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Apple is slowly turning the iPhone into a fairly capable satellite communications device. It first rolled out Emergency SOS via Satellite on the iPhone 14 lineup. While you were previously limited to relying on the spacecraft for communications only when dialing emergency services, in iOS 18 this capability will apply to all situations where you're away from cellular or Wi-Fi coverage. I got to check out the updated experience at Apple Park, here's how it will work with iMessage or SMS messages.When you've been disconnected from cellular or Wi-Fi for some time, an alert will appear to say you'll need to hop on satellite communications to send messages. Tapping this notification brings up the new connection assistant, which contains all your satellite-powered tools, like Find My, roadside assistance and emergency SOS.You can start a chat from this page or just go to the Messages app, where a prompt will appear in the Dynamic Island to instruct you on how to find an overhead satellite. You can also go to the Satellite option in Settings or in the Control Center to get set up when cellular or Wi-Fi signals aren't available.The connection experience here isn't much different from before - you'll be told what direction to point your iPhone, as well as suggestions to avoid obstructions. Once you're linked, an indicator in the dynamic island shows a green check mark and it'll continue to change colors and shapes if your connection begins to weaken.To prevent networks getting congested with promotional SMS messages, Apple has made it so the person that's off grid is the one who can initiate SMS chats over satellite. That is, except for people who are listed as your emergency contacts or your iCloud family members. Their messages will still come through when you're on a satellite connection. Regardless of whether you're using iMessage or SMS, you'll only be able to send texts, emojis or tapback reactions. Compressing these into packages small enough to convey over satellite is already challenging, not to mention images and video.In my demo on an iPhone that was tweaked so it couldn't connect to Wi-Fi or cellular, I watched an Apple rep connect to an available satellite via the Dynamic Island's interface, then send a text to another person. On the sender's phone, the words iMessage. Satellite" appeared above the blue bubble, and the same showed up on the recipient's phone over the gray bubble. Read receipts aren't supported over satellite, so I only saw the delivered" and sent" status labels under the bubbles.It's nice to see both SMS and iMessage supported over satellite, even if only the latter is end-to-end encrypted. Apple's decision to include SMS is thoughtful, and though I'd like RCS to be covered as well, that platform's messages are too large or complicated to compress effectively. They are, after all, going to satellite infrastructure over 800 miles away from Earth, and targeting spacecraft that are moving at 15,000 miles per hour.The company still hasn't shared details on the pricing for satellite connectivity and related features after its free trial is over, but for now, those with an iPhone 14 and newer will be able to use these features for free. Apple's provision here is a little confusing at the moment, but basically you get two years of free satellite service from the time you purchase your new iPhone, and in November 2023 the company added another year to its free trial. In theory that's a window of a total of three years, though it might depend on when you bought your iPhone, since Apple didn't initially offer a two-year period.iOS 18 is expected to come to iPhones this fall, and we'll undoubtedly find out more about Messages via Satellite before then. We'll update this article with more information as and when we get it.Catch up here for all the news out of Apple's WWDC 2024.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/how-messages-via-satellite-will-work-on-ios-18-and-how-much-it-will-cost-130020976.html?src=rss

Push. Push. Push, push, push, jump -All four wheels reconnect with the glowing pavement in a slap of crisp plastic and crunching wood.Push, push, push, push, jump kickflip -Another slam, a quick screech.Push, push, push, ju -A shattering crash. The world flips on its head in an explosion of glittering blacks and iridescent pinks. I let out a small laugh, adjust the controller in my hands, and lean forward. Reset.Push.In a hyper-chilled demo space at Summer Game Fest, Skate Story creator Sam Eng drew a picture of a flaming skateboard on a business card while I played his game, occasionally lifting his head to giggle at my crashes and answer my questions. He described Skate Story as an attempt to capture the feeling he often has while skateboarding, invincible in one moment and utterly vulnerable the next. Fragile, like glass.Skate Story absolutely crystallizes this feeling. You play as the glass skater, a demon made of translucent pain, and your goal is to skate to the moon, eat it, and escape this hell. The game takes place in a series of surreal playgrounds in the Underworld, offering long catwalks for gaining speed, winding pathways lined with lethal red shards, and open areas dotted in concrete ramps, gaps and waxed ledges. The Devil and his minions are your enemies, and their only weaknesses are your sweet tricks.Sam EngSkate Story is coming to PC and I played the demo with a standard Xbox controller: Press Y to hop on the board, A to gain speed, X to powerslide and B to ollie. Holding A pushes the glass skater forward in a steady rhythm, holding B does a higher ollie, and combining the trigger and bumper buttons with a jump executes a trick. I leaned heavily on ollies, kickflips (left trigger + B) and grinds (near a ledge + B), but I also landed a few moves that included these inputs plus a nudge of the right analog stick, swapping stances.As I ollied my way through the Underworld, I encountered a variety of floating stone heads - some friendly, some vicious - and I collected items to unlock new progression areas, slamming my board into the ground to solve little puzzles. There was a shop with custom decks and parts for sale, and wide-open spaces for practicing tricks. The demo's concluding boss fight, versus a giant stone philosopher's head no less, provided a concrete arena for me to perform tricks and deal damage with my rad skateboarding prowess.Sam EngI'm craving a few uninterrupted hours with the game, ideally at home and after a few edibles, so I can perfect its mechanics, unlock upgrades and learn new moves. I crashed a dozen times in my 45-minute demo, often in the same spot repeatedly and always with a magnificent, shattering explosion - but resets were swift and not too punishing. The crash always hit harder after I'd found a flow state, holding down A to push and jumping smoothly over neon spikes embedded in the shimmering black asphalt, taking a risk and landing a kickflip, reaching peak velocity, feeling completely free. And then I'd clip a sliver of concrete and the ride would be over, sudden and harsh. In Skate Story, sidewalk-high edges are just as dangerous as glowing-red obstacles, and the game requires a constant buzz of situational awareness. A lot like skateboarding in real life, I'd wager.Skate Story induces a limbo-like haze through its mechanical rhythm, VHS-filtered visuals and the constant, low whoosh of the glass skater's wheels rolling across the Underworld's concrete. Strategy becomes impossible and the only option is to feel your way through the brutalist, pearlescent landscapes. The game's soundtrack is provided by New York artist Blood Cultures and it's a soothing, lo-fi vibe fest, like OlliOlli's flow music but with a distorted edge. It feels like a perfect fit.Skate Story encourages you to enter a peak state early on, only so you can chase that feeling the rest of the game. It's an incredibly compelling loop, with room for payoff or failure in every push.Sam EngThe Underworld is so much larger than the slice I explored in Skate Story'sSummer Game Fest demo. The full game has more than 70 tricks to learn, fresh gear to acquire and a leveling system to unlock. Skate Story feels like a game that will easily swallow hours upon hours of my time. As easily as eating the moon, at least.Skate Story is due out this year (not 2023, as suggested by the top trailer) on Steam, developed by Sam Eng and published by Devolver Digital.Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/skate-story-hands-on-kick-push-shatter-120051976.html?src=rss

Samsung is expanding its lineup of Galaxy FE devices, which offer many of the features of flagship devices at a more budget-friendly cost, with a new smartwatch. The company says the Galaxy Watch FE includes the sensor tech, performance and health and fitness features of mainline Galaxy Watch devices with an all-new look. Naturally, though, there are some tradeoffs.The Galaxy Watch FE doesn't have the physical rotating bezel of the Watch 6 Classic, for instance, and it's limited to one size: 40mm. There are three color options of black, pink gold and silver and there are new one-click watch bands with blue and orange stitching. The watch has sapphire crystal glass, which Samsung says will help protect it against scratches in day-to-day use.The device has a wide range of health and fitness features, including the ability to help you track more than 100 workouts. There's an advanced running analysis feature that aims to provide insights and guidance to help prevent injury, while the personalized heart rate zone tool will help you set your own goals based on your physical abilities.The Watch FE also offers electrocardiogram monitoring and can look for signs of irregular heart rhythms and atrial fibrillation. Additionally, it has sleep tracking and body composition features, while it can deliver motivational messages to help you along your wellness journey.Other features include Find My Phone and Samsung Wallet. You'll be able to control the camera of your compatible Samsung smartphone remotely with the help of the Camera Controller tool.The Bluetooth version will cost $200 and will be available in the US on June 24. The $250 LTE variant will arrive in October.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/samsungs-galaxy-watch-fe-arrives-on-june-24-120050782.html?src=rss

Netflix is taking advantage of some high drama in the hot dog-eating world with its next live-streaming event. A couple of days ago, Joey Chestnut was banned from Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Content over his apparent partnership with a plant-based brand, as pretty much every major news site in the world inexplicably reported.Cue Netflix, which leaped in with its own frank-eating event called Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef, set to be live-streamed on Monday, September 2. It features two of the best-known (only-known, for most people) hot dot-eating personalities in the form of Chestnut (40) and Takeru Kobayashi (46), with the latter coming out of semi-retirement for the occasion."Through all of my years in competitive eating, Kobayashi stands out as my fiercest rival," Chestnut said in a Netflix press release. "Retiring for me will only happen after I take him down one last time," added Kobayashi.

A number of former SpaceX engineers are suing Elon Musk for sexual harassment, retaliation and creating a hostile workplace environment. The suit comes in the wake of a blockbuster WSJ report that lifted the lid on Musk's treatment of SpaceX employees. This same group penned an open letter in 2022 highlighting Musk's behavior which, they say, caused them to be fired. They have also filed complaints against SpaceX with the NLRB, another government agency Musk is waging war against.- Dan CooperThe biggest stories you might have missedChinese EV makers face additional tariffs of up to 38 percent in the EUMusic publishers accuse Spotify of bait-and-switch subscription scheme'Sony Pictures is buying Alamo DrafthousePlayStation Plus June offerings include Monster Hunter Rise and three Lego gamesAstro Bot is a supremely silly and incredibly smooth platformerChromeOS will lean more on the same tech that powers AndroidJabra says it's exiting the consumer headphones business just as it announces new earbudsYou can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!Apple seems to have persuaded OpenAI to work for exposureEven Sam Altman bowed to Tim Cook.

At Apple's recently concluded annual conference for developers, the company announced that it teamed up with OpenAI to bring its technology to the iPhone and its other devices. It's easy to imagine a huge amount of money changing hands in a deal between a massive corporation and a fast-rising tech firm. But according to a new Bloomberg report, nobody paid anybody in that partnership. Apple is reportedly not paying OpenAI, because it believes that putting its technology in front of hundreds of millions of users is equal to or even better than any kind of monetary payment.Apple will use OpenAI's GPT-4o model to power AI tasks on iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia. Siri, for instance, will tap into ChatGPT's capabilities if users ask it to create menu ideas, to summarize articles or to find photos based on a description of what they contain. Apple's writing tools can also use ChatGPT to write stories, as well as to rewrite and proofread existing text. Users will be able to enjoy these features without having to log into or pay for ChatGPT, but they do get access to extra perks if they pay for a Plus account.As Bloomberg points out, OpenAI could make money from the deal by convincing Apple users to pay $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus. And if those users sign up on an Apple device, then the iPhone-maker will also get a commission. In the future, Apple intends to generate more earnings from AI by getting into revenue-sharing agreements with its partners, the news organization says. It's aiming to get a cut of what those partners will earn from monetizing results in chatbots on Apple's operating systems, in particular, because it believes more and more users will turn to AI over search engines. That means it could earn less money from its long-standing (and lucrative) search deal with Google.Apple has yet to reveal its future AI partners, but it's reportedly in talks with Google to offer Gemini integration to iOS users as soon as later this year. It's also reportedly talking to Anthropic to offer its Claude AI chatbot as another option.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-seems-to-have-persuaded-openai-to-work-for-exposure-033636236.html?src=rss

We don't know if OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is actually making any money so far. But thanks to a Wednesday report in The Information, what we do know is that the company doubled its annualized revenue - a measure of the previous month's revenue multiplied by 12, as the publication helpfully explained - in the last six months.OpenAI's annualized revenue was $3.4 billion, CEO Sam Altman reportedly told staff. That's up from $1.6 billion around the end of last year, and $1 billion a year ago. Most of this revenue came from a subscription version of ChatGPT, which offers higher messaging limits to people who pay at least $20 a month, as well as from developers who pay the company to use the company's large language models in their own apps and services. About $200 million on an annualized basis comes from Microsoft, which gives OpenAI a cut of sales of OpenAI's large language models to customers using Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing platform aimed at businesses.Notably, an OpenAI spokesperson told The Information that the financials were "inaccurate" but did not explain which details it disputed. OpenAI did not immediately respond to Engadget's request for comment.Earlier this week, Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI. The company plans to hook ChatGPT right into its operating systems for iPhones, iPads, and Macs, letting Siri reach out to ChatGPT to answer questions. The financial terms of that deal, however, are still unknown.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openais-revenue-is-reportedly-booming-230324957.html?src=rss

