A group of organizations, including nonprofits like LatinoProsperity and labor groups like the California Teamsters, are petitioning California Attorney General Rob Bonta to stop OpenAI from becoming a for-profit entity, The Los Angeles Times reports. OpenAI announced plans to transition to a public-benefit corporation in 2024, and reportedly has two years to pull it off or risk a large portion of the money its raised become debt.The group's primary concerns are that OpenAI "failed to protect its charitable assets" and is actively "subverting its charitable mission to advance safe artificial intelligence." OpenAI started as a nonprofit research organization studying AI, but transitioned to a for-profit company that's overseen and run by a nonprofit in 2019.That structure is legally allowed in the state of California, but the group's petition claims that OpenAI's decision to pursue a new structure is driven by a desire not to further its mission, but to provide "AI's benefits - the potential for untold profits and control over what may become powerful world-altering technologies - to a handful of corporate investors and high-level employees."Engadget has reached AG Bonta for comment on the petition and will update this article if we hear back."Our Board has been very clear that we intend to strengthen the non-profit so that it can deliver on its mission for the long term. We're not selling it, we're doubling down on its work," OpenAI told Engadget. "We look forward to the input and advice from leaders who have experience in community-based organizations on how we can help them achieve their missions,as recently announcedby the creation of our advisory Commission."OpenAI's primary justification for going for-profit is to raise more money. Currently, there's nothing stopping OpenAI from convincing more people to invest, but as Engadget reported in February, it is limited in the returns it can offer investors. It wouldn't have those limitations as a for-profit company, nor would it have to heed the demands of a nonprofit board focused on the risks of the company's breakthroughs, rather than their utility as consumer products.OpenAI's board has attempted to reign in the for-profit side over the years, like pushing out Sam Altman in 2023, before he was rehired and the board was filled with new members more friendly to OpenAI's for-profit goals. The organizations behind the petition believe that moves like that are enough justification for the AG to step in to protect the public's interest.The petition joins other attempts to stop OpenAI's conversion, like Meta's letter to Bonta claiming that OpenAI's transition to a for-profit would "flout the law," and Elon Musk's attempt to buy the company.Update 8:24PM ET: Added comment from OpenAI.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/labor-and-nonprofit-coalition-calls-on-california-ag-to-stop-openai-from-going-for-profit-212548103.html?src=rss
Horror entertainment specialist Blumhouse is running special screenings of its movie M3GAN where audiences will be encouraged to use their smartphones. Yes, flying in the face of all the warnings and announcements to not interrupt the experience for other viewers, Blumhouse is partnering with Meta to deliver special content during screenings of M3GAN. During these one-night engagements, viewers can use Meta's Movie Mate service to access second screen content, such as a chatbot version of the M3GAN doll, film trivia and behind-the-scenes details. Blumhouse movies Annabelle and Ma are also getting one-night engagements this spring, but those seem to be standard showings where people will get annoyed if you bust out your phone.To take advantage of this tie-in, theater-goers start by sending a DM to the movie's Instagram account. It will also only work for people inside participating theaters, meaning Instagram will likely require access to viewers' location data."The M3GAN in-theater Movie Mate is a first-to-market moviegoer experience," said Omar Zayat, group lead entertainment, tech, travel, gaming and auto at Meta. "We are happy to introduce filmgoers to it by way of Instagram Direct and Click-to-Messenger Ads. We are thrilled to be working with Universal Pictures and Blumhouse to deliver rich experiences designed to get audiences back into theaters."Buried in all that corporate jargon is an acknowledgement that movie theaters were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Possibly in an effort to encourage more business, there has been a wave of cinemas allowing or encouraging activities that would normally get you booted from the theater. AMC started hosting special sing-along showings of Wicked because some audience members apparently couldn't stop themselves from doing their best Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande impressions. A Minecraft Movie has also seen disruptive behavior, thanks to fan reactions and the filming of fan reactions hoping to go viral.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/meta-wants-you-to-be-on-your-phone-during-special-showings-of-m3gan-220411260.html?src=rss
by Lawrence Bonk,Kris Holt,Will Shanklin on (#6QN1P)
With Nintendo's April 2 Direct showcase over and done, we now know more about the Switch 2 than ever before, including its release date (June 5) and price ($450!). We're also keeping a close eye on how the recently-announced tariffs in the United States are affecting Nintendo's launch plans - the company has already paused pre-orders in the US that were set to take place on April 9.Thanks to Nintendo's January 16 teaser trailer, we've long known what the Switch 2 will look like, and that it will arrive in 2025 - over eight years after its predecessor. The Nintendo Switch 2 looks very similar to the original system, albeit with a larger display, magnetic Joy-Cons and a sleeker design. The company also reaffirmed that the upcoming console will be backwards compatible with Switch games.Looking to catch up on everything we know about the Switch 2? Read on.What are the key new features of the Nintendo Switch 2?Display and dockThe Nintendo Switch 2 has a 1080p 7.9-inch display with a 120Hz refresh and HDR compatibility. It also supports up to 4K output at 120Hz (with variable refresh rates) when docked.Joy-Con and Pro ControllerThe new Joy-Con 2 for Nintendo Switch 2 attaches magnetically with a button to release them. They have larger SL and SR buttons (the ones hidden when the Joy-Con are attached) to make playing multiplayer games on individual Joy-Cons more feasible. These buttons are also made of steel and attach to the Switch 2's magnets.The analog sticks are no longer tiny nubs, and are closer in size to the ones you might find on a PS5 or Xbox controller. However, they do not have Hall effect sensors, the use of which can minimize the risk of the "stick drift" issue that plagued the original Joy-Cons.The Joy-Con 2 have what Nintendo is calling HD Rumble 2" built in, which seems to be a refinement of the original (and still very good) vibration function. Finally, each Joy-Con 2 has an optical sensor that allows you to use it as a mouse, and a C button, which we'll get to in a minute.NintendoThe new Pro Controller for the Nintendo Switch 2 comes with everything you'd expect based on the refreshed Joy-Con 2: Namely HD Rumble 2 and the C button. There are also remappable GL/GR buttons around the back and a standard audio jack for connecting a headset.Both options come with Amiibo support built in. The Switch 2 comes with two Joy-Con 2, as you'd expect, and additional pairs are priced at $90. The Pro Controller will cost $80.The C button stands for chat"The new C button is a dedicated way to enter a chat session with friends. As well as the standard features you'd expect from voice chat, Nintendo has built a Discord-like video-sharing feature, which lets you show your gameplay to others and see other people's screens while you're playing.The GameChat function works with a mic built into the console, though headsets are also supported. Nintendo will also sell a $50 camera that plugs into the USB-C port on the top of the console, which will allow you to stream your face along with your game.NintendoGameCube supportThe Switch 2 will work with GameCube games via the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack. The three titles available at launch will be F-Zero GX, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Soul Calibur II.Improved specsPerhaps the biggest feature, though, is one you can't see: The Switch 2 has an all-new processor and GPU and significantly more storage (256GB vs 64GB in the Switch OLED), along with support for faster and more capacious microSD cards. This will obviously lead to better first-party games and upgraded Switch experiences, but more importantly it will mean multi-platform games that had to skip the original, underpowered Switch will be able to be ported over. With games like Cyberpunk 2077 coming to the Switch 2 at launch, it seems like far more ports will be feasible than on the original console.Another major improvement comes in the form of networking - the Switch 2 supports Wi-Fi 6, which will improve the original's often glacial download speeds. Similarly, the new dock sports an Ethernet port for a rock-solid connection.What's it like to play?Nintendo gave the press a chance to check out the Switch 2 and a few of the games it highlighted. You can read our impressions of Mario Kart Worldas well as more general thoughts on how the Switch 2 feels in person. Right off the bat, Mario Kart World feels like an outstanding launch title, with more depth and better visuals than we've ever seen from a Mario Kart game. The core formula is intact, but there are a lot of new features and play styles to dig into.As for the Switch 2 hardware, it feels like a major step forward from the original Switch - it has grown up a lot and feels far more polished and refined. And while it may not have an OLED screen, the 7.9-inch LED display Nintendo did use is outstanding.When will the Nintendo Switch 2 come out?June 5, 2025.When do pre-orders open for Nintendo Switch 2?Pre-orders were originally set to begin on April 9, but on April 4 Nintendo announced it was suspending pre-order plans in the US "indefinitely" in reaction to the original slate of tariffs imposed by President Trump. However, Nintendo says that the release date for the console is unchanged.How much will the Nintendo Switch 2 cost?On April 2, Nintendo announced that the Switch 2 would cost $450 standalone, or $500 with a bundled digital copy of the new Mario Kart game, Mario Kart World. That's significantly more expensive than the original Switch, which launched at $300, and has remained at that price ever since. It's also more expensive than the entry-level current-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft.The comparison looks a little better up against Valve's Steam Deck, which costs $400 for the LCD model or $550 for the basic OLED model. The Steam Deck is more affordable than most PC handhelds.Within 48 hours of the pricing announcement, however, Nintendo delayed the original pre-order schedule "in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions." With heavy US tariffs levied on Nintendo's Asian production centers, the implication was that would have little choice but to pass at least some of those costs on to American consumers. But Trump's April 9 tariff pivot - reverting to 10 percent across the board for 90 days for all countries except China, which now gets a triple-digit hit - further muddied the waters. That's because it's unclear how much, if any, of the components and assembly of US-bound Switch 2 consoles will originate in China.How long will the Switch 2's battery last?Nintendo says that the Switch 2 will last between 2 and 6.5 hours on a single charge. This is similar to the original Switch, which was rated for 2.5-6.5 hours, though later revisions upped that figure significantly. The company cautions that "this time is an estimate ... battery life will depend on the games you play and usage conditions."When can I try the Nintendo Switch 2?Nintendo is planning a worldwide roadshow to let gamers go hands-on with the console. These events started in New York and Paris on April 4-6, with others taking place throughout the following two months.Ticket registration for many of the Nintendo Switch 2 Experience events has closed, but waitlists are available. However, given that Nintendo is taking a first come, first served approach, your chances of attending the roadshow if you don't already have a ticket (or unless you signed up for the waitlist immediately) seem very small at this point.The full list of Nintendo Switch 2 Experience dates is as follows:North America:
The National Recording Registry announced its 2025 inductees, and there are some geeky sounds that will be immortalized in the Library of Congress. The Microsoft Windows 95 reboot chime was selected to be a part of the registry, as was the Minecraft soundtrack."These are the sounds of America - our wide-ranging history and culture. The National Recording Registry is our evolving nation's playlist," Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said. "The Library of Congress is proud and honored to select these audio treasures worthy of preservation, including iconic music across a variety of genres, field recordings, sports history and even the sounds of our daily lives with technology."The Windows 95 start-up audio was composed by ambient music pioneer Brian Eno. According to the blurb from the Library of Congress, the final sound clip was twice as long as Microsoft's engineers had requested of the composer. But they went ahead with the chime because they felt it "conveyed the sense of welcome, hopefulness and progress that they envisioned" for this era of personal computing.The Volume Alpha soundtrack to Minecraft is only the second piece of gaming music to be added to the registry. It joins the iconic theme for Super Mario Bros, which was inducted in 2023. The launch audio for the popular sandbox game (which just got its own movie) was composed and performed by Daniel Rosenfeld under stage name C418.The 2025 inductees include music from across the genre spectrum. Some of the other selections include the original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton, Miles Davis album Bitches Brew, and Celine Dion's single "My Heart Will Go On."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/the-windows-95-start-up-chime-has-been-added-to-the-library-of-congress-203909673.html?src=rss
