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You didn't have to wait long for Samsung's latest phones to receive steep discounts. Amazon is running a sale on the Galaxy S23 series that brings the flagship devices to record-low prices. Most notably, the Galaxy S23 Ultra with 512GB of storage and 12GB of RAM is down to $1,200 (normally $1,380). You can roll the savings into wireless earbuds, a case and other accessories.You're still poised to save money if the Ultra is more than you need. The Galaxy S23+ 512GB is on sale for $1,000 (normally $1,200), while the standard S23 with 256GB is available for $800 (usually $860). You don't have to skimp on capacity just to get one of the more affordable models.The Galaxy S23 Ultra is our favorite Android phone, and for good reason. While it's an iterative upgrade to last year's model, it delivers improvements where they matter most: better cameras, longer battery life and faster performance. So long as you're okay with a large screen, this is a versatile device that can handle just about any situation.Not that the other models are slouches. We liked the Galaxy S23+ for its exceptionally long battery life, vivid display and speedy chip, and the base model won't be far behind. While the low-light photography isn't quite as strong as with other high-end phones, this is a straightforward pick if you're either upgrading from an earlier Samsung phone or want more power than the Pixel 7 line can deliver.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/samsung-galaxy-s23-phones-drop-to-record-low-prices-at-amazon-133018495.html?src=rss

The Nintendo Switch OLED is a big improvement over the original, due in particular to the 7-inch OLED display that's larger and brighter than the original model. It's also $50 more than its predecessor, but a sale (today only) helps negate some of that. Woot is selling the Switch OLED for just $320, a savings of $30 over the regular price, and the best deal we've seen to date.The Switch OLED scored a solid 89 in our review and various Switch models have featured in our latest console buyer's guide. The compact size makes it the perfect travel companion, and the more efficient OLED screen delivers up to seven hours of battery life on Metroid Dread — significantly more than the OG Switch. At the same time, the screen is noticeably brighter while delivering more vibrant colors and deeper blacks.It comes with the same CPU and GPU to ensure compatibility with all your Switch titles. However there are improvements in the stand, welcome tweaks to the buttons and a new textured plastic material that makes it nicer to hold. The only drawbacks are a bit of extra weight and the higher price, but the latter is offset significantly by the savings. If you're interested, act quickly — the deal is only good for today or until all stock is gone.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-nintendo-switch-oled-is-30-off-right-now-131533906.html?src=rss

If you pay attention to the music industry, you’ve probably heard about spatial audio. The promise is that music will envelop the user from all directions without needing a room full of speakers to achieve the effect. Apple has pushed it a lot in the last few years, in Apple Music, its line of AirPods headphones and the latest HomePod speaker. Amazon’s streaming service also offers spatial audio, and its Echo Studio speaker can play back compatible tracks.Sonos has been paying attention, as well – its recent Arc and Beam soundbars support Dolby Atmos for movies, and now the company is releasing its first music speaker designed for spatial audio, the Era 300. This beast is large and has an unusual shape to accommodate all the drivers needed for achieving these room-filling effects. At $450, you’d expect this speaker to sound excellent, regardless of whether it’s playing back spatial audio or not, but support for this new format is what sets it apart from other speakers. As such, the big question on my mind is whether this feature is a game changer, a gimmick, or somewhere in between?Photo by Nathan Ingraham / EngadgetDesignThere’s nothing in the Sonos lineup to compare the Era 300 to. From a size and weight perspective, it’s a large speaker, similar to the Sonos Five, but its unusual shape immediately sets it apart. Seen from the front its oval reminds me of a race track, but any other angle reveals a distinctive footprint. If you look at it from the top, it’s thinner near the middle than it is on the ends; the best way I can describe it is a knocked-over hourglass.This is to accommodate the complex driver array inside the Era 300. There’s one tweeter pushing out from dead center, and two more sending audio out the left and right sides. Finally, there’s a fourth tweeter inside a directional horn pointed upwards; Sonos says that it’s at a specific angle optimized for spatial audio. Two woofers, again on either side of the speaker, complete the array.The Era 300 reminds me of most other recent Sonos products. It is well-built, exceedingly sturdy and generally feels like a product that justifies its high price tag. That said, its physical appearance is definitely more unusual than the company’s other speakers. I recognize that it’s functional, but the combo of its size and strange tapering make it stand out more than you might like.Photo by Nathan Ingraham / EngadgetA lot of new features and changes in the Era 100 are also found in the Era 300. This includes a redesigned set of touch controls on the top panel, a USB-C port for line-in and ethernet (provided you shell out for the optional adapters), a Bluetooth toggle and a switch to physically disconnect the microphone on the back. For more on these features, I’ll point you to the relevant section of my Era 100 review. Most everything I said there applies. That said, for $450, it’s a little disappointing that Sonos requires an adapter for line in or Ethernet. The $550 Sonos Five has both of those built right in. I’m sure the company has the data showing that a small percentage of owners use those features, so I’m glad they haven’t been removed completely, but it would definitely be nice if they didn’t require an adapter.SetupSetting up the Era 300 is pretty simple, even if you don’t already have a Sonos system. You’ll need to download the Sonos app to your phone and set up an account; from there, the app will look and see if there are any speakers to add. You’ll also need to log in to your audio services of choice – if you want to try spatial audio, you’ll need either Apple Music or Amazon Music Unlimited. You can search for and play music through the Sonos app, but there are also a bunch of options if you’d rather stick with the music apps you’re used to. You can use AirPlay 2 to shoot audio from Apple Music and other services on the iPhone directly to the Era 300, or use Spotify Connect without needing to go through the Sonos app. That said, it’s worth noting that if you want to play back tracks in spatial audio, you’re required to use the Sonos app.There are a few optional but useful things you can do while you’re setting up the Era 300. The first is Trueplay, a feature that tunes your speaker’s output based upon where it’s placed in your room. Trueplay has been around since 2015, but in the past it required you to have an iPhone. You’d have to walk around your room slowly raising and lowering the phone while the speaker played a test tone. The Era 300, though, can use its built-in microphones to listen and optimize its output – that process is much simpler and faster than the old technique, and Android users aren’t left out either.I’ve been extremely happy with Trueplay’s results in the past, so I’d recommend that everyone try this out. That said, I did find that the old, manual tuning process yielded slightly better results. So while I appreciate the ease of use in the new Trueplay system, I’ll probably still walk around my room waving my phone – but I won’t judge you if you take the easier route.If you like using voice controls, you can also add a voice assistant to the Era 300. Amazon’s Alexa has been supported since the One launched back in 2017, and last year Sonos added its own music-focused assistant. Setting up the Sonos assistant is a little easier than Alexa, because you don’t need to go linking your Amazon account, but both are pretty straightforward at this point. One thing to note: past Sonos speakers with microphones also worked with Google Assistant, but that’s no longer the case. The Era 100 only works with Alexa and the Sonos assistant, likely due to the ongoing patent battles between Google and Sonos. I personally prefer Google Assistant over Alexa, so this is a bit of a bummer. But I also mostly just talk to my speaker to play music, so the Sonos option works well enough.Audio quality and the spatial experiencePutting aside the potential of spatial audio for a moment, the Era 300 sounds excellent – as it should, given its price. It doesn’t quite match the stunning detail and bass presence of the Sonos Five, which remains the most impressive audio-focused speaker Sonos sells. But for $100 less, you’re getting a premium experience that far surpasses the Era 100 and other speakers like Apple’s HomePod. I was very impressed with the Era 100, but playing the speakers back side-by-side shows just how much better the Era 300 is at making each separate component of a song shine. Bass, vocals and instrumentation are all reproduced in excellent detail that smaller speakers simply can’t match.But the real question with the Era 300 is the value of spatial audio – does it really provide a new and worthwhile listening experience? For me, the answer is a big “sometimes.” Right now, I think that the trick of spatial audio, to a large extent, remains just that: a trick. I spent a lot of time bouncing between Atmos versions of songs on Apple Music and Amazon, comparing them to the standard versions on Spotify. I could always tell there was a difference, but I also didn’t always feel that it was an improvement. Broadly speaking, spatial audio tracks did feel less like they were coming out of a single point in space. But a lot of times, the immediacy of the song’s original mix was lost and the vocals felt drenched in reverb rather than being right up close.In some cases, especially when I listened to older albums that were remixed for spatial audio, the results were simply worse. The excellent guitarwork and vocals on the Alice in Chains classic “Down in a Hole” from 1992’s Dirt sounded a million miles away. I had high hopes for the multi-layered doom rock of “Rain When I Die,” but again the mix felt mushy and poorly defined. Alice in Chains’ 1990 debut Facelift was also released in Atmos recently, and it sounds far better than Dirt, so it’s clear that older albums and spatial audio aren’t inherently incompatible. Pearl Jam’s 1991 debut Ten didn’t sound bad, but there was still a lack of definition to too much of the mix. By contrast, the recently-released Atmos mix of 1998’s Yield was an enjoyable listen, but I’m not convinced it’s better than the original. For the record, this isn’t a fault of the speaker, but rather a fault of these mixes – I noticed the same issues when listening through Apple’s HomePod or AirPods Max.Photo by Nathan Ingraham / EngadgetNewer songs and albums that are likely recorded, produced, and mastered with spatial audio, in mind sounded better. The acoustic guitar and hushed vocals of Billie Eiish’s “Billie Bossa Nova” felt wonderfully close, and the club beats of Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia were lively and impressive. In most cases, though, the mixes that sounded best to me were only slightly different than the originals, and I still often felt like the Atmos versions put too much reverb into the mix. This was particularly true on Carly Rae Jepsen’s latest album The Loneliest Time. Instrumentation sounded lush and vibrant, but the vocals lacked impact. In a best case scenario, with a single Era 300, the difference between the best spatial audio and standard mixes is often going to be fairly subtle.I will admit that when I simply put on a playlist of new songs (many of which were in spatial audio) and stopped thinking about it, I enjoyed myself a lot more. It helps that newly-released songs generally sound much better in Atmos than the remixes of older albums I’ve come across. When I wasn’t obsessively comparing the new mixes to old versions of songs I knew inside and out, it was easier to appreciate the Era 300 for the great-sounding speaker it is. But that’s the case whether you’re listening to an Atmos version of a song or the standard mix, so spatial audio shouldn’t be the main reason to buy the Era 300.Like basically all Sonos speakers, you can pair two Era 300s together for stereo playback, though I’m not sure “stereo” is the right word when we’re talking about spatial audio. The fact that you can’t adjust the left / right balance between them kinda proves that point. Regardless of what you call it, two Era 300s provide an absolutely massive experience that does a better job of delivering on the promise of spatial audio. With two speakers, there’s no real sweet spot; instead, music sounds consistently excellent regardless of where you are relative to the speakers. And if you want to get really wild, you can use a pair of Era 300s as rear speakers along with a Sonos Arc or second-gen Beam soundbar to get Dolby Atmos home theater playback. I don’t have the right living room or soundbar setup to make this work, but I can say it was impressive in a demo Sonos gave the press last month. Of course, considering how much an Arc and two Era 300s costs, it had better be.Wrap-upThe Era 300 is in a slightly strange place in the Sonos portfolio. Its higher price means it’s not going to be as broadly appealing as the $250 Era 100. It’s closer to the $550 Sonos Five, which is probably a superior speaker despite lacking spatial audio capabilities. But, for $100 less, the Era 300 still provides a premium audio experience and has a handful of improvements over the Five, including built-in microphones and automatic Trueplay tuning. For $500, you could also buy a pair of Era 100 speakers and run them in stereo – those speakers sound great, and you’ll get excellent coverage with two of them working together.And, of course, there’s the messy potential for spatial audio. After spending a lot of time listening to the Era 300, I don’t think it’s a game-changer yet. In the best cases, it provides a different listening experience, but it’s not always better – in fact, I’ve been surprised at how often it has been worse. While lots of new music is being released in spatial audio, most older music is only available in good old stereo, so the catalog of songs available in the new format is comparatively small.Fortunately, the Era 300 is a great speaker, whether or not it is playing songs in Dolby Atmos. It’s crisp, loud, detailed and has lively bass – and when I’ve stopped thinking about spatial audio, it has been a joy to listen to. Spatial audio is a potentially interesting feature, especially if more and more musicians and producers embrace it, but I’d recommend that you not buy the Era 300 with only that in mind. Buy it if you’re really interested in a premium speaker that does a great job filling a room with sound, whether it’s an Atmos mix or not.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sonos-era-300-review-a-big-bet-on-spatial-audio-130053487.html?src=rss