If you're looking for a birthday gift for the Pokemon fan who has everything (and we mean, every toy, card, item of apparel, game, Happy Meal collectable, etc.), the jewelry brand King Ice may have the solution.King Ice posted a photo on X and its website Wednesday teasing a new line of Pokemon jewelry pieces. The photo features the familiar face of Pikachu with a Poke Ball on his head decked out entirely in jewels. The X caption reads: Collection dropping 6/14/24."This is not the first time the jewelry and clothing brand have collaborated with a big video game franchise. King Ice also sells a line of bejeweled Xbox themed necklaces, rings and earrings. It's also made necklaces and other keepsakes featuring characters from games like PAC-MAN, Sonic the Hedgehog and Halo with a completely blinged out Master Chief full figure and helmet. King Ice has also made necklaces and rings for other pop culture icons such as Batman, Chucky and Tiffany from the Child's Play horror movie and TV show franchise, Looney Tunes characters based on the Space Jam movies and Ren and Stimpy.This also won't be the first time that Pokemon has been honored with its own jewelry line. Tiffany & Co. released a line of Pokemon jewelry pieces in November designed by Daniel Arsham featuring characters like Pikachu, Charmander, Squirtle, Jigglypuff, Cubone and Mew. The Tiffany necklaces came in 18K yellow gold with diamonds or sterling silver and even have their own Tiffany Blue Poke Balls, according toWomen's Wear Daily.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/king-ice-teases-bejeweled-pokemon-bling-222344432.html?src=rss

Sony Pictures Entertainment announced today that it has acquired Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, a beloved independent theater business. Alamo Drafthouse won scores of loyal fans over the years for its well-enforced policy of no talking and no texting during showings, as well as its dine-in experience with food and beverage menus.At least for now, the Alamo experience for viewers may not feel different under the new management. Alamo Drafthouse will continue to operate its 35 cinemas and run its Fantastic Fest film festival. And current CEO Michael Kustermann will remain at the helm and report to the head of a new Sony Pictures Experiences division.It's the end of an era for the indie theater chain, which was founded in 1997 by Tim and Karrie League. But given how hard the COVID-19 pandemic crushed the movie-going experience, at least this isn't the end of the Alamo Drafthouse story. The business made a valiant effort to keep viewers' support with its Season Pass streaming service in 2020, but the Texas-based company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2021 and began approaching potential buyers in March of this year.There's no dollar figure attached to the announcement, but Sony's press release notes that Alamo Drafthouse is the seventh-largest theater chain in North America. Even with their struggles, the company attracts an annual audience of 10 million and posted a 30 percent increase in box office revenue last year. Maybe this sets the Alamo theaters up to host special Crunchyroll anime marathons in the near future.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/alamo-drafthouse-is-being-bought-by-sony-pictures-204934280.html?src=rss

There's a whole new crop of games headed to your PlayStation console if you're a subscriber to one of Sony's various PlayStation Plus tiers. The additional games for the June update include 14 new titles featuring PS5-only games like the medieval RPG Crusader Kings III, the surreal action-adventure After Us, the industrial age strategy game Anna 1800 and Football Manager 2024.The collection also includes several PS4/PS5 crossover titles starting with the critically acclaimed, fan favorite Monster Hunter Rise from Capcom. Others include the motocross racing game Monster Energy Supercross - The Official Videogame 6 and the procedural police sim Police Simulator: Patrol Officers. A few titles originally released on the PS4 are also being added, including the first-person shooter Far Cry 4 and two Lego games including The Hobbit and Disney-Pixar's The Incredibles. A few older titles are also being added to the Classics catalog for Premium subscribers: third-person shooter Ghosthunter, Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy and the wisecracking platformer Daxter.June's collection of PlayStation Plus titles is the first to feature a game for the PlayStation VR 2 with the free release of the nature paddling simulator Kayak VR: Mirage. Sony started offering PS VR2 games on its PlayStation Plus earlier this month as part of its Days of Play celebration that included a healthy collection of virtual titles include Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, Before Your Eyes, Walkabout Mini Golf, Synth Riders and both chapters of The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. You'll need to be a Premium subscriber to try the VR games, though.The first batch of new PlayStation Plus games for June announced in late May including SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake, AEW Fight Forever, Streets of Rage 4 and EA Sports FC 24. These titles are available to anyone, regardless of which PlayStation Plus tier you're subscribed to.The update also offered a batch of PS2 classic titles for those on the Premium tier. Those include Tomb Raider Legend, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. Finally, PS Plus Extra and Premium members also got access to Dredge, Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2, Cricket 24, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - The Definition Edition and a game trial of WWE 2K24.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/playstation-plus-june-offerings-include-monster-hunter-rise-and-three-lego-games-202307151.html?src=rss

Astro Bot is as precise as it is ridiculous, and this is exactly what makes it so damn delightful. During my 30-minute demo at Summer Game Fest, I crashed into spiky obstacles, flew off the side of sky-high platforms, bounced into deadly projectiles and popped my little robot protagonist like an overinflated balloon - and I could not keep the smile off my face the entire time. The art style, sound effects and animations in Astro Bot are infused with childlike joy, taking the sting out of each failure. Simultaneously, each death felt avoidable with a little more practice, each leap landable with just one more try. Resets were quick and generous, encouraging trial-and-error while maintaining a superb platforming flow.Despite its kid-friendly appearance, Astro Bot feels like a mature - and super tricky! - platformer.This competency makes sense, considering Sony has had more than 10 years to perfect the Astro Bot recipe. The first official Astro Bot title was Rescue Mission, a 2018 PlayStation VR game and a semi-sequel to 2013's The Playroom demo on PS4. Next, Astro's Playroom came pre-installed on the PS5 at launch in 2020, offering a short but memorable tour through the features of the DualSense controller. All of these experiences were cute and well-executed, but as it turns out, they were long-tail teasers for the full Astro Bot game coming out on September 6.PlayStationThe SGF 2024 Astro Bot demo was on PlayStation 5 and showcased a few different worlds, each with a distinct gadget and map style. I tried out a dog jetpack that let me dash forward and a pair of frog-face gloves with spring-loaded punching abilities. The frog gloves were my favorite weapon of the day: the left glove was activated by the LT button and the right was attached to RT, and I spent most of this level rhythmically punching the air, just because it felt cool to do so. Throughout this stage there were also red sticky points to punch into, allowing me to hold the gloves in place and stretch out the springs, turning Astro into a robot-sized slingshot. You have to hold the triggers in place and pull Astro back before flinging its little body in the proper direction, which is sometimes directly into the face of a giant red octopus. Obviously.Astro makes the most adorable wah wah wah wah sound when it dies, diffusing the disappointment of each failure. I heard this sound most often while attempting to clear a section of spinning, spiked balls and pink-glass platforms that shattered as soon as Astro skated over them. The fragile nature of the glass forced me to react with twitchy adjustments, ramping up the tension and encouraging replays. There were so many clever mechanics, tools and obstacles on display in the Astro Bot demo, including a throwable time-freezing item, a powerful magnet that picked up anything metal nearby, a line of flaming spheres that snaked rapidly across a platform, and even just the standard jump, which propelled Astro into the air and shot lasers out of its feet, injuring the blobs and other enemies below.PlayStationThe full game will feature more than 50 unique planets of platforming proficiency, more than 300 bots to rescue (more than half of which are classic PlayStation characters), and dozens of weird and satisfying tools to use. It'll take about 15 hours to complete, and according to Team ASOBI head Nicolas Doucet, that length was chosen purposefully.Usually games use like one or two mechanics really well, and they build up on top of that, but this is really more about us rebooting everything for every planet, and just keeping Astro and the crew as the center point," Doucet told Engadget at SGF. But it's something we decided from the beginning, that maybe as a result, it won't be like a 50 hour game - but that's okay. It's better to have 15 hours of constant renewal than 30 hours where you feel like, sometimes, it drags a bit."Team ASOBI's goal with Astro Bot is to offer a fresh experience at every turn.We want people to think, What surprise are they going to throw next?'" Doucet said. And if we can maintain that all the way to the end - even like, final boss, game ending, we are trying to keep that alive to the very, very, very last second of the game. If we succeed with that, I think people will have a good time."As in Astro's Playroom, the DualSense controller has a starring role in Astro Bot. The game's bots regularly fly around on a jet-sized DualSense and Astro is on a mission to collect friends and store them inside the controller itself. When new bots are picked up they appear inside an on-screen DualSense, and when players shake the controller in real life, it's mirrored in the game. The little characters sway and knock into each other, and they can even pop out of the gamepad if it's rattled in the proper way, and it's all just pretty adorable.PlayStationIt's refreshing to see Sony leaning into silliness.The design of Astro has a little bit of a tummy, and actually, the bots originally were supposed to look a little bit like toddlers," Doucet said. They look a little bit clumsy on their legs and, you know, their butts sticking out as if they were wearing nappies and stuff. The design came from that, so that the silhouette would be endearing and also a little bit silly. But that was separated from the tightness [of the mechanics]. It's almost like there's two mindsets, because the silliness can be there and we kind of laugh about it, but when it comes to clearing a challenge, it's good to be tight. It's only pixel perfect."The balance between acuity and absurdity is what makes Astro Bot so compelling, even just in its demo form. It feels like a solid platformer first, providing a mechanically sound foundation where all of the nonsense can thrive.The silliness usually comes from animation and the visual side, whereas the tightness of the gameplay comes from the engineering and really the game design and programming," Doucet said. If I go back to the origins of Astro, before being a funny-to-look-at platformer, it was actually a platformer that feels good, where the jump lands exactly where you want and starts when you want. Your input lag and all of that was really the focus point."The PlayStation demo space at Summer Game Fest was a cool cave of happiness, featuring Lego Horizon Adventures and Astro Bot, two games that turn classic Sony characters into irreverent cartoon versions of themselves. Considering some of PlayStation's most popular protagonists are serious, grizzled warriors like Kratos, Joel, Ellie, Wander, the Bloodborne guy and Aloy, there's room for these interpretations to go horribly wrong. Astro Bot gets it right (and it sounds like Lego Horizon Adventures does, too).The writing of the games isn't as important to us as what the character background is," Doucet said. In the case of The Last of Us, for example, the main characters are good characters. They have complex decisions to make, but fundamentally, they're good people. There would be nothing wrong about questioning, Who is Ellie?' and, Who is Joel?' And then, you know, parents and kids can exchange [ideas]. You can imagine a good conversation coming out of that."PlayStationThe character I was most stoked to see in Astro Bot was the red-cloaked protagonist from Journey. While the meeting immediately triggered memories of loss, discovery and introspection, I was mostly just happy to see an old friend in an unexpected place. The fact that the character was guaranteed to be carefree and comedic here added an extra layer of mental security to the experience. A colleague who was watching me play didn't immediately recognize the Journey character in Astro Bot and I was happy to explain it, automatically recounting some of my own experiences with the game from back in the day. It's easy to see how Astro Bot will introduce new audiences to classic PlayStation franchises, while also reigniting those feel-good hormones in veteran players.But I'll be honest: I don't really need the PlayStation characters in Astro Bot. They're adorable and capable of generating a warm tinge of familiarity, but for me, Astro Bot's allure doesn't lie in its nostalgia play. Instead, I view the character appearances more like easter eggs, cute but not crucial to the actual gameplay. Which, I have to say again, is incredibly competent, replayable and fun. Stellar platforming is Astro Bot's true joy.Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/astro-bot-is-a-supremely-silly-and-incredibly-smooth-platformer-200012651.html?src=rss

Google is making some significant changes to ChromeOS, the operating system that powers Chromebooks, but they may not be easy for you to spot. Future versions of the OS will lean more heavily on the same tech on which Android is based. More specifically, Google says it will "be embracing portions of the Android stack, like the Android Linux kernel and Android frameworks, as part of the foundation of ChromeOS."The ChromeOS and Android teams already have some experience of working together, having delivered features like the ability to run Android apps on Chromebooks. The ChromeOS crew has adopted Android's Bluetooth tech too.There are several reasons for this shift, including engineering efficiencies and helping phones and accessories become more compatible with Chromebooks. Google says it will "continue to deliver the unmatched security, consistent look and feel, and extensive management capabilities that ChromeOS users, enterprises and schools love."There's another major reason for baking more Android tech into ChromeOS: to enable more AI features. Google says this approach will help it to roll out new AI tools at a faster and larger scale across more devices. Given that Android devices are where many users will likely interact with the company's AI products most often outside of Search, G Suite and Gmail, it's not too surprising that Google would want to bring some of the same nous to ChromeOS.Don't expect to see the fruits of this labor on your Chromebook anytime soon, though. Google notes that while the under-the-hood work is starting now, the upgrades "won't be ready for consumers for quite some time." Once the overhauled ChromeOS is ready for primetime, the company promises a "seamless" transition to it.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/chromeos-will-lean-more-on-the-same-tech-that-powers-android-194842840.html?src=rss