Whether it's your nephew who wants a new iPad, your sister who needs a new pair of AirPods or your parent who could benefit from an easy-to-use MacBook, Apple devices are some of the most in-demand devices you can get today. That means, unfortunately, that big discounts can be scarce and you won't find them directly from Apple. But that doesn't mean good Apple deals don't exist, you just have to know where to look and keep an eye out for new deals. Since you probably have more pressing things to do beyond monitoring the web for discounts, Engadget keeps track of deals like these regularly, so we're here to help. We're continually searching retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Target and others to find what's on sale and we update this list every week. You might note that iPhone deals are missing from this list - apart from refurbished or carrier deals, you won't find many unlocked iPhones on sale. But for everything else, like AirPods, MacBooks, iPads and MacBooks, these are the best Apple deals you can get right now. Best Apple streaming deals Best iPad deals Apple iPad mini (7th gen) for $479 ($20 off): This is the iPad to get if you prefer small tablets, akin to ereaders. The latest mini is equipped with an A17 Pro chipset, an 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display and Apple Intelligence. We consider it to be the best small tablet, period, and we appreciate its Apple Pencil Pro support, 128GB of storage on the base model and compact design. Apple iPad Air (M3, 11-inch) for $549 ($50 off): The only major difference between this, the latest iPad Air, and the previous generation is the addition of the faster M3 chip. We awarded the new slab an 89 in our review, appreciating the fact that the M3 chip was about 16 percent faster in benchmark tests than the M2. This is the iPad to get if you want a reasonable amount of productivity out of an iPad that's more affordable than the Pro models. Also at Best Buy. Apple iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) for $1,193 ($107 off): The iPad Pro is overkill for any casual user, but if you want the best possible performance out of a tablet, this is the one to get. In our review, we marveled at how thin it is and called the OLED display one of the best we've seen. It houses Apple's latest M4 chip - the same slice of silicon as in the MacBook Air - which means it can handle even intense media editing. But the main drawback is price. This discount doesn't eliminate that hitch, but helps a bit. Best MacBook deals and Mac discounts MacBook Air (M2, 13-inch) for $800 ($200 off): With the launch of the M4 MacBook Air, the M2 model feels a little old - even though it's objectively a solid laptop. We called it Apple's "near-perfect" Mac in our original review, praising it for its excellent performance, gorgeous screen and thinner design. Also at Best Buy. MacBook Air (M4, 13-inch) for $949 ($50 off): Apple's latest MacBook Air only came out earlier this month, but it's already seeing a slight discount at a couple retailers. One of the things we appreciated most in our review was the slight price drop for the base configuration. Instead of starting at $1,099 like the M3 MacBook Air, the M4 starts at $999. Add in this discount and the fact that the ultraportable packs Apple's latest M-series chip, and you've got yourself a pretty good deal on a capable laptop - one that happens to be our favorite laptop overall. iMac (M4, 24-inch) for $1,179 ($120 off): For an all-in-one solution, the M4 iMac is a good pick thanks to its powerful performance, standard 16GB of RAM and improved webcam. Just note that it only comes in the 24-inch screen size option. Best AirPod deals AirPods 4 with ANC for $169 ($10 off): These buds have ANC, but they don't have the interchangeable ear tips you'll find on the AirPods Pro 2. Even so, they have an improved fit over the last version, plus good sound quality and a heap of advanced features. Also at B&H Photo. Best Apple Watch deals Apple Watch SE for $170 ($80 off): Those on tighter budgets can opt for the Apple Watch SE and know they're getting the core Apple wearable experience with few compromises. We consider it to be the best smartwatch for newbies. Though we have a few thoughts on what a new generation SE could look like. Read more Apple coverage:
President Donald Trump has announced a 90-day pause on the sweeping tariff plan that went into effect on Wednesday, April 9, and an increase to 125 percent on the tariff on imports from China. Even with the 90-day pause, there's still also a 10 percent tariff on all other imports to the US."Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World's Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125 percent, effective immediately, " Trump posted on Truth Social. For not retaliating, and attempting to "negotiate a solution," the president says he also "authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10 percent" on trade with countries other than China.China originally announced its own 50 percent tariff on US imports on April 8, The New York Times reports, before raising the tariff to 84 percent when Trump's plan went into effect. The European Union recently approved its own set of tariffs to go into effect on April 15.Besides negatively impacting global trade, Trump's tariffs have already had an immediate effect on companies offering consumer products partially or completely manufactured outside of the US. Many companies can no longer afford to pay the tariff to get their products to US customers, or are considering raising prices to account for their losses.For example, Nintendo attributed the pause on Switch 2 pre-orders in the US and Canada to the tariffs. The new import restrictions have also temporarily limited the sales of some products: Both Razer and Framework are no longer selling certain laptops in the US. Framework also delayed pre-orders on its new 2-in-1 convertible laptop and announced that it would be raising prices by 10 percent on the devices that remain for sale.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/trump-announces-90-day-pause-on-tariffs-excluding-china-195630212.html?src=rss
Google has used AI to revamp one of the most beloved films of all time for a 360-degree Sin City screen with the highest resolution in the world. The rerolled version of The Wizard of Oz will debut this August at The Sphere, the Las Vegas entertainment venue with a famously globular LED screen. Whether a technical marvel, dystopian nightmare fuel or some combination, the project will surely continue The Sphere's penchant for extravagant spectacles that persuade tourists to plunk down hundreds of dollars to sit for a few hours in one of its 17,600 seats.Sphere Entertainment, the company behind the venue, worked on the project with Google, Magnopus and Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns The Wizard of Oz rights. Google describes it as an "epic undertaking of creativity and technology," humbly likening it to the cinematic boundaries broken by the acclaimed Technicolor original. "We're taking a beloved movie, but we are re-creating it," Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian told The Wall Street Journal. "The only other way you could do it is to go back [in time] and film it with the cameras that the Sphere uses."The 1939 original.Warner Bros. DiscoveryGoogle used generative AI models from its Gemini family on the project, most notably Veo 2 and Imagen 3. The company not only had to magnify the original 35mm film for a 160,000-square-foot screen composed of 16,000 LEDs but also had to account for camera cuts that removed characters from the frame. For example, in a Kansas scene between Dorothy, Auntie Em and Miss Gulch, Uncle Henry (who was also in the room but off-camera) will be visible on the much wider screen.It did so primarily through an AI super-resolution tool (generating new pixels to fit the much higher-res screen), AI outpainting (generating new parts of a scene stretching beyond the original celluloid) and performance generation (incorporating composites of the actors into these expanded environments).To help fine-tune the AI models, Google didn't limit the models' training to the original footage. It also fed them supplementary material like the shooting script, production illustrations, photographs, set plans and scores - teaching them about characters' and environmental details and production elements like camera focal lengths. The company also consulted with professional filmmakers for character actions, expressions and performance."Now, Dorothy's freckles snap into focus, and Toto can scamper more seamlessly through more scenes," Google claimed.The companies behind the project (perhaps contradictorily) claim that, despite AI touching "over 90 percent of the movie," it "respects the original in every way." Google says no new dialogue lines were added, and there isn't a note of new music sung.If the glimpse shown in the preview below (via tabGeeks) is any indication, Dorothy has all the overly smoothed-out hallmarks we've come to expect from AI-upscaled faces. But we'll leave final judgment for the sun-drenched Sin City tourists who spend their hard-earned (or hard-won) cash on following the Gemini-infused road beginning on August 28.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/google-used-ai-to-reconceptualize-the-wizard-of-oz-for-the-las-vegas-sphere-194504769.html?src=rss
If you haven't already heard, Switch 2 pre-orders remain indefinitely delayed in the U.S. While folks in the U.K. are able to pre-order the new console now (while stock lasts, of course), Americans will have to wait for their time to shine. In response to new tariffs announced by President Donald Trump shortly after the last Nintendo Direct presentation, the company delayed Switch 2 pre-orders in the U.S. Canadians will also have to wait as Nintendo has now also indefinitely delayed pre-orders in that country as well, according to a report from MobileSyrup and confirmed by Walmart of Canada via a post on X. According a statement Nintendo provided to Engadget: "Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged." President Trump recently announced a 90-day pause on steep reciprocal" tariffs affecting 75 countries, but also announced that the tariff imposed on China will go up to 125 percent. It's still unclear what this could mean for Switch 2 pre-orders and pricing, but we do know this: Nintendo started moving some of its Switch console manufacturing to Vietnam in 2019. The reciprocal tariff for Vietnam was set to be 46 percent, but with this latest announcement, that appears to be on hold for now in favor of a 10 percent reciprocal tariff that's now in effect for the 90-day pause period. Nintendo had previously announced the April 9 pre-order date for North America, along with the June 5 date for wider availability. The starting price was to be $450, but that could change now in response to the proposed tariffs. Participating retailers will also be selling the Switch 2 when it eventually makes its way to the U.S. We expect those to include Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Walmart and others. There's some fine-print attached to pre-ordering directly from Nintendo. According to the pre-order page on Nintendo's site, you must be 18 years or older, sign in with your Nintendo account and register your interest in pre-ordering. Then, you'll be sent an invitation email when it's time to play your pre-order, and the invitation will be valid for 72 hours. And then there's this bit of info: "Invitation emails will be prioritized on a first-come, first-served basis to registrants who have purchased a Nintendo Switch Online membership with a minimum of 12 months of paid membership and a minimum of 50 total gameplay hours, as of April 2, 2025." That seems to mean those who have paid for Switch Online in the recent past and those who have spent a good amount of time playing Switch games as of late will get first pick at buying a Switch 2. There's no telling if these same restrictions will apply if you want to pre-order from third-party retailers. We knew from the teaser trailer for the Switch 2 that Nintendo's new hardware would be bigger and would have a new approach to the detachable Joy-Cons. The new Joy-Con 2 have a new C button, mouse controls and a built in gyroscope for tilt control. The console has a built-in mic to support a new feature called Game Chat that will let you communicate with friends in-game. The device is indeed a bit larger, with a 7.9-inch LCD screen that supports a 120Hz refresh rate, HDR and a 1080p resolution. When docked, you'll be able to play at up to 4K on your TV, and Nintendo says it improved the consoles internal speakers as well. The new dock also has a built-in fan to keep the console cool and help maintain performance during long play sessions. The Switch 2 has dual USB-C ports for charging, and the base storage amount has increased to 256GB. The Switch 2's storage can be expanded like the previous model, but it will only work with newer microSD Express cards. The Switch 2 has a number of accessories that you'll be able to purchase separately as well, including the new Switch 2 camera for $50, a new Switch 2 Pro controller for $80, an extra pair of Joy-Con 2 controllers for $90, a Joy-Con 2 charging grip for $35 and more. However, considering the new question of tariffs, it's unclear if those accessory prices will change before customers can actually order the gear. Pre-order the Nintendo Switch 2 from:
Samsung has finally detailed the prices of the new TVs it announced at CES 2025. The company is selling updated version of The Frame TV, multiple ranges of OLED TVs with faster processors and The Frame Pro, a high-end version of its popular TV / digital picture frame. The major upgrade The Frame Pro offers over the original The Frame is a 4K Neo QLED display and the Wireless One Connect Box. Samsung's Neo QLED displays use MiniLEDs to offer improved brightness and local dimming. To better sell the illusion that The Frame Pro is a picture frame, the Wireless One Connect Box lets you hide the cables you'd normally plug into your TV in a cabinet, and wirelessly transmit their inputs directly to your display. For those upgrades, plus the included NQ4 AI Gen3 Processor, The Frame Pro is $2,199 for a 65-inch model, $3,199 for a 75-inch model and $4,299 for the 85-inch model. Samsung says an 83-inch model will be available at a later date. Samsung The changes to The Frame are more modest. The TV now sports a refresh rate of up to 144Hz and also comes with the NQ4 AI Gen3 processor. The chip powers video upscaling on top of AI-powered features like "Click to Search," the ability to look up an actor's bio while watching something, and "Live Translate," the ability to generate real-time captions of whatever you're watching in another language. If you want The Frame, you'll pay $899 for the 43-inch model, $1,099 for the 50-inch model, $1,299 for the 55-inch model and $1,799 for the 65-inch model. The updates to Samsung's more traditional OLED TVs vary depending on the series and size you purchase, but all of the new TVs support Samsung's AI-powered features. The S95F comes with the NQ4 AI Gen3, a new glare-free display, Samsung's "brightest-ever OLED screen" and the Motion Xcelerator 165Hz feature for smooth gameplay during demanding video games. The S90F gets the same chip and Motion Xcelerator 144Hz (for a slightly lower refresh rate) and the S85F uses the NQ4 AI Gen2 processor and Motion Xcelerator 120Hz. The S95F starts at $2,299, with sizes that range from 55 inches to 75 inches. The S90F starts at $1,299 for the 42-inch model and can go up to 83 inches. The S85F, meanwhile, starts at $1,499 for the 55-inch model and also goes up to 83 inches. All of Samsung's new TVs are available to order today, and the company is guaranteeing seven years of software updates to the TVs' One UI Tizen operating system when you purchase. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/samsung-is-not-selling-the-frame-pro-for-cheap-185607096.html?src=rss
Sony is beefing up the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog for Extra and Premium subscribers with a bevy of new additions for April. The headliner here is Hogwarts Legacy. This is one of the biggest blockbusters of the past couple of years, even in the face of J.K. Rowling doing her darndest to destroy her personal Hogwarts legacy with anti-trans nonsense.For the uninitiated, it's an open-world action RPG set at Harry Potter's favorite wizarding school. However, the game takes place in the 1890s, over a hundred years before Potter and his buds careened around the campus. The game hits the service on April 15.Also on the docket this month is the puzzler Blue Prince. This is actually a day-one launch for the platform. The reviews of this one have been particularly effusive, with most people praising the clever puzzles, the atmospheric game world and the addition of roguelike mechanics. It'll be available for download on April 10.The second installment of Don't Nod's Lost Records: Bloom & Rage will also be available on April 15 for subscribers as a day-one launch. This follow-up concludes the time-twisting narrative adventure that's set in both 1995 and 2022. This is generally considered a spiritual successor to the iconic Life is Strange.Other games dropping this month include EA Sports PGA Tour and the restaurant management sim PlateUp! PS4 players are also getting a little treat, as Battlefield 1 will be available from April 15.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/hogwarts-legacy-and-blue-prince-come-to-playstation-plus-game-catalog-in-april-175501864.html?src=rss
