Over the past few years, Google has been trying to repair its reputation as a source for disinformation by launching multiple programs, particularly the Google News Initiative. Now, the company has teamed with PBS Student Report Labs (SRL) and other journalism organizations on programs designed to strengthen media literacy for students, educators and the public.

Google and Student Report Labs are creating educational resources aimed at teaching young people how to talk about misinformation with older family members and friends, Google wrote. "Through storytelling and co-production with students, we’ll explore the media literacy needs of different communities and generations, and how they can connect with each other to find solutions,” says SRL Founder Leah Clapman. As an example, Google referenced an SRL YouTube video called "What does a school board do?" (below).

Google also teamed with the News Literacy Project (NLP), a nonpartisan national education nonprofit, to again provide media literacy education to students, teachers and the public. Google aims to bring its "Newsroom to Classroom" initiative to more journalists and educators, helping NLP expand it to areas in California, Colorado, Texas, Iowa and Nebraska, "places hit particularly hard by the decline in local news," according to Google. 

Finally, Google is expanding its Spanish language outreach by teaming with Poynter's MediaWise project focused on students and seniors. It's joining forces with the team to translate their "How to Spot Misinformation Online" course in Spanish and creating a text-based version that will be delivered via SMS, "which is how many seniors find and share news," the company wrote. 

Google said the efforts will bolster its existing projects like Fact Check Explorer and "about this result" from Search. However, the company has a long way to go to assuage critics in the public and governments around the world that it's beating the misinformation that still plagues its various platforms. 

Streamlabs has teamed up with Twitch to help streamers improve broadcasts from an Xbox — without the need for a capture card. The web-based Streamlabs Studio will let streamers customize their broadcasts with widgets and overlays, such as a chat panel or live stream alerts.

"Live streaming gives viewers unprecedented access to their favorite creators. Real-time viewer engagement via chat and alerts create incredible shared experiences," Ashray Urs, Streamlabs' head of product, said in a statement. "In the past, creating professional broadcasts and engaging viewers from a console has been challenging. With Streamlabs Studio, you can transform console gameplay into a high-quality live stream production with viewer engagement tools to interact with your community."

Typically, Twitch streamers who broadcast their console gameplay have had to run the video through a PC with the help of a capture card if they want to add bells and whistles like onscreen donation alerts or custom layouts. Xbox owners can now select "Streamlabs" as a destination in the Twitch app and log into the Streamlabs Studio website to customize their stream. The site works on mobile and tablets, so you don't even need a PC to personalize your stream or switch between preset scenes.

What's more, you can use your smartphone or tablet as a webcam and layer that into your stream. Streamlabs Studio can also capture audio from a headset plugged into a controller or video from a webcam that's connected to an Xbox and include those feeds in broadcasts.

Streamlabs Studio isn't free — it costs $5/month or $50/year. However, it could help Twitch streamers who don't have a capture card or capable PC to make their broadcasts stand out from the pack.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is currently testing an option that makes Twitch streaming easier on Xbox consoles. It brought the Console Live Streaming feature to Xbox Insiders on the Alpha Skip-Ahead ring last month.

Google has launched new tools and features for both readers and reporters designed to aid local news organizations, it announced today. The headline feature is a carousel that shows local news in response to search queries, launching around the world in all languages starting today. Google initially launched the feature to provide local information for COVID searches, but it's now been expanded to other topics like sports, local government and more.

Google said it's been tweaking its systems so that authoritative, relevant local news sources appear more often next to national publications in Top Stories and other general news features. "This improvement ensures people will see authoritative local stories when they’re searching for news, helping both the brand and the content of news publishers reach more people," Google said. 

It's also able to drill down into narrow subtopics related to local news, like high school football. Combined with its location services (provided you have those enabled), you should get more relevant results. "For example, if you’re in Detroit and search for football, we’ll now show you results for local high school and college teams, rather than just showing you results for, say, the professional team," Google said. It will also surface tweets from news organization along with "authoritative sources and authors." 

Google

Alongside the new consumer features, Google announced new data tools for reporters. First up is the Census Mapper project, a map that can be embedded in stories to display Census data at the national, state and county level. It was produced as part of the 2020 Census Co-op, supported the Google News Initiative. It can show Census data at a local level, showing how populations have shifted over time. Google is also improving its Common Knowledge Project, a visual journalism project that allows reporters to explore local data. 