Of the two speakers Sonos announced earlier this month, the Era 100 is much easier to sum up: it’s a replacement for the Sonos One, which was first introduced in 2017. Unlike the Era 300, there’s no need to ponder the value of spatial audio; the Era 100 is a relatively straightforward mono speaker, just like the One and the Play:1 before it. Don’t let that simple description deceive you, though – the $250 Era 100 is a complete redesign, inside and out, and the end result is a worthy upgrade and a very versatile speaker.DesignAt first glance, the Era 100 looks quite similar to the One, but upon further examination you’ll notice a number of small but meaningful changes. That starts with the vertically-oriented Sonos logo that you’ll find on most of their other speakers like the Roam and, naturally, the Era 300. The Era 100 is slightly taller and deeper than the One; it’s also slightly deeper than it is wide. But it should fit basically anywhere the older speaker did.The most significant external change is on top of the speaker. There, you’ll find a redesigned set of touch controls, including dedicated track forward and back buttons for the first time. Those surround the play / pause button instead of the volume controls that you’ll find on the One. Volume has been moved to a touch slider in the center of the touch panel. Tapping either side of it raises or lowers the volume, or you can slide your finger left and right. Using the slider takes a little practice, and it’s far too easy to go from silent to deafening, but there’s no doubt it’s better for rapid adjustments than tapping a button repeatedly. There’s also a spot to mute the mic, just like on the One.There are also some major changes on the Era 100’s back. There’s no more ethernet jack or setup button. Instead, there’s a USB-C port you can use to plug in the $20 line-in adapter or the $40 combo line-in / ethernet adapter. On the one hand, it’s annoying to have to shell out extra cash for these adapters – but this is the first time Sonos has offered line-in at all on a speaker in this price range, so it’s not a total bummer.Aside from the USB-C port, you’ll find another switch for muting the mic. Unlike the top button, which just mutes it with software, this physically disconnects the mic for additional privacy. Finally, there’s a Bluetooth button that puts the speaker in pairing mode.As with most Sonos products, the company has done a good job here marrying clean, attractive design without compromising on functionality. Yes, the loss of the Ethernet jack will rankle a small number of users, but for the most part these changes are improvements. I wish that they just put a line-in right on the speaker instead of requiring a dongle, but I’m more glad that the feature is here at all than I am annoyed at needing to buy an extra piece of plastic.Photo by Nathan Ingraham / EngadgetSetupGetting the Era 100 up and running is pretty simple, even if you don’t already have a Sonos system. You’ll need to download the Sonos app to your phone and set up an account; from there, the app will look and see if there are any speakers plugged in it can add. You’ll also need to log in to your audio services of choice, but after that you should be good to go. Obviously you can search for and play music through the Sonos app, but there are also options if you’d rather stick with the music apps you’re used to, like AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect.There are a few optional but useful things you can do while you’re setting up the Era 100, though. The first is Trueplay, a feature that tunes your speaker’s audio output based upon where it’s placed in your room. Trueplay has been around since 2015, but in the past it required you to have an iPhone. You’d have to walk around your room slowly raising and lowering the phone while the speaker played a test tone.The Era 100, though, can use its built-in microphones to listen and optimize its output – that process is much simpler and faster than the old technique, and Android users aren’t left out either. I’ve been extremely happy with Trueplay’s results in the past, so I’d recommend that everyone try this out. That said, I did find that the old, manual tuning process yielded slightly better results.You can also add a voice assistant to the Era 100. Amazon’s Alexa has been supported since the One launched back in 2017, and last year Sonos added its own music-focused assistant. Setting up the Sonos assistant is a little easier than Alexa, because you don’t need to link your Amazon account, but both are pretty straightforward at this point. Sadly, where past Sonos speakers supported Google Assistant the Era 100 does not. This is likely due to the ongoing patent battles between Google and Sonos. I personally prefer Google Assistant to Alexa, so this is a bit of a bummer.Photo by Nathan Ingraham / EngadgetAudio qualityWhile new features like easier Trueplay and new controls are important, what I really wanted to find out was how the Era 100 compares to the One it replaces. (I’ve also been comparing it to Apple’s latest HomePod as well as the Era 300.) So far, I’ve been extremely impressed. It’s immediately obvious that the Era 100 is a notable upgrade over the One.First off, the Era 100 is loud. Surprisingly so – it’s significantly louder than the One and the HomePod, and the Era 300 isn’t that much louder. Even a single Era 100 should provide enough volume for just about any room in your house. If you have a large open floor plan, you’ll probably want a couple speakers to cover the space rather than cranking a single, relatively small speaker to its limit. But in the vast majority of use cases one Era 100 should be sufficient.Obviously, there’s a lot more to good sound than just volume. The Era 100 has significantly improved bass performance when compared to the One, again exceeding what I’d expect from a compact speaker. Bass-heavy tracks like Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” and Dragonette’s “T-shirt” had a solid thump without being overwhelming, especially at higher volumes. It doesn’t match the Era 300 or HomePod, both of which have more dynamic bass performance, but Sonos is getting a lot out of the Era 100.Photo by Nathan Ingraham / EngadgetWhile I’m glad the bass has improved, I’m more impressed with the speaker’s overall clarity. The two tweeters definitely help make higher frequencies more defined. The sound profile is crisper and more dynamic than that of the One. The nuance and sheen of “California” by Chvrches and Metric’s “Formentera” came through wonderfully, while standard four-piece rock or metal like Metallica’s self-titled classic and Tool’s AEnima sounded lively and powerful. I also checked out my go-to film and game scores from Lord of the Rings and The Last of Us, and the intricate compositions were full and well-balanced. The One now sounds somewhat muddy by comparison, with both the highs and lows less distinct. The Era 300 sounds clearer still, thanks to the many drivers it has on board, but the 100 again is doing a lot with its comparatively limited speaker array.If you have a larger space or just want increased volume and detail, I recommend getting two Era 100s and pairing them in stereo. While the Era 100 technically has left and right tweeters, the small size means there’s no real stereo separation to speak of. Putting two of them together naturally yields a much wider soundstage and brings out lots of details that get erased when you squish a stereo mix down to one channel.A pair of Era 100s can also be used as rear surround speakers in a setup with one of Sonos’ soundbars. I didn’t test this, as I don’t have a great living room setup and I was more interested in the music performance, but it’s worth mentioning this feature. Sonos has long offered the option to use basically any of its music speakers as rear surrounds, and I’m glad they’ve continued with that here.The Era 100 (and 300) are the first non-portable speakers that include Bluetooth connectivity. It’s exceedingly simple: just hold the Bluetooth button on the back of the speaker to put it in pairing mode and it should show up for your phone or other device to connect to it. I had no reason to use Bluetooth, but the fast setup and pairing process could be useful if you have a friend who quickly wants to play a tune over your speaker, for example. It’s not essential, but having more options never hurts.Wrap-upSonos made a lot of smart decisions with the Era 100. The improvements it offers over the One are immediately obvious, both in sound quality and new features like line-in, Bluetooth and easier Trueplay setup. I don’t think Sonos One owners should necessarily run out and replace their speakers, but Sonos is now offering a better product at a $30 price increase, one that I think is justified for what you get.Of course, Sonos makes things a little complicated because there are two generations of the One; they’re identical in terms of audio components, but the gen 2 model has more memory and a faster processor. If you have the One from 2017 or 2018, replacing it with an Era 100 will provide better sound and more future-proof internals.The Era 100 isn’t the most exciting speaker I’ve listened to – I still have fond memories of being blown away by the Sonos Play:5 (now just called the Five) in 2015, and the Era 300 is also a delight. But when you take into consideration what most people will need from a speaker, the Era 100 provides impressive performance at a reasonable price.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sonos-era-100-review-affordable-multi-room-audio-that-actually-sounds-good-130007717.html?src=rss

According to a New York Times report, parts of Twitter’s source code were leaked online. Court filings published Friday reveal Twitter claimed copyright infringement to have the code taken down from Github as soon as possible. The code was removed the same day, but there’s no report on how long it was online for – or the leak's scope or depth. The Twitter executive who spoke with the NYT said the company's primary concern was that the source code could be used in future hacking efforts.Twitter executives suspect it's the work of a former employee who left "within the last year." That might not narrow down the hunt for the leak. Since Elon Musk purchased Twitter last October, the company has shed roughy 80 percent of its staff.– Mat SmithThe Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.The biggest stories you might have missedEU agrees to allow sales of e-fuel internal combustion engine cars past 2035 ‘Diablo IV’ beta preview: More polished and even more satisfying Hitting the Books: How the Godfather of Cybercrime got his start on eBay Sennheiser’s Momentum 4 Wireless headphones are cheaper than ever Elon Musk reportedly values Twitter at $20 billionThe billionaire bought the company last year for $44 billion.In timely fashion, Twitter owner Elon Musk says he valued Twitter at about $20 billion, according to an email seen by The Information and The New York Times. (Although this was before the reports of the source code leak.) Musk shared the valuation, a significant drop from the $44 billion he paid to buy the company last fall, in a memo he sent to Twitter employees on Friday announcing a new stock compensation program.Continue reading.It's your last chance to buy from Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS eShopsYou'll still be able to download games you've already purchased.It's the end of an era: Nintendo is shutting down its Wii U and 3DS eShops today at 5 PM PT (8 PM ET). After that, you'll no longer be able to purchase new games for those consoles, but you'll still be able to redownload titles you've already purchased. Some games will disappear forever, with 450 digital-only Wii U games, 600 digital-only 3DS games and 530 virtual console titles gone (at least from official channels), according to Video Games Chronicle’s estimates.Continue reading.Netflix strikes last-minute deal for ‘Arrested Development’ streaming rightsIt’ll leave when it’s good and ready.FoxAll five seasons of Arrested Development, including the two financed by Netflix, were set to leave the service on March 15th. However, the series is now staying put, thanks to a licensing agreement the company reached with Disney-owned 20th-Century Fox, the show’s original rights holder. According to Vulture, the new deal gives Netflix exclusive streaming rights to the series. As a result, the show’s first three seasons will not be available to watch on Hulu as of later this year. Notably, the deal reportedly gave Disney the option to sell the linear TV rights for all five seasons.Continue reading.Intel co-founder Gordon Moore has passed awayMoore famously predicted the miniaturization of computers in 1965.Gordon Moore, co-founder and former CEO of Intel, has passed away at 94. He was the last surviving member of the Intel Trinity, which also included his fellow founder, Robert Noyce, and their first hire, Andy Grove. In 1965, Moore wrote a paper that envisioned the miniaturization of computers, introducing the world to his prediction dubbed Moore's Law.He predicted the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year, leading to the creation and production of smaller and more powerful chips that would, in turn, enable advancements in technology. By 1975, he adjusted his estimate for the doubling of transistors to every two years, though top chipmakers disagree on whether Moore's Law still holds.Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-twitter-source-code-may-have-leaked-online-111545469.html?src=rss

If you've been waiting to purchase Microsoft 365 Family, now might be the right time. Amazon is offering a 12-month subscription for $100, down from $150 — plus a $50 Amazon gift card. Basically, you save $50 and get another $50 in spending money, not so bad.Your purchase includes all the usual Microsoft programs — Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook etc. — and 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage for easy sharing of photos and files across your devices.Microsoft 365 is available to download immediately for up to six family members on PCs or Macs. The Amazon gift card, on the other hand, will arrive in the mail. It has no expiration date so as long as you don't lose the little card somewhere, you can hold onto it for a while.If you choose to buy the family package, do yourself a favor and set a calendar reminder for just under a year from now. The subscription will auto-renew annually and there's nothing worse than finding out through a credit card statement. If you love it, great. If not, you'll have the option to cancel.This deal isn't completely new as Amazon offered the same one-day discount at the end of January. If you regretted skipping it then, here's your chance. But, you have to think fast, this deal is literally here today, gone tomorrow.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-will-give-you-a-50-gift-card-when-you-buy-a-year-of-microsoft-365-family-091100773.html?src=rss

It's the end of an era as Nintendo is shutting down its Wii U and 3DS eShops today (March 27th) at 5PM PST (8PM EST). After that, you'll no longer be able to purchase new games for those consoles, though you'll still be able to redownload titles you've already purchased for the time being.The company first warned of the eShop closures back in February 2022, and barred users from adding funds to their accounts on August 29th. Nintendo wrote at the time that that the move was "part of the natural lifecycle for any product line as it becomes less used by consumers over time."That may be true, but a trove of over 1,000 digital games will be lost in the shutdown, including Dr. Luigi, Mini Mario & Friends: Amiibo Challenge, and Pokémon Picross, to name but a few. In total, 450 digital-only Wii U games, 600 digital-only 3DS games and 530 virtual console games will disappear, VGC reported. Of the latter, 335 aren't currently available on Nintendo Switch Online.That means the only option for folks who want to play these classic games will be physical copies, which have soared in value. Many other download-exclusive games, meanwhile, will disappear for good.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/its-your-last-chance-to-buy-from-nintendos-wii-u-and-3ds-eshops-072838697.html?src=rss

In yet another embarrassing development for new Twitter boss Elon Musk, court filings published Friday reveal that portions of the social media site's source code — the base programming that makes Twitter possible — have been leaked online, the New York Times reports.Per court filings, Twitter claimed copyright infringement in an effort to have the offending code taken down from the Github collaborative programming network, where it had been posted. While the code was removed the same day, details as to how long the code had been left up were not made available, nor were the leak's scope or depth. As part of the takedown request reminiscent of Raytheon's famous -- failed -- attempt at court-sanctioned doxxing, Twitter also asked the US District Court for the Northern District of California to order Github to reveal both the identity of the user who posted the code and those who accessed and downloaded it.The NYT reports that, per sources within the company privy to the internal investigation into the leak, Twitter executives strongly suspect it's the work of a disgruntled employee who had left, "within the last year." Coincidentally, Elon Musk purchased Twitter last October for the eye-watering price of $44 billion and proceeded to lay-off and otherwise lose 80 percent of the company's staff, not the 75 percent that everybody feared Musk would enact in the run-up to his purchase.The executive who spoke with the NYT are primarily concerned that revelations gleaned from the stolen code could empower future hacking efforts, either by revealing new exploits or allowing bad actors to access Twitter user data. If the increasingly temperamental page functionality wasn't enough to send the site's user base running for the hills that the site's resurgence of scammers and white nationalists since Elon's takeover didn't already scare off, will the threat of outright hacking be the final straw for advertisers and users alike?This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/portions-of-twitters-source-code-have-reportedly-leaked-online-234405620.html?src=rss

Good news, Arrested Development fans. You can continue watching the highly acclaimed sitcom on Netflix. As The Verge outlines, all five seasons of the show, including the two financed by Netflix, were set to leave the service on March 15th. However, the series is now staying put, thanks to a licensing agreement the company reached with Disney-owned 20th Century Fox, the show’s original rights holder.