What kind of person would you be in the face of a disaster that's beyond explanation? Would you help distressed neighbors and open your home even to sketchy-looking strangers in the hope that there's strength in numbers, or go it alone regardless of how heavily the odds are stacked against you? Would you still brush your teeth every day? The horror in Francis Coulombe's RPG Look Outside is all encompassing. There is the cosmic element: something incomprehensible is happening beyond the walls of your apartment building and it's in your best interest to not even look outside, let alone go there. And as you quickly learn, anyone who has looked or been outside is transformed in unimaginable ways, making for some extreme (and extraordinarily creative) body horror. But in much of the game leading up to its multiple climactic endings, the unease also stems from how it makes you look inside - at the choices you've made and the person you've become in order to survive. Despite trying to take an empathetic approach, I still found myself in situations that left my character (and me) wracked with guilt. There is a gnawing sense of doubt that grows over the course of the game, repeatedly making me question whether I'd, say, made a bad call and been too quick to kill that neighbor whose entire head is teeth, or if my hand was really forced into making a very upsetting sacrifice. After a while, the most unnerving thing is looking in the mirror. And you have to do that a lot in this game, because hygiene affects your stats. Francis Coulombe/Devolver Digital It all begins with your character, Sam (you can change the name, if you want), waking up after a strange dream with a strong urge to look outside. You are immediately given the choice between satisfying your curiosity and listening to your gut, and you'll find yourself grappling with that dilemma time and time again. At this point, you also meet Sybil, the mysterious next-door neighbor who only speaks to you through the wall, with one glaring eyeball peering out of a large crack. Sybil, whom it's unclear if you should trust, tells you that everything will blow over in 15 days if you just wait it out. You need to scavenge for resources if you're going to make it that long, though, and once you leave your apartment and get a chance to talk to some other neighbors, you may decide you want to take a more active role in getting to the bottom of the catastrophe. Some neighbors, particularly a few robed amateur astronomers who appear to be in a cult, seem to know quite a bit about what's going on, and it's insinuated that doing tasks for them will help you figure out the how and why of the phenomena around you. Others are more focused on addressing their immediate needs and will try to rope you into their causes: locating missing people, picking up laundry, cleaning the messes left behind by eldritch horrors, etc. There's a full on war happening somewhere in the building, which you can choose to play a part in if you're so inclined. Your landlord will unsurprisingly still demand you pay him rent despite the circumstances. If you choose to play in Normal mode, like I did, Sybil is your only save point, so you'll have to return home regularly. Easy mode autosaves. All interactions are turn-based, and as you explore the apartment building, you'll run into tons of enemies and potential allies - but the line between the two isn't always easy to distinguish. Sometimes you can only attack or try to escape, which answers the question for you, but other times, you have the opportunity to talk and ask questions. The turn-based nature allows you to take a moment and evaluate each new encounter, but there's always an air of ambiguity about everyone's trustworthiness. Even when you're back at your apartment, where you can shower, rest, do some cooking and crafting, and play video games, people will come along and knock on your door, and you'll have to make up your mind about whether you should let them in. The thing is, surviving can be pretty difficult once you really get going if you're on your own. Enemies will outnumber and overpower you. That's where it becomes helpful to have a few allies. With as many as three other people in your party, the scale tips heavily in your favor. I took the trusting approach, for better or worse. This resulted in me having a pretty solid group of fighters on my side, but a pair of those same allies kicked me out of my own bedroom and complained about my cooking. The creature designs come disgustingly, beautifully alive in the pixel art style. Body horror can be really hard to stomach, and something is often lost for me in the process of consuming it when it's intended to seem realistic - either because I'm hiding behind my hands and only taking tiny peeks through my fingers, or because it ends up achieving the opposite effect and just looks ridiculous without meaning to. But Coulombe's art equally embraces the horrifying and the absurd, and the effect of that balance is powerful. Nothing was ever so disturbing that I couldn't look straight at it, but there were certainly moments that gave me a genuine scare or made my skin crawl. Even the characters that aren't being transformed, like the protagonist, look a little grotesque, which adds to how unsettling everything feels. But just when the dread would reach a fever pitch, something overtly silly would be thrown in almost as if to splash some cold water on the whole thing and say, yes this is the apocalypse but we're still human, we still have a sense of humor. Francis Coulombe/Devolver Digital So much of the joy of playing this game is discovering all the tricks it has up its sleeve, so I won't get into any descriptions of bosses, puzzles or the building itself, other than to say that the latter has a whole House of Leaves thing going on that is unbelievably frustrating at times, but in a way that only adds to the brilliance of it all. There is no map to guide you, either. The soundtrack, composed by Eric Shumaker, keeps in perfect step with every emotion the environment evokes, and I could probably write an entire separate review about how good it is. All of this builds up to an absolute cosmic gut-punch of an ending (or endings, there are several) that completely changed the way I felt about the game up until that point. In the end, it becomes something much, much bigger than it once seemed, and the feelings were almost overwhelming. I can't stop thinking about it. By now I've played Look Outside many hours beyond what a typical run would be, just picking apart every detail and turning over every stone to try and figure out all the secrets, reach all the conclusions. I have died in all sorts of strange ways, and lived to see wildly different fates pan out. I went into this only with the expectation of cool art and a relatively unique approach to survival horror, and came away shook from what turned out to be one of the best cosmic horror games I've played in a while, maybe ever. Look Outside, published by Devolver Digital, is only available on Steam for now, but I sure hope it makes its way to other platforms soon so more people can experience it. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/look-outside-is-an-unexpected-cosmic-horror-masterpiece-that-shook-me-to-the-core-171542211.html?src=rss
Anthropic is joining the ranks of OpenAI in offering a more expensive tier of its flagship chatbot. On Wednesday, the company announced Max Plan. Starting today, you can either pay $100 or $200 per month to use Claude up to 5x or 20x more than you can with Anthropic's existing Pro plan. The company told Engadget it's introducing the Max tier in response to the popularity of Claude 3.7 Sonnet. The new hybrid reasoning model, which excels at coding tasks, has been so popular with users, many are asking to use it as much as they want.With tokens for Claude 3.7 Sonnet costing significantly more than what Google and others charge for access to their lightweight models, Anthropic isn't quite ready to offer unlimited usage of the new model. However, you'll find even OpenAI's $200 per month Pro plan has its own set of restrictions, with monthly limits imposed on "very compute intensive" features like Deep Research.Part of the reason Anthropic is offering two different price points at the Max tier is so that it can give flexibility to customers as their needs change. Additionally, those same users will gain priority access to new models and capabilities as Anthropic releases them.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropics-max-plan-offers-nearly-unlimited-claude-usage-for-200-per-month-170032710.html?src=rss
Heart Machine knows how to make a stylish game, so it's no surprise that the studio's latest project, Possessor(s), is sexy as hell. I mean, just look at Rhem, the cosmic demon with a chiseled jawline, aquamarine horns and a fine-cut suit unbuttoned down to his navel, who alternately encourages and negs you throughout the game. Stupid sexy Rhem.It's just fun to have hot characters at the end of the day," Heart Machine founder Alx Preston said at GDC 2025. Preston and three other Heart Machine developers - producer Myriame Lachapelle, narrative director Tyler Hutchison and writer Laura Michet - played through Possessor(s) while we chatted about the game and the studio.Hutchison continued the hot-characters conversation by praising Heart Machine concept artist Sophie Medvedeva and adding, Since we were kind of building out this visual novel, I was trying to leverage the expertise I brought from Dream Daddy to be like, well, let's make sure these characters are very hot."Sometimes, it's as simple as that.Possessor(s) is a sidescrolling sci-fi action game set in the ruins of Sanzu, a corporate megalopolis that's been ripped apart by interdimensional horrors. Sanzu was once a company town controlled by the tech firm Agradyne, but three years ago, a flood of demons escaped the city's underground laboratories, possessing its citizens and transforming most of them into vicious, mutated creatures. The game spans desolate skyscrapers and abandoned aquariums, and it looks like a daydream of a 1990s anime, splattered in neon and shimmering with a sickly green VHS aura.It stars Luca, a possessed-but-lucid 16-year-old who's searching the urban wasteland for any signs of her mother and best friend. The hot" descriptor in this game is reserved for the demons, but Luca is stylish, with an iridescent coat, slender metal legs and two horns of her own. Luca is bursting with teenage angst and she has an uneasy relationship with Rhem, the demon who's invaded her consciousness. He's the only thing keeping her alive, and he needs her in order to finally return home.Luca is missing her mom and her best friend, who both got lost when the demons escaped to destroy the city," Michet said. So she's resentful Rhem won't let her take some time off to find all the people important to her."Heart MachineTogether, Luca and Rhem explore Sanzu, investigate the true nature of Agradyne and search for Luca's loved ones. Levels are littered with evil creatures to battle and puzzles to solve, and throughout the game, Luca masters an arsenal of improvised weapons like kitchen knives, a guitar, a hockey stick and a corded computer mouse. Her whip, a power provided by Rhem, allows her to swing across gaps, rapidly reposition and pull in heavy objects and enemies.Combat in the demo seemed to flow smoothly; it was heavy on visual flourishes, leaping airborne attacks and satisfying slashing moves, with Luca bounding seamlessly across floors, walls and platforms. A few frames of line-drawn placeholder art flashed across the screen at one point, but these were the only indication that Possessor(s) isn't actually complete yet. It's due to hit PC and PS5 this year.The original premise was something more like Smash Bros., where you can do directional inputs and kind of build out your loadout to feel more like a different character," Preston said. Where we've ended up is still a bit Smash Bros.-y, in that there's juggling and bouncing enemies on surfaces and things like that. But we've found the spirit of Luca and her character, and what she wants to do."Heart MachinePossessor(s) is eye-catching and combat-focused, and it also has a narrative that's supremely relevant for our times. Boiled down, the premise is that capitalistic megacorporations with an iron grip on society are bad, and young people fighting the system are rad. Interdimensional beings with chiseled pecs and a devastating smoking habit are the hot twist that makes the story uniquely Heart Machine's.I mean, it sucks to live in a hierarchical corporate society where your value is determined by your value to the business," Michet said. And Luca will discover this from her teenager perspective."The story in Possessor(s) is branching, with multiple paths to follow and a quarantined city of characters to meet. This is a new mechanic for Heart Machine - in fact, the entire game is composed of firsts for the studio, and Possessor(s) is purposefully different from its previous games, Hyper Light Drifter, Solar Ash and Hyper Light Breaker. Hyper Light Drifter'smoody, 16-bit-inspired isometric actionput Heart Machine on the map even before its release in 2016. Solar Ash followed in 2022 and it was a third-person, 3D platformer. Hyper Light Breaker hit the market this January as a third-person, online roguelite with stylized 3D graphics. Meanwhile, Possessor(s) is a hand-drawn, 2.D side-scroller with touches of horror and visual-novel mechanics.Heart MachineThis progression aligns with a mentality of curiosity that Preston outlined to Engadget in 2021. At the time, Heart Machine had fewer than 30 developers and they were still building Solar Ash, unsure of how the switch to 3D would be received. Back then, Preston said the following:
Fret not, Fireflies, The Last of Us will continue on HBO beyond its second season. Just before the hit adaptation of Naughty Dog's games returns to the network and Max for its next batch of episodes, HBO has officially greenlit a third season of the show.It would have been a major shock if TLOU wasn't going to return beyond this latest seven-episode stint. Season two doesn't cover all of the shocking events of The Last of Us Part 2. The show's creators and showrunners, Neil Druckmann of Naughty Dog and Craig Mazin, have long been adamant that it would take at least two seasons to adapt that overly long misery simulator (still a very good game, though). Plus, the first season was a huge success, as tens of millions of people watched Joel and Ellie fend off infected and other enemies as they trekked across the remnants of America."We approached season two with the goal of creating something we could be proud of," Mazin said in a statement. "The end results have exceeded even our most ambitious goals, thanks to our continued collaboration with HBO and the impeccable work of our unparalleled cast and crew. We look forward to continuing the story of The Last of Us with season three!"HBO hasn't given a timeline for when we can expect the third season, but there should hopefully be a smaller gap between seasons this time around. Season two was delayed by the Hollywood writers' and actors' strikes in 2023. Plus, it's hard to imagine that viewers will be willing to wait so long to find out what happens after [redacted].Speaking of which, season two of TLOU premieres on HBO and Max this Sunday, April 13. Engadget's Nathan Ingraham reviewed the season, and found it did an admirable job of adapting (at least some of) the non-linear source material while resolving certain issues from the first season.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/the-last-of-us-will-return-for-a-third-season-163801196.html?src=rss
