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Can you smell it? Black Friday is rapidly approaching, and some companies have already begun the onslaught of sales. Solo Stove, for instance, has just cut the ribbon on its annual Black Friday sale, offering discounts on numerous fire pits and related items and accessories. The biggest discount here is for the Ranger Backyard Bundle 2.0, which now costs $320 instead of $465. That's a savings of $145. The Yukon 2.0 bundle goes even further, with a discount of $245.These bundles include a next-gen fire pit, a marked improvement over the original, along with plenty of accessories, like the new base plate and ash pan. You also get a stand, a lid, a weather-resistant enclosure and even a carrying case for those BBQ-driven beach trips.We praised the removable base plate and ash pan with the 2.0 series, as these tools eliminated the messy cleanup process involved with previous releases. We also enjoyed the proprietary 360-degree airflow technology, allowing for an efficient burn for long periods of time. As a matter of the fact, the only significant downside here is the normal price, and this sale helps to alleviate those concerns.The fire pit bundles are not the only discount available via Solo Stove's Black Friday sale, though they are the most significant. You can grab the well-regarded Pi Prime pizza oven for $300, a savings of $50. If you are filled to the brim with fire pit accessories, you can also buy the Ranger 2.0 by itself for $200 instead of $230.Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo's Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog's experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/solo-stoves-black-friday-deals-include-up-to-245-off-fire-pit-bundles-184011930.html?src=rss

YouTube's crackdown on ad blockers is hurting the companies who make them. Multiple ad blocking companies say that thousands of people are uninstalling their products after YouTube started showing warnings to people trying to watch videos on its website with ad blockers enabled.One of the companies, AdGuard, told Wired that more than 11,000 people have uninstalled its Chrome extension each day since October 9, compared to 6,000 uninstallations per day before YouTube implemented the change. On October 18, 52,000 people uninstalled AdGuard, the company's CTO Andrey Meshkov told Wired. However, installations of AdGuard's paid version, which YouTube's crackdown doesn't affect, went up.Another ad blocking company, Ghostery, said that its usage was flat in October as it experienced three to five times the daily number of installs as well as uninstalls. Notably, the company said that more than 90 percent of its users who completed a survey about why they uninstalled the product said they did so because the tool no longer worked with YouTube.Since YouTube's crackdown only seems to affect people who access its website through Chrome on laptops and desktops, some users also tried to use other browsers as a workaround. Ghostery told Wired that its installations of Microsoft's Edge browser went up by 30 percent in October compared to September.YouTube ads are increasingly contributing more to Google's overall revenue. The company sold more than $22 billion in ads on the platform from the beginning of this year through September. But the streaming platform is also trying to push more people to pay for YouTube Premium, which gets rid of ads, lets people download videos, stream videos in higher quality and access YouTube Music. Earlier this year, the company bumped up YouTube Premium's pricing by $2 to $14 a month.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/thousands-of-people-are-uninstalling-ad-blockers-after-youtubes-big-crackdown-174009041.html?src=rss

NASA's Lucy spacecraft, first launched in 2021 to explore the Trojan asteroids trapped near Jupiter, has made an interesting discovery. The spacecraft found an asteroid, nicknamed Dinky, that actually has a smaller asteroid orbiting it, as originally reported by Scientific American. That's right. It's basically a moon with its own moon. It's an ouroboros of cosmic curiosity.The technical term here is a binary asteroid pair and Dinky, whose real name is Dinkinesh, was spotted by Lucy during a quick fly by. That's when the spacecraft spotted the smaller moon" orbiting it.A binary was certainly a possibility," Jessica Sunshine, a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland, told Scientific American. But it was not expected, and it's really cool."As a matter of fact, the fly by itself wasn't supposed to find anything of note. It was simply a trial run for the team to hone its skills before investigating the aforementioned Trojan asteroids orbiting the sun ahead of and behind Jupiter. The team wanted to make sure Lucy's probe would successfully latch onto a space rock, even when both objects were moving extremely fast. Guess what? It worked. Hal Levinson, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and principal investigator of the Lucy mission, said that the test was amazingly successful."As for Dinky and its, uh, even dinkier satellite, NASA scientists still have a long way to go with its investigation, as only about one third of the relevant data has been beamed down to Earth. NASA has released a series of images showing Dinky and its pseudo-moon, but not any actual data as of yet.Even just from these images, however, you can tell a lot about these two celestial bodies. There's a visible equatorial ridge on the main body of Dinky aka Dinkinesh and a secondary ridge-line branching off from it. The parent asteroid is covered in craters, likely the result of numerous hits by other asteroids. Levinson says that there are more images to come of the secondary satellite and that these pictures suggest that the junior asteroid has some interesting" stuff going on. He goes on to say that the shape is really bizarre."Binary asteroid pairs are not rare, as researchers have found that around 15 percent of near-Earth asteroids boast a cute lil orbital companion. NASA and affiliated researchers are still waiting for more data on the pair, including color images and spectroscopy that should shed some more light on the two asteroids. Levinson says there's a lot of cool stuff to come."In the meantime, Lucy will continue on its original mission, to investigate those mysterious Trojan asteroids near Jupiter. It'll make contact with one in 2025.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nasa-discovered-that-an-asteroid-named-dinky-actually-has-its-own-moon-173028204.html?src=rss

Not too long ago, Marvel Studios seemed indestructible. But the Marvel Cinematic Universe has faced some significant setbacks over the last few years. As laid out in a Variety report this week, Marvel has been contending with a number of issues such as box office disappointments, while Jonathan Majors (who portrays the MCU's latest centerpiece villain) is awaiting trial for assault and harassment charges. Marvel also seemed to be stretching itself thin between its many movies and TV shows amid reports that visual effects staffers were overworked.Perhaps with all of that in mind, Marvel is trying something a bit different with its next streaming series in a bid to get fans back on board. Echo will be the first Marvel show to arrive on Disney+ and Hulu simultaneously. On top of that, for the first time since its former Netflix shows, Marvel will return to TV-MA-rated fare and drop all five episodes of the series simultaneously on January 10. However, Echo will only be available on Hulu until April 9.Echo will be the first superhero series to have both a deaf and a Native American character in the central role, as Varietynotes. Maya Lopez/Echo (Alaqua Cox) first appeared in Disney+ series Hawkeye in 2021, though she's more of an anti-hero.The show's first trailer shows Echo squaring off against a returning Wilson Fisk/Kingpin (Vincent D'Onofrio). Based on this evidence, the series looks to have a darker, more adult-oriented tone that's more aligned with the likes of Daredevil (that show's titular character appears briefly in this trailer) and Jessica Jones than Ms. Marvel or Loki.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/echo-will-be-the-first-marvel-show-to-hit-disney-and-hulu-simultaneously-172206411.html?src=rss

ProtonVPN is running a Black Friday Sale on its VPN services, including a 30-month plan for 60 percent off, or $120 total. That works out to $4 per month for two and a half years of access, saving you $180 over paying full price. Proton VPN is our favorite VPN service and, unlike most VPN services that continually run promotions, Proton rarely hosts sales. Their email and other services are seeing discounts, too.In our tests, ProtonVPN passed with high marks - but so did most of the other services. What sets ProtonVPN apart is its overall security and privacy safeguards. The Swiss-based company employs an independently audited no-logs policy and has proven they don't comply with law enforcement requests to reveal data. It's also based on an open-source code and discloses potential vulnerabilities through an official peer-review program. Plus, we found it easy to use.While there is a free version, the Plus plan that's on sale grants access to more servers, with locations in more than 65 countries and lets you run the service on 10 devices at a time. Compare that to the free version which only has servers in three countries and protects just one device at a time.It's worth noting that Proton's Black Friday sale extends to all of its services, including Proton Mail, which we've recommended in our guides, and Proton Unlimited, which gives you access to VPN, Mail, Calendar, Drive and Pass, the company's password manager. The everything plan is down to $105 for the year, which works out to just under $9 per month.Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo's Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog's experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/protonvpn-plans-are-up-to-60-percent-off-in-a-black-friday-deal-153355317.html?src=rss

