After teasing them at CES 2024 earlier this year, Samsung has officially launched the Premiere 7 and Premiere 9 ultra short throw (UST) 4K projectors. They offer enhanced picture quality compared to the previous Premiere LSP9T and LSP7T models, particularly in the areas of brightness and color accuracy. Samsung's main goal with the new products, it said, was to give buyers a "cinematic experience." Smart TV features are available via Samsung's Tizen OS, offering access to Samsung TV Plus, Netflix, YouTube and other streaming services. The newly integrated Samsung Gaming Hub also comes with more than 3,000 titles from Xbox and others, with no console needed. Both models include 4K AI upscaling and Vision Booster, which automatically adjusts color and contrast for different lighting conditions. The Premiere 7 looks like a solid mid-range contender in the UST category with 2,500 ISO lumens of brightness and 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 HDR standard. That should allow for accurate colors and expanded dynamic range, though most projectors fall well short of required HDR specs in terms of brightness. Speaking of HDR, the Premiere 7 only offers HDR10, while others like the Formovie Theater can handle Dolby Vision content. As for sound, it comes with Dolby Atmos tech and 30W 2.2ch speakers. Samsung Meanwhile, the Premiere 9 sits a notch below the Premiere 8K UST projector also announced at CES. With the triple laser engine, it ups the brightness to 3,450 ISO lumens, below the Premiere 8K's 4,000 lumens but higher than most 4K UST projectors (Epson's EpiqVision Ultra LS800W 4K 3LCD projector is a notable exception with 4,000 ISO lumens). It also comes with Samsung's answer to Dolby Vision, HDR10+. Considering the brightness and 154 percent DCI-P3 color accuracy, the picture should be impressive. It also features 40W speakers with Dolby Atmos in a 2.2.2 channel up-firing configuration. Samsung projectors can be expensive compared to others and the new models are no exception. The Premiere 7 retails for $2,999, while the Premiere 9 doubles that to an eye-watering $5,999. Both models are now available at samsung.com and across select retailers. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/samsung-expands-its-ust-projector-lineup-with-the-premiere-7-and-premiere-9-150002515.html?src=rss
Are you looking to boost your iMac's capabilities without having to do a complete overhaul? The Mac Mini with an M2 Pro chip is quite a force to be reckoned with and it's available for a record-low price of $1,150, down from $1,299, thanks to an eight percent discount and a $49 coupon you can click right on the product's page. This model has 512GB and 8TB of storage but no AppleCare+. Apple released the Mac Mini with an M2 Pro chip in early 2023. We gave it an 86 in our review thanks to its excellent performance (it has up to 12-core CPU and up to 19-core GPU). It also offers two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, four Thunderbolt 4 ports, a headphone jack and gigabit Ethernet. The look and experience of the Mac Mini with an M2 Pro chip are solid. By the latter, we mean that it doesn't really make any sound. Meanwhile, its sleek, compact design ensures you have room on your desk. 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/deals/apples-mac-mini-with-the-m2-pro-chipset-is-150-off-right-now-144724475.html?src=rss
Canadians who have been mulling whether to snap up a Chinese EV may want to make a firm decision on that quickly. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that, starting on October 1, the country will impose a 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles built in China. The White House established an identical levy in the US earlier this year.The surtax will apply to electric cars, trucks, buses and delivery vans, as well as some hybrid models. Canada will also charge a 25 percent tariff on Chinese steel and aluminum starting on October 15.According to the CBC, industry players had been pressuring the Canadian government to match the US tariff on Chinese EVs. Trudeau said that Canada is following suit to "level the playing field for Canadian workers" and help the domestic EV industry be more competitive."Because of our government's choices and the hard work of hundreds of thousands of Canadian auto workers, we are transforming Canada's automotive sector to be a global leader in building the vehicles of tomorrow," Trudeau said at a press conference. "But actors like China have chosen to give themselves an unfair advantage in the global marketplace, compromising the security of our critical industries and displacing dedicated Canadian auto and metal workers. So, we're taking action to address that."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/canada-follows-the-us-by-slapping-a-100-percent-tariff-on-chinese-evs-140158558.html?src=rss
Uber has received its largest fine to date, with the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) issuing a 290 million ($324 million) penalty to the rideshare company. The regulatory body announced it had issued the fine in response to Uber transferring the personal data of European taxi drivers into the United States without properly safeguarding the information. The complaint came from France, but the case was moved to Holland, where Uber's EU headquarters are located.The Dutch DPA found that Uber took account details, taxi licenses, location data, photos, payment details, identity documents and more from European drivers and transferred them to servers at their US headquarters for over two years. During this period, Uber didn't use any transfer tools, a decision the Dutch DPA has deemed caused insufficient protection. "In Europe, the GDPR protects the fundamental rights of people, by requiring businesses and governments to handle personal data with due care," Dutch DPA chairman Aleid Wolfsen said in a statement. "Uber did not meet the requirements of the GDPR to ensure the level of protection to the data with regard to transfers to the US. That is very serious."The Dutch DPA has fined Uber twice before, first imposing a 600,000 ($670,000) fine in 2018 after the company failed to report a data breach that occurred two years earlier within a 72-hour timeframe. In 2023, the Dutch DPA fined Uber 10 million ($11.2 million) for not fully detailing its data retention periods (regarding information about European drivers) or the non-European countries where it shares data. Uber objected to the latter fine and has made its intentions clear to fight the 290 million.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/uber-gets-slapped-with-%E2%82%AC290-million-fine-123039726.html?src=rss
Since it started offering subscribers access to mobile games in 2021, Netflix has built up one of the best gaming libraries around. With a balanced mix of titles built for the service and exclusive rights to the mobile versions of several popular indies (and a few blockbusters), Netflix has something for everyone in its lineup.
Convicted felon and ex-pharmacy profiteer Martin Shkreli has been ordered to surrender all his copies of a one-off Wu-Tang Clan album he used to own, ArtNet reported. The preliminary injunction, issued by federal judge Pamela Chen, was made on behalf of an NFT collective called PleasrDAO, the current owner of the record.As part of the ruling, the court ordered Shkreli to turn over all copies to his attorney within a week, along with an affidavit confirming he'd done so (under penalty of perjury). He must provide an inventory of all copies of the album, a list of anyone who may have received it and any money made from distribution.The judgement could prove a challenge for Shkreli. In a May 2024 podcast, he reportedly said he copied the album and "sent it to like, 50 different chicks," while also boasting that "thousands of people have listened to it," according to PleasrDAO's original complaint.Shkreli - who became infamous for buying and jacking up the price of life-saving AIDS medication Daraprim - purchased the only copy of the Wu-Tang album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin back in 2015 for a reported $2 million at auction. Following his securities fraud conviction, the album was seized along with other assets to satisfy a forfeiture judgement. The government then sold the album in 2021 to PleasrDAO for $4.75 million.However, that group sued Shkreli in June 2024, accusing him of streaming the music as pat of a "Wu-Tang Official Listening Party" on social media. To promote that, he reportedly boasted in a now-deleted video that he made copies "hidden in safes around the world." In June, Judge Chen issued restraining order requiring Shkreli to stop distributing the album and to appear in court to explain why he should be allowed to keep his copies.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-ordered-to-surrender-copies-of-one-off-wu-tang-clan-album-120013576.html?src=rss
Monday is National Dog Day, and Lyft seized the opportunity to catch up on a feature equivalent to one Uber has had for about five years. When heading somewhere with a furry companion, Lyft's new Pet Mode lets you designate that you'll bring them along, ensuring you'll get a driver to accommodate your dog or cat.Like Uber Pet, Lyft's Pet Mode adds a surcharge - in this case, $4 plus tax. The company says the fee goes directly to the driver.The new Pet Mode could've come in handy a year ago during the saga of Tux the Cat, who was being taken to the vet by her owner Palash Pandey. A Lyft driver in Austin, TX, was accused of speeding off with Tux (inside a carrier) still in the car's backseat, ignoring Pandey's pleas as he banged on the window. The driver responded to Pandey's in-app messages, claiming not to have the feline.Days passed as Pandey made desperate calls to the Austin Police Department and viral postings on Reddit and X (Twitter). Eventually, media outlets picked up the story, and Lyft's PR team went into crisis mode. CEO David Risher even got involved.Tux was finally located under a stairwell about a mile from the drop-off point. It was a momentarily viral fiasco with a feel-good ending, but a feature that ensured passengers got matched with pet-friendly drivers would have likely prevented it. [The driver] told me that if he'd known I'd had a cat, he wouldn't have picked me up," The Washington Post reported Pandey as saying. He said he was allergic to cats and would have canceled the ride. My drop-off location was a pet hospital, and I was holding a pet carrier, so it's hard to figure that one out."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/lyfts-belated-pet-mode-matches-drivers-to-those-traveling-with-their-furry-friends-100021294.html?src=rss
Several Volkswagen EVs and other models will soon have access to a range of casual multiplayer games that you can play using your phone as the controller. VW teamed up with AirConsole to bring its gaming platform to the ID.7, ID.5, ID.4 and ID.3 product lines, as well as the new Passat, Tiguan, Golf and Golf Estate. VW expects to roll AirConsole out to vehicles in some European markets by mid-September ahead of a broader expansion with more games and territories.After firing up the AirConsole app on the VW Active Info Display, you'll just need to scan a QR code to connect a smartphone. Passengers in the rear will be able to join the multiplayer games too. Bear in mind that AirConsole will only work when the vehicle is in park, so it's primarily intended as a way to help everyone pass the time while waiting at an EV charging station or otherwise idling.VW isn't the first automaker to incorporate AirConsole into its vehicles as BMW started doing so last year. The platform is also available on a desktop web browser as well as Android TV, Google TV and Amazon Fire TV.Offering games in cars has become a bit of a trend over the last few years, with Tesla even offering access to Steam in some models (at least until it ended support for that earlier this year). Personally, I'm more interested in installing a PS5 in an ID.Buzz, Pimp My Ride-style.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/vw-is-bringing-casual-multiplayer-games-to-evs-and-other-cars-090034594.html?src=rss
Blue Origin's New Glenn heavy-lift rocket and its Mars-bound NASA payload now have a tentative launch date. The company said on Friday that the inaugural flight will take place no earlier than October 13, carrying two probes built by Rocket Lab to help NASA study the effects of solar wind on Mars' atmosphere. This will be the first time New Glenn flies after years of delays in its development, and the date cuts well into the window of opportunity for travel to Mars, which occurs roughly every two years based on the planetary alignments. That launch period opens on September 29 and extends to mid-October, per Ars Technica.
Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, was reportedly arrested at an airport near Paris on Saturday as part of a preliminary investigation into the app's lax approach to moderation and failure to curb criminal activities, according to Reuters, which cited the French news outlets BFM TV and TF1. Telegram is also reportedly being accused of not cooperating with police. On Sunday afternoon, Telegram posted a statement to its official news channel and on X, saying that CEO Durov has nothing to hide" and that it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform."Telegram abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act - its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving," it said. Durov was taken into custody after arriving at Le Bourget airport on a private jet, Reuters reported. According to the BBC, the concerns of the current investigation include the app's failure to crack down on drug trafficking, child sexual abuse materials, and fraudulent activities.
The new Terminator anime heading to Netflix looks absolutely brutal in a trailer that dropped this weekend. Terminator Zero is set in 2022 and 1997 (the year of Judgment Day, as described in Terminator 2) and focuses on new characters: Eiko and the scientist Malcom Lee, who are being hunted by a Terminator. The series is produced by Skydance and Production I.G., the Japanese animation studio behind Ghost in the Shell and Psycho-Pass.Fittingly, it drops on August 29, in a nod to the date of the fictional nuclear annihilation event. You can check out the new trailer below - but just a heads up for anyone who isn't into anime gore, this clip is packed with it.Netflix also released a six-minute look at the show's tense opening on its companion site, Tudum, earlier this week. It begins in a nightmare version of 2022 before traveling back in time. Per the site:
Polaris Dawn, a private space mission that aims to complete the first-ever civilian spacewalk, is expected to launch this week. On X, SpaceX said it's targeting Tuesday August 27 at 3:38AM ET for liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry the Polaris Dawn crew to orbit. Led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, Polaris Dawn plans to send its crew of four private citizens as far as 870 miles from Earth - farther than any human has traveled since the Apollo program. The spacewalk, in which two of the crew members will step outside the SpaceX Dragon capsule, will take place at an altitude of 435 miles above Earth.The Polaris Dawn crew includes Isaacman, CEO of Shift4, as commander, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Scott Kidd" Poteet as its pilot, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon as mission specialists. Menon will also serve as the medical officer. The mission is expected to last about five days.
Threads is testing the option for users to put a 24-hour expiration timer on their posts, after which the post and all replies would disappear, Stories-style. A spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the feature is being tested among a group of users after it was first spotted earlier this summer by developer Alessandro Paluzzi. It sounds a lot like pre-X Twitter's Fleets, which didn't exactly catch on. But, the ephemeral format could save habitual post-deleters some trouble.It comes a few months after Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared that Threads was experimenting with auto-archiving. That optional feature would let users designate a date for their posts to be hidden from the feed. But Threads users in the past have indicated that they largely aren't into the idea of automatic archiving, and such a feature hasn't yet shown up on a wider scale. Threads hit the 200 million user mark at the beginning of August, and recently introduced an analytics tool called Insights for users - particularly those with large followings - to keep track of their account's performance. Meta also said the option to schedule posts is on the way.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-is-testing-disappearing-posts-that-expire-after-24-hours-211329320.html?src=rss
After more than two months of tests and discussions, NASA has decided that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will come home in February 2025 on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, and the Boeing Starliner they flew to the International Space Station on in June will return uncrewed. In a press conference on Saturday, Steve Stich, manager for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said there was too much uncertainty" around the predictions for Starliner's thrusters to move forward with a crewed return flight.The plan now is that Starliner's first crew will return with SpaceX's Crew-9, which is scheduled to launch to the ISS at the end of September. Crew-9 was initially supposed to carry four crew members, but will instead have to go ahead with two, so as to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the way back. That spacecraft is being reconfigured with seats for the two astronauts, and Dragon spacesuits will be added to its cargo for them to wear home. By the time Wilmore and Williams depart, the duo will have been on the space station for about eight months. The Starliner flight test was only supposed to last a little over a week.The next step is to get Starliner ready for undocking and wrap up as an uncrewed flight test. The agency plans to conduct the second part of its readiness review for the process this coming week, and expects undocking to take place around early next month. We are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we will review those aspects at the readiness review," Stich said. We're going to go with a simplified separation technique to get away from the station a little more quickly."The issue with Starliner's thrusters has been very complex," Stich said, and their performance has been challenging to predict." Without being able to accurately predict how the thrusters would perform from undocking through the deorbit burn, the potential risks for the astronauts were just too high, he explained.We have had mistakes in the past," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. We have lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information can come forward." With that context looming over the discussions, he said, We have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection, you come forward. Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and and its most routine, and a test flight by its nature is neither safe nor routine. And so the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/starliner-astronauts-will-come-home-in-february-on-a-spacex-crew-dragon-173008021.html?src=rss
It's seemed like everyone this summer has been talking about Valve's in-development MOBA shooter, Deadlock, except Valve itself. Thousands of people have reportedly played it, some of whom have leaked screenshots and gameplay footage. But Valve has remained silent on the subject. Now, the company has finally confirmed the game's existence with an official Steam page, which notes that Deadlock is in early development" and in the hands of playtesters. Unfortunately, that's about it for the details.Deadlock is still only available to play via invitation. There's no release date or even release window on the page, and the 22-second teaser it includes isn't particularly enlightening. But now that Valve is finally acknowledging this thing publicly, we could see more about it soon. Back in May, YouTuber Tyler McVicker, who has long reported on Valve, described Deadlock as what's meant to be Valve's next major competitive game. The next Counter-Strike. The next Dota."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/valve-finally-confirms-its-next-game-deadlock-with-a-bare-bones-steam-page-162836953.html?src=rss
Meta has blocked WhatsApp accounts involved in "a small cluster of likely social engineering activity" on the service. In its report, it has revealed that it traced the activity to APT42 (also called UNC788 and Mint Sandstorm), which the FBI previously linked to a phishing campaign that targeted members of the Trump and Harris camps. The company said that the suspicious activity on WhatsApp "attempted to target individuals in Israel, Palestine, Iran, the United States and the UK." It also seemed to have focused on political and diplomatic officials, which included people associated with both presidential candidates.The bad actors on WhatsApp pretended to be technical support representatives from AOL, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, though Meta didn't say how they tried to compromise their targets' accounts. Some of those targets reported the activity to the company, which compelled it to start an investigation. Meta said it believes the perpetrators' efforts were unsuccessful and that it has not seen any evidence that the targets' accounts had been compromised. It still reported the malicious activity to law enforcement, though, and shared information with both presidential campaigns.Earlier this month, Google also published a report detailing how APT42 has been targeting high-profile users in Israel and the US for years. The company said it observed "unsuccessful attempts" to compromise the "accounts of individuals affiliated with President Biden, Vice President Harris and former President Trump." While Google described APT42's attacks as "unsuccessful," the group had successfully infiltrated the account of at least one high-profile victim: Roger Stone, who is a close political confidante of Trump. The FBI previously reported that he had fallen victim to the phishing emails sent by the Iranian hackers, who then used his account to send more phishing emails to his contacts.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/meta-took-down-whatsapp-accounts-connected-to-iranian-hackers-targeting-the-us-election-140039124.html?src=rss
One Btn Bosses does exactly what it says in the tin, but there's more to this tongue-in-cheek bullet-hell boss rush than you initially might suspect. You play as a small ship that moves along tracks and battles a string of bosses (quite literally, as you're fighting your way through the ranks of a peculiar corporation). The only real control you have at your disposal is a single button.While the visual language draws from Asteroids, it plays a bit like Vampire Survivors, in that your weapon auto fires at your enemy but your agency is even more limited as you can't move wherever you want. At first, pressing the button will reverse your ship's direction as you try to avoid attacks (generally, you can take damage three times before you lose a fight). But going the other way means slowing down both your movement and the firing rate. That adds a fun wrinkle to figuring out your approach: play it as safe as possible and take longer to defeat an enemy, or go high risk and try to win as quickly as possible so you can soar up the leaderboard.As you progress, you'll unlock different weapons and movement abilities, as well as different color schemes. You can choose your loadout for each round. On the movement front, you might opt to hold the button to dash through enemy attacks without incurring damage or keep it pressed down to build up speed and accelerate in the other direction. In terms of dealing damage, you might opt for a laser that grows more powerful as you pick up sparks or a pickup weapon that only fires when you run across an item on the track. Experiment to figure out works best for you.Along with the campaign, there's a separate roguelite mode called Rifts & Developments that randomizes enemy attacks and layouts (it's possible to memorize the attacks in campaign levels). Here, you have a total of three lives and they aren't replenished between rounds unless you choose an upgrade that lets you do so. Nothing carries back over from the roguelite mode to the campaign except for XP, so if you're stuck on a boss and you're close to unlocking a new weapon, you can switch over to earn some juicy experience to expand your arsenal.One Btn Bosses is tough, but it never feels unfair. The enemy attacks are as clear as day thanks to the clean art direction. I haven't felt that I've been boxed in between enemy attacks so that losing a life was inevitable - to my eye, all the damage I've sustained was my own fault.In a weird way, One Btn Bosses kind of reminds me of the early days of Twitter, in that one could only be creative on that platform within the confines of a single 140-character message. The limitation that the studio, Midnight Munchies, placed on itself here forced the developers to come up with inventive ways of keeping One Btn Bosses engaging throughout its duration.One side note: this is one of the first batch of games that received backing from Outersloth, a side project of Among Us developer Innersloth. The whole idea behind Outersloth is to offer indie developers an alternative funding model and to help "fun, original and clever games get made." One Btn Bosses definitely fits the brief.One Btn Bosses is out on Steam now.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/one-btn-bosses-gets-a-ton-of-mileage-from-single-button-gameplay-140025604.html?src=rss