Instagram is testing a feature that locks Reels behind a secret code and a provided hint, according to a report by TechCrunch. This looks like a novel way for creators to interact with fans, as they can share exclusive reels with people who are more likely to know the answer to these clues.As an example, a creator could lock a Reel with a hint like my favorite food" and rabid fans would, of course, know the answer. The Meta-owned social network has been testing the feature on its Design account. It shared a locked Reel that prompts viewers to enter a secret code based on a hint that read 1st # in the caption."Meta / Screenshot from EngadgetThe first hashtag mentioned in the caption was Threads." Upon entering the correct code, viewers access a Reel that announces that the Design account is launching a profile on Threads.This could be used by brands to advertise new products or by creators trying to amp up engagement. Personally, I could see it as a place to hide in-jokes with friends, but maybe that's just me.Engadget has reached out to Instagram for more information regarding this feature. We'll update this post if we find out anything regarding availability. This could be just a test, with no actual plans for a general rollout.This is also quite similar to another Instagram tool called Reveal. This feature lets creators post a hidden Story for followers to uncover by sending a DM.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-is-testing-reels-that-are-locked-behind-a-secret-code-162142807.html?src=rss
Last year, Sony rebranded its portable speaker lineup under the ULT umbrella with new models classified as either Field or Tower. The former are the more "traditional" Bluetooth options while the latter are the party box, karaoke machine sort of devices. Just like 2024, the company has three new entries in the ULT lineup this time around with the ULT Field 3, ULT Field 5 and ULT Tower 9. Those first two fill the mid-range gap between the current ULT Field 7 and ULT Field 1 while the last item is a smaller alternative to the ULT Tower 10. The ULT Field 3 will replace the SRS-XE300. As the name suggests, Sony's ULT button is among the updates, a control that adds instant access to ULT1 mode for bass boost. The company also expanded the customizable EQ and added its Sound Field Optimization. Inside, a single woofer and a tweeter are angled slightly in the center while two passive radiators are positioned at the ends of the speaker. The ULT Field 3 works in both vertical and horizontal orientations where the XE300 was only vertical. There's a new Party Connect button to easily sync with other Sony speakers and you can charge your devices via the USB-C port. The company kept the 24-hour battery life the same as the XE300 but improved the quick-charge feature to give you two hours of use in 10 mins. The ULT Field 3 remains IP67 waterproof, dust proof and shock proof like its predecessor, however this new speaker is also rust proof. A removable shoulder strap is among the additions too, but there's one major item Sony retained. The ULT Field 3 is the same price at the XE300 at $200. ULT Field 3 Sony The ULT Field 5 isn't quite at large as the ULT Field 7, but it's still hefty. This speaker will replace the SRS-XG300 in Sony's arsenal, clocking in at $330 - $20 less than that predecessor. Here you'll get a single woofer and two tweeters angled in the middle of the unit with passive radiators at either end. You'll also be able to use a second ULT mode, ULT2, that "emphasizes powerful sound" in addition to the ULT1 bass boost. A 10-band EQ and Sound Field Optimization help maintain sound quality and that new Party Connect button is on this larger speaker too. Like the ULT Field 3, you can use the ULT Field 5 in either vertical or horizontal positions, and similarly there's a removable shoulder strap. Battery life remains up to 25 hours on the ULT Field 5, just like the XG300. Once again, Sony improved quick charging to give you 30 more minutes of use in a 10-minute session. This speaker has lights at the ends though, which can impact longevity. Sony says you'll reach that 25-hour mark using ULT modes with the lights off, but using both will drop that figure to 10 hours. There are three different light modes though, so there are options available. On the back of the ULT Field 5, there's a panel with aux input, USB-C charging in/out, a battery care button and a switch for the lights. That's protected by a sealed flap, which helps the speaker achieve its IP67 rating. That brings us to the ULT Tower 9. The party box joins the ULT Tower 10 on Sony's current roster, replacing the SRS-XV900. Expanded EQ, Sound Field Optimization and two ULT modes are among the additions here, as are a redesigned handle and wheels for better portability. Sony improved the lighting for 360-degree projection as well as making the top control panel splash proof. Besides the Party Connect button from the new ULT Field speakers, the ULT Tower 9 has a dedicated option for a stereo pair. The top panel also houses controls for lighting, volume, power and two inputs for microphones (one of which can be used for a guitar). ULT Tower 9 Sony Like the XV900, you can use Sony's TV Sound Booster feature to enhance living room audio on the ULT Tower 9. The speaker has that ULT button, which gives you two modes for either bass boost or "powerful sound." The driver arrangement inside includes four tweeters, two of which are pointing out the back of the speaker, along with two mid-range units and a single woofer. The wireless version of the ULT Tower 9 is the same price as its predecessor at $900, but Sony is also offering a wired option that must remain plugged into an outlet for $750. If you opt for wireless, battery life is the same on that Tower 9 as the ULT Field 5: up to 25 hours with only ULT mode and up to 10 hours with both ULT mode and lighting active. Lastly, Sony revealed the ULT Mic, which is a $150 set of two wireless microphones and a transmitter that are designed to be used with the company's party speakers. This new accessory pack works with both the newer ULT Tower speakers in addition to the ULT Field 7. You can also use it with any older Sony speakers that support a microphone jack and receiver (like the XV900, XV800, XV500, XP700 and XP500). The mics are rechargeable with up to 20 hours of battery life and they feature a shock proof design. What's more, the company equipped these devices with noise reduction for hands, breath and wind, plus there's a Duet Assist tool to compensate for uneven vocal volumes. The ULT Field 3, ULT Field 5, ULT Tower 9 and ULT Mic are all available now. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/sony-adds-three-more-speakers-to-its-ult-lineup-bass-boost-button-included-160008038.html?src=rss
There's a big Xbox showcase event scheduled June 8 at 1PM ET. This is happening the same weekend as Summer Game Fest, which begins on June 6. Xbox has typically held these kinds of live presentations alongside Summer Game Fest ever since E3 was sent to a farm upstate to live with other discontinued industry conferences.We don't know what will be shown at the annual Xbox Games Showcase. The company says it will bring us a "look at upcoming titles from across our first-party studios, in addition to incredible new titles from our third-party partners." It's a digital-only event, so there will be no crowd to hoot and holler at reveals.As a guess, I'd expect some new info on that new Fable entry, which was recently delayed until 2026. We could also get new trailers for the Perfect Dark reboot and Ninja Gaiden 4. Other possibilities include Gears of War: E-Day and Hideo Kojima's OD. The sky truly is the limit. Xbox owns a lot of studios and, of course, has numerous partnerships with third-party devs.One game that won't be at the official presser is The Outer Worlds 2. That's because it's getting its very own livestream that follows the showcase. This game was originally teased all the way back in 2021, so it's high time for a release date. Xbox promises a look inside developer Obsidian and trailers that reveal "new gameplay, details and developer insights." Interestingly, The Outer Worlds 2 is no longer an Xbox exclusive, as it's also coming to PS5.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/xboxs-big-summer-showcase-is-set-for-june-8-at-1pm-et-152001789.html?src=rss
If Claude Plays Pokemon is supposed to offer a glimpse of AI's future, it's not a very convincing showcase. For the past month and counting, Twitch has watched Anthropic's chatbot struggle to play Pokemon Red. Across multiple runs, Claude has failed to beat the nearly 30 year old game. And yet for David Hershey, the project's lead developer, the showcase has been a success."I wanted some place where I could understand how Claude handles situations where it needs to work over a very long period of time," Hershey explains to me over a video call. As part of his day job at Anthropic, Hershey works on the go-to-market team where he helps the company's clients create their own agents (more on those in a moment). He first began working on Claude Plays Pokemon as a side project around the time Anthropic released 3.5 Sonnet last June.As you can probably guess from the name, the project was partly inspired by Twitch Plays Pokemon, which debuted in 2014 and saw 1.16 million participate in a crowdsourced attempt to beat Pokemon Red using only the inputs viewers typed into the stream's chatbox. Hershey wasn't the first Anthropic employee to try to mold Claude into a Pokemon League Champion, but the project took on a life of its own right around the time he got involved.In the early days of the project, it was a big deal when Claude managed to leave Red's home and find Professor Oak. "I spent some ungodly number of hours tinkering to get it to make that kind of progress," Hershey tells me. He would update his co-workers on Claude's progress in an internal Slack channel. At that point, most of the company wasn't paying attention, and it wasn't something Anthropic planned to share with the world.However, Hershey has made it a habit to revisit the project with each new major model release from Anthropic, starting with the upgraded version of Claude 3.5 Sonnet last fall and again more recently with 3.7 Sonnet. "It's the way I go to see 'What is this new model?' 'How does it work?' 'What can I learn about it?'" Hershey explains. And with Claude 3.7 Sonnet, the version of Claude playing the game right now, it was the first time "you could squint and see signs of life."Inside Anthropic the hope was that Claude would become better at trying different strategies and adjusting its approach when things didn't go according to plan. With Pokemon Red, the company saw Claude do those things in real-time. "[Claude 3.7 Sonnet] spends less time stuck on assumptions," says Hershey. "You'll still see it make a guess and then spend some number of hours believing that's true and making dumb decisions in the meanwhile, but previous models would kind of go on doing that forever."AntrhopicAnd you can, quite literally, see Claude develop and run with those assumptions. Each ploddingly slow move in the game is preceded by a paragraph of text output from the AI - "I've encountered a wild ZUBAT while trying to navigate to (24,24). As per my strategy, I should flee from this battle to conserve resources" - followed by one single button press. Then it reassess the game state and does that all over again.If you've been watching Claude fumble through Pokemon Red as a fan of the game, a model that spends "less time stuck on assumptions" appears minor, especially when the chatbot will frequently get stuck in areas like Viridian Forest, sometimes for days, due to the maze-like level design. Nonetheless, it is a milestone for the type of AI system that Claude 3.7 represents.Like a lot of recent frontier AI systems, Claude 3.7 Sonnet is a reasoning model, meaning it's designed to tackle problems by breaking them down into smaller pieces. "A lot of our customers care about how effective Claude is an agent," explains Hershey. For the uninitiated, agents or agentic AIs are systems that are designed to plan and carry out complicated tasks without human supervision. Right now, most people think of AI as a blank chat box waiting to answer a question, but chatbots are only the consumer face of the industry; agentic systems represent an incremental but important step towards the promise of artificial general intelligence.From that perspective, there are a couple of things that make Claude Plays Pokemon interesting. First, there's the surprising fact Hershey delegated a lot of the programming that made the project possible to Anthropic's coding agent including an overlay that allows Claude to make sense of Pokemon Red's game world.Second, and more importantly, Claude was not pretrained to play Pokemon Red. The chatbot knows some fundamentals about the game, such as the name of each gym leader and the order the player must beat them in, but it doesn't have hundreds of years worth of game knowledge like some specialized AI systems. "You can throw a model at a game with no preparation, no guidance and it can learn everything itself," he says. "I aim to be as close to that side as possible."Hershey had to give Claude some help. I already mentioned the overlay that allows it to interpret Pokemon Red's interface. Pixel art is something all AI systems struggle with, and 3.7 Sonnet is no expectation. As humans, our imagination does a great job of filling in the details suggested by just a few pixels. What's more, Claude doesn't "see" the way we do.If you watch it closely, you'll notice each time it moves the player character, it will make a few inputs before reevaluating its position. Between those frames, Claude doesn't have any sensory input. It can't see Red walking, nor does it "hear" when its inputs cause him to crash into a tree or some other obstacle. Claude's "poor vision" is one of the primary reasons it struggles with the game; in fact, Hershey had to give the chatbot a way to read the game's memory so it was less likely to get confused if it misinterpreted the screen.If the goal of the project was for Claude to beat Pokemon Red, that would have been easy. Hershey could have programmed a route through the game for the chatbot to follow, but at that point all he would have been testing is how well Claude follows a rigid set of instructions. "Claude is pretty good at that," Hershey says. "I knew that. We all knew that."Instead, in leaving Claude to its own devices, the new model has shown it's better at planning, coming up with new strategies and ultimately trying something different when its assumptions prove to be wrong. One of the more novel solutions Claude developed during its third run through the game was to intentionally cause all of its Pokemon to faint so that it could escape from Mt. Moon.Still, Claude could be a lot better at both short- and long-term planning. In the same example I just mentioned, Claude deleted all of its notes on Mt. Moon after respawning at a nearby Pokemon Center, incorrectly believing it had successfully navigated the cave. One of its more promising runs ended after Claude failed to recognize it needed to talk to Bill to progress the game. It got stuck in an endless loop of bad decision making."Moving forward, I don't know how useful this will be internally as a benchmark. It's possible that with a small, tiny set of skills, Claude gets a little bit better and beats the game, and then the benchmark is not that interesting," Hershey admits. "It could also be the case that there are things I don't quite understand yet about what's going to make our next model good, and then we'll still be learning a lot more incremental things along the way."As for what happens next, Hershey says he doesn't have a long-term strategy for Claude Plays Pokemon. "I've just spent so much time - my wife would say too much time - staring at this thing," he says, laughing. I also get the sense Hershey's not quite ready to close the book on the project. "I would imagine whenever a new model comes out, I'll be playing Pokemon with it, and I will probably show the world that too."Until then, Anthropic, following a recent reset, continues to stream Claude Plays Pokemon on Twitch. The project has been successful enough to inspire an independent developer to program a Gemini Plays Pokemon stream, and if I had to guess, we'll see more imitators before long.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/claude-isnt-a-great-pokemon-player-and-thats-okay-151522448.html?src=rss