Elon Musk values Twitter at about $20 billion, according to an email seen by The Information and The New York Times. Musk shared the valuation, a significant drop from the $44 billion he paid to buy the company last fall, in a memo he sent to Twitter employees on Friday announcing a new stock compensation program. The billionaire reportedly warned Twitter’s significantly diminished workforce that the website was still in a precarious financial position. “Twitter is being reshaped rapidly,” he wrote, adding the company had, at one point, been four months away from running out of cash.

The European Union has agreed to make a carveout for synthetic fuels in its proposed 2035 ban on the sale of new combustion engine cars. Per the Associated Press, the bloc made a deal with Germany on Saturday to allow automakers to sell new ICE cars past 2035, provided those vehicles run on climate-neutral fuels only. The agreement ends a dispute that had threatened to scuttle the EU’s signature climate change policy. At the start of March, the European Parliament delayed a vote that would have codified the proposed ban after Germany, with support from automakers, said it would not back the mandate without an exemption for synthetic fuels.

One of Engadget’s favorite pair of noise-canceling headphones is on sale at Amazon. After a nearly $85 discount, you can get the Sennheiser Momentum 4 for $265. If you’re not fussy about color, the white model is an additional $6 off. Either way, that’s a new all-time low for Sennheiser’s flagship Bluetooth headphones.Engadget Senior Editor Billy Steele awarded the Momentum 4 a score of 82. He came away with their audio quality, noting they were among the best-sounding Bluetooth headphones he tested in 2022. Also impressive was their ANC performance and battery life. With noise cancellation turned on, Steele found he could get up to 60 hours of playtime on a single charge. That’s double what most noise-canceling headphones offer. If you don’t mind the Momentum 4’s somewhat forgettable design, they’re a great pair of headphones. I'll also note here Amazon has a handful of other Sennheiser products on sale, including the company's excellent HD 599 SE headphones.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/sennheisers-momentum-4-wireless-headphones-are-cheaper-than-ever-151139441.html?src=rss

The internet has connected nearly everybody on the planet to a global network of information and influence, enabling humanity's best and brightest minds unparalleled collaborative capabilities. At least that was the idea, more often than not these days, it serves as a popular medium for scamming your more terminally-online relatives out of large sums of money. Just ask Brett Johnson, a reformed scam artist who at his rube-bilking pinnacle, was good at separating fools from their cash that he founded an entire online learning forum to train a new generation of digital scam artist.Johnson's cautionary tale in one of many in the new book, Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry, from Harvard Business Review Press. In it, Professor of Forensic Accounting at DePaul University, Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope, chronicles some of the 20th and 21st century's most heinous financial misdeeds — from Bernie Madoff's pyramid schemes to Enron and VW, and all the Nigerian Princes in between — exploring how the grifts worked and why they often left their marks none the wiser.Harvard Business Review PressReprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted from Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry by Kelly Richmond Pope. Copyright 2023 Kelly Richmond Pope. All rights reserved.Cyber MondayI was doing my morning reading before class, and a story about a reformed cybercriminal caught my attention. I always wanted to learn more about cybercrime, but I’d never interacted with a convicted cyber offender. Here was my chance.I did a quick Google search and found his personal website. I reached out, explained my interest in his story, and waited. By evening, I had an email from gollum@anglerphish.com. I was immediately suspicious, but it was a legit address of Brett Johnson, the man from the article.After a few email exchanges, we got on a call. He was super friendly and had the voice of a radio DJ. I invited him to come speak to my class at DePaul.“I teach on Monday nights for the next eight weeks, so whatever works for you will work for me,” I said.“How about I hop in my car and come visit your class this coming Monday?” he said.I was a little shocked—Birmingham, Alabama was a long drive— but I immediately took him up on his offer.Brett was born and raised in Hazard, Kentucky, “one of these areas like the Florida Panhandle and parts of Louisiana, where if you’re not fortunate enough to have a job, you may be involved in some sort of scam, hustle, fraud, whatever you want to call it,” he said.Maybe there was something in the water because his entire family engaged in fraud. Insurance fraud, document forgery, drug trafficking, mining illegal coal. You name it, Brett’s family did it.Young Brett was a natural liar. As he grew up, he participated in the family scams.Eventually, he branched out on his own. His first scam: in 1994, he faked his own car accident. Second scam: eBay fraud.He reached his peak in the mid-’90s, during the Beanie Baby heyday. The Royal Blue Peanut, essentially a cobalt stuffed elephant toy, sold for as much as $1,700. Only five hundred of the dolls were manufactured, making it one of the most valuable Beanie Babies.Brett was trying to earn some extra money. A Beanie Baby scam seemed easy and quick.He advertised on eBay that he was selling Royal Blue Peanut for $1,500. Except he was actually selling a gray Beanie Baby that he dipped in blue dye to look like Royal Blue Peanut for $1,500.He accepted a bid and instructed the winner to send a US postal money order. “It protects us both,” he said via email. “As soon as I get that and it clears, I’ll send you your elephant.”The bidder sent Brett the money order; Brett cashed it and sent her his version of the blue Beanie Baby. The phone rang almost immediately.“This is not what I ordered!” yelled a voice on the other line.Brett’s response was swift. “Lady, you ordered a blue elephant. I sent you a blue-ish elephant.”Brett gave her the runaround for a few weeks until she finally disappeared.This experience taught Brett two very important lessons about cybercrime:

In 2020, Epic Games publicly demoed Unreal Engine 5 for the first time. Nearly three years later, gamers are still waiting for the tech to go mainstream. Outside of Fortnite and The Matrix Awakens, there aren’t any UE5 games you can play right now, and the first salvo probably won’t arrive until the end of the year at the earliest. None of that stopped Epic from showcasing the engine’s latest capabilities with a handful of new demos during its recent State of Unreal keynote at GDC 2023.Arguably the most impressive one saw Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 developer Ninja Theory show off Epic’s new MetaHuman Animator. The tool promises to make realistic facial capture accessible to indie developers by allowing them to use an iPhone, instead of dedicated equipment, to capture facial performances. As you can see from the two demos Epic shared, the tool makes it possible to quickly and accurately transform a closeup video of an actor into something a studio can use in-game. Epic said the animator would launch this summer.Separately, Epic showed off some of the enhancements coming to Unreal Engine 5.2 with a demo that featured, of all things, a digital recreation of Rivian’s R1T electric truck. The EV turned out to be the perfect showcase for UE 5’s new Substrate shading system. The technology allows artists to create different shading models and layer them as they see fit. In the demo, Epic gave the R1T an opal body to show how Substrate can allow different material layers to interact with one another without creating lighting artifacts. The demo was also a showcase for Epic’s new set of Procedural Content Generation tools. They allow artists to create expansive, highly detailed levels from a small set of hand-crafted assets.If all goes according to plan, it won’t be much longer before the first slate of Unreal Engine 5 games arrive. Provided it’s not delayed again, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is slated to release this year. Lords of the Fallen and Black Myth: Wukong, two other UE5 projects, don’t have a release date yet but have been in development for a few years now.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/epic-made-a-rivian-r1t-demo-to-show-off-its-latest-unreal-engine-5-tools-214300199.html?src=rss

Microsoft has released a pair of emergency updates to address the “aCropalypse” security flaw found within its native Windows 10 and 11 screenshot editing apps. As Bleeping Computer reports, the company began testing a fix for the vulnerability earlier this week shortly after it was discovered by retired software engineer Chris Blume.On Friday evening, Microsoft began rolling out public updates for Windows 11’s Snipping Tool as well as Windows 10’s Snip & Sketch app. You can manually prompt Windows to patch the app you use by opening the Microsoft Store and clicking on “Library,” followed by “Get Updates.” Microsoft recommends all users install the updates.The aCropalypse flaw was first discovered on Pixel devices, and subsequently addressed by Google in Android’s recent March security update. In the case of Windows 11’s Snipping Tool, it turned out the utility wasn’t properly overwriting cropped PNG data. The issue did not affect all PNG files, but the concern was that bad actors could exploit the vulnerability to partially recover edited images, particularly those that had been cropped to omit sensitive information. As with Google's March Android update, Microsoft's patches won't protect images that were previously created with its screenshot tools.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-releases-fix-for-windows-11-screenshot-privacy-bug-195412172.html?src=rss

A federal judge has ruled against the Internet Archive in its high-profile case against a group of four US publishers led by Hachette Book Group. Per Reuters, Judge John G. Koeltl declared on Friday the nonprofit had infringed on the group’s copyrights by lending out digitally scanned copies of their books.The lawsuit originated from the Internet Archive’s decision to launch the “National Emergency Library” during the early days of the pandemic. The program saw the organization offer more than 1.4 million free ebooks, including copyrighted works, in response to libraries worldwide closing their doors due to coronavirus lockdown measures.Before March 2020, the Internet Archive’s Open Library program operated under what’s known as a “controlled digital lending” system, meaning there was often a waitlist to borrow a book from its collection. When the pandemic hit, the Internet Archive lifted those restrictions to make it easier for people to access reading material while stuck at home. The Copyright Alliance was quick to take issue with the effort. And in June 2020, Hachette, as well as HarperCollins, Penguin Random House and John Wiley & Sons, sued The Internet Archive, accusing the organization of enabling “willful mass copyright infringement.” That same month, the Internet Archive shuttered the National Emergency Program early.Going into this week’s trial, the Internet Archive argued the initiative was protected by the principle of Fair Use, which allows the unlicensed use of copyrighted works under some circumstances. As The Verge notes, HathiTrust, an offshoot of the Google Books Search project, successfully used a similar argument in 2014 to fend off a legal challenge from The Authors Guild. However, Judge Koeltl rejected the Internet Archive’s stance, declaring “there is nothing transformative” about lending unauthorized copies of books. "Although [the Internet Archive] has the right to lend print books it lawfully acquired, it does not have the right to scan those books and lend the digital copies en masse," he wrote. Maria Pallante, the president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, said the ruling “underscored the importance of authors, publishers, and creative markets in a global society."On Saturday, the Internet Archive said it would appeal the decision. “Libraries are more than the customer service departments for corporate database products. For democracy to thrive at global scale, libraries must be able to sustain their historic role in society — owning, preserving, and lending book,” the nonprofit wrote in a blog post. “This ruling is a blow for libraries, readers, and authors and we plan to appeal it.”This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/internet-archive-violated-publisher-copyrights-by-lending-ebooks-court-rules-164629790.html?src=rss

Gordon Moore, co-founder and former CEO of Intel, has passed away at 94. He was the last surviving member of the Intel Trinity, which also included his fellow founder Robert Noyce and their first hire Andy Grove. Moore and Noyce previously worked with the co-inventor of the transistor, William Shockley, before helping found Fairchild Semiconductor. In 1968, the two struck out on their own and founded NM Electronics, which eventually became Intel.A few years before that, in 1965, Moore wrote a paper that envisioned the miniaturization of computers. To be precise, he predicted that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year, leading to the creation and production of smaller and more powerful chips that would, in turn, enable advancements in technology. His prediction was dubbed "Moore's Law," and it was proven accurate in the years that followed. By 1975, he adjusted his estimate for the doubling of transistors to every two years, though now top chipmakers disagree on whether Moore's Law still holds.In 1979, Moore was named chairman of the board and CEO at Intel before giving up the latter role in 1987. He apparently served as mediator between Noyce and Grove, and he and Grove were the ones who decided that Intel would focus on microprocessors instead of continuing with its memory business. The rest, as they say, is history. Before Moore completely stepped down from his duties at Intel in 2006, he and his wife established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation with $5 billion in funding. The foundation supported environmental conservation efforts, mostly in the San Francisco Bay area, and donated to various educational institutions' science and technology departments.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/intel-co-founder-gordon-moore-has-passed-away-073145647.html?src=rss

Blue Origin now has an explanation for the booster failure that cut a New Shepard flight short last September. Jeff Bezos' company has determined that a "thermo-structural failure" in the NS-23 rocket's engine nozzle was to blame. Operational temperatures for the nozzle climbed higher than expected following cooling system design changes, creating fatigue that misaligned the thrust and activated the crew capsule's escape system.Engineers are already taking "corrective actions" that include redesigning the combustion chamber and operating conditions. Blue Origin has also tweaked the nozzle design to improve its structural integrity. The capsule wasn't damaged and will fly again, Blue Origin says.The company says it hopes to resume flights "soon," but hasn't provided an exact date. It intends to restart operations by re-flying the research payload from the aborted mission. The Federal Aviation Administration has to accept the incident findings before Blue Origin can move forward.There's plenty of pressure on Blue Origin to address the issues. The company recently obtained a NASA contract to fly a science mission to Mars using its yet-to-launch New Glenn rocket, and has been pushing for a lunar lander agreement. The sooner Blue Origin can prove that its rocketry is trustworthy, the sooner it can secure customers that include governments and space tourists.Rivals are facing problems of their own. Relativity Space's first 3D-printed rocket failed to reach orbit earlier this month. SpaceX, meanwhile, has yet to successfully fire all of Starship's engines at the same time. That's not including past problems like Rocket Lab's setbacks. Private spaceflight remains difficult, and Blue Origin is just the latest to illustrate that fact.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/blue-origin-pins-last-summers-ns-23-rocket-failure-on-a-faulty-engine-nozzle-195714293.html?src=rss