The new features might be cold comfort to the many local newspapers and websites that have been gone out of business in part due to the flow of ad dollars to companies like Facebook and Google. Both of those tech giants have put in some funds to support local journalism, but that has done little to stop the decline of newspapers that perform a valuable service in their communities. 

You won't have to visit an Amazon-owned store to use the company's cashierless Just Walk Out tech in the UK. Bloomberg has learned Sainsbury's will be one of the first to license Amazon's camera-based shopping system in the country for a small grocery store in London's High Holborn district. A website for the upcoming SmartShop Pick & Go store only mentioned the technology coming from a "third-party supplier," but Bloomberg sources said Amazon was responsible.

Amazon declined to comment. A Sainsbury's spokesperson wouldn't confirm or deny Amazon's involvement, but did say it was testing an "upgraded version" of SmartShop with employees in a Holborn store. The shop is believed to be opening to the public on November 29th.

The hardware certainly appears to be Amazon's, if Bloomberg's visit to the store was any indication. Customers scan their phones on the way in, and ceiling-mounted cameras use AI to detect what they take from shelves. You're charged as soon as you leave the store.

Sainsbury's has a few incentives to adopt Just Walk Out. While the UK has relaxed many of its pandemic measures, this could be appealing to customers who still want to avoid contact with staff and often-touched self-checkout kiosks. The faster turnarounds could lead to more customers even without safety concerns. And then there's competition — Tesco recently opened a nearby Express store using rival technology from Trigo Vision. Sainsbury's risks losing business from time-conscious shoppers.

Snapchat’s in-app camera is now able to recommend recipes based on the food you have laying around your kitchen. Food Scan is the latest addition to the app’s “scan” functionality, which also allows users to identify plants and dog breeds and items of clothing.

Now, scanning a food will turn up recipes containing the item, as well as a link to the Wikipedia entry for the ingredient. Snap has partnered with allrecipes.com on the feature, which it says can recognize more than 1,200 items and suggest more than 4,500 dishes.

I got the chance to preview the feature, and the app’s food scanning abilities were mostly spot-on. It was able to correctly identify a variety of produce and recommend relevant recipes (including a persimmon bar recipe that looked intriguing). Like most of these types of visual search features, though, it’s not entirely foolproof. It suggested cherry recipes when I scanned a bag of cherry tomatoes. And a hunk of ginger managed to totally stump the feature. No matter what angle I held the camera, Snapchat was unable to recognize it as food, and instead recommended reptile and human hand-themed AR lenses.

The feature is also not meant to work with packaged foods — Snapchat has a separate feature that can scan those items for nutritional info — so it won’t be able to help you figure out what to do with that random can of tomato sauce or whatever else is collecting dust in the back of your pantry. But even with those limitations, the feature is still a useful starting point for when you’re out of ideas or just want to try something new. And, even when it doesn’t quite work, you might still find an entertaining new AR lens to try out.

Sony has updated the PS Remote Play app on Android, which now has some extra controller features for Android 12 users. You can now connect a DualSense controller and use it to play PlayStation 5 games remotely. Sony brought DualSense support to the iOS version of the app earlier this year.

There are also some upgrades for those who use a DualShock 4 (the PS4 controller) with the app. There's now support for the touchpad, motion sensor and rumble features, as well as a battery indicator. Although those features are only available to those on Android 12, the controller is compatible with Android 10 and 11 as well.

In September, Sony added the option to stream PS4 and PS5 games to the app over a mobile data connection, in addition to WiFi. So, wherever you are, you might be able to sneak in some Deathloop or Returnal with a DualSense.

Fender's acoustic-electric hybrid guitars are technical marvels, but they're pricey for up-and-coming musicians (officially $2,000) and relatively complex. Thankfully, there's a somewhat more accessible option. The instrument brand has unveiled an Acoustic Player Telecaster with both a more affordable $1,200 price and a simpler design with a three-way voice selector (versus five on other models) and one blend knob. In theory, this is better-suited to younger, newer musicians who want two guitars in one — at least, if they can justify spending over a grand on new hardware.

The Fishman co-designed pickup helps you switch between acoustic and electric modes, and the N4 pickup promises "noiseless" electric playing. You'll find a total of six voicings you can play either by themselves or merged to create fresh sounds.