HBO's The Last of Us took a riveting action game bolstered by intimate human moments and made a richly human drama supported by terrifying action. In returning for season two, and now using the sequel game as source material, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann had quite a bit more work cut out for them. The first season greatly expanded the emotional depth and breadth of Joel and Ellie's cross-country journey while also fleshing out the stories of many others they meet along the way, and the cast (led by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey) was outstanding. But some fans felt the balance of action and drama was off, and I had a few issues with the pacing - though the final product was still outstanding in my eyes.That was over two years ago, and now it's encore time. Season two premieres on HBO this Sunday, April 13 (you can stream it on Max), and I am once again happy to report that the show does a faithful job of capturing the first part of a complex story while also fixing a few of the minor complaints I had about the first season.[Editor's note: this story discusses season two broadly but avoids specific plot details and spoilers. There are spoilers for season one.]The show picks up exactly where season one (and the first game) concluded. Joel and Ellie return to the settlement of Jackson, Wyoming, where Joel's brother Tommy is part of a peaceful, well-fortified commune - a rare oasis of relative safety in a destroyed world. This comes about a year after the Fireflies - a militia group searching for a cure for the zombie infection - tasked Joel with smuggling Ellie across the country. Over the ensuing journey, Joel bonds with Ellie and comes to treat her as a surrogate daughter, replacing the one he lost at the beginning of the outbreak 20 years prior.Ellie's immunity to the infection gave the Fireflies hopes she holds the key to finding a cure - but when Joel learns it would kill her, he wipes out a whole platoon of soldiers and the doctor who was trying to carry out the procedure, before fleeing with Ellie back to Jackson. As far as she knows, there was no way to make a cure and Joel rescued her when raiders descended on the Firefly complex.Kaitlyn Dever in HBO's The Last of Us season twoPhotograph by Liane Hentscher/HBOWe immediately learn that Joel's rampage against the Fireflies is going to have major repercussions right from the jump, as we meet Abby (played with furious intensity by Kaitlyn Dever) and her small crew of young Fireflies in Salt Lake City in the days following the massacre. Things then jump forward five years; Ellie and Joel are well-integrated into the Jackson community and living a relatively normal life - though Joel's therapy sessions with Gail (the wonderful Catherine O'Hara) show that he and Ellie have had some degree of falling out. Whether it's just her being a 19-year-old or something deeper remains to be seen.Without spoiling anything, the sequel game, The Last of Us Part II, is a far less linear affair than its predecessor. Events are shown out of order through multiple flashbacks. Perspectives shift. The playable character changes at various points. I've spent much of the last year wondering exactly how Mazin and Druckmann would translate that structure to TV - what events would be shown in what order, and what things might get cut or expanded on?But surprisingly, the show closely mirrors the game's chronology. The core of the season remains Joel and Ellie, the fallout from season one and how it affects everyone around them. A handful of events, including an infamous town festival in Jackson and the reveal of Abby's motivations throughout the season, are moved up sooner in the series to give viewers more context for why things are happening. It's a change the creators said was made to compensate for the change between the interactivity of playing characters like Abby and Ellie versus watching them.Pedro Pascal and Catherine O'Hara in HBO's The Last of Us season twoPhotograph by Liane Hentscher/HBOThe season's structure worked - the multi-pronged plot didn't ever feel hard to stick with, and I think the show did a better job this season at balancing out action and drama. As the cast and creators have alluded to, Ramsey and Pascal don't get as much time together as they did in season one, which is a shame given their absolutely fantastic chemistry. But both actors make the most of Joel and Ellie's fracturing relationship, and they also do wonderful work with other scene partners. Both Joel and Ellie spend significant time with Dina (Isabela Merced), who ends up being something of another daughter to Joel and a best friend / love interest for Ellie. She brings a completely different attitude to these scenes - like anyone in the world of The Last of Us, you know she's seen her fair share of horrible things, but she combines a cool confidence with vulnerability in a way that keeps Ellie delightfully off balance.One of the key new events in the show that didn't take place in the game is a massive siege of Infected attacking the town of Jackson (something you see in the show's various trailers). At first, it felt like an on-the-nose response to complaints that the Infected didn't feel like much of a threat in season one, but the way the large-scale battle is juxtaposed with a much more intimate threat in the same episode plays out perfectly. That episode was followed by one that was far more peaceful and character-driven, a cadence I appreciated after the siege's intensity. Naturally, things ramp up as the season draws to a close, but the balance feels measured and thoughtful.Isabela Merced and Bella Ramsey in HBO's The Last of Us season twoPhotograph by Liane Hentscher/HBOOverall, the Infected are more present in this season than the last, and they're as deadly and terrifying as ever. In the game, the player might think nothing of taking on five or six in one go, but in the show even a one-on-one encounter feels fraught with danger. Of course, as in season one, the humans are the more unpredictable and threatening part of the world.Other new characters and events, like the fate of Gail and her husband Eugene (played by Joe Pantoliano), once again serve to enrich and enhance the world of The Last of Us. And beyond individual characters, the show also delves deeply into bigger warring factions, similar to the Kansas City liberators" in season one. We get multiple views of how groups band together and try to survive against the Infected, and each other, and the show does a good job of not portraying any one way as right or wrong.Ellie makes her own judgments as the story progresses, and she starts to lose herself in a cycle that she can't seem to get out of, even as her friends distance herself from her actions. Ramsey plays this extremely well - though they have a slight and small frame, they play Ellie's ferocity in a way that's convincing and frightening. That side of her is flipped on its head in more vulnerable moments when the weight of Elle's choices start piling up, and it's fascinating and disturbing to watch. Mazin said that the reasoning behind Ellie's quiet fascination with violence and being protected would play out in season two, and a lot of small moments definitely start paying off here.Pedro Pascal in HBO's The Last of Us season twoPhotograph by Liane Hentscher/HBOUnlike season one, which is a self-contained affair, season two leaves much up in the air. Again, that's something the creators have told us already; Mazin said that telling the story of the second game would take at least two seasons. There's a lot of story still to be told here, and thus things end on a very different vibe than season one. I'm hoping that Mazin, Druckmann and the cast can get back to doing season three a little quicker than last time, as another two-plus years will feel like an exceedingly long wait for some resolution.With only seven episodes, season two has a shorter run time than season one, which already felt a bit rushed to me. The finale in particular blew through some of its script in rapid-fire fashion that felt almost sloppy. It could have easily done with an extra 10 minutes without losing any momentum. And given that Mazin has already said the next season will be significantly larger," my hopes for a quick turn-around are probably not realistic.Bella Ramsey in HBO's The Last of Us season twoPhotograph by Liane Hentscher/HBOIn the end, that might not be a bad thing for most viewers. The Last of Us can be a grueling and emotional watch, season two even more so than the first. There are some moments of extreme violence that are hard to watch. The show does strike a thoughtful balance between implied and graphic violence,, but it can still be harrowing, and a few moments made me feel almost ill (an appropriate emotion, but not the most pleasant one).It's a little hard to evaluate season two in a vacuum, given it's only the first half of some fairly messy, non-linear source material. That's not a major knock; plenty of shows don't wrap everything up every year in a tidy package. And given the quality infused in every episode of this show, from the acting to the script to the set design and VFX, I'm confident in saying that anyone who enjoyed season one should get on board for what's to come here, even if it takes a long time to get any resolution. Just as with the game that it's based on, the journey of The Last of Us season two is intense and asks a lot from viewers, but it's still a journey worth taking.Update, April 9 2025, 11:12AM ET: This review was updated with a modified headline and more details in the introduction.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/the-last-of-us-season-two-review-more-zombies-and-more-heartbreak-160007479.html?src=rss
We finally have the trailer for Murderbot, the Apple TV+ show based on Martha Wells' seven book series, The Murderbot Diaries. It features Alexander Skarsgard as a security unit that is less interested in protecting humans and more excited about catching up on its favorite soap operas.As Sarsgaard says in the trailer, "I was built to protect and obey humans. And humans are idiots. But now that I've hacked my programming, I can do whatever I want. As long as they don't find out." But, things take a turn when it gets chosen for a dangerous assignment. The security unit privately refers to itself as Murderbot, a fact that becomes more than awkward once the humans learn about the name.Apple first announced the sci-fi adaptation, from About a Boy creators Chris and Paul Weitz, in late 2023. The first two of ten Murderbot episodes will come to Apple TV+ on May 16. The next eight episodes will debut every Friday.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/the-murderbot-tv-show-trailer-is-here-150017588.html?src=rss
In an incredibly shocking turn of events, more generative AI features are coming to the Google Workspace suite of productivity apps by way of Gemini. Docs, Sheets, Chat, Meet and newcomer Vids are among the tools that are getting new AI capabilities that perhaps some folks will find useful.Google is taking a cue from audio overviews in NotebookLM to bring new Gemini-powered audio features to Docs. You'll soon have the option of listening to full audio versions of your documents or just the highlights in what Google calls a podcast-style overview. Those enrolled in the Workspace alpha testing program can start trying out these audio features in the coming weeks.By the end of June, alpha testers will have access to an AI writing coach of sorts. The "help me refine" feature is said to offer suggestions on bolstering an argument, ensuring consistent formatting, enhancing the structure of the text and clarifying key points.A similar feature is coming to Sheets later this year. The "help me analyze" tool will seemingly point out trends you might have overlooked, offer pointers on where to dig deeper for more insights and whip up charts to visualize the data.In Meet, you'll soon be able to ask Gemini to recap parts of a meeting you missed because you were running late, clarify certain decisions or topics, generate a recap in the format of your choice and help refine a point before you raise a virtual arm to join the conversation. This so-called "personal in-meeting advisor" will be generally available in Meet before the end of June.As for Chat, Google will soon offer the option to mention @gemini in a conversation to receive a summary that includes open questions, important decisions that were made and lays out next steps. It could be a useful way to distill everything that happened in a bustling group chat. This capability will be available through the Labs early-access program in the coming weeks.In Vids, you'll soon be able to generate what Google says are "high-quality, original" clips using the Veo 2 model (perhaps ignoring the fact that generative video AI models mash together footage that they were trained on and arguably don't create anything truly original at all). Workspace alpha can get their hands on this in the coming weeks.Elsewhere, there's another new feature called Google Workspace Flows. Google bills this as "a brand-new way to automate and orchestrate work across your apps, powered by AI." It employs Gems, customizable AI agents that can be created with Gemini, to take care of specialized tasks, such as researching, analyzing and generating content.The company says that Workspace Flows can, for instance, address a customer support ticket by analyzing the issue, researching a solution and drafting a reply that the support team can review before sending. Gems can mine your Google Drive files for context. Google's also working with third-party partners to integrate Workspace Flows into their apps and tools. Google is now rolling out Workspace Flows in the alpha program.Lastly, as of today, Google will allow Workspace users to choose where Gemini processes their data. So if you're in the European Union and don't want your data to travel to the US (or vice versa), that's now an option. Google makes it clear that this is to help comply with regulations such as the EU's GDPR.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/surprise-google-workspace-is-adding-more-ai-tools-to-docs-sheets-chat-and-other-apps-143644125.html?src=rss
