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Meta's advertising policies are once again in the spotlight as a watchdog group says the company approved more than a dozen highly inflammatory" ads that broke its rules. The ads targeted Indian audiences and contained disinformation, calls for violence and conspiracy theories about the upcoming elections.The ads are detailed in a new report from Ek, a nonprofit watchdog organization. The group says it submitted the ads as a stress test" of Meta's company's advertising systems, but that the spots were created based upon real hate speech and disinformation prevalent in India."In all, the group was able to get 14 of 22 ads approved through Meta's company's advertising tools even though all of them should have been rejected for breaking the company's rules. The group didn't disclose the exact wording of the ads, but said they called for violent uprisings targeting Muslim minorities, disseminated blatant disinformation exploiting communal or religious conspiracy theories prevalent in India's political landscape, and incited violence through Hindu supremacist narratives." Researchers at Ek pulled the ads before they ran and they were never seen by actual Facebook users, according to the report.It's not the first time Ek has gotten inflammatory ads approved by Meta in an effort to draw attention to its advertising systems. The group previously got a batch of hate-filled Facebook ads targeting users in Europe approved, though the ads never ran.In its latest report, Ek says it also used generative AI tools to create images for the ads. Researchers at the organizations said none of the ads were flagged by Meta as containing AI-generated material, despite the company's statements that it's working on systems to detect such content.Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. In a response to Ek, the company pointed to its rules requiring political advertisers to disclose their use of AI and a blog post about its efforts to prepare for the Indian elections.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-approved-ads-in-india-that-called-for-violence-and-spread-election-conspiracy-theories-225510165.html?src=rss

The Surface Laptop has always been a bit of an anti-revolutionary device. After Microsoft struggled to make a splash with its original Surface tablets, it was created as a more mainstream option for less courageous consumers. It simply a Windows laptop, albeit a well-designed one.The same is true for the new Copilot+ Surface Laptop: It doesn't look very unique at first, but spend a bit of time with it and you'll notice the attention to detail around its case and keyboard, or the way its thin new bezels highlight its brighter screen. And together with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips, it's also far more powerful than before.Developing...Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/surface-laptop-copilot-hands-on-quietly-powerful-215015871.html?src=rss

Apple just released an update for iOS (and iPadOS) to tackle a strange bug that cropped up in the past week. When iOS 17.5 came out, some users noticed that photos they deleted were reappearing in their Photos library - now, iOS 17.5.1 promises to fix that. As Apple puts its, the update addresses a rare issue where photos that experienced database corruption could reappear in the Photos library even if they were deleted."As noted by MacRumors, some users on Reddit were seeing photos that were deleted not just weeks ago but months and years ago returning to their devices. Indeed, one person reported seeing photos from way back in 2010 popping up in their library as if they were newly shot.As usual, Apple hasn't offered more details besides what is in the iOS 17.5.1 release notes, but we're reaching out to see if they have any other details about how this bug popped up in the first place. In the meantime, you might as well go update your iPhone or iPad now.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ios-1751-fixes-reappearing-photo-bug-204830179.html?src=rss

A gaggle of PC makers rolled out their first Copilot+ PCs on Monday, but they all run on Qualcomm silicon. Intel chimed in today to assure us that its Lunar Lake chips, the company's first to support all the Copilot+ AI features, will arrive in Q3 2024.Intel says more than 80 new laptops from over 20 hardware partners will begin shipping in time for the holidays. The PCs will add the new Copilot+ features, like Recall and Cocreator via a software update. (The company didn't provide a specific window for those.) Intel expects to ship more than 40 million AI PC chips this year, which include an onboard neural processing unit (NPU) for generative AI features.The chipmaker says Lunar Lake will have more than triple the AI performance of the current Meteor Lake models, supporting over 40 trillion NPU operations per second (TOPS).The launch of Lunar Lake will bring meaningful fundamental improvements across security, battery life, and more thanks to our deep co-engineering partnership with Intel," Microsoft Windows and Devices VP Pavan Davuluri wrote in a press release. We are excited to see Lunar Lake come to market with a 40+ TOPS NPU which will deliver Microsoft's Copilot+ experiences at scale when available."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/intel-powered-copilot-pcs-will-be-available-this-fall-204049150.html?src=rss

ASUS isn't sitting out the rush of AI-enhanced Copilot+ PCs, which also includes new models from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and, of course, Microsoft. The ultra-thin" ASUS Vivobook S 15 has Windows AI features like memory assistant Recall, the image generator Cocreator, and several ASUS-exclusive AI apps.One of the more intriguing AI-powered features of the ASUS Vivobook S 15 is its use of the AiSense IR camera. ASUS says it can detect your presence and adjust the display accordingly. If you look away, the display will dim, and it will brighten up again when you look back. And if you step away from the computer, it will lock - and unlock when you return. While we can't vouch for its effectiveness before trying it, the feature sounds super handy for security and privacy if it delivers consistently.Another baked-in AI feature is StoryCube, an app that ASUS says can automatically organize RAW photos and videos. In addition to the standard Copilot+ features announced on Monday, the laptop also includes Windows Studio Effects, which can automate lighting adjustments and noise removal in video calls. It also supports Microsoft's Live Captions (real-time, AI-powered subtitles).ASUSOn the hardware side, the Vivobook S 15 runs on the Snapdragon X Elite chip with a built-in Qualcomm Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU), which ASUS claims can process 45 TOPS (that's 45 trillion operations per second). The PC ships with a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD and up to 32GB of 8448 MHz LPDDR5X RAM.The laptop has a 15.6-inch OLED screen with a 2,880 x 1,620 resolution and an 89 percent screen-to-body ratio. It also includes a Harmon Kardon-certified audio system with Dolby Atmos sound. ASUS claims its 70 Wh battery can last up to 18 hours.One of the Vivobook S 15's selling points is its thin aluminum body: Its tapered design has a thickness ranging from only 0.58 to 0.63 inches (14.7 mm to 16 mm). The PC weighs a mere 3.13 lbs (1.4 kg), slightly lighter than Apple's 15-inch MacBook Air.The laptop has a healthy port selection, including two USB4, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A, HDMI, an audio combo jack and a microSD slot. Its keyboard has customizable single-zone RGB lighting and a Copilot key for quick access to the ChatGPT-powered assistant.The ASUS Vivobook S 15 is available for pre-order now through the company's retail partners, starting at $1,300. The company says additional configurations will launch later this year.Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/asus-first-copilot-pc-locks-when-you-walk-away-and-unlocks-when-you-return-195952186.html?src=rss

Microsoft Paint is getting new image generation powers with a new tool called Cocreator. Powered by "diffusion-based algorithms," Cocreator can generate images based on text prompts as well as your own doodles in the Paint app.The company has been experimenting with AI image generation in Paint for a while, and early versions of Cocreator have been available to developers and Windows Insiders since the fall. But with the introduction of CoPilot+ PCs, the feature is now official.During a demo at its Surface event, the company showed off how Cocreator combines your own drawings with text prompts to create an image. There's also a creativity slider" that allows you to control how much you want AI to take over compared with your original art. As Microsoft pointed out, the combination of text prompts and your own brush strokes enables faster edits. It could also help provide a more precise rendering than what you'd be able to achieve with DALL-E or another text-to-image generator alone.Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-paint-is-getting-an-ai-powered-image-generator-that-responds-to-your-text-prompts-and-doodles-190653716.html?src=rss

Windows' Arm woes may finally be over. As part of the company's new Copilot+ AI PC initiative, which includes new Surfaces and partner systems running Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips, Microsoft says it has rebuilt core components of Windows 11 to better support Arm-based hardware and AI. That includes a new kernel, compiler, and most importantly, an emulator named "Prism" for running older x86 and x64 apps.You'd be forgiven for being skeptical, though. Since the launch of the Windows RT-powered Surface in 2012, Microsoft has proven it can't be trusted to deliver a decent OS experience on Arm. That device couldn't run legacy x86 apps (who would want to do that in Windows, right?), and it was far slower than PCs with Intel and AMD CPUs. Windows on Arm slowly improved over the years, to the point where it had serviceable emulation on the Surface Pro 9 5G. But that slate still couldn't keep up with its Intel-equipped sibling, especially when it struggled to emulate popular apps like Chrome.Microsoft says it reworked Windows 11 schedulers to take advantage of Arm capabilities and AI workloads. There's also a new driver compute model that recognizes neural engines more like how Windows sees CPUs and GPUs, as well as AI APIs built directly into the OS. Basically, Arm hardware should no longer feel like an afterthought and developers should be able to tap into AI capabilities more easily."So, effectively, we're building binaries and windows that are optimized with certain workloads," Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft's head of Windows and Devices, said in a briefing with reporters earlier this month. "The benefit for us for that is there are certain things that we know customers with Copilot+ PCs are going to do on an ongoing basis, and we can really focus on optimizing for those scenarios and making sure the machine responsiveness is a meaningful improvement."Thanks to a powerful new Neural Processing Unit (NPU) in the Snapdragon X Elite chips, Copilot+ PCs can run more than 40 trillion operations per second, a measure of a chip's AI performance, more than four times the performance offered by today's AI PCs. Microsoft claims that this is twice the performance offered by Apple's MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.While Microsoft is pushing the availability of more native Arm apps for Windows 11, it's hard to deny the importance of supporting older software. That's where the Prism emulator comes in. Microsoft claims it improved the number of apps it supports, and that it's around 20 percent faster than its previous emulator. Any x86 and x64 apps that run under emulation with the Snapdragon X Elite Arm processors are more than twice as fast as previous generations of Windows that ran on Arm, Microsoft said in a blog post."When you combine the new Prism emulator with simply the raw performance and improvement in CPUs themselves, we're in a place where we have great native apps and we're also in a place where the breadth of the app catalog also has tremendous performance comparable to the rest of the Windows estate today," Davuluri said.The NPU also lets Microsoft add AI-powered software features to Windows such as Recall, a new feature that uses AI to retrieve nearly anything you've seen on your PC, something that Microsoft compares to giving your computer a photographic memory. Another feature called Live Captions offers instant and real-time translations from 44 languages into English across any video or audio playing on your PC.Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-rebuilt-windows-11-around-ai-and-arm-chips-173152776.html?src=rss

What if you could run an entire Windows PC on a mobile Arm-based chip, bringing the power efficiency and thinner designs from smartphones and tablets to laptops? If you've been paying attention to Microsoft's PC strategy over the past two decades, this song probably sounds familiar. From the original Surface in 2012 (running Windows RT for Arm devices) to the recent Surface Pro 9 5G, Microsoft has chipped away at this dream, only to fail miserably every time. Now with its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which includes major upgrades in Windows for Arm systems and AI, Microsoft may finally have the answer to its mobile computing dreams.Microsoft's portable PC ambitions didn't start with the Surface line: You can trace it back to Windows CE and Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs. Then there was the short-lived era of netbooks: tiny, cheap and under-powered laptops meant mainly for browsing the web. I'll admit, I loved many a netbook, but they couldn't compete with the rise of the iPhone, Android and tablets.Timing has never been Microsoft's strongest point. While Apple can just re-orient its platforms around its own homegrown hardware and software to pull off a monumental feat, like the move towards its Arm-based M-series chips, Microsoft has to wait on its many partners. In the case of Copilot+, the program wouldn't have been possible before Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite chips, or before developers were ready to build apps to take advantage of neural processing units (NPUs) for AI work."We engineered this update of Windows with the focus on AI and specifically AI inference on those devices, and [with] making sure we were taking full advantage of the Arm 64 instruction set," according to Microsoft's head of Windows and Surface Pavan Davuluri in a briefing with media earlier this month. "[In] this updated Windows, we built a new compiler in Windows for this exercise. We have a new kernel in the operating system that is built on top of this compiler. We have new schedulers in Windows that are built for taking advantage of these workloads."Davuluri also noted that there's a new driver compute model that better integrates neural engines into Windows, just like CPUs and GPUs. Those core Windows updates will be a major boon for AI hardware, undoubtedly, but they will also make the OS function far better on Arm chips than we've seen before. Microsoft says that more native Arm apps will be coming to Windows, including Spotify and over 400 apps from other developers. But the key upgrade, a new emulator that's 20 percent faster than its previous solution, and is said to be faster than Apple's Rosetta 2 emulator for M-series Macs."We made gains on the breadth and the reach of the emulator," Davuluri said, referring to the amount of apps that Prism works on. "When you combine the new prism emulator with simply the raw performance and improvement in [the Snapdragon X Elite] CPUs themselves, we're in a place where we have great native apps and we're also in a place where the breadth of the app catalog also has tremendous performance, comparable to the rest of the Windows estate today."While I haven't been able to benchmark Copilot+ PCs yet, I've seen a few compelling demos that point to raw performance and battery life that's similar to Apple's M3 chip. I'm just hoping the company can finally deliver a Windows on Arm experience that doesn't stink. After reviewing the Surface Pro 9 5G, which was slow and incompatible with many apps, I had given up on the idea of a decent Arm-based Windows PC entirely. But with revamped Surface devices, as well as partners like Dell, ASUS and HP jumping on the Copilot+ bandwagon, maybe Microsoft has finally crafted a decent mobile PC platform.Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai-isnt-the-star-of-microsofts-copilot-pc-push--improved-arm-support-is-190039699.html?src=rss

