62 percent off, coming in at $4 per month or $108 for two years. The Standard plan is likely the best option for average consumers, offering a secure VPN, tracker blockers, ad blockers and malware protection. This plan is 63 percent off, totaling $3 per month or $80 for the whole shebang. Each and every one of these deals includes three free months of service, totaling 27 months. The one-year plans are also discounted and come with the same three free months of use.

There are even discounts for the company’s proprietary password management software, NordPass. Two-year Premium plans are 58 percent off and also offer three free months upon signing up. Enterprise users actually get six free months to try everything out.

We have praised NordVPN’s feature set and general ease-of-use, but balked at the original price tag. As a matter of fact, the cost was a primary reason why Nord’s offering narrowly missed our list of the best VPNs. So these discounts go a long way to making this an extremely attractive option for those looking for a speedy and useful virtual private network.

It’s worth noting that all of these plans are being advertised as Black Friday discounts, but you can actually make use of the sale beginning today. It all ends on November 29, so set a calendar reminder if you want some time to think things over.

If you aren’t even sure what VPNs are for, they are actually quite useful for those who spend a lot of time on ye olde internet. These services are nearly-mandatory when accessing public Wi-Fi, as they prevent cyber criminals from accessing your computer. The software also blocks malicious sites, protects sensitive data and lets you skirt geo-restrictions when surfing.

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Politicians and awkward SNL hosts have long-relied on the humble teleprompter to get their lines out, and now there’s a device that lets the rest of us get in on the mealy-mouthed fun. The Elgato Prompter is basically a shrunken-down teleprompter, complete with a scrolling display, side hoods to minimize unwanted ambient lighting and simple connectors that attach to an external camera, built-in webcam or just about anywhere else.

Unlike other prompters on the market, you don’t need your own tablet or phone, thanks to a built-in screen and the company’s proprietary Camera Hub software. Once activated, the device not only displays video scripts, but also mirrors any window or app via a simple drag and drop. This lets you see both the script and live feeds from chat participants at the same time, all while looking directly into the camera. It’s a bona-fide cornucopia of human social cues.

Of course, you aren’t relegated to live feeds from fellow chat participants. You can drag and drop anything to the Prompter, with Elgato suggesting that users place a window of “the big match” so people can sneak glances during those endless work meetings. We would never, however, recommend such a blatant display of truancy.

The Prompter is an Elgato product, so it offers some deep integration with the recently-discounted Stream Deck. There’s a plugin for the device that offers control and adjustment options at the touch of a button, all of which should come in handy for livestreamers and YouTubers looking for that perfect take. To that end, Elgato says it built the device to be the “true all-in-one solution for content creators.”

Elgato, which is owned by noted peripheral manufacturer Corsair, says the Prompter integrates with more webcams, cameras and smartphones than any other similar device on the market, so you likely won’t need to buy additional hardware to use it. If you’re worried, there’s a list of supported cameras and devices right here.

Setup seems simple enough, with included attachment clips and a stand, interchangeable backplates and a single USB connection to both power the device and transfer data. The Elgato Prompter is available right now and costs $280.

YouTube’s rolling out a whole bunch of new features and design updates, three dozen in total. Some of these tools are for the web app, while others are for the smartphone app and smart TV software. These features aren’t game-changers by themselves, but they add up to an improved user experience. Let’s go over some of the more interesting ones.

It’s now easier to speed up videos for those who just can’t get enough of really fast podcast clips. Just hold your finger down on the video and it’ll automatically bump up the playback speed to 2x. This feature is also useful for searching through a video for a relevant portion, in addition to fast-paced playback. The tool’s available across web, tablets and mobile devices.

The app’s launching bigger preview thumbnails to help with navigation. There’s also a new haptic feedback component that vibrates when you hover over the original start point, so you never lose your place. This will help when perusing videos with your finger on a smartphone or tablet, as the current way to do this isn’t exactly accurate.

One of the more useful updates here is a new lock screen tool to avoid accidental interruptions while you watch stuff on your phone or tablet. This should be extremely handy for those who like to take walks or exercise while listening to YouTube, as the jostling typically interrupts whatever’s on-screen. In other words, your quiet meditation video won’t accidentally switch to some guy yelling about the end of masculinity as your phone sits in a pocket, purse or handbag.

Speaking of guys yelling about the end of masculinity, the company’s finally (finally) added a stable volume feature, which ensures that the relative loudness of videos don’t fluctuate too much. This tool’s automatically turned on once you snag the update.

Even the humble library tab has gotten a refresh. It’s now called “You” and relays a bit more data than before. You’ll have access to previously watched videos, playlists, downloads and purchase all from one place. Again, this change impacts the app on both web and mobile devices. 

The rest of the updates are design related, with on-screen visual cues that appear when creators ask you to subscribe complete with dopamine-enhancing sparkles when you finally “smash that like button.” There’s even a new animation that follows the view count and like count throughout a video’s first 24 hours. Some design elements extend to the smart TV app, including a new vertical menu, video chapters, a scrollable description section and more.

YouTube’s latest update is a tiered release and the company says it could be a few weeks before it reaches every user throughout the globe. The popular streaming platform says more features are forthcoming, including a redesign of the YouTube Kids app.

YouTube’s constantly changing up its core features. The past year has seen an enhanced 1080p playback option for web users and the company's even announced a spate of AI-enhanced creator tools, among other updates. Evolve or die right? The social media landscape, after all, is currently in the midst of something of a sea change.

Elgato’s Stream Deck MK.2 is on sale for $130, a discount of $20 from the MSRP of $150. That’s 13 percent off and actually beats the sale price from last week’s Amazon Prime Day event. If you’re a podcaster or a livestreamer, this is a pretty good time to snag this highly useful streaming device.

This is the latest and greatest Stream Deck, and we said it sets a new standard for the industry when we placed it in our list of the best game streaming gear. Not to be confused with Valve’s Steam Deck, this similarly-named device boasts a hub of 15 LCD hotkeys that you can customize to your liking to simplify livestreaming, podcasting and related activities.

For instance, one button press can turn on a connected accessory, instantly mute a microphone, adjust the lights, trigger on-screen effects or activate audio clips, to name a few examples. You have 15 of these keys, and each can be customized as you see fit. You can even set them to perform in-game actions, like any standard keyboard shortcut.

Additionally, many users have found these devices useful for programming, media editing and any other profession/hobby that could use a bit of hotkey simplification. The buttons are also really satisfying to press.

The main reason you’d get this, however, is right in the name. It’s for streamers that have to moderate a fast-moving chat all while gaming or performing some other task. Each button has a tiny display to let you know at a glance the end result of each press. Over time, you won’t even need these mini displays, instead relying on simple muscle memory, just like keyboard hotkeys. Each of the major streaming platforms, like Twitch and YouTube, offer their own plugins for the device complete with a set of commonly-used adjustment options.