Eight former SpaceX engineers filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk on Wednesday, accusing the CEO of sexual harassment and retaliation. The same group of fired employees have also filed complaints with the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) about SpaceX's alleged retaliation. Bloomberg first reported on the lawsuit.Musk knowingly and purposefully created an unwelcome hostile work environment based upon his conduct of interjecting into the workplace vile sexual photographs, memes, and commentary that demeaned women and/or the LGBTQ+ community," the eight former employees wrote in Wednesday's filing.The former SpaceX engineers said some of them were harassed by other co-workers who mimicked Musk's posts," in an alleged example of mob bullying under the influence of their superior's behavior. The plaintiffs wrote that this created a wildly uncomfortable hostile work environment."The group worked together on an open letter in 2022, highlighting the Tesla founder's allegedly problematic behavior. They say they were fired in retaliation for that essay.According to Bloomberg, the filing says the former SpaceX engineers have reason to believe Musk made the decision to fire them in retaliation for their letter. The complaint claims that when a SpaceX HR official suggested the company conduct a formal investigation before taking any decisive action, Musk replied, I don't care - fire them."The engineers' case with the NLRB has been held up by an appeals court injunction despite the board agreeing that SpaceX illegally retaliated against them. SpaceX sued the agency in January, calling its structure unconstitutional."The lawsuit follows a report on Tuesday detailing allegations that Musk had sexual relations with two female employees and asked a third to have his babies.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/elon-musk-sued-for-sexual-harassment-and-retaliation-by-former-spacex-engineers-190846047.html?src=rss

Tile owner Life360 says a hacker obtained personal information on customers of the Bluetooth tracker brand. The details include names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and Tile device ID numbers. Life 360 CEO Chris Hulls said in a statement that the stolen data does not include credit card numbers, passwords, other login credentials, location data of Tile devices or government-issued ID numbers."Similar to many other companies, Life360 recently became the victim of a criminal extortion attempt," Hulls wrote. "We received emails from an unknown actor claiming to possess Tile customer information. We promptly initiated an investigation into the potential incident and detected unauthorized access to a Tile customer support platform (but not our Tile service platform)."Hulls added that Life360 believes the stolen data was limited to customer names, their physical and email addresses and device IDs. "We have taken and will continue to take steps designed to further protect our systems from bad actors, and we have reported this event and the extortion attempt to law enforcement," Hulls wrote. "We remain committed to keeping families safe online and in the real world."The attack appears to have gone beyond pinching user data, however. According to 404 Media, which first reported on the intrusion, the hacker was able to gain access to some of Tile's internal tools, including one used to process any location data requests submitted by law enforcement.The hacker says they used login credentials that apparently belonged to a former Tile employee to access the customer support systems (Tile said in a separate statement to 404 Media that it later deactivated these credentials). The information they obtained is also said to include order and return details along with the payment method used by the customers. They were also seemingly able to access tools that, for instance, allow Tile to transfer ownership of a Bluetooth tracker from one email address to another, create administrator accounts and send push notifications. The hacker told 404 Media that they didn't use these functions.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/a-hacker-obtained-tile-customers-personal-information-171632302.html?src=rss

Jabra is exiting the consumer earbuds business. The move is shocking, as Jabra's parent company made the announcement at the same time it unveiled new models of its Elite earbuds. Peter Karlstromer, CEO of parent company GN, said the decision is part of our commitment to focus on attractive markets where we can deliver profitable growth and strong returns."The company will discontinue the Jabra Elite (consumer earbuds) and Talk (mono Bluetooth) product lines. In late 2023, it pivoted the Elite line towards the premium segment in a move designed to compete with industry heavyweights Apple, Sony and Bose. However, the company lamented that its target markets have changed over time." Its current assessment is that we cannot generate a fair return on investment compared to the many other opportunities we have within our Hearing, Enterprise, and Gaming businesses."Jabra will reduce the inventory of the to-be-discontinued products, and it expects to complete the wind-down by the end of the year. However, GN says it will service and support its devices for several years."Although a bit farther under the radar than obvious competitors like AirPods, Jabra made some high-quality audio gear. Engadget's audio expert Billy Steele called the 2021 Jabra Elite 3 the new standard for affordable wireless earbuds," as the company struck an alluring balance between quality and value.Now, who's pumped for the new Jabra Elite 10 and Elite 8 Active earbuds coming later this month?Update, June 12 2024, 1:15PM ET: This story and headline have been updated to note that Jabra's parent company made the announcement it was exiting the headphone business the same day it released new earbuds, not the day after.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/jabra-says-its-exiting-the-consumer-headphones-business-a-day-after-launching-new-earbuds-164518215.html?src=rss

It looks like the sun hasn't quite set on Finn, Jake, Marceline, Princess Bubblegum and the rest of the post-apocalyptic gang. The iconic cartoon Adventure Time is coming back in a big way, according to a report by Variety.Cartoon Network Studios is working on three new entries in the franchise, one movie and two TV shows. There are no plot details regarding the movie, which makes sense given the end of the show and those follow-up specials, but there's a bunch of talented people behind the scenes.Rebecca Sugar is back, who made many of the best episodes of the original run before creating Steven Universe. The same goes for Adam Muto, the showrunner throughout the latter half of the series, and Over the Garden Wall co-creator Patrick McHale. We don't have any release date or platform information for the movie, but it'll likely stream on Max.Adventure Time: Side Quests is a kids' show that looks similar in theme to the early seasons of the OG series. It stars a younger Finn and Jake as they get their start in adventuring throughout the Land of Ooo. This won't be a heavily serialized show. It'll mostly be standalone episodes starring earlier versions of beloved characters, like The Ice King. Nate Cash, who was an animator on the original series, is attached to this one.

Summer nights are ideal for gathering around a fire pit - but smoke in your eyes is less than fun. Solo Stove makes stainless steel numbers that minimize the smoke thanks to a double wall design that recirculates the air and reburns the particulate, resulting in less of it getting in your face and in your hair. If you've got an outdoor space that could use a little night time fire ambiance, now is a good time to get a Solo Stove as the company is hosting a sale on bundles of its more popular models. That includes the Ranger Essential Bundle for $210 instead of $320 (a $110 discount).The Ranger is billed as the portable model - big enough for people to gather around, but at 15-inches across, you can easily take it with you on camping trips and the like. The bundle includes the stove ($230 at full price on its own) plus a stand to give the stove a little lift, an ash plate for easier cleanup, a lid to keep the rain out and a carry case to help with portability.The bundle comes as part of a larger Father's Day sale, with discounts across the site, including a set based around the mid-sized, 19.5-inch Bonfire for $80 off at $340. The largest stove, the 30-inch diameter Canyon, is part of a bundle that's seeing the smallest discount, with $20 off to make it $820. Whichever size you go for, we think you'll enjoy the mostly smoke free experience - and recommend it in our guide to outdoor gear. One of our favorite pizza ovens from that same guide, the Solo Pi dual fuel is also on sale, for $70 off the starter bundle (it's now $380).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/solo-stove-fire-pit-bundles-are-up-to-110-off-right-now-161521027.html?src=rss

Sony takes games seriously. That's reflected in its tentpole releases, which are overwhelmingly gritty, adult affairs like Horizon, God of War and The Last of Us. It's surprising, then, that its Summer Game Fest demo area replaced Sad Dads and apocalypses with cutesy Astro Bot figurines and Lego. Lots of Lego.Lego Horizon Adventures might not have generated the Summer Game Fest headlines that the new Doom and Assassin's Creed games did, but in many ways its legacy may be more interesting. Co-developed by Guerilla Games (known for the Horizon and Killzone series) and the AAA support team Studio Gobo, it aims to bring the world of the Horizon games to a new generation - and a new platform, the Nintendo Switch.Horizon Adventures isn't the first Sony game on Switch. MLB: The Show routinely comes to both Nintendo's console and Xbox, but that's a licensed sports game, and Horizon is a key PlayStation franchise. It has a VR spin-off, a live-action adaptation confirmed for Netflix and an MMO heavily rumored in its future. Bringing the latest iteration of the series day one to Switch, then, is unusual.We're trying to bring in as broad an audience as possible," Guerilla Games narrative director James Windeler told Engadget. The collaboration with Switch, that's an incredibly unique opportunity ... it will really help bring in a family-friendly audience."It's also just a plain bigger audience. Nintendo's console has been around since 2017, and the market for Switch games is over 140 million. (For context, there are around 58 million PlayStation 5s in the wild.) Lego titles are also in a tiny minority of non-Nintendo games to top the Switch retail sales charts.The game itself, from the 30-minute demo I played, seems delightful. The world of Horizon translates well to Lego, with the robodinos in particular being a highlight. There is already a Forbidden West Tallneck Lego set and it would be extremely surprising if we don't see Thunderjaws and Scrappers showing up in Lego stores soon. Combat is surprisingly faithful to the original games, with Aloy sneaking around tall grass to get a good angle on an enemy and using her Focus to spot weak points. Also faithful to the original games is that stealth can very quickly fall by the wayside in favor of frenetic dodging. Less faithful: I got through one tricky fight by repeatedly summoning a hot dog vendor to throw exploding franks all over the place. It is a Lego game, I guess.Tone-wise, Guerilla is shooting for the Lego Movie-like cross-generational irreverent humor, which isn't really my jam but I appreciate it. Windeler said Guerilla is trying to hit key elements of the first game without directly remaking it: It's definitely not a one-to-one retelling, but neither is it a parody in the sense that you don't need to be a Horizon aficionado to really kind of respond to the humor. It's broader in that way." The voice cast from the original games, including Ashly Burch as Aloy and JB Blanc as Rost, is back for Horizon Adventures and seemingly having a lot of fun. Burch's delivery in particular is ultra wide-eyed and excited, more like her work as Tiny Tina in the Borderlands series or one of her many animated characters. It's a fun spin on a traditionally stoic character.SonyCo-op is a big feature for Horizon Adventures. Local co-op is a drop-in, drop-out affair, which, as with most Lego games, enables an adult to easily help a kid get past a tricky area. But Lego games are also a lot of fun to play among consenting adults if you're both into the particular franchise - I know plenty of grown-ups who live for Lego Star Wars. Away from the couch, there is online multiplayer, which is obviously more targeted at adults.I am not a huge Horizon fan. Of all the open-world collect-a-thons, it's one of my favorites, but it is very much not my genre. My partner is a fan, though, and we're always on the lookout for middle-ground co-op games that can bridge the gap in our tastes. Maybe Horizon Adventures could be that, and I'll become a real Horizon head because of it?Finding new audiences is something Sony and Microsoft have been grappling with over the past couple of years. This Xbox-PlayStation generation has not seen as explosive growth as the last, and the kind of AAA experiences they typically shoot for are expensive to produce.Microsoft seems to be committed to multiplatform releases for several established franchises it's acquired, like Call of Duty, Diablo and Doom. It also ported four formerly exclusive titles - Hi-Fi Rush, Grounded, Pentiment and Sea of Thieves - to rivals' machines earlier this year.Sony's approach has, until recently, been to court PC players with ports of older titles such as Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War. This year it also released Helldivers 2 on PC day one, which went very well until it didn't. Company president Hiroki Totoki told investors in February that he would like to go aggressive on improving our margin performance" (what a gamer!) by focusing more on multi-platform releases. The assumption at the time was that he was solely referring to PCs, but the Switch release of Horizon Adventures seemingly opens this effort up to more platforms.It's unlikely that Sony will bring its giant AAA games to a rival console at launch. But it could be that Sony begins to treat the Switch much like Nintendo used to treat mobile devices. The mid '10s saw an influx of Nintendo games on iPhone and Android, including Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp and Mario Kart Tour. The strategy was pretty clear: Introduce Nintendo characters to a more casual audience, and convert a number of them over to the full" experience. If Horizon Adventures goes well - and why would it not? - it's easy to see Sony opening the floodgates and sending a bunch of its franchises to Nintendo's mass-market console.Lego Horizon Adventures launches 'Holiday 2024' on PlayStation 5, PC and Nintendo Switch.Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/lego-horizon-adventures-might-be-sonys-most-important-game-of-the-year-160026354.html?src=rss

The Anker 334 MagGo magnetic power bank is on sale via Amazon for just $31. That's a discount of over 20 percent and a record low price for this particular model. The sale even applies to all of the available color options, five in all, which is something of a rarity.Let's go over some of the features. This device boasts a 10,000mAh capacity, which should allow for around 20 extra hours of smartphone use. It charges wirelessly with 10N of magnetic force and can both juice up your phone and charge itself simultaneously, when plugged into some power.It's also pretty small, easily fitting into a pocket or bag, and downright cute. The varied color options help with that. There are integrated temperature sensors to prevent overheating and handy LED lights on the exterior to let you know when it's charging.This is, more or less, an entry-level power bank, so it doesn't have some of the high-tech bells and whistles of its more expensive cousins. It can't charge multiple items at once, like some of the 3-in-1 products out there, and takes around four hours to fully charge a modern smartphone. Still, it is an Anker product, and the company makes good chargers and power banks.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/pick-up-this-anker-magnetic-power-bank-for-only-31-151542078.html?src=rss