Apple just revealed some new hardware at a streaming event earlier this week, including Macbook Pro laptops equipped with the proprietary M3 chip. These laptops are still on preorder, as they don't officially release until next week. Despite that, you can already get a pretty sweet discount of $200 for one of these ultra-powerful computers.Retailer Adorama is offering the deal on pre-orders of nearly any configuration of the M3-enabled laptop. For instance, the basic Apple 14" M3 MacBook Pro costs $1,600 to pre-order anywhere else, but Adorama's deal brings the price down to $1,400. The same discount applies if you beef up the storage capacity, add more RAM, swap the screen size or increase the number of available cores.There is a slight hoop you have to jump through to get this deal. You must be an Adorama VIP member. Luckily, signing up for this program is fairly effortless and, more importantly, absolutely free. Once you sign up, log into the rewards page and the discount will show up as an option.These new Macbooks look to be the most powerful laptops the company has ever made, thanks to the just-built M3 chip. They are available in multiple colors, including the new Space Black option. The Macbooks ship in 14- and 16-inch versions and some feature M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, in addition to the standad M3. Though the prices start at $1,600 (or $1,400 with this sale), they can balloon to thousands of dollars once you start making upgrades.As for other specs, the screen's a bit brighter, with a peak of 600 nits. The new chips should also drastically improve performance and speed. Beyond that, many features remain the same as last year's models. You get the same 1080p FaceTime cameras and the six-speaker sound system. The computers aren't out in the wild yet, so we don't have information regarding battery life and other real-world metrics.This is an early Black Friday deal and it's for pre-orders only. In other words, once the laptops officially release on November 7, the sale will likely end.Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo's Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog's experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-m3-macbook-pro-is-already-200-off-in-an-early-black-friday-deal-150707609.html?src=rss

Even though its latest microcomputer bears its own chip designs, Raspberry Pi has been using Arm CPUs since its inception in 2008. The two companies have now formed tighter bonds as Arm has picked up a minority stake in Raspberry Pi. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed. However, the companies say it's a "strategic investment" on Arm's part.It seems that Arm wants to gain more of a foothold in the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. "With the rapid growth of edge and endpoint AI applications, platforms like those from Raspberry Pi, built on Arm, are critical to driving the adoption of high-performance IoT devices globally by enabling developers to innovate faster and more easily," Paul Williamson, senior vice-president and general manager of Arm's IoT division, said in a statement.Many IoT developers have long been using Raspberry Pi's low-cost, capable computers for a wide range of purposes. The Register reports that, since 2020, more than half of all Raspberry Pi devices are being used for industrial and commercial purposes. However, Raspberry Pi is said to have prioritized those partners, perhaps making it more difficult for students and enthusiasts to get their hands on its computers at retail price.There's another reason why Arm and Raspberry Pi might want to be closer bedfellows. RISC-V is an open-source processor design that could make it easier for companies to build their own chips or lower manufacturing costs. Qualcomm and Google are working on a RISC-V platform to power Wear OS devices, for instance. In addition, several companies are also using RISC-V CPUs in would-be Raspberry Pi competitors.As The Register notes, Arm has pointed out the potential threat of RISC-V to its business. The company mentioned in a pre-IPO filing that if market support for RISC-V rises, "our customers may choose to utilize this free, open source architecture instead of our products." To that end, the investment could help to bolster Raspberry Pi's position in the single-board computer market and perhaps ward off competition.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/arm-picks-up-a-minority-stake-in-raspberry-pi-144946332.html?src=rss

Home improvement retailer Ace Hardware still can't take online orders as of Friday while it recovers from "a malicous cyberattack." News of the outage first started circulating on Sunday, after a Reddit user shared a note from CEO John Venhuizen detailing the incident. Ace Hardware has not responded to a request for comment to verify the email, but the website confirms that it is "currently unable to process orders online" and directs customers to make their purchases in-store.The cyber incident impacted warehouse management, invoice and other delivery systems, according to Venhuizen's memo. "The impact of this incident is resulting in disruptions to your shipments," Venhuizen wrote. An update issued on Monday urged stores to stay open, and confirmed there were no known impacts to its in-store payment and service systems.Out of the company's 1,400 servers and 3,500 networked devices, 1,202 were impacted by the attack, according to a notice obtained by Bleeping Computer. About half had been restored as of early Thursday morning. "This frustration and all of this effort is the direct result of a malicious cyber attack on Ace," the update said. "This was perpetuated by criminals. Though they are hiding in this shadows, they are no different than thugs who break into your store attempting to steal your stuff." The details of the attack, such as who is responsible and how they accessed the systems, hasn't been confirmed yet.Ace Hardware also warned retailers to be aware of cybercriminals trying to take advantage of the chaos by spoofing email updates or trying to remotely access in-store systems. Ace Hardware operates on a retailer-owned model, in which store owners form the cooperative of shareholders behind the retail giant. The retailer operates more than 5,800 stores.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ace-hardwares-online-ordering-and-other-systems-are-still-down-due-to-a-suspected-cyberattack-143208409.html?src=rss

Apple's M3 chip is here, and the company is wasting no time shoving it into new computers. This week, we dive into the new M3-equipped MacBook Pros and iMac, which offer some notable upgrades over the M2 and M1 models. Also, we find time to celebrate the death of the old 13-inch MacBook Pro, and try to determine if the cheaper 14-inch MacBook Pro is actually meant for pros with 8GB of RAM. We also chat about Apple's healthcare plans, as well as Lenovo's ridiculous tablet fashion campaign.Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!Subscribe!

Samsung only debuted its new SmartTag 2 in mid-October, but the device already has a great sale going. Right now, you can get four SmartTag 2 trackers for just $80, down from $92. The 13 percent price cut puts each one at just $20 - that's quite a saving compared to the $30 a single SmartTag2 costs.The original SmartTag came on the scene in 2021 as a counter to the AirTag and Tile - but only for Galaxy users. Now, with its newest iteration, Samsung has updated quite a few features, such as taking the Bluetooth and ultra-wideband (UWB) variants and combining them into one model. The SmartTag2 also does something Apple still hasn't mastered: providing a key ring for its smart tracker. The initial model simply had a punch hole.Samsung's SmartTag 2 is also IP67 dust and water-resistant, giving you an easier time for runs in the rain or letting your dog wander around with it in all sorts of weather. Plus, its battery life lasts 50 percent as long as its predecessor, giving you 700 days in Power Saving Mode and 500 days in Normal Mode. At the moment, the SmartTag 2 still only works for Samsung devices, but it's definitely a good option if you have one.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/samsungs-smarttag-2-four-pack-is-just-80-right-now-122558604.html?src=rss

Google has ended its agreement with real estate developer Landlease for its San Francisco Bay Project, effectively scrapping its plans to build a campus with thousands of homes for employees and locals. The company announced the project in 2019, promising the "development of at least 15,000 new homes at all income levels" on at least $750 million worth of land it owns. Around 4,000 of those homes were supposed to be affordable housing, which would've been a welcome presence in the region with one of the highest costs of living in the country.The San Francisco Bay Project is a collective name for Google's planned developments in San Jose (Downtown West), Sunnyvale (Moffett Park) and Mountain View (Middlefield Park and North Bayshore). San Jose, in particular, approved the massive project in 2021, and it would've seen the construction of 4,000 homes, office space for approximately 20,000 employees, 300 hotel rooms and 10 parks. As part of the deal, Google had agreed to set aside $200 million in funding for displaced local businesses and job readiness programs.Earlier this year, however, Google put the Downtown West facility construction on hold after demolition had already started to make way for construction that was scheduled to begin in 2026. The company told Engadget at the time that it was still figuring out "how to best move forward" with the San Jose campus in a way that would cater to its "future needs." Workplaces have changed tremendously over the past few years, after all, mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic - Google, for instance, adopted a hybrid work schedule that allowed employees to work from home for a couple of days a week. Earlier this year, Google parent Alphabet also laid off 12,000 workers after going on a hiring spree during a period of growth.In Lendlease's announcement (PDF), it said that the companies have decided to end their agreement after Google did a comprehensive review of its real estate investments. They've apparently determined that the "existing agreements are no longer mutually beneficial given current market conditions. Based on what a company spokesperson told CNBC, though, Google hasn't entirely killed its housing projects. "As we've shared before, we've been optimizing our real estate investments in the Bay Area, and part of that work is looking at a variety of options to move our development projects forward and deliver on our housing commitment," Alexa Arena, a senior director of development at Google, told the news organziation. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan also told CNBC that this development "doesn't change Google's commitment to San Jose or their timeline" and that it gives the company more flexibility to choose the "best possible developers" for the project.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-plan-to-build-15000-homes-for-the-san-francisco-bay-project-fizzles-out-113526409.html?src=rss

