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.

Ars Technica: “Mastodon’s founder cedes control, refuses to become next Musk or Zuckerberg”

The news comes after leaders of other social networks, like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, have sparked backlash over sudden changes to popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter). For years, Musk has drawn criticism for changing Twitter's hate speech policies through his X rebranding. And more recently, Zuckerberg this month defended Meta’s decision to relax hate speech policies (permitting women to be called “property” and gay people to be called “mentally ill”) by calling bans on such speech out of touch with mainstream discourse.

Mastodon is hoping to provide an alternative social network for users who are potentially frustrated with their lack of control over their timelines and content on other networks.

But to achieve the envisioned independence for all users, Mastodon’s structure needed to evolve, the blog said, as the community grew to about 1.5 million monthly active users in 2023. Remaining headquartered in Europe primarily, Mastodon’s day-to-day operations will be managed by the new European not-for-profit entity, establishing a new legal home for Mastodon.

Ashley Belanger

Good intentions, but there is already precedent of a company starting out as a nonprofit with good intentions on paper, only to succumb to investor pressure once its product became a hit – on course, I’m talking about OpenAI.

The Verge: “Dell kills the XPS brand”

The tech industry’s relentless march toward labeling everything “plus”, “pro”, and “max” soldiers on, with Dell now taking the naming scheme to baffling new levels of confusion. The PC maker announced at CES 2025 that it’s cutting names like XPS, Inspiron, Latitude, Precision, and OptiPlex from its new laptops, desktops, and monitors and replacing them with three main product lines: Dell (yes, just Dell), Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max.

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That yields new products like the freshly announced Dell Plus 32-inch 4K QD-OLED monitor and Dell Pro Premium laptops. In the future, it means we can also expect product names like Dell Pro Max Plus. Since a laptop like the Dell Pro Premium comes in two sizes, 13-inch and 14-inch, their proper full names are Dell Pro 13 Premium and Dell Pro 14 Premium. They’re spiritual successors to outgoing Dell Latitude laptops.

Dell’s XPS line, which has been a prominent name in premium laptops for years, is being replaced by new Dell Premium models. So they’re part of the base-tier Dell line, at the Premium sub-tier.

Antonio G. Di Benedetto

People have mocked this rebranding as too Apple-like, but honestly it’s much worse than that. Apple laptops (MacBook) at least have a brand distinct from the company name (Apple); throwing everything under Dell sounds generic and lazy. On top of that, you’re getting rid of a now-well-known name (XPS), which was associated with premium products.