You folks out there who have been waiting for a good deal before picking up Amazon's Kindle Scribe, the company's first Kindle with stylus support, now may be your time. The device has dropped to an all-time low price of $240. That's 29 percent off the regular price for the base model with the Basic Pen and 16 GB of storage. In addition, there's an option you can plump for that includes three months of Kindle Unlimited. That bundle costs the same price, but remember to cancel Kindle Unlimited before the three months are up if you don't want to keep using it (the service typically costs $12 per month).One important thing to bear in mind here is that Amazon Prime Day is slated to take place in July. That mega sale always includes steep discounts on Amazon's own products. While $240 is the best offer we've seen for the Kindle Scribe, there's the possibility that the price will drop even lower for a couple of days in July.That said, a discount of $100 is nothing to sniff at for our pick for the best e-reader E Ink tablet around. The 10.2-inch touchscreen has auto-adjusting front lights to make it easy to use in a variety of lighting conditions. The stylus and tablet combine to deliver a low-latency writing experience, which makes writing on the device by hand feel more natural. You can create multiple notebooks too, adding pages as you see fit.The Kindle Scribe's battery can power the device for months between charges as E Ink screens are incredibly efficient. You can, of course, read e-books from Amazon and Amazon Unlimited. You can also listen to audiobooks thanks to Audible and Bluetooth support.On the downside, we found it somewhat frustrating that it's not possible to write notes in the margins of most books. For the time being, that function is limited to a selection that's made up of journals and puzzle books such as crosswords and sudoku ones. In fiction and non-fiction books, you'll need to hold the stylus against the screen to highlight a word or phrase and add notes there. If that's not an issue for you, we reckon you can't go too far wrong with the Kindle Scribe.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-kindle-scribe-drops-to-a-record-low-of-240-143801159.html?src=rss

Pew Research and the Knight Foundation just put out a pair of lengthy reports on how Americans are experiencing news and politics on social media. There are a number of noteworthy stats in the research but, for me, it mostly underscores that news distribution is kind of a mess.It's not that news has disappeared from X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, but the way that most users are encountering news content is vastly different from platform to platform. And much of what people say they are seeing is not coming from journalists and media organizations but influencers other unconnected accounts.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the researchers found that most people aren't on social media to follow news. A minority of TikTok (41 percent), Instagram (33 percent) and Facebook (37 percent) users reported that getting news" was a major or minor" reason they used the platform. X, as Pew points out, was a notable exception, with 65 percent of people reporting news as a reason they use the service.That may not be especially surprising, given Twitter's long-running reputation as a news source and Meta's more recent shift away from the media industry. And even though majorities of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok said they didn't seek out news, most people reported that they see some kind of news-related content on the platforms.But when you dig into the kind of news participants say they see, the top categories were opinions and funny posts" about current events. Look at the breakdown below: opinions and funny posts were significantly more prevalent than news articles or information about a breaking news event" on every platform. (Again, the only exception was X, where people said they see articles at roughly the same rate as funny posts" about the news.)Pew researchIt's also striking to consider the sources for news-related posts reported by the study's participants. On every platform except X, the top source of news and news-related content is not journalists or media orgs. On Facebook and Instagram, it's friends and family, and on TikTok it's other people." The other people" category is also quite high for X, with 75 percent saying they see news from these accounts. This suggests that much of the news content people see on X and TikTok is being driven by those platforms' recommendation algorithms.Pew ResearchWhile Pew typically repeats the same sorts of studies at regular intervals, allowing readers to extrapolate trends over time, this study is brand new, so unfortunately, we don't have historical data to compare all these stats to. But they do broadly reflect what many in the media industry have been experiencing over the last few years. Publishers are getting far less traffic from social media, and news is increasingly filtered through influencers, meme creators and random algorithmically-surfaced accounts. It's also worth noting that for every platform, most people said that at least sometimes" they see inaccurate news. And for X, which had the biggest share of news consumers and people seeing journalistic content, 86 percent of participants reported seeing news that seems inaccurate."The report's authors don't draw a conclusion about what this all means in general, let alone in an election year when there is increasing anxiety about the spread of AI-fueled misinformation. But the report suggests that finding reliable and accurate news on social media is far from straightforward.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/news-on-social-media-is-a-fractured-mess-pew-study-indicates-140001507.html?src=rss

The European Union is going impose additional tariffs of up to 38 percent on Chinese-made electric vehicles in an effort to protect the region's manufacturers from unfair competition, according to The New York Times and the Financial Times. The European Commission has already warned Chinese carmakers about the additional taxes, which will go on top of the existing 10 percent tariff on their EVs and will be different for each manufacturer. BYD's and Geely's vehicles will be hit by tariffs between 17.4 and 20 percent, while SAIC will face an additional 38 percent in taxes.Rates for other carmakers vary, depending on whether they've cooperated with an ongoing EU investigation into the Chinese government's subsidies for its EV manufacturers. Because of those subsidies, China-made EVs can be sold at much lower prices than their European competitors'. The Chinese carmakers that have cooperated with the probe will be subjected to an additional tariff of 21 percent, while those who didn't will get an extra 38 percent. The Financial Times says European Commission's Margaritis Schinas has reached out to Chinese authorities to "explore possible ways to resolve" the issue. The new tariffs will be enforced on July 4 if they fail to reach an agreement.While the EU said that it's introducing additional taxes on Chinese EVs to protect the bloc's manufacturers, some authorities and European automakers oppose the move out of concern that it could lead to retaliation from China. They're specifically worried that China's response would make EVs more expensive in general, which in turn could drive away customers, especially those who are still not wholly convinced that they should switch to electric.The EU's announcement comes a month after the US quadrupled the import tariff for Chinese EVs. It was part of a bigger move by the US government to quash China's influence on its economy, along with imposing additional taxes on Chinese-made semiconductors, solar cells, batteries and medical products.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/chinese-ev-makers-face-additional-tariffs-of-up-to-38-percent-in-the-eu-130046170.html?src=rss

Waymo is voluntarily recalling its robotaxis after one of them collided with a telephone pole in an alley enroute to pick up a passenger, The Verge reported. The vehicle was unoccupied and no bystanders were injured.At the time of the May 21st accident, the Waymo vehicle went through an alley lined with telephone poles mounted at street level rather than on a curb, with a yellow line showing where to drive. While pulling over, it struck one of the poles at 8 MPH and sustained some damage, Waymo said."It never made it to pick us up," the passenger waiting for the car, Jericka Mitchell, told 12News. Mitchell reportedly heard, but didn't see the accident.The company filed a recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) after updating the software in its entire self-driving fleet of 672 vehicles. The update is designed to fix an error that assigned a low damage score to the pole and failed to account for the alleyway's hard edge.It's only Waymo's second recall. The first happened earlier this year when two of its autonomous vehicles crashed into the same pickup truck that was being towed. In that one, Waymo found that its software failed to predict the movements of the vehicle due to "persistent orientation mismatch" between the towed vehicle and the one towing it.Waymo is also under investigation for more than 24 incidents including crashes and traffic violations. Rival Cruise, owned by GM, was involved in a more serious incident last year, wherein one of its robotaxis accidentally dragged someone hit by another vehicle a few dozen feet down a San Francisco street. California then suspended its license to operate in the state and Cruise eventually paused all robotaxi operationsThis article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/waymo-issues-recall-after-one-its-self-driving-taxis-crashed-into-a-pole-121937607.html?src=rss

Elon Musk had sexual relations with a SpaceX intern who was later hired onto his executive staff as a troubleshooter, The Wall Street Journal reported. He also had an intimate relationship with a second employee and allegedly asked a third woman to have his babies, according to the report. When the latter refused, Musk denied her a raise and complained about her performance, according to the WSJ's sources.In one case, Musk pursued a relationship with an intern. Later, he contacted her about a fulltime job at SpaceX to "find problems at the company and fix them," according to the report. She became a full-time member of Musk's executive group, something former employees found unusual for someone so junior - despite her talent as an engineer. (The woman told the WSJ that she didn't want to be part of the article and said in an affidavit that her and Musk remained friends.)Another woman said she was accused by SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell of having an affair with Shotwell's husband. The woman reported the event to HR, something that allegedly got back to Shotwell. Shotwell then demanded the woman be removed from the chief executive's office. Musk later had a sexual relationship with the same woman, who has since left the company.The WSJ said its reporting is based on text message, emails, documents and interviews with more than 48 people, "including former employees, people familiar with Musk's interactions with female subordinates and friends and family of the women."Musk didn't reply to the WSJ. In a comment, Shotwell said:"The untruths, mischaracterizations, and revisionist history in your email paint a completely misleading narrative. I continue to be amazed by what this extraordinary group of people are achieving every day even amidst all the forces acting against us. And Elon is one of the best humans I know."This is far from the first report about inappropriate behavior at SpaceX, though. Late in 2021, former employees described a "culture of sexual harassment" at the company, including unwanted advances, lewd comments and physical contact. Last year, Musk was accused of sexual misconduct by a SpaceX flight attendant and earlier in 2024, a SpaceX lawsuit claimed repeated instances of gender discrimination and basic safeguarding failures.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wsj-details-elon-musks-questionable-conduct-with-spacex-employees-120057625.html?src=rss

There was so much Apple had to cram into its WWDC 2024 keynote that some features were left out of the spotlight. Here at the company's campus, I've had the chance to speak with various executives, as well as get deeper dives into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, Apple Intelligence, watchOS 11 and more. In these sessions, I've been able to learn more about how specific things work, like what steps exactly do you take to customize your iPhone's home screen and control center. I also got to see some other updates that weren't even briefly mentioned during the keynote, like new support for hiking routes in Apple Maps and what training load insights look like on watchOS 11. Of all the unmentioned features I've come to discover, here are my favorites.Maps: Create and share custom routesI've always been a Google Maps girl, in part because that app had superior information compared to Apple Maps in its early years. These days, I stick to Google Maps because it has all my saved places and history. When I found out that iOS 18 would bring updates to Apple Maps, particularly to do with hiking and routes, I was intrigued.Basically, in iOS 18, when you go into search in Maps, you'll see a new option under "Find Nearby" called hikes. It'll show you recommended hikes, and you can filter by the type of hike (loop, for example) and specify a length. You'll find options in the vicinity and tapping into one will show you a topographical view with the elevation details, how challenging it should be as well as estimated duration. You can tap to save each route and store it for offline reference later and add notes too. There's a new Library view and you'll find it in your profile in Maps.You'll also be able to create new routes in Maps by tapping anywhere to start defining your route. You can keep tapping to add waypoints, which will cause the trail to continue to connect them, then hit a "Close loop" button to finish your trail. These routes can be shared, though it's not yet clear if you can share it to, say, your friend or driver to have them take your preferred path to your destination.AppleThe hikes that Apple will serve up in Maps are created by its own team, which is working with US National Parks, so they'll only be available for the 63 national parks in the country to begin with. In other words, it's not porting information from AllTrails, for example. In a press release, Apple said thousands of hikes will be available to browse at launch.As a city dweller who only sometimes hikes, my excitement is less about hiking and more about the potential of sharing my custom routes to show people how they should walk to my building or favorite restaurant from the train station. It's a compelling feature, and arguably a reason I'd choose Apple Maps versus Google's.Calendar integration with RemindersFrankly, the Maps update might be my favorite out of everything that wasn't shown off during the WWDC 2024 keynote by a huge margin. But some of the new tools coming to Calendar tickle my fancy too. Specifically, the new integration with reminders makes it easier to not just schedule your tasks right into your daybook, but also check them off from the Calendar app. You can soon move reminders around by long pressing and dragging them, so that note to call you mom can be placed on a slot at 5pm on Wednesday, instead of sitting in your Reminders app. In addition, Calendar is getting new views that better detail your level of activity each day in a month, similar to how the Fitness app shows your daily rings progress quickly in the monthly view.Tapback insights showing who exactly responded with what emojiThis isn't one wasn't mentioned at all during the keynote, but there are details about how Tapback works that weren't described at yesterday's show. If you're like me, you might not even have remembered that Tapback refers to those reactions you can send in Messages by double tapping on a blue or gray bubble. With iOS 18, you'll get more options than the limited selection of heart, thumbs up, thumbs down, "Haha," exclamation points and question mark. They're also going to show up in full color with the update, instead of the existing (boring) gray.What I found out later on, though, is that when you double tap a message that already has reactions attached to it, a new balloon appears at the top of your screen showing who has responded with which emoji. This should make it easier to lurk in a group chat, but also could double as an unofficial polling tool by asking your friends to react with specific emojis to indicate different answers. That should make Messages a bit more like Slack, and I wish Whatsapp and Telegram would take note.Others: Math Notes in iPhone, updates to Journal and SafariThere are quite a lot of features coming to iOS 18 that didn't get much love on the WWDC stage, like the Journal app's new widget for the home screen, which shows prompts for reflection and lets you create new entries. Journal also has a new insights view that displays your writing streaks and other historical data, plus a new tool that lets you add your state of mind to each entry from within the app.Meanwhile, Safari is getting a new "Highlights" button in the search (or URL) bar, and tapping it will show a machine-learning-generated summary of the webpage you're on. Tapping into this brings up a panel with more information like navigation directions to a restaurant mentioned on the page, for example, or a phone number to call up a business. You can also quickly launch the reader view from this pane.I wasn't super enthusiastic about either of those, largely because I don't use the Journal app much and I don't need Safari summarizing a website for me. But some other buried updates that I really wanted to shout out. For example, Math Notes for iPad and using Apple Pencil certainly got a lot of time, but it wasn't till I looked at Apple's iOS 18 press release that I found out the iPhone's Notes app is also getting a version of it. According to the screenshot Apple included, it looks like you can tally up and split expenses between a group of friends by writing a list of expenses and how much each item cost, then add the names of each expense to a formula with plus and equal signs, then get that divided by the number of people in your group. Not quite Splitwise, but I could see this becoming more powerful over time.I was also intrigued by some of the Smart Script features on iPadOS 18, especially when I realized that you can just move your handwritten words around by dragging your handwritten words further away from each other, and the rest of your scrawled text moves in tandem. This is hard to describe, and I'll have to wait till I can try it for myself to show you an animated example. But it was impressive, even if it's not extremely useful.Finally, the Passwords app and other privacy updates got a shout out during the keynote, but I learned more about how things like accessory setup and contacts sharing with apps work. Apple is releasing a new accessory setup kit so that device makers can adopt a pairing interface similar to how you'd connect your AirPods or Apple Watch to your iPhone. If the developers don't use this approach, the new Bluetooth setup interface will be much clearer about what other Bluetooth devices are on your local network and what you're actually granting access to when you agree to let an app see other devices on your network. Though this wasn't entirely skipped during the keynote, the Passwords app is something that makes me happy, since I'm absolutely sick of having to dig through settings to find a way to get codes for specific apps I use my iPhone's authenticator to unlock.There are plenty of features that were talked about that I'm excited by and learned more about the workings of, including the new dynamic clock style in the Photos face in watchOS 11, pinned collections in the redesigned Photos app and iPadOS mirroring for easier remote tech support. Oh, and that new Airplay feature that'll let you send money to friends by holding your phones together? Yes! Being able to pause and adjust your Activity rings in watchOS and that Training Load insight? Hallelujah!And though I can see the appeal of locked and hidden apps, I'm not sure I'd find much use for that and it would probably exacerbate my already prone-to-suspicion nature.I'm also a little wary of things like Genmoji and Image Playground, which are both Apple Intelligence features that won't hit all iOS 18 devices. There will be metadata information indicating when images were generated by Apple's AI, and guardrails in place to prevent the creation of abusive and exploitative content.Clearly, there are plenty of updates coming to Apple's phones, tablets, laptops and wearables later this year, and I can't wait to try them out. The public beta should be ready around the end of summer this year, which is when most people (who are willing to risk an unstable platform) can check them out.Catch up here for all the news out of Apple's WWDC 2024.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/my-favorite-ios-18-ipados-18-and-watchos-11-features-that-flew-under-the-radar-at-wwdc-2024-113044069.html?src=rss