If you own an Amazon Echo Show 8 Photos edition, be prepared for your device to start showing ads. According to emails posted by customers on Reddit and Threads and first reported by The Verge, Amazon will discontinue its PhotosPlus subscription feature that let people upload and display their own pictures on the Echo Show 8.Reddit/amazonechoPhotosPlus subscriptions will end on September 12 and Amazon will end support for the photo feature on September 23. Instead, affected customers will have to upload their photos to Amazon Photos with 25 GB of storage and learn to live with the ads on their home screen.The feature, which costs $2 a month, let users upload their own photos for display on the Echo Show 8's home screen turning the voice and touch controlled screen device into a digital picture frame. The screen would rotate the owners' photos every 30 seconds, a feature that could be left on indefinitely (or as long as it could last on its chargeable battery).Any mention of the PhotosPlus subscription has been removed from Amazon's website. The Amazon Echo Show 8 Photos Edition is also no longer for sale.Amazon has seen some major struggles with Alexa devices. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Alexa lost Amazon more than $25 billion from 2017 to 2021. Amazon has tried to recoup some of those losses by eliminating bonuses to Alexa developers. The tech giant is also reportedly working on an advanced version of Alexa known as Remarkable Alexa" that could come with a monthly subscription fee.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/amazon-will-discontinue-the-echo-show-8-photos-editions-main-reason-for-existing-210045966.html?src=rss
A new Zombies mode is headed to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. A new cinematic trailer released on Friday shows that the DLC will take players to a small town called Liberty Falls infested with the running dead.The trailer starts in a picturesque piece of America with an old-timey song setting the tone. Then everything goes to hell and our unnamed hero wakes up in a post-apocalyptic world from what was just a nightmare all along. He receives a bulletin that the running dead are on their way so he picks up a shock rifle to start popping off some zombies' tops. The big reveal at the end features some kind of menacing villain that feels like a cross between ZAX from Fallout 76 and GLaDOS from the Portal games.This is just a premature judgment based on the trailer but it looks and sounds a lot like Fallout, another game that takes place in a world where humanity ends and mutant humans roam the landscape.There's no official wide release date for Black Ops 6's Zombies DLC or any indication that it will or won't be available when the game launches on October 25. The first gameplay footage of the Liberty Falls maps and story mode will premiere on August 28 at Call of Duty NEXT in Washington DC. Open beta access will start on August 30. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will also be available on Xbox Game Pass on launch day.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-trailer-for-call-of-duty-black-ops-6s-zombies-dlc-has-risen-191550462.html?src=rss
Meta has canceled its plans for a long-rumored mixed-reality headset that was intended to compete with the Apple Vision Pro, according to reporting by The Information. The company told employees at Reality Labs to stop working on the device after a product review meeting attended by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as cited by Meta staffers.The headset was internally referred to as La Jolla and was reportedly supposed to release in 2027. This mixed-reality device was allegedly heads and shoulders above the Quest 3, with ultra-crisp micro OLED displays. This is the same display technology used in the Apple Vision Pro.Reporting indicates that a major sticking point was cost. The team wanted to get the device under $1,000, but those micro OLED panels don't come cheap. The Vision Pro, after all, is $3,500.Another likely reason the premium device got canned is that, well, there might not be that much hunger for expensive headsets. The Vision Pro's sales have been sluggish and Meta's own pre-existing high-end headset, the Quest Pro, was widely ridiculed for coming in with a $1,500 price tag.It's important to note that this doesn't mean Meta is abandoning VR and MR devices. It's just putting the kibosh on one expensive, high-end headset. There are plenty of rumors out there that a Quest 4 is coming, alongside a more budget-friendly version of the Quest 3. Meta is also reportedly prepping some new AR glasses that will likely be shown off at the next Connect event on September 25.The CTO of Meta, Andrew Bosworth, echoed the above sentiment. He wrote on Threads that the company has "many prototypes in development at all times" and that "decisions like this happen all the time."The company is, however, shifting its strategy a little bit. Beyond canceling the aforementioned headset, Meta's been trying to license its XR software to third-party hardware makers. The platform, which is called Horizon OS, might be licensed to Indian tech giant Jio as an opening move in this gambit. A deal with LG, however, fell through.It's always possible that the company will revive the concept of a high-end headset in the future, once the space gets more consumer traction. In the meantime, the Quest 4 will reportedly hit store shelves in 2026.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-has-reportedly-killed-its-apple-vision-pro-competitor-184446962.html?src=rss
Microsoft announced it will host a special conference in September to discuss the lessons and security measures the industry can take away from the CrowdStrike computer shutdown in July. The Windows Endpoint Security Ecosystem Summit is scheduled for September 10 at Microsoft's Redmond, WA headquarters.The event will feature representatives from Microsoft, CrowdStrike and other cyber and computer security companies. The participants will explore changes in industry practices and the use of applications that can prevent future computer shutdowns.An executive who spoke to CNBC anonymously says one of the talking points of the conference will address the use of applications that rely more on Windows' user mode instead of kernel mode. The July outage occurred because Crowdstrike's agent operated in kernel mode in which the central processing unit gives software total access to a system's resources and hardware. Applications in user mode are more isolated so they can't bring down other systems.The attendees will also discuss implementing eBPF technology into systems to check programs without triggering system wide crashes. The conference will also feature discussions on the use of safer programming languages such as Rust, an alternative to programming languages such as C or C++.CrowdStrike blamed faulty testing software included in an update as the cause of the crash that shut down 8.5 million Windows machines starting on July 19. The shutdown causes blue screens of death for systems for banks, airlines and businesses around the world.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/microsoft-will-host-a-security-conference-after-the-crowdstrike-shutdown-172119101.html?src=rss
Even if you're not a student, you can still take advantage of the many back to school sales out there. As we do each Friday, we searched around to see if any of the tech we've previously covered and recommend is currently on sale. We spotted the lowest price yet on the 9th-generation iPad - it may be discontinued, but $200 for a capable Apple tablet is still a sweet deal. Our current favorite wireless headphones, the Sony WH-1000XM5 are back down to their July Prime Day price. And Amazon is throwing in a free smart bulb on top of discounted prices for a number of its Echo speakers and displays. 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/deals/the-9th-gen-ipad-is-cheaper-than-ever-at-199-plus-the-rest-of-this-weeks-best-tech-deals-170600479.html?src=rss
TollBitThe 28-year-old founders of TollBit, a New York-based startup that is all of six months old, think we're living in the Napster days" of AI. Just like people of a certain generation downloaded digital music, companies are ripping off vast swaths of the internet without paying the rights holders. They want TollBit to be the iTunes of the AI world.It's kind of the Wild West right now," Olivia Joslin, the company's co-founder and chief operating officer, told Engadget in an interview. We want to make it easier for AI companies to pay for the data they need." Their idea is simple: create a marketplace that connects AI companies that need access to fresh, high-quality data to the publishers who actually spend money creating it.AI companies have, indeed, only recently started paying for (some of) the data they need from news publishers. OpenAI kicked off an arms race at the end of 2022, but it was only a year ago that the company signed the first of its many licensing deals with the Associated Press. Later that year, OpenAI announced a partnership with German publisher Axel Springer, which operates Business Insider and Politico in the US. Multiple publishers including Vox, the Financial Times, News Corp and TIME, have since signed deals with OpenAI and Google.But that still leaves countless other publishers and creators out in the cold - without the option to strike this Faustian Bargain even if they want to. This is the long tail" of publishers that TollBit wants to target.Powerful AI models already exist and they have already been trained," Toshit Panigrahi, TollBit's co-founder and CEO told Engadget. And right now, there are thousands of applications just taking these existing models off the shelves. What they need is fresh content. But right now, there's no infrastructure - neither for them to buy it, nor for content-makers to sell it in a way that is seamless."Both Joslin and Panigrahi weren't particularly knowledgeable about the media industry. But they both knew how online marketplaces and platforms operated - they were colleagues at Toast, a platform that lets restaurants manage billing and reservations. Panigrahi watched both the deals - and the lawsuits - pile up in the AI sector, then called on Joslin.Their early conversations were about RAG, which stands for Retrieval-Augmented Generation in the AI world. With RAG, AI models first look up information from specific databases (like the scrapable portions of the internet) and use that information to synthesize a response instead of simply relying on training data. Services like ChatGPT don't know current home prices, or the latest news. Instead, they fetch that data, typically by looking at websites. That absence of fresh data is why AI chatbots are often stumped by queries about breaking news events - if they don't scrape the latest data, they simply can't keep up.We thought that using content for RAG was something fundamentally different than using it for training," said Panigrahi.TollBitBy some estimations, RAG is the future of search engines. More and more, people are asking questions on the internet and expecting complete answers in return instead of a list of blue links. In just over a year, startups like Perplexity, backed by Jess Bezos and NVIDIA among others, have burst onto the scene with ambitions of taking on Google. Even OpenAI has plans to someday let ChatGPT become your search engine. In response, Google has sprung into action - it now culls relevant information from search results and presents it as a coherent answer at the top of the results page, a feature it calls AI Overviews. (It doesn't always work well, but is seemingly here to stay).The rise of RAG-based search engines has publishers shaking in their boots. After all, who would make money if AI reads the internet for us? After Google rolled out AI Overviews earlier this year, at least one report estimated that publishers would lose more than $2 billion in ad revenue because fewer people would have a reason to visit their websites. AI companies need continuous access to high quality content and data too," said Joslin, but if you don't figure out some economic model here, there will be no incentive for anyone to create content, and that'll be the end of AI applications too."Instead of cutting one-off checks, TollBit's model aims to compensate publishers on an ongoing basis. Hypothetically, if someone's content was used in a thousand AI-generated answers, they would get paid a thousand times at a price that they set and which they can change on the fly.Each time an AI company accesses fresh data from a publisher through TollBit, it can pay a small fee set by the publisher that Panigrahi and Joslin think should be roughly equivalent to whatever a traditional page view would have made the publisher. And the platform can also block AI companies who haven't signed up from accessing publishers' data.So far, the founders claim to have onboarded a hundred publishers and are in pilots with three AI companies since TollBit launched in February. They refused to reveal which publishers or AI companies had signed on so far, citing confidentiality clauses, but did not deny speaking