Google gamifies its top search results of 2018

While 2018 felt like a rather turbulent year, to say the least, Google wants to soften the blow a bit or focus on the other big news of the year by gamifying its top search results of the year. Game of the Year 2018 will test your knowledge of the top search trends of 2018 in a click-to-choose format. It’s also a good source of random trivia—like who appeared in search results more: Justin Trudeau or Justin Bieber?—you might want to use as you attend more parties during the holidays.

Netflix’s ‘To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before’ announces sequel

A much-loved Netflix romantic comedy just got its green light for the sequel to come out. Lana Condor, who plays the movie’s protagonist Lara Jean Covey, made the announcement saying To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before will be getting a second movie. It’s originally based from Jenny Han’s trilogy of young adult novels. The first film, which came out in August, follows Lara as she discovers her secret love letters to five of her childhood crushes were sent out to the boys in question. Noah Centineo, who plays Lara’s love interest Peter Kavinsky, will be returning. There’s no specific date yet for the film but what we do know now is that Sofia Alvarez will be returning to write the screenplay for the follow-up movie.

Google Lens is now capable of recognizing a billion items

Google’s AI-based tool has grown exponentially over the past year. From around 250,000 items it could recognize when it launched on Photos and Assistant, it can now recognize over a billion items. Its optical character recognition engine has been further developed to read more product labels, which in turn allows it to recognize more goods. It’s also gotten more data from smartphone photos. This new number comes from the products that are available through Google Shopping so don’t expect it to know obscure items just yet. It also has been developed to recognize people, geometric shapes, and Wi-Fi network names.

Source: The Verge

Remove.bg makes quick work of removing backgrounds from images

By the power of AI, website Remove.bg does one job and does it kinda well. Sort of. If you need to quickly remove the background of an image, this single-purpose site can do it for you. You just need to upload the image you need to have the foreground be separated from background and then it’ll let you download a PNG version of the final product. No need to do anything. While the site claims it only works on people, it can separate other objects and the like as long as the subject is clearly in the foreground. It also isn’t perfect. It can sometimes be a bit confused with images where the background and foreground are a bit fuzzy—like that image of Elon Musk missing a bit of his eye. But again, if you need a quick fix and you aren’t so picky about the results, this might be a good site to keep in mind.

Source: The Verge