Elon Musk has withdrawn his lawsuit against OpenAI, a day before a judge was set to hear a request for dismissal. Musk sued OpenAI, saying its founders had violated its nonprofit status, to become a de-facto part of Microsoft. OpenAI said there was no such violation, and the lawsuit was likely a way for Musk to gain access to its secrets. Despite ending the suit, Musk might be nursing this grudge, tweeting if Apple integrates OpenAI's tools into its software, he'll ban iPhones from his companies.- Dan CooperThe biggest stories you might have missedX is officially making likes (mostly) private for everyoneYou can't mirror your iPhone while mirroring your Mac on Apple Vision ProNetflix drops a proper trailer for Arcane's second (and last) seasonGeneral Motors revives its robotaxi service, Cruise, in Houston, with human driversApple refuses to call Apple Intelligence AIApple Intelligence: What devices and features will actually be supported?Netgear is releasing more affordable versions of its Orbi and Nighthawk routersApple ID is now Apple AccountYou can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!Light unveils a new minimalist phone with a black-and-white OLED screenYou'll even have to stroke your own chin.LightLight, makers of a minimalist" handset that does most of what a dumbphone would do with an added layer of pretension, has launched its third-generation device. The Light Phone III gains a black-and-white OLED display, camera and a built-in NFC chip for mobile payments. But it'll cost you $800, which should be enough to send you scrambling for a $40 Nokia instead.Continue Reading.Spotify's HiFi plan could finally arrive this year, but you may need to pay extra$5 a month for better-sounding sound.We might know how much more Spotify's high-fidelity plan will cost, should the thing ever arrive. Rumors suggest the plan is coming by the end of the year and will cost $5 a month on top of an existing Premium subscription. Much as there are rumors of extra features thrown into that mix, it's a significant charge on top of what Apple Music charges for the same thing.Continue Reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-musk-backs-down-from-openai-lawsuit-111549227.html?src=rss

Thanks to X showing what its users "like" on its platform, politicians and public personalities have been caught looking at salacious and unsavory tweets in the past. Now, the platform formerly known as Twitter is making likes mostly private, and according to company chief Elon Musk, it's an important change so that people can "like posts without getting attacked for doing so." The company originally launched the ability to hide the likes tab as a perk for X Premium subscribers last year. "[K]eep spicy likes private," X said when it announced the new feature.

There was no new Apple hardware at WWDC 2024, but Apple still had tons of news around AI and its upcoming operating systems. In this bonus episode, Cherlynn and Devindra brave the California heat to discuss Apple Intelligence and how it's different than other AI solutions. And they dive into other new features they're looking forward to, like the iPhone mirroring in macOS Sequoia and iPadOS 18's surprisingly cool Calculator app.Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!Subscribe!

So close, yet so far. Ahead of WWDC 2024, I had hoped Apple would let you mirror your iPhone inside of the Vision Pro, just like how you can use your Mac on an enormous virtual display. Instead, we got iPhone Mirroring on macOS Sequoia. As the name implies, it will let you see everything on your iPhone from the comfort of your Mac.But, I wondered, what if you mirrored a Mac that was mirroring an iPhone in the Vision Pro? It seems like the ideal workaround in theory, one that would solve the headset's annoying inability to play nicely with your iPhone. But, unfortunately, it won't work. We've heard from knowledgeable sources that Apple's hardware only supports one of its Continuity mirroring features at the time. So if you're sending your Mac's screen to the Vision Pro, you won't be able to mirror your iPhone at the same time.We haven't heard the exact reason for that limitation, but I'd wager it comes down to networking limitations. Mirroring a sharp and lag-free version of your Mac's screen is difficult enough - juggling that alongside a perfectly rendered copy of your iPhone might be too tough for some Macs. Apple is already pushing beyond its current Continuity restrictions with visionOS 2, which will support higher resolution Mac mirroring, as well as the ability to virtualize an ultra-wide display. So perhaps there's room for multi-device mirroring down the line.It's not hard to imagine Apple bringing the iPhone mirroring feature directly to the Vision Pro eventually, but ideally, it would also work alongside Mac mirroring in the headset.Here are a few other tidbits we've learned about iPhone mirroring on macOS Sequoia while exploring WWDC:

Elon Musk dropped a lawsuit against OpenAI one day before a judge in California state court was set to hear OpenAI's request for dismissal. Musk's suit, which was filed in February, had accused OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of violating the company's non-profit status and instead prioritizing profits over using AI to help humanity.In the 35-page suit, Musk had alleged that OpenAI had become a closed-source de facto subsidiary" of Microsoft, which invested $13 billion in the company and owns a 49 percent stake. Microsoft uses OpenAI's technology to power Copilot, the company's generative AI tools that are deeply integrated in products like Windows and Office.OpenAI had reportedly requested for the lawsuit to be dismissed, arguing that Musk would use any information that emerged as a result to get access to the company's proprietary records and technology." The company had also said that there was no founding agreement for it to breach.OpenAI and Musk's lawyer, Alex Spiro, did not respond to a request for comment from Engadget.Musk, who was one of the founders of OpenAI in 2015, left the company three years later after disagreements over the direction of the organization. He runs xAI an AI startup that makes Grok, a ChatGPT rival that is built into X and is available for paid users. xAI recently raised a $6 billion funding round from top investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital.On Monday, Musk said that he would ban Apple devices from his company's after Apple integrated ChatGPT in its operating systems through a partnership with OpenAI.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/musk-withdraws-his-breach-of-contract-lawsuit-against-openai-221316519.html?src=rss

Yesterday, following Apple's announcement of a partnership with OpenAI to integrate support for ChatGPT into the company's devices, Elon Musk did what he always does: he tweeted. The owner of X wrote, on X, that he would ban Apple devices at his companies "If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level.". And to that I say: Go right ahead. And while you're at it, remove your company's software from Apple's App Store too.Musk's companies (at least the major ones) currently include Tesla, SpaceX, X, X AI and Neuralink. Even if we're just talking about phones - which according to Counterpoint Research Apple currently has a 52 percent market share in the US - around 80,000 of Musk's 155,000 employees would be subject to the ban, if general statistics hold true. And that's not counting anyone who uses a Mac computer or iPad. (Note: The lion's share of these workers would be at Tesla, which employs around 140,000 people.)

After whetting fans' appetites with a teaser back in January, there's a full-length trailer for the second season of Arcane. The animated Netflix show explores the backstories behind some of the many champions in Riot Games' League of Legends.Sisters Vi and Jinx remain at the show's core. Their conflict acts as a foil for the cities of Piltover and Zaun, which are now locked in a deadly conflict following the closing events of season one. Vi is now part of the effort to capture her sibling and destroy the dangerous substance Shimmer. Fans of the MOBA will recognize champions such as Caitlyn and Ekko returning from Arcane's first season, while it appears Singed and Warwick will make their show debut when the new season drops this November. Check it out for yourself:This new season sets up plenty of stunning visuals and compelling drama, but the second batch of episodes will also be the last for Arcane. This show "is just the beginning of our larger storytelling journey and partnership with the wonderful animation studio that is Fortiche," Arcane co-creator Christian Linke said in a League of Legends dev update. From the very beginning, since we started working on this project, we had a very specific ending in mind, which means the story of Arcane wraps up with this second season. Arcane is just the first of many stories that we want to tell in Runeterra," he added.With a clear end point in view, at least the show will get a proper ending instead of an unsatisfactory cliffhanger. The ongoing creative partnership is also a nice silver lining for fans. Considering League of Legends now has more than 160 champions in-game and in-the-works, that's a whole lot of story fodder to explore.Arcane won acclaim both from people who had no prior experience with the MOBA, as well as impressing much of League of Legends' existing international fan base when it debuted on Netflix in November 2021. The show was rewarded with four Emmys in 2022. It was the first show from a streaming network to be honored with the award for outstanding animated program.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflix-drops-a-proper-trailer-for-arcanes-second-and-last-season-210424128.html?src=rss

Cruise, General Motors' beleaguered driverless taxi service, announced Tuesday that it will start testing again around Houston. Cruise announced that they would start with human taxi drivers behind the wheels of its cars before moving to supervised autonomous driving with a safety driver behind the wheel in the coming weeks."The announcement from Cruise landed around the same time that General Motors' chief financial officer Paul Jacobson announced at Deutsche Bank's Global Auto Industry Conference in New York City that the carmaker would inject another $850 million into the robotaxi company to cover operational costs.Cruise has been nothing but a huge money pit for GM. Last year, the company plugged the plug on its driverless taxis when one of its cars in its San Francisco fleet hit a pedestrian who was hurled into the driverless taxi's path by another vehicle and dragged them approximately 20 feet after getting pinned under its tire. The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) suspended the company's permits less than a month later. Cruise laid off nearly a quarter of its workforce and dismissed nine of its executives including the company's co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Kyle Vogy following an investigation into the accident.Since then, Cruise has slowly but surely started showing new signs of life. In April, the company announced it would start redeploying its services in Phoenix. Just as in Houston, Cruise's cars will still be monitored and operated by humans. The autonomous taxi company also plans to expand its services to other cities by engaging with officials and community leaders," according to the company's blog,but gave no timeline on when an extension might happen.Update June 11, 5:45PM ET: This article was updated after publishing to clarify that Cruise's return to Houston is currently limited to testing, rather than picking up fares.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general-motors-revives-its-robotaxi-service-cruise-in-houston-with-human-drivers-205002639.html?src=rss

Bethesda announced Doom: The Dark Ages at the Xbox Games Showcase over the weekend, and easily the most exciting addition to the franchise featured in the trailer is the Shield Saw. As the name suggests it's a shield. Which is also a chainsaw. Naturally, modders have already programmed the weapon into the original Doom.Modder Craneo shared a clip on X yesterday showing how they were able to bring the Shield Saw featured in the trailer for the upcoming Doom sequel into the retro computer game. They converted the old-fashioned chainsaw into an innovative weapon that both protects you from enemy damage and rips opponents to shreds, thereby providing the wielder with a brilliant balance of defense and offense. The video makes it seem you can also toss the Shield Saw, something that was surely a pain to program.