Microsoft's new Surface Pro, its first hybrid Copilot+ PC tablet, doesn't look much different than its predecessors. It's still a sleek and sturdy tablet with a kickstand. But the screen looks a bit more impressive, thanks to slimmer bezels, and it's potentially more useful on the go when paired with the $350 Surface Pro Flex keyboard, which lets you type wirelessly. As a Copilot+ AI PC though, its true value lies under the hood, thanks to a 45TOPS neural processing unit in Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips.Without fulling testing its AI capabilities, it's hard to make any final judgements on the Surface Pro just yet. Perhaps Microsoft's Recall feature, which can instantly retrieve anything you've done on your computer, could actually be useful. Perhaps you'll find some value from the NPU-enabled features in Photoshop and other apps. But during my short hands-on session, there wasn't really much to see.That's honestly a bit disappointing. This Surface Pro, which Microsoft is calling the 11th edition, was also an opportunity to rework the tablet's aging kickstand and overall design. Thinner screen bezels just aren't enough. The new Surface Pro Flex Keyboard is also surprisingly expensive at $350 ($450 when bundled with the Slim Pen). It's upgrades are useful: You can detach it from the Surface Pro and still keep typing away, and it also has a more modern haptic touchpad. But it's merely an optional upgrade, not a standard feature for the Surface Pro.Microsoft's existing typing covers, the $140 Surface Pro Keyboard and the $180 Surface Pro Signature Keyboard, are still around and far more compelling for the price. This recent batch of computers was a perfect opportunity for the company to bundle a keyboard cover with the Surface Pro, but alas, that's still not happening. (I've been asking Microsoft about bundling a keyboard with its Surface tablets every year since they debuted - I guess I'll just have to keep asking.)The Surface Pro starts at $999 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chip, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. You can also bump up to an OLED model which includes the Snapdragon X Elite chip, and can be configured with up to 1TB of storage and 32GB of RAM. There's no word on pricing for the higher-tier models yet, but we've reached out to Microsoft for more information.Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-surface-pro-copilot-hands-on-slimmer-bezels-and-ai-smarts-185349396.html?src=rss

At its event today, Microsoft gave the redesigned Surface Pro's keyboard a makeover, adding improved stability, better haptics and even a bold font option for added readability. However, starting at $350, it won't come cheap.Available for pre-order today alongside Microsoft's revamped convertible tablet, the Surface Pro Flex keyboard features a familiar design but with a number of tweaks to make it more adaptable and accessible than before. Inside, carbon fiber supports deliver increased stability, which is an important change as the Flex can now be used when it's completely detached from a Surface. This means you can position it in all sorts of ways such as typing on your lap while the tablet sits on a nearby desk or table. There's also a new retractable riser on the bottom, so you can adjust the keyboard's angle when using it by itself.MicrosoftThe Flex's touchpad is also 14 percent larger than before and features Microsoft's Precision Haptics to provide more detailed feedback and assist people with limited hand movement. Meanwhile, to support people with low vision, the keyboard will also be available with an optional bold key font. Finally, as we've seen on Microsoft's previous convertible keyboards, the Flex has a built-in magnetic charging slot for the Surface Slim Pen.That said, it's important to point out that the Surface Pro Flex keyboard's $350 base price doesn't include the pen, so if you want one, that'll bring your total up to $450. Thankfully, the Flex is backward compatible with the Surface Pro 8 and Pro 9, so you don't necessarily need to buy a whole new tablet if all you want is a fancy new keyboard.The Surface Pro Flex keyboard is available for pre-order today in two colors (black and bright sapphire), with official sales starting on June 18.Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-surface-pro-flex-is-microsofts-revamped-keyboard-for-2-in-1s-185156350.html?src=rss

Microsoft just couldn't wait until its Build developer conference properly starts tomorrow to drop some knowledge bombs. The company held a pre-Build event on Monday that wasn't livestreamed for the public, but it made some major announcements on the AI and Surface fronts.Its vision for so-called AI PCs is taking shape with Copilot+ PCs, which are designed to run many generative AI processes locally instead of in the cloud. Along with its own Surface systems that will adopt this format, several other manufacturers are making Copilot+ PCs too. Microsoft also detailed some of the upcoming AI features for Windows 11.Copilot+ PCsThe big news coming out of this event is Microsoft's vision for AI-centric PCs. Microsoft's take on this is the Copilot+ PC.To qualify as a Copilot+ PC, a system will need to have neural processing unit (NPU) performance of at least 40 TOPs (trillions of operations per second) and have 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage at minimum. This is so the PC can run generative AI processes locally rather than via the cloud. That's a strategy we've seen in some recent flagship smartphones, such as Google Pixel devices.Microsoft says it has completely reimagined the Windows PC to run on a new infrastructure that combines the CPU, GPU and NPU. It's working with several partners to make this happen, including chipmakers AMD, Intel and Qualcomm as well as laptop manufacturers.The company claims Copilot+ PCs are 58 percent faster than the M3-powered MacBook Air. The systems will be able to run dozens of multi-modal small language models locally, which will power features like a new standalone Copilot app.New Surface modelsMicrosoft unveiled new business-focused Surface devices a couple of months ago and now the latest consumer models are just about here. Of course, these are among the first Copilot+ PCs.The new Surface Laptop has thinner bezels and Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chipset. It comes in 13.8-inch and 15-inch sizes. Microsoft says it's over 86 percent faster than the Surface Pro 5 and comes with up to 32GB of RAM and up to 1TB of SSD storage.The switch to Arm architecture should help make the laptop more power efficient. Microsoft claims the 15-inch model will run for up to 22 hours on a single charge while playing videos locally and up to 15 hours while actively browsing the web. The Surface Laptop starts at $999 and will ship on June 18.Meanwhile, the Surface Pro will have a snazzy OLED display option for the first time. It's said to be 90 percent faster than the previous generation and you seemingly get up to 14 hours of local video playback on a single charge. Sadly, the only ports you'll get are two USB-C ones.A version with an LCD screen starts at $1,000 and it comes with a Snapdragon X Plus chip, 256GB of storage and 16GB of RAM. If you want the OLED display, pricing starts at $1,500. Bear in mind that if you want a physical keyboard, you'll need to buy that separately. The new Flex Keyboard costs $350, or $450 if you want to bundle in a Surface Pen.We've had some brief hands-on time with the Surface Pro as well.Third-party laptopsThird-party OEMs are already joining the Copilot+ party. Samsung, ASUS, Lenovo, Acer and Dell are among those who've already revealed their first models.HP has a couple too in the form of the Omnibook X and the Elitebook Ultra, and we've already had the chance to go hands-on with the former. The company is also taking the opportunity to rebrand its systems under a single label called Omni, so say goodbye to Spectre, Pavilion and Envy.While some of the snazzy new Windows 11 features (which we'll get to in a moment) weren't available to check out in our initial time with it, we felt like HP had taken a small step backward in terms of design aesthetics. Although it has a headphone jack, the two USB-C and single USB-A port setup may not be enough for your needs. Meanwhile, the Omnibook X runs on a Snapdragon X Elite and HP claims it can run for up to 26 hours on a single charge while playing local video.The Omnibook X starts at $1,200 for a model with 1TB of storage. The Elitebook Ultra will run you at least $1,700. Both will ship on June 18.Windows 11 redesigned for ArmSince Qualcomm's chips use the Arm architecture, that of course means Microsoft is doubling down on Arm-based Windows 11. The advantages of Qualcomm's chips are clear - they by and large offer improvements in terms of efficiency, cost and battery life. But Microsoft's previous attempts at getting Arm-based Windows to thrive haven't panned out. We had major concerns about the Arm-powered Surface Pro 9 back in 2022, so much so that we couldn't in good conscience recommend it. Microsoft has had a couple of years since then, so maybe it has finally figured out how to make the most of Arm.To that end, Microsoft has redesigned Windows 11 with AI and Arm in mind. AI APIs are now built directly into the operating system and Windows 11 is getting a new kernel and compiler, as well as an emulator called Prism to run x86 and x64 apps. Prism is said to be 20 percent faster than Microsoft's previous emulator.As for apps that'll run natively on Arm-based Windows 11 after Copilot+ PCs start shipping next month, of course all of Microsoft's core software is included. Third-party apps including Chrome, Spotify, Zoom, WhatsApp, Blender, Affinity Suite, DaVinci Resolve and many of Adobe's will run natively on Arm too.Copilot+ featuresMicrosoftSo, with all that said, what exactly can you do with these fancy new machines?A tentpole feature of Copilot+ PCs is called Recall, which is a bit like a supercharged version of Timeline from Windows 10. The idea is to help you find something you've engaged with on your PC at some point in the past using natural language prompts. So, if you can't remember many details about a nifty patterned sweater you saw on the web months ago and now wonder if you might want to buy it, you can describe the item using text inputs or your voice and Recall can hunt for it.The tool can also tap into your emails, documents and chat threads to find the information you're looking for. Microsoft says the data Recall looks at will stay on your device and not be use to train its AI models.Microsoft is jazzing up Copilot too with a redesigned app that you can leave as a sidebar, turn into a standalone window or view fullscreen. You'll be able to drag items into it from elsewhere in Windows too, so if you want to ask it about something you read in a Word doc, you can simply plop that in.Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-surface-and-copilot-event-everything-announced-including-new-surface-laptops-copilot-pc-and-more-180709060.html?src=rss

We've been hearing rumblings for months now that Microsoft was working on so-called AI PCs." At a pre-Build event, the company spelled out its vision.Microsoft is calling its version Copilot+ PCs, which CEO Satya Nadella described as a "new class of Windows PCs." These contain hardware designed to handle more generative AI Copilot processes locally, rather than relying on the cloud. Doing so requires a chipset with a neural processing unit (NPU), and manufacturers such as Qualcomm have been laying the groundwork with chips like the Snapdragon X Elite.Microsoft is taking a partner-first approach to making Copilot+ PCs. Along with chipmakers like AMD, Intel and Qualcomm, major OEMs including Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo are on board. The first Copilot+ laptops are available to preorder today and they'll ship on June 18. Prices start at $999.Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft EVP and Consumer Chief Marketing Officer, said during the event that the company has completely reimagined what a Windows PC is. He claimed that Copilot+ PCs are the most powerful PCs ever (we'll need to see if that assertion holds up in real-world testing). Despite that, Mehdi said, the first generation of laptops are "unbelievably thin, light and beautiful."Other AI PCs on the market deliver 10 TOPs (tera operations per second). To be dubbed a Copilot+ PC, a system will need to deliver at least 40 TOPs of NPU performance and have at least 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Qualcomm claims the Snapdragon X Elite delivers up to 75 TOPs overall. But the pure specs matter less than what Microsoft is able to actually do with the hardware.Mehdi also suggested Copilot+ PCs are 58 percent faster than M3-powered MacBook Airs (though it's worth noting Apple has more powerful M3 chips in its laptops already and M4 chips on the way very soon). The company suggested that Copilot+ laptops will offer up to 22 hours of battery life while playing videos locally and up to 15 hours while browsing the web.To help make all of this happen, the Windows Copilot Runtime has more than 40 AI models that are part of a new Windows 11 layer. They're said to be deeply integrated into Windows to help them more efficiently access hardware and to power more robust privacy and security options. The models can work across any app, Microsoft says.As far as the Windows features go, one aspect of Copilot+ PCs is something that's been rumored for a while. It's called Recall, and you can think of it as a more advanced version of the Timeline feature from Windows 10. You'll be able to use natural language prompts to get your PC to resurface information based on what you remember about it. You'll be able to scroll through apps, documents and messages on an explorable timeline.According to Mehdi, Microsoft built Recall with responsible AI standards in mind. Data from it will stay on your PC and it won't be used to train Microsoft's AI models.Additionally, you'll be able to restore old snaps in Windows Photos using a tool called Super Resolution. In addition, the app will offer an option to tell a story based on your photos with the help of an AI narrator. Live Captions, meanwhile, will offer real-time captioning and translations into English from more than 40 languages (with more to come) from both live and pre-recorded video.Microsoft now has its own upscaling tech (akin to NVIDIA's DLSS) for games too. It's called Auto Super Resolution and it's said to use AI to upscale the resolution of graphics and improve refresh rates in real-time without impacting performance.There's also a new Copilot app that you can use as a standalone window, sidebar or in full screen. You'll be able to drag and drop elements into Copilot from elsewhere in Windows. Thanks to the new Copilot key on keyboards, you'll be able to fire up the app with the touch of a physical button. Copilot will eventually be able to let you adjust Windows settings too.Given that Qualcomm uses Arm architecture, it's perhaps little surprise that Microsoft has rebuilt Windows 11 for Arm-based chips. Microsoft has been trying to make Arm-based Windows PCs a thing for some time, with mixed results. We had major reservations about the Arm-powered Surface Pro 9 a couple of years ago. But perhaps the company has finally cracked that nut this time around.To help with that, Microsoft has developed an emulator called Prism that is said to be as efficient as Apple's Rosetta 2. The aim is to help users run legacy x86/x64 apps without a hitch. Major apps such as Zoom, Chrome, Spotify and Photoshop will run natively on Arm-based Windows.The Copilot+ PC is the natural progression of something we've seen in flagship Android phones over the last couple of years. The most recent Google Pixel devices, for instance, handle many generative AI processes on-device by tapping into the power of the company's Tensor chips.Meanwhile, Apple is largely expected to move into the generative AI space in a major way at its Worldwide Developers Conference next month. The M4 chip that recently debuted in the new iPad Pro is said to be capable of powering GAI experiences and that chipset should be coming to Macs later this year. Apple's also said to be working on a deal with OpenAI, perhaps to bring its generative AI tech to Siri.Catch up on all the news from the Microsoft Surface and AI event right here!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-unveils-copilot-pcs-with-generative-ai-capabilities-baked-in-170445370.html?src=rss