The Beatles have released another song, the first since 1995. Now and Then" is being advertised as the final Beatles track, given that two of the members have passed and the other two are well over 80 years old. But then again, millionaires do love money.The song grew from a John Lennon demo track dating back to the 1970s and a 1995 guitar track from George Harrison. The surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, then finished the tune using machine learning technology. The song was meant to come out back in 1995, along with Free as a Bird" and Real Love," two other tracks culled from old Lennon demos. However, the technology just wasn't there to pull the vocals without degrading audio quality.With the same software director Peter Jackson used for the Get Back documentary for Apple, the team split Lennon's vocal from the piano without any audio bleed, allowing the remaining Beatles to turn it into a fleshed-out ballad. The guitar solo is in the Harrison style, but it's not actually played by him - he does play some of the rhythm guitar in the background.- Mat SmithYou can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!The biggest stories you might have missedThe best cameras you can buy so far this yearUber and Lyft must pay $328 million to New York drivers in massive wage theft settlementThe best white elephant gift ideasA commercial spaceplane capable of orbital flight is ready for NASA testingApple Arcade exclusive Japanese Rural Life Adventure is a surprising story of rebirthNASA is launching a free streaming serviceNASA+ will be available November 8 with live shows and original series.NASANot another one! At least this streaming service is free. NASA has announced a new streaming service called NASA+, which will hit most major platforms next week. It'll be completely free, with no subscription needed, and you won't be forced to sit through ads, either. There aren't too many details out just yet about the content, but NASA says its family-friendly programming embeds you into our missions" with live coverage and original video series.Continue reading.HTC sends VR headsets to the International Space StationThey're specially calibrated for zero gravity.HTC is sending its Vive VR headsets to the International Space Station, apparently to give lonely astronauts something to do. The HTC Vive Focus 3 headsets will be part of an ongoing effort to improve the mental health of astronauts during long assignments on the station. The headsets are optimized to stabilize alignment and reduce the chances of motion sickness - which is a bigger problem when it happens in space.Continue reading.Netflix's ad-supported plan will soon allow downloadsAnd reward binge watching.Netflix is celebrating one year of its ad-supported plan by giving users on that tier every fourth episode of a consecutive binge ad-free. That's certainly not a bad way to entice you into staying on, especially if it's, ugh, Ozark. (Don't at' me.) Netflix is also rolling out downloads on its ad-supported tier, claiming to be the first streamer to make the option available for users who have ads included. Netflix's ad-supported plan is by far the cheapest after the streamer cut its Basic tier in mid-2023. It's $6.99 monthly, while the Standard plan is now $15.49.Continue reading.Scarlett Johannson fights AI clones, in courtWow.NDZ/STAR MAX/IPxIt sounds like an action movie, but it's not. It's just legal action. Scarlett Johansson's lawyers have approached an AI app developer for using her likeness in an ad without permission.An ad spotted on X promoted an AI image editor called Lisa AI used an AI-generated version of Johansson's voice and image, alongside actual footage of the actor in a Black Widow behind-the-scenes clip. Multiple Lisa AI apps remain on the App Store and Google Play, but the ad no longer appears on X. Yet, when Johansson gets to play a robot voice, that's OK? Yes. Of course it is.Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-the-final-beatles-song-was-made-with-a-little-help-from-ai-111541406.html?src=rss

Amazon bundle deals are a relatively common occurrence, but the latest one is a pairing we'd never expect: Ahead of Black Friday, Prime Members can get the Fire TV Stick 4K Max and Blink Video Doorbell as a pair for $65. The Blink Video Doorbell is $60 on its own, so for another five bucks, you're getting the Fire TV Stick 4K Max - not a bad deal. The 4K Max is having its own sale right now, with a 25 percent discount bringing its price to $45 from $60. So, even if you factor in the sale, you're saving $40 overall, a nice steal.While the only two things these items might seem to have in common is Amazon's ownership, if we think really hard, we can connect them. Well, not having to get up to check who's at the door while using your streaming device is good for starters. No, even better, you can activate Alexa on the Fire TV Stick to engage in two-way audio through the doorbell.The Fire TV Stick 4K Max supports Dolby Atmos audio, Wi-Fi 6E and HDR10+. Meanwhile, the Blink Video Doorbell shows a 1080p HD picture during the day, uses infrared night video and can be wired or wireless, up to you. All-in-all, they're both solid options to add to your home.If you're just in the market for a new monitoring system, check out the massive sales across Blink's smart home doorbells and cameras lineup. The Blink Mini three-pack is currently 60 percent off, dropping to $40 from $100, while the new fourth-generation Blink Outdoor has four cameras available for 50 percent off, dropping to $180 from $360. Going back to the theme of bundles, you can pick up the whole Blink Home Bundle for 52 percent off, getting a Video DoorBell system, a fourth-gen Outdoor camera and a Mini for $102, down from $215.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-is-bundling-a-fire-tv-4k-max-and-blink-video-doorbell-for-65-in-early-black-friday-deal-105046984.html?src=rss

In just a bit over a month, legacy HBO Max subscribers paying for ad-free streaming will be losing a couple of perks they're enjoying. One of those is 4K streaming. According to The Verge, the streaming service has started sending affected subscribers an email, notifying them that they won't be able to stream in 4K anymore after December 5th. Warner Bros. Discovery promised existing subscribers when it rebranded the service into "Max" back in May they they would still have access to their plan's features over the next six months. After that period ends, their only option to retain 4K streaming is to let go of their $16-a-month subscription plan to switch to Max's Ultimate Ad-Free tier that costs $20 a month.The service introduced the tier when Max launched, promising users access to 1,000 4K movies and TV show episodes, some of which support Dolby Atmos and Vision. Subscribers who choose to keep their legacy plan will have to make do with Full HD resolution. In addition, legacy subscribers will no longer be able to stream on three devices at once, because Max will only allow them access to two concurrent streams. Both changes bring the legacy $16 subscription in line with the new Max Ad Free tier, which costs the same amount.An Ultimate Ad Free subscription allows subscribers to stream on up to four devices at once, aside from giving them access to 4K content. It costs quite a bit more than the regular ad-free subscription, but those who want higher-quality streaming and can afford to plunk down $200 in one go will be seeing their yearly expenses for Max go up by just a few cents per month. Max also has a $10-a-month ad-supported tier for those who don't mind their viewing experience interrupted by commercials.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/legacy-hbo-max-ad-free-subscribers-will-lose-access-to-4k-streams-soon-092315829.html?src=rss

Intuit is shutting down its free budgeting app Mint, which had 3.6 million active users in 2021, Bloomberg reports. The company will absorb users into its other service called Credit Karma when Mint disappears on January 1, 2024 - less than two months from now."Credit Karma is thrilled to invite all Minters to continue their financial journey on Credit Karma, where they will have access to Credit Karma's suite of features, products, tools and services, including some of Mint's most popular features," Mint wrote on its product blog. The company noted that Mint's product team and some features have already shifted over to Credit Karma.Mint helps users manage their budget, track expenses and keep track of subscriptions and monthly bills so you don't pay late fees. Intuit acquired the company in 2009 for $170 million, with Mint saying the acquisition would help bring the app to millions more users.Intuit will shift users to Credit Karma (a company it acquired in 2020), even though they're not exactly the same. Credit Karma is more like a banking app that lets users view transactions, monitor credit and see multiple accounts, but lacks the budget tracking features that make Mint attractive to many. Intuit specifically notes on a support page that "the new experience in Credit Karma does not offer the ability to set monthly and category budgets," instead helping users "build awareness" of their spending. However, Mint's net worth feature was recently ported over to Credit Karma.Mint users will be able to transfer their accounts by logging into Credit Karma from the Mint app, after which they'll lose access to their Mint profiles. They can also download or erase any Mint data if they'd rather not switch.Some Mint users on Reddit don't seem thrilled with the switch, with one saying that without the budgeting feature, "Mint is just a glorified checkbook register." Intuit, meanwhile, was recently ordered to pay $141 million for deceiving millions of low-income Americans into paying for tax services that should have been free.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/intuit-is-closing-down-mint-its-popular-free-budget-tracking-app-054145229.html?src=rss