"How do you shorten Apple Intelligence?" That's the question I've asked several Apple employees at WWDC 2024, and their practiced responses have become comically absurd.We just say Apple Intelligence," they tell me. Yah, but do you say that every time? The AI acronym is right there!" I'd retort. The usual response is a stiff smile and clenched teeth, like a human programming error in real-time. (Yes, I'm aware it's just overly aggressive media training in action.) One person suggested they also say "personal intelligence" - yes, a phrase that's longer than Apple Intelligence.There's no doubt Apple Intelligence means many things to the company. It's an effort to compete with Microsoft's (still unproven) Copilot and Google's Gemini. It's a way to make Apple seem "hip" with ChatGPT. And it should enable a slew of new features for consumers. But Apple Intelligence is never "AI" to Apple.Normally, I'd chalk this up to a silly branding quirk. But it becomes a problem as we cover Apple Intelligence. It's a long phrase that's just begging to be shortened to "AI," but then how do you distinguish that abbreviation from ChatGPT, Copilot and the general concept of AI? During the WWDC 2024 keynote, Apple only mentioned the phrase "artificial intelligence" three times: Twice while referring to its previous AI-powered features, and another while referring to "other artificial intelligence tools" like ChatGPT.At this point, I've just decided to call Apple Intelligence "Apple AI." It's shorter and it differentiates the product from competitors. And yes, it just means "Apple Apple Intelligence," but everyone still says "ATM machine" and "PIN number." It's not my fault Apple decided to co-opt the acronym "AI."Catch up here for all the news out of Apple's WWDC 2024.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-refuses-to-call-apple-intelligence-ai-195913202.html?src=rss

Apple Intelligence is coming, but not to every iPhone out there. In fact, you'll need to have a device with an A17 Pro processor or M-series chip to use many of the features unveiled during the Apple Intelligence portion of WWDC 2024. That means only iPhone 15 Pro owners (and those with an M-series iPad or MacBook) will get the iOS 18-related Apple Intelligence (AI?) updates like Genmoji, Image Playground, the redesigned Siri and Writing Tools. Then there are things like Math Notes and Smart Script on iPadOS 18 and the new features in Messages coming via iOS 18 that will be arriving for anyone that can upgrade to the latest platforms. It's confusing, and the best way to anticipate what you're getting is to know what processor is in your iPhone, iPad or Mac.Why won't the iPhone 14 Pro get Apple Intelligence?It's not evident exactly why older devices using an A16 chip (like the iPhone 14 Pro) won't work with Apple Intelligence, given its neural engine seems more than capable compared to the M1. A closer look at the specs sheets of those two processors show that the main differences appear to be in memory and GPU prowess. Specifically, the A16 Bionic can only support a maximum of 6GB of RAM onboard while the M1 starts at 8GB and goes up to 16GB. In fact, all the supported devices have at least 8GB of RAM and that could hint at why your iPhone 14 Pro will not be able to handle making Genmojis, perhaps.Though it might not seem quite fair that owners of a relatively recent iPhone won't get to use Apple Intelligence features, you'll still be getting a healthy amount of updates via iOS 18. Here's a quick breakdown of what is coming via iOS 18, and what's only coming if your iPhone supports Apple Intelligence.What iOS 18 features will be coming to iPhones?Basically everything described during the iOS portion of yesterday's WWDC 2024 keynote is coming to all iPhones (that can update to iOS 18). That includes the customizable home screen, Control Center, dedicated Passwords app, redesigned Photos app, new Tapback emoji reactions, text effects, scheduled sending and more. Messages via Satellite is only coming to iPhone 14 or newer, and you'll be able to send text messages, emojis and Tapbacks, but not images or videos.You'll also be tied to the same satellite service plan that you got at the time of your purchase of an iPhone 14. If you bought your iPhone 14 in January 2024, you received a free two-year subscription to be able to use Emergency SOS via Satellite and other satellite communication features that now include texting. That means that to continue texting people via satellite after January 2026, you'll need to start paying for a plan.There are a whole host of updates coming with iOS 18 that Apple didn't quite cover in its keynote either, and I'll be putting up a separate guide about that in a bit. But suffice to say that apps like Maps, Safari, Calendar and Journal are getting new functions that, together with the other changes mentioned so far, add up to a meaty OS upgrade.What Apple Intelligence features are older devices missing out on?In short, all of them. If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or an iPad (or Mac) with an M-series chip, you'll get a redesigned Siri, Genmoji and Image Playground, as well as writing tools baked into the system. That means tools like proofreading, summarizing or helping you adjust your tone in apps like Mail, Notes and Keynote are limited to the AI-supported devices. If you don't have one of those, you'll get none of this.The redesigned Siri, which is only coming through Apple Intelligence, will be able to understand what's on your screen to contextually answer your queries. If you've been texting with your friend about which baseball player is the best, you can ask Siri (by long pressing the power button or just saying Hey Siri) "How many homeruns has he done?" The assistant will know who "he" is in this context, and understand you're referring to the athlete, not the friend you're chatting with.Apple Intelligence is also what brings the ability to type to Siri - and you can invoke this keyboard to talk to the assistant by double tapping the bottom of the screen.This also means that new glowing edge animation that appears when Siri is triggered is limited to the Apple Intelligence-supported devices. You'll still be looking at that little orb at the bottom of your screen when you talk to the assistant on an iPhone 14 Pro or older.There are loads more features coming via Apple Intelligence, which appears to be set for release later this year.Catch up here for all the news out of Apple's WWDC 2024.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-intelligence-what-devices-and-features-will-actually-be-supported-185850732.html?src=rss

Netgear is releasing more affordable versions of its flagship Orbi and Nighthawk router systems. The recently-released Orbi 970 starts at a jaw-dropping $1,700, so this is a welcome bit of news.The Orbi 770, on the other hand, starts at $700. It's still a tri-band mesh router system that supports Wi-Fi 7, with support for up to 100 simultaneous devices. The top speed gets a hit when compared to the 970, 11Gbps vs 27Gbps, but it's still plenty fast. Remember, an internet speed of one gigabit per second is actually 1,000 megabits per second (Mbps.) Anything above 1,000 megabits is more than enough for streaming and web surfing. So, the Orbi 770 offers 11 times that.NetgearA three-pack will cover up to 8,000 square feet and there are a pair of 2.5Gb LAN ports for wired connections to a gaming console or shared storage device. The cylindrical design is slim enough to hide just about anywhere and each unit features four internal antennas for 360-degree coverage. The company says the system will work regardless of the home layout, from the front door to the backyard."The Orbi 770 is available now via Netgear and major retailers. A starter pack that includes one router and one satellite costs $700, while a three-pack with a single router and two satellites costs $1,000. You can keep adding on satellites at $400 a pop if you live in a mansion.NetgearThe Netgear Nighthawk RS300 is a standalone router and not a mesh system. This tri-band router works with Wi-Fi 7 and offers speeds up to 9.3Gbps. The newly-designed omni-directional internal antenna should allow for 2,500 square feet of coverage across a maximum of 100 devices.There are a pair of 2.5Gbps ports for wired connections and two 1Gbps LAN ports that can be linked together for speeds up to 2Gbps when connected to a NAS device. It also has a USB thumb drive for sharing files and a proprietary app for making quick adjustments. The Nighthawk RS300 is available right now for $330, which is much cheaper than the flagship RS700S.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netgear-is-releasing-more-affordable-versions-of-its-orbi-and-nighthawk-routers-183522831.html?src=rss

Marvel Rivals pits its greatest heroes against each other and it's a lot of fun. It's also a familiar kind of fun if you've ever played Overwatch. As Overwatch 2 fightsto hold onto players (and attract new ones), there's no shortage of new games with similar team PvP dynamics, modes and characters. Like Valve's leaked Deadlock title, or PlayStation's Concord, or Star Wars: Hunters. Add the now console-bound (and more strategy-heavy) Valorant, and yep, there are a lot of team shooters on the horizon. Oh and I forgot Foamstars, like most of us.Rivals, made by Netease, has a headstart, however, with a roster of characters that most of us have heard of. These are also heroes whose powers and abilities we already know. And it's certainly a roster: 19 characters, expanding now to 21 for the next wave of tests.I was going to complain that this is a heady number of characters and combinations to learn, or at least get used to. But, well, Overwatch launched with 21. One leak, data-mined from the closed alpha, suggest there are plans for up to 39 characters. Oh my.Briefly playing this alpha-build demo at Summer Game Fest offers a glimpse at the game, and nascent metas (combinations of characters and team builds), but it takes time to evolve and coalesce. It also takes time for me to get good at a new team shooter.Like the original Overwatch, Rivals pits six heroes/villains against six other Marvel characters, with familiar team goals of escoring a slow-moving object, or protecting zones from the opposing team. It's not all Marvel Presents... Overwatch, though.I liked the destructable environments, with some walls taking only so much damage before crumbling and exposing your hero. It kept me on my toes. Other unique gameplay features include "Dynamic Hero Synergy," a sort of baked-in meta where two (sometimes three) characters can augment each other in battle.One example of this happened as I found early success with Groot. Groot is a tank-type player, with the ability to make Mei-styled walls, just made of plants, not ice. However, if Rocket, his Guardians of the Galaxy team-mate, is on the same team, it increases the duo's damage output. And Rocket can ride around on Groot's shoulder, too. Cute.I mentioned the Groot-Mei connection, but other skill overlaps with Overwatch characters are obvious, but with a twist. Hela, queen of Hel, has a few similarities with Overwatch 2' s Kiriko, with the ability to escape tight spots, but swapping healing for a focus on damage dealing.Meanwhile, Black Panther's lunge attack gets an instant cooldown if you hit an enemy, mimicking Genji's dash attack that recharges if you get a kill.The third-person perspective, which a few early testers found divisive, takes some getting used to. Look, I get it: when the core USP of a game is the global juggernaut that is Marvel's intellectual property, you want to see what you paid for. You want to see Iron Man blasting Magik from the skies, Loki faking his death as he circles back around to attack Namor's weak spot. In first person, a lot of that character design is lost, and your team mates and enemies rarely stand still in order for you to appreciate their character designs and lore.I'm not sure why, but playing this kind of game from a third-person perspective made movement feel, somehow, sluggish. Unless you're Spider-Man, who has an uniquely high level of mobility and speed compared to the rest of the current roster.Overwatch 2 struggled with a lack of PvE features as well as the major change to 5v5 team battles. For a lot of Overwatch players, the game has fallen out of favor. However, for a lot of people it's still the team shooter to beat. Will the draw of Marvel's greatest heroes (and villains) be enough of a draw, and can NetEase sustain Rivals appeal when it launches? A closed beta test, which will include PS5 gamers this time, is scheduled for July.Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-biggest-threat-to-marvel-rivals-is-all-the-other-rival-team-shooters-182005638.html?src=rss

In addition to revealing its initial plans for AI and annual updates to iOS, macOS and more at WWDC 2024, Apple also discussed new capabilities coming to the second-gen AirPods Pro. Siri Interactions will allow you to respond to the assistant by nodding your head yes or shaking your head no. Apple also plans to introduce improved Voice Isolation that further reduces background noise when you're on a call. Both of these items are exclusive to the most recent AirPods Pro, because they rely on the company's H2 chip like existing Adaptive Audio, Personalized Volume and Conversation Awareness features.Like those advanced audio tools that are already available on AirPods Pro, Siri Interactions and Voice Isolation use the processing abilities of the H2 chip in tandem with the power of a source device - an iPhone or MacBook Pro, for example. Using the processing power on both sides, while being able to do so with very low latency, is what will continue to unlock these types of features on AirPods Pro. The pairing will also ensure that the system doesn't respond when you don't intend for it to, partially because it's able to reliably predict what you're doing.For Siri Interactions, Apple employs several sensors in addition to the H2 chip to detect a nod yes or a shake no. The company hasn't divulged any specifics on those, but the motion-detecting accelerometer inside AirPods Pro likely plays a role. Those sensors work alongside an advanced set of transformer models to accurately predict whether you are trying to confirm or dismiss Siri's alert. They can also distinguish between normal head movements, with the goal of AirPods Pro not being tricked by a quick glance to the side or some other action. Overall, the intent is for Siri Interactions to work just as well when you're stationary as when you're moving or during a workout. Of course, Apple has an AI-infused update coming for Siri, so making exchanges with the assistant more natural and convenient means you might use it more.Billy Steele/EngadgetCall quality was already a key aspect of AirPods Pro. But, like it has for Siri Interactions, Apple is using the combined power of H2 and a source device to improve voice performance. More advanced computational audio models are being used than what's currently at work on AirPods Pro, with the goal of further reducing background distractions from everyday scenarios. Those include wind noise, the clamor of a busy city street, construction site racket and potential interruptions at home - like cooking, kids, pets or a vacuum. Additionally, Apple is improving the overall voice quality, not just the real-time noise reduction, and the company is doing so with very low latency. This means you should also sound better on calls in general, but not just because background noise is reduced.Since these features rely so heavily on the processing power of the H2 chip, any future AirPods models would need to be equipped with the component in order to offer them. They would either need the H2 or something with even more computational horsepower. Of course, Apple doesn't comment on future products, but the company is clear that H2 is foundational to unlocking these types of advanced audio tools. And if the rumors are true, we won't have to wait long to see if the new "regular" AirPods will also allow you shake your head to dismiss a call.Catch up here for all the news out of Apple's WWDC 2024.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/how-airpods-pro-will-know-when-youre-trying-to-silently-interact-with-siri-180614981.html?src=rss

