In YouTube’s latest move to woo TikTok creators onto YouTube Shorts, the streaming giant announced today that short-term video creators would soon be allowed up to a minute of copyrighted music in their Shorts. The change is a significant boost from the previous 15-second limit for any licensed song.

YouTube says its short-form creators will be able to use between 30 and 60 seconds of licensed music “for most tracks.” However, some songs will remain on the previous 15-second limit, with licensing agreements determining which tracks fall in which window. Creators can quickly see how much time each song allows in the YouTube app’s audio picker. The new song-length options begin rolling out today and will continue “over the next few weeks” on iOS and Android.

As user-created videos have exploded during the past decade, aggressive DMCA takedown notices have become a headache for streamers on all platforms. Record labels often automate their copyright enforcement, leading to overzealous claims. For example, creators have seen their videos flagged for accidentally including a few seconds of copyrighted audio from a passing car’s stereo. Some police officers have even exploited the DMCA to their advantage, blasting Taylor Swift songs to prevent bystanders from sharing their legally recorded videos.

The song-limit boost is YouTube’s latest attempt to woo TikTok creators (and therefore viewers and ad dollars) onto Shorts. In September, the company announced an ad-revenue sharing program to give qualified creators a 45 percent cut of ad revenue, regardless of whether they use music. TikTok launched a similar sharing program earlier this year following widespread complaints about its previous “static pool of money” approach.

YouTube’s aggressive approach appears to be paying off, with Shorts tallying views from over 1.5 billion logged-in users per month. As of September 2021, TikTok had racked up 1 billion monthly users. However, given YouTube’s overall dominance in the video space, those numbers likely include people who were already on YouTube watching other content. TikTok’s numbers, on the other hand, more clearly include people looking for its distinctive short-form videos — an audience that YouTube and other media giants like Meta are continuing to chase.

With global temperatures expected to rise as much as 2.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, the island nation of Tuvalu says it has no choice but to build a digital version of itself. On Tuesday, Simon Kofe, the country’s foreign minister, told the COP27 climate summit Tuvalu would look to the metaverse to preserve its culture and history amid rising sea levels (via Reuters).

“As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation. Our land, our ocean, our culture are the most precious assets of our people. And to keep them safe from harm, no matter what happens in the physical world, we’ll move them to the cloud,” Kofe said in a video that sees the camera slowly zooming out to reveal that he’s in front of a greenscreen recreation of his home.

At last year’s COP26 summit, Kofe famously addressed the conference standing knee-deep in seawater to highlight the existential threat climate change poses to island nations like Tuvalu. In his latest address, the metaverse is framed as a potential home for all countries if there's not a global effort to address the problem.

“Only concerted global effort can ensure that Tuvalu does not move permanently online and disappear forever from the physical plane,” he said. “Without a global conscience and a global commitment to our shared well-being, we may soon find the rest of the world joining us online as their lands disappear.

Tuvalu is an archipelago consisting of nine islands located between Australia and Hawaii. It’s home to approximately 12,000 people. Climate scientists anticipate the entire country will be underwater by the end of the 21st century.

To achieve the 1.5C target put forward by the Paris Agreement and avoid significantly worse climate outcomes, the world has eight years to reduce annual global emissions by a further 45 percent, compared with projections based on current policies. To limit the rise in temperatures to under 2C, an extra 30 percent reduction in emissions is needed.

There are more Apple Watches than ever before. Between the Series 8, Watch Ultra and second-gen SE, shopping for a smartwatch is a lot trickier than in years past. Are the Watch Ultra's outdoors-friendly features worth the $800 and bulkier size? What differentiates the Series 8 from the new SE? Check out the video below detailing how they compare against each other to help you make your decision if you’re in the market for a new Apple Watch.

Now might be a good moment to splurge on music-making tools. Arturia is running a Black Friday sale that offers 50 percent off its "flagship" virtual instruments, effects and software. The 33-instrument V Collection 9 set has dropped from $599 to $299 for newcomers, while FX Collection 3's 26 effects plugins are $199 instead of the usual $399. And if you're looking for an accessible synthesizer, Pigments is down from $199 to $99. The promo runs until December 6th, and you'll get personalized offers if you already use the company's products.

We've considered these tools to be valuable even at their regular prices. V Collection 9 offers a range of pianos, classic synths and other instruments that offer substantial flexibility, including new items like a Korg MS-20 emulator and the cinematic Augmented Strings. FX Collection 3 brings vintage distortions and lo-fi effects. Pigments, meanwhile, encourages you to create synth sounds from scratch with the help of extras like a distortion module.

You can use the V Collection and Pigments tools by themselves, but all of the software on sale can work with other digital audio workstations through support for formats like AAX, Audio Unit, NKS and VST. With these discounts, Arturia's audio packages could make more sense if you're either new to music production or determined to expand your toolset for the lowest price possible.