A federal jury has found Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, guilty on all seven counts of fraud and conspiracy he was charged with in relation to the downfall of his cryptocurrency exchange. According to The New York Times, he faces a maximum sentence of 110 years in federal prison. Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas back in December 2022 after the Department of Justice took a close look at his role in the rapid collapse of FTX. The agency examined whether he transferred hundreds of millions of dollars - the company claimed it was hacked after around $600 million disappeared from its funds - when the exchange filed for bankruptcy. It also investigated whether FTX broke the law when it moved funds to sister company Alameda Research.During Bankman-Fried's trial that took place over the past month, prosecutors argued that he used FTX's funds to keep Alameda Research running. The fallen entrepreneur also founded the cryptocurrency hedge fund, which was ran by his girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who was aware that he used FTX customers' money to help Alameda meet its liabilities. Bankman-Fried previously denied that he deliberately misused FTX's funds.The Times says his lawyers tried to portray him as a math nerd who had to grapple with "forces largely outside of his control," but the jury clearly disagreed after the prosecution called Ellison and three of Bankman-Fried's former top advisers to the witness stand. Ellison and all of those advisers had pleaded guilty, with the Alameda Research chief admitting that she committed fraud at Bankman-Fried's direction. The FTX founder himself took the stand and said that he "deeply regret not taking a deeper look into" the $8 billion his hedge fund had borrowed from the cryptocurrency exchange.Bankman-Fried was charged with wire fraud on FTX customers, wire fraud on Alameda Research lenders, conspiracy to commit wire fraud on both, conspiracy to commit securities and commodities fraud on FTX customers, as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is scheduled to be sentenced on March 28, 2024 by US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who also presided over his trial.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ftx-founder-sam-bankman-fried-found-guilty-on-seven-charges-of-fraud-and-conspiracy-012316105.html?src=rss

TikTok is pushing back on critics who claim the video app is falling short in its content moderation duties amid the Israel-Hamas war. In a statement, the company offered new details about the number of accounts and videos it has taken down since the October 7th attacks by Hamas.According to TikTok, it removed more than 925,000 videos in the conflict region" and millions more pieces of content" from around the world. The company also said it's experienced spikes in fake engagement" in recent weeks. Since Oct. 7, we've removed more than 24 million fake accounts globally and more than half a million bot comments on content under hashtags related to the conflict."The new details come as TikTok has faced increasing scrutiny over how its app is recommending content related to the ongoing conflict. According to NBC News, some lawmakers have recently stepped up their calls for the app to be banned amid allegations that TikTok's algorithm is disproportionately promoting pro-Palestinian content. In its update, TikTok said that such claims were based on unsound analysis" of its data.Unfortunately, some misinformed commentators have mischaracterized our work to prevent the spread of hate speech and misinformation surrounding the crisis in Israel and Gaza, especially as it relates to antisemitism," the company said. Over the last few days, there has been unsound analysis of TikTok hashtag data around the conflict, causing some commentators to falsely insinuate TikTok is pushing pro-Palestine content over pro-Israel content to U.S. users." The company added that, in the United States, the hashtag #standwithisrael had been viewed 46 million times since October 7, while #standwithpalestine had been viewed 29 million times.TikTok isn't the only platform to face increasing scrutiny over its moderation policies as tensions surrounding the conflict spill over onto social media platforms. Meta has faced accusations that it shadowbanned" Instagram accounts that posted about conditions within Gaza, which it attributed to a bug." X, formerly known as Twitter, is dealing with a European Union investigation into its handling of misinformation related to the conflict.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tiktok-says-its-removed-millions-of-fake-accounts-since-start-of-israel-hamas-war-231851792.html?src=rss

Apple's latest quarterly earnings report paints a picture of software wins amid something of a hardware slump. In a statement announcing the financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter, the company called out a new all-time high for revenue from its services division. It also highlighted iPhone revenue as having set a September quarter record. However, this marks the fourth consecutive quarter of overall revenue decline, with its earnings of $89.5 billion representing a 1 percent drop year over year. This also means the record-breaking performances of the iPhone and Services divisions did little to offset weakness elsewhere.The lackluster performance is somewhat understandable, though. The company just had a launch event for its new M3 chips, MacBooks and an iMac this week, none of which can be bought yet. And though the new iPhone 15 lineup and Apple Watches were introduced in September, sales of those devices likely did not account for much of this fiscal quarter's results. We're also anticipating a November release for new iPads this year, which could further fuel hardware revenue.Correspondingly, the Mac, iPad and wearables divisions were down this quarter, with the first two taking noticeable hits. Though Apple drummed up significant interest with the Vision Pro headset earlier this year, that device is far from ready to be sold to the public and is unlikely to hit the market until 2024 at the earliest. With holiday shopping about to ramp up, as well as more product releases on the horizon, it's much more likely that the company's hardware products will have a greater impact on its bottom line next quarter.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-revenue-declines-again-despite-iphone-and-services-strength-211938910.html?src=rss

It looks like Amazon is hellbent on keeping its spot as the biggest online retailer - even if that means hurting both sellers and customers. In September, the FTC filed a long-expected antitrust lawsuit against Amazon over its alleged use of illegal strategies to stay on top. Details of the suit were previously withheld from the public, but today a mostly unredacted version was released.Amazon's undeniable dominance of the online retail space has helped small businesses to reach more consumers. However, over the years, it seems Amazon has become exploitative in its approach. The company continues to increase third-party seller fees, which are taking a toll on the smaller businesses and even causing bankruptcy for some. Amazon previously said these claims were baseless, but the documents revealed today show otherwise.According to the The Wall Street Journal, the internal documents cited in the original complaint showed that Amazon executives were well aware of the effects of the company's policies. In the documents, Amazon executives acknowledged that these policies, which included requiring Amazon sellers to have the lowest prices online or risk consequences, had a punitive aspect." One executive pointed out that many sellers live in constant fear" of being penalized by Amazon for not following the ever-changing pricing policy.The FTC alleges that the company had been monitoring its sellers and punishing them if they offered lower prices on other platforms, which the agency says is a violation of antitrust laws. The unredacted documents showed that Amazon has increased prices by over $1 billion between 2016 to 2018 with the use of secret algorithms known as Project Nessie." It was also revealed that the "take rate," aka the amount Amazon makes from sellers who use the Fulfillment By Amazon logistics program, increased from 27.6 percent in 2014 to 39.5 percent in 2018. It's unclear if that has changed in more recent years since those numbers remained redacted.And Amazon isn't just ruining its sellers' experience. The complaint also revealed Amazon's increased use of ads in search results. Several ad executives at the company acknowledged that these sponsored ads were often irrelevant to the initial search and caused harm to consumers" and the overall experience on the site.The FTC alleges that these policies were the brainchild of Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and former chief executive, to increase the company's profit margins.Mr. Bezos directly ordered his advertising team to continue to increase the number of advertisements on Amazon by allowing more irrelevant advertisements, because the revenue generated by advertisements eclipsed the revenue lost by degrading consumers' shopping experience," the FTC complaint alleges.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-knows-its-policies-force-sellers-to-live-in-constant-fear-194800056.html?src=rss

NASA will soon start testing what is dubbed as the world's first commercial spaceplane capable of orbital flight, which will eventually be used to resupply the International Space Station. The agency is set to take delivery of Sierra Space's first Dream Chaser, which should provide an alternative to SpaceX spacecraft for trips to the ISS.In the coming weeks, the spaceplane (which is currently at Sierra Space's facility in Colorado) will make its way to a NASA test site in Ohio. The agency will put the vehicle, which has been named Tenacity, through its paces for between one and three months. According to Ars Technica, NASA will conduct vibration, acoustic and temperature tests to ensure Tenacity can survive the rigors of a rocket launch. NASA engineers, along with government and contractor teams, are running tests to make sure it's safe for Tenacity to approach the ISS.All going well, Tenacity is scheduled to make its first trip to space in April on the second flight of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket. The rocket has yet to make its own first test flight, which is currently expected to happen in December. However, given how things tend to go with spaceflight, delays are always a possibility on both fronts.The spaceplane has foldable wings, which allow it to fit inside the payload of the rocket. On its first mission, Tenacity is scheduled to stay at the ISS for 45 days. Afterward, it will return to Earth at the former space shuttle landing strip at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida rather than dropping into the ocean as many spacecraft tend to do. Sierra says the spacecraft is capable of landing at any compatible commercial runway.Plunging into the ocean is awful," Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice told Ars Technica. "Landing on a runway is really nice." The company claims Dream Chaser can bring cargo back to Earth at fewer than 1.5 Gs, which is important to help protect sensitive payloads. The spaceplane will be capable of taking up to 12,000 pounds of cargo to the ISS and bringing up to around 4,000 pounds of cargo back to terra firma. Sierra plans for its Dream Chaser fleet to eventually be capable of taking humans to low-Earth orbit too.As things stand, SpaceX is the only company that operates fully certified spacecraft for NASA missions. Boeing also won a contract to develop a capsule for NASA back in 2014, but Starliner has yet to transport any astronauts.to the ISS. Sierra Nevada (from which Sierra Space was spun out in 2021) previously competed with those businesses for NASA commercial crew program contracts, but it lost out. However, after the company retooled Dream Chaser to focus on cargo operations for the time being, NASA chose Sierra to join its stable of cargo transportation providers in 2016.Dream Chaser's first trip to the ISS has been a long time coming. It was originally planned for 2019 but the project was beset by delays. COVID-19 compounded those, as it constricted supply chains for key parts that Sierra Space needed before the company brought more of its construction work in house. The company is now aiming to have a second, human-rated version of Dream Chaser ready for the 2026 timeframe.NASA has long been interested in using spaceplanes, dating back to the agency's early days, and it seems closer than ever to being able to use such vehicles. Virgin Galactic (which just carried out its fifth commercial flight on Thursday) uses spaceplanes for tourist and research flights, its vehicle is only capable of suborbital operations. With Dream Chaser, Sierra has loftier goals.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/a-commercial-spaceplane-capable-of-orbital-flight-is-ready-for-nasa-testing-185542776.html?src=rss

It looks like Meta may be pumping the brakes on one of its more aggressive, and unpopular, growth-hacking tactics for Threads. The company appears to be working on a new privacy setting so Threads users can opt-out of having their posts cross-posted to Facebook and Instagram feeds.The unreleased feature was spotted by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, who often uncovers early versions of social media features before they officially launch. Paluzzi shared screenshots of a new suggesting posts on other apps" toggle in Threads' privacy settings.