Game publisher Voodoo (known for free-to-play mobile titles stuffed with ads) has bought the social platform BeReal (known for a scorching hot 15 minutes of fame in 2022) for 500 million. Although BeReal has fallen off the radar since its much-hyped peak, Voodoo says the app has grown to 40 million active users.BeReal achieved incredible user loyalty and growth, showing there is a universal need to share real, unfiltered experiences with close friends," Voodoo CEO Alexandre Yazdi wrote in a press release. We are very excited to bring our teams together and leverage Voodoo's know-how and differentiated technologies to scale BeReal into the iconic social network for authenticity."If you've forgotten, BeReal's gimmick is that it promotes spontaneous authenticity" by prompting users to capture dual-camera pictures (a selfie and whatever the rear camera is aimed at) during two-minute windows at random times throughout the day. It won Apple's iPhone App of the Year award in 2022 as younger users (especially) appreciated its less choreographed user content.The app's marketing spiel is that the short and sudden posting window forces spontaneous, unmanicured content (unlike, say, Instagram). On the downside, authenticity isn't always engaging: Some users complained that its content could get downright boring. (Care to peruse an adrenaline-pumping pic of... somebody looking half asleep as they sit at a computer?)Although BeReal's buzz has died down significantly since its 2022 heyday (partially thanks to Instagram and TikTok cloning its gimmick while it was still hot), the company says its user base is growing more than you might expect. Voodoo's 40 million active users figure is double the 20 million daily active users BeReal claimed in April 2023.It's worth noting that Voodoo's press release on Tuesday describes BeReal as having 40 million active users, not daily active users, suggesting those figures may not be apples to apples. And around the time BeReal claimed 20 million daily active users last year, The New York Times published a report citing an analytics firm that said the app's daily use had dropped 61 percent from its peak: from about 15 million users in October 2022 to less than six million" in March 2023.Left: The original Donut County. Right: Voodoo's clone Hole.io.Ben Esposito / VoodooNo matter whose figures are accurate, BeReal is now in the hands of the French gaming publisher Voodoo. Founded in 2013, the mobile gaming titan's ultra-casual titles tend to do quite well. By 2022, it claimed to have passed six billion total downloads, and it says its apps trail only Google and Meta in mobile app installations.However, Voodoo's games are infested with ads, and it isn't above stealing others' ideas. For example, Voodoo's free Hole.io is a knockoff of the $5 Donut County from Los Angeles-based indie developer Ben Esposito, Apple's 2018 iPhone Game of the Year and one of Engadget's favorite games from six years ago.Voodoo says Aymeric Roffe, CEO of its social app Wizz, will take over as BeReal's CEO. The company says BeReal's founder and previous CEO Alexis Barreyat will remain involved in BeReal in the short term" before shuffling off to work on new products.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bereal-the-buzziest-app-of-2022-has-been-bought-by-a-mobile-game-publisher-175016152.html?src=rss

For all the AI features, customization options and everything else coming to Apple's operating systems this year, there is one other notable update. The company is rebranding Apple ID to Apple Account in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia and watchOS 11.The reason behind the change is to provide "a consistent sign-in experience across Apple services and devices," the company wrote in a blog post. Apple Account "relies on a user's existing credentials," so you won't have to change anything.The betas of the new operating systems already use the term Apple Account, but MacRumors notes that Apple ID is still used in some places, such as the account sign-in page on Apple's website. The company is most likely going to complete the Apple Account transition by the time it rolls out the latest major public versions of the operating systems (which also include tvOS and visionOS) this fall.Catch up here for all the news out of Apple's WWDC 2024.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-id-is-now-apple-account-172019457.html?src=rss

As Apple races to add more advanced features to its smartphones, other companies are moving in the opposite direction. One such company, Light, just unveiled its latest and greatest minimalist phone, offering a stark contrast to the app-filled gadgets we all stare at way, way too much.The Light Phone III eschews the e-paper screen found with the previous models, opting for a sleek black-and-white OLED. It still doesn't offer any access to social media, the internet or even email. This is, first and foremost, a phone. It's not completely bare, however, as the Light Phone III includes a camera and an embedded NFC chip for making payments. It also allows access to navigation tools, a simple music player, texting, voice notes, a calendar, a timer and an alarm.It's larger than previous generations, with a cute form factor that can only be described as the Rabbit R1, but serious." There's no half-baked AI integration here, however, but there is an analog scroll wheel on the side for navigation and for making adjustments. It's around the width of modern iPhones, but much shorter. The team says this was on purpose, so as to make it easier to text while holding the device vertically.LightLight has also paid for private access to navigational information, so Google won't get ahold of any tracking data. The camera looks to be a simple point-and-shoot that can't compete with modern offerings from Google or Apple, but will get the job done.Other specs include 6GB of RAM, up from 1GB in the Light Phone II, 128GB of memory and a newer Qualcomm chip. There's a fingerprint ID on the power button and loudspeakers at the bottom. The battery is much larger than what was included with previous iterations and its user-replaceable.Now, here's the bad news. The Light Phone III is $800, which is more than twice the price of the $300 Light Phone II. That's a whole lot of cheddar for what amounts to, well, a phone. Deleting all of the intrusive apps on your current smartphone costs $0, though that's easier said than done.However, Light is running a deal for early adopters. The phone's available for $400 for a limited time to crowdfund mass production. Models should ship out in January.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/light-unveils-a-new-minimalist-phone-with-a-black-and-white-oled-screen-163225012.html?src=rss

Google is bringing some new and upgraded features to its hardware lineup as part of the June Pixel feature drop. The update will start rolling out today to all supported Pixel phones, tablets and smartwatches.First of all, Google is expanding access to its Gemini Nano generative AI model, which will now be available on Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a. Until now, it's only been present on the Pixel 8 Pro. At the outset, the model will be available as a developer option on Pixel 8 and 8a and this can be enabled through the device settings.The Recorder app is getting an AI-powered boost too. Google says you'll get more detailed summaries of recordings on Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel 8a compared with earlier versions of the app. Speaker labels will be applied if you have a Pixel 6 or newer, and there's the option to export transcripts to text files and Google Docs.Handily, you'll now be able to connect a Pixel 8a, Pixel 8 or Pixel 8 Pro to an external display via USB-C to view videos and photos on a larger screen. On the Pixel Fold and sixth-gen and later Pro Pixels, you'll be able to choose which lens to use while taking photos.Meanwhile, Pixel 6 and newer models will support reverse phone number lookup directly from the call log. Those devices and Pixel Tablet will also be able to "automatically identify the best moment from your photo in HDR+ with just a single shutter press," Google says, which will seemingly make it easier to take a snap of your smiling face when it's in focus.Pixel Watch is getting some updates too, including car crash detection on the second-gen model. If your wearable detects that you may have been in a severe car accident, it will ask if you're okay. If you don't respond or you need help, it can contact emergency services for you. The feature will also notify your contacts and provide them with your real-time location. Other updates include fall detection improvements and PayPal access via Google Wallet on both generations of the Pixel Watch.Google says there will be easier access to the Google Home App on devices running Wear OS 3 and above too. You'll be able to access and control a smart home device from your watch face, for instance, and access favorite devices with a swipe. The Google Home Favorites widget is coming to phones and tablets running Android 12 and later too.Last but not least, when a Pixel Tablet is docked in hub mode, it can receive richer notifications from a Nest doorbell. You'll be able to see who's at the door, chat with them via two-way talk or send a quick response.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-brings-gemini-nano-to-more-pixel-devices-and-enhances-recorder-summaries-160917592.html?src=rss

Govee smart lights and fixtures are up to 35 percent off right now, as part of a far-reaching sale on Amazon. The deals include all of the smart bulbs, LED strips and flood lights you can shake a stick at, but perhaps the most notable item is the Govee Floor Lamp Pro. It's on sale for $200 via a clippable coupon, which is a discount of $20.This floor lamp easily made our list of the best smart LED light bulbs, despite being much more than a simple bulb. The Floor Lamp Pro is a slickly-designed lighting fixture that's over two feet tall and displays multiple colors at once. The diverse array of hues on offer make it a great choice for simply lighting up a room or making sure you look alright during a Zoom meeting.The fixture includes a Bluetooth speaker at the base, to allow for the occasional music-based light show. The speaker can even play a wide variety of white noise types for sleeping or meditating. I'm a white noise addict at all times of the day. Being a modern smart lamp, it also works with Alexa and Google Assistant.The only bad thing to say about the Floor Lamp Pro is the exorbitant price, which typically clocks in at $220. Dropping it down to $200 doesn't make it an impulse buy, but it's at least a bit more palatable.You can also pick up some nifty LED light strips for $80, which knocks 20 percent off the asking price. These offer Matter support and can be strung together to create the light show of your dreams.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/govee-smart-lights-are-up-to-35-percent-off-right-now-151755814.html?src=rss

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is lush. Set on the side of a mountain that's been covered in a terrible black defilement, Kunitsu-Gami's world is an ancient, psychedelic dreamscape packed with magic and otherworldly horrors. It's also mechanically dense, with moments of slow strategizing and rapid-fire hack-and-slash combat. After playing for nearly an hour at Summer Game Fest, it's clear that Kunitsu-Gami is much more than a beautiful screenshot.The game is divided into day and night mechanics, but all of the action takes place in various camps along the mountainside, set under green canopies and among dense foliage. The defilement creates plants with glowing pink orbs and slathers some areas in an iridescent black goo, trapping villagers in putrid sacs and infecting the local deer population.CapcomPlayers are tasked with protecting the Maiden Yoshiro from the Seethe, the monsters that spawn out of the defilement at night. Yoshiro is the key to cleansing the mountainside, but her ritual takes time and she's incredibly vulnerable. It really takes a village to protect her.During the day, players purge the defilement and rescue locals from their containment sacs, while also clearing a path for Yoshiro's dance. Press B on the gamepad to assign an attack role to a villager, and then press RB to place them in the environment. At night, the Seethe pour out of the Torii Gates - the basic hordes are composed of globular, juicy monsters with long, thin arms and gaping mouths lined with sharp teeth.Combat plays out in a rhythmic sword dance" style, with simple inputs that can be combined into fancy combos. Using just two attack buttons and a 360-degree camera, players slash through the Seethe, make sure the creatures don't get too close to Yoshiro, and manage their additional attack units. Combat flows smoothly, with satisfying swordplay and a challenging rush of monsters to defeat at each Torii Gate. After cleansing an area, players can hang out in the camp, upgrading their skills, unlocking new abilities, and learning about the food and culture of the region that's been defiled.There are also challenge areas with bigger, deadlier monsters to kill. Here, players are provided a small team of villagers plus upgrade materials to assign these units specific roles, like archer or woodcutter. The challenge enemy I encountered, Gakinyudo, was a giant, eyeless beast that ripped its own jaw in half before the battle began, revealing an even more disgusting form. The monsters in Kunitsu-Gami have distinct backstories dripping in vile details, and I adore the amount of attention their designs have been given.Here's how Capcom describes the beast I battled: The ravenous Gakinyudo are born from the corpses of lecherous monks who fell to defilement from their debauchery while alive. They prefer to dig up their meals from graveyards." Metal.I defeated the Gakinyudo, but it took some time, unit rearrangement and a new group-attack move to finish the job. I enjoyed every slice of my sword in this fight.CapcomThe game's environments and character designs are dense with fascinating details. The Maiden Yoshiro wears layers of flowing fabrics, a delicate face covering and intricately adorned jewelry, and she dances with a slow, focused purpose. She feels both fragile and incredibly powerful. The distanced, third-person perspective and fully adjustable camera encourage players to investigate every corner of each new area, slashing plants to receive resource orbs and purging shrines that have been covered in ooze.As each night approaches, the game's background music becomes more unsettling and discordant, until it's overrun by hellish screams and the Seethe begin spawning. Details like this make Kunitsu-Gami memorable, even just in demo form. It's clear that there's much more to uncover in this game and I'm eager to explore its ancient, magical mountainside in full.Kuntisu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is due to come out on July 19 for PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC. It'll be available on Game Pass at launch.Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/kunitsu-gami-path-of-the-goddess-feels-as-luscious-as-it-looks-150059627.html?src=rss

Dragon Age: The Veilguard was given a proper unveiling at Summer Game Fest, with an Ocean's 11-style intro to the gang of heroes and fantasy character tropes that will make up your cadre. Bioware also invited me to a hands-off demo of Veilguard, where I got to briefly see the character creation setup and the opening chapter of the game, as you join the likes of Varric and other characters from Dragon Ages past.It does look different, though. I've only dipped into the Dragon Age series in the past, but the character style of Dragon Age: The Veilguard (especially in the trailer) looked, initially, like some kind of League Of Legends-style spin-off or even a, gasp, mobile game. There's undoubtedly a cartoonish spin on characters, although Solas, the primary antagonist (and sadsack elf), seems to be his miserable, mournful self.The environments we saw during the demo are suitably fantastical. During parts of the game, several vantage points appear to show off all the mystical landmarks. Oh, and a large chunk of the opening chapter is a town under siege by dimensional beasts.Other significant changes appear in combat. While you'll still be able to pause to consider tactics and enemy targets in a controller-friendly move, unique attacks for your character can be launched from a quick launch menu while the battle continues around you. It appears that The Veilguard could be more fast-paced than its predecessors.I watched several battles between Rook, your custom-made character, and allies, including crossbow-wielding Varrik, fan-favorite Harding the scout, and the frostmage (and detective?!) Neve. We weren't able to issue commands to our allies, but you will be able to in the final game. We watched a rogue build in action, which combined bow attacks with close-quarters dagger moves. If you choose a warrior, expect to focus on defense and heavy strikes, while a mage seems to lean on ranged combat.

