PetaPixel: “The Sigma BF stands for ‘Beautiful Foolishness’”

BF stands for beautiful foolishness, Yamaki says. This is a phrase taken from the book, the very old book — I think probably over a hundred years old — called The Book of Tea by Okakura Tenshin, the Japanese researcher. At that time, he wanted to tell the spirit of the Japanese culture and we have the tea ceremony. And through the tea ceremony, he tried to tell what is the essence of Japanese culture.

In the book he said, let’s enjoy the time and the beautiful foolishness with a cup of tea. So this camera is for daily use. Daily life is full of joy and nice relaxing time which he calls it the beautiful foolishness.

Yamaki designed the camera with the intention of making it as easy as possible to use without feeling constrained to older design elements that are, Sigma argues, not necessary and overly complicated.

Jaron Schneider

I’ve seen a number of people praising the design as Apple-esque on various social media, and all I could think was: these must be people who never used anything other than an iPhone to take photos. This camera is nothing more than a smartphone with a lens mount, down to the internal, non-swappable storage – the perfect showcase of form over function.

Financial Times: “Weather forecasting takes big step forward with Europe’s new AI system”

While tech companies and meteorological offices around the world are already applying AI to the weather, the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) said its operational model broke new ground by making global predictions freely available to everyone at any time.

This milestone will transform weather science and predictions, said Florence Rabier, director-general of ECMWF, an intergovernmental organisation. Making the AI Forecasting System operational produces the widest range of parameters using machine learning available to date.

An experimental version tested over the past 18 months showed the system was about 20 per cent more accurate on key predictions than the best conventional methods, which feed millions of worldwide weather observations into supercomputers and crunch them with physics-based equations.

The new European system could predict the track of a tropical cyclone 12 hours further ahead, giving valuable extra warning time for severe events, said Florian Pappenberger, ECMWF director of forecasts.

Clive Cookson

Improved weather forecasting with better accuracy and predictions over longer timespans seems like a genuinely positive application of machine learning, unlike the multiple pitfalls of generative AI. Google’s DeepMind announced similar results from its GenCast AI model recently – which incidentally was trained on historical weather data from the same ECMWF. Turns out European AI models are not that far behind as many Americans insist on fearmongering.

Adobe Blog: “The Adobe Adaptive Profile”

The latest version of Camera Raw includes a new profile, called Adobe Adaptive. Unlike existing profiles such as Adobe Color or Adobe Landscape, Adobe Adaptive is image dependent. An AI model analyzes the photo and adjusts tones and colors to make them look just right. The effect is as if the AI had changed Exposure, Shadows, Highlights, Color Mixer, Curves and other controls for you, although the actual controls stay in their original neutral position.

The AI has been trained on thousands of hand-edited photos of people, pets, food, architecture, museum exhibits, cars, ships, airplanes, landscapes, and many other subjects. The photo collection covers various types of artificial lighting, as well as natural light during different seasons and times of day. The edited pictures were reviewed by a team of photographers to ensure a consistent style that looks appealing and natural, avoiding opinionated renderings with extreme contrast or unusual color choices.

Florian Kainz, Marc Levoy, & Lars Jebe

With Lightroom’s latest update, this feature has officially arrived in the Lightroom apps as well. I’m all for new features to enhance and expedite photo editing, but I’m a bit conflicted on this one. I like the concept of tweaking color profiles to individual images, but at the same time it feels like the implementation takes a lot of control out of the hand of the photographer and obscures it behind ‘magical’ AI algorithms.

Gry Online: “Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 review – a bit like early access, but at full price”

The American studio Firaxis promised a revolution and kept its word – Civilization 7 is a revolutionary installment. Without hesitation, he takes on the greatest sanctities of the series, destroys the old order and introduces a new order. The problem is that this revolution is still going on – barricades are still being erected in the streets, and smoke is rising over the city. And we will wait a little longer before the old goes away for good, and the new one solidifies, learns from its first mistakes and – most importantly – repairs the distortions. Because there are simply a lot of them in this revolutionary mess.