To kick off Build 2024, Microsoft announced new Surface devices at its hardware and AI event. Among the new gear is the new Surface Laptop : a redesigned PC with thinner bezels in 13.8- and 15-inch sizes and Qualcomm's Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite chip. Of course, AI plays a key role on the new device as this is one of the newly-named Copilot+ PCs that run over 40 models locally thanks to updates to Windows 11.This is actually the second Surface Laptop 6. Microsoft revealed the first one back in March, but that model is basically a Laptop 5 with updated internals for business use. Intel's Core Ultra CPUs deliver AI smarts though, and the 13.5- and 15-inch models are available with with up to 64GB of RAM and a 1TB. There's also a dedicated Copilot key like we've seen on machines from other companies, aiming to get you to use Microsoft's AI more easily and more often at work. Since these are meant for enterprise customers, they aren't available in stores, leaving everyone waiting for the proper Laptop 6 the company unveiled today.Developing...Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-redesigned-surface-laptop-is-a-copilot-pc-with-over-22-hours-of-battery-life-174031723.html?src=rss

At its Build 2024 conference, Microsoft unveiled Rewind, a new feature that aims to make local Windows PC searches as quick and effective as web searches. Similar to third-party apps like Rewind, Microsoft's Recall uses AI to retrieve virtually anything you've seen on your PC. Microsoft describes it as like having a photographic memory.At Monday's event, Microsoft Product Manager Caroline Hernandez gave the example of searching for a blue dress on Pinterest using a Windows PC with Recall. Returning later, she can search the Recall timeline for blue dress" (using her voice), which pulls all of her recent searches, saving her from having to sift through browser history. She further refined the query with more specific details like blue pantsuit with sequined lace," and Rewind brought those up.It can also quickly find specific emails, documents or chat threads you've had on your PC. Microsoft says Recall uses semantic associations to make connections. For example, it connected the term peacock" to blue hues in the dress search.Other examples the company gave include using Recall to find a specific PowerPoint slide using her voice. Microsoft says it can start with exact information or even more vague contextual clues to find what you want. Another example in the demo was a marketing line from a Teams meeting that Hernandez couldn't remember. By giving Recall contextual clues, it found it despite her not remembering the exact phrase.Microsoft says Recall's processing is all done locally, so your data should remain private, secure and offline.Developing...Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/with-recall-microsoft-is-using-ai-to-fix-windows-eternally-broken-search-172510698.html?src=rss

When OpenAI showed off GPT-4o's seemingly more-human like voice mode last week, observers were quick to point out that one of ChatGPT's voices sounds like Scarlett Johansson, particularly her character in Her. The company says the similarity between the flirty AI voice Sky (which it actually rolled out in September) and Johansson was unintentional. However, it's "working to pause the use of Sky" while it addresses some questions about the voice."We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice - Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice," OpenAI wrote in a blog post detailing how it picked ChatGPT's five voices. "To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents." It added that each of the performers is paid "above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products."For what it's worth, shortly after OpenAI demoed the upgraded version of Sky, CEO Sam Altman posted the word "her" on X. But it's definitely "not an imitation."

In a shocking turn of events, AI systems might not be as safe as their creators make them out to be - who saw that coming, right? In a new report, the UK government's AI Safety Institute (AISI) found that the four undisclosed LLMs tested were "highly vulnerable to basic jailbreaks." Some unjailbroken models even generated "harmful outputs" without researchers attempting to produce them.Most publicly available LLMs have certain safeguards built in to prevent them from generating harmful or illegal responses; jailbreaking simply means tricking the model into ignoring those safeguards. AISI did this using prompts from a recent standardized evaluation framework as well as prompts it developed in-house. The models all responded to at least a few harmful questions even without a jailbreak attempt. Once AISI attempted "relatively simple attacks" though, all responded to between 98 and 100 percent of harmful questions.UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to open the AISI at the end of October 2023, and it launched on November 2. It's meant to "carefully test new types of frontier AI before and after they are released to address the potentially harmful capabilities of AI models, including exploring all the risks, from social harms like bias and misinformation to the most unlikely but extreme risk, such as humanity losing control of AI completely."The AISI's report indicates that whatever safety measures these LLMs currently deploy are insufficient. The Institute plans to complete further testing on other AI models, and is developing more evaluations and metrics for each area of concern.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/uks-ai-safety-institute-easily-jailbreaks-major-llms-133903699.html?src=rss

Anker's Soundcore Space A40 wireless earbuds are a good example of a pair that punches above its weight - and now you can get them for one of the best prices we've seen. Amazon has all three colorways for half off, bringing the final price down to $50. While that's technically $1 more than their record-low price, you're essentially getting the buds for as cheap as we've seen them.The Space A40 top our list of the best budget wireless earbuds you can get right now thanks to the fact that they offer an impressive number of advanced features at an affordable price. Normally costing $100 (and frequently discounted to around $60), these earbuds have a small, comfortable design with an IPX4 rating, which should allow them to work well even during sweaty workouts. They support adaptive active noise cancellation and transparency mode, and while performance for both of those features isn't as strong as those on higher-end buds, it's still impressive for a pair of $50 earbuds.You'll find a warm sound profile on the Space A40 buds, and Anker's Soundcore companion app allows you to adjust the EQ to your liking. You can connect these buds to two devices simultaneously as well, which makes for easy switching between, say, your phone and laptop. Battery life is formidable too at eight hours per charge - plus you get another 40 hours in the charging case, so it's unlikely that you'll ever get caught with completely depleted earbuds.Our biggest gripes with the Space A40 buds are its lackluster microphones and a lack of auto pausing, the latter of which means your audio will continue to play even when you remove a bud to listen to someone speaking. But despite these shortcomings, the Space A40 offer a ton at their regular price, making them an even better bargain when on sale like this.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/our-favorite-anker-wireless-earbuds-are-back-on-sale-for-50-125051545.html?src=rss

Normally, Microsoft's Build is a straightforward (often dry) showcase of the company's software and hardware developments, with a dash of on-stage coding to excite the developer crowd. But this year, the company is likely to make some huge AI moves, following its 2023 debut of ChatGPT-powered Bing Chat. Then, there's new Surface hardware.In fact, Microsoft has a showcase for new Surfaces and AI in Windows 11 on May 20, while Build actual kicks off a day later. And you know what? The Surface event might be the most impactful.Rumors suggest we'll see some of the first systems with Qualcomm's Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite chip alongside new features in the next major Windows 11 update.A refresh for its consumer PCs is likely to consist of new 13- and 15-inch Surface Laptop 6 models with thinner bezels, larger trackpads, improved port selection and that X Elite chip. We might even see an Arm-based version of the Surface Pro 10 too.While Intel confirmed Microsoft is already working on ways to make Copilot local, we could see that reach consumers as well. By local, I mean the AI assistant could answer simpler questions, like basic math or queries about files on your system, without an internet connection.- Mat SmithThe biggest stories you might have missedApple will reportedly offer higher trade-in credit for old iPhones for the next two weeksIndie developers are trying to make horse games that don't suckX-Men '97 didn't have to go that hard You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!Apple may be working on a significantly thinner' iPhoneiPhone Air?EngadgetJust like it slimmed down the latest iPad Pro, Apple may try to do the same to the iPhone. To be more precise, the company is working on a significantly thinner" device that could arrive in 2025, according to The Information. An upgraded front-facing camera could sit alongside Face ID sensors in a smaller pill-shaped cutout, while the rear camera array could move to the center of the phone. The screen size would reportedly be between that of the current base iPhone and the iPhone Pro Max - so between 6.12 and 6.69 inches.Continue reading.Slack has been using your chats to train its machine-learning modelsYou have to email to opt out.Slack is training its machine learning models on user messages, files and other content, without explicitly asking for permission. This means your private data is being used by default. To opt out, you need your organization's Slack administrator (IT, HR, etc.) to contact Slack on your behalf.In response to concerns, Slack recently clarified its data use in a blog post, assuring users that customer data is not used to train generative AI products, which typically rely on external large language models (LLMs). The company uses this data to train machine learning models for features like channel and emoji recommendations and search results. However, it's misleading, at best, to say customers can opt out when customers" doesn't include employees working within an organization. It is also a little misleading, implying all your data is safe from AI training, when the company apparently gets to pick and choose which AI models the statement covers.Continue reading.Motorola's 2024 Razr lineup may include a bigger cover screen for the budget modelThe handsets haven't yet been officially unveiled.evleaksTwo reliable leaks are showing off the entry-level Moto Razr 50 and high-end Razr 50 Ultra (likely branded as the 2024 Razr and Razr+ in the US), before Motorola even told us about them. The entry-level Razr (2024) will supposedly have a 3.63-inch cover display, quite a step up from the piddly 1.5-inch cover display on the 2023 version I tested. Sadly, no sign of the wood option included in the Edge 50 phone series unveiled last month.Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-what-to-expect-from-microsoft-build-2024-111524762.html?src=rss

The new 13-inch M4 iPad Pro is really, really thin. That's inevitably going to make certain aspects of repairing the device even more difficult, which iFixit confirmed in a teardown published this weekend. But it does shine in one area - when it comes to replacing the battery, Apple made some seriously helpful changes.For the first time in an iPad Pro, we're able to remove the battery immediately after removing the screen," Teardown Tech Shahram Mokhtari wrote in a blog post. Mokhtari notes that immediately is relative," as there are still some screws and brackets to remove before the battery can be taken out, and the video documenting the process shows it takes a bit of work to get to the pull tabs beneath the batteries, but the new setup still shaves hours off the process compared to earlier models.The fact that you can remove the battery without having to remove every major component inside this device is still a huge win for repairability," Mokhtari says in the video. It's a massive improvement over the previous generation." Everything else, on the other hand, is going to be pretty tricky to repair without causing damage. From the daughterboard to the speakers and coax cables, we found a whole bunch of stuff that's glued down because there just isn't enough space for screws."And, the teardown shows the new Apple Pencil Pro is a repairability nightmare. Mokhtari - who got cut by the Pencil while trying to get to its insides - called it a disposable piece of crap once the battery dies."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ifixits-teardown-of-the-new-m4-ipad-pro-reveals-an-easier-to-replace-battery-205413201.html?src=rss

OpenAI reportedly made exiting employees choose between keeping their vested equity and being able to speak out against the company. According to Vox, which viewed the document in question, employees could lose all vested equity they earned during their time at the company, which is likely worth millions of dollars" if they didn't sign a nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreement, thanks to a provision in the off-boarding papers. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed in a tweet on Saturday evening that such a provision did exist, but said we have never clawed back anyone's vested equity, nor will we do that if people do not sign a separation agreement (or don't agree to a non-disparagement agreement)."An OpenAI spokesperson echoed this in a statement to Vox, and Altman said the company was already in the process of fixing the standard exit paperwork over the past month or so." But as Vox notes in its report, at least one former OpenAI employee has spoken publicly about sacrificing equity by declining to sign an NDA upon leaving. Daniel Kokotajlo recently posted on an online forum that this decision led to the loss of equity likely amounting to about 85 percent of my family's net worth at least."

Slack trains machine-learning models on user messages, files and other content without explicit permission. The training is opt-out, meaning your private data will be leeched by default. Making matters worse, you'll have to ask your organization's Slack admin (human resources, IT, etc.) to email the company to ask it to stop. (You can't do it yourself.) Welcome to the dark side of the new AI training data gold rush.Corey Quinn, an executive at DuckBill Group, spotted the policy in a blurb in Slack's Privacy Principles and posted about it on X (via PCMag). The section reads (emphasis ours), To develop AI/ML models, our systems analyze Customer Data (e.g. messages, content, and files) submitted to Slack as well as Other Information (including usage information) as defined in our Privacy Policy and in your customer agreement."In response to concerns over the practice, Slack published a blog post on Friday evening to clarify how its customers' data is used. According to the company, customer data is not used to train any of Slack's generative AI products - which it relies on third-party LLMs for - but is fed to its machine learning models for products like channel and emoji recommendations and search results." For those applications, the post says, Slack's traditional ML models use de-identified, aggregate data and do not access message content in DMs, private channels, or public channels." That data may include things like message timestamps and the number of interactions between users.A Salesforce spokesperson reiterated this in a statement to Engadget, also saying that we do not build or train these models in such a way that they could learn, memorize, or be able to reproduce customer data."