Levi’s is partnering with an AI company on computer-generated fashion models to “supplement human models.” The company frames the move as part of a “digital transformation journey” of diversity, equity, inclusion and sustainability. Although that sounds noble on the surface, Levi’s is essentially hiring a robot to generate the appearance of diversity while ridding itself of the burden of paying human beings who represent the qualities it wants to be associated with its brand.Levi Strauss is partnering with Amsterdam-based digital model studio Lalaland.ai for the initiative. Founded in 2019, the company’s mission is “to see more representation in the fashion industry” and “create an inclusive, sustainable, and diverse design chain.” It aims to let customers see what various fashion items would look like on a person who looks like them via “hyper-realistic” models “of every body type, age, size and skin tone.”Levi’s announcement echoes that branding, saying the partnership is about “increasing the number and diversity of our models for our products in a sustainable way.” The company continues, “We see fashion and technology as both an art and a science, and we’re thrilled to be partnering with Lalaland.ai, a company with such high-quality technology that can help us continue on our journey for a more diverse and inclusive customer experience.”Lalaland.aiLevi’s claims, “AI will likely never fully replace human models for us” (note the qualifying “likely”). But I can’t help but see this as the first step in a dystopian slow walk toward automating the industry. As AI-generated “photography,” art and writing grow ever more convincing, we would be naive to take corporations at face value when they insist moves like this are about PR-friendly principles like celebrating diversity and looking out for the environment. At the very least, it’s awfully convenient that those high-minded motives also let them mass-produce something that previously required hiring people.Levi Strauss reportedly began a 12-to-19-month process of cutting around 800 jobs — almost 20 percent of its corporate workforce — last year. It was part of a restructuring plan to save about $75 million to $100 million annually.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/levis-will-supplement-human-models-with-ai-generated-fakes-190011557.html?src=rss

It's no shock to see another country banning TikTok from government phones, but France is taking the restrictions a step further. Le Mondereports the French government is banning "recreational" apps like TikTok, Twitter, Netflix and even Candy Crush from public servants' devices. The apps represent cybersecurity risks that could jeopardize data for both the employees and the administration, according to the office of public service minister Stanislas Guerini.The government hasn't provided an exact list of banned apps. However, Guerini said certain there could be some exceptions for the sake of necessary communication. This won't prevent a social media team from posting content, in other words. The ban takes effect immediately, but the penalties for defying the rule can be decided at the "managerial level," Guerini's office says. The approach doesn't affect personal devices.The clampdown comes after the US federal government, dozens of states, Canada, the European Commission and the UK have banned TikTok on their workers' devices. In those cases, the rationale has been similar: officials are worried the Chinese government could collect data about important individuals, spread propaganda and compel ByteDance (TikTok's parent company) to hand over sensitive information.TikTok has repeatedly denied collaborating with the Chinese government. In testimony before a House committee yesterday, CEO Shou Chew said ByteDance was "not an agent of China" and that American user data wouldn't be accessible to staff in other countries by the time a migration project wraps up later this year.The French policy, however, isn't aimed at any one country or app category. Instead, it represents a general concern that entertainment apps may put government data at unnecessary risk. That's not so hot for employees hoping to watch Netflix during lunch, but it may reassure politicians worried employees might inadvertently expose info through their social media accounts.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/france-bans-tiktok-and-candy-crush-from-government-phones-170434409.html?src=rss

OpenAI was forced to take its wildly-popular ChatGPT bot offline for emergency maintenance on Tuesday after a user was able to exploit a bug in the system to recall the titles from other users' chat histories. On Friday the company announced its initial findings from the incident.In Tuesday's incident, users posted screenshots on Reddit that their ChatGPT sidebars featured previous chat histories from other users. Only the title of the conversation, not the text itself, were visible. OpenAI, in response, took the bot offline for nearly 10 hours to investigate. The results of that investigation revealed a deeper security issue: the chat history bug may have also potentially revealed personal data from 1.2 percent of ChatGPT Plus subscribers (a $20/month enhanced access package)."In the hours before we took ChatGPT offline on Monday, it was possible for some users to see another active user’s first and last name, email address, payment address, the last four digits (only) of a credit card number, and credit card expiration date. Full credit card numbers were not exposed at any time," the OpenAI team wrote Friday. The issue has since been patched for the faulty library which OpenAI identified as the Redis client open-source library, redis-py.The company has downplayed the likelihood of such a breach occurring, arguing that either of the following criteria would have to be met to place a user at risk:

The next game from the makers of Genshin Impact has a release date. Honkai: Star Rail — a turn-based, space-fantasy, tactical RPG — arrives on April 26th. In addition to previously announced PC and mobile availability, developer HoYoverse announced today that a PlayStation (PS5 / PS4) version is coming “later.”Although much is unknown about Honkai: Star Rail, we do know it trades in Genshin Impact’s Breath of the Wild type of open-world action for turn-based combat. Based on its trailers, it looks like a visual spectacle with an anime-esque art style and a cast of memorable characters.The story, set in the same universe as Honkai Impact 3rd, follows a protagonist with an implanted Stellaron (mysterious life forms that respond to the world’s desire to advance) on a quest to discover the truth about the “Cancer of All Worlds.” It begins at a tutorial level on Herta Space Station before moving on to snow-covered Jarilo-VI and other diverse worlds.The free-to-play game will use gacha (item and character-based loot boxes) for monetization. It’s rated T for Teen and will be available for PC (standalone installation or the Epic Games Store), iOS and Android. That PS5 / PS4 version will arrive at an unknown later date.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-next-game-from-the-makers-of-genshin-impact-arrives-in-april-165030309.html?src=rss

If you're on the market for a new e-reader, Amazon's latest discounts on Kindles may have exactly what you've been looking for at a lower-than-expected price. Key among the sale items is the Kindle Paperwhite, which is down to $100. That's only $5 more than its record-low price, and it's the same price as the standard Kindle, which doesn't have as many extra features as the Paperwhite.While we did not review the Paperwhite, we did test the Paperwhite Signature Edition, which is only different thanks to its auto-adjusting front light, higher storage capacity and its wireless charging capabilities. You should get a very similar experience going with the regular Paperwhite, and it should be a great one. The latest version of Amazon's ubiquitous e-reader has a 6.8-inch, 300 ppi glare-free screen with 17 front LEDs, including a new adjustable warm light that will make it easier to read in dark environments (and after a full day of staring at a computer screen).The design of the Paperwhite hasn't changed drastically over the years, but Amazon has refined it. This model's screen is flush with its bezels, giving it a cleaner look, and it's also IPX8-rated, so it won't be in danger if it takes an accidental dunk in the pool or bathtub. This Paperwhite also has Audible support, so if you have audiobooks through the Amazon-owned outlet, you can listen to them directly from your Kindle as long as you have a pair of Bluetooth headphones to do so.It's worth mentioning that the Kids version of the Paperwhite is also on sale for $110, and we sometimes recommend this model even for adults. You're getting the same hardware as the non-kids model, along with a longer warranty and a protective case. The Kids version is also touted to have no ads, but that's only if you stick to the kid-friendly UI that's preinstalled on the e-reader.Also included in this sale is the new Kindle Scribe, which is down to a new all-time-low price of $290. The Scribe is Amazon's first jump into the e-ink tablet space, and the model on sale includes 16GB of storage and a basic pen. As a tablet, the Scribe is a basic but fairly well-executed device: there's little to no latency when writing on the display, there are a decent number of brush options to choose from and you can organize multiple notebooks pretty easily. As an e-reader, it's a little on the large size with its 10.3-inch display, but the screen is crisp and responsive and we like the wider side bezel that makes the device easier to grip.You can't actually take notes in the margins of Kindle books on the Scribe, but you can add sticky notes to your books and jot down ideas that way. And if you like the idea of keeping your notes on the same device that holds most of your reading material, the Scribe will be a good option for you. That goes for those who have big Kindle e-book libraries, but also those who have PDFs and ePUBs they want to mark up, too, as the Scribe supports a number of different file types.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/amazon-sale-knocks-the-kindle-paperwhite-down-to-100-150513073.html?src=rss

The UK is softening its objections to Microsoft's buyout of Activision Blizzard. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has revised its findings and determined that the merger won't lead to significantly reduced competition in the console space. While the evidence remains the same, the watchdog now finds that Microsoft's ownership of franchises like Call of Duty would "not materially affect" Sony's ability to compete with PlayStation systems. Microsoft could "degrade" the PlayStation's appeal, the CMA says, but Sony's platform has a strong-enough catalog that the damage would be limited.The Authority also reconsidered its view that Microsoft might benefit from shutting out Call of Duty's PlayStation audience. More recent Microsoft data suggests the company could suffer substantial losses in "any plausible scenario" by making the game franchise Xbox-only or offering exclusive perks, according to the CMA. Not enough gamers would switch from PlayStation to Xbox to make that strategy work, in other words.The CMA makes clear that the updated findings don't change its concerns about cloud gaming services. In February, the regulator said Microsoft represented up to 70 percent of the worldwide cloud gaming market, and completing the Activision Blizzard purchase could harm gamers who can't afford an expensive console or PC.We've asked Microsoft and Sony for comment. Activision Blizzard tells Engadget in a statement that the CMA now has an "improved understanding" of the console market, and that Microsoft already has solutions in place for remaining issues. Activision maintains that Sony is only trying to "protect its dominance" by contesting the acquisition.Sony has long opposed the deal and calls it a "threat to our industry" that could hurt the quality of Call of Duty on PlayStation. Microsoft has made a number of concessions in hopes of clinching the Activision Blizzard takeover, including 10-year multi-platform promises for Call of Duty as well as arrangements to bring games to rival cloud platforms.The UK overseer's change of heart doesn't overcome resistance to the merger in other countries. The US Federal Trade Commission is still suing to block the union, and points out that Microsoft made future titles like Redfall Xbox-exclusive on consoles despite assurances to European Union officials. Objectors can also comment on the findings before the end of March. However, the new stance still improves Microsoft's chances of completing the acquisition — a major regulatory body just dropped its main point of contention.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/uk-watchdog-no-longer-thinks-microsofts-activision-blizzard-merger-is-a-threat-to-console-competition-140206114.html?src=rss

Later today, Blizzard will open the gates to Diablo IV's long-awaited open beta, allowing anyone to play the action RPG before its June 6th release date. I had a chance to check out the beta during the early access window the studio offered last weekend and came away more excited than ever to play the final game. Nearly three months from release, there's a lot to like about Diablo IV. Combat is fun and impactful, and the game gives you a lot of freedom to play your character the way you want to play them. Add to that a compelling world with top-notch art direction and sound design, and you have what could be the best Diablo game yet. Still, there's more work Blizzard could do around the user interface, and some dungeons could use more variety.If you're jumping into the beta today, Blizzard has said players should be ready for lengthy queue times, particularly on Friday afternoon. Long login times and disconnects were an issue on the first day of the early access weekend, but Blizzard eventually addressed those technical hiccups.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/diablo-iv-beta-preview-more-polished-and-even-more-satisfying-133038708.html?src=rss

Google finally opened up its Bard AI for testing, and it turns out it’s a little loopy. This week, Cherlynn and Devindra dive into their experience with Bard, as well as how it compares with Microsoft’s BingAI (and GPT4, consequently). Also, we discuss even more AI news from NVIDIA, Microsoft and Midjourney, as well as TikTok CEO Shou Chew’s date with Congress.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 podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!Subscribe!

It turned into a five-hour showdown between TikTok CEO Shou Chew and US lawmakers, who have found suspicion of TikTok to be a rare source of bipartisan agreement. It comes as US officials told the company they could ban the app if it doesn’t separate itself from ByteDance.As with previous hearings with social media executives, lawmakers pressed Chew for often impossible yes-no answers to complex questions and grew frustrated when he declined to give one. In one exchange, Representative Tony Cardenas asked Chew whether ByteDance was a Chinese company. He would only admit it was a “global” firm with a Chinese founder. The hearing was also notably different from previous hearings with other social media company CEOs because the vast majority of lawmakers are not active on TikTok. Not all of their questions were nuanced, either: Representative Richard Hudson demanded to know if TikTok can “access the home WiFi network.” TikTok’s future remains uncertain, Chinese officials said Thursday they opposed a sale of the social network.– Mat Smith.The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.The biggest stories you might have missedHow and where to buy refurbished tech online‘Star Trek: Picard’ thinks the kids aren’t alright Twitter says it's killing legacy verified checkmarks starting on April 1st SEC charges Lindsay Lohan and other celebrities for illegally touting cryptoThey didn't disclose they were being paid to promote certain coins.Hippolyte Petit via Getty ImagesThe Securities and Exchange Commission has cracked down on the businesses of crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun and has charged him for the unregistered offer and sale of the tokens Tronix and BitTorrent. If those tokens sound familiar even to non-hardcore crypto enthusiasts, it's because several celebrities had promoted them on social media – and now they're also being charged by the agency. According to the SEC, eight celebrities, including Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, Soulja Boy, Ne-Yo and Akon, illegally promoted the tokens online without disclosing they were paid to do so. All celebrities charged, except for Soulja Boy and musician Austin Mahone, have agreed to pay a collective amount of $400,000 in penalties to settle the charges.Continue reading.‘Cyberpunk 2077’ is getting a path-tracing Overdrive Mode in AprilThe tech preview requires the latest and most expensive NVIDIA graphics cards.A new Cyberpunk 2077 technology preview (Overdrive Mode) supports path tracing, the next goalpost to make games look even prettier and keep you buying expensive new GPUs, courtesy of… GPU manufacturer NVIDIA. The two-year-old game joins Minecraft, Portal and Quake II — old… classics? – in supporting the technology. While ray tracing follows a single beam of light across a virtual scene, path tracing follows the light as it bounces around an environment, more realistically mimicking how it works in the physical world. But the heady calculations behind it mean you’ll need the most powerful NVIDIA RTX 40-series GPUs to enjoy Cyberpunk 2077’s path-tracing makeover – and you might still run into performance issues.Continue reading.Relativity Space launched its 3D-printed rocket, but failed to reach orbitThe aim is lower-cost spaceflight.After multiple scrubbed attempts, Relativity Space has finally launched its 3D-printed rocket. But the results were mixed. Its Terran 1 vehicle successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral late Wednesday but failed to reach orbit after the second-stage engine ignited only momentarily. It's unclear what led to the failure, but Relativity is promising updates in the "coming days." Terran 1 endured Max-Q (maximum dynamic pressure), the moment expected to place the most stress on the 3D-printed design, so that’s being seen as an achievement. The 3D-printing process theoretically provides simpler, more reliable rockets that are cheaper to make and could be ready in weeks, lowering the costs of putting satellites into orbit.Continue reading.Framework’s latest modular PC is a gaming laptopIt’s a bigger challenge.The Framework Laptop 16 is the company’s second product after its upgradeable 13-inch notebook, but there’s not much information – or specs – to go on at the moment. Yesterday’s announcements essentially just prepared the ground for a fuller media blitz closer to pre-orders opening later this spring. But according to company founder Nirav Patel, the new laptop has “pretty much complete flexibility to support changes when it comes to GPUs.”Continue reading.United and Archer will open an air taxi route to Chicago’s O’Hare airport in 2025The companies say the trip from downtown will take as little as 10 minutes.Archer Aviation / United AirlinesArcher Aviation and United Airlines announced a partnership today to launch a commercial air taxi route between downtown and O’Hare International Airport in 2025. As well as being United’s headquarters and largest hub, Chicago's airport makes it an ideal testbed for flying taxis. The drive to or from O’Hare, in the western suburb of Rosemont, can take anywhere from 35 minutes to over an hour, depending on traffic. Archer estimates a flight in one of its air taxis will only take 10 minutes to travel from O’Hare to its destination at a downtown helipad.Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-what-tiktoks-ceo-told-congress-about-the-apps-ties-to-china-113834453.html?src=rss