with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta. So far, they say that no money has changed hands between AI companies and publishers on their platform.TollBitUntil that happens, their model is still a giant hypothetical - although one that investors have so far poured $7 million into. TollBit's investors include Sunflower Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Operator Collective, AIX and Liquid 2 Ventures, and more investors are currently pounding down their door," Joslin claimed. In April, TollBit also brought on Campbell Brown as a senior adviser, a former television anchor who previously acted as Meta's head of news partnerships for the better part of a decade.In spite of some high-profile lawsuits, AI companies are still scraping the internet for free and largely getting away with it. Why would they have any incentive to actually pay publishers for this data? There are three big reasons, the founders say: more websites are taking steps to prevent their content from being scraped ever since generative AI went mainstream, which means that scraping the web is getting harder and more expensive; no one wants to deal with ongoing copyright lawsuits; and, crucially, being able to easily pay for content on an as-needed basis lets AI companies tap into smaller and more niche publications because it isn't possible to strike individual licensing deals with every single website. Joslin also pointed out that multiple TollBit investors have also invested in AI companies which they worry might face litigation for using content without permission.Getting AI companies to pay for content could provide a recurring revenue stream for not just large publishers but to potentially anyone who publishes anything online. Last month, Perplexity - which was accused of illegally scraping content from Forbes, Wired and Conde Nast - launched a Publishers' Program under which it plans to share a cut of any revenue it earns with publishers if it uses their content to generate answers with AI. The success of the program, however, hinges on how much money Perplexity makes when it introduces ads in the app later this year. Like Tollbit, it's another complete hypothetical.Our thesis with TollBit is that if you lose a page view today, you should be compensated for it immediately rather than a few years after when a tech company figures out its ads program," said Panigrahi about Perplexity's initiative.Despite all the existing licensing deals and technical advances, AI-powered chatbots still make for terrible news sources. They still make up facts and confidently conjure up entire links to stories that don't actually exist. But technology companies are now stuffing AI chatbots in every crevice they can, which means that many people will still get their news from one of these products in the not-so-distant future.A more cynical take on TollBit's premise is that the startup is effectively offering hush money to publishers whose work is more likely than not to be sausaged into misinformation. Its founders, naturally, don't agree with the characterization. We are careful about the AI partners we onboard," Panigrahi said. These companies are very mindful about the quality of input material and correctness of responses. We're seeing that paying for content - even nominal amounts - creates incentive to respect the raw inputs into their systems instead of treating it as a free, replaceable commodity."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/this-startup-wants-to-be-the-itunes-of-ai-content-licensing-162942714.html?src=rss
The Department of Justice and eight states' attorney generals filed an antitrust lawsuit against rental software company RealPage on Friday, accusing it of using algorithms to drive up rent prices nationwide. The suit alleges RealPage's software, YieldStar, gathers sensitive information from landlords and rental companies, which it feeds into algorithms that recommend prices and practices that limit competition and force renters to pay more.Americans should not have to pay more in rent because a company has found a new way to scheme with landlords to break the law," Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote in a DOJ press release.RealPage's software reportedly manages more than 24 million rental units globally. The DOJ's complaint accuses the Texas-based company of contracting with competing landlords who agree to share nonpublic, competitively sensitive information" about rental rates and other lease terms. RealPage then trains YieldStar's algorithms, which generate pricing and other competitive recommendations based on their and their rivals' competitively sensitive information," according to the DOJ.The DOJ was joined in its suit by the attorney generals of North Carolina, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington. It filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, accusing the company of violating Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. The 1890 law is considered the bedrock of US antitrust actions.In addition, the lawsuit accuses RealPage of monopolizing the rental market in a feedback loop that strengthens RealPage's grip on the market," making it harder for honest businesses to compete on the merits."The DOJ's complaint cites internal documents and sworn testimony from the company, along with landlords who have used the software to allegedly price-gouge renters. The agency says RealPage admitted its software was designed to maximize rent prices, saying its product excels at driving every possible opportunity to increase price," avoid[ing] the race to the bottom in down markets" and a rising tide raises all ships."In addition, the DOJ quotes a RealPage executive as observing that its software helps landlords avoid competing. The executive allegedly opined that there is greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another in a way that actually keeps the entire industry down." (Perhaps the executive doesn't consider renters part of the greater good.")The DOJ also quotes a RealPage executive as explaining to a landlord that its competitor data can help spot situations where they may have a $50 increase instead of a $10 increase for the day." The suit even cites a landlord's comment that YieldStar helps the supply side control the market. I always liked this product because your algorithm uses proprietary data from other subscribers to suggest rents and term. That's classic price fixing."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-doj-files-an-antitrust-lawsuit-against-a-software-company-for-allegedly-manipulating-rent-prices-154230054.html?src=rss
iFixit took apart Samsung's Galaxy Ring, scrutinized its components and wrote its findings, which could make you think twice about buying the device. It warned that the Galaxy Ring is "100 percent disposable" which is to say: once the battery died, the whole thing becomes junk. It "isn't designed to last more than two years," iFixit warned.To be fair the website did say that "all smart rings like it" are disposable, because they can't be non-destructively opened. It explained that lithium ion batteries "have a shelf life," and while they could be replaced on other devices, it's not possible to dismantle a smart ring to do that without wrecking the device completely. If the battery dies in the ring, you'll have to throw it away.The website also put the Galaxy Ring through a CT scanner found that Samsung used a press connector to attach the battery to a circuit board. A press connector, as its name implies, connects components inside a device without solder. iFixit said it typically loves press connectors, because they make replacing individual parts easier. However, the one inside the Galaxy Ring is apparently sealed and doesn't make the device repairable. It said that the company most likely used a connector instead of soldering the components for its own benefit, because the parts came from different production facilities.We gave the Galaxy Ring a score of 80 in our review; we found it basic and expensive at $400 - $100 more than its competitor, the Oura Ring. That said, Oura charges $6 a month to use its software, which does add up over time.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/ifixit-put-the-landfill-bound-samsung-galaxy-ring-through-a-ct-scanner-131529577.html?src=rss
In some good news for the environment, China has reached a clean energy goal six years sooner than expected. In 2020, President Xi Jinping set a goal to have at least 1,200 gigawatts of clean energy sources by 2030. In a new statement, China's National Energy Administration claims the country has reached 1,206 gigawatts, thanks to 25 gigawatts of turbines and panels added last month, Bloomberg reports.This milestone is critical for China, the world's biggest polluter, which produces about 12.7 metric tons of emissions produced annually as of 2023, The New York Times reports. For context, the United States is second with 5.9 billion tons. However, China is spending more on clean energy than every other country, but it still has a long way to go. So far, solar and wind have generated 14 percent of the country's energy in 2024.China is working to expand this number with a range of projects that include renewable energy. In June, it was announced that state-owned China Three Gorges Renewables Group will invest 80 billion yuan ($11 billion) in a base using solar, wind and coal to generate electricity. The plant will be built in Inner Mongolia and get 135 gigawatts of the 435 gigawatts China has devoted to desert projects by 2030. We'll have to see how much of a negative offset the coal aspect will cause as the plan progresses.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/china-claims-to-have-already-reached-its-2030-clean-energy-goal-122012187.html?src=rss
On August 24, NASA will finally announce how Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronauts that flew to the ISS aboard Boeing's Starliner, will be coming home. Earlier this month, the agency said it was already in talks with SpaceX about the possibility of giving the astronauts two seats aboard an upcoming Crew Dragon mission. While NASA was making sure that the option was available, it continued asking Boeing for data to prove that the Starliner is safe to ride back to Earth. The Starliner's batteries won't last forever, though, and the agency needs to make a decision soon.In its announcement, NASA said that on August 24, its leadership will make a final examination of the data Boeing gathered through various ground tests and simulations by engineers with help from Williams and Wilmore. An hour later, at around 1PM Eastern time, it will hold a news conference to broadcast its official decision. You can watch the event on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube and the agency's website, but we'll also keep you updated.The Starliner's first crewed mission blasted off the space in June on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket after several delays. It was only supposed to stay docked to the ISS for eight days before making its way back home with both astronauts. During its flight to the orbiting lab, however, five of its maneuvering thrusters had failed. The helium leak that caused Boeing and NASA to scrub its launch also came back and had even worsened. Over the past few months, engineers conducted tests and simulations on the ground to provide NASA with the data it wanted. "We are letting the data drive our decision making relative to managing the small helium system leaks and thruster performance we observed during rendezvous and docking," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, back in June.If NASA does decide to go with its backup plan of making Wilmore and Williams hitch a ride on the Crew Dragon, then the Starliner will be coming back to Earth without a crew onboard. It's still unclear when the Starliner is making its way back to the planet, but it likely couldn't come soon enough for the company. Aside from the fact that the Starliner's batteries are running out, Boeing reported earlier this month that it took another $125 million in losses due to the spacecraft's delayed return. Wilmore and Williams will then be coming home as part of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission, the same mission that had to be delayed because Starliner was still taking up one of the two slots on the ISS that can accommodate astronaut capsules. The Crew-9 capsule won't be flying back to Earth until February 2025, though, so the astronauts' supposed eight-day trip will turn into an eight-month stint.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasa-will-soon-announce-whether-starliners-astronauts-are-coming-back-on-a-spacex-vehicle-120049271.html?src=rss
Here's one trick Sony and Microsoft don't want you to know: You don't have to spend $70 to play a good game. These days, courtesy of in-app payments and the ease of offering both a sample of a title alongside its full-fat version, there are actually plenty of great games to play that won't cost you a dime. And quality has never been higher across mobile, PC and consoles, so regardless of which platform or device you prefer, you'll find a number of great free games to choose from.