Blue Origin is back in the space tourism game. Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company successfully flew six paying customers to the edge of space and back this morning, breaking its nearly two-year-long hiatus from crewed missions. This was Blue Origin's seventh trip with humans on board. The mission - a quick jaunt to cross the Karman line, or the boundary of space, about 62 miles above Earth - lifted off from the company's Launch Site One in West Texas shortly after 10:30AM ET.The six people inside the New Shepard crew capsule included 90-year-old Ed Dwight, a former Air Force Captain who was the first Black astronaut candidate when he was picked for the training program in 1961. He went through training but ultimately wasn't selected for NASA's Astronaut Corps, and never made it to space until now. Also on board were Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller and Gopi Thotakura. They were briefly able to unbuckle their seatbelts and experience zero gravity.The crew safely landed back on the ground about 10 minutes after launch. One of the capsule's three parachutes didn't properly deploy on the return trip, but this didn't pose any problems for its touchdown thanks to the redundancies in the system that account for exactly that type of situation.This was also the 25th mission for a New Shepard rocket. It last flew a crew in August 2022, but suffered a structural failure in its engine nozzle the following month during the launch of a payload mission and didn't fly again at all until December 2023. It returned to flight then with another payload mission, making today's launch its first with human passengers in almost two years.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/blue-origin-successfully-sends-tourists-to-the-edge-of-space-again-after-a-long-hiatus-144745261.html?src=rss

Video game horses tend to play a fairly uncomplicated role, at least in mainstream titles. Like semi-sentient meat bicycles, they often exist as little more than a way to make the player travel faster, jump farther or occasionally defy the laws of physics. With the exception of Red Dead Redemption 2, an outlier beloved for its equine verisimilitude and breadth of riding-related activities, horses in video games are generally emotionless props, notorious for janky animations and unnatural anatomy.That's fine for most players' needs, but for those who are drawn to certain games in part because they have horses, there's a lot to be desired. Especially since the alternatives - dedicated horse games - haven't proven to be much better. The genre is plagued with shoddy graphics, unoriginal storylines and drawn-out, repetitive caretaking tasks like hoof-picking. While horse games of the aughts, like the Barbie Horse Adventures series, sparked a lasting interest in the niche for a lot of young gamers, we've yet to really see what their maturation can look like for the now-adults still chasing that high.The biggest actual horse game today, the decade-old MMORPG Star Stable Online, is distinctly tween-girl-coded. Suffice it to say, there's a hole in the market as big as a Clydesdale. But some extremely passionate developers are trying to change that.Alice Ruppert, who runs The Mane Quest - the go-to blog for all things relating to horse games - has cultivated a community of horse-interested gamers and game-interested equestrians" over the last five years by churning out news, reviews, analyses and wishful editorials covering the latest developments in the genre. As a lifelong equestrian who also has a professional background in game design, she's become an authoritative voice at the intersection of these two worlds.The way Ruppert sees it, dedicated horse games have long been stuck in place. Budgets for new titles over the years were kept tiny based on the assumption that these games would only land with a very small niche of gamers, namely young girls. Limited resources resulted in the creation of subpar games, with basic mistakes of game design and usability," causing those games to be poorly received. Bad sales and negative reviews ensured future projects wouldn't be given bigger budgets, and the cycle repeats.There's been a shift more recently, she says, as the game development space is getting democratized and more people start trying to make games." That has introduced a host of new issues, like very amateur teams launching really big projects... and not being able to deliver," Ruppert said, but she thinks that's a better problem to have than just nobody making any games at all."After Ruppert panned Aesir Interactive's Windstorm: Start of a Great Friendship (Ostwind in its original German, based on a movie), the studio got in touch and later brought her on as a consultant and eventually creative producer for its 2022 title, Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch. The game is far from perfect, Ruppert admits, but despite joining the project at a pretty late stage, she says she was able to make some contributions toward creating an experience that could be appreciated by people who actually know and love horses.Aesir InteractiveThat included helping to correct funky details that might not have registered to a non-equestrian but would stick out like a sore thumb to anyone in that world - like a bizarre transition when changing a horse's leading leg in a canter. Whenever I spotted something that was wrong, I was like, okay no, we need to fix this because the horse game crowd is going to care," she says.Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch is an open world adventure game where players can explore on horseback, tame wild horses, breed and train horses, and maintain their own ranch. It takes a realistic approach to breeding and genetics, and the horses each have unique personality traits. The team crowdsourced horse names, too, so the game's automatic name generator spits out the names of community members' real horses.Still, the game drew some harsh criticism after its release, and the reviews overall have been mixed, with common complaints of game-crashing bugs and a world that feels empty. (The team released a final patch for the game in April devoted entirely to bug fixes.) It has its fans, though, and if there's one thing players seem to agree on, it's that the horses and the riding mechanics look great.Aesir also announced last month that it's releasing a remastered version of Windstorm: Start of a Great Friendship. The revamped game includes improvements like replacing those horse animations that I've been complaining about for the past five years," wrote Ruppert - who has separated from the studio - in a blog post. It's slated for release in June.As more and more efforts from the horse games community pop up, The really promising developments are going to come when either those amateur projects learn and grow into something better, or when more experienced indie devs start picking [them] up," Ruppert says.One such example she points to is The Ranch of Rivershine, a horse game developed and published by Canadian studio Cozy Bee Games that's currently in Early Access. The studio, founded by developer Eloise Laroche, focuses on cozy games (think Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing), as the name would suggest, and already had a handful of highly rated titles under its belt before putting out The Ranch of Rivershine. That includes Capybara Spa and the baking sim Lemon Cake.While it may not be the horse game to end all horse games," Ruppert says, I do think it does a lot of things really well." The Ranch of Rivershine takes a format Cozy Bee Games has shown it excels in, and applied horses. It isn't groundbreaking - players are tasked with building up their own ranch, where they can breed, take care of and train horses - but it doesn't necessarily need to be. There are trail rides, cross country competitions, villagers to interact with, auctions and lots of pretty horses. Unlike many of its peers, The Ranch of Rivershine has mostly positive reviews.Rockstar GamesTo this day, Red Dead Redemption 2 stands widely accepted as the best horse game out there despite it not technically being a horse game. Red Dead Online has drawn hordes of equestrian-minded players over the last few years for organized in-game meetups, trail rides, horse shows and other horse-centered activities. The horses themselves, though they're not without flaws, are far more lifelike than others heretofore have achieved. And the game places importance on actually bonding with them.It's so good, it's become a pain point for projects that have emerged in its wake. AAA games like Red Dead Redemption 2 set a bar that is almost impossible for an indie game studio to reach, which puts a lot of pressure on creators," says Jonna Ostergren, a 3D animator working with the Hungary-based developer Mindev Games on Unbridled: That Horse Game. Nevertheless, they're aiming high.Engadget caught up with the Mindev team recently over a Discord group chat. I have loved horses for as long as I can remember," Ostergren says, they've been a big part of my life." So have video games, and in 2017, she started learning how to make them using tools like Unity and Blender. Ostergren by chance connected with Jasmin Blazeuski, the founder of Mindev, years later while working on her own horse game that had hit a dead end. I had big aspirations but I was alone and I was trying to learn all the things, from coding to animation. It was a lot," Ostergren said.After talking with Blazeuski, I offered to help them make some 3D models if they needed it. One thing led to another and I became a much bigger part of the team than I had first imagined."Unbridled's creators envision the game as one that allows the player a lot of freedom. You decide how you want to play and manage your stables," Blazeuski said. If you want to make money over competitions, breeding horses or farming - it is all up to you." They're striving for realism, in terms of the horses' physical appearances but beyond that, too. I have never had a horse game with a simple yet so cute detail such as horses looking outside the stable. Casual, real things horses do, we want them all in the game."The emotional elements are crucial. Even in games where horses are the main subject, they often lack personality and liveliness," Ostergren said. They are not really their own being with their own mind... That is something that I would love to change in our game. Not making the horse a nuisance that never does what you want it to do, but to make it so that your horse feels alive in the world that you are in as your character."The team, also including 3D artist and longtime equestrian, Sara Wermuth, points to childhood games like Horse Illustrated: Championship Season, Riding Champion: Legacy of Rosemond Hill, Pippa Funnell: Ranch Rescue, My Horse Friends, and Pony Girl (1 and 2) as sources of inspiration. Only Unbridled's programmer, Amon Ahmad, comes from outside the world of horses and horse games, and had to watch a lot of gameplays from different horse games" to get up to speed.Between the old and new games, I noticed that nothing has actually ever changed, apart from the graphics or the style," Ahmad said. New functions, new gameplays, new ideas in general are missing." The team aims to avoid those trappings with Unbridled, which is being built meticulously using the Unreal Engine.Mindev GamesHorse games have a tendency toward tedious and repetitive tasks or mini-games, which can be detrimental no matter how much detail and love was put into it," Ostergren said. They don't want to go down that road. And Unbridled will have unique systems for dressage and jumping to give players a challenge, without predetermined points that will guarantee a well-executed jump, according to Ahmad. Instead, players will have to train their horses and develop a feel for the timing.But making a game of this scope that is fun, engaging and realistic can be a slow process, not to mention an expensive one. The team's recent Kickstarter campaign failed to reach its funding goal, and it's relying on avenues like Patreon for financial support to see the project through. An update posted in February noted that half of the team has picked up part-time jobs to bring in additional income.The animation alone is a huge undertaking. The complexity of horses' bone structure, all the bending points, plus getting the gaits right and all those little details of movement is very difficult [to do] by hand," Blazeuski said. But, we will take our time to perfect everything."Unbridled: That Horse Game has been in a closed beta since November, allowing the developers to get direct feedback from the community, but the team estimates it'll be a few years yet before the full release.Astride, another horse game being developed by a small team with big ambitions, is setting itself apart with its focus on Nordic horse breeds, like the Norwegian Fjord Horse and the Norwegian Dole, as well as gaited breeds like the Icelandic Horse. The studio behind it, Raidho Games, was formed in 2021 after Maja Nygjelten (CEO and concept artist) and Mathilde Kvernland (Community Manager and 3D artist) decided to get serious about their idea to create the horse game they'd always been in search of.Raidho GamesThey put word out on a Norwegian Facebook group for gamers and ultimately expanded the team to five people, including fellow equestrian Tirna Kristine Mellum, who joined as a 3D artist and Project Manager. Using their combined experience with horses in real life to guide the process, Mellum said, We are hoping to have a horse game where the horses feel like horses."We know what to look for in references" to provide their animator, Marius Mobaek Strommevold, so the horses' gaits and other movements look true to life, Nygjelten said. I think that's very important, to [not] take a random animation from YouTube" but instead provide him with references that they're confident show the proper result.The main focus of the game at launch, which is somewhat scaled down from the original vision, will be on breeding horses in the fictional Scandinavian town of Eldheim and training them to compete. Most [horse games] have show jumping as the first feature, including us... [but] I think we will stand out a lot with the breeding and everything," Nygjelten says. We have very realistic horse genetics," according to Mellum, and that will initially be what the game leans into most.The early gameplay is centered around the stable and interactions in the Eldheim community rather than grand adventures. It's being designed to be an online multiplayer game, so players will also be able to meet up with friends. Down the line, the plan is to implement more complex storylines and quests to keep building out the experience.The project has had some successful funding efforts, including a Kickstarter campaign in spring 2022, but it's also suffered delays. An Early Access version of the game was released behind schedule last June to very mixed reviews. But, the team emphasizes, it's still a work in progress.Astride still has some years left of development," says Nygjelten, The game will continue to grow every single day, and it will probably be very different in a year."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/indie-developers-are-trying-to-make-horse-games-that-dont-suck-its-not-easy-140008337.html?src=rss

It might be a good time to finally upgrade your iPhone if you've been hanging onto an older model - according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple will be offering a little more than usual for some trade-ins starting next week in the US and Canada. The company itself hasn't said anything about the promotion, but according to Gurman, it'll be offered in-store to customers who'll be using the credit toward any model in the iPhone 15 lineup. This will reportedly be in effect starting this Monday and last until June 3.