Today Sony is adding a bunch of new features to the PlayStation Portal's Cloud Streaming option. The beta platform is getting updates such as the ability to sort games by recently added, name in standard or reverse alphabetical order or release date.Then there's the pause feature, which will stop the game if you open the PS Portal quick menu. Gameplay will also pause if you click the power button. Be warned, you will get disconnected from the cloud streaming session if more than 15 seconds go by without you unpausing it (clicking the power button again). Plus, you'll be paused if there's a system error message on your screen. However, these features don't work, as of yet, in multiplayer mode.You're also going to have a clearer idea of when it's your turn to play. You will get an estimated wait time if the streamer server is full and then be put right into the game when you're up. Then there's the new create button, which takes a screenshot (when held down) or records a video of the game (when clicked twice). This media will stay in the PlayStation App library under captures for 14 days.There's two more, minor, updates to Cloud Streaming. You'll now receive an inactivity notification after 10 minutes of no action, just letting you know that the session is about to end. Plus, there's a user feedback screen that will pop up at the end in case there's anything you want PlayStation to know.Sony first announced the Cloud Streaming trial late last year and its available to all PlayStation Plus Premium members in beta. The experimental system lets you stream select games from PlayStation's servers, regardless of if you own a PS5.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/ps-portals-cloud-streaming-beta-gets-automatic-pauses-and-screen-captures-141945431.html?src=rss
Samsung's Ballie will go on sale in the US and South Korea this summer, the company announced today. What's more, through a partnership with Google Cloud, the diminutive robot will ship with a Gemini AI model. Samsung didn't state the specific system that powers Ballie, but in combination with the company's own proprietary language models, it says the robot has multimodal capabilities, meaning Ballie can process voice, audio and visual data from its sensors. According to Samsung, Ballie can also manage your smart home devices and even offer health and styling recommendations, if you're inclined to seek that type of advice from a robot. Samsung has yet to announce pricing for Ballie, though with the uncertainty around the Trump administration's recently announced tariffs, you can't blame Samsung, can you? The company first demoed Ballie in 2020. The robot has gone through a few iterations since the then, with the version you see above first demoed at CES 2024. Samsung said then Ballie would arrive sometime in 2024, but last year came and went without the robot hitting store shelves. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/samsungs-cute-ballie-robot-arrives-this-summer-with-google-gemini-in-tow-133658886.html?src=rss
It's almost time for The Triple-i Initiative, a gaming showcase for indie publishers and developers. You can watch the stream on The Triple-i Initiative's YouTube channel at 9AM PT / 12PM PT on April 10. It's also available on Twitch, Bilibili and Steam. This presentation is the second annual edition and, based on the teaser video, it looks like we will see an interesting range of games.The 45-minute or so showcase should include looks at Enshrouded, V Rising and Deep Rock Galactic. Poncle, the studio behind Vampire Survivors is also set to reveal something, alongside other developers like Sloclap. All in all, the stream should include everything from demo drops to release dates for over 30 games.The team at Engadget is very excited that Balatro publisher Playstack is also planning something for the event. "We had been saving our big announcement for a special showcase," said Marta Matyjewicz, marketing manager at Playstack, in a statement. "We were amazed by the quality of last year's Triple-i, so when the opportunity came to be a part of it, we knew we had to take it."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/how-to-watch-the-triple-i-initiative-indie-showcase-on-april-10-133037464.html?src=rss
The warm weather is here, which means saying goodbye to gym memberships and hello to exercising in the fresh air. Without machines measuring your progress, a fitness tracker can ensure you're staying on top of your workout. Now is a great time to pick on up, with the Fitbit Charge 6 down to $120 from $160. This 25 percent discount brings our favorite fitness tracker down to its lowest price of 2025. We've given the Charge 6 this accolade thanks to features like a more accurate heart rate monitor and it's use of Bluetooth to pair with exercise machines (if you do miss the indoors). It also offers 20 different workout modes for tracking your exercises. Plus, Google, which owns Fitbit, allows for anyone with a YouTube Music premium subscription to skip and control music playback. Other perks of the Fitbit Charge 6 include using Fitbit Pay or Google Wallet for contactless payments and a great built-in GPS. The Fitbit 6 also offers seven days of battery life, much longer than the day or two you get with an Apple Watch (a much more complex device, but still). Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-fitbit-charge-6-is-25-percent-off-right-now-131620961.html?src=rss
The 2025 BAFTA game awards took place yesterday in London and were dominated by one of our favorite games this year, Astro Bot. The PlayStation 5 platformer took home prizes in five categories including Best Game, along with Animation, Audio Achievement, Family and Game Design. That's no surprise, considering the game's critical accolades and popularity with fans.Astro Bot is the first fully-fledged and fully-priced version in the Astro universe. "With precise and responsive controls, adorable characters and an exciting variety of mechanics and environments, Astro Bot is easily one of the best games that Sony has every produced," wrote Engadget's Jessica Conditt. It beat out some strong competition in the Best Game category, including Balatro, Black Myth: Wukong, Helldivers 2, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and Thank Goodness You're Here.Still Wakes the Deep came in second with three BAFTAs: New Intellectual Property, and Performers in Supporting and Lead Roles. One of those winners, Scottish actor Karen Dunbar (playing Finlay), humorously declared in her acceptance speech that "I'm not even an actor, I'm a gynecologist!"Other key winners of the evening included Balatro for Debut Game category, Thank Goodness You're Here for Best British Game, Helldivers 2 in the multiplayer and music categories, Neva for Artistic Achievement and Metaphor: ReFantazio for Narrative. For a complete list of winners check here and you can watch the entire ceremony below.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/bafta-game-awards-adorably-dominated-by-astro-bot-130012074.html?src=rss
Google has started rolling out the loss of pulse detection feature for Pixel Watch 3 devices in the US. The feature does exactly what it describes: It checks for your pulse when the watch is on your wrist and will call emergency services if it determines that your pulse has stopped. It debuted in several European countries last year when the watch launched, but it didn't get approval from the US Food and Drug Administration until February this year.The feature uses concurrent passive algorithms to check for the presence of a pulse at the rate of once a second. If it detects the absence of a pulse, active sensors kick in to check for signals that could indicate false detections, such as if you're no longer wearing the watch. It's only then that the device will enter the Stage 1 alert phase, wherein it will send you a haptic notification asking you to tap a promp that says "I'm OK." If you're unresponsive, it will ramp up the alerts and add sounds, counting down to give you time to respond before it calls emergency services.Google says the feature could save you in instances wherein every second matters, such as when you're having a cardiac or respiratory arrest, or when you've gotten poisoned. In cases like those, you can only get immediate help if someone is around to see them happen. That's not always possible: As Google explains, half of all loss of pulse events related to cardiac arrest are unwitnessed. With this feature, you could be attended to much more quickly if you do need help and prevent more permanent damage to your body.GoogleThis article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/google-is-rolling-out-pixel-watch-3s-loss-of-pulse-detection-feature-in-the-us-120038008.html?src=rss
Drones have become an important tool in a creator's bag of tricks, allowing them to capture aerial footage that elevates their videos. And nowadays, they've become more accessible as video quality and features have dramatically improved while prices have dropped.
Much of the time, the best gaming headset" isn't a headset at all. While many people look at gaming headsets as their own niche, they're ultimately just headphones with a boom mic, some fancy branding and (usually) an inflated price tag attached. While the general quality of those headsets has improved over time, a good pair of traditional wired headphones - which, yes, still exist - still tend to deliver richer, more detailed sound. If you need to chat with friends, you can always hook them up to a dedicated microphone and achieve superior audio quality there as well.
If you've been shocked by how much you spend on streaming services lately, you're not alone. Companies like Netflix, Disney, Max and others have been consistently raising prices to the point where you may question if streaming is even worth it anymore. We at Engadget still think it is, but we also think you should be smart with your money - and that's where streaming deals come in. Yes, it is possible to get discounts on services like Peacock and Paramount+, even if those deals aren't as common as a sale on AirPods. If you're looking to save money and still stream all of the content you want, Engadget can help by laying out the best streaming deals you can get right now, how you can save with bundles and everything you should know before paying for yet another streaming service. Best streaming deals True streaming deals can be hard to come by. Most often, they'll pop up during the Black Friday shopping period. On occasion, we'll see them sparingly throughout the year and they usually take the form of a discounted monthly or annual rate for a limited period of time. Also, true streaming deals are typically on the ad-supported versions of a service, but once in a while you'll find a unicorn of a deal on a tier that has ad-free viewing. If you're able to wait for a deal before subscribing to a streaming service, we recommend doing so. You'll save money upfront and in the long run, and you also have the option to cancel your subscription before the price goes back up to the normal rate. Maybe you find you like the service so much that you're fine paying full price for it - that's the ideal situation. But if you're not compelled to keep that app on rotation in your smart TV, most streaming services make it easy for you to cancel at any time. With that said, these are the best streaming deals you can snag right now. Audible (three months) for $3 ($42 off): This deal gives you access to Audible Premium Plus, which includes one credit each month that you can spend on any book you'd like, along with listening access to thousands of other books, podcasts and Audible Originals. You also get to take part in Audible's exclusive member sales. The deal runs through April 30. Starz (six months) for $18 ($28 off): Starz's latest offer gives you six months of access for only $18, which shakes out to just $3 per month. This represents a 66-percent discount off the standard annual plan. This gives you access to all Starz content, including originals like Power Book III: Raising Kanan and movies like Fast X. If you'd prefer less of a commitment, you can get three months of access for only $9. DirecTV Sports Pack - first month free ($15 off): When you sign up for an Entertainment, Choice or Ultimate package, you can get the first month of the DirecTV Sports Pack for free. This gives you access to NFL Network and NFL Red Zone, MLB Network, CBS Sports Network and TUDN and more. Sling TV + MLB.TV for $30 off: New subscribers can get $30 off their first month of Sling TV when they sign up and add MLB.TV to their package. The offer applies to Sling Orange, Sling Blue and Sling Orange & Blue, and MLB.TV gives you access to MLB Network along with access to all out-of-market games during the regular season. This offer runs through May 31. YouTube TV for $60/month for the first two months ($46 off): New subscribers can save a total of $46 when they sign up for YouTube TV's base plan, which includes access to over 100 channels, unlimited DVR space and six household accounts with the ability to stream on three devices at once. Sling Orange for $23/month for the first month (50 percent off): New customers can get Sling Orange or Sling Blue for half off the usual price for the first month, bringing the final prices to $23/month and $25.50/month, respectively. Orange is likely best for sports fans, with eight exclusive sports and family channels, while Blue includes 19 exclusive news and entertainment channels. You can get both Orange and Blue access also for half off for one month, or $33 total. Fubo Essential for $55/month for the first month ($30 off): Fubo has introductory discounts on most of its packages, but Essential may be the best for most people. It offers access to 215 channels, unlimited cloud DVR and up to 10 simultaneous streams. Note that regional sports content is not included here; you'll have to go up to Pro or Elite plans for that. Spotify student discount - Premium + Hulu with ads for $6/month (72 percent off): Spotify's student offer continues to be one of the best around, giving you access to the Premium tier of the music streamer and Hulu's ad-supported plan for only $6 monthly. Purchased separately, you'd pay $22 per month for both of the services. Plus, the first month is free when you sign up. Hulu student discount - subscribe for $2/month (75 percent off): Those with a valid student ID can get Hulu's ad-supported tier for 75 percent off the typical rate. They'll keep the same sale price for as long as they're a student as well. Max student discount - subscribe for $5/month (50 percent off): Max offers their ad-supported tier to students for half off the usual rate. You'll just have to verify that you're a student through Unidays, and make note that this offer is only good for up to 12 months of service. Streaming bundle discounts There's more consolidation happening now than ever before in the streaming space, and that means there are more streaming bundle options. These bundles offer you access to more content with one subscription price, but those prices are typically higher than paying for a single service by itself (obviously). It may be tempting to just get the bundle, but if only one of those services in the bundle speaks to you, you'll spend less overall by just paying for the single service. Speaking of a deep love for a single streaming service: if all of your favorite shows are on Peacock or the latest releases on Max consistently bring you joy, consider paying for one year upfront. Subscribing with an annual plan usually saves you money in the long term over paying on a monthly basis. Unfortunately, not all streaming services (looking at you, Netflix) have an annual subscription option. Here are some of the best streaming bundles you can get right now. Disney+, Hulu, Max bundle with ads for $17/month: Ad-supported Max is included here, along with full, ad-supported access to Disney+ and Hulu. You'll save 43 percent with this bundle, as opposed to paying for all three services individually. Sling TV + Max starting at $53/month: Sling TV and Max have partnered on a discount that gives new subscribers 50 percent off their first month of Sling TV, plus $5 off monthly when you subscribe to the Sling TV + Max bundle. The standard price for the Sling Blue + Max duo is roughly $58/month, so you'll get a monthly discount of $5 off that. In addition, for the first month only, you'll get half off the price of the bundle. The promotion also applies to the Sling Orange & Blue + Max package, which has a standard price of $73/month. Paramount+ with Showtime for $13/month or $120/year: This includes everything in Paramount+'s Essential plan, except the ads, and also provides access to Showtime content, live CBS streams and download features. Hulu + Live TV with Disney+ and ESPN+ for $96/month: This streaming bundle amalgamation is a bit confusing but it does offer a lot: you get live TV streaming via Hulu's service plus access to the following VOD services: Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+. Out of those three, only ESPN+ will have ads. Disney+ and Hulu Duo Premium for $20/month: This bundle removes the ads from both Disney+ and Hulu (with the exception of select live and linear content) and allows you to download content for offline viewing. You'll save 43 percent with this bundle, as opposed to paying for both ad-free tiers individually. Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ Trio Basic for $17/month: You get full access to Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ content with this package, albeit with ads across the board. This bundle price is 47 percent off the total price of all three separate subscriptions. Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ Trio Premium for $27/month: Similarly to the Duo bundles, the Premium version of the Trio removes ads from most content in Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+, and you can download content for offline viewing. This price represents a 43-percent savings when compared to paying for all three ad-free tiers separately. Read more streaming coverage
