Technology - Google News

Here’s why Twitter, Uber, and more are giving fully loaded M1 Max MacBook Pros to engineers - 9to5Mac
Fully’s standing desks and accessories are cheaper for Black Friday - The Verge
Nvidia's new tech uses AI to automatically match voice lines to animated faces - PC Gamer

Here’s why Twitter, Uber, and more are giving fully loaded M1 Max MacBook Pros to engineers - 9to5Mac

Posted: 08 Nov 2021 06:24 AM PST

Apple introduced the new line of MacBook Pro last October during its "Unleashed" event. With impressive improvements over the most recent Intel chips and even the M1 processor, the company has been very successful with the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips.

With that in mind, lots of tech companies are upgrading their staffs' Macs with the incredibly powerful M1 Max MacBook Pro with 64 GB of RAM.

It all started with Uber employer Mahyar McDonald, who shared on Twitter that "all active iOS Engineers at Uber are getting upgraded to 16″ M1 Max MacBook Pros with 64GB of RAM." He even says that this includes new hires, which also made his post very popular.

A week later, a senior employee of Twitter, John Szumski, shared similar news: "I'm excited to be rolling out fully loaded M1 Max MBPs to all of Twitter's iOS & Android engineers! We're seeing improvements in both top-line performance and thermal throttling that currently plague our Intel builds."

On Linkedin, The Pragmatic Engineer's Gergely Orosz also noted that apart from these companies, Shopify is also giving "the latest M1 MacBook Pros to engineers, while letting people keep their Intel ones." Orosz also shared some tidbits about why these big tech companies are spending so much money on these machines:

"How much time would a $4,000, top-of-the market machine like the M1 shave off from each build? How much total time over 2 years? How much "value" does this time mean per engineer?

With the M1, the answer is a no-brainier. The $4,000 per engineer spent will bring back *so* much more productivity versus top-of-the-market Intel ones, including the 2021 one."

Here's why Twitter, Uber, and more are giving fully loaded M1 Max MacBook Pros to engineers

During the "Unleashed" event, Apple said that the M1 Max chip can more than double the M1 chip power. With even more RAM available, this new MacBook Pro has been really praised by developers, engineers, and pro users overall. These computers also got a new design, a brand-new display, and more ports.

Are you working at a big tech company that gave you a new M1 Max MacBook Pro? Tell us in the comments section below and read more about the power of these new Macs below.

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Fully’s standing desks and accessories are cheaper for Black Friday - The Verge

Posted: 08 Nov 2021 07:48 AM PST

There are countless brands that make standing desks, but Fully makes some of the best. And now through November 30th, the day after Cyber Monday, you can get 15 percent off every item available on its online store. That includes its Jarvis standing desks and handy accessories you might want with one, like a monitor arm, powered grommet covers that give you extra plugs and USB charging ports, and more. These deals don't completely change that these are still pricey products, but if you have a home office, you stand to level up a few rungs on the ergonomic ladder by taking advantage of these deals.

If you're looking for a real wood tabletop for your desk instead of less durable MDF material, the Jarvis standing desk with a bamboo top starts at $484 instead of $569. The cost goes up from there depending on the size of desk you'd like, along with several other customizations that make the price go up.

We haven't reviewed standing desks at The Verge, but Fully's Jarvis desk has been mentioned several times by a few of us here who own one (including myself).

Fully makes less costly desks, too, like the Remi laminate standing desk, which now costs $390 instead of $459. The company also makes several fixed-height desks, which are seeing a 15 percent price drop right now.

Whether you want to go in on a desk or not, Fully's accessories are compatible with more than its own creations. For people who are on their feet at a desk, the Topo anti-fatigue mat makes that far less of a strain. Normally $99, it costs $84. The mini version costs $67.

Another great addition to your work space could be Fully's Jarvis monitor arm that fastens to your desk. It has a wide range of motion, even letting your monitor twist to the side if you'd rather orient your setup that way. Normally $129, it's $110 now.

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Nvidia's new tech uses AI to automatically match voice lines to animated faces - PC Gamer

Posted: 08 Nov 2021 04:23 AM PST

Nvidia may be best known for graphics cards you can't find in stores, but the company also makes some interesting software tools. An example of this is the noise removal feature known as RTX voice, which was upgraded to work with all GeForce cards earlier this year, and does an excellent job of cleaning up background noise.

Now Nvidia (Thanks, 80.lv) has been showing off a new tool in beta this year involving sound. Audio2Face is an impressive looking auto rigging process that runs within Nvidia's open real-time simulation platform, Omniverse. It has the ability to take an audio file, and apply surprisingly well matching animations to the included Digital Mark 3D character model.

It does this automatically, works well with most languages, and can be adjusted using sliders for more detail.

To do this, Nvidia has implemented a deep neural network that matches the facial animations to the audio in real time. When you first start the program it may take a moment to build the Tensor RT Engine which optimises the neural net for your hardware. From there, you should be able to see changes in real time or bake them in, as long as your hardware can hack it.

As an added bonus, Nvidia on Demand is the company's tutorial website, and it features heaps of videos on Omniverse and Audio2Face. The first video on Audio2Face is pretty far back in March 2020, but more recent tutorials even detail how to export the process to other tools like Unreal Engine 4.

After watching a few videos, it does seem to depend a bit on the quality of the audio used. Charlie Chaplin's uncharacteristically famous speech from the film, The Great Dictator is featured in one video and the movements just don't seem as clear as they do with crisper, modern recordings. That being said, unlike some audio quality, this tool is likely to only get better with time.

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