One of the bigger selling points of Apple's AirPods for some people is their unsealed design, which means they rest just outside of your ear canal instead of inserting all the way in. Open-style earbuds like these aren't good at blocking out ambient noise as a result, but they tend to be more comfortable to wear for those with sensitive ears.AirPods aren't exactly cheap, though. If this idea sounds appealing but you're on a tighter budget, the latest Amazon Echo Buds are a similar alternative that we recommend in our guide to the best budget earbuds. They normally cost $50, but a new deal at Amazon has dropped them back down to $35. That matches the lowest price we've tracked.We gave the Echo Buds a score of 77 in our review last year. So long as you're OK with earbuds that don't totally close off your ear canal, they're a good value when they're discounted to this extent. We found they needed a slight bit of EQ tweaking to sound their best - the treble range was a little too hot out of the box - but Amazon's Alexa app makes that simple enough. Once you dial them in, they sound perfectly decent for a sub-$50 pair of unsealed earbuds. You won't get much in the way of deep bass, as usual with open-style headphones, but there's at least some rumble and enough separation to keep tracks from sounding overly congested.The earbuds themselves are lightweight and comfortable in the ear, and their included charging case is easy to slip into a pocket. Unlike many cheap earbuds, they support wear detection - so they'll automatically pause when you remove an earbud - and the ability to connect to two devices at once. Call quality is passable, if unremarkable, while the customizable touch controls are generally reliable. Naturally, you can also access Alexa hands-free, though it's possible to mute the built-in mics if you want nothing to do with that voice assistant.These are still cheap earbuds, to be clear, so they come with their share of trade-offs. Battery life is mediocre, for one, usually tapping out around five hours. The pair only has an IPX2 water- and dust-resistance rating, so they're not well-suited for sweaty workouts. There's no charging cable in the box, and the Alexa app, while fairly well-featured, is more bloated than other companion apps we've tested. Annoyingly, you also need to register with the Alexa app just to set the Echo Buds up. And again, don't get an open-style pair like this if you're looking for noise cancellation. Still, while there's a chance we see a lower price during Amazon's Prime Day sale next month, this is a solid deal for the right person right now.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/the-latest-amazon-echo-buds-are-back-on-sale-for-35-142612419.html?src=rss

Yesterday's Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote teased a lot of what users can expect this fall when big iOS, iPadOS, macOS and watchOS updates hit their devices. Changes coming include RCS support in Messages, a new Passwords app, a revamped Calculator app for iPhone and iPad and a bunch of artificial intelligence (AI) infusions across the board with the new "Apple Intelligence" system. The latter will bring some of the biggest updates to Apple devices in years, including generative AI image creation, "Genmoji" custom emojis, text summarization and even some ChatGPT integration as well. If you weren't able to catch the news live, here's a rundown of everything announced at WWDC 2024.Apple IntelligenceAppleApple revealed its plans to incorporate AI into its operating systems at WWDC this year. Dubbed "Apple Intelligence," this new generative AI system will appear in iOS and iPad 18 and macOS Sequoia in the form of (what Apple believes to be) practical tools that most people can use regularly. Those features include new writing tools that can help you rewrite, proofread and summarize things like emails and other messages, original emoji and image creation and more. Going hand-in-hand with original image generation is a new feature called Genmoji, which allows users to create their own unique emojis by typing in descriptions and requirements like "T-rex wearing a tutu on a surfboard."Siri is getting an AI infusion, now that it will be powered in part by large language models. In addition to asking Siri to delete an email or edit a photo, users will also be able to ask the virtual assistant to summarize articles and webpages in Safari and even extract personal information from a picture of an ID so it can fill out an online form for them. The company emphasized the importance of "personal context" with Apple Intelligence, which will enable things like using natural language to search for photos that contain only specific family members or friends.Apple highlighted how most Apple Intelligence actions will be done on-device to make the system as privacy-focused as possible. For queries that cannot be done locally, the work will be sent to Apple's processing centers. The company also created Private Cloud Compute, a feature that's supposed to utilize the cloud for more advanced AI processing while also making sure your data remains secure.OpenAI's ChatGPT is also integrated into Apple Intelligence, allowing users to give Apple permission to share their queries with ChatGPT "when it might be helpful." Examples provided include asking for menu ideas that incorporate specific ingredients, or asking for decor advice while providing a photo of a space that needs sprucing up. ChatGPT will also work with the AI writing tools coming to iOS and iPadOS 18 in a new Compose feature. ChatGPT integration with iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia will roll out later this year, and apparently Apple intends to add support for other AI models in the future - meaning its partnership with OpenAI isn't a long-term exclusive.iOS 18 and iPadOS 18AppleThe next iPhone software update will roll out to users in the fall and, as expected, one of the biggest changes is support for Rich Communication Service, or RCS. The messaging protocol offers many improvements over SMS including end-to-end encryption, better media sharing and support for proper group chats. Apple previously stated it would adopt support for RCS in 2024 to comply with EU regulations, so it's unsurprising to see it mentioned in iOS 18's forthcoming features. Also new to Messages will be the ability to "tapback" reply using emojis and stickers, text formatting and effects and the ability to send messages via satellite.iPhone users will have more control over their home screens in iOS 18 thanks to the fact that it will not be a locked grid system anymore. Users will be able to move app icons more freely, plus they'll be able to change app icon colors as well use a tint color picker. In terms of design and layout, this is one of the biggest changes to come to the iPhone's home screen in years and it gives iOS users similar features to those Android users have had for a long time. In the same vein, Control Center will be updated in iOS 18 to include more customization options, and will allow users to program quick controls from third-party apps in addition to the native options.The Photos app is getting a big redesign in iOS 18, putting an emphasis on intelligently organized groups of photos that revolve around memories, trips and other big events. The new design ditches the old tabbed layout and will usher in a one-page design when you can view all of your photos individually, or view them by Collections. Users will also be able to filter out things like screenshots and receipts that would show up in a chronological format, but would otherwise mess up a tightly curated group of vacation photos.A couple of new privacy features stand out in iOS 18, namely the ability to lock and hide apps. For the former, users can lock an app so sensitive information stays behind a Face-ID or Touch-ID wall, preventing those who you casually hand your iPhone to from seeing that information. Hiding an app, on the other hand, does exactly what you think: hides a program in a special hidden folder that others won't be able to see.The Calculator app is getting a big overhaul in iOS 18, including improved unit conversions, a sidebar showing recent activity and integration with the Notes app. But what might be even more notable is the fact that the revamped Calculator app will not only be available on iPhones and Macs - it's coming to iPads for the first time as part of the iPadOS 18 update. Embedded within the iPadOS Calculator app is a new feature called Math Notes, which lets users write out math equations with the Apple Pencil and the app will solve many of them instantly.iPadOS 18 will also feature a new Tab Bar, which looks similar to the Dynamic Island on iPhones. This bar makes it easier to access essential controls even when you're in apps, and depending on what you're doing, it can show up at the top of the screen or as a sidebar of sorts on the left of the display. The Notes app in iPadOS is getting another new feature called Smart Script, which will make users' handwriting more legible automatically.macOS SequoiaAppleThe next iteration of Apple's computer software will be called macOS Sequoia. In addition to many of the AI features also coming to iOS and iPadOS 18 as part of Apple Intelligence, the next macOS update will include iPhone mirroring, which lets users see and control their iPhone screen on a Mac screen. They'll be able to use their keyboard and trackpad to intact with the iPhone screen on their laptop, and they can even open iOS apps directly on their computers without picking up their iPhone at all.A new Passwords app builds upon the technology of iCloud Keychain to save all of users' passwords and login credentials across devices and platforms (it will be available on Windows in addition to iOS and iPadOS). Along with standard passwords, the new app can save passkeys, verification codes and more, and give users the ability to securely share passwords with others.Other updates coming in macOS Sequoia include a snap window arrangement tool with accompanying keyboard and menu shortcuts, Presenter Preview, which lets you see what you're about to share with call partners before they see it, and gaming upgrades like improved Windows porting capabilities using Gameporting Toolkit 2. Users will also get access to Image Playground in macOS Sequoia, Apple's AI image generator built into Apple Intelligence. It provides the ability to create AI-generated images in different styles, including animation, illustration and sketch.watchOS 11AppleThe next software update for the Apple Watch includes two big changes: Training Load and a new Vitals app. Training Load in watchOS 11 essentially uses many of the health and fitness metrics collected during workout tracking to estimate your effort level each time. Each workout will receive a rating from one (easy) to 10 (all out) that estimates how hard the user worked during that particular session.The new Vitals app will show Apple Watch users how their captured health data, including heart rate, compares to baseline measurements. This will hopefully allow users to better understand when something might be off and outside the "normal" range.The Activity app on iPhone is also getting an update to accompany watchOS 11, and will allow users to customize the data they see on the homepage so they can put their most important stats front and center. Cycle Tracking will also get an update to include more detailed pregnancy insights, including gestational age and information about the user's health metrics that may related to pregnancy (like heart rate fluctuations).visionOS 2AppleUntil now, Apple's Vision Pro headset has only been available in the US. That's changing soon as the company announced the device's rollout in additional countries including Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the UK in the coming months. As far as the headset's software (visionOS) goes, Apple announced that visionOS 2 will add spatial photos, which adds depth to images in the Photos app, new UI gesture controls and improved Mac screen mirroring with support for higher resolutions and display sizes.AirPods Pro audio updatesAppleApple briefly mentioned some software updates coming to AirPods Pro, including improved Voice Isolation, which should help the buds better pick up a user's voice in noise environments. A new Siri Interaction is coming to AirPods Pro as well: a silent head-nod will allow users to answer an incoming call without saying a word out loud to Siri, and contrast, a shake of the head will decline a call. These silent interactions will also be applicable to messages and notifications.Catch up here for all the news out of Apple's WWDC 2024.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-intelligence-ai-ios-18-and-the-biggest-announcements-at-wwdc-2024-184422501.html?src=rss

Spotify first revealed its plan to roll out a high-fidelity option for music streaming some years ago, but that still hasn't come to pass. This may finally be the year when the company's HiFi streaming goes live, but you'll likely need to pay extra for the privilege.HiFi streaming is expected to arrive by the end of 2024 and it will be an add-on that costs users at least $5 more per month on top of an existing plan, according to Bloomberg. That's in addition to a Premium price increase that takes effect next month. As such, individual users who want to listen to high-fidelity music on Spotify may need to pay at least $17 per month, unless they're fortunate enough to be on the $6 student plan. It's not clear if the HiFi add-on will be available to those on the free tier.HiFi audio is already factored into Apple Music ($11 per month for individuals) and Amazon Music Unlimited ($11 per month for those without Prime). It was a key selling point for Tidal at the outset of that service, which also now costs $11 per month. That places Spotify, which said in 2021 it would roll out its HiFi plan that year, well behind its rivals on that front.That said, the so-called "Supremium" add-on is said to include other features, like an option to spin up custom playlists in a flash based on specific activities, dates and times of the year. Bloomberg reports that Spotify's tech will adjust playlists based on a user's behavior and eventually automatically create playlists without any input from them.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spotifys-hifi-plan-could-finally-arrive-this-year-but-you-may-need-to-pay-extra-141610374.html?src=rss

Thrasher, which its developers describe as a "mind-melting arcade action odyssey," will be available for the Meta Quest and the Apple Vision Pro on July 25. The SteamVR version will follow at a later date. Thrasher was first announced at The Game Awards last year as a new project by Brian Gibson, who was the artist and composer behind the nightmare-inducing rhythm game Thumper. For Thrasher, Gibson teamed up with Mike Mandel, known for working on games like Rock Band VR and Fuser, who took charge of the coding and research and development.The player takes control of a space eel in Thrasher, which they have to guide with "fast-paced gesture controls" through unsettling landscapes, so that it can evolve and defeat a cosmic baby god by the end of their journey. Based on the images and teasers the developers have released so far, the game's environments truly do look mind-bending with their psychedelic neon colors and their geometric patterns. Even the eel's powers sound trippy: Players can fight bosses with a rainbow spray of bullets or bulldoze environment elements in a blaze of color and light.The developers said that Thrasher's "music, visuals, and gameplay mesh into one transcendent experience" for the player. While the virtual reality version offers the most immersive option for gamers, Thrasher is also expected to be available for consoles and PC in the futureThis article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/thrasher-the-psychedelic-game-from-the-artist-behind-thumper-arrives-in-july-133026724.html?src=rss