There's a lot of power in the notion of the default: The obvious, sensible choice you won't get picked on for making. Until now, the default choice for an Android flagship is whatever model of Galaxy Samsung is stamping out this year. Sam Rutherford has been using Google's new Pixel 9 as his daily driver, and he feels the winds of change are blowing. This may be the first time a Google handset has well and truly taken the lead as the default choice.What has pulled the Pixel 9 out from under Samsung's shadow is the better industrial design, with its utterly gorgeous look and feel. That, combined with class-leading cameras, a great display and all of Google's newfangled AI smarts, makes it a winning handset. You'll have to read the full review to find out just why it's worth your cash, but the list of downsides is so short you'll have to make an effort not to buy one right now.- Dan CooperThe biggest stories you might have missed
An appeals court has revived an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon filed by the Attorney General of Washington, DC more than three years ago. The online retailer must now face allegations that it illegally raised prices for consumers.The lawsuit was originally filed in 2021 and cited Amazon's practices related to third-party sellers on its platform. Specifically, it called out a provision in the company's agreements with third-party sellers that allowed it to punish businesses that offered its products at lower prices on non-Amazon platforms. Karl Racine, the AG at the time, said these agreements allowed the company to impose an artificially high price floor across the online retail marketplace." Racine later expanded the case to include Amazon's pricing tactics for wholesalers.Amazon has disputed those allegations, and the case was dismissed in 2022. But an appeals court has now reversed that decision. Viewed as a whole, the District's allegations about Amazon's market share and maintenance of its market power through the challenged agreements plausibly suggest that Amazon either already possesses monopoly power over online marketplaces or is close to a dangerous probability of achieving monopoly power,'" the judge wrote.We disagree with the District of Columbia's allegations and look forward to presenting facts in court that demonstrate how good these policies are for consumers," Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle told Engadget in a statement. "Just like any store owner who wouldn't want to promote a bad deal to their customers, we don't highlight or promote offers that are not competitively priced. It's part of our commitment to featuring low prices to earn and maintain customer trust, which we believe is the right decision for both consumers and sellers in the long run."The reversal adds to Amazon's antitrust woes. The company is also facing a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission and more than a dozen states. The UK's antitrust regulator has also opened an investigation centered around the company's $4 billion investment into Anthropic.In a statement, DC's current AG Brian Schwalb noted that the district was the first jurisdiction to take antitrust enforcement action" against the company. Now, our case will move forward, and we will continue fighting to stop Amazon's unfair and unlawful practices that have raised prices for District consumers and stifled innovation and choice across online retail."Update, August 22 2024, 7:13 PM ET: This story has been updated to include a statement from Amazon.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/dcs-antitrust-case-against-amazon-comes-back-to-life-194314355.html?src=rss
Get ready, trainers: the original Pokemon anime will soon be getting a new home. The Pokemon Company has partnered with Canadian company WildBrain to be the distributor for a single-IP free ad-supported television channel that's all Pokemon, all the time. The deal covers the first 22 seasons of the animated tales of Ash Ketchum and his electrifying buddy Pikachu.The FAST channel will arrive first in the US, followed by launches in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. WildBrain has existing relationships with several TV platforms, including Samsung, LG, Roku, Tubi and Pluto, but it didn't share any specific dates or likely homes for the future Pokemon channel. The company specializes in children's programming. It operates FAST channels for game franchises Sonic and Super Mario as well as kid-focused titles such as Teletubbies, Strawberry Shortcake and Caillou.Fans should be pleased to have this new development from the Pokemon Company after its Pokemon TV venture was shuttered earlier this year. If you're looking for other Pokemon content, stateside viewers should be sure to catch up on the Netflix exclusive Pokemon Journeys before the show leaves in September. You've also got the latest show, Pokemon Horizons, which landed on the streaming service in February.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/the-first-22-seasons-of-pokemon-will-return-to-streaming-225513118.html?src=rss
If you buy a new Hewlett-Packard laptop in the next few weeks, then you'll notice a new app on the Start" menu called Google Essentials. On Thursday, Google announced that the new app will bundle some of its core services like Google Photos, Google Drive and Google Messages.The Google Essentials app will not only house shortcuts to its most used services but it will also centralize your Google account information and saved materials such as documents, photos and saved games for titles from Google Play Games. Eligible subscribers will also receive a two month trial of Google One cloud storage with 100GB.The blog posts says that Google Essentials will only be available on Windows PCs starting with new Hewlett-Packard (HP) laptops including models like the Spectre, Envy, Pavilion, OMEN and Victus. Google says it plans to make the Essentials app available on more Windows PC brands in the future.The concept of a bundled Google services app sounds very similar to the old Windows Live Essentials. The collection of Microsoft applications allowed Windows users a quicker way to access apps like Mail, Movie Maker, Messenger and Writer. An archived version of the Windows Live Essentials installer is available on the Internet Archive.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-essentials-will-house-all-google-services-in-a-single-windows-app-223824942.html?src=rss
General Motors' robotaxi service Cruise has inked a multi-year deal with Uber. The deal will let Uber customers hail a Cruise self-driving taxi from their smartphone starting next year, according to TechCrunch. This means that Cruise's self-driving taxis will be back on roads for the first time since striking a pedestrian in San Francisco in October 2023.Neither GM nor Uber gave a specific date or city for Uber's rollout of Cruise's robotaxis. A spokesperson told the website that the new partnership between Cruise and Uber would follow Cruise's re-launch of its own driverless taxi service in 2025.Cruise is currently testing cars with human drivers on roads in Dallas, Phoenix and Houston with plans to expand to more cities. Uber also has a partnership with the self-driving car fleet Waymo that's currently operating in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco.Cruise also just reached an agreement with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) following an investigation that started in December of 2022 over three rear-end crashes involving its autonomous driving vehicles. The company was under another investigation following an accident in October in San Francisco when one of its vehicles struck a pedestrian who was thrown into its path by a human-driven vehicle and dragged 20 feet causing further injuries.A third-party report released by Cruise found that executives knew about the incident but failed to disclose it in meetings with city officials and federal agencies. Cruise fired nine of its executives at the end of last year following a probe. The company also agreed to pay a fine to the California Public Utilities Commission allowing Cruise to restart its operations in the state.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/cruises-self-driving-cabs-are-coming-to-uber-next-year-214734509.html?src=rss
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim has been in the works for about three years now, but with its release date fast approaching we now have our first trailer. It's one of the more unusual and intriguing projects under the Lord of the Rings franchise, an anime-style standalone movie that covers events in the kingdom of Rohan some 200-ish years before the War of the Ring.The trailer starts with some iconic footage from the '00s Lord of the Rings films focused on Rohan before diving into the animation. It's immediately obvious that this project is connected to Peter Jackson's films, as the designs for key areas like Edoras and Helm's Deep clearly reference those earlier movies despite the distinctly different style. As for characters, we're introduced to King Helm Hammerhand and his daughter Hera who, judging by the trailer, will likely be our main protagonist. It looks like an attempt to marry her off goes south, angering the family of suitor Wulf -things get decidedly more tense after that, with plenty of action and Oliphaunts and, naturally, some teases of ring-related events to come.The film is directed by Kenji Kamiyama, who has been a writer and director on various anime including Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Eden of the East. He's also directed episodes of Star Wars: Visions and Ultraman. Most of the cast is still under wraps, but we know Brian Cox is voicing King Hammerhand, while Gaia Wise is voicing his daughter Hera. Miranda Otto is also reprising her role from the Lord of the Rings films as Eowyn, who will serve as the narrator for the story.The movie is set to be released on December 13, and it's the first of several Lord of the Rings films in development - Andy Serkis, perhaps best known for his performance as Gollum in Jackson's Middle-earth films, is directing a new film tentatively entitled The Hunt for Gollum. While that movie is years away, fans can also catch Middle-earth on-screen in a week when season two of Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/first-trailer-for-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-shows-an-anime-styled-middle-earth-202139240.html?src=rss
The best thing about the free games that the Epic Games Store offers is they're genuinely yours to keep forever. They're not locked behind a subscription of any kind. The only form of payment you provide is a little personal information in the form of your email address and whatever else is required to create an Epic account. It might be worth signing up if you haven't already, as this week's free games are pretty notable.First up is The Callisto Protocol, a 2022 survival horror game from Dead Space co-creator Glen Schofield. It's cut from the same cloth as Dead Space, but - stellar visuals aside - we didn't like it much. (In fact, a Dead Space remake that arrived shortly afterward was much more warmly received.) Still, it can be yours for absolutely zilch right now.