The Acoustasonic Player Telecaster is available worldwide in four familiar guitar colors (black, white, butterscotch and a graded "Shadow Burst"). There's still an incentive to splurge on the more expensive guitars if you want more control, but this might make sense if you need that $800 or just want something that saves space and time. This might be the ideal guitar if you need to play electric on stage, but acoustic in your apartment.

Mozilla launched Firefox Relay as a free product that gives you five email aliases you can use every time you need to sign up for a random account online. Now, the organization has introduced a paid Premium tier for the service that will give you access to even more aliases. You'll get your own subdomain (yourdomain.mozmail.com) when you subscribe, and you'll be able to create an unlimited number of emails. The tier will also give you access to a summary dashboard with the emails you make, the option to use your aliases when you reply to messages and a 150 kb attachment allowance.

After you sign up for Relay, you'll have to install its Firefox extension to be able to take advantage of its features. Every time you visit a website that asks for an email address, the Relay icon will appear on your browser, and you can click it to generate a random address.The service will forward messages you get using your aliases to your primary email account, and you can block all messages from coming in or even delete the alias when it starts getting spam. 

In its announcement, Mozilla said it decided to introduce the paid option because lot of beta testers wanted more than just five aliases. It didn't say how much a Premium subscription will cost in the future, but it's offering the tier at an introductory price of $1/EUR1 per month for a limited time. At the moment, the option is only available in Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland.

1Password's latest major update is now out of early access and is officially available for Windows 11. The version, called 1Password 8, features a brand new design and new productivity and security capabilities. Company chief experience officer Matt Davey said 1Password created a whole new design language dubbed Knox for the project to help ensure consistency across devices. As we mentioned in the past, categories have moved from the sidebar to a dropdown menu, and you'll also see new icons and the option to switch to dark mode.

The new version was built to be faster than its predecessor, with a feature called Quick Access that gives you a way to find and use saved credentials even when the 1Password app isn't open. There's also a new Item Catalog feature that guides you through the process of viewing or adding items, and smart suggestions that recommend matches as soon as you type in your search term. 

On the security front, 1Password 8 comes with a new Watchtower Dashboard that helps you identify weak or compromised passwords and inactive two-factor log-ins. You'll also be able to restore deleted items, which can be extremely helpful for when accidents happen, and you'll be able to share log-in details with anyone through Psst! The company introduced the password-sharing feature in October, giving you a way to safely share logins with co-workers or clients even if they don't have an account themselves.

1Password also made the latest version available for early access on Macs in August, a couple of months after early access came out for Windows. It has yet to announce when general availability will be open for Mac users, but it did say in the past that it expects to release 1Password 8 for Apple's OS later this year.

We saw the 512GB Mac Mini M1 go on sale earlier this month and now it's the base 256GB model's turn to be discounted. The small desktop is $50 off on Amazon and it has an extra, automatically applied $50 coupon that will bring the final cost down to $600. That's the best price we've seen and a great deal on the most affordable M1 machine available. If you're willing to pay a bit more for the extra storage, the 512GB model remains on sale for $750 thanks to another automatically applied coupon that knocks an additional $30 the sale price.

With the MacBook Air M1 starting at $999, the Mac Mini M1 is the most budget-friendly way to upgrade to a machine with one of Apple's latest chips. You can expect the Mac Mini to perform similarly to the MacBook Air — speedily and smoothly. We were impressed by the M1 chipset's performance — it made the MacBook Air feel lightning fast and native apps performed better than we've ever seen them. The Mac Mini M1 has eight-core CPU, an eight-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine that handles machine learning tasks. You'll also get 8GB of RAM in this machine along with 256GB of storage. If you plan on storing a lot of photos, documents and other things on the desktop, you may want to spring for the 512GB model — or simply invest in a solid portable SSD that you can connect to the Mac Mini.

While the rumor was that we would see an updated Mac Mini this year, that didn't end up happening. That means the machine looks much the same as it has for the past few years. It's a small silver box housing a variety of ports including two Thunderbolt ports, two USB-A connectors, an HDMI port, an Ethernet port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Thanks to its size, good array of ports and upgraded power with the M1 chip, the Mac Mini is a solid option for those who want a compact machine that doesn't compromise performance.

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