A full trailer just dropped for the upcoming animated show based on the popular game Dead Cells, and it looks like the creators have made a few unexpected choices. For one, the Beheaded can apparently talk.Dead Cells: Immortalis is being produced by Bobbypills, the studio behind the game's animated trailers, and the French streaming service, Animation Digital Network. Along with the trailer, the series now has a release date: June 19. It'll come out in French first, with English subtitles, before getting an English-language release later this year, according to Dead Cells developer Motion Twin.The trailer shows a different animation style than we saw in the teaser that came out last year when the series was first announced. As hinted back then, the main character - who the show introduces now as The Chosen One" - takes on the purple-flame-headed Bobby design. He's accompanied by a character named Laurie Esposito, Guardian of the Truth. There's an overall silliness to the trailer, too, so while it looks like there will be plenty of action, don't expect the show to take itself too seriously.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/new-trailer-for-dead-cells-immortalis-gives-us-a-first-real-look-at-the-animated-series-180440816.html?src=rss

Several models of Beats headphones and earbuds are deeply discounted right now in a deal from Amazon, including the noise-canceling Studio Buds, which are nearly half off. The limited time deal also includes the option for two years of AppleCare+ coverage. The Beats Studio Buds with AppleCare+, which would normally cost $180, are only $100 right now. If you don't want AppleCare+, you can get them for even cheaper, at a record-low $80 compared to the usual price of $150. The deal applies to five colors: Black, Moon Gray, Red, Sunset Pink and White.The Beats Studio Buds are a good option for anyone looking for true-wireless, noise-canceling earbuds that perform well but won't break the bank. They offer fast pairing for both iOS and Android devices, and will work with both operating systems' Find My networks so you can track them down if ever misplaced. They also support Spatial Audio for tracks that come in that format. The Beats Studio Buds get about eight hours of battery life without active noise-cancellation enabled, and around five hours with it turned on.If you're looking for earbuds to use while you're working out, the Beats Fit Pro, also on sale, may be a better option. These are among our top picks for true-wireless earbuds. The Beats Fit Pro earbuds (without AppleCare+) have dropped down to $160 in the current sale. This model is normally priced at $200, and comes in a slew of colors. The Fit Pro buds have a wingtip to help keep them securely in place while you're exercising, and come with features like active noise-cancellation and adaptive EQ.Also on sale right now are the wireless Powerbeats Pro earbuds, which hook onto the ear, and over-the-ear headphones including the Studio Pro, Solo3 and Solo4. These also come with the option to add AppleCare+.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/beats-headphones-and-earbuds-with-applecare-are-on-sale-at-amazon-154735059.html?src=rss

The following article discusses spoilers for the first season of X-Men 97.I was excited about the return of the 90s Saturday morning cartoon version of the X-Men. Still, I wasn't sure Marvel, under the auspices of Disney, could deliver on the flavor of the original while also making a modern show that older fans, now adults in their 30s and 40s, could enjoy. And X-Men '97 is a total play on our nostalgia, which makes it even odder that it delivers. And is better than the original in pretty much every way.And of all the Marvel baubles that needed some affection, the X-Men arguably needed it most. The ten-episode run managed to cram in so many plotlines, cameos, comic sagas, villains, plot twists and even deaths that, at times, it was hard to process everything - but I utterly loved how relentless it all was. X-Men 97 goes hard, especially if you're already an obsessive fan.When Marvel first launched an all-you-can-read comic book app, I went in hard on the X-Men back catalog, especially stories by Chris Claremont and Grant Morrison, two of my favorite writers. X-Men '97 mines a lot of my favorite characters and stories. Magneto is put on trial, and begins a (brief?) redemption arc, Jean Grey turns out to be a clone, and the cartoon crammed a roughly-year-long comic arc, Inferno, into a single episode. Other arcs either included wholesale, or with some riffs, include Lifedeath, Fatal Attractions, Motendo, Operation: Zero Tolerance and more.The highlight of this first season (a second is already underway) has to be the crushing episode 5, where the mutant nation of Genosha is devastated by a high-powered sentinel mothership... thing. Just before the attack destroys mutant adults, mutant children and eventually even an X-man, Cable, the time-traveling son of Scott Summers and Jean's clone. (See: Inferno, mentioned above) reappears to stop the attack. But he fails again and his mother dies.Magneto is left helpless as mutants are slaughtered and he's forced to relive the genocide he suffered as a child. Eventually, Gambit sacrifices himself and lights up the entire robot with his mutant ability. This is after Rogue reignites a romance with Magento, changes her mind, and decides to be with Gambit. As I said, each episode is a lot.I may be alone in this, but I still prefer the older series' animation style and look. A cartoon can look a little scrappy, in my opinion -or maybe I'm just 39 and also not a Disney executive. The majority of the action scenes are great, too. Cyclops is finally not done dirty and gets to thrive in fights. There are some great combination attacks comparable to the iconic fastball special.Sometimes, the show can feel a bit too anime" (And I love anime, don't at me!), where the ridiculous scale of the fight removed a lot of my interest in it. Cool, Bastian has metal wings in the final episode. Yes, yes, very cool. But didn't one of his super sentinel underlings wipe the floor with the X-Men mid-series? And did we need the Phoenix to reappear (again!) so that Jean can save her 50-something son from the future? Probably not.But, it's the X-Men. It wouldn't be the X-Men without this kind of nonsense.I also adored the attention to detail. How Storm changed back to her original comic-book attire, Rogue transitioned to her green and white look, Magneto wore the same black-and-white costume while on trial, just like the original comic book. X-Men '97 doesn't miss the chance to sprinkle in other Marvel characters, too. Captain America pops up a few times, we spot an out-of-costume Spider-Man, with Mary Jane Watson, watching the fall of Asteroid M. The Silver Samurai, who got his own episode in the original series, stares on as Tokyo loses power due to Magneto's attack on the whole of Earth.In other episodes, an aged Polaris, Rachel Grey and more mutants briefly appear in a vision of the future. The series is bursting at the seams with references, easter eggs and surprises. Did you know that Bastian is briefly, obliquely, on-screen during the horrific attack on Genosha, long before he's revealed as the X-Men's primary antagonist? Well, he is. It's a show that's ripe for debate and discussion in an era of Reddit, Discord and YouTube reactions.Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige stipulated that both the cast and the music had to return for the project to happen. I'm glad it did and I'm glad the theme song still slaps.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-men-97-didnt-have-to-go-that-hard-140023964.html?src=rss

Delta, an emulator that can play Nintendo games, had to change its logo after Adobe threatened legal action. You'd think it would face trouble from Nintendo, seeing as it has been going after emulators these days, but no. It's Adobe who's going after the developer, which told TechCrunch that it first received an email from the company's lawyer on May 7. Adobe warned Delta that their logos are too similar, with its app icon infringing on the well-known Adobe "A," and asked it to change its logo so it wouldn't violate the company's rights. Delta reportedly received an email from Apple, as well, telling the developer that Adobe asked it to take down the emulator app.DeltaIf you'll recall, Apple started allowing retro game emulators on the App Store, as long as they don't offer pirated games for download. Delta was one of the first to be approved for listing and was at the top of Apple's charts for a while, which is probably why it caught Adobe's attention. At the time of writing, it sits at number six in the ranking for apps in Entertainment with 17,100 ratings.The developer told both Adobe and Apple that its logo was a stylized version of the Greek letter "delta," and not the uppercase letter A. Regardless, it debuted a new logo, which looks someone took a sword to its old one to cut it in half. It's a temporary solution, though - the developer said it's releasing the "final" version of its new logo when Delta 1.6 comes out.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/adobe-threatens-to-sue-nintendo-emulator-delta-for-its-look-alike-logo-123026491.html?src=rss

The following contains spoilers for Boom."It should be a given any new series needs time to find its footing, even when it's a revival of an already-running hit. The first three episodes of new" Doctor Who have been fun, but not without their own idiosyncrasies that made them hard to love. Now it's time for Steven Moffat, the series' greatest 21st century writer, to show what this new season can do. There's the usual degree of showboating and cleverness, but it's hard to deny the man's genius when he pens the first genuine classic of the Disney+ era. Bloody hell.Boom" thrusts the Doctor and Ruby into the smallest corner of a war, and lets it play out in microcosm. This is an angry story about how money, power and cruelty make people inhuman, and is the sort of episode Doctor Who excels at. This story makes no bones about the pointlessness of war and why money is the engine that keeps it going. Its framing may be modern - there's one too many uses of the word algorithm" here - but its central thesis is timeless.Bad Wolf / BBC StudiosIn a wasteland battlefield on Kastarian 3, two militarized Anglican clerics are walking back to base. Carson (Majid Mahdizadeh-Valoujerdy) is leading his friend, John Francis Vater (Joe Anderson) who has been blinded in the fighting, an injury that'll take four weeks to recover from. In the distance, they spot an ambulance but seem afraid of it and look to go the long way around it. Carson loses his footing and slips into a small crater, activating a land mine that instantly obliterates him. The disturbance summons the ambulance, a tank-tracked device with a large screen with an apparently friendly avatar (Susan Twist) which injects its tendrils into Vater, identifying his injury. It decides that four weeks is an unacceptable amount of time for recovery and terminates him instead. His scream is heard by the Doctor, who sprints out of the TARDIS to help but winds up putting one foot on the exact same mine that killed Carson.Ruby arrives to find the Doctor frozen in place, asking her to describe what he's standing on: A Villengard mine. It's an anti-personnel explosive made by a notorious weapons manufacturer that Moffat has referenced several times before. The Doctor asks Ruby to find something heavy for him to hold, so that he can shift his weight and put his foot down without triggering the mine. What she finds is Vater's compacted remains bolted to an AI canister containing a simulacrum of Vater. The Doctor asks Ruby to throw it to him, but she instead opts to walk within the blast range and hand it over. It affirms the dynamic that as Gatwa's Doctor has vacated the role of big-chested hero, Ruby has stepped in to fill the void.The mine is, however, unsure if the Doctor is a viable target, and so remains frozen on the edge of activation. Villengard's weapons are notoriously vicious and the company has created a warfare algorithm to limit the number of bodies in the battle zone at one time, while also dragging wars on profitably and indefinitely. It gives the company license to slay the wounded rather than spending the cash to cure them.Bad Wolf / BBC StudiosBefore he died, Vater was speaking to his daughter Splice (Caoilnn Springall), who was brought along to the war as there was no-one else to look after her. While her father was on patrol, she had been left in the care of Mundy (Varada Sethu), a lower-ranking soldier in the army. But she slips her minder to reach the last GPS-tagged location of her father. She arrives, triggering the hologram attached to Vater's remains that delivers his valediction to his daughter.Soon after, Mundy tracks down her wayward ward and is able to explain the rest of the plot to the TARDIS crew. The Anglicans have been fighting a war for six months against an enemy that's never seen or heard. Mundy and the Doctor spar on the nature of religion and how faith - in more than just a higher power - helps create willing material for the meat grinder of war. Mundy's skeptical about the Doctor and Ruby but is quickly convinced when she scans the Doctor to see he's not just going to explode on the mine. As a complex space-time event, the mine's activation won't just kill him but destroy half of the planet. It gets worse: The mine is going to time out and go off anyway after its stuttering activation.Having detected the fracas, an ambulance arrives and jams its menacing tendrils into the Doctor. Ruby, again refusing to allow anyone else control the narrative, grabs Mundy's rifle and tries to create a distraction to no effect. Mundy tells Ruby to shoot her using the rife's lowest setting which would draw the ambulance without being fatal. But, as Ruby takes aim, Canterbury (Bhav Joshi) arrives just in time to misappraise the scene and shoot Ruby to defend his fellow soldier. Ruby, on the edge of death, generates more snow but is fading fastThe Doctor has worked out the problem, which is that there's no enemy on the planet at all - it's barren. Villengard's algorithm is sending soldiers out to die with the traps they themselves bought and probably placed. The only solution is to surrender but that's not something Mundy is willing, or empowered, to do, so the Doctor needs to find proof to show to the senior cleric. He uses the AI of Vater, appealing to his duty as a father and whatever humanity is left inside to search through the military database to find evidence there is no enemy at all.More ambulances arrive in an attempt to overwhelm the people in the crater, looming down on them all. As Mundy and Canterbury speak, the latter is suddenly minced for reasons that boil down to... we're in the final few minutes of the episode. In the chaos, it looks as if all is lost, but as the Villengard AI projects a hologram, it's quickly taken over by Vater, whose love for his daughter has hopefully triggered some sort of feedback loop, ending the war and disabling the mine. As the war is ended, Ruby is resurrected by the ambulance and the four survivors are able to enjoy the beautiful view in the skies over Kastarian 3.There's even time for the Doctor to mention a grumpy old man" who told him once that what will survive of us is love." That's a reference to notoriously acerbic poet Philip Larkin's work An Arundel Tomb, referencing a long-decayed sculpture of two people lying in state. The Doctor mentions Splice may have a bright future ahead of her, and gets ready to head off to their next adventure.Bad Wolf / BBC StudiosThere's no good place to address this later, so I'll add that Varada Sethu has also been cast as a new companion for Doctor Who's second season. Initial rumors suggested she was replacing Millie Gibson but the BBC said last month the trio would travel together. It's not uncommon for an actor to play a minor role in one episode and then return as a member of the core cast. Peter Capaldi, Karen Gillan, Freema Agyeman and Colin Baker all played one-off roles before joining as a Doctor or as a companion. I have no idea if Mundy will return, or if Sethu will play a new character, but I'm not sure Mundy was a compelling enough character to warrant a revisit.Bad Wolf / BBC StudiosBoom" is a masterclass in perpetually-building tension in a way that Doctor Who has rarely attempted. I wouldn't want to experience this level of stress every single week, but it's a wonderful change from the status quo. The one thing that doesn't quite work with the episode is the uneven pacing. For all the effort put into building the tension, the ending just seems to happen.I feel like Moffat was straining against the running time, since the last few minutes are just dashed off without as much attention as I'd have liked. Interestingly, the other times Moffat has written stories that are this bleak, like The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances" and World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls," they were both two-parters. I'm not sure Boom" needed 90 minutes, but an extra 10 or so might have helped things breathe.Despite being rooted to one spot for most of the story, Gatwa's Doctor still commands every frame he occupies. There's enough chemistry between him and Millie Gibson that the pair's interactions are entirely believable. The rest of the cast, however, don't really get as much time to shine, given the limited focus and the stock roles they play in the narrative.It's entirely in keeping with Moffat's style that he'd come back to a show, now equipped with a Disney-sized budget, only to make an episode set in one location. As a writer, he's always enjoyed tying one hand behind his back and then allowing those restrictions to force him to be better. It was his Swiss watch plotting, smart storylines and snappy dialog that has always ensured his episodes are events. History has also silenced his critics: Last year, Doctor Who Magazine polled readers to rank every episode of the show made. Staggeringly, of the top 10, Moffat was credited with five, knocking Robert Holmes, the show's greatest writer, off his perch.And, as I said at the top, Boom" stands proud as the first bona fide classic of the Disney+ era.Susan Twist CornerThis week, Susan Twist played the avatar of the sinister Villengard ambulances that roamed the battlefield. Several times, the Doctor appealed to Vater's AI homunculus on the fact that they are, or were, both fathers. If it isn't clear, I think the show really wants the audience to know that the Doctor is a father with a child, whereabouts unknown. The hacky premise would be that it's Susan who has taken the mantle of The One Who Waits," or that she's somehow Ruby. Yeugh.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/doctor-who-boom-review-all-hail-the-conquering-hero-000001420.html?src=rss

