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It may seem like a highly unlikely pairing, but acquiring Bandcamp does align with Epic's broadening ambitions for the metaverse as well as CEO Tim Sweeney's intent to create a version of the internet that more closely aligns with the company's vision for Fortnite.

Epic has acquired a number of companies over the past few years, thanks to the success of Fortnite, that hint at its focus on building a small empire at the intersection of entertainment, technology and social media, including social video app Houseparty and Guitar Hero and Rock Band developer Harmonix.

Sweeney, often in public statements in both the antitrust trial against Apple and on Twitter, has voiced his concern about Big Tech's dominance and his fear that such control will extend to the metaverse, which has become a kind of stand-in for the next-generation version of the internet that combines social media, gaming and entertainment with technologies like virtual and augmented reality.

With Bandcamp, Epic seems to have found a like-minded platform. It's also one with a sterling reputation among musicians for treating creators fairly in a way that could benefit Fortnite and Epic's plans for the metaverse, given how pricey traditional media licensing deals can be.

We couldnt be more excited to welcome the Bandcamp team to Epic Games, Epic Game Store chief Steve Allison said in a statement. Bandcamp has built an incredible community and business where up and coming artists can succeed thanks to the direct support of their fans, with one of the best revenue models and terms in music. This aligns closely with Epics approach to supporting creators across all media and enabling them to connect directly with their fans.

"In Epic, weve found a partner who believes as deeply as we do that the future of music, and art itself, depends on the creation of equitable and inclusive communities like the one our fans and artists have helped to build," said Bandcamp CEO Ethan Diamond in a statement. "Were excited to work alongside the Epic team to accelerate the realization of our mission and pursue our shared goal of empowering more creators in a fair and open way.

The acquisition naturally raises some questions about what this might mean for the future of Bandcamp. We don't yet have clarity on whether Epic will make any changes to Bandcamp's revenue model (including Bandcamp Fridays) or what happens to Bandcamp's editorial operation.

In a separate message on the company's website and Twitter account, Diamond said Bandcamp will remain a standalone marketplace, with Diamond at the helm, and that there will be no immediate changes to Bandcamp's business model. Diamond says Epic will primarily be helping Bandcamp for now with "basics like our album pages, mobile apps, merch tools, payment system, and search and discovery features, to newer initiatives like our vinyl pressing and live streaming services."

"The products and services you depend on arent going anywhere, well continue to build Bandcamp around our artists-first revenue model (where artists net an average of 82% of every sale), youll still have the same control over how you offer your music, Bandcamp Fridays will continue as planned, and the Daily will keep highlighting the diverse, amazing music on the site," Diamond wrote. "We share a vision of building the most open, artist-friendly ecosystem in the world, and together well be able to create even more opportunities for artists to be compensated fairly for their work."

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Amazon is expanding its 'free college' benefit and adding ESL classes - Protocol

Samsung introduced its Expert Raw app in beta at the end of 2021; currently, it is only available for the S21 Ultra. The app allows you to control manual exposure settings for all four of the rear cameras, which is nice, but the more interesting thing it allows you to do is shoot multi-frame RAW files. Heres what you need to know about Expert RAW what it is, why its useful, and how to use it.

The short answer is that its RAW but better. In general, RAW shooting saves more data than a JPEG image file, which is a huge benefit if you prefer to fine-tune things like white balance and exposure photo editing software. JPEGs are smaller and more easily shareable, but those kinds of settings are baked in to save space, and theyre much less flexible for post-processing. Plenty of smartphones offer a traditional RAW shooting mode but with a major disadvantage to shooting a standard JPEG image.

When you take a photo in your phones native camera app, the resulting JPEG (or HEIC) file often includes data from multiple frames that were captured very quickly when you pressed the shutter button. This allows the phone to create a single image file with wider dynamic range, making a backlit subject brighter without adding a whole lot of ugly noise, for example.

Traditional RAW mode on a smartphone (or any camera) captures a single frame thats more flexible for editing than a typical JPEG but loses out on the computational benefits that come with the multi-frame processing youd get with the JPEG. This makes shooting RAW on a smartphone kind of pointless, to put it bluntly. Smartphones have very small sensors and lenses relative to traditional cameras, and they use these computational tricks to capture more image data and compensate for that size disadvantage. As a result, its usually better to just let your phone do its thing and take a JPEG.