Meta just released an experimental new A/B testing feature for Reels on Facebook, allowing creators to experiment with different captions and thumbnail images to create the perfect clips. The tools are part of the pre-existing Professional Dashboard, which already provides plenty of useful metrics, like view count insights and more.Here's how it works. When creating a Facebook Reel on your mobile device, you can insert up to four different caption and thumbnail combinations. This starts a testing phase for the content. Whichever one gets the most views will automatically be displayed on your page as the winning variant." It seems fairly simple.The company's also working on incorporating generative AI to help create unique caption and thumbnail options, though that feature is still being worked out. The ultimate goal here is to ensure user-generated content gets as many eyeballs as possible. This increases Facebook's traffic and potentially gives creators some money in the process, thanks to Meta's bonus program.To that end, there's a new system in place that awards achievement badges for leaping past certain metrics. A digital badge isn't as good as money, but it's something (I guess.) Meta does say that these badges could help creators achieve increased visibility of their content, via an awarded Rising Creator label.That's not the only tool that rolled out today. There's also a new feature that lets you quickly whip up Reels from pre-existing video posts and livestreams. The Professional Dashboard has new content management tools to help users keep track of all of this stuff. Previously, creators could only access content performance on a post-by-post basis, but now the dashboard gives you a more holistic view of things.It's interesting that this feature dropped on Facebook and not Instagram, as Reels are more integral to the latter than the former. We'll update you if and when the company debuts these tools for Instagram users.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-made-an-ab-testing-tool-to-help-users-optimize-their-reels-on-facebook-171323994.html?src=rss

For the third time in less than two years, I have COVID-19. Whenever an illness has forced me to stay in bed, my comfort food has been gaming. In 2009 I played through all of Assassin's Creed II in a feverish, swine flu-induced haze. When I was sick with COVID for the first time, I jumped into Red Dead Redemption 2 blind, and found a story about sickness and human mortality. Now, during one of the most stacked years in recent gaming history, I find myself under the covers not with Starfield, Spider-Man 2 or any of the other big fall releases. Instead, my bedside companion is a small Apple Arcade exclusive called Japanese Rural Life Adventure.I discovered this gem through an X account that tweets about upcoming indie games. I took one look at Japanese Rural Life Adventure and knew I had to play it. The game features a beautiful pixel art style, and a pastoral setting evocative of anime classics like Only Yesterday and Wolf Children. What I didn't expect to find was a heartwarming experience about the importance of community.In its opening hours, Japanese Rural Life Adventure plays out much like Stardew Valley or, for that matter, any other farming sim made in the past two decades. When the game's protagonist first arrives in the countryside, they find their new home in disrepair, nearly every inch of the surrounding fields overgrown with weeds. But following a predictable start, the game shows its true character.Almost uniquely among other games in the genre, Japanese Rural Life Adventure doesn't include any romantic partners for the player's character to pursue. Nearly everyone you meet is elderly. They complain of aching bones, bad backs and a dim future where there aren't any young people to carry on their community's traditions.I was born and raised in the city, in a big town. I have no memories of playing in rivers, climbing mountains, or anything like that," Takeo Fujita, the founder of Japanese Rural Life Adventure developer GAME START, told me over email. I have no older relatives living in the countryside. In other words, you could say that the gentle and simple countryside' found in Japanese Rural Life Adventure comes from a sense of longing that I felt watching and reading Japanese TV dramas and manga."Longing for a simpler life is something that pervades Japanese Rural Life Adventure -not just its setting, but also its mechanics and the scale of its gameplay. For all the time I've put into the game, I have not become a farming mogul. At most, it's possible to plant and maintain four fields for growing rice and produce, alongside a few fruit trees. In fact, there's only so much work" for your character to do in a single day. And the days, compared to those in Stardew Valley or recent Harvest Moon entries, are long, adding to the sense of a slower pace of life.Japanese Rural Life Adventure consistently pushed me to slow down and appreciate everything it had to offer beyond farming: fishing, bug catching, cooking and photographing wildlife, all of which have their own fun minigames associated with them. Sometimes, I would just let my character rest on the front porch to watch a cherry blossom tree shed its pedals or to bask in the sparkle of fireflies at night.GAME STARTAt first, Japanese Rural Life Adventure limits players to the small area around their farm. More often than not, advancing the plot or opening a new section of the game involves helping others. Before I could buy seeds to grow my first batch of cucumbers and daikon radishes, I first had to build a bench for an old peddler lady to sit and rest. After completing a few of the game's early objectives, including the partial restoration of a local Shinto shrine, the nearby town unlocks.The town is in a sorry state when you first visit. The roads are weed-ridden and potholed. Nearly every building is falling apart. The young people are long gone. It's one step removed from becoming a ghost town.As it turns out, this town is the heart of Japanese Rural Life Adventure. After exploring it for a bit, I meet the village head, who tasks my character with restoring the decaying roads and buildings, including a Buddist temple and schoolhouse, all in hopes of bringing tourists who will help revitalize the local economy.I didn't expect this from Japanese Rural Life Adventure. In Japan, declining birth rates and one of the world's oldest populations threaten to erase rural life as the country knows it. A 2019 Bloomberg article, citing data from the Japan Policy Council, frames the stakes succinctly: If current trends continue, by 2040, 869 municipalities - nearly half of Japan's total - will be at risk of vanishing."Fujita says GAME START didn't set out to create a game about the plight of his country's towns and villages. When developing games, we do not consider difficult themes such as vanishing rural communities or population aging. We believe that games should be something you can enjoy and forget about everyday life," he said. "Growth' and development' are elements that can make a game attractive to prospective players. So we adopted village regeneration' as one of the themes of the game."GAME STARTTo some extent, all games like Japanese Rural Life Adventure share an interest in community. After all, it's safe to say part of the reason why so many people love Stardew Valley is because of Pelican Town and all the weird and wonderful characters that inhabit it. However, inorienting almost all of the player's actions towards the betterment of its unnamed town, Japanese Rural Life Adventure puts community front and center in a way I hadn't seen in the genre before. It's also that focus that makes the game feel fresh and compelling.Take the restoration project I mentioned earlier. The village head compensates the player for completing the tasks he assigns to them, but I found the money I earned was often only enough to cover the costs of the next repair I needed to complete. More rewarding was seeing the results of my efforts. The project culminates in a summer festival that requires a significant investment from the player, both in terms of time and money spent. Before I could even start preparing for the event, I first had to repair and repaint the torii gates of the temple where the town planned to hold the festival. It was also up to me to produce the 21 chochin lanterns needed to light everything. This task consumed a few hours of my time, but the reward was a beautiful night time celebration that felt like a culmination of everything I had done up to that point. The fact I won a young koi fish to release in the pond in front of my house was a bonus.Often, Japanese Rural Life Adventure doesn't feature a lot of mechanical sophistication. Watering plants is as straightforward as a single tap, and most other tasks involve either foraging or buying the right items, but what it has a lot of is heart. That was something I needed.Japanese Rural Life Adventure is currently available on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-arcade-exclusive-japanese-rural-life-adventure-review-170006419.html?src=rss