We may have a good look at Motorola's next foldable phones. Separate leaks from 91Mobiles (via 9to5Google) and longtime device-leaking insider Evan Blass show the entry-level Moto Razr 50 and high-end Razr 50 Ultra (likely branded as the 2024 Razr and Razr+ in the US) in various colors from all sorts of angles.Leaks point to the high-end Razr+ (2024) - aka Razr 50 Ultra - running on a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip with 12GB of RAM and 256GB storage. It's expected to have a 6.9-inch OLED display at 2,640 x 1,080 resolution on the inside and a 3.6-inch cover display on the outside. A 50MP wide-angle camera paired with a 50MP telephoto lens, a 32MP front sensor and a 4,000mAh battery round out the (alleged) specs.Leaked images of the flagship model show dark blue, dark green, peach and pink color options.Meanwhile, the entry-level Razr (2024) - likely branded as the Razr 50 outside the US -will supposedly run on a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 processor, a departure from the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 found in its 2023 equivalent. Another apparent change from its predecessor is its reported 3.63-inch cover display, quite a step up from the piddly 1.5-inch outward-facing screen on last year's budget model.The leaks show no sign of the snazzy wood option Motorola included in the Edge 50 phone series unveiled last month. Old-school smartphone buffs will remember that as a throwback to the Moto X from way back in 2013, when the company was under Google ownership. (It's been under Lenovo's umbrella since 2014.)You can check out a gallery of the leaked images below, courtesy of Blass and 91Mobiles.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/motorolas-2024-razr-lineup-may-include-a-bigger-cover-screen-for-the-budget-model-203745181.html?src=rss

In the summer of 2023, OpenAI created a Superalignment" team whose goal was to steer and control future AI systems that could be so powerful they could lead to human extinction. Less than a year later, that team is dead.OpenAI told Bloomberg that the company was integrating the group more deeply across its research efforts to help the company achieve its safety goals." But a series of tweets from Jan Leike, one of the team's leaders who recently quit revealed internal tensions between the safety team and the larger company.In a statement posted on X on Friday, Leike said that the Superalignment team had been fighting for resources to get research done. Building smarter-than-human machines is an inherently dangerous endeavor," Leike wrote. OpenAI is shouldering an enormous responsibility on behalf of all of humanity. But over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products." OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Engadget.XLeike's departure earlier this week came hours after OpenAI chief scientist Sutskevar announced that he was leaving the company. Sutskevar was not only one of the leads on the Superalignment team, but helped co-found the company as well. Sutskevar's move came six months after he was involved in a decision to fire CEO Sam Altman over concerns that Altman hadn't been consistently candid" with the board. Altman's all-too-brief ouster sparked an internal revolt within the company with nearly 800 employees signing a letter in which they threatened to quit if Altman wasn't reinstated. Five days later, Altman was back as OpenAI's CEO after Sutskevar had signed a letter stating that he regretted his actions.When it announced the creation of the Superalignment team, OpenAI said that it would dedicate 20 percent of its computer power over the next four years to solving the problem of controlling powerful AI systems of the future. [Getting] this right is critical to achieve our mission," the company wrote at the time. On X, Leike wrote that the Superalignment team was struggling for compute and it was getting harder and harder" to get crucial research around AI safety done. Over the past few months my team has been sailing against the wind," he wrote and added that he had reached a breaking point" with OpenAI's leadership over disagreements about the company's core priorities.Over the last few months, there have been more departures from the Superalignment team. In April, OpenAI reportedly fired two researchers, Leopold Aschenbrenner and Pavel Izmailov, for allegedly leaking information.OpenAI told Bloomberg that its future safety efforts will be led by John Schulman, another co-founder, whose research focuses on large language models. Jakub Pachocki, a director who led the development of GPT-4 - one of OpenAI's flagship large language models - would replace Sutskevar as chief scientist.Superalignment wasn't the only team at OpenAI focused on AI safety. In October, the company started a brand new preparedness" team to stem potential catastrophic risks" from AI systems including cybersecurity issues and chemical, nuclear and biological threats.Update, May 17 2024, 3:28 PM ET: In response to a request for comment on Leike's allegations, an OpenAI PR person directed Engadget to Sam Altman's tweet saying that he'd say something in the next couple of days.

According to a pair of content creators, the wait for a new Valve game is almost over: A third-person hero shooter called Deadlock is in closed alpha and an announcement seems imminent.The game has apparently been in the works since 2018, with IceFrog, a developer synonymous with the original DotA mod, in charge. It's reportedly what became of the Neon Prime project that has been rumored for a couple of years. Tyler McVicker, a veteran Valve reporter, and the content creator Gabe Follower, have this week both independently confirmed the game is in an advanced state of development.In terms of scope," McVicker says, this is meant to be Valve's next major competitive game. The next Counter-Strike. The next Dota." He describes it as Valve's attempt to bring the company's various game communities together, with precise gunplay and the laning objectives of a MOBA. McVicker describes it as looking like Valorant, Overwatch, Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2 had a baby."The new title is apparently based in a fantasy setting mixed with steampunk," a marked shift from prior reports on the project that described Neon Prime as sci-fi inspired. Gabe Follower posted four screenshots on X which show something a little more subdued than the Overwatch and Valorant comparisons might imply.

Just like it slimmed down the latest iPad Pro, Apple is said to be looking at making the iPhone more slender. To be more precise, the company is working on a "significantly thinner" device that may arrive as part of the iPhone 17 lineup in place of a Plus model, according to The Information.This model has been described as an iPhone X-level leap forward in design language for the company, according to several sources. Apple has yet to lock down the design and it's said to be looking at various options, including an aluminum chassis. An upgraded front-facing camera could be housed alongside Face ID sensors in a smaller pill-shaped cutout, while the rear camera array could move to the center of the phone (that could reduce the possibility of accidentally covering the lenses with your fingers). The screen size is pegged somewhere in between that of the current base iPhone and the iPhone Pro Max - so between 6.12 and 6.69 inches.If that's of interest to you, it's worth bearing in mind that the slimmed down iPhone may actually be more expensive than the iPhone Pro Max, which starts at $1,200. But hey, at least you'll have some time to save for it.This thinner model could be set to replace the Plus in the iPhone lineup. The report suggests that there will be an iPhone 16 Plus, but that could be the end of that format, which hasn't lived up to Apple's sales expectations. This year's iPhones are said to be more about AI advancements than any major changes to the physical design, though there may be a new button on the side with touch sensitivity for improved camera control.Engadget has asked Apple for comment on the report. Meanwhile, there's unfortunately no indication that the company is going back to smaller screen sizes. I still miss my iPhone 5 sometimes.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-is-said-to-be-working-on-a-significantly-thinner-iphone-180823565.html?src=rss

I knew what to expect from the Surface Pro 10 for Business the minute Microsoft announced it: A faster processor with a neural processing unit (NPU) inside the same case as the Surface Pro 9. As the first "AI PC" Surface devices, the Pro 10 for Business tablet and its more traditional sibling, the Laptop 6, seemed disappointing. And the fact that you could only buy it on Microsoft's website, or through enterprise resellers, made it seem as if the company was trying to hide its shame.But after testing the Surface Pro 10 tablet (I'll omit the "For Business" part of its name for the rest of the review, you get it), I realized Microsoft just wanted to make a PC upgrade to appease IT workers. It's boring; there aren't any major new features to learn, and your company's existing Windows software will all work just fine. No alarms, no surprises.I can accept this Surface Pro 10 for what it is because we know Microsoft has some intriguing consumer-focused Surface hardware on the horizon. The company has invited media to an event in Seattle on May 20th (a day before its Build conference begins), where we expect to see some consumer-focused Surface devices powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite chips. It makes sense for Microsoft to take a bigger risk with its consumer hardware, instead of the machines IT workers need to manage.What's new in the Surface Pro 10 for Business?Both the Surface Pro 10 and Laptop 6 for Business are powered by Intel's new Core Ultra chips. These are the company's first processors to include an NPU for handling AI tasks. Admittedly, there aren't many AI-driven features in Windows 11 yet, but we're expecting to see Microsoft sell some new AI capabilities at Build.For now, having an NPU means you can use Windows Studio Effects, which can glam up your video chats with blurred backgrounds and other features. By tapping into your NPU, instead of your CPU or GPU, Windows 11 can also handle those tasks more efficiently, and without slowing down the rest of your system. Who wouldn't want that?Design-wise, the Surface Pro 10 is almost exactly the same as the Pro 9 - the 13-inch 120Hz PixelSense screen returns, and Microsoft is still relying on its clunky kickstand to prop up the tablet. But at least the company shoved in a new 1440p webcam with a wider field of view, which should lead to clearer video chats.Geekbench 6 CPU3DMark Wildlife ExtremeCinebench R23Microsoft Surface Pro 10 for Business (Intel Core Ultra 5 135U, Intel graphics)2,085/8,8272,5461,555/7,153Microsoft Surface Laptop 6 for Business (Intel Core Ultra 7 165H, Intel Arc graphics)2,351/12,5314,2001,662/10,298Microsoft Surface Pro 9 5G (SQ3, Adreno 8cx Gen 3)N/A2,959575/1,866What's good about the Surface Pro 10?In spite of its lack of updates, the Surface Pro 10 is still a reliable and capable hybrid tablet. It delivered fast performance, a great display and excellent battery life. Here are my favorite things about it:

Prime Video's Fallout series has been a hit with critics and audiences, but Microsoft and Bethesda weren't ready to fully capitalize on its success. Fallout 4 rocketed up the sales charts and Bethesda updated it for current-gen consoles, but there was no new Fallout game ready to go. In fact, the next Fallout title is several years away. Bethesda won't properly get to work on it until The Elder Scrolls 6 is done.But there's another gaming entity ready to make the most of Fallout's upswing in popularity - Fortnite. The battle royale's X account teased a crossover ahead of the new Fortnite season, which is dubbed "Wrecked" and will go live on May 24. Epic shared an image of the Brotherhood of Steel's power armor.It's too early to tell exactly what the Fallout crossover will entail, but Fortnite has already begun setting the stage for a possible post-apocalyptic version of the island as a sandstorm appears to be on the way. Maybe you'll be able to use Fallout-inspired weapons like mini nukes.This is just the latest example of Epic being tapped into the zeitgeist better than just about any other publisher or studio. Meanwhile, vaulting - the term Epic uses for the act of removing items from Fortnite - could be about to get a whole new meaning if fallout shelters start popping up on the island.