If you've had your eye on the PS5 and God of War: Ragnarok, which just happens to be one of our best PlayStation 5 games for 2023, then this is your chance to get both together at a discount. The PS5 God of War: Ragnarok bundle is currently on sale for $510, or $50 less than its usual price. That means you can get the game for only $11, considering the disc version of the console on its own will set you back $499. You can even choose between Amazon and Adorama if you decide to get the bundle, which also includes a DualSense controller in addition to a voucher for the full game.The PS5 was notoriously hard to find in the previous years, because supply chain constraints during the pandemic made it difficult for Sony to keep up with the demand. Things only started to change last year, when supply chain issues eased up enough for the company to be able to promise that it was going to ramp up production of the console. Back in February, Sony announced that it had sold 7.1 million PS5s from October to December 2022 despite a price hike across several regions in August. That's an 82 percent increase from the same quarter a year before, signifying an end to the the console's availability issues.There were no real discounts for the PS5 when it was barely available anywhere, and it's only now when Sony has finally caught up that we've started seeing good deals for the console. While we'll likely see more in the coming months, this could be one of the best deals to pop up if you're a God of War fan.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/sonys-god-of-war-ragnarok-ps5-bundle-is-50-off-right-now-095940300.html?src=rss

PayPal is expanding access to passkey logins to Android users in the US, so long as they access the website on the Chrome browser. The payment processor first introduced passkey logins for Apple's computers and tablets running macOS Ventura and iPadOS16 in October last year. Google had yet to release stable passkey support for Android and Chrome at the time, but PayPal promised to make the password alternative available to other platforms and countries in the future.By December last year, passkeys rolled out to stable Chrome. Now PayPal is making good on its promise, with some limitations. The login option isn't available for the payment processor's Android app yet, and users can only activate it if they're using Chrome on a device running Android 9.The new authentication technology allows users to access websites and services that support it without having to type in usernames and passwords. While it can use biometric authentication to verify a user's identity, it's not quite the same as current login tech that auto-populates login boxes using facial or fingerprint recognition. The technology creates a cryptographic key pair — one public and one private — that becomes associated with a user's account. Apps and services that support passkeys use the public key to confirm a person's identity by matching it to the private key, which is kept in the user's device. As The Verge notes, some password managers can now sync passkeys between devices, as well.To activate passkeys for PayPal on Android, eligible users have to log in the traditional way on a Chrome browser first. Then, the option to "create a passkey" will appear, and they will be prompted to verify their identity using their biometrics or their phone's passcode. After they're done setting up, they'll find that they'll no longer have to type in anything to quickly check out purchases with PayPal on Chrome. Passkeys also provide stronger security, since they're resistant to phishing. And, since one of the key pairs is kept on the user's device, people's login information won't be compromised in case of an app or service data breach.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/paypal-launches-passkey-logins-for-android-web-in-the-us-070157855.html?src=rss

Pretty soon, previously verified Twitter accounts will lose their checkmarks unless they start paying for it. The website has announced that it will "begin winding down [its] legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks" on April 1st. It was never a secret that the company intended to do so. Shortly after Twitter Blue first launched in November 2022, company chief Elon Musk said that "far too many corrupt legacy Blue 'verification' checkmarks exist" and that the company is removing them in the coming months.

Utah’s governor has signed two bills that could upend how teens in the state are able to use social media apps. Under the newlaws, companies like Meta, Snap and TikTok would be required to get parents permission before teens could create accounts on their platforms. The laws also require curfew, parental controls and age verification features.The laws could dramatically change how social platforms handle the accounts of their youngest users. In addition to the parental consent and age verification features, the laws also bar companies “from using a design or feature that causes a minor to have an addiction to the company's social media platform.”For now, it’s not clear how Utah officials intend to enforce the laws or how they will apply to teenagers’ existing social media accounts. Both laws are scheduled to take effect next March.The effect that social media can have on teens, particularly younger ones, has been in the spotlight for some time. Earlier this year, the Surgeon General said that “13 is too early,” referring to the minimum age when most platforms allow teens to join. Lawmakers in Congress and in other states have also proposed laws that would limit teens’ ability to use social media apps.Not everyone agrees that laws restricting teenagers from using social media is the right approach, though. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that promotes digital rights, has opposed the law, saying it would violate the First Amendment rights of young people. Other groups have voiced similar concerns.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/utah-passes-laws-requiring-parental-permission-for-teens-to-use-social-media-223302739.html?src=rss

You no longer have to wonder whether or not the revived Twitter Blue subscription is available in your country. Twitter has confirmed that Blue is now available worldwide. Pay $8 per month ($11 if you sign up through the iOS app) and you'll get the no-longer-that-special blue checkmark as well as 4,000-character tweets, higher ranking in replies, post editing and other perks.Organizations, meanwhile, can pursue a more useful tick next to their names. Twitter has begun accepting applications for the grey checkmarks that verify government officials and organizations, not to mention their equivalents at multilateral institutions. As you might guess, the criteria is stricter. Applicants have to use either their government ID or a valid email address, and have to describe their positions and functions. Businesses can already apply for gold checkmarks.

At his first Congressional hearing, TikTok CEO Shou Chew tried to downplay TikTok’s ties to China and parent company ByteDance. But lawmakers at the House Energy and Commerce Committee were far from satisfied with his answers.In her opening statements, committee chair Representative Cathy Rodgers said that TikTok should be banned. "ByteDance is beholden to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party], and ByteDance and TikTok are one and the same," she said.Chew, who in his written testimony said that “ByteDance is not an agent of China” repeatedly pointed to Project Texas, the company’s sweeping plan to lock down US users’ data in the United States. But lawmakers on the committee were skeptical of the plan, which TikTok officials have said would do more to protect users than an outright ban.Chew repeated multiple times that US user data would be inaccessible to employees in other countries “after Project Texas” is completed later this year. Still, committee members were skeptical of the plan, which has been in the works for more than a year. Rodgers called it a “marketing scheme,” Representative Frank Pallone said "Project Texas is simply not acceptable," and Representative Angie Craig said the plan “doesn’t pass the smell test.”The more than five-hour showdown between Chew and lawmakers, who have found suspicion of TikTok to be a rare source of bipartisan agreement, comes as US officials have told the company it could ban the app if it doesn’t separate itself from ByteDance.As with previous hearings with social media executives, lawmakers pressed Chew for yes or no answers to complex questions, and grew frustrated when he declined to give one. In one exchange, Representative Tony Cardenas asked Chew whether ByteDance was a Chinese company. He would only admit that it was a “global” firm with a Chinese founder. In another, Representative Debbie Lesko asked if he would agree with a statement that the Chinese government persecutes the Uighur population in China. He would only say that "it's deeply concerning to hear about all the kinds of human rights abuse" and tried to pivot to saying those statements are allowed on TikTok.And Chew dodged other questions about the inner workings of ByteDance and its China-based employees. He was sharply criticized for his response to a question about whether ByteDance employees had spied on American journalists. “I don’t think ‘spying’ is the right way to describe it,” Chew said. “This is ultimately an internal investigation.” (TikTok was quick to point out Chew denied ‘spying’ had happened at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party.)The hearing was also notably different than previous hearings with other social media company CEOs because the vast majority of lawmakers are not active on TikTok. Not all of their questions were nuanced, though. At one point, Representative Richard Hudson demanded to know whether TikTok can “access the home WiFi network.” And multiple lawmakers asked why TikTok’s moderation practices are different from the aggressive censorship of its Chinese counterpart, Douyin.Beyond national security concerns, several lawmakers also raised the issue of teen safety, including TikTok’s content moderation practices and how it deals with viral “challenges.” Chew often pointed to recent updates like TikTok’d addition of a STEM-themed feed, new screentime settings and algorithm tweaks to limit “repetitive patterns” of potentially harmful content.But, after more than five hours of questioning, it seemed his testimony hadn’t done much to persuade the members of the committee that Project Texas will be able to address their concerns.For now, TikTok’s future is uncertain, and even Chew seemed unwilling to speculate. Chinese officials said Thursday they oppose a sale of TikTok. When asked in the hearing if he agreed with those comments, Chew instead pointed to Project Texas."We will need to look at this because Project Texas is designed to move forward here in the United States and we are not discussing this," he said.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/heres-what-tiktoks-ceo-told-congress-about-the-apps-ties-to-china-and-teen-safety-201657076.html?src=rss

After a particularly long incubation process, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is almost ready to ship. Daedalic has revealed that its stealth action take on JRR Tolkien's fantasy world will be available May 25th on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. A Switch version is due later in the year. While the mechanics of the game are by now familiar, this still promises to be a fresh take if you weren't enthused with the hack-and-slash of Monolith's Middle-earth games.You play Gollum in a previously unrecorded story of his search for (what else?) the Precious during the first few chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring. He's clearly not a brawler, so he has to sneak and climb to survive. And crucially, the battle inside his corrupted mind plays a key role. You have to choose between giving into Gollum's darker impulses or hanging on to the shreds of kindness from Smeagol. While this is an original tale based on the books, you'll run into familiar characters and navigate a world heavily inspired by Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies.To say Gollum has taken a while to finish would be an understatement. It was originally unveiled in 2019, and even then wasn't expected to arrive until 2021. That year came and went (the pandemic didn't help speed development), and even a tentative September 2022 release didn't happen after a delay that was only supposed to last "a few months" as Daedalic took extra time to polish the title.The timing might work in the game's favor. In 2019, Amazon's Lord of the Rings TV series was still in its infancy, and the last big Tolkien game (Middle-earth: Shadow of War) was old news. Flash forward to 2023 and it's another story. Amazon's The Rings of Power show is a major success, and movie effects house Weta Workshop is making its own game set in the franchise. There's a renewed interest in hobbits and orcs, and Gollum might benefit from that demand.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/lord-of-the-rings-gollum-will-finally-arrive-on-may-25th-193755108.html?src=rss

Archer Aviation and United Airlines announced a partnership today to launch a commercial air taxi route in Chicago. The companies plan to open the flight path between downtown and O’Hare International Airport in 2025.Besides being United’s headquarters and largest hub, Chicago's airport commute makes it an ideal testbed for flying taxis. For example, the drive to or from O’Hare, in the western suburb of Rosemont, can take anywhere from 35 minutes to over an hour, depending on traffic; even in one of the city’s elevated trains, it can take around 45 minutes. But Archer estimates a flight in one of its air taxis will only take 10 minutes to travel from O’Hare to its destination at a downtown helipad. The program will initially be limited to the mainline O’Hare / downtown route, but the companies eventually plan to add smaller paths to surrounding communities.Archer describes the upcoming route as “cost competitive” for passengers without going into specifics. But even if it’s initially limited to deep-pocketed business travelers, the program should be good for the environment. Archer’s air taxis use electric motors and batteries and don’t produce emissions. “This exciting new technology will further decarbonize our means of transportation, taking us another step forward in our fight against climate change,” said Mayor Lori Lightfoot. “I’m pleased that Chicago residents will be among the first in the nation to experience this innovative, convenient form of travel.”The partnership is the latest in United’s aggressive investments in flying taxis. Last year, the airline ordered at least 200 electric flying taxis from Eve Air Mobility; that followed a $10 million deposit it placed with Archer the month prior.In addition to Chicago’s (ground-based) taxis and ride shares, the city has a robust public transportation system built around elevated trains and buses, the latter of which the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has committed to converting to electric by 2040. (The CTA already deploys 23 electric buses.) If all goes according to plan, the flight path will help decrease emissions and traffic congestion, something most Chi-town residents can get behind.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/united-and-archer-will-open-an-air-taxi-route-to-chicagos-ohare-airport-in-2025-191352804.html?src=rss

Following the release the new GPT-4 engine and Whisper API in March, OpenAI announced Thursday that it has begun introducing plugins for ChatGPT. These will enable the chatbot to interact with 3rd-party APIs, tailoring its responses to specific circumstances as defined by the developers while expanding the bot's range of capable actions.Say you want to develop a chatbot that users can talk sports with. Before the latest GPT-4 upgrade, the chatbot would only be able to discuss games and scores that happened in the past, specifically in 2021 which is when GPT-3's training data was assembled. It wouldn't pull real-time data or even be aware that the year 2022 existed. With a chatGPT plugin, you'll be able to tack ChatGPT functionality onto your existing code stack where it will be able to do anything from retrieve real-time information calls (sports scores, stock prices, breaking news) to pulling specific knowledge-base information like your company's internal documents or from your personal cloud. It will even be able to take action on behalf of the user like booking a flight or ordering take-out — think, an installable Google Assistant made by the OpenAI folks.

