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Justin Bieber appears to announce release of new album, ‘Swag'

Justin Bieber appears to announce release of new album, ‘Swag'

Toronto Star11-07-2025
After teasing a new project with billboards in Iceland and Los Angeles, Bieber, 31, posted a picture to Instagram of a Times Square billboard Thursday bearing what appear to be the titles of 20 songs, among them 'Therapy Session,' 'Glory Voice Memo,' 'Zuma House,' 'Yukon' and the presumed title track.
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After much speculation, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham announce ‘Buckingham Nicks' reissue
After much speculation, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham announce ‘Buckingham Nicks' reissue

Winnipeg Free Press

timea day ago

  • Winnipeg Free Press

After much speculation, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham announce ‘Buckingham Nicks' reissue

NEW YORK (AP) — They're not going their own way anymore. After much speculation, Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham announced Wednesday the reissue of 'Buckingham Nicks,' more than 50 years after the release of their only full-length album as a duo. Since its initial release in 1973, 'Buckingham Nicks' has never been reissued and is not currently available on streaming platforms. The remastered version arrives Sept. 19 via Rhino Records' high-fidelity series and was sourced from the original analog master tapes. The album will also receive a CD and digital release for the first time, and the opening track, 'Crying in the Night,' was available to stream Wednesday. Buckingham and Nicks were in their early to mid-20s during the making of their album. 'It was a very natural thing, from the beginning,' Nicks says in the re-release's liner notes, written by music journalist David Fricke. Despite their relative inexperience, 'it stands up in a way you would hope it would, by these two kids who were pretty young to be doing that work,' Buckingham says, according to the announcement release. The reissue announcement was foreshadowed by cryptic Instagram posts last week. Both Nicks and Buckingham shared handwritten lyrics to their official social media accounts. 'And if you go forward…' Nicks posted, a line from their song 'Frozen Love,' which appears on 'Buckingham Nicks.' 'I'll meet you there,' Buckingham shared, completing the lyric. In 2011, Buckingham told Uncut that he and Nicks had 'every intention of putting that album back out and possibly even doing something along with it, but I can't put any specifics on that.' In 2013, on the album's 40th anniversary, Fleetwood Mac released 'Extended Play,' their first new studio material since 2003's 'Say You Will.' The four-track collection featured a song titled 'Without You,' which had been originally slated for 'Buckingham Nicks.' The reissued version of 'Buckingham Nicks' features the same album cover as the original, despite Nicks' public dissatisfaction with the photograph, telling classic rock magazine MOJO that she 'felt like a rat in a trap' during the shoot. 'I'm actually quite prudish. So when they suggested they shoot Lindsey and I nude I could not have been more terrified if you'd asked me to jump off a speeding train,' Nicks told MOJO in 2013. 'Lindsey was like, 'Oh, come on — this is art. Don't be a child!' I thought, 'Who are you? Don't you know me?'' 'Buckingham Nicks' was released one year before they joined Fleetwood Mac, and was met with little commercial success. But it did attract the attention of Mick Fleetwood, who invited Buckingham to join Fleetwood Mac. Buckingham in turn insisted Nicks come, too. The two, then a couple, became the central faces, voices and songwriters of the group for the four decades that followed. The pair's tumultuous relationship appeared across the band's discography: She wrote 'Dreams' about him. He wrote 'Go Your Own Way' about her. Infamously, they broke up while writing the 1977 hit album 'Rumours.' Footage of Nicks staring down Buckingham 20 years later during a performance of 'Silver Springs' routinely goes viral ('You'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you,' Nicks and Buckingham sing in unison, at one point, holding each other's gaze.) Buckingham left the band in 1987, returning in 1996. The last time the band reunited, however, for a 2018-2019 tour, the rest of the members kicked Buckingham out, and as a result, he sued them. He claimed he was told five days after the group appeared at Radio City Music Hall that the band would tour without him. He says he would have been paid at least $12 million for his share of the proceeds. Later that year, Buckingham said they had settled the lawsuit. Both Buckingham and Nicks have also released reams of solo music. Some fans had theorized that Nicks and Buckingham were teasing a Fleetwood Mac reunion, which would have been the first since the death of vocalist, songwriter and keyboard player Christine McVie in 2022. Last year, Nicks told MOJO that without McVie, 'there is no chance of putting Fleetwood Mac back together in any way.'