Amazon just bundled together the fourth-gen Echo and the fifth-gen Echo Dot in a sale that represents significant savings for both devices. You can snag both for $83, which is a discount of nearly $70 if you bought each separately. The bundle's even available in multiple colors, including white, blue and black. You can't mix and match hues, however, for the contrast hounds out there.The bundle includes the fourth-gen Echo, originally released in 2020. In our review, we said that the speaker punches above its weight" and praised the reasonable price. Well, if the price was reasonable at $100, it's certainly reasonable now. The Echo is more or less the gold standard when it comes to basic smart home speakers and gives you access to Alexa, premium sound quality (for a small ball that sits on a counter) and an easy-to-use microphone array.We also noted that this thing sounds even better when paired with another device for the purposes of stereo or multi-room sound. That's where the Echo Dot comes in.The bundle also includes the fifth-gen Echo Dot. This speaker may not be as powerful as its older sibling, but it still offers plenty of nifty features, including surprisingly robust sound, a temperature sensor and built-in Eero capabilities. There's a reason why it made our list of the best smart speakers. You can pair the Dot with the regular Echo for stereo sound in one room or for delivering audio to multiple rooms at once. It'll be like the music is traveling with you, resembling the line at a highly personalized Disney ride.It's worth noting that both of these devices are a generation behind, as there's a newer Echo Dot with a built-in clock and a fifth-gen standard Echo. Still, the bundle's a pretty good deal.Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo's Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog's experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-selling-an-echo-and-echo-dot-bundle-for-83-as-an-early-black-friday-deal-162027983.html?src=rss

Brave joins the growing list of browsers that come with built-in generative AI assistants. The open source browser developer has started rolling out an update for Brave on desktop, which gives users access to its AI assistant Leo. Brave introduced Leo through its Nightly experimental channel back in August and has been testing it ever since. The assistant is based on the Llama 2 large language model, which Microsoft and Meta had developed together for commercial and research purposes.Like other AI assistants, users can ask Leo to do various tasks, such as creating summaries of web pages and videos, translating and/or rewriting pages and even generating new content. The Llama 2-powered Leo is available for free to all users, but Brave has also introduced a paid version capable of "higher-quality conversations." Leo Premium, as it's called, is powered by Anthropic's Claude Instant and can produce longer and more detailed responses. Users will have to pay $15 a month for it, but they will also get priority queuing during peak periods and early access to new features.In its announcement, Brave Software emphasized that Leo preserves users' privacy. The developer said that conversations with Leo are not persisted on its servers and that the assistant's responses are immediately discarded and "not used for model training." It also explained that it doesn't collect IP addresses and retain personal data that can identify a user. Plus, users don't even have to create an account to use Leo.Back in July, Brave came under fire after it was accused of selling copyrighted information to train artificial intelligence models without consent. "Brave Search has the right to monetize and put terms of service on the output of its search-engine," the company's Chief of Search, Josep M. Pujol, said at the time in response to the allegations. "The 'content of web page' is always an excerpt that depends on the user's query, always with attribution to the URL of the content. This is a standard and expected feature of all search engines."Brave is rolling out Leo on desktop in phases over the next few days. Those using the browser on their Android and iOS devices, however, will have to keep an eye out for its release on mobile in the coming months.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/braves-ai-assistant-comes-to-its-desktop-browser-160010918.html?src=rss

Uber and Lyft have agreed to pay a combined $328 million in settlements following a wage theft investigation by the New York attorney general's office. According to New York AG Letitia James, the companies' policies systematically cheated their drivers out of hundreds of millions of dollars in pay and benefits." They'll both now have to pay settlement funds to more than 100,000 current and former drivers in New York, and offer both minimum hourly pay rates and paid sick leave.In the two settlements, Uber has to pay $290 million, while Lyft must pay $38 million. The AG's office found both Uber and Lyft shortchanged drivers by deducting sales taxes from drivers' commissions that should have been paid by riders between 2014 and 2017. They also did not offer paid sick leave. As a result of the settlement, drivers outside of New York City will be guaranteed an earnings floor of $26 per hour (NYC drivers already have minimum rates under Taxi & Limousine Commission regulations), and will earn one hour of sick pay for every 30 hours worked. This will be capped at 56 hours per year.NYC drivers will get $17 per hour for sick leave, while drivers outside of the city will get $26 per hour. Both rates will be adjusted annually for inflation. Drivers can put in a claim for their share of the settlement on the New York Attorney General's website. The companies will also be required to update their apps to improve the process for putting in sick leave requests and provide support for pay-related questions, plus earnings statements for drivers which explain their compensation in detail.Uber separately settled with the Department of Labor today as well following two lawsuits over its failure to provide unemployment benefits for drivers. The company will now have to make quarterly payments into the New York State Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund to cover its drivers, and pay an as yet undisclosed amount in retroactive payments going back to 2013.The New York Taxi Workers Alliance has sued multiple times seeking unemployment benefits for drivers, as the fight over whether they should be considered employees or independent contractors continues. Today's settlement is a victory for Uber drivers across the state who will no longer be denied timely access to life-saving benefits by Uber in their darkest hour, and New York taxpayers will no longer have to subsidize the billionaires at Uber and Lyft," the NYWTA and Legal Services NYC said in a statement about the settlement. Drivers for the state's largest employer will now be able to access unemployment benefits moving forward without endless obstacles and denials."New York has been cracking down on app-based service providers in recent years amid a push by the Biden administration to see gig workers classified as employees. A California court, however, slapped down one such bill in March, allowing companies to continue classifying their drivers as contractors. But NY has made progress recently in securing more protections. In September, Uber, GrubHub and DoorDash were told they must pay their delivery workers a minimum wage.Update, November 2 2023, 3:10PM ET: This story has been updated to include information on a second settlement Uber reached today with the New York Department of Labor, and a statement from the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/uber-and-lyft-must-pay-328-million-to-new-york-drivers-in-massive-wage-theft-settlement-155716817.html?src=rss

The Beatles are back, sort of. The fab four just released a new song, the group's first since 1995. Now and Then" is being advertised as the final Beatles track, which makes sense given that two of the members have passed and the other two are well over 80 years old.The song was built using a demo track from John Lennon dating back to the 1970s and a guitar track from George Harrison from 1995. The surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, finished off the tune with the help of modern machine learning technology.The software, which was first used by director Peter Jackson when making the Get Back documentary for Apple, was able to split Lennon's vocal from the piano without any bleed, giving the remaining Beatles free rein to add whatever they wanted. You can watch a documentary on the making of the song right here.As for the song itself, it's a relatively slow Lennon ballad, with his vocals being a highlight. McCartney lays down one of his effortless bass lines and Starr hits the drums. The guitar solo is in the style of Harrison, but not actually played by him, though he handles some of the rhythm guitar in the background. There's also a full orchestral arrangement because, well, it's the Beatles. This likely won't go down as one of the group's most beloved tracks, but that Lennon vocal is both haunting and beautiful.Now and Then" was supposed to come out back in 1995 as part of The Beatles Anthology, along with Free as a Bird" and Real Love", two other tracks culled from 1970s Lennon demos. Back in the 1990s, however, the technology just wasn't there to separate Lennon's vocal from the piano without some serious degradation to the original take.The Beatles may say this is their last song ever, but we'll report back in 2053 and see if that ends up being true. See you then. In the meantime, check out the track.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/listen-to-the-final-beatles-track-made-with-machine-learning-and-archival-recordings-153253946.html?src=rss

NASA has announced a new streaming service called NASA+ that's set to hit most major platforms next week. It'll be completely free, with no subscription requirements, and you won't be forced to sit through ads. NASA+ will be available starting November 8.

External studies and internal reports alike have shown time and time again the negative impact social media can have on teens' mental health, leading to a range of safety precautions across platforms. Now, YouTube is expanding its well-being tools for young people, including recommendation limits on videos that could be harmful.YouTube teamed up with its Youth and Families Advisory Committee to identify types of videos that could have a detrimental effect on a teens' mental health if repeatedly viewed. These categories included videos that idealized certain body weights, features and fitness levels or show social aggression. However, these videos are still searchable (and can be recommended at least once). To this end, YouTube has made its crisis resources - the information that appears if someone searches words like "self-harm" or "eating disorders" - into a full-page panel. The idea is that this will force viewers to take more of a break and more clearly state third-party crisis hotlines and suggestions for searches like "grounding exercises."The company is also increasing the frequency of its Bedtime and Take a Break reminders, with the latter automatically set to appear across videos every hour for viewers under 18. The frequency can then be adjusted in settings by the user or a parent. Breaks could be beneficial, given an August 2022 report from Pew Research found that 95 percent of US teens use YouTube, and nearly one-fifth of them are on it "almost constantly." TikTok, meanwhile, was the second most popular platform, with 67 percent of respondents using it - nearly one-third less than YouTube.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/youtubes-new-teen-protections-limit-recommendations-on-potentially-harmful-videos-133144681.html?src=rss