Hybrid cars aren't just valuable for their fuel efficiency, apparently. Consumer Reports has published annual reliability survey data indicating that hybrids are generally more reliable than their gas-only equivalents. Hybrid cars were the most reliable among vehicle types, with their SUV siblings ranking third. Certain models were stand-outs, including the Ford Maverick pickup, Lexus NX luxury SUV and Toyota Corolla sedan — they all had above-average reliability on top of major fuel savings.

That trustworthiness doesn't always extend to other electrified cars. The publication found that plug-in hybrids aren't as reliable. Toyota's Prius Prime and RAV4 Prime are less reliable than their conventional hybrid versions, and the Chrysler Pacifica hybrid was one of the most unreliable vehicles in the survey. EVs continue to struggle, too. While there are some exceptions, such as the "outstanding" reliability of the Kia EV6, the category is still plagued with glitches — and not just Tesla's build quality issues. Ford's Mustang-Mach-E dipped to below average due to its electronics flaws. Only four out of 11 models with enough survey data had average or better reliability.

A straightforward hybrid isn't always the best choice, either. Consumer Reports warns that BMW, Mercedes, Ram and others offer "mild" hybrids that don't offer much in the way of fuel savings, and are sometimes focused more on adding power. These vehicles weren't included in the hybrid reliability rankings.

The greater reliability of hybrids isn't a total surprise. While they offer improved fuel economy, they're ultimately based on familiar model lines using well-established combustion engine technology. EVs are more likely to be brand new models based on young electric motor systems and don't have years of refinement.

Automakers will have to improve their safety tech if they want to stay in Consumer Reports' good graces, whatever powertrain they're using. As of November, the outlet will penalize models that don't include pedestrian-aware automatic emergency braking as a standard feature. CR will also stop handing out bonus points to vehicles that only have blind spot warnings (they'll need rear cross traffic warnings as well) and forward collision alerts. This will theoretically push car creators to strengthen their default safety packages and potentially save lives.

Last year, MIT developed an AI/ML algorithm capable of learning and adapting to new information while on the job, not just during its initial training phase. These “liquid” neural networks (in the Bruce Lee sense) literally play 4D chess — their models requiring time-series data to operate — which makes them ideal for use in time-sensitive tasks like pacemaker monitoring, weather forecasting, investment forecasting, or autonomous vehicle navigation. But, the problem is that data throughput has become a bottleneck, and scaling these systems has become prohibitively expensive, computationally speaking.

On Tuesday, MIT researchers announced that they have devised a solution to that restriction, not by widening the data pipeline but by solving a differential equation that has stumped mathematicians since 1907. Specifically, the team solved, “the differential equation behind the interaction of two neurons through synapses… to unlock a new type of fast and efficient artificial intelligence algorithms.”

“The new machine learning models we call ‘CfC’s’ [closed-form Continuous-time] replace the differential equation defining the computation of the neuron with a closed form approximation, preserving the beautiful properties of liquid networks without the need for numerical integration,” MIT professor and CSAIL Director Daniela Rus said in a Tuesday press statement. “CfC models are causal, compact, explainable, and efficient to train and predict. They open the way to trustworthy machine learning for safety-critical applications.”

So, for those of us without a doctorate in Really Hard Math, differential equations are formulas that can describe the state of a system at various discrete points or steps throughout the process. For example, if you have a robot arm moving from point A to B, you can use a differential equation to know where it is in between the two points in space at any given step within the process. However, solving these equations for every step quickly gets computationally expensive as well. MIT’s “closed form” solution end-arounds that issue by functionally modeling the entire description of a system in a single computational step. AS the MIT team explains:

Imagine if you have an end-to-end neural network that receives driving input from a camera mounted on a car. The network is trained to generate outputs, like the car's steering angle. In 2020, the team solved this by using liquid neural networks with 19 nodes, so 19 neurons plus a small perception module could drive a car. A differential equation describes each node of that system. With the closed-form solution, if you replace it inside this network, it would give you the exact behavior, as it’s a good approximation of the actual dynamics of the system. They can thus solve the problem with an even lower number of neurons, which means it would be faster and less computationally expensive.

By solving this equation at the neuron-level, the team is hopeful that they’ll be able to construct models of the human brain that measure in the millions of neural connections, something not possible today. The team also notes that this CfC model might be able to take the visual training it learned in one environment and apply it to a wholly new situation without additional work, what’s known as out-of-distribution generalization. That’s not something current-gen models can really do and would prove to be a significant step towards the generalized AI systems of tomorrow.

Budding beatmakers (or musicians looking to add to their toolset) might be interested in checking out Ableton's Black Friday deals. The company has slashed the price of its Live packages, the Push controller and sound packs by 20 percent. While that isn't quite as generous as the 25 percent discounts we've seen from Ableton in the past, the company doesn't often run sales. So, if you've been eyeing Live 11, one of the most popular digital workstations (DAWs) around, for a while, now might be the time to take the leap. You'll have some time to think about it, though, as the deals run through January 11th.

The base Live 11 Intro option is down from $99 to $79 for the time being. It has what you need to get started with the DAW, including more than 1,500 sounds, 21 audio effects and 11 MIDI effects.