Social media platform Instagram has been around since 2010 yet it still doesn't have a dedicated iPad app. In fact, the last we heard about the network's interest in tablets was back in 2022, when Insta head Adam Mosseri said there simply weren't enough iPad users to merit developing a native app. A baffling standpoint, but one that could finally be changing.A current employee of the service spoke anonymously to The Information recently and said that in this, the year 2025, Instagram is at last working on an iPad app. As of now, the only way to use Instagram on an iPad is a zoomed-in version of the company's iPhone app. Most businesses realized a decade ago that repurposing a phone app isn't a great user experience since the aspect ratio is so different on a tablet. That's particularly noticeable when your service is all about photo and video content.The sudden interest in iPad may be part of Instagram's broader efforts to fight for social media dominance as the popular video platform TikTok faces a potential ban in the US. The Information also reported that Instagram recently hosted an early preview of an upcoming Edits app for video-editing, which would compete with CapCut, a rival service also owned by ByteDance and at risk of falling within the TikTok ban.Mosseri has also spoken about plans to improve Instagram's capabilities in content search. "You can imagine, whatever you use Instagram for, it'd be great to be able to find that' more easily," he said on an episode of the Build Your Tribe podcast. "But also for creators ... it should allow content to resurface so that you don't get all the value in those first 24 or 48 hours."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/the-year-is-2025-and-instagram-is-reportedly-working-on-an-ipad-app-223942933.html?src=rss
The Guardian reported that the UK's Ministry of Justice has been developing an algorithm designed to identify people who could become killers. Initially dubbed the "homicide prediction project," this tool used data from UK police forces, possibly including victims and witnesses as well as suspects.Civil liberty watchdog Statewatch discovered the program through Freedom of Information Act requests. Based on the documents acquired by the group, Statewatch claimed that the program developed its prediction tool based on police data about between 100,000 and 500,000 people. Different categories of information shared with the Ministry of Justice appeared to also cover sensitive topics such as mental health, addiction, suicide and disability."Time and again, research shows that algorithmic systems for predicting' crime are inherently flawed," Statewatch researcher Sofia Lyall said. "This latest model, which uses data from our institutionally racist police and Home Office, will reinforce and magnify the structural discrimination underpinning the criminal legal system.""This project is being conducted for research purposes only. It has been designed using existing data held by HM Prison and Probation Service and police forces on convicted offenders to help us better understand the risk of people on probation going on to commit serious violence. A report will be published in due course," a representative from the MOJ told The Guardian.Law enforcement has long had a questionable relationship with AI tools. From AI being used to create police reports (bad idea) to misusing programs like ShotSpotter (another bad idea) to adopting tech that poses privacy threats to citizens (also a bad idea), history is not on the side of these being well-implemented technologies.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/uk-is-going-full-minority-report-with-murder-prediction-research-214254968.html?src=rss
Razer laptops are now among the latest collateral damage of President Donald Trump's tariffs. Days after Nintendo paused Switch 2 pre-orders, The Verge reported that Razer has paused direct sales of devices like the Blade 16 gaming laptop in the US.The Blade 16's product page, which recently included a pre-order link, now only offers a measly "Notify me" button. In addition, its configurator page, which allowed you to choose a graphics card, processor and other specs as recently as a few days ago, now draws a 404 error. You can still pre-order it in Europe and other regions.Razer's laptop product page for US customers now only includes live order links for items like skins, docks and cooling pads.RazerAlthough Razer hasn't publicly linked the pause to Trump's tariffs, it isn't hard to connect the two. The levies are scheduled to kick in at 12:01AM ET tonight, dramatically affecting companies that build products in or source parts from countries like China and Taiwan. Tariffs are a tax on imported foreign goods, and businesses often pass the higher cost to consumers. Economists have estimated that consumers will pay an extra $3,800 annually due to Trump's policy -and that was before Trump announced additional tariffs on China, totaling a staggering 104 percent.Razer's pause follows the halting of Switch 2 US pre-orders as Nintendo gauges the situation and ponders its next move. Similarly, Framework stopped selling some of its laptops in the US, and Reuters reported on Tuesday that memory chipmaker Micron plans to add a surcharge to some products. Expect the "Liberation Day" hits to keep coming as tonight's official beginning of the biggest US tax hike since 1968 approaches.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/razer-laptops-are-the-latest-trump-tariff-casualty-204844654.html?src=rss
The US Department of Justice has disbanded its unit focused on prosecuting cryptocurrency scams. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the end of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team in a memo sent on Monday, Reuters reported.When the NCET launched, its focus was prosecuting cryptocurrency used in money laundering, fraud and theft. In recent years, the Department of Justice secured several high-profile wins in cases involving Binance, Tornado Cash and Bitfinex. However, the dissolution of NCET marks the latest government move to implement the current administration's crypto-friendly attitude.Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at encouraging the creation of blockchain networks. Blanche cited this as his rationale, and ordered the department's cryptocurrency efforts to focus on "individuals who victimize digital asset investors, or those who use digital assets in furtherance of criminal offenses such as terrorism, narcotics and human trafficking, organized crime, hacking, and cartel and gang financing." Any investigations that run counter to this agenda "should be closed."The US Securities and Exchange Commission has also been walking back its regulation of cryptocurrency, such as ending an enforcement case against Coinbase. However, cryptocurrency remains a risky endeavor, with theft still rampant at the individual and national levels. Additionally, the Trump family already has a vested interest in encouraging crypto operations, claiming a majority of revenue from World Liberty Financial's token sales.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/doj-to-disband-its-cryptocurrency-enforcement-unit-200347077.html?src=rss
While the Nintendo Switch 2 had its splashy debut last week, including details about the hardware and launch games, there's still lots about the console that Nintendo has yet to clear up. For instance, the company hasn't gone into specifics about the CPU and GPU that are powering the Switch 2, other than to touch on the performance enhancements that they offer over the Switch (NVIDIA separately confirmed that the Switch 2 uses its Deep Learning Super Sampling tech).However, since last Wednesday's blockbuster Direct, Nintendo has touched on some new Switch 2 details in interviews with the press. For one thing, Nate Bihldorff, Senior Vice President of Product Development & Publishing at Nintendo of America, told Nintendo Life that the console's Joy-Con 2 controllers do not use Hall effect tech. "The Joy-Con 2's controllers have been designed from the ground up," Bihldorff said. "They're not Hall effect sticks, but they feel really good."Switch 2 producer Kouichi Kawamoto separately said that the Joy-Con 2 joysticks "are quieter and don't make noise, even when they're moved quickly to the edge." The company is referring to them as "smooth-gliding sticks."Engadget has asked Nintendo why the company opted not to use Hall effect tech in the Joy-Con 2. We've also asked whether the Switch 2 Pro Controller foregoes Hall effect sensors as well.This technology is becoming increasingly common in the thumbsticks of third-party gamepads, but Nintendo has yet to implement it in its own joysticks (nor have Sony or Microsoft, for that matter). The idea behind Hall effect sensors is that they reduce the likelihood of stick drift. This problem was so pervasive on the original Switch's Joy-Cons that Nintendo offered free, unlimited repairs for stick drift in Europe. So it's not clear why Nintendo would opt out of having Hall effect sensors in the Joy-Con 2 to help mitigate such problems.A fun fact if you haven't heard of Hall effect controllers before: Sega used them in the Sega Saturn 3D controller and the Dreamcast controller decades ago. It's definitely not new technology, but it's definitely getting more popular and widely used lately, despite Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony not adopting it yet.Meanwhile, Nintendo has confirmed US pricing for a few Switch 2 experiences. The company told IGN that the upgrades for two The Legend of Zelda games - Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom - cost $10 each for those who already own either game. However, Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscribers get access to the upgrades at no extra cost.The Switch 2 upgrades include visual fidelity and framerate enhancements, along with the inclusion of HDR support and faster loading times. You'll also be able to use the Switch mobile app as a Sheikah Slate of sorts, helping you to find hidden items with voiced directions.In addition, Nintendo has revealed that Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, which seems like a tech demo that will take you through all the features of the console, will cost $10. As for why Nintendo is charging 10 bucks for this as opposed to offering it for free (like Valve did with the fun Steam Deck tech demo, Aperture Desk Job, or Sony did with Astro's Playroomon PS5), Nintendo of America's Vice President of Product and Player Experience Bill Trinen had this to say to IGN:
If you've been waiting for the right time to try Apple TV+, now may be your best shot. You can snag three months of access to one of our favorite streaming services for only $9. Apple TV+ includes highly rated original series like Ted Lasso, Severance, Slow Horses, For All Mankind, Foundation and Silo, alongside new arrivals The Studio and Dope Thief. Apple's films include the 2022 Best Picture winner CODA, as well as Blitz, Killers of the Flower Moon and Tetris. Apple's shows won 10 Emmy Awards in 2024, including a Slow Horses victory for outstanding writing in a drama series. Although its films weren't up for anything at this year's Oscars, it received 13 nominations in 2024, including Best Picture nods for Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon. Three months of Apple TV+ for $9 is available through April 24. Both new and qualified returning subscribers (which mostly means you aren't billed through your cellular provider or another third party) are eligible. If you don't want to pay full price ($10 monthly) after three months, remember to cancel before the renewal date. Check out our coverage of the best streaming deals for more discounts, and follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/three-months-of-apple-tv-is-on-sale-for-only-9-right-now-193009233.html?src=rss
Fans of murderous clicking aliens have a lot to look forward to this year, with not one, but two different Predator titles debuting in 2025. Both projects are being helmed by Dan Trachtenberg, who proved his Predator chops directing the excellent Prey, and is now providing a compelling new chapter for the franchise.First up is Predator: Killer of Killers, an animated miniseries that will arrive on Hulu on June 6. That anthology dropped a first look trailer today and it's a taste of classic Predator action as the beast hunts down warriors across three different time periods. There are Viking raiders, samurai in feudal Japan and pilots from World War II. I imagine things end badly for the humans in every era.In a delightful casting choice for 80s action movie appreciators, Killer of Killers includes voice work by Michael Biehn. That means he joins the elite roster of actors who have crossed paths with the trinity of Aliens, Terminators and Predators. Well done, sir.The second project is a feature film titled Predator: Badlands. This is a sequel to Prey and stars Elle Fanning. But in a twist on the usual formula, the human star isn't trying to kill the Predator, but manages to team up with it. Predator: Badlands will have a theatrical release on November 7.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/watch-the-trailer-for-animated-anthology-predator-killer-of-killers-182933911.html?src=rss
Amazon's autonomous vehicle company Zoox has begun testing its robotaxis in Los Angeles. It has deployed a small fleet of retrofitted test vehicles throughout the city for the purposes of mapping and data-collection. This could, eventually, lead to paid rides for consumers.
