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You can start exploring your family tree on Ancestry for free right now

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Ancestry.com

This content was produced in partnership with Ancestry.com.

Ever felt curious about your genealogy and ancestry? Want to know where you came from, how your family tree stacks up, and if you have any relatives out there that you don’t know about? Of course, we’re boiling it down to just the basics here because there’s so much more you can learn about yourself and your history, but the point is, now’s the perfect time to take the leap. Ancestry® is offering a 14-day free trial to help you get started on your personal history journey. In case that wasn’t clear, you can try the platform for 14 days, totally free. There’s no promotional code needed. Just sign up on Ancestry as a new subscriber, and you’ll get your 14 days. You’ll get direct and accurate insights from your DNA, including ethnicity, personal traits, family history, and so much more. It’s like cracking open an egg to peer inside, only you’re taking a look at your entire lineage. It’s certainly exhilarating, and if you’ve ever been curious about where you come from and knowing your origin story, well, here’s your chance.

Why you should try Ancestry and explore your lineage

Research your Ancestry for free with trial
Ancestry.com

If you’ve ever been curious about where you come from, and we mean where you really come from, as far back as you can go, this is your time to shine. With , and through the Ancestry platform, you can find the stories that led to you. From family history records to special DNA features — like ethnicity — to personal inheritance, traits, and beyond, there are few limits to what you can learn and see about your family’s history. You can even see if your ancestors were featured in print newspapers in the past. How cool is that?

Explore the origins of your last name, find out what your ancestors were like and how they lived, or start an entire family tree tracing back your roots, it’s all up to you. Imagine finding an uncle, cousin, or even sibling.

Normally, you’d have to pay to get started, but Ancestry has activated a 14-day trial for all new customers. It means you can head on over there and start exploring your history for no cost. Plus, after that trial, you’ll save up to $60 on the first six months of your membership. What does it entail? You’ll be able to make discoveries on Ancestry about your history, special collections, and records. You’ll also learn from something called “Ancestry Hints,” which provides you with quick, customized searches and info on your family tree — helping you to expand your personal knowledge. You can also organize, preserve, and share your family tree online, and access advanced tools, like the option to upload photos, anecdotes, and stories.

You’ll be able to connect with millions of other Ancestry members to collaborate. For example, you can ask for help during your searches, share ideas, make discoveries together, and even find relatives that you never knew you had. We’re barely scratching the surface here, there’s so much more. But for now, the most important thing to take away is that you can get started today for free. There’s no reason not to, you can learn a lot about yourself and your family, and honestly, you never know what you’ll find! How exciting.

Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

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Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

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AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying
Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

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