The following article contains spoilers for Lower Decks, Season Four, Episode Ten.Four seasons in, and you more or less know what you'll get from a Star Trek: Lower Decks season finale. A hefty dose of in-jokes and references that conclude the season arc by pulling the Cerritos crew together. There's a focus on teamwork over individual valor, and a belief that Starfleet's mission is the right one. Add in a gag or two about how Star Trek is better when it's slow and cerebral, add in a cliffhanger that threatens the show's status quo, and you're done.Just because Old Friends, New Planets" sticks to this formula, it doesn't mean it isn't good, and you'll laugh plenty of times in the half hour. The show's ability to wheel out a staggeringly left field comic premise like Twaining is one of its biggest strengths. But the episode is full of solid gags that work on a second or third re-watch, including the lampshading about who Locarno (Robert Duncan McNeill) does or does not look like.Judged on its merits as an episode of Star Trek, and you'll find it similarly-winning with great writing and direction. I can't help but single out Chris Westlake's score, whose work this season has been just as great as the last. It was wonderful, too, to see Shannon Fill and Wil Wheaton recruited for their cameos in Mariner's flashback. Who else but a true devotee would make such an effort, and the show's creative team led by Mike McMahan has an infectious love for Trek's golden era.It's just that there's also a sense of diminishing returns, or that the show needs to find a higher gear to operate in. The limits of a sitcom's premise means you can't do too much to up-end the status quo, but you can feel this desire for evolution. It's the old trap: You can't joke that the USS Cerritos isn't important, and keep putting them in these high-stakes scenarios. Can you go back to fixing a warp manifold if your lead character just toppled a planet-threatening tyrant?And now, an intervention.Sadly, one thing bothered me about Old Friends, New Planets," which requires me to bring up Star Trek: Picard's dreadful third season. I'm not relitigating matters here, but I am asking why two Trek series opted to do The Wrath of Khan homages in the same year. Isn't spotting duplication like this and preventing it at the pre-production stage part of Franchise Overseer Alex Kurtzman's job? Sure, he can't be in every meeting, but surely this is why he's credited as an executive producer on every Trek series currently running, right?It was nice, however, that both series honored the late CGI artist Fabio Passaro.It doesn't help that back-to-back Wrath of Khan homages mere months apart look less like a show of admiration and more like a cry for help. When Star Trek's creative well runs dry, it's to Nicholas Meyer's 1982 classic that they run to for inspiration. As I wrote back in February, the path to Khan is so well-worn I'm not sure there isn't a single element that hasn't been strip-mined to oblivion.And while creatives pillage that film's iconography, the person behind it has often been persona non grata in Trek circles. Meyer's still around, and doing good work, but his Trek pitches haven't had a look-in for a long while. I don't know if it's ageism, or if he's awful in real life, but the fact his work is so popular yet he can't get a look in feels unjust. And we still haven't heard anything more about Ceti Alpha V, the Khan midquel podcast that was announced more than a year ago.I think it's time that we staged an intervention, and said that Star Trek is no longer allowed, even in jest, to pull anything from The Wrath of Khan. In fact, let's make that broader, and say that we need to leave those toys in the box for a decade or more. And instead, let's focus on telling new stories that people will be desperate to honor three or four decades in the future.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/star-trek-lower-decks-season-finale-delivers-exactly-what-it-promises-130051733.html?src=rss

Whether it's for a tour of the International Space Station (ISS) or a battle with Darth Vader, most VR enthusiasts are looking to get off this planet and into the great beyond. HTC, however, is sending VR headsets to the ISS to give lonely astronauts something to do besides staring into the star-riddled abyss.The company partnered up with XRHealth and engineering firm Nord Space to send HTC VIVE Focus 3 headsets to the ISS as part of an ongoing effort to improve the mental health of astronauts in the midst of long assignments on the station. These headsets are pre-loaded with unique software that has been specifically designed to meet the mental health needs of literal space cadets, so they aren't just for playing Walkabout Mini Golf during the off hours (though that's not a bad idea.)The headsets feature new camera tracking tech that was specially developed and adapted to work in microgravity, including eye-tracking sensors to better assess the mental health status of astronauts. These sensors are coupled with software intended to maintain mental health while in orbit." The headsets have also been optimized to stabilize alignment and, as such, reduce the chances of motion sickness. Can you imagine free-floating vomit in space?Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen will be the first ISS crew member to use the VR headset for preventative mental health care during his six-month mission as commander of the space station. HTC notes that astronauts are often isolated for months and years at a time" while stationed in space.This leads to the question of internet connectivity. After all, Mogensen and his fellow astronauts would likely want to connect with family and friends while wearing their brand-new VR headsets. Playing Population: One by yourself is not exactly satisfying.The internet used to be really slow on the ISS, with speeds resembling a dial-up connection to AOL in 1995. However, recent upgrades have boosted Internet speeds to around 600 megabits-per-second (Mbps) on the station. As a comparison, the average download speed in the US is about 135 Mbps. So we'd actually be the bottleneck in this scenario, and not the astronauts. The ISS connection should allow for even the most data-hungry VR applications.These souped-up Vive Focus 3 headsets are heading up to the space station shortly, though there's no arrival date yet. It's worth noting that it took some massive feats of engineering to even get these headsets to work in microgravity, as so many aspects of a VR headset depend on normal Earth gravity.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/htc-is-sending-vr-headsets-to-the-iss-to-help-cheer-up-lonely-astronauts-120019661.html?src=rss

Normally, all you get from binge-watching shows on Netflix are dry eyes and a popup asking if you're still watching - has the answer ever been no? But, Netflix is celebrating one year of its ad-supported plan by giving all users on that tier every fourth episode of a consecutive binge ad-free. That's certainly not a bad way to entice you into staying on the streamer for just one more episode (cut to five episodes later without moving).Netflix is also rolling out downloads on its ad-supported tier, claiming to be the first streamer to make the option available for users who have ads included. While the binge-watching perk wont roll out until early 2024, the ability to download shows and movies should be available by the end of the week. However, it's unclear if downloaded shows will enjoy the binge-watching perk once it rolls out.For a company that claimed it would never include an ad-supported tier, Netflix has certainly embraced the format since its November 2022 launch. It introduced its first Title Sponsorship during the most recent season of Love Is Blind. Netflix will continue with partnerships for another reality series, Squid Game: The Challenge, and The Crown's final season. Early 2024 will also see advertisers given the option to include a QR code in any of their US-based content.Netflix's ad-supported plan is by far the cheapest option after the streamer cut its Basic tier in mid-2023. It comes to $6.99 each month, while the Standard plan is $15.49 and the Premium is $22.49. The lowest-priced tier allows for two concurrent streams and has been upgraded to 1080p video quality versus 720p.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflixs-ad-supported-plan-will-soon-allow-downloads-and-reward-binge-watching-115033226.html?src=rss

YouTube's no longer just experimenting with ad-dodging viewers. The platform has gone all out in its fight against add-ons, extensions and programs that prevent it from serving ads to viewers worldwide, it confirmed to Engadget.The use of ad blockers violates YouTube's Terms of Service," a spokesperson said. YouTube started cracking down on the use of ad blockers earlier this year. By June, it took on a more aggressive approach and warned viewers they wouldn't be able to play more than three videos unless they disable their ad blockers.It may be an overly aggressive push: Some people apparently can't play videos on Microsoft Edge and Firefox browsers even if they don't have ad blockers, according to Android Police, but we could not replicate that behavior.- Mat SmithYou can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!The biggest stories you might have missedScarlett Johannson takes legal action against AI app that cloned her likenessFormula E preseason testing: Five key takeaways from ValenciaSony ANC headphones are up to 53 percent off in Amazon's early Black Friday saleThe best gifts under $50 that make great stocking stuffersThe AI Seinfeld show is bugging out harder than Frank Costanza on FestivusThis AI-powered security camera can describe what it sees in detailBeyond just dog spotted.'Psync LabsPsync Labs' focus is to improve machine vision and pair this with generative AI to help it, and you, understand what it can see. Its debut security camera, the Genie S, will process what it sees and send you a written description of what (it thinks) is going on. The camera, which doesn't have the best picture and sound quality, has 32GB built-in storage for $35, and some exciting stuff happening inside.ViewSay is Psync's transcription tool that uses GPT, a form of generative AI, to get the camera to describe in text what it's seeing. ViewSay, which currently costs 99 cents a month (but will jump to $7 per month in the future) can apparently identify objects, sort events that triggered the recording and even let you search through the clips with text, all through your smartphone. It's early days, but the system shows glimpses of insightful visual analysis .Continue reading.Apple Music's Siri-only $5 voice plan gets silencedIt's no longer listed on the streaming service's website.Apple appears to have killed off its lowest-cost Apple Music subscription. The Apple Music Voice Plan allowed folks to access the streaming service for $5 per month, as long as they were willing to use it only through voice commands to Siri. However, as of Wednesday, the plan is no longer listed on the Apple Music webpage. As it stands, the cheapest standalone Apple Music option is now the student plan, which costs $6 per month and includes Apple TV+ at no extra cost - if you're a student.Continue reading.LinkedIn's latest premium perk is an AI job coachThe platform is ramping up its AI-powered features as it hits 1 billion users.LinkedIn is adding a new AI-powered job coach for its premium subscribers. The feature will tap into LinkedIn data to help job seekers find, research and apply for roles, and it arrives as the company announced its user base has grown to one billion members. For now, the most prominent feature for job seekers will be AI-generated insights alongside each job posting. The tool can summarize lengthy job descriptions and weigh in on whether the role is a good fit for a user, based on their LinkedIn profile. For example, it can highlight specific work experiences users' may want to emphasize in their application.Continue reading.Disney will buy out Comcast and take full control of HuluIt will pay $8.61 billion for the deal.Disney is buying the rest of Hulu from Comcast. It will acquire the 33 percent of Hulu Comcast still controls and expects to pay NBCUniversal around $8.61 billion for the deal, though the final amount will be determined sometime next year. Disney CEO Bob Iger said when he announced the combined streaming app that it's a logical progression" of the company's direct-to-consumer offerings. And hey: Comcast still has Peacock.Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-youtube-is-seriously-cracking-down-on-ad-blockers-111532949.html?src=rss