When Hades II moves out of Early Access and into v1.0 later this year, Nintendo will have a prime seat at the table. A "Creator's Voice" promo video published on Tuesday (via Kotaku) echoed what developer Supergiant Games posted in a FAQ last week: Switch 2 and Switch will be the only consoles to play the roguelike on out of the gates.The video's mention of Hades II "launching first for consoles on Nintendo Switch 2" further confirms that PlayStation and Xbox owners will at least have to wait a while before playing the highly anticipated sequel on their systems. That was already established by a Supergiant FAQ update from April 2: "While we haven't ruled out bringing Hades II to any other platforms, our current focus is only on the versions listed above," referencing its Early Access platforms (PC and Mac, via Steam and Epic) and Nintendo's Switch 2 and OG Switch.In addition, Supergiant clarified to Engadget on Tuesday that the game will launch simultaneously on those platforms, so the PC, Mac, Switch 2 and Switch versions will all be available on its release date.This follows a similar pattern to the one the developer used in Hades. It initially launched on PC, Mac and Switch before later landing on PlayStation 5/4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.SupergiantThe developer laid to rest any concerns that the roguelike won't perform well on Nintendo's platforms. "We have both versions running smoothly at a target 60 frames per second, with the Switch 2 version taking advantage of the bigger, higher-definition 1080p display," Supergiant wrote last week.We don't know when Hades II, which arrived in Early Access last spring, will jump to v1.0 (apart from a general 2025 window). In February, Supergiant pushed the game's Warsong Update, which added Ares, an updated Altar of Ashes and a final boss fight. A third big patch is also in the works before the sequel is released to the public.Update, April 8, 2025, 12:54PM ET: This story has been updated with a confirmation from Supergiant that it will launch simultaneously on PC, Mac and Switch.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/hades-ii-will-launch-on-switch-2-and-switch-before-playstation-and-xbox-163757321.html?src=rss
Triband Games is back with another entry in its What the" franchise. What the Clash? is an exclusive for Apple Arcade and will be available on May 1. Apple describes it as a "quirky, fast-paced multiplayer game" that features Triband's take on popular minigames like table tennis, archery, racing and tag.However, this isn't just a simple multiplayer minigame collection. Players can use modifier cards to "create absurd combos." This includes stuff like "giraffle, toasty archery, sticky tennis and milk the fish." Remember, this is the developer behind the monumentally silly What the Car? and related titles.The game offers simple touch controls, which makes sense given the platform, and there's a solo mode for those who don't want to goof on their friends and family. It includes leaderboards and tournaments. Also, everyone plays as a giant stretchy hand with legs (?!) that can be customized with clothes and accessories.Trident also made the fantastic What the Golf? and the VR-focused What the Bat? Both are very good. Two of the company's games ended up on our list of the best Apple Arcade titles. What the Car? also won mobile game of the year at the 2024 D.I.C.E. Awards.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-goofy-multiplayer-game-what-the-clash-hits-apple-arcade-on-may-1-155951496.html?src=rss
Millions of us got into Wordleover the last few years and while there have been many clones of that game, other developers went in a slightly different direction and found success, as The New York Times did with the excellent Connections. Another game that has been doing the rounds for a couple of months has a new home, as The Atlantic becomes the latest publisher to get in on the daily puzzle trend.Starting Tuesday, you can play Bracket City on the magazine's website. Ben Gross, an independent game designer who created the game, will continue to work on it alongside The Atlantic's director of games, Caleb Madison.The aim of Bracket City is to solve a nested series of clues to reveal a fact about that given day in history. You have to solve the clues in order, but if you figure out an answer at a higher level, you can use that to work your way backwards and help you get to the solution. There's a tutorial to help you get started.The AtlanticTuesday's fact of the day is 10 words long, while Monday's was only six words, but revealing each meant solving 17 clues first. The clues include cryptic hints, fill-in-the-blank idioms and general knowledge teasers. Clicking on a hint will reveal the first letter of its answer. There's also a hard mode in which you don't have to press enter to submit a guess but "every keystroke counts."You'll earn a city-based rank depending on how well you did, such as Commuter or Mayor, while completing a puzzle perfectly will see you earn the title of Kingmaker. Every previous edition of the game is available in a free archive, which you can access by clicking on the date.I've only been playing Bracket City for half an hour but I'm already obsessed. It tickles my brain in a similar way to Connections. It's less about guessing letters to find the right word and more about general knowledge and wordplay. Bracket City is already a winner in my book, and it's an instant addition to my rotation of once-a-day puzzle games.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/bracket-city-could-be-your-latest-word-game-obsession-151405964.html?src=rss
Sega just announced that Sonic Rumble will be available on May 8. It was supposed to come out last winter, but will finally see the light of day next month. It's being described as a "multiplayer action game" and it really reminds me of Mediatonic's Fall Guys, which even offers a mode that stars the speedy hedgehog.To that end, Sonic Rumble can accommodate 32 players at once. It's a battle royale-style title that has players race around worlds inspired by the franchise. The last one standing at the end wins. You know the drill.This being a Sonic game, there are rings to collect. These can be used to purchase new skins and stickers. Sega specifically mentioned a Sonic skin from the recent Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie, which is neat.The company also promises "key gameplay enhancements designed to add depth and strategic layers to every round." Each player gets a customizable set of skills, with multiple slots per character. There's also a newly-announced co-op mechanic that brings players together to "strategize and overcome obstacles as a unit."There's a spot of bad news here for console players. Sonic Rumble will only be available for iOS, Android and PC via Steam.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-fall-guys-esque-sonic-rumble-comes-out-on-may-8-145632617.html?src=rss
We'll all soon ditch those big winter coats and the equally big pockets they have built in as warmer weather becomes the norm. But that also means it will be a bit harder to keep track of your things. I lost my phone, alone, multiple times over this past sunny weekend. But, now there's a (cheaper) potential solution: The Chipolo One Bluetooth tracker. Amazon has a four-pack of Chipolo One trackers for only $50 right now, which is 33 percent off their usual price. It's also the best price we've seen on this set of our favorite Bluetooth tracker for 2025. It also offers two different color sets to choose between and is a great deal if you want multiple trackers (just one is usually $20). Beyond the convenient keyhole (sorry Apple), we like the Chipolo One for features like how loud it is when you're searching for something - plus, it never has a delay when you press find. It's also very quick to ask if you've left something behind and works equally well with an iPhone or Android. If you're not sure you need four Chipolo trackers, or this is your first time picking them up, you can also snag one of them for only $15. That's a $5 discount and the best price we've seen on a single-pack. Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/a-four-pack-of-chipolo-one-trackers-drops-to-an-all-time-low-of-50-131257240.html?src=rss
A new report from Reuters has shed light on how Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is employing tech in its processes, including the alleged use of artificial intelligence to monitor communications. The initiative is said to be keeping an eye out for chatter that's considered hostile toward Musk or President Donald Trump.Some managers at the Environmental Protection Agency have reportedly been told that DOGE is deploying AI to monitor communication apps and software such as the widely used Microsoft Teams for anti-Musk or anti-Trump sentiment. It's said that DOGE is watching out for individuals whose work didn't square with the administration's agenda. One manager reportedly told EPA staffers to Be careful what you say, what you type and what you do."The EPA didn't explicitly state whether AI was being used to monitor employees for signs of disloyalty, though it told Reuters that it was "looking at AI to better optimize agency functions and administrative efficiencies." It added that it wasn't using AI "as it makes personnel decisions in concert with DOGE." The EPA has placed nearly 600 workers on leave and pledged to cut its budget by 65 percent amid DOGE's government-wide cost-slashing efforts.Meanwhile, it's said that DOGE staffers are using Signal to communicate with each other. This could be a violation of federal record-keeping rules given the app's ability to automatically delete messages after a certain period of time. And that's not to mention the security risks of accidentally inviting, say, a journalist to a top-secret chat about government operations.Some DOGE workers are also said to be using Google Docs to edit official documents collaboratively, in effect bypassing usual vetting procedures and chains of custody. In addition, staffers are reportedly making use of Musk's chatbot Grok AI in their work, but exactly what they're doing with it remains unclear. It emerged this week that the White House wants federal agencies to make full use of "American AI."DOGE has been accused of operating under a shroud of secrecy. The administration has contended that since DOGE is operating under the Executive Office of the President, it's not obligated to allow the public to request access to its records, which would be the case if it were an official government agency. Nevertheless, a federal judge last month ordered DOGE to start providing records of its operations to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sued for access to such documents under freedom of information laws. The watchdog told Reuters that, as of Monday, it had received no records from DOGE.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/doge-is-reportedly-using-ai-to-monitor-government-comms-for-anti-musk-and-anti-trump-chatter-141411751.html?src=rss
As someone who has moved around quite a bit, VPNs have always been essential to ensure I can access my sites and shows. The problem is that these often cost a pretty penny, sometimes more than I'm willing to fork out. But, now, our favorite VPN for multiple devices is now having a massive sale. Surfshark Starter VPN is down to $54 for 27 months - a plan that typically costs $417. It breaks down to $2 each month and three months free. This tier offers perks like a secure VPN, unlimited devices, ad and cookie pop-up blockers, a rotating IP and masked email and personal detail generators. The two other plans, Surfshark One and One+, are on sale for $67 and $81, respectively. They both offer the Starter's features, along with scheduled scans, leak alerts, no data tracking or storage and personal data security reports. Surfshark One+ also includes data removal from company databases and data removal from people search sites. Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/surfshark-vpns-two-year-plan-drops-to-only-54-133540084.html?src=rss
Motorola isn't radically reinventing the Moto G Stylus for 2025, but it is improving the midrange smartphone where it matters. And when the other stylus-friendly smartphone is the $1,300 Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, that might be all it needs.The Moto G Stylus has a 6.7-inch Super HD pOLED display with an 120Hz refresh rate and a max brightness of 3000 nits. Like the previous Moto G Stylus, this year's model also has a 5,000mAh battery that Motorola says should offer 40 hours on a single charge. That's paired with a Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chip, 8GB of RAM and either 128GB or 256GB of storage - a good step-up from the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 in the last Moto G Stylus.MotorolaOther than the updated internals, the Moto G Stylus is also much safer around water and dust. The phone has IP68 water protection and MIL-STD-810H certification, which means its covered when it comes to dust and rain, but can also survive falls from "nearly 1.5 meters and total submersion in nearly 1.5 meters of water for up to 30 minutes," according to Motorola.Motorola's main improvement to the namesake of the Moto G Stylus is to make it more responsive. The new stylus is "6.4x" more responsive than the previous generation, and can also be used for new Android features like Circle to Search and Motorola's "Sketch to Image," which can turn scribbles into detailed images with AI.MotorolaDespite all of those changes, the Moto G Stylus doesn't look all that different the new Moto G and Moto G Power Motorola announced in January, with a textured, faux-leather back in either a blue-green or a bright blue, and a raised plateau for its camera system. The selfie camera on the front of the Moto G Stylus is 32MP, and the rear cameras include a 50MP wide with optical image stabilization, a 13MP ultrawide / macro and a "3-in-1 light sensor."The Moto G Stylus will launch on April 17, unlocked, for $399.99 at Amazon, Best Buy and Motorola's website. The phone will also be available in the coming months through Metro by T-Mobile, Visible, Total Wireless, Straight Talk, AT&T, Cricket, Spectrum Mobile, Consumer Cellular, UScellular, Xfinity Mobile, Google Fiber Wireless, Optimum Mobile and Boost Mobile.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/motorola-is-updating-the-moto-g-stylus-to-make-it-more-durable-130051835.html?src=rss
Whether you're planning a long vacation or just want more peace of mind, a security camera can make a big difference in your life. Now, our choice for best budget security camera is half off, making safety all the more accessible. You can pick up the newest Blink Mini 2 for $20, down from $40 - a deal last seen during Amazon's Spring Sale. The Blink Mini 2 offers a great device for the price. It's easy to set up and can be used outside (with a separately purchased water-resistant power adapter). It also has a 1080p HD live view with a built-in spotlight and night vision in color. If you're in need of multiple Blink Mini 2 cameras then you can take advantage of multi-pack deals. Right now, the two-pack of Blink Mini 2s is down to $38 from $70 - a 46 percent sale. A trio of the cameras is 45 percent off, down to $55 from $100. Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/pick-up-a-blink-mini-2-camera-while-its-up-to-half-off-125338790.html?src=rss
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has released the administration's revised policies for the use of AI in federal agencies. As Reuters notes, it has altered Biden-era guidelines and has rescinded orders by the previous administration related to safety over the technology's use. The Trump administration said it's shifting towards a "forward-leaning, pro-innovation and procompetition mindset" instead of maintaining and "pursuing the risk-averse approach" of Biden's government.Before Trump took office, the government ordered federal agencies to ensure that any AI tools they use "do not endanger the rights and safety of the American people" and to be transparent about the technologies they use. It also placed restrictions on AI acquisitions. According to the Trump administration, the new rules "will no longer impose unnecessary bureaucratic restrictions on the use of innovative American AI."Federal agencies will still have to appoint a Chief AI Officer like the previous administration had ordered. While Biden's government wanted those officers to ensure that agencies are using AI responsibly, their main role in the current government is to serve as "AI advocates," promoting agency-wide AI adoption. "Agency Chief AI Officer roles are redefined to serve as change agents and AI advocates, rather than overseeing layers of bureaucracy," the White House said. Accountability for using AI will be more akin to the existing process for using IT in the government, OMB said, "instead of creating new layers of approvals." In addition, the new rules remove what the new administration calls "burdensome agency reporting requirements" for the acquisition of AI in the government.The government now wants federal agencies to develop an AI strategy within the next six months.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-white-house-wants-federal-agencies-to-maximize-the-use-of-american-ai-123053019.html?src=rss
Anyone else feel like half the time their phone rings these days it's spam? Sometimes there's an alert before you even pick up, but other times it takes being in the call to know. Well, Google is now making it easier to do the latter, adding in-call scam detection to the Pixel Watch.The new AI-powered feature gives a loud beep at the start of the call and every couple minutes afterward. It will give a notification, beep and vibration in cases where a scam is very likely. You can dismiss the notification from the watch if you know it's not a scam. Try it out by turning on scam detection in settings.There's a few caveats, as the in-call scam detection works only on the Pixel watch 2 or 3. They also need to be connected by Bluetooth to a Pixel 9 or newer phone. It's also only available right now in the US and for English-language calls.Google first introduced the feature to select phones in beta last November. It's now available on the Pixel 9 and newer devices, but this addition lets you see the notification without ever taking out your phone.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/google-brings-in-call-scam-notifications-to-pixel-watches-120008825.html?src=rss
Timing is everything. Hours after I published our Friday newsletter, debating the price of Nintendo's new console, the company announced it would delay US pre-orders for the Switch 2 as it wrestled with a new set of tariffs introduced by President Trump.Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the US will not start April 9, 2025, in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions," Nintendo told Engadget. It added that the console is still set to launch on June 5, however.Last week, the Trump administration announced a set of new tariffs on a swath of countries, including Japan (Nintendo's base of operations), China and Vietnam. Those last two countries, where Nintendo manufactures much of its hardware, will be subject to import duties of 54 percent and 46 percent.Nintendo said the Switch 2 would cost $450 at launch - and we've discussed the rises enough - but there's no word yet on whether that price will get readjusted, or whether the company will just distribute fewer consoles to the US.It's not the only one reassessing things in the wake of the recent tariffs. Jaguar Land Rover is pausing shipments to the US. Vehicle imports face a 25 percent tariff, and the company told the AP it was taking some short-term actions including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans."Relatively smaller companies are also figuring things out: Framework, best known for its modular, repairable laptop series, announced it was also suspending US sales for some of its laptops.- Mat SmithGet Engadget's newsletter delivered direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!The biggest stories you might have missed
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