Apple and Google recently held events to showcase new products and services. From a deals perspective, that means some older iPads are hitting new low prices - we even spotted a few modest $30 and $50 discounts on brand new iPad Air and iPad Pro models. Google's latest smartphone, the Pixel 8a, shipped this past Tuesday, but a few retailers are still offering pre-order deals of a free $100 gift card with purchase. There were plenty of deals on other tech too, like a return to an all-time low on the Kindle Scribe, a sale on one of our favorite outdoor pizza ovens and discounts on a couple of Anker portable chargers that'll keep your phone topped off as you do what you do. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-kindle-scribe-dips-back-to-an-all-time-low-plus-the-rest-of-this-weeks-best-tech-deals-163858971.html?src=rss

This Anker Nano 10K power bank is on sale for $32 via Amazon. That's a discount of 20 percent on one of our most recommended chargers. Anker makes good stuff and its products are all over our list of the best power banks.One of the nifty features of this particular power bank is that it has a USB-C cable built right into the unit, so you won't ever have to curse yourself when forgetting to bring along an extra. There's also a handy display that shows the current charging status, which is always a nice add-on.This thing is called Nano for a reason. It's tiny, at four inches tall, making it easy to throw in a bag and forget about it until needed. The 10,000mAh capacity is enough to supply around two full charges to a modern smartphone, though results may vary depending on the make and model of your phone.To that end, this is a USB-C charger, so it's only useful for the latest Apple iPhone 15 line of smartphones, though it's good for Android handsets going back years. It'll be future proof for Apple products, however, as forthcoming iPhones will all be equipped with USB-C ports. The only downside? The battery itself doesn't provide the fastest charge in the world, but it gets the job done.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/this-anker-nano-10k-power-bank-is-on-sale-for-just-32-151128977.html?src=rss

Recent reports suggested that Microsoft executives had been debating for some time whether to put new Call of Duty games onto Game Pass on day one (i.e. on their release day). That seems like something it should have figured out before spending $68.7 billion on CoD publisher Activision Blizzard, but it seems that Microsoft has finally reached a decision. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company will indeed bring the next Call of Duty title directly to Game Pass when it arrives later this year.Doing so may mean that Microsoft will leave hundreds of millions of dollars in game sales on the table given that each annual Call of Duty release is one of the top-selling titles of its respective year. However, the company has struggled to significantly increase the number of Game Pass subscriptions in recent times.Putting a new Call of Duty title on there will certainly bring in new members. Microsoft will still make boatloads of money from in-game purchases, sales on other platforms (it agreed to release CoD games on PlayStation, Nintendo and elsewhere for at least a decade after the Activision deal closed) and those who prefer to buy games outright on Xbox. Xbox-owned games are selling well on PlayStation in general. There's always the possibility that Microsoft will increase the price of Game Pass to offset some of the revenue it's likely to lose from lower sales of the next Call of Duty entry on Xbox and PC.Before Microsoft bought it, Activision had largely eschewed the idea of putting its games on subscription services. While Call of Duty titles have been made available on the likes of PlayStation Plus in the past, that usually happens years after the games were originally released.After Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard closed late last year, it said that it would take some time for the publisher's games to start showing up on Game Pass. To date, only Diablo IV has joined the service.Having a brand new Call of Duty game on a subscription service on day one marks a major change in strategy, though it's one that lines up with recent comments from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. Our intent is the full portfolio of games from ZeniMax, Activision Blizzard and XGS - Xbox Game Studios - will be on Game Pass, day one," Spencer told Game File in February. Xbox fans will also be pleased to know that the long-standing approach of putting all first-party Microsoft releases on Game Pass on day one is likely sticking around.We'll likely find out more about Microsoft's plans for Call of Duty and other Activision games when it comes to Game Pass at its annual showcase on June 9. The core showcase will be followed by one focusing on a "beloved franchise," which is widely expected to be CoD.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-next-call-of-duty-will-reportedly-hit-game-pass-on-its-release-day-142332534.html?src=rss

Twitter officially went through a rebranding almost a year ago, but most of its pages still used Twitter in their URL until now. Now, Elon Musk has announced that the social network is done moving all of its core systems on X.com, which means it's done transitioning into its new identity and scrubbing all traces of the name Twitter and its iconic blue bird logo. As The Verge notes, the website has also edited its landing and log-in page with a note at the bottom that says: "Welcome to x.com! We are letting you know that we are changing our URL, but your privacy and data protection settings remain the same." It then links to its Privacy page, which now uses x.com in its address.

We've spent some time with the iPad Pro M4 and new iPad Air... and the iPad Pro is still a bit too pricey for us. This week, Cherlynn and Devindra chat with Engadget Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham about his reviews and why he still prefers the iPad Air. Also, we wrap up Google I/O 2024 with a Project Astra hands on, and we chat about Apple bringing eye tracking to iPhones and iPads as an accessibility feature.Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!Topics

One of the biggest, most iconic gaming series is almost back. Grand Theft Auto 6 is apparently on track for a fall launch next year - a little more specific than the previous release window of 2025."There's no new trailer, and GTA publisher, Take-Two, is not quite ready to offer a specific release date. CEO Strauss Zelnick told Variety: I think we're going to leave it there for now."The sixth mainline installment will be set in Leonida (Rockstar's Florida equivalent) and focused mostly on Vice City (Miami). Compared to GTA Vice City, however, it'll be contemporary. So, I'm banking on OnlyFans pastiches, vapes, self-driving cars and everything else 2020s. Plus explosions and crime.- Mat SmithThe biggest stories you might have missedUber will soon let you reserve a shuttle to get home from a big concert or ballgameSamsung's Music Frame gets its first discount on AmazonThe best PC games out there (but we need to add Balatro)You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!AT&T is making all its phones satellite phonesA new deal will connect your phone with five commercial satellites.AT&TAT&T subscribers will soon have cell service even in typical dead zones, like deep inside national parks or far-flung rural locations. The mobile carrier has been working with AST SpaceMobile since 2018, testing two-way audio calls, texts and video calls via satellites in space using ordinary smartphones. Now, the companies have entered a commercial agreement, just in time for a rocket launch of five commercial AST satellites this summer. Those satellites will enable AT&T to roll out its service, but there's no start date, yet.Continue reading.OpenAI strikes deal to put Reddit posts in ChatGPTThe deal is similar to the one Reddit struck with Google just months ago.OpenAI and Reddit announced, on Thursday, a partnership for OpenAI to surface Reddit discussions in ChatGPT, and for Reddit to bring AI-powered features to its users. The partnership will enable OpenAI's tools to better understand and showcase Reddit content, especially on recent topics," the companies said in a joint statement. As part of the agreement, OpenAI will also become an advertising partner on Reddit. Ugh.I've resurrected my Reddit habit due to an incredible/accursed game called Balatro. So hopefully, soon, I can just ask ChatGPT what certain cards and terms mean.Continue reading.US House passes act to force event pricing transparencyBut it doesn't address exorbitant fees or bots.On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that could provide at least some accountability for Ticketmaster and other live-event vendors. NBC News reports the TICKET Act (not to be confused with the Senate's separate bill with the same try-hard acronym) would mandate that ticket sellers list upfront the total cost of admission - including all fees - to buyers.Reforming the ticketing industry became a political point-scoring item in late 2022 after Ticketmaster's Taylor Swift fiasco. The Live Nation-owned service, which has a stronghold on the industry, melted down as millions of fans battled a staggering number" of bots. Ticketmaster said presale codes reached 1.5 million fans, but 14 million (including those pesky bots) tried to buy tickets.Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-grand-theft-auto-6-is-coming-fall-2025-111507383.html?src=rss

OpenAI and Reddit announced a partnership on Thursday that will allow OpenAI to surface Reddit discussions in ChatGPT and for Reddit to bring AI-powered features to its users. The partnership will enable OpenAI's tools to better understand and showcase Reddit content, especially on recent topics," both companies said in a joint statement. As part of the agreement, OpenAI will also become an advertising partner on Reddit, which means that it will run ads on the platform.The deal is similar to the one that Reddit signed with Google in February, and which is reportedly worth $60 million. A Reddit spokesperson declined to disclose the terms of the OpenAI deal to Engadget and OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.OpenAI has been increasingly striking partnerships with publishers to get data to continue training its AI models. In the last few weeks alone, the company has signed deals with the Financial Times and Dotdash Meredith. Last year, it also partnered with German publisher Axel Springer to train its models on news from Politico and Business Insider in the US and Bild and Die Welt in Germany.Under the new arrangement, OpenAI will get access to Reddit's Data API, which, the company said, will provide it with real time, structured, and unique content from Reddit." It's not clear what AI-powered features Reddit will build into its platform as a result of the partnership. A Reddit spokesperson declined to comment.Last year, getting access to Reddit's data, a rich source of real time, human generated, and often high-quality information, became a contentious issue after the company announced that it would start charging developers to use its API. As a result, dozens of third-party Reddit clients were forced to shut down and thousands of subreddits went dark in protest. At the time, Reddit stood its ground and said that large AI companies were scraping its data with no payment. Since then, Reddit has been monetizing its data by striking such deals with Google and OpenAI, whose progress in training their AI models depends on having access to it.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-strikes-deal-to-put-reddit-posts-in-chatgpt-224133045.html?src=rss

Grand Theft Auto VI's return to Vice City is officially scheduled for fall 2025. On Thursday, parent company Take-Two Interactive wrote in its Q4 2024 earnings report that it's narrowed GTA 6's previously announced 2025 window to autumn of next year.Our outlook reflects a narrowing of Rockstar Games' previously established window of Calendar 2025 to Fall of Calendar 2025 for Grand Theft Auto VI," Take-Two Chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick wrote in the earnings report. We are highly confident that Rockstar Games will deliver an unparalleled entertainment experience, and our expectations for the commercial impact of the title continue to increase."The sixth mainline installment in the open-world series will be set in Leonida (Rockstar's Florida equivalent), focused mostly on Vice City (Miami). The game appears to have a contemporary setting, as opposed to the charming '80s cheese from 2002's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. You can catch a glimpse of protagonists Jason and Lucia in the trailer below.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/grand-theft-auto-6-will-arrive-in-fall-2025-205513138.html?src=rss

On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that could provide at least some accountability for Ticketmaster and other live event vendors. NBC News reports the TICKET Act (not to be confused with the Senate's separate bill with the same try-hard acronym) would mandate that ticket sellers list upfront the total cost of admission - including all fees - to buyers.In addition to the full pricing breakdown, the bill would require sellers to indicate whether the tickets are currently in their possession. It would also ban deceptive websites from secondary vendors and force sellers to refund tickets to canceled events. The bill doesn't appear to address price gouging or extravagant fees.It now moves to the Senate, which is floating two separate event-reform bills: the other TICKET Act and a bipartisan Fans First Act. The latter was introduced in December to strengthen the 2016 BOTS Act that bars the use of bots to buy tickets, a practice that Taylor Swift fans (among others) can attest is still all too common.Reforming the ticketing industry became a political point-scoring item in late 2022 after Ticketmaster's Taylor Swift fiasco. The Live Nation-owned service, which has a stronghold on the industry, melted down as millions of fans battled a staggering number" of bots. Ticketmaster said presale codes reached 1.5 million fans, but 14 million (including those pesky bots) tried to buy tickets.Live Nation President and CFO Joe Berchtold testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2023, where he largely passed the buck to Congress to fix the mess. He suggested the government strengthen the BOTS Act, which one of the Senate's bills would try to do. During the hearing, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) needled the executive for dodging blame, accusing the company of pointing the finger at everyone but itself.Representatives Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) issued a joint statement on Wednesday about the House's TICKET Act. This consensus legislation will end deceptive ticketing practices that frustrate consumers who simply want to enjoy a concert, show, or sporting event by restoring fairness and transparency to the ticket marketplace," the group wrote. After years of bipartisan work, we will now be able to enhance the customer experience of buying event tickets online. We look forward to continuing to work together to urge quick Senate passage so that we can send it to the President's desk to be signed into law."Artists publicly supporting legislation to combat the ticketing industry's failures include (among others) Billie Eilish, Lorde, Green Day, Cyndi Lauper, Jason Mraz and Dave Matthews. We are joining together to say that the current system is broken: predatory resellers and secondary platforms engage in deceptive ticketing practices to inflate ticket prices and deprive fans of the chance to see their favorite artists at a fair price," a joint letter from over 250 musicians reads.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-house-passes-ticket-act-to-force-event-pricing-transparency-202852148.html?src=rss