Currently, Civilization 7 is a chaotic mix of interesting ideas, classic solutions for the series, a lot of minor and major bugs, wonderful audiovisual setting, misguided simplifications and unclear mechanics. As a result, apart from the moments when the game drew me in so much that it was difficult for me to tear myself away, there were also a lot of moments when I couldn’t find basic information, key mechanics didn’t work or the gameplay was simply tiring. And above all this, there is a red flag in the form of a cut out fourth epoch (the one with computers or the conquest of space), the absence of which is simply felt. Which, by the way, is a clear reminder that the revolution in the series is not only about gameplay changes, but also about a stronger focus on monetization.

Adam Zechenter

It feels odd to link to a review in a language I don’t speak, and to comment on a game I haven’t played yet, but based on the translation this article best represents my own impressions on Civilization VII, at least from the early previews and gameplay videos from Firaxis and content creators. In short: huge changes to game mechanics that are paired with poor and even baffling implementation, bad UI, and lots of unfinished work that cannot, for me at least, justify the initial high price.

The Verge: “Microsoft bundles Office AI features into Microsoft 365 and raises prices”

Microsoft is bundling its AI-powered Office features into Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions, but it’s also raising prices as a result. Previously, Microsoft 365 subscribers had to pay an extra $20 per month to get Copilot inside Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as part of a Copilot Pro subscription, but Microsoft is now adding these AI features to Microsoft 365 apps for an extra $3 per month. Existing subscribers can opt out of the AI features and not suffer the price increase, though.

Microsoft has been testing adding AI-powered Office apps, the most important feature of Copilot Pro, into the Microsoft 365 subscriptions in recent months. What was previously only available in Australia, New Zealand, and a number of countries across Asia is now expanding to most markets worldwide.

While it feels like Microsoft is admitting that people aren’t willing to pay an extra $20 a month for AI-powered Office features, Microsoft argues it has always wanted to bring AI features to more users.

Tom Warren

People aren’t loving our new fancy gizmo that we pumped billions in? Wait, I have the perfect solution: let’s force it on them! A perfect illustration of the ‘AI is overhyped’ argument.

The Verge: “Instagram profile grids are going to feature rectangles instead of squares”

Instagram’s profile grids will display content as rectangles instead of squares as part of a change rolling out over the weekend, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in an Instagram Story on Friday.

I know some of you really like your squares. And square photos are sort of the heritage of Instagram. But at this point, most of what’s uploaded, both photos and videos, are vertical in their orientation, Mosseri said. It’s a bummer to overly crop them, he added.

Jay Peters

This change caused quite a bit of uproar in my small photographic community, and on Threads more broadly.

Euractiv: “Internal documents reveal Commission fears over Microsoft dependency”

The EU’s data protection watchdog, the EDPS, has ordered the Commission to bring its Microsoft use into compliance. This implies exploring less intrusive alternatives than Microsoft, but little has been done in this regard.

The case offers a stark example of the chasm between Europe’s desire for autonomy in highly sensitive areas such as IT, and the on-the-ground reality of its dependence on American tech.

There are no known credible offerings from European providers, reads an internal Commission document seen by Euractiv.

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In another recent report by the Directorate-General for Digital Services (DG DIGIT), also seen by Euractiv, concerns about excessive power in the hands of a few non-European companies, risks associated with a single supplier (price hikes, migration difficulties), and the potential loss of in-house competencies were mentioned – concerns the Commission has not yet publicly acknowledged.

The report also gives a very positive description of member state initiatives to develop open and sovereign alternatives to Microsoft, yet concludes only that DG DIGIT will plan to evaluate them internally as a possible complement for small scale initiatives with very restricted scope.

Jacob Wulff Wold

In terms of digital sovereignty, I think this is a far more pressing issue than, say, the amount of VC funding for EU startups or whether these companies end up listing on a European stock market. It should have become a priority a decade ago when the Obama administration was caught spying on Angela Merkel’s conversations. And it is undoubtedly imperative now, with geopolitical pressure on European states mounting from all sides.