Canadian researchers create tool to remove anti-deepfake watermarks from AI content
Canadian researchers create tool to remove anti-deepfake watermarks from AI content

Toronto Sun

timea day ago

  • Toronto Sun

Canadian researchers create tool to remove anti-deepfake watermarks from AI content

Published Jul 23, 2025 • 3 minute read A person looks at the Instagram account of singer Katy Perry, in Paris, on May 7, 2024, showing a generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) picture depicting the singer at the Met Gala. Photo by OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT / AFP via Getty Images OTTAWA — University of Waterloo researchers have built a tool that can quickly remove watermarks identifying content as artificially generated — and they say it proves that global efforts to combat deepfakes are most likely on the wrong track. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Academia and industry have focused on watermarking as the best way to fight deepfakes and 'basically abandoned all other approaches,' said Andre Kassis, a PhD candidate in computer science who led the research. At a White House event in 2023, the leading AI companies — including OpenAI, Meta, Google and Amazon — pledged to implement mechanisms such as watermarking to clearly identify AI-generated content. AI companies' systems embed a watermark, which is a hidden signature or pattern that isn't visible to a person but can be identified by another system, Kassis explained. He said the research shows the use of watermarks is most likely not a viable shield against the hazards posed by AI content. 'It tells us that the danger of deepfakes is something that we don't even have the tools to start tackling at this point,' he said. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The tool developed at the University of Waterloo, called UnMarker, follows other academic research on removing watermarks. That includes work at the University of Maryland, a collaboration between researchers at the University of California and Carnegie Mellon, and work at ETH Zurich. Kassis said his research goes further than earlier efforts and is the 'first to expose a systemic vulnerability that undermines the very premise of watermarking as a defence against deepfakes.' In a follow-up email statement, he said that 'what sets UnMarker apart is that it requires no knowledge of the watermarking algorithm, no access to internal parameters, and no interaction with the detector at all.' When tested, the tool worked more than 50 per cent of the time on different AI models, a university press release said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. AI systems can be misused to create deepfakes, spread misinformation and perpetrate scams — creating a need for a reliable way to identify content as AI-generated, Kassis said. After AI tools became too advanced for AI detectors to work well, attention turned to watermarking. The idea is that if we cannot 'post facto understand or detect what's real and what's not,' it's possible to inject 'some kind of hidden signature or some kind of hidden pattern' earlier on, when the content is created, Kassis said. The European Union's AI Act requires providers of systems that put out large quantities of synthetic content to implement techniques and methods to make AI-generated or manipulated content identifiable, such as watermarks. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. In Canada, a voluntary code of conduct launched by the federal government in 2023 requires those behind AI systems to develop and implement 'a reliable and freely available method to detect content generated by the system, with a near-term focus on audio-visual content (e.g., watermarking).' Kassis said UnMarker can remove watermarks without knowing anything about the system that generated it, or anything about the watermark itself. 'We can just apply this tool and within two minutes max, it will output an image that is visually identical to the watermark image' which can then be distributed, he said. 'It kind of is ironic that there's billions that are being poured into this technology and then, just with two buttons that you press, you can just get an image that is watermark-free.' Kassis said that while the major AI players are racing to implement watermarking technology, more effort should be put into finding alternative solutions. Watermarks have 'been declared as the de facto standard for future defence against these systems,' he said. 'I guess it's a call for everyone to take a step back and then try to think about this problem again.' Read More Canada Sunshine Girls Olympics Sunshine Girls Columnists

Second season of The Rebuild: Inside the Montreal Canadiens premieres Aug. 21
Second season of The Rebuild: Inside the Montreal Canadiens premieres Aug. 21

Montreal Gazette

time2 days ago

  • Montreal Gazette

Second season of The Rebuild: Inside the Montreal Canadiens premieres Aug. 21

Montreal Canadiens Montreal Canadiens fans won't have to wait until training camp to get their Habs fix on television: Season 2 of The Rebuild: Inside the Montreal Canadiens premieres Aug. 21 on Crave in Canada. The streaming service made the announcement Tuesday on their Instagram page. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Crave en français (@cravecanadafr) 'Witness the evolution of a team undergoing a major transformation towards a promising future. Follow the coach and players from a new angle, from training camp to the playoffs,' the post said. Season 1 was considered a success for Bell Media's streaming service. At the time the second season was announced, Crave said Season 1 of The Rebuild was one of the most-viewed French titles on Crave. It was also the most-watched Crave Original factual series since Crave became a bilingual TV and streaming service in 2020. Season 1 featured eight episodes in English and French. The docuseries takes fans behind the scenes of the team's rebuilding process. The first season was shot during the 2023-24 NHL season, while the latest season will cover 2024-25. The show is once again being produced by Groupe Fair-Play.

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