Digital audio workstations (DAWs) tend to be power-hungry, so it was already a pretty big deal when Soundation managed to fit most of the required features in a handy web app. But now the company has refined the code to allow anyone to embed a fully-functional music recording station right on their website.For the uninitiated, digital audio workstations are where the vast majority of modern music-making takes place. These software suites integrate with all manner of hardware and feature standard timeline-based recording functions. Soundation’s new tools open these features up to any person or company with an active website. All you have to do is copy and paste a bit of code and the software does the rest. Of note, you can place an empty DAW on your website, just waiting to be filled with music, or a DAW that already features audio content.What are the use cases here? You can drop a fresh and empty DAW just waiting for visitors to add sounds and effects. This is the ideal scenario for collaborative classes and the like. Remember, a DAW features all of the tools you need to record audio, edit audio, drag and drop MIDImidi, and add effects.Things get more interesting when you factor in DAWs pre-loaded with musical content, which could lead to a user-friendly way to remix pre-existing songs. The artist just has to embed a preloaded DAW on their site and let fans work their magic. This technology will also allow customers to “try before they buy” when it comes to sample packs and standalone beats. You can rearrange the samples on the fly and really get into the nitty-gritty, instead of just listening to demo clips.Embedding lets you change up the visual features of the DAW, including the thumbnail, aspect ratio, colors, and more. So your specific DAW should look completely different from the beatmaker next door, leading to unique remix competitions hosted by music marketplaces and teachers using different DAW templates for each class.The technology is available right now to try, but it does require a Soundation subscription that starts at $5 per month. However, subscribing also gets you access to real-time collaboration tools and other perks.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/you-can-now-embed-a-legitimate-audio-workstation-right-on-your-website-180021810.html?src=rss

Nvidia wants game developers to remember that ray tracing isn’t the end of the line. A new Cyberpunk 2077 technology preview (“Overdrive Mode”) supports path tracing, the next goalpost to make games look even prettier and keep you buying expensive new GPUs. The two-year-old game joins Minecraft, Portal and Quake II — titles with relatively primitive graphics — in supporting the technology. In addition, Nvidia announced the availability of a developer kit to pave the way for the next generation of bleeding-edge graphics.While ray tracing follows a single beam of light across a virtual scene, path tracing follows the light as it bounces around an environment, more realistically mimicking how it works in the physical world. It determines how nearby surfaces reflect or absorb the light, producing physically accurate soft shadows that more easily convince our brains that we’re viewing a natural, real-life scene. And humans perceiving graphics as more realistic is (naturally) an advancement the gaming industry will pursue without hesitation. Hollywood has used path tracing for decades, but it was a slow and expensive process that couldn’t work on consumer gear or in anything close to real-time.However, we need to keep our expectations in check for the moment: You’ll need the most powerful Nvidia RTX 40-series GPUs to enjoy Cyberpunk 2077’s path tracing (and those who do may run into performance issues). Still, Nvidia is eager to nudge the industry toward what will be increasingly possible for consumer graphics in the coming years.Nvidia says two of its technologies were vital in producing this milestone: DLSS 3 (AI-based image upscaling without performance loss) and Shader Execution Reordering (more efficient ray tracing without losing quality). “DLSS allows games to render 1/8th of the pixels, then uses AI and GeForce RTX Tensor Cores to reconstruct the rest, dramatically multiplying frame rates, while delivering crisp, high-quality images that rival native resolution,” Nvidia explained in its announcement.Although we’ll probably have to wait a while before this technology becomes widely accessible, Nvidia launched a new SDK this week to let developers prepare. Owners of the latest and greatest Nvidia GPUs can test the Cyberpunk 2077 “Overdrive Mode” tech preview starting on April 11th.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cyberpunk-2077-is-getting-a-path-tracing-overdrive-mode-in-april-171558980.html?src=rss

There have been many attempts to build an upgradable gaming laptop, and all of them have failed. Technology moves on, or the manufacturer stops being able, or willing, to support users who have already bought a machine. The most infamous example must be the A51M, which had swappable GPU modules designed to keep it close to the cutting edge. But Dell killed off the plan to produce new modules for that machine the very next year. It’s this arena, littered with high expectations and broken promises that Framework is entering with its first gaming notebook. It’s called the Framework Laptop 16 and it could be the standard bearer for a new paradigm in portable computing. No pressure.The Framework Laptop 16 is the company’s second product after its perpetually-upgraded 13-inch notebook. That has earned it plaudits from across the industry, and has given it the confidence to turn its sights toward a far harder group to win over; gamers, creatives and power users. But despite the beefier internals, the machine retains the promise of being an entirely modular, fully-repairable laptop. “It’s all of the repairability and upgradeability that exists in the Framework Laptop 13, in a larger, higher-performance form factor,” said company founder Nirav Patel. He told me he believes that Framework is now “delivering on the holy grail in high-performance notebooks, which is the ability to upgrade the GPU independently of the rest of the system.”At first blush, it’s clear that the Framework 16 doesn’t try to disguise the modular nature of its construction like its smaller sibling. That’s both a function of the sheer level of customization on hand, and an intentional choice to be loud and proud about what this machine is. Patel said that while the default build is fairly discreet (I’d be tempted to disagree), “there’s so much you can reconfigure and customize that you can build something totally insane” so expect the models seen in the wild to be “immediately eye-catching.” And, if you had to sum up its aesthetics in a single word, I’d be tempted to coin the phrase legopunk.What we don’t have today, and won’t learn for a little while longer, is what specs are going to be found inside this chassis. Today’s announcements are essentially just preparing the ground for a fuller media blitz closer to when pre-orders open later this Spring. More importantly, it’s to get the ever-growing community of Framework developers and hobbyists attuned to what’s coming, and the tools that they’ll be given free-reign to play with to help customize and tweak their own machines. Patel believes that there’s plenty of potential toys for people to want to fiddle with, both inside the machine, and on the top of its deck. As part of this push, a slew of open source data, from mechanical drawings to electrical reference designs has been uploaded to GitHub.Much of our discussion focused on the big question that will likely hang over this machine for at least the next year or so. Plenty of companies have made gaming laptops with the promise of a future roadmap to upgrades, and none of them could deliver on that year-after-year. “It’s been tried in the past, it’s failed horribly, so much so that there’s a class action lawsuit,” admitted Patel. “What they did wrong, we learned all of [their] lessons so what we’re building is an expansion bay system. Rather than constrain components to a single size and hope that they can conform to those requirements forever, the laptop itself will grow (or shrink) as required.Framework has made room in the chassis to support both a current generation GPU module as well as future ones. “Instead of getting stuck where we can’t support new generations” he said, “we have that flexibility within that expansion bay to reconfigure any internal – or external – aspect of it to make sure it works.” This even stretches to the external dimensions of the laptop itself, and you can swap out the standard deck case for one with a longer rear vent, a common feature on many high-performance machines. “We’ve designed ourselves a way where we have pretty much complete flexibility to support changes when it comes to GPUs,” said Patel.Internally, the 16’s mainboard is set up in such a way as to allow a connection over PCIe x8, which Patel says offers enough “high power and display support in both directions” for a laptop of this intended size and class. When asked if that connection was enough, he said that the machine still has to behave like a gaming laptop, rather than trying to bolt on overpowered desktop-class modules. “It wouldn’t make sense to put a 300 watt GPU into such a fairly thin form factor,” especially given the thermal constraints any laptop has, let alone a gaming one.FrameworkIt should be easy enough to make changes, with Patel explaining that those who need integrated graphics can just add a default thermal module into the bay. But when the person’s needs change, they can “fly in a graphics module” to get that higher level of performance. But the expansion card bay isn’t just designed for an annual cadence of new GPUs, but instead will be offered up for a variety of purposes.The bay, and its connection, will be opened up to Framework’s developer community enabling them to build their own modules. The company has already built a dual M.2 SSD that uses the bay, offering up to 16TB of additional storage. But Patel envisions a wide variety of other tools that could be plugged in, like a video capture card, streaming hardware, dedicated AI modules or even a software-defined radio transmitter.As well as the unprecedented level of internal customization, the 16 also offers hot-swappable keyboard, mousepad and anything-else-on-the-top-deck modules. Patel said, based on market research, there’s a clean 50-50 split between people who love, and those who hate, numpads. “So, we thought, why not let people choose?” Consequently, the whole top deck of the 16 is user reconfigurable. Patel added that owners can “actually remove the keyboard, remove the numpad, slide the keyboard into the center and add input modules to the left and right” all while the machine is running.Much like the expansion cards, Framework says it is opening these tools up to developers as well. Patel said that the company has already developed a secondary display, haptic slider and an LED matrix display. Framework is also developing regular backlit keyboards as well as, since this is a gaming laptop after all, an RGB-backlit version. Many of the modules are built on QMK keyboard software based on the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, and the company is releasing open-source firmware to help enable the developer community to build their own projects. In its release, the company said it was hoping to see fans building their own “jog wheels, sliders, touchscreen displays, e-ink notepads, smart card readers and more.”Another holdover from the older Framework Laptop is the expansion cards: USB-connected peripherals which let you choose which integral ports your laptop has, and where you put them. The bigger chassis size means that the 16 has three ports on either side, compared to the two on its smaller sibling. But one of those, depending on how you feel about having a dedicated headphone jack, might already be reserved. “The gaming audience is either using wireless or USB headsets,” said Patel, who paused and smiled to himself before adding that the company has had the “courage” to remove the dedicated 3.5mm port from the bigger machine. “But we’ll introduce an audio expansion card [to replace it]” giving users the choice of having the port, or not, and to pick which side of the chassis they want that wire running to.If there’s one thing that will hopefully ensure that Framework doesn’t fall into the same trap as the A51M, it’s going to be its ties with component manufacturers. The company already makes its own mainboards with Compal and Patel said Framework was already plugged into the ecosystem necessary to build its own graphics cards. He added that, much like initiatives to tackle mainboard and battery waste, Framework would also work to ensure that legacy GPU modules, the ones that get swapped out from this machine a few years down the line, will also get a second life. “You can take the graphics module out of a Framework Laptop 16 and install it in an external enclosure to use as an eGPU,” said Patel. The company’s booth at the Game Developers Conference will be demonstrating a proof of concept for this, which will likely evolve into a purchasable product when the need arises.Patel notes that Framework now has a solid track record of supporting a model for several generations which should help quell any unease for would-be buyers. “We think, with the Framework Laptop 13 having shown this third generation of products all launching within the same form factor, all continuing support all the way back to the first laptop we ever shipped, it shows we are in this for the long haul.” He added that “when we say we’re building things for longevity, we’re gonna keep delivering upgrades, that is something we’re going to deliver on.” And that by open-sourcing many of its components, and offering comprehensive documentation, it enables third parties to “just jump in” with their own projects.Further details about the Framework Laptop 16 will be made available when pre-orders open toward the end of Spring. Patel said that there’s no word on pricing, but that you should use Framework’s existing cost structure to compare against the market as it stands. Shipments are expected to begin towards the end of the year, but the real test of this machine isn’t so much in its first launch, but what happens 12 and 24 months down the line. Then again, it’s a challenge Patel knows all too well, and believes that users are craving “stability” and a machine that “works well for them as long as they want to.” It’s wild to think that, in this day and age, those are considered to be lofty promises.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/frameworks-laptop-16-is-a-modular-upgradable-gaming-laptop-170021876.html?src=rss