Multi-frame RAW, which several phone manufacturers (including Apple) have introduced, makes RAW much more useful, especially when youre taking a photo with your phone. You get the best of both worlds: data from multiple frames recorded into a single file, plus plenty of flexibility for editing.

The Galaxy S22 series, including the standard S22, S22 Plus, and S22 Ultra, have all supported Expert RAW as of February 25th. Samsung plans to expand support to some older models, but there are certain hardware requirements a phone has to meet to be able to run Expert RAW, so only a handful of other top-tier devices will offer it. That list includes:

The feature isnt included in the standard Samsung camera app; its actually an entirely separate app that needs to be downloaded from the Galaxy Store. Open the store app and search for Expert RAW. Once youve downloaded it and agreed to give it access to your camera and microphone, youre ready to start shooting multi-frame RAW files.

The Expert RAW interface is similar to the Pro mode in the standard camera app, including the letter icons at the bottom of the screen that indicate the 0.6x, 1x, and 3x lens options. When you press the shutter, youll see text urging you to hold the phone still while the phone grabs multiple frames. Related: Expert RAW isnt something youll want to use for moving subjects.

The resulting files are big around 30MB to 40MB each in my testing. Theres a high-efficiency RAW option you can toggle on if you tap the settings icon on the shooting screen, but it only saved me a couple of MBs per image. Unless you bought a phone with massive storage, youll want to stick to using Expert RAW when it will really make a difference, not all the time.

Expert RAW files are saved as standard DNG files, so you can take them into any RAW processing software that you like. Samsung includes a Lightroom shortcut in the Expert RAW app, but if you want to go that route, youll need to download Lightroom from the Galaxy Store and log in with an Adobe account. Downloading from the Galaxy Store entitles you to a two-month free trial, but after that, youll need to pony up for the $119 annual subscription.

In any case, you can tap the share icon when reviewing your image to take your photo into a free app like Snapseed or save it to cloud storage to edit on a desktop.

With your image in the editing software of your choice, youll enjoy more freedom to push shadows or pull back highlights than with a standard RAW file. I took a standard RAW and a multi-frame RAW of the same backlit scene for comparison purposes, and the difference is significant. Pushing the shadow slider all the way +100 on both photos, theres some clear banding in the standard RAW, while the Expert RAW looks much cleaner.

So when youre shooting a scene with a wide dynamic range, this is definitely the better RAW mode to use just dont get too trigger-happy if you want to go easy on your phones storage.

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How to use Expert RAW on Samsung Galaxy S22, S22 Plus, and S22 Ultra - The Verge

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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., weighed in on the White House's request to Congress for $10 billion in aid to Ukraine, saying he's not opposed to selling weapons to Ukraine, but the U.S. should be careful about giving weapons away and expanding on national debt, which would threaten national security.

On Thursday, the Biden administration requested at least $10 billion in new money to provide aid to Ukraine amid Russian President Vladimir Putin's war against the nation, according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

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Paul responded to the White House's ask, saying he's "not opposed" to selling weapons to assist Ukraine, but he's "opposed" to giving away weapons and expanding upon the United States' trillions of dollars in debt, which would "threaten our own national security."

Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, speaks during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"Im not opposed to selling defensive weapons to Ukraine. I am opposed to giving away weapons or money to buy weapons as I believe that we should not expand our $30 trillion debt that threatens our own national security," Paul told Fox News Digital.

The Biden administration's request comes as Ukraine faces increasingly heavy bombings and missile attacks from Russia. Meanwhile, Russian warships are headed toward Odesa for what U.S. officials anticipate will be an amphibious assault beginning as soon as Thursday.

"As part of the agreement lawmakers are working to finalize ahead of the March 11thdeadline, were also urging Congress toinclude supplemental fundingfor two urgent and immediate needs: supporting Ukraine, and continuing our ongoing COVID response efforts," OMB Acting Director Shalanda Young said Thursday.