Google DeepMind workers have signed a letter calling on the company to drop contracts with military organizations, according to a report by Time. The document was drafted on May 16 of this year. Around 200 people signed the document, which amounts to five percent of the total headcount of DeepMind.For the uninitiated, DeepMind is one of Google's AI divisions and the letter states that adopting military contracts runs afoul of the company's own AI rules. The letter was sent out as internal concerns began circulating within the AI lab that the tech was allegedly being sold to military organizations via cloud contracts.According to Time, Google's contracts with the United States military and the Israeli military allow access to services via the cloud, and this reportedly includes AI technology developed by DeepMind. The letter doesn't linger on any specific military organization, with workers emphasizing that it's not about the geopolitics of any particular conflict."Reporting since 2021 has slowly revealed the scope of tech supplied by Google (and Amazon) to the Israeli government via a partnership known as Project Nimbus. This is far from the first instance of Google employees openly protesting their work being used to support politically fraught military aims - the company fired dozens of staffers who spoke out against Project Nimbus earlier this year.Any involvement with military and weapon manufacturing impacts our position as leaders in ethical and responsible AI, and goes against our mission statement and stated AI principles," the DeepMind letter says. It's worth noting that Google's slogan used to be don't be evil."The letter goes on to ask DeepMind's leaders to deny military users access to its AI technology and to set up a new in-house governance body to prevent the tech from being used by future militaries. According to four unnamed employees, Google has yet to offer a tangible response to the letter. We have received no meaningful response from leadership," one said, and we are growing increasingly frustrated."Google did respond to Time's reporting, saying that it complies with its AI principles. The company says that the contract with the Israeli government is not directed at highly sensitive, classified or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services." However, its partnership with the Israeli government has fallen under plenty of scrutiny in recent months.Google purchased DeepMind back in 2014, but under the promise that its AI technology would never be used for military or surveillance purposes. For many years, DeepMind was allowed to operate with a good amount of independence from its parent company, but the burgeoning AI race looks to have changed that. The lab's leaders spent years seeking greater autonomy from Google, but were rebuffed in 2021.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/deepmind-workers-urge-google-to-drop-military-contracts-190544509.html?src=rss
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will cease to exist on November 28, but players' saves should be getting a new home. Since its global launch in 2017, Pocket Camp has offered the core Animal Crossing experience on smartphones, including limited time special events.Sales of Leaf Tickets, the in-game currency for speeding up access to camp accessories, will stop on November 27. The company is also ending its subscription plans for the Pocket Camp Club, which provides additional in-game cosmetics each month. New plans will not be accepted after October 28 and existing subscriptions will not renew after that date.But all is not lost for those of us who have invested a lot of hours into building pint-sized communities. Nintendo cushioned the blow with the news that a new app is in the works where existing players can continue their save files. The new take on the game will be a paid purchase with no in-app purchases, as opposed to Pocket Camp's freemium approach. The team promised more information on the new app this October.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/dont-freak-out-but-nintendo-is-killing-off-animal-crossing-pocket-camp-181640622.html?src=rss
Snap is getting ready to show off a new pair of augmented reality glasses, according to a new report in The Verge. The glasses would be the fifth-generation of Spectacles, and the second pair to have augmented reality capabilities. CEO Evan Spiegel will reportedly unveil the glasses at the company's upcoming Partner Summit event on September 17.The company last introduced a pair of AR glasses in 2021. The glasses were only ever made available to a small handful of creators and developers, who came up with some interesting experiments that combined Snapchat's lenses with the AR displays. But, as I noted in my hands-on with AR-enabled Spectacles that year, the device was still pretty limited. It had an extremely narrow field of view and only a 30-minute battery life. The glasses were also much bulkier and boxier compared to earlier generations of Spectacles that looked more like regular sunglasses.Snapchat's fourth-generation Spectacles that had AR displays.Karissa Bell for EngadgetNow, it sounds like Snap has made some improvements to the underlying tech. The Verge reports that the latest glasses will have a wider field of view and better battery life. However, it seems the Spectacles are still being positioned as more of a developer device than something any Snapchat user will be able to buy. Each pair reportedly costs thousands of dollars to build" and Snap is planning on making fewer than 10,000" of them.Still, it suggests that Snap hasn't entirely given up on its hardware ambitions. Its last new product was the $250 Pixy selfie drone, which it abandoned just four months after launch in 2022. The company recalled the device earlier this year after a reported battery fire.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/snap-is-reportedly-working-on-a-new-pair-of-augmented-reality-spectacles-173024510.html?src=rss
This is a story about serendipity and probability.Nicole He met Arnaud De Bock while waiting in line for the bathroom at a GDC developer party in 2019. She was giving a talk on voice technology in art and games based on her work as a creative technologist, her portfolio filled with interactive projects like the True Love Tinder Robot, Garden Friends, ENHANCE.COMPUTER and Soylent Dick. De Bock was working on the Reigns series and Card Shark for Nerial, and finishing up Pikuniku on the side.Technically, He wasn't invited to this particular party, but Ape Out co-creator Maxi Boch snuck her in.There in the bathroom line, I met Arnaud," He told Engadget. We started chatting, and we were sort of mutual fans of each other's work, and we talked about potentially collaborating on something. A few months later, we were trying to work on this other idea that he had with his collaborator Remi [Forcadell] from Pikuniku. That idea never really worked out into anything. But at the same time, Arnaud and I were both obsessed with this reality show called Terrace House."Devolver DigitalTerrace House was a Japanese reality series that aired from 2012 to 2020, featuring a rotating cast of six strangers, mainly young professionals, as they lived together for months at a time. Episodes followed the participants as they navigated work and relationships, and the entire thing had a soothing, quiet kind of vibe, even during explosive arguments about eating someone else's steak. Though cast members often ended up dating each other, you could call Terrace House very demure and very mindful - especially in comparison to Western reality shows like Love Island or Too Hot to Handle, which are built around the themes of bikinis, lust, betrayal and neon-lit product placement.Inspired by Terrace House and 1990s reality shows like The Real World and Room Raiders, He and De Bock started creating a game called The Crush House. Nerial jumped on board: The studio was finishing up Card Shark and co-founder Francois Alliot saw this reality TV project as an opportunity for his team to flex their narrative muscles.At some point, we made a major pivot as far as the writing goes, just ramping it up from this chill Terrace House style, slice-of-life relaxed thing, to be trashy, essentially," He said. Like, the dialogue needs to be a lot more engaging. It needs to be funnier and raunchier, more over the top."Devolver DigitalThat's when shows like Love Island and The Ultimatum entered the production conversation. In its final form, The Crush House falls in the space between Terrace House and Love Island. It's set in a bright seaside mansion (with an infinity pool, of course) and it stars four characters at a time as they form strategic friendships, have fiery arguments and make out with each other between ad breaks.The Crush House is set in 1999, before smartphones enabled a call-and-response relationship with viewers, but the audience still plays a critical role. Players are the on-site producer and videographer, and they have to respond in real-time to demands from different categories of viewers, like drama queens, foodies, fish freaks, divorced dads and butt guys, while also appeasing advertisers and the mysterious network overlords. Capturing the correct footage, playing ads at the right time and placating the suits makes for a surprisingly intense gameplay loop. There's a sprint button here for a reason.One of the most intriguing aspects of The Crush House is its replayability. There are 12 cast members to choose from at the start of every run, and they have distinct personality traits that play off of each other in unique ways. There are classic reality-TV archetypes, like the himbo, the naive girl and the pretentious one, and their interactions are driven by procedural generation.Everything that you see on the screen, the dialogues, are generated," Alliot said. We have a system called rigmarole, which is a system that matches the traits of a character with what we call sagas, which are like models of stories. For example, if you got a love triangle, you have a number one, number two, number three, they will have different traits that we will match to the characters. If we have a match, we play that story and then it unfolds like that, with possible outcomes that may be different depending on the character that you picked. And this system allows us to have a very broad or very narrow type of narrative."He and the developers at Nerial wrote about 50,000 lines of dialogue for the Crush House rigmarole system. With 12 characters to choose from and four characters in each playthrough, there are 495 total possible cast combinations in the game. Essentially, The Crush House had to be procedurally generated.We have things that are logical, but it's never 100 percent super structured," Alliot said. It's a bit loose, a loose narrative that fits very well with reality TV. And so you can play the game basically forever, matching different characters, and it will still surprise you."The Crush House was a jumble of random dialogue and code for a long time before its procedural generation systems had enough information to produce a rational, powerful experience, He said. Alliot warned her this would be the case, and encouraged her to be patient and watch out for the moment when everything would snap into place. Eventually, that's exactly what happened.Devolver DigitalIt's kind of a mess for a long time," He said. But when we reached the point where actually it all came together - we had enough writing, we had the technical stuff working out, and the animations playing and all this stuff happening. It's like there's something that clicks and it kind of becomes magical."The Crush House still surprises He, even after years of studying its code and iterating on its outputs.I had this experience even yesterday playing the game, where there was a very sweet, romantic scene between Veer and Alex, and then the next scene, Veer says something that's really cruel to him," He said. And I was struck by that. I mean, I can see through the veil of it, I know how everything works, but it's really awesome to have that effect."The Crush House is available on Steam for PC, developed by Nerial and published by Devolver Digital.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/how-the-crush-house-turns-procedural-generation-into-social-manipulation-160020111.html?src=rss