If you're ready for something more full featured, consider the Live 11 Standard package, the price of which Ableton has lowered from $449 to $359. The bundle includes unlimited audio and MIDI tracks, as well as unlimited scenes and more than 1,800 sounds.

At the top end is the Live 11 Suite, which is down from $749 to $599. You'll get access to more than 5,000 sounds, along with more audio and MIDI effects and extra software instruments. Current Live users can get 20 percent off upgrades too.

Meanwhile, it's rare to see Ableton offering a discount on the Push controller, which has deep integration with Live. In fact, the company confirmed to Engadget this is the first time it has cut the price of the controller since 2016.

You'll be able to use Push to play and tweak samples, step sequence your creative ideas and record your creations. If you don't already own Live 11 but want to pick up Push, you'll need to buy them as a bundle. The Live Intro 11 and Push package costs $639 (down from $898). Live 11 and the controller will set you back $918 (was $1,248). As for the bundle of Live 11 Suite and Push, that will run you $1,118 (down from $1,548). Current Live owners will see their Push price after logging into their account, but based on the bundle prices, it should be around $560.

Ableton allows customers to spread the cost of Live or Push over six months at the discounted rate. Meanwhile, students and teachers can save up to 40 percent off the standard price.

Descript aims to simplify video editing by making it a matter of tweaking transcripts, but now you don't even need to have ready-made audio. The company has redesigned Descript with a new interface that includes a writing tool. You can write a script in Overdub on the fly and either use text-to-speech to vocalize your narration or replace it with your own recording later. This could mainly be helpful if your content doesn't have any spoken-word material, but it might also come in handy if you're not comfortable speaking.

The app as a whole now centers on "Scenes," or distinct visual segments (pictured above). You effectively treat moments in a video like you would slides in a presentation, with each getting its own overlays and titles. The concept is potentially easier to grasp than working with a conventional video editor's timeline. Accordingly, there are now templates with ready-made layouts, title sequences and social clips.

Other additions revolve more around features you might expect from established media editing tools. The Descript recorder is now built into the editor, with separate tracks for your screen and the camera. Color control lets you modify elements like exposure and white balance, while AI-powered chroma keying allows to remove backgrounds like you would using a green screen. And if you need a pre-made soundtrack or B-roll footage, you now have access to stock media from providers like Giphy, Storyblocks and Unsplash.

The new Descript is available now for Macs and Windows PCs. How much you'll pay depends on how you intend to use it. The tool is free for three hours of transcription and other core features, but you'll need to pay $12 per month for watermark-free video exports and 10 hours of transcription. Heavy-duty users will want to spend $24 per month to get unlimited Overdub, 30 hours of transcription per month and pro versions of tools like Audiograms and filler word removal.

As before, Descript makes the most sense if you're working with either dialogue-heavy videos or podcasts. You may still want to stick to a conventional timeline-based editor to produce the next great movie or TV show. However, the new version may be appealing if you need to produce a reasonably polished video in a hurry.

After announcing it would share ad revenue with Shorts creators earlier this year, YouTube is experimenting with new revenue streams for the service. The platform plans to introduce TikTok-like shopping features to Shorts, allowing users to shop directly for products promoted by influencers through links in videos, The Financial Times has reported. 

YouTube plans to roll out two separate schemes starting in 2023. The first is an affiliate marketing system that would pay a commission to select US-based creators who promote products. Meanwhile, users in the US, India, Brazil, Canada and Australia would be able to shop through Shorts via links. All of that in on top of the aforementioned system that will see creators take a 45 percent share of ad revenue starting early next year

"It is very much an endorsement model, versus a more traditional advertising model or a paid-placement model," YouTube Shopping's GM Michael Martin told the FT. "Our goal is to focus on the best monetization opportunities for creators in the market."

YouTube's Shorts channel, which recently got its own tab, now has 1.5 billion monthly users, surpassing the 1 billion users now on TikTok. Despite that success, though, Alphabet revealed in its last earnings report that YouTube ad sales revenue was down and missed expectations.

As such, YouTube is experimenting with new sources of revenue already being exploited by TikTok and Meta. However, the endorsement approach hasn't worked as well in the US as other countries, so YouTube plans to focus its direct shopping schemes in markets where it has worked, like South Korea. 

The Lucid Air is a fantastic first car from a new automaker. It’s also a very expensive EV out of the reach of most people. The company has promised less expensive versions of the Air and today those vehicles are finally being unveiled.

During the Los Angeles auto show, Lucid took the wraps off the Lucid Air Pure and Touring. The two vehicles might not hit 60 in under two seconds, but these are likely the trim levels that will dominate the automaker’s sales.

The Pure is the first and only Air to come in under $100,000 starting at a still pricey $87,400. It’s best to remember that the Air is still a luxury vehicle. While it won’t hit 500 miles between charges, it has an EPA target of 410 miles and can charge at 250kW on a compatible DC fast charger.

The Touring is slightly more expensive at $107,400 and can drive for an EPA estimated range of 425 miles.

While the Pure wasn’t quite ready for testing, we were able to get behind the wheel of the Touring for a quick jaunt around the Lucid headquarters. Watch the video below for the full story.