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 28: U.S President Joe Biden gives remarks at a Black History Month celebration event in the East Room of the White House on February 28, 2022 in Washington, DC. The event was attended by members of President Bidens Cabinet, the Congressional Black Caucus, state and local elected officials, and Civil Rights and Faith based leaders. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

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OMB also asked Congress for $22.5 billion in coronavirus-related aid. That money will go toward treatments, vaccines and virus tests.

Rand Paul on Hannity. (Fox News)

Fox News' Tyler Olsen contributed to this report.

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Rand Paul on White House's $10B Ukraine aid ask: Expanding debt 'threatens' US national security - Fox News

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Sen. Rand Paul to co-host town hall events with Hageman - Wyoming Tribune

Tonight, you heard a speech by someone who doesnt know whats going on in the union, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Tuesday night. Or at least he is hoping you dont know.

President Joe Biden delivered the State of the Union address Tuesday, but it was Paul who provided the real State of the Union. Whereas Biden spent much of the night vilifying Russian President Vladimir Putin and the crisis in Ukraine, it was Paul who put the focus back on the plight of the American people. When Biden did get around to addressing the United States, he described an alternate reality, ignoring the harsh conditions that have inundated the country during his presidency.

Whats the state of the union? Russias invasion of Ukraine has led to the worst crisis in Europe since World War II. Massive inflation is everywhere, the likes of which we havent seen since the malaise of Jimmy Carter, Paul said. Parents are frustrated from almost two years of bureaucrats messing with their kids schooling. Everyday Americans seeing their freedom, jobs, and livelihoods stolen from them by petty tyrants drunk on power with lockdowns and mandates.

Paul eviscerated Biden for all of his policy failures from his first year in office. The state of the union is frankly pretty poor, and Americans are largely unhappy with Bidens performance, Paul said emphatically.

Statistics show that he is right. Biden is polling at horrifically low levels. Inflation is decimating households, approaching the highest levels ever recorded. Then, Paul highlighted concerns over our countrys soaring national debt. Paul also addressed supply chain shortages and skyrocketing food prices that have left peoples bank accounts and refrigerators emptier than in recent years. The nirvana that Biden presented in his speech isnt based in any reality.

Of course, thats if you can even get the food. Supply chain issues from our COVID policies have continued to bring empty shelves and late deliveries of just about every item in our economy, Paul said. From meat to used cars, from raw materials to boatloads of goods, the delays are ongoing.

Paul has been a crusader against overturning the countrys mask mandates. Frequently, he has claimed they were nothing more than tyrannical theatrics a claim that has new currency now that mask mandates were suddenly dropped in the Capitol just in time for Bidens State of the Union. Suffice to say, that is quite the coincidence.

Furthermore, whereas Biden kept fibbing about his utopia, Paul addressed the reality of COVID-19 restrictions put into effect by Democrats throughout the country. Our two years of lockdowns, ballooning national debt, and out-of-control inflation threaten our national security, Paul said. Congress added trillions of dollars in new debt to pay people to stay home from the lockdowns that Congress mandated.

Paul also tackled the social justice topics of the moment.

Parents are being told theyre not in charge of their kids education, then watching as critical race theory and extreme gender issues are brought into their small childrens classrooms thats if their kids are even meeting in person in a classroom at all, he said.

Biden and his followers want you to believe theyre following the science, but it looks more like political science to many of us," he continued. "There have been many casualties of the Biden policies so far: science, freedom, prosperity, strength in the world."

But it wasnt just Biden whom Paul criticized. He appropriately went after the presidents enablers in Congress.

Democrats in Congress who clapped and cheered tonight bear much of the blame as well, he said. They passed the spending bills and enabled the appointees who have made this mess.

Most importantly, unlike the false realities created in Bidens speech, Paul was able to end on an optimistic path and provide guidance on how the country can recover from Bidens first year in office.

Thankfully, one thing I can say without flinching about Americans is that the state of our union can and will bounce back, he said. We can get our spending under control. We can retake our freedom. We can stop the left from taking over our schools, and we can fix our foreign policy again. ... It starts now. Parents are fighting back. People are listening to other voices with real science on their side. And men and women are running for office to take back Congress. Next year, I am hopeful the message will be better, our outlook brighter. For now, keep fighting and hoping, and our best days can and will be in our future.

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Biden gave a speech, but Sen. Rand Paul gave the real State of the Union - Washington Examiner