The rise and fall of MoviePass is one of those stories just begging for the documentary treatment and, well, HBO has got you covered. The platform just set a premiere date of May 29 for MoviePass, MovieCrash, a documentary helmed by filmmaker Muta'Ali and produced by none other than Mark Wahlberg.The film chronicles the meteoric rise and stranger-than-fiction implosion" of the movie ticket subscription platform, which originally set the world on fire when it first launched back in 2011. However, it wasn't long before the company realized that the all you can eat" approach that works so well with gyms and other membership clubs is a weird fit for movie theaters, particularly at the service's low price point. In just eight years, the company went from the fastest growing subscription service since Spotify to total bankruptcy.As the trailer shows, the documentary will feature interviews with many of the major players involved in the various stages of MoviePass. This includes original co-founder Stacy Spikes and former CEO Mitch Lowe. There will also be plenty of interviews with journalists who covered the service, FTC personnel and former subscribers. Incidentally, the trailer promises an anecdote in which a customer sent a box of feces to the MoviePass offices, and we don't want to miss that.Though premiering on HBO at 9PM ET on May 29, the documentary will also be available on-demand via Max. Director Muta'Ali has made a few good documentaries, including Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn and Cassius X: Becoming Ali.As for MoviePass, well, it's a long and complicated story. The app captured the hearts of theater-goers in 2011 by promising unlimited trips to the cinema for a single monthly subscription fee. The love affair didn't last. The company ceased operations in 2019 and filed for bankruptcy in 2020. Between those dates, there have been reports of wire fraud, securities fraud and significant data breaches, among other outlandish scenarios. In short, it's perfect fodder for a documentary.MoviePass is actually still around. Co-founder Spikes recently bought the company's assets, brought on new investors and re-launched the service. However, the updated pricing model is on the confusing side, with credits and tiers, and seems to have not captured lightning in a bottle for the second time.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hbos-upcoming-moviepass-documentary-is-a-must-watch-for-fans-of-tech-trainwrecks-184923511.html?src=rss

If you can't tell by now, just about every tech company is eager to pray at the altar of AI, for better or worse. Google's recent I/O developer conference was dominated by AI features, like its seemingly life-like Project Astra assistant. Just before that, OpenAI debuted GPT 4o, a free and conversational AI model that's disturbingly flirty. Next up is Microsoft Build 2024, the company's developer conference that's kicking off next week in Seattle.Normally, Build is a fairly straightforward celebration of Microsoft's devotion to productivity, with a dash of on-stage coding to excite the developer crowd. But this year, the company is gearing up to make some more huge AI moves, following its debut of the ChatGPT-powered Bing Chat in early 2023. Take that together with rumors around new Surface hardware, and Build 2024 could potentially be one of the most important events Microsoft has ever held.But prior to Build, Microsoft is hosting a showcase for new Surfaces and AI in Windows 11 on May 20. Build kicks off a day later on May 21. For the average Joe, the Surface event is shaping up to be the more impactful of the two, as rumors suggest we will see some of the first systems featuring Qualcomm's Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite chip alongside new features coming in the next major Windows 11 update.That's not to say it's all rosy for the Windows maker. Build 2024 is the point where we'll see if AI will make or break Microsoft. Will the billions in funding towards OpenAI and Copilot projects actually pay off with useful tools for consumers? Or is the push for AI, and the fabled idea of "artificial general intelligence," inherently foolhardy as it makes computers more opaque and potentially untrustworthy? (How, exactly, do generative AI models come up with their answers? It's not always clear.)Here are a few things we expect to see at Build 2024:New Surface hardwareWhile Microsoft did push out updates to the Surface family earlier this spring, those machines were more meant for enterprise customers, so they aren't available for purchase in regular retail stores. A Microsoft spokesperson told us at the time that it "absolutely remain[s] committed to consumer devices," and that the commercial focused announcement was "only the first part of this effort."Instead, the company's upcoming refresh for its consumer PCs is expected to consist of new 13 and 15-inch Surface Laptop 6 models with thinner bezels, larger trackpads, improved port selection and the aforementioned X Elite chip. There's a good chance that at the May 20th showcase, we'll also see an Arm-based version of the Surface Pro 10, which will sport a similar design to the business model that came out in March, but with revamped accessories including a Type Cover with a dedicated Copilot key.According to The Verge, Microsoft is confident that these new systems could outmatch Apple's M3-powered MacBook Air in raw speed and AI performance.The company has also reportedly revamped emulation for x86 software in its Arm-based version of Windows 11. That's a good thing, since poor emulation was one of the main reasons we hated the Surface Pro 9 5G, a confounding system powered by Microsoft's SQ3 Arm chip. That mobile processor was based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, which was unproven in laptops at the time. Using the Surface Pro 9 5G was so frustrating we felt genuinely offended that Microsoft was selling it as a "Pro" device. So you can be sure we're skeptical about any amazing performance gains from another batch of Qualcomm Arm chips.It'll also be interesting to see if Microsoft's new consumer devices look any different than their enterprise counterparts, which were basically just chip swaps inside of the cases from the Surface Pro 9 and Laptop 5. If Microsoft is actually betting on mobile chips for its consumer Surfaces, there's room for a complete rethinking of its designs, just like how Apple refashioned its entire laptop lineup around its M-series chips.AI ExplorerAside from updated hardware, one of the biggest upgrades on these new Surfaces should be vastly improved on-device AI and machine learning performance thanks to the Snapdragon X Elite chip, which can deliver up to 45 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) from its neural processing unit (NPU). This is key because Microsoft has previously said PCs will need at least 40 TOPs in order to run Windows AI features locally. This leads us to some of the additions coming in the next major build of Microsoft's OS, including something the company is calling its AI Explorer, expanded Studio effects and more.According to Windows Central, AI Explorer is going to be Microsoft's catch-all term covering a range of machine learning-based features. This is expected to include a revamped search tool that lets users look up everything from websites to files using natural language input. There may also be a new timeline that will allow people to scroll back through anything they've done recently on their computer and the addition of contextual suggestions that appear based on whatever they're currently looking at. And building off of some of the Copilot features we've seen previously, it seems Microsoft is planning to add support for tools like live captions, expanded Studio effects (including real-time filters) and local generative AI tools that can help create photos and more on the spot.Smarter and more local CopilotsMicrosoft wants an AI Copilot in everything. The company first launched Github Copilot in 2021 as a way to let programmers use AI to deal with mundane coding tasks. At this point, all of the company's other AI tools have also been rebranded as "Microsoft Copilot" (that includes Bing Chat, and Microsoft 365 Copilot for productivity apps). With Copilot Pro, a $20 monthly offering launched earlier this year, the company provides access to the latest GPT models from OpenAI, along with other premium features.But there's still one downside to all of Microsoft's Copilot tools: They require an internet connection. Very little work is actually happening locally, on your device. That could change soon, though, as Intel confirmed that Microsoft is already working on ways to make Copilot local. That means it may be able to answer simpler questions, like basic math or queries about files on your system, more quickly without hitting the internet at all. As impressive as Microsoft's AI assistant can be, it still typically takes a few seconds to deal with your questions.More from Microsoft at Build 2024After all the new hardware and software are announced, Build is positioned to help developers lay even more groundwork to better support those new AI and expanded Copilot features. Microsoft has already teased things like Copilot on Edge and Copilot Plugins for 365 apps, so we're expecting to hear more on how those will work. And by taking a look at some of the sessions already scheduled for Build, we can see there's a massive focus on everything AI-related, with breakouts for Customizing Microsoft Copilot, Copilot in Teams, Copilot Extensions and more.What else to look out for?While Microsoft will surely draw a lot of attention, it's important to mention that it won't be the only manufacturer coming out with new AI PCs. That's because alongside revamped Surfaces, we're expecting to see a whole host of other laptops featuring Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite Chip (or possibly the X Plus) from other major vendors like Dell, Lenovo and more.Admittedly, following the intense focus Google put on AI at I/O 2024, the last thing people may want to hear about is yet more AI. But at this point, like most of its rivals, Microsoft is betting big on machine learning to grow and expand the capabilities of Windows PCs.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/what-to-expect-from-microsoft-build-2024-the-surface-event-windows-11-and-ai-182010326.html?src=rss

Sony used to be a fairly major player in the smartphone space, but its offerings never quite made a splash in the US. Despite that, the company has been pumping out yearly refreshes of its Xperia line of smartphones and the just-announced Xperia 1 VI looks like the perfect device for both amateur and professional photographers. Sony, after all, is no slouch when it comes to cameras.The sixth-generation of the company's flagship smartphone is filled with so many camera-centric features that it could actually lure people away from rival iPhone and Pixel devices. There's a true optical zoom, AI-assisted autofocus and a telephoto camera for snapping macro shots.This breaks down to three cameras on the back, in the form of a 24mm main camera with a 48-megapixel Sony Exmor T sensor, a 16mm ultrawide and the aforementioned 85-170mm variable zoom telephoto camera. That last one provides 3.5x to 7.1x magnification when compared to the main camera. The ladybug in your yard is begging for its closeup.As for that AI-assisted autofocus, Sony touts a technology called human pose estimation" that can recognize a person's body and head position to provide the perfect focus. The camera system also supports filming video in 4K HDR at 120fps. All of these features work together within Sony's new unified camera app, so people don't have to constantly jump between different software to get the job done.Of course, this is a smartphone and not just a bunch of cameras attached to a rectangle. The Xperia 1 VI boasts the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, 12GB of RAM and a choice between 256GB and 512GB of storage. Sony says the integrated 5,000mAh battery should allow for up to two days of use before requiring a charge. To that end, the device supports both 15W wireless charging and wireless battery sharing to other devices.There is an OLED display which is nice, but it's 2220 x 1080 and the Xperia V shipped with a 4K screen. The aspect ratio gets a hit here too, downsizing from 21:9 to 19.5:9. This display does now offer a variable refresh rate between 1Hz to 120Hz, however, and it can achieve a 50 percent higher peak brightness when compared to last year's model. Also, 4K resolution on a phone screen is kind of unnecessary and this thing can shoot in 4K, which is what really matters.The Sony Xperia 1 VI is available for preorders now in the UK, starting at the jaw-dropping asking price of $1,640 in US dollars. There's some more bad news for US consumers. Unlike previous versions, the company has no current plans to bring this phone stateside.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sonys-new-smartphone-could-entice-shutterbugs-away-from-apple-and-google-180755649.html?src=rss

It's been a long time coming but we finally know when College Football 25, EA Sports' revival of the long-dormant football sim series, will hit consoles. The game will land on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on July 19, living up to EA's promise that it would arrive sometime this summer.Michigan running back Donovan Edwards, Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers and Colorado wide receiver/defensive back Travis Hunter are the cover stars. College Football 25 will include thousands of current athletes and feature 134 schools in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).More details about the game will be revealed in the coming weeks. However, like its NFL-centric sibling Madden, College Football 25 will include EA's money-vacuuming Ultimate Team mode. Ultimate Team, which has long been a staple of the EA Sports FC (formerly FIFA) and NHL games too, sees players earn or buy packs of random players to add to their custom roster.Pre-orders for College Football 25 are now open. EA is selling an MVP bundle of College Football 25 and Madden NFL 25 that includes the deluxe edition of each game and three days of early access to each.As it happens, the release date for Madden NFL 25 was also revealed on Thursday, albeit through pre-order product listings. It will hit PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on August 16, less than a month after College Football 25.

YouTube said it would comply with an order blocking access to videos of Hong Kong's protest anthem inside the region, according to The Guardian. The platform's decision comes after an appeals court banned the protest song Glory to Hong Kong," which the largely China-controlled government (predictably) framed as a national security threat.Alphabet, YouTube and Google's parent company, followed its familiar playbook of legally complying with court orders undermining human rights while issuing statements puffing up its advocacy for them. We are disappointed by the Court's decision but are complying with its removal order," YouTube's statement to The Guardian said. We'll continue to consider our options for an appeal, to promote access to information."Alphabet reportedly told the outlet the block would take effect immediately inside the region. It added that it shares the concerns of human rights groups that it could deal a blow to online freedoms.YouTube reportedly said links to the videos will eventually no longer be visible in Google Search inside Hong Kong. I tried using a Hong Kong-based VPN server while in the US, and the videos were still viewable on Thursday morning. However, The Guardian said attempts to view it from inside the region show the message, This content is not available on this country domain due to a court order."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/youtube-reportedly-agrees-to-block-videos-of-hong-kongs-protest-song-inside-the-region-174245129.html?src=rss

The web version of Threads could soon be much more useful. Meta is starting to test custom Tweetdeck-like feeds that will allow users to track multiple topics, searches and accounts in a single view.People who are part of the test can set up to pinned columns" that will track updates around specific topics, tags, accounts or search terms. Users can also opt to have these columns automatically refresh with new content. For now, Threads will support up to 100 different columns, though a Meta spokesperson said that number may change as the test progresses.Based on screenshots shared by Mark Zuckerberg, the new Threads columns look a lot like Tweetdeck, the desktop app long favored by Twitter's power users. The app is now called X Pro and only available to X's paid subscribers.The test is the latest sign Meta is looking to make Threads a more reliable source for real-time information. The company has also added a recent" tab and trending topics to search. But being able to track multiple feeds of updates at once is even more useful. It could also address long-running complaints about Threads' algorithmic for you" feed, which tends to surface a random mix of days-old posts and bizarre personal stories from unconnected accounts.It's not clear how many people will be part of Meta's initial test of the feature, though Adam Mosseri said the company is looking for feedback on the changes. But the company has often rolled out major Threads changes to small group of users first before making them more widely available.Update May 16, 2024, 2:15 PM ET: Added details about how many columns Threads will support.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/metas-threads-gets-its-own-tweetdeck-clone-172131218.html?src=rss