If there was a question hovering over Framework’s much-lauded modular laptop, it was for how long the company would keep supporting it. After all, companies talk a good game about being green and sustainable at launch, only to abandon those plans a year or two later. Now, we’re three chip generations deep, and today we’re getting new mainboards carrying Intel’s 13th generation Core CPUs. Even better, users will soon have the option to ditch Intel in favor of AMD’s rival products, both for new machines and to upgrade in all of the models already shipped. It’s a remarkable sign of confidence in its platform, and a signal to users that Framework is in this business, with this chassis, for the long haul.Intel’s 13th generation Core CPUs were first announced at CES in January and Framework is rolling them out along with a number of other updates to its laptop. Since it sells (or sold) only one model of laptop, these changes will appear in the product from now on. And these annual updates are designed to address the criticisms that some users have had with the hardware thus far. That includes a new hinge that’s been redesigned to be more rigid compared to the ones found in units up until now. And, more importantly, a new, bigger 61Wh battery with a slew of firmware updates that should increase the laptop’s runtime by between 20 and 30 percent depending on how intense your workload is.The focus on addressing user complaints stretches to the display cover, which will now be matte as opposed to glossy. Similarly, Framework will now incorporate the 80dB louder speakers it offered in its Chromebook to some of its mainline laptops. All of these innovations will, as per Framework’s usual commitment to supporting its existing users, will also be able to buy as standalone parts. And, as I outlined last year, even someone with next-to-no aptitude for upgrading computer parts can make these fixes with relatively little fuss. Customers can now select their display bezel color and keyboard options at the buying stage, saving them from having to double purchase.The other change that we’ll need to address is that this machine has been rechristened as the Framework Laptop 13. That’s because it’s now sitting alongside the company’s new 16-inch gaming machine, which was announced today.I asked founder Nirav Patel if there wasn’t a temptation, since we’re now three generations in, to start messing with the chassis. “We plan to stick with it, we haven’t seen anything that makes us want to change it,” he said, “it’s really just being able to upgrade those modules.” He said that one of the key pillars of feedback he’s received is that users “actually just want stability” in their purchases rather than a constant stream of new hardware. He added that Framework’s pledge to keep supporting the same laptop chassis for so long is a good signal to would-be buyers that they’re investing in a “stable ecosystem.”Framework has promised price parity between Intel and AMD’s mainboards, which will offer a Ryzen 7040 in either a Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 flavor. Pre-orders will open at the same time for both, although it’s thought that the AMD version might ship a little later. Framework will open pre-orders to users looking for a new machine and just the new mainboards at the same time. Those in the latter camp, who want to ditch Intel in their existing Framework 13 for AMD, will also need to buy new RAM and a new WiFi card. The one other downside for would-be switchers is that, as Patel explains, “the port configuration is different in terms of what the expansion cards actually support.” This is because the Intel boards universally support Thunderbolt 4, while the AMD model offers two USB 4.0, one USB 3.2 plus DisplayPort, and one vanilla USB 3.2 port.There will be some changes and tweaks depending on which model you opt for, since the different chip options mean different default builds. For instance, the new Intel models will get the louder speakers, while the AMD units do not, although those quieter speakers have been tuned for better performance. Similarly, the base models with Core i5 and Ryzen 5 will keep the older 55Wh battery, while the i7 and Ryzen 7 options will get the newer 61Wh option. As such, you might want to examine the pre-order pages in more detail to make sure you know what you’re getting.As users upgrade their existing laptops with new mainboards, Framework is acutely aware there will be a raft of functional boards potentially left unused. Rather than create a new stream of e-waste, the company has so far worked to support 3D-printed cases and hobby projects. “We released these open-source design files where people could 3D-print their own case,” said Patel, “but most people don’t have 3D printers.” Which is why Framework has teamed up with PC case maker CoolerMaster to produce the first official standalone case for its mainboards.The case is a similar thickness to the laptop deck at present, and is designed so a user can “take that mainboard, drop it in, and [they] now have this nice simple little second PC,” said Patel. It will also accommodate the same expansion cards as the Framework Laptop 13, and all the user needs to provide is a USB-C power supply of 45W or higher. It includes both its own stand and the option to VESA mount the machine, tucking it neatly behind whatever display you choose to connect it to. It’ll be affordable, too, as it’ll cost just $39 when it launches later in Spring.Patel also expects plenty of Framework owners to upgrade their batteries for the new and improved model. He explained that the company is demonstrating “a proof of concept that turns the [first-generation Framework laptop] battery into a USB-C power bank that can power any device, including a laptop.”And you might expect that this, too, will get refined and polished by Framework’s committed community into something that plenty of people can experiment with.On that subject, the company is also announcing support for Fedora 38 and Ubuntu 22.04 Linux, both of which will work “fantastically out of the box” for both AMD and Intel models. Manjaro XFCE 22.0 and Mint 21.1 are also at an advanced stage of support, and the company says both are “working great” on the new hardware.The pre-built base model configurations of both Intel and AMD versions of the Framework Laptop 13 (2023) with Windows 11 will cost $1,049 before build-to-order upgrades. All units can be pre-ordered from today for the usual $100 deposit, with shipments for both expected to start at some point in May. In addition, Framework also announced that it would begin shipping to Belgium, Italy, Spain and Taiwan later in the year.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/framework-brings-updated-intel-and-amd-chips-to-its-modular-laptop-170003842.html?src=rss

Atari is betting that an acquisition will bolster its classic game library. The company is buying Nightdive Studios, best known for its upcoming System Shock remake, for $10 million in cash and stock. The move will help Atari both expand its catalog and use Nightdive's combination of technology and publishing to boost a "retro-focused" strategy. The deal is expected to close in April.Apart from the System Shock re-do, Nightdive mainly thrives on the KEX engine it uses to make vintage games run on today's PCs, in some cases with technical improvements. Its modernizations range from well-known hits like Quake and Blade Runner through to cult favorites like Darklands and Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri. Nightdive isn't a large company, having racked up $3 million in revenue last year.For Atari, this is part of a broader bid to refocus on gaming. The company has tried (and struggled with) multiple unusual ventures in recent years, including crypto, online casinos and even themed hotels. Nightdive lets Atari concentrate on making "premium" PC and console titles without relying solely on retreads of first-party games, and without spending as much time developing technology to port old software. Atari is nowhere near returning to its heyday, but it may become more relevant to gamers than it has been in a while.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/atari-buys-the-game-studio-behind-the-system-shock-remake-165355144.html?src=rss

Sega announced a new expansion today for Sonic Origins, its remastered collection of old-school Sonic the Hedgehog games. Sonic Origins Plus adds 12 classic Game Gear titles and new playable characters.Sonic Origins Plus adds the entire library of Sonic Game Gear installments, which includes: Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic Chaos, Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble, Sonic Labyrinth, Sonic Blast, Sonic Drift, Sonic Drift 2, Sonic 2 in 1, Tails Adventure, Tails' Skypatrol, Sonic Spinball. Additionally, the expansion lets you play as Amy Rose (Sonic’s hammer-wielding admirer first introduced in Sonic CD) in the first three Sonic games, and you can play as Amy or Tails in Sonic CD.You’ll receive all the content from the Sonic Origins base game, including remastered versions of Sonic the Hedgehog 1, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles and Sonic CD (as well as all previously released DLC). In addition, the collection still includes Classic Mode, where you can enjoy the games in their original and unaltered format, and Anniversary Mode, which stretches the aspect ratio to 16:9 and lowers frustration by giving you infinite lives. Finally, a 20-page book of classic art and a reversible coversheet are bundled if you buy a physical copy.If you own Sonic Origins, the expansion will cost an extra $10. However, if you’re new to the collection, you get Sonic Origins Plus — including all the base game’s content — for $40, the same price you’ll pay now for Sonic Origins alone. The expansion will be available for PlayStation (PS5 / PS4), Xbox (Series X / S and One) and Nintendo Switch on June 23rd, which marks the 32nd anniversary of the first Sonic game’s launch on the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sonic-origins-plus-brings-the-hedgehogs-game-gear-entries-to-modern-consoles-160043311.html?src=rss

Relativity Space has finally launched its 3D-printed rocket after multiple scrubbed attempts, but the results are decidedly mixed. The startup's Terran 1 vehicle successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral late Wednesday, but it failed to reach orbit after the second stage engine ignited only momentarily. It's not clear what led to the failure, but Relativity is promising updates in the "coming days."The company still characterizes the mission as an accomplishment. Terran 1 endured Max-Q (maximum dynamic pressure), the moment expected to place the most stress on the 3D-printed design. The rocket wasn't carrying a customer payload. Instead, it carried the first metal produced from Relativity's 3D printing system.As CNNexplains, the two previous launch attempts were plagued with problems. Relatively had trouble cooling propellant in time for the first liftoff, while the second was hampered by both a wayward boat and a software flaw that prompted an automatic engine cutoff shortly after ignition.Relativity is using the expendable Terran 1 to demonstrate the viability of its 3D printing technique ahead of the reusable Terran R rocket's planned 2024 launch. The manufacturing process theoretically provides simpler, more reliable rockets that are cheaper to make and can be ready within weeks. That, in turn, could lower the costs of delivering satellites and experiments into orbit.While this launch represents progress, there's mounting pressure to complete testing. Relativity already has contracts that include launching OneWeb satellites and Impulse Space's commercial Mars mission. There's also the simple matter of competition: rivals like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab aren't standing still, and any setbacks limit Relativity's chances to win business.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/relativity-space-launched-its-3d-printed-rocket-but-failed-to-reach-orbit-153502328.html?src=rss

Chromebooks are designed to be simple and straightforward, but if you’re new to Chrome OS, it may not be immediately obvious how to do certain things. One potential source of confusion is figuring out how to take a screenshot, since the keyboards built into most Chromebooks contain keys you won’t see on a MacBook or Windows laptop. If you’re stuck, don’t worry: Capturing your screen is still easy on Chrome OS, and there are multiple ways to do it. Let’s break it down.In most cases, the fastest way to take a screenshot on a Chromebook is to press the Control (Ctrl) and Show Windows keys at the same time. This grabs a shot of your entire screen. The Show Windows key, which is unique to Chromebooks, looks like a rectangle with two lines next to it. It’s often located where the F5 key would be on a Windows PC.GoogleHitting Ctrl + Shift + Show Windows, meanwhile, opens up the Screen Capture toolbar. This presents a menu with options to capture all of your screen, a specific portion or a single open window. You can also take a video recording of part or all of your screen from here.Alternatively, you can get to these tools through your Chromebook’s Quick Settings menu. To access this, click the clock in the lower right corner of the taskbar – or “shelf,” in ChromeOS terms – then click the Screen Capture icon that appears in the resulting menu.Note that some Chromebooks have a dedicated Screenshot key, marked by a little camera icon. If you have that, you can just press that button instead of using the shortcuts mentioned above.Nathan Ingraham / EngadgetIf you’re using an external keyboard without a Show Windows or Screenshot key, you can press Ctrl + F5 to take a full-screen capture, or Ctrl + Shift + F5 to pull up the Screen Capture menu and/or grab a partial screenshot. And if you have a ChromeOS tablet, you can take a screenshot by hitting the power and volume down buttons simultaneously.Once you take a screenshot or recording, Chrome OS will automatically copy it to your clipboard. You’ll then see it appear in a small window in the bottom corner of the display, from which you can edit or delete the capture. Recent screenshots will appear in a holding area on your taskbar/shelf called the Tote, while all of your captures will go to the Downloads folder in the Files app by default. To change that save location, press Shift + Ctrl + Show Windows, select the Settings gear icon, then choose Select Folder.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/how-to-take-a-screenshot-on-a-chromebook-150044417.html?src=rss

Audible has teamed with Dolby Laboratories to introduce spatial sound in its library. Called Dolby Atmos on Audible, it's debuting on more than 40 titles including The Little Mermaid, The Sandman Act III and the music-oriented podcast, Maejor Frequency. The move represents another push into narrative audio content for Dolby, as Wondery (also owned by Amazon) started doing Atmos podcasts last year.The new collection covers multiple genres, including feature-length multi-cast productions, soundscapes, live performances and podcasts. "The Dolby Atmos collection celebrates and expands the possibilities of audio storytelling by highlighting the extraordinary talents of a variety of actors, writers, directors, sound designers and other creators," the companies said in a press release.Dolby Atmos might seem like overkill for audiobooks, but much as Dolby did for movies, it has the potential to make narrative stories more immersive on good headphones or sound systems. "Through the ability to create more layers of sound and control over the directionality of different audio elements, creators can draw listeners into a deeper, richer, and more lifelike spatial sound experience that fully engrosses them in each story," they wrote. The examples of originals the companies highlight in the announcement are more dramatic productions than straight readings, so you're likely not going to get spatial audio for every Malcolm Gladwell novel.For instance, The Little Mermaid will feature a "magical underwater soundscape and original music," presumably enhanced by spatial sound. "Sound placement can now be used as a new element to draw audiences even closer to their favorite podcasts, audio narratives, and stories with Dolby Atmos," said Dolby vice president John Couling.The Dolby Atmos titles are available to Audible members via the Audible app on compatible iOS and Android Dolby Atmos-enabled mobile devices. To see all the available titles, type “Dolby Atmos” into the search bar on the Audible website, or look for the Dolby Atmos logo in the Audible app.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audible-original-productions-and-podcasts-are-getting-dolby-atmos-support-150029137.html?src=rss

You might not have to go to great lengths to cancel subscriptions in the future. The Federal Trade Commission is proposing rule changes that would require providers to make it as easy to cancel subscriptions as it is to sign up, including through the same medium. If it only takes a few clicks to join an online fitness class, for instance, you should have the option to cancel online in just as many steps.The proposal would also let you decline to hear pitches for additional offers when you want to cancel service. Providers would have to provide annual reminders of renewals for subscriptions to anything besides physical goods, the FTC says. Other rule updates would require clear explanations of what people are getting and bar misleading claims.The FTC's effort would revise the Negative Option Rule from 1973, and would echo European Union policy on subscriptions. This will ideally prevent companies from either fooling customers into paying for services they don't want or are done using, commission Chair Lina Khan says. It's also meant to prevent the all-too-common tactic of forcing customers to call or visit a store in order to make the cancellation process difficult.The proposal doesn't outline specific penalties for violations. It's not clear how effective the updated rules would be at deterring offenders. If implemented, though, the approach could make it easier to experiment with services. You could subscribe for a few months without worrying that you'll struggle to cancel your plan. Telecoms, meanwhile, might also have to let you leave without making last-ditch offers or asking you to talk to a shop clerk.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ftc-wants-to-make-it-easier-for-you-to-cancel-subscriptions-142649542.html?src=rss