Peloton is in something of a financial rut lately, and we all know what companies do when that happens. They take it out on consumers. To that end, the exercise machine maker just announced it will be charging a $95 used equipment activation fee" to anyone who buys one of its machines on the secondhand market, according to a report by CNBC.The company made this announcement in its Q4 2024 shareholder letter. The fairly exorbitant fee will apply to any machine bought directly from a previous owner, meaning anything purchased via Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace or, heck, even a neighbor down the street. Without tithing $95 to the church of Peloton, the machine won't have access to any of the classes or features the company has become known for.The company says this activation fee is just to ensure that new members receive the same high-quality onboarding experience Peloton is known for." In a recent earnings call, however, a company representative was more transparent, calling the fee a source of incremental revenue and gross profit," according to The Verge.Users who pay this fee will be treated to a virtual custom fitting," in the case of the Peloton Bike and Bike Plus. They will also receive a summary of the hardware which will illustrate exactly how much the machine was used by the original owner, just in case the seller tries that whole I only used it once" thing. Peloton also says that these second hand buyers will get discounts on accessories like shoes, mats and spare parts. So it's not all bad.Also, the $95 fee doesn't apply to those who buy refurbished machines directly from the company or from any of its third-party distribution partners. It's only those who sell or buy via traditional used equipment channels who gotta pay the troll toll.Buying a preowned Peloton machine was one of the great joys of being a consumer. The standard Bike, for instance, sells new for nearly $1,500, but you can pick up a used one online for $300 to $500. Now, that price goes up to $400 to $600. Peloton also requires a monthly membership fee to access content, which is around $44.This isn't the only move that Peloton has recently made that could be seen, through a cynical lens, as nickel and diming consumers. It upped subscription prices for those who use the company's app with third-party machines. There's still a free tier, but it doesn't offer access to any live classes.However, the recent earnings call did offer a bit of good news for Pelo-heads (I just made that up). Shares have risen 15 percent this quarter and losses have been narrowed to $30 million, down from $241 million year over year.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/peloton-to-ruin-the-secondhand-market-by-charging-a-95-used-equipment-activation-fee-155230509.html?src=rss
Home security devices can give us peace of mind, but they don't always come cheaply. That's why we're excited to see Ring's Pan-Tilt Indoor Camera finally go on sale. The device, which launched at the end of May, is down to $60 from $80 - a 25 percent discount. The only catch: the sale is just available on the black and white models, leaving the Blush, Charcoal and Starlight options at full price. Ring's Pan-Tilt Indoor Camera offers all the basics with two-way talk and motion alerts but is also the company's first foray into a motorized base, with the device providing a 360-degree look at what's happening inside your home. Plus, it has a tilt range of 169 degrees and displays its view in color HD video. If you're staying in a home with one in it or have visitors, you can activate the built-in hardware kill switch and slide a shutter over the camera - this should also disable any audio. Right now, you can also get the Ring Video Doorbell for 40 percent off, down to $60 from $100 - just shy of its record low. The doorbell lets you hear, see, and speak with anyone at your front door, with the camera displaying a 1080p HD visual on your computer or phone. It comes with a rechargeable battery and is available in Satin Nickel or Venetian Bronze. 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/deals/rings-new-pan-and-tilt-security-camera-drops-to-60-in-its-first-discount-141551723.html?src=rss
If there's one thing that's guaranteed in the world of social media, it's that platforms are going to copy each other's features. However, the newest iteration of this is still surprising, to say the least. Instagram has announced a new music feature that allows you to attach a song to your profile a la Myspace.Instagram has copied MySpace, a platform that peaked long before Instagram ever existed, and arguably was thrown into decline by the rise of Instagram's parent company.So, how does this new feature work? You can choose a song by going to edit profile and clicking "Add music to your profile." You can then choose a song or search in the For You section. From there, pick the 30 seconds of the song you want to feature and it will remain on your profile until you pick a new one or decide Myspace features are better left in the past. Don't worry if you're scrolling in public as songs won't start playing now the second you go on someone's profile - click the play button to hear it.InstagramInstagram teamed up with singer Sabrina Carpenter to promote the feature, with fans able to hear a clip of her new song "Taste." exclusively on her profile (though the album comes out tomorrow). Earlier this year, Instagram's parent company, Meta, teamed up with another pop star, Taylor Swift. She created a Threads account alongside the release of her new album, The Tortured Poet Society, in April. The first group of people to share her post received a customized badge on their profile.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-copiesmyspace-140049134.html?src=rss
For the first half of Android's existence, Google was happy simply being in charge of the OS while other manufacturers built a massive ecosystem of devices. Things changed in 2016 with the launch of the original Pixel, a phone that married the company's hardware and software designs. But even that combo wasn't enough to immediately catapult Google's flagship to the front of the pack. However, between the continued evolution of its devices and former major players like LG and HTC getting out of the game, Google has become the third-largest Android phone maker in the US, just barely behind Motorola. Enter the Pixel 9, which sports a slick new design, a brighter screen, better cameras and even more sophisticated software tricks. In many ways, this thing feels like it best represents Google's vision for what a smartphone should be and it's here to claim its title as the default Android handset. Design and display I usually hate making this comparison, but it's hard to ignore that the Pixel 9 looks a lot like an iPhone. Similar to recent Apple handsets, the base ninth-gen Pixel features flat sides with rounded corners and a smooth matte finish. Its front and back panels are made out of Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which when combined with the phone's recycled aluminum frame results in a device that Google says is two times more durable than before. The big difference though is the Pixel 9's rear camera module. Gone is the edge-to-edge bar we've become familiar with over the previous three generations and in its place is a simple pill-shaped visor. Compared to Apple's arrangement - which still looks like the top of a stove to me - Google's design is the essence of simplicity. There are two lenses on the left and a flash on the right, with some additional components like a tiny microphone and a single-zone laser-detect autofocus system scattered throughout. Sure, it's a bit tall and bulky, but because it largely spans the width of the device, it means the phone doesn't wobble when you rest it on its back. Points to Google for a more elegant solution. Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget In front, the Pixel 9 sports Google's latest 6.3-inch OLED Actua display, which offers an even higher peak brightness of 2,700 nits (versus 2,000 nits for the Pixel 8). Granted, that's a few hundred less than the 3,000 nits on the Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL, but even when viewed side-by-side, you'd be hard-pressed to notice a difference. As before, the Pixel 9 has a variable refresh rate that jumps between 60Hz and 120Hz to help save on battery while Google has tweaked little details like evening out the phone's bezels so that they are the same size all the way around. Altogether, it's an excellent display with accurate colors and rich tones. I've got to give Google credit, because over the past few years, Pixel displays have made major leaps to the point where they can now hold their own against both Apple and Samsung. One final small but very welcome upgrade is a new ultrasonic fingerprint scanner hidden beneath the Pixel 9's displays. It's even more reliable than the optical sensor used before and, in my testing, it's unlocked the phone nearly instantly every single time. Performance Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget Google's Tensor chips are often maligned for focusing more on efficiency and AI processing than general performance. But I think a lot of that noise comes from people who care more about benchmarks than how fast a phone operates in the real world. In my experience, the Pixel 9 and the Tensor G4 delivered everything I wanted with ample haste. Switching between apps happens in a flash, while scrolling feels incredibly smooth. Even relatively demanding games like Zenless Zone Zero ran well, with only the occasional hiccup. Unless you are really pushing it by running a bunch of super resource-hungry apps at the same time, the Pixel 9 can handle the stress. New software and AI features When Google introduced its big suite of AI-powered features on the Pixel 8 last year, it felt like the company was trying to live up to its own self-fulfilling prophecy on the proliferation of machine learning. But with the launch of even more AI-based tools alongside the Pixel 9, Google's strategy is becoming much clearer thanks in large part to the new Pixel Screenshots and Pixel Studio apps. Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget The thing I like most about the Pixel Screenshots app is that it enhances the way people already use their phones. When you're doomscrolling and you come across something fun or interesting, what do you do? You either share it immediately or save it for later, often by taking a screencap. That's where the Screenshots app comes in. By using AI to analyze the contents of a pic, you can easily retrieve it later with a quick search. My favorite use case is for recipes. Previously, I would find an interesting dish and leave it open in a browser tab, which always felt like a clunky workaround. But now, I can just screenshot it and feel confident about finding it in the future. And unlike Microsoft's Recall feature in Windows 11, Google's Screenshots app only looks at the stuff you capture manually instead of automatically recording everything you do, so it feels less intrusive. For those who want to create their own content, Pixel Studio lets you use AI to generate images by typing in a handful of prompts. It's basically a free version of Midjourney built just for Google's phones and I feel like I've only begun to explore its potential. It can turn people's faces into cute little stickers that you can copy into pictures or give you inspiration on how to decorate your room. The possibilities are endless. Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget Then there are a handful of smaller but still very useful tools like the Pixel Weather app, which features AI-generated summaries to help you plan your day. Instead of checking the hourly forecast and looking at every stat and figure, you can quickly read a couple of sentences to see when the UX index will peak or if there's a surprise thunderstorm headed your way. Meanwhile, other features like Gemini Live let you ask questions and bounce ideas off of Google's most powerful AI assistant in a more natural way (you know, if you're into that kind of thing). Phone conversations also sound better thanks to improvements to Clear Calling, which cuts down background noise. If you're distracted or don't feel like paying attention, you can use the new Call Notes feature to transcribe everything before giving things a closer look later. There's even a Satellite eSOS feature that's free for the first two years, which lets you call for help when you don't have service. Thankfully, I haven't needed to test it out myself, though for anyone who's curious, Google offers a demo experience that's slated to go live on August 22. Cameras Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget Superb image quality has long been one of the Pixel family's calling cards and it's getting even better on the Pixel 9 thanks to two new cameras. The main wide-angle lens features a new 50MP sensor while the ultrawide lens is powered by an updated 48MP cell, the latter of which can be used to shoot close-up macros. In situations with good light, the Pixel 9 outperformed the more expensive Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. Colors were generally brighter and Google's processing typically preserved more details. One of the most impressive examples was a backlit shot of a Transformer, where the Pixel 9 captured a photo with much richer hues and better focus while the S24U struggled, producing a shot with muddy colors and a surprising amount of noise. At night, Google's superb Night Sight mode reinforced the Pixel's lead in image quality, capturing brighter and more well-exposed photos. The only time Samsung's phone came out on top was in a single low-light shot of a flower, because even though the S24U's pic was a touch oversharpened, it was still better than the overly soft result I got from the P9. Of course, you can't have a new Pixel with some fresh camera features to go with it. This time, we've gotten a range of improvements including Auto frame which uses AI to cleverly recompose images and fill in the missing parts where needed. Or you can use Reimagine to create more fantastical pics by replacing elements (foregrounds and backgrounds work best) with whatever you can think of. Panorama mode can also be used at night now and while it takes some practice to get the best results, even on my first attempt in a less-than-ideal location, I got a neat-looking shot of the NYC skyline. If you zoom in, the results don't really hold up. But from afar, the Pixel 9's Reimagine feature can create some fantastical photos like this one with an AI-generated starry night. Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget Then there's Add Me, which lets you take multiple group shots with different people holding the camera to create a single composite image with everyone in the shot. Now, no one has to be left out simply because they're the designated photographer that day. It's surprisingly easy to use and great for introverts like me who don't want to ask a stranger for help. But you have to stay still or else things can get wonky. Perhaps the coolest thing about this feature is that you can also use it to clone yourself multiple times in the same image, which is a really fun, if unintended, use case. My one gripe is that I wish Google had included support for Zoom Enhance on the Pixel 9. It would be really nice to have a tool to sharpen blurry or cropped photos available on the base model, especially since, unlike its more expensive Pro siblings, it doesn't have a dedicated telephoto lens. Battery life and charging Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget Thanks to a larger 4,700mAh cell (up from 4,575mAh) and improved power efficiency, Google claims the Pixel 9 has 20 percent longer battery life than the previous model. But I found that it fared even better, lasting 27 hours and 32 minutes on our video rundown test. Not only is this the best we've seen from any Pixel to date, it also tops the OnePlus 12's time of 26:40 for the best longevity of any phone we've tested. Unfortunately, despite Google having just released a new 45W power adapter (sold separately), the Pixel 9's wired charging speed remains the same at 27 watts. You also get Qi wireless support (but not Qi2) at up to 15 watts and reverse wireless power sharing when you want to help out a friend with a device that's short on juice. Wrap-up For so many years, non-Pro Pixels have existed as an also-ran next to Samsung's base Galaxy S phones, primarily for people who appreciate Google's software wizardry and regular feature drops. But with the Pixel 9, Google has upped its hardware design while once again doubling down on what it does best. It has a gorgeous screen, class-leading cameras and a more refined appearance, plus more AI-powered tools than anyone else. Pretty good ones at that. You also get fantastic software support including seven years of OS and security updates. Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget Aside from a couple of omissions like no support for Qi2 magnetic wireless charging and Zoom Enhance, the Pixel 9 has everything you want and need from a high-end Android handset. Google's software - which was already a major plus - is becoming a pillar of dominance. That said, owners will need to be more proactive about embracing these features to get the most out of their devices. AI still succumbs to hallucinations and errors (a lot of the new tools are still in preview phase), so many features remain far from foolproof. But the foundations for a wide range of powerful tools are at your disposal. At this point, the big question is, at least in the $800 price range, why buy anything else? In some respects, Google might even be its own biggest competitor, because for those who aren't as enthusiastic about AI, you can save some money and get a Pixel 8a for $499. But for everyone else, while Samsung might still have a lead in total sales, the Pixel 9 should be the go-to flagship Android phone.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/google-pixel-9-review-the-go-to-android-smartphone-133005548.html?src=rss
Neuralink has published an update on the second patient in its early human trials, and it said that "promisingly," it has "observed no thread retraction" in the participant. The Elon Musk-led startup implants a chip into the human brain, allowing paralyzed patients to control devices, browse the internet and play video games with their thoughts. It implanted a chip into its first patient back in January, and while the procedure went well, some of the implants' connective threads retracted from the brain weeks later. That reduced the brain signals the device could receive.For its second patient called Alex, the company employed mitigation measures to prevent the same thing from happening, or at least lower its probability. It said it reduced brain motion during surgery and also reduced the gap between the implant and the surface of the brain. The company hasn't observed any thread retraction in the patient, so far. As for its first patient, it modified an algorithm to improve how his implant detects and translates signals after the was observed. It said the first patient's threads have stabilized and his implant has since recovered.Weeks after his surgery in July, Alex has already been able to use computer-aided design (CAD) software to design a custom mount for his Neuralink charger. The mount was 3D printed, and he has since added it to his setup. He has also been able to use his implant in conjunction with a mouth-operated joystick to play Counter-Strike 2 more effectively, because he can now move and aim at the same time.Neuralink say it's now working on making its chip capable of decoding multiple clicks and movements to "deliver full mouse and video game controller functionality." It's also developing algorithms that can recognize a user's intent to write by hand, which would enable faster text entry. That would then allow people who cannot speak, such as those with ALS, to be able to communicate with others more easily. Finally, the company apparently plans to give its implants the capability to interact with the real world, so that people can use it to move their own wheelchair or a robotic hand to feed or clean themselves.
UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, 59, has been confirmed dead after multiple days of search and rescue efforts, multiple news agencies report. The 183-foot super-yacht, Bayesian, capsized off the coast of Sicily around 5 AM local time on Monday morning during a violent storm. Lynch was one of 22 individuals on board, including passengers and crew, with 15 individuals rescued and one body found immediately following the events. Five more bodies, including Lynch's, have since been recovered. At this time, his daughter is the only person still missing, Reuters reports, citing sources close to the rescue operation.Lynch co-founded tech companies Autonomy and Darktrace and founded venture capital firm Invoke Capital. Following the $11 billion sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard, Lynch has spent the past decade-plus engulfed in a legal battle over allegations of inflating sales and misleading HP. A San Francisco jury acquitted him in June of all 15 counts of fraud.The yacht excursion was meant to celebrate Lynch's recent victory, with family, friends, and business associates joining him. Other members of the deceased include the yacht's chef, Neda and Chris Morvillo, a Clifford Chance lawyer who represented Lynch and Judy and Jonathan Bloomer, a non-executive chairman of Morgan Stanley International. Angela Bacares, Lynch's wife, escaped the wreckage and is safe.Lynch's co-defendant, Stephen Chamberlain, 52, also faced tragedy this week. The BBC reports he was hit by a car on Saturday, August 17, while out running in Cambridgeshire, England, and died from his injuries.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/british-tech-billionaire-mike-lynch-confirmed-dead-after-yacht-sinking-121856262.html?src=rss
In January, calls using an AI-generated voice imitating President Biden instructed voters not to take part in the New Hampshire Primary. Now, as the 2024 election nears, the Federal Communications Commission is sending a message by further cracking down on those responsible for the Biden deepfake. Lingo Telecom, which transmitted the fraudulent calls, will pay the FCC a $1 million civil penalty and must demonstrate and implement a compliance plan.In response to the settlement, The Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan A. Egal stated, "..the potential combination of the misuse of generative AI voice-cloning technology and caller ID spoofing over the U.S. communications network presents a significant threat. This settlement sends a strong message that communications service providers are the first line of defense against these threats and will be held accountable to ensure they do their part to protect the American public."This step follows the FCC's proposed $6 million fine for Steven Kramer, the political consultant who directed the calls. The FCC alleges he also violated the Truth in Caller ID Act by spoofing a local politician's phone number. The enforcement action in Kramer's case is still pending.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fcc-fines-telecoms-operator-1-million-for-transmitting-biden-deepfake-120010234.html?src=rss
Google is selling its ultra-premium Pixel 9 Pro in two sizes, but it's not the size that counts here. Instead, it's the suite of AI features Google hopes will revolutionize how you use your phone. The Morning After's Mat Smith has spent plenty of time with both handsets to work out if they're good enough to justify your cash.He explores headline features, like Gemini Advanced, as well as the smart new AI-enabled photo tweaks. One of my favorites is Add Me, which puts you in the background of a group shot you were holding the phone for. Or Zoom Enhance, which offers a CSI-like level of clarity enhancement for the furthest point in a photo.I won't spoil the review beyond saying Mat thinks the Pixel 9 Pro, sorry Pixels 9 Pro, are well worth the cash. But you'll have to read it all to work out why.- Daniel CooperThe biggest stories you might have missed
Google has reached a deal with California lawmakers to fund local news in the state after previously protesting a proposed law that would have required it to pay media outlets. Under the terms of the deal, Google will commit tens of millions of dollars to a fund supporting local news as well as an AI accelerator program" in the state.The agreement ends a months-long dispute between lawmakers and Google over the California Journalism Preservation Act, a bill that would have required Google, Meta and other large platforms to pay California publishers in exchange for linking to their websites. Google strongly opposed the measure, which was similar to laws passed in Canada and Australia.Earlier this year, Google began a short-term test" in the state that removed links to local news for some users in California. The company also halted some of its own spending on local news in the state.Now, under the new agreement, Google will direct at least $55 million" to a nonprofit public charity housed at UC Berkeley's journalism school," Politico reports. The university will distribute the fund, which also includes at least $70 million" from the state of California. Google will also commit $50 million over five years to unspecified existing journalism programs.'"The agreement also includes funding for a National AI Innovation Accelerator." Details of that program are unclear, but Cal Matters reports that Google will dedicate at least $17.5 million" to the effort, which will fund AI experiments for local businesses and other organizations, including newsrooms. That aspect of the deal, which is so far unique to Google's agreement in California, could end up being more controversial as it could exacerbate existing tensions between publishers and AI companies.In a statement, Alphabet's President of Global Affairs, Kent Walker, credited the thoughtful leadership" of California Governor Gavin Newsom and other state officials in reaching the agreement. California lawmakers have worked with the tech and news sectors to develop a collaborative framework to accelerate AI innovation and support local and national businesses and nonprofit organizations," he said. This public-private partnership builds on our long history of working with journalism and the local news ecosystem in our home state, while developing a national center of excellence on AI policy."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-strikes-a-deal-with-california-lawmakers-to-fund-local-news-000522484.html?src=rss
YouTube added a new AI assistant feature that allows users who have been hacked to recover their accounts and safeguard them from future invasions. An announcement for the new help feature appeared earlier today on Google's support page for YouTube.The new hacked channel assistant," available on YouTube, will allow eligible creators" a way to troubleshoot their accounts when they've been hacked. The feature can be accessed in the YouTube Help Center.The assistant will ask a series of questions to help affected users secure their Google login, undo anything the hacker may have done to their channel and secure their channel from further access to hackers. So far, the feature is only available in English and for a select group of certain creators," but Google says it's working to make the features accessible to all YouTube creators.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/youtube/a-new-ai-support-chatbot-is-available-for-hacked-youtube-channels-222800979.html?src=rss
Twitch is updating subscription costs for mobile purchases. Beginning October 1, Tier 1 sub and gift sub prices made in the company's mobile app will be $8, up from the current rate of $6 a month. Tier 2 and Tier 3 prices will not be impacted.
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