Just a few months ago Lenovoannounced updates to its high-end Legion gaming PCs. But now the company is back to introduce some fresh budget-friendly fare as part of its new “value-oriented” LOQ line. Though they aren’t quite as powerful as their more expensive siblings, after checking them out, I like how these new devices don’t feel cheap despite their lower prices.At launch, the LOQ family (pronounced “lock”) will consist of either a 15 or 16-inch laptop and a 17L desktop PC. The LOQ 15 and 15i will be the least expensive of the bunch starting at $900 for either an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS or Intel Core i7-13700 chip, while the LOQ 16 and 16i (the “i” denotes an Intel-based config) will go for just a bit more at $960 and $1,150, respectively. Finally, for people who don’t need to move their gaming rig around, the LOQ tower will be priced at a reasonable $980.Photo by Sam Rutherford / EngadgetBut more importantly, while Lenovo is trying to keep costs down, it doesn’t feel like it cut too many corners with its new machines. Not only do they have similar styling to the Legion line, they also have solid specs with the laptops offering support for up to NVIDIA RTX 4060 GPUs. And like the premium Legion line, you also get rear IO to help keep wires from getting too cluttered.The main differences between Lenovo’s LOQ and Legion gaming notebooks are that instead of an aluminum chassis, the LOQ line features a plastic body, with either a white or a four-zone RGB backlit keyboard (instead of per-key). The new machines also carry slightly smaller batteries (either 60 or 80Whr depending on the model). And while the LOQ line doesn’t support super fast 240Hz refresh rates, you can still get 165Hz displays going up to 2,560 x 1,600 with variable refresh rate support (both G-Sync and FreeSync), as well as 350 nits of brightness. All told that’s not too shabby, especially when you consider that Lenovo’s cheapest Legion Pro laptop currently starts at just over $1,600.Photo by Sam Rutherford / EngadgetNow, in person, the smaller LOQ 15 came off a bit chunky, and I swear it felt heavier than Lenovo’s 5.3-pound listed weight, while the LOQ 16 is even heftier at 5.7 pounds. However, I appreciate that even on Lenovo’s budget gaming laptops, the company still included a full HD webcam and an electronic shutter switch to disable it.Alternatively, if you’re looking for something a bit more powerful that’s still easy to carry around, today Lenovo also announced two additions to the Legion family in the Slim 7/7i and the Slim 5/5i.At just 0.78 inches thick and weighing 4.4 pounds, the Legion Slim 7 and 7i are the more portable of the two. It also packs Intel Core i9-13900H or Ryzen 9 79040HS chips, up to NVIDIA RTX 4070 graphics and up to a 3.2K 165Hz display or a 2,560 x 1,600 240Hz screen. You can also get optional per-key RGB lighting and a big 99.9 WHr battery, along with an aluminum frame in either storm gray or glacier white. So while I like the price of the new LOQ line, the Legion 7 Slim laptops would make me think long and hard about shelling out some extra cash for the sleeker design.Photo by Sam Rutherford / EngadgetMeanwhile, the Legion 5 Slim models still feature solid specs, including the same CPUs and a slightly wider range of graphics options (RTX 4050 up to RTX 4070 depending on the specific config). And unlike the 7 Slim which is only available as a 16-inch model, the 5 Slim will come in 14-inch and 16-inch sizes.The new LOQ 15i is slated to go on sale first sometime in April, followed by LOQ 15 and the larger LOQ 16i in May. The AMD-based LOQ 16 will arrive in June. Meanwhile, the Legion Slim 5i and 7i are expected to go on sale in April starting at $1,350 and $1,770, with the Slim 5 and Slim 7 arriving later in May starting at $1,200 and $1,770, respectively.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/lenovo-loq15-gaming-laptop-hands-on-affordable-but-not-cheap-130050043.html?src=rss

The following article discusses Star Trek: Picard, Season Three, Episode Six, “The Bounty.”When the Original Series cast made their swansong, they left Star Trek in the rudest health it had ever been in. The Next Generation had reached its creative peak, Deep Space Nine was a year away from starting, and the movie series was making good money. The Undiscovered Country gave fans one last adventure with Kirk and co. that gently highlighted why it was time to move on. By comparison, Nemesis’ soft box office meant there would be no grand finale for the TNG crew. DS9 and Voyager were done, and it wouldn’t be long before pre-Kirk prequel-series Enterprise would leave our screens. There was quite literally nobody to pick up from where Picard and co. left off as “current day” Trek went into enforced stasis. Now, it feels like 2002 all over again, with the only “current” Trek series, Discovery, canceled and the only other live-action Trek show yet again being a pre-Kirk era prequel. They say that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.This sense of unease about the future permeates “The Bounty,” as Star Trek: Picard hints that the next (next) generation aren’t up to scratch. Picard, Riker and LaForge are all fathers struggling to deal with the gifts and curses they handed down to their children. The show keeps implying that there’s less hope in these kids because they’ve spent so long in their parents’ shadow. Sidney LaForge isn’t speaking to her father, who grouses to Picard how hard it was to raise her. The show has already hamfistedly tried to cover Riker’s grief over Thaddeus, while Picard has given his son a terminal case of Irumodic Syndrome. When Jack gets the idea of stealing the Bounty’s cloaking device, he and Sydney can’t get it working without Geordie’s resentful help. Come on kids, get out of the way while dad, once again, picks up your mess and fixes the things you can’t cope with. The subtext is one of disappointment, of darn kids with their avocado lattes and oat milk toast who can’t do anything as well as their baby boomer forebears.It’s an interesting perspective from a franchise that has always worried about its own coolness, fretting that it’s too thoughtful, too middle-aged. Chekov joined The Original Series cast because producers wanted to woo a younger crowd with a Davy Jones-type mop-topped pretty boy. This anxiety is most visible in the Next Generation movies, which are constantly battling each other in attitudes around age, aging and relevance. Generations leaves Picard at peace with his own age, but everything that follows repudiates that position, mostly as Patrick Stewart’s behind the scenes power grew, so did his desire to remake the character in his own image. The vest-clad man of action in First Contact, the romantic lead of Insurrection and the off-roading petrolhead in Nemesis all stem from this desire. Rather than a desire to become the wise, elder statesman of the Star Trek universe, Picard raged against the dying of his own light. And rather than lay the table for his successors, he judged them all and found them unworthy.This mistrust of youth goes hand-in-hand with a fetishization of the past that goes beyond nostalgia and into paraphilia. “The Bounty” has not one, but two trips to space museums so that the fans can gawk at objects of desire, stripped of their context, there for nothing but fan service. Riker, Worf and Raffi beam onto Daystrom Station, home of Starfleet’s “most off the books tech, experimental weapons, alien contraband,” which when you think about it is really daft. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think the US Navy stores secret chemical weapons at MIT, which is, or was, the best point of comparison for a civilian robotics research institute. Along the corridor, there’s the Genesis Device! (Why? It was blown up when the Reliant combusted and turned into the Genesis Planet, its existence makes no sense) A Tribble! And James Kirk’s Corpse!... Wait, that seems weird, why do that? That seems weirdly perverse, why would you store a decorated officer’s dead body in a site for military weapons when there’s nothing special about his physiology in this timeline? Oh, that’s why, because our heroes don’t get to gracefully die in Star Trek any more, they just become objects of fetishization.We get a brief cameo from Daniel Davis’ Moriarty as part of Daystrom’s not-quite security system before we hit the big reveal of the episode: Data!. Or, something else, a Soong-type android with the brains of Soong, Lore, B-4 and Data all mashed up in one body. (Why B-4 and Lore? Why would you put the unworkable prototype and the psychotic brains in there with the two functional ones? Because we’ll need an inevitable betrayal two or three episodes down the line, not because it makes sense.) And then we’re off to the fleet museum for a brief interlude of spaceship porn and, wouldn’t you know, the ships deemed worthy of preserving are almost all hero vessels from the Star Trek franchise. I mean, look, I’m a starship porn type of guy, and any loving shot of Andrew Probert and Richard Taylor’s Enterprise model will always have my heart soaring. But it just feels all so soulless, like the characters in Star Trek are now behaving like Star Trek fans.The conclusion of the episode reveals the changelings stole Picard’s corpse from Daystrom Station for reasons as-yet unknown. Meanwhile, Riker has been captured by Vadic and taken to the Shrike, where he’s shown that the baddies have also captured Deanna. But not before the 70-year-old Riker is given a dose of good old 24-style face punching, to match the rest of the series’ Bush-era politics.The biggest problem with this sort of all-the-characters-grew-up-watching-Star Trek nostalgia, of course, is that it collapses the size of your narrative universe. Star Trek is big and broad enough to sustain a massive trans-media ecosystem covering every corner of its fictional universe. But Star Trek: Picard makes out that Starfleet is made up of five ships not called Enterprise, none of which are worth remarking upon. The notion that the Enterprise is just one of hundreds, or thousands, of starships having wild and crazy adventures on the frontiers of space is beyond comprehension. In a way, I’m glad nobody in TV-land is familiar with Star Trek: New Frontier, lest it turned out that someone at Daystrom has collected Mackenzie Calhoun’s eyeballs on a shelf for the lolz.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/star-trek-picard-3-6-the-bounty-review-130030243.html?src=rss

You can grab Samsung SSDs and microSDs at a discount right now from Amazon if you're looking to expand the storage space of your computers, consoles or mobile devices. To start with, Samsung's 1TB T7 Shield portable SSD is down to $80. At 50 percent off retail, it's now available for the lowest price we've seen it sell for on the e-commerce website. We named the non-rugged (or non-Shield) T7 as one of our best SSDs for 2023, and this has similar specs and features. Take note that the beige, blue and black color choices are all on sale, and the 2TB T7 Shield is also listed for a discounted price of $140.The T7 Shield was designed to be durable, to be dust and water-resistant and to have the ability to endure being dropped for up to 9.8 feet. It has a read/write speed of 1,050/1,000 MB/s and is compatible with PC, Mac, Android devices and consoles.If what you need is an internal SSD, though, Samsung's 980 PRO 1TB SSD is also on sale for $80. Like the T7, that's the lowest price we've seen for the component, which retails for $110. You can also get its 2TB version for $160 in case you want a drive with a bigger capacity. The model was specifically designed for gamers and tech enthusiasts and offers high-performance bandwidth that can help make heavy-duty applications run smoothly.The Amazon sale has other SSDs to choose from, but if you're looking to buy a memory card, there's Samsung's EVO Plus 256GB Micro SDXC. It's currently listed for $23, which is an all-time low for the microSD card that retails for $50. Need even more space? The 512GB version of the model is also on sale for $51.80, or 48 percent lower than its usual price.Buy Samsung SSDs and memory cards at Amazon - up to 53 percent offFollow @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/samsung-ssds-and-memory-cards-are-up-to-54-percent-off-at-amazon-122019880.html?src=rss

TikTok CEO Shou Chew is preparing to tell lawmakers that banning it will damage the US economy. “Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chew said in written remarks released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee before today's hearing on TikTok. The hearing, Chew’s first Congressional appearance, comes when the stakes couldn’t be higher for the company.US officials recently told Bytedance TikTok could be banned in the US if the company doesn’t divest itself. Chew detailed the app’s safety features, including Project Texas, TikTok’s billion-dollar effort to lock down users' data. “Earlier this month, we began the process of deleting historical protected US user data stored in non-Oracle servers; we expect this process to be completed later this year,” Chew writes. “Under this structure, there is no way for the Chinese government to access it or compel access to it.”Lawmakers will likely grill Chew in depth about TikTok’s ties to ByteDance and China, and whether they can trust the company to protect US users. How will the hearing fare? Congress has a track history of completely misunderstanding the underpinnings of tech companies, whether that’s Iowa’s Steve King complaining to the head of Google about iPhones, Senator Orrin Hatch not knowing Facebook makes most of its money from advertising or the iconic claim from then-Alaska Senator Ted Stevens that the internet is a series of tubes. Who will embarrass themselves this time?– Mat SmithThe Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.The biggest stories you might have missedUbisoft's new Ghostwriter tool will automatically generate background sounds and chatterOpera adds ChatGPT and AI prompts into its browserCable and satellite providers may have to advertise the true price of TV serviceRedfall hands-on: A creepy and creative twist on the modern looter shooterThe best DACs for Apple Music Lossless in 2023Where to sell your used and unwanted gadgetsTesla’s Wireless Charging Platform is well made and exorbitantA charger with Cybertruck aesthetics.EngadgetIn December last year, Tesla and Freepower announced the Wireless Charging Platform. Like many of the carmaker’s other products, though, it’s almost ludicrously expensive. At $300, Tesla’s offering is twice the cost of the priciest item from our wireless charger round-up. It’s probably not worth it, but it’s also, annoyingly, pretty good at what it does.Continue reading.Spotify may have spent less than 10 percent of its Joe Rogan apology fundThe company claims it has spent more of the $100 million fund but didn’t specify further.In its first year of operation, Bloomberg sources claim Spotify has spent less than 10 percent of its $100 million Creator Equity Fund, a pool meant to foster diversity in podcasts and music. A Spotify spokesperson denies this 10 percent figure, claiming the company has spent more, but hasn't provided a specific figure. Spotify established the fund after an artist-led backlash to Joe Rogan’s COVID-19 vaccine misinformation spread through his Spotify-exclusive podcast. While that was the catalyst, critics also pointed to Rogan using racist language and making transphobic statements.Continue reading.The Tripod Desk Pro is a portable standing desk that upgraded my WFH setupAnd when work’s finished, you can hide it.Taken by Mat Smith / EngadgetIt’s hard to make standing desk coverage compelling, but hey, I tried. I’ve been testing out a premium portable standing desk from Intension, and it’s shaking up my WFH setup. It combines an incredibly solid tripod (with optional wheels) and a desk surface that slides on like a camera. It’s rather expensive, but I might have to buy one once I return this sample.Continue reading.Nothing’s $149 Ear 2 wireless buds have improved connectivity and more customizationIt’s a competitive price for ANC buds.Nothing’s revealed its second-generation Ear wireless buds. The eye-catching design sticks around, and the company has tried to address some of the issues that bedeviled the original, with some much-needed improvements to connectivity and setup. Fortunately, the price of the Nothing Ear 2 is the same as the Ear 1: $149, which undercut a lot of the established true wireless competition. Read on for our full impressions.Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-tiktok-ceo-says-its-owner-is-not-an-agent-of-china-113057928.html?src=rss