It's been less than two months since Amazon launched the Fire TV soundbar at its annual fall event, but the device is already on sale as part of the website's early Black Friday offerings. You can get the brand new entry to the Fire TV line for $100, which is a full $20 less than its original list price. The device can enhance your TV audio with its dual speakers and give you access to a 3D virtual surround sound experience with its DTS Virtual:X and Dolby Audio support.It can connect to your phone or tablet via Bluetooth, but it doesn't support Alexa voice commands. And if you want to adjust its volume, you'd have to use its remote. That said, if you have a Fire TV streaming device and a Fire TV-powered smart TV, you can use one remote for all of them - simply plug the soundbar's HDMI cable to your TV.Amazon's soundbar is just one of the Fire TV devices currently on sale at the website. You can get its streaming sticks for up to half off their usual prices, including the Fire TV Stick Lite that's on sale for $18 and the standard Fire TV Stick that's listed for $20. If you don't mind spending a bit more for higher-quality streaming, you can get the Fire TV Stick 4K for $30 instead or the even beefier Fire TV Stick Max for $45. Finally, the TV Cube will cost you over 20 percent less than usual and will set you back $110.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-new-fire-tv-soundbar-is-17-percent-off-in-early-black-friday-deal-102022941.html?src=rss

Oscar-nominated actor Scarlett Johansson has taken legal action against an AI app developer for using her likeness in an ad without permission, Variety has reported. The 22-second ad promoted an AI image editor called Lisa AI: 90s Yearbook & Avatar, and reportedly used an AI-generated version of Johansson's voice and image.The ad showed a real clip of Johansson in a Black Widow behind-the-scenes clip, saying "What's up guys? It's Scarlett and I want you to come with me...". It then transitions to AI-generated photos and a cloned version of her voice promoting the AI app. Under the ad is fine print that states: "Images produced by Lisa AI. It has nothing to do with this person." Multiple Lisa AI apps created by Convert Software remain on the App Store and Google Play, according to Variety, but the ad no longer appears on X.Johansson is "handling the situation in a legal capacity," said her lawyer Kevin Yorn. "We do not take these things lightly. Per our usual course of action in these circumstances, we will deal with it with all legal remedies that we will have," he added.Johansson has one of the best known faces (and voices) in Hollywood and is the spokesperson for high-end companies including Dolce & Gabbana and Louis Vuitton. Given that, it's hard to believe that someone would even attempt to rip off her likeness, if the claim is accurate (and it's not exactly a ringing endorsement for the quality of ads on X).The idea of using AI to rip off celebrity likenesses is a relatively new phenomenon, so the legal ramifications are still being worked out. In one notable incident, actor Tom Hanks warned his fans on social media that videos using AI versions of his likeness were being used to fraudulently hawk products.Though it's still a legal grey area, some states have related laws around privacy rights, with California for one allowing civil lawsuits for the unauthorized use in advertising or promotion of someone's "name, voice, signature, photograph or likeness."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/scarlett-johannson-takes-legal-action-against-ai-app-that-cloned-her-likeness-065505106.html?src=rss

Disney is buying the rest of Hulu from Comcast, the company has announced. It will acquire the 33 percent of Hulu Comcast still controls and expects to pay NBC Universal approximately $8.61 billion for the deal, though the final amount will be determined after an appraisal that will be wrapping up sometime next year. As The New York Times notes, the companies had agreed back in 2019 that Comcast could force Disney to buy its stake by next year and Disney could require Comcast to sell. The cable TV and media company chose to speed up negotiations with Disney instead of waiting until 2024."The acquisition of Comcast's stake in Hulu at fair market value will further Disney's streaming objectives," Disney said in its announcement. Earlier this year, the company revealed that it will launch a "one-app experience" that combines Disney+ and Hulu content by the end of 2023. While it didn't outright say at the time that it had plans to buy out Comcast, that was a pretty big clue that a full Hulu takeover was in the cards. Hulu's standalone app won't be going away anytime soon, but its offerings will also be available on Disney+ when the new experience launches.Disney CEO Bob Iger said when he announced the combined streaming app that it's "a logical progression" of the company's direct-to-consumer offerings "that will provide greater opportunities for advertisers, while giving bundle subscribers access to more robust and streamlined content..." As for Comcast, it already has its own streaming service - Peacock - and has been making its shows like The Voice available to its members.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/disney-to-buy-out-comcast-and-take-full-control-of-hulu-054157026.html?src=rss

The UK government has announced a $273 million investment to build its most powerful supercomputer yet, Isambard-AI, which will rank among the top AI supercomputers in the world when it's switched on. It'll pack thousands of NVIDIA superchips, allowing it to run more than 200 quadrillion calculations per second. Isambard-AI is expected to begin operations in summer 2024 and will be hosted by the University of Bristol.The supercomputer is being built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and will use 5,448 of NVIDIA's GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips, NVIDIA said in its own announcement. It'll be able to achieve over 21 exaflops of AI performance, or over 21 quintillion floating point operations per second for AI applications, like training large language models. According to the University of Bristol, Isambard-AI will be 10 times faster than the fastest supercomputer in the UK today. It'll be housed at Bristol's National Composites Center in a self-cooled, self-contained data center."The announcement came during the UK's AI Safety Summit, where leaders from multiple countries - including the US - are meeting to discuss the future of AI and its potential risks. Isambard-AI will eventually be used to connect with other supercomputers in the UK as well, to boost performance even further. Once it's up and running, according to Simon McIntosh-Smith of the University of Bristol, Isambard-AI will be one of the most powerful AI systems for open science anywhere."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-uk-is-spending-273-million-to-build-its-fastest-ever-ai-supercomputer-213551806.html?src=rss

Apple appears to have killed off its lowest-cost Apple Music subscription. The Apple Music Voice Plan allowed folks to access the streaming service for $5 per month, as long as they were willing to use it only via Siri voice control. However, as of Wednesday, the plan is no longer listed as an option on the Apple Music webpage, as first spotted by MacMagazine.It's no longer possible to sign up for the Apple Music Voice Plan, 9to5Macnotes. It's unclear if current users will be grandfathered into their current subscription or why Apple seems to have ditched the offering. Engadget has contacted Apple for comment.The voice plan was largely aimed at those who listen to Apple Music via HomePods, AirPods or Apple Watch and may be more likely to use a voice assistant than go through the Music app on their phone, tablet or computer. There were other significant tradeoffs. It wasn't possible for users on this plan to add songs to their library, create playlists, use the service on non-Apple devices or listen to lossless or Dolby Atmos audio. The voice plan, which debuted in 2021, was also only available in a limited number of markets, including the US, UK and Canada.As it stands, the cheapest standalone Apple Music option is now the student plan, which costs $6 per month and includes Apple TV+ at no extra cost. Alternatively, you can opt for the $11 per month individual subscription or split the cost of a $17 family plan with relatives. Otherwise, you can join Apple One, which now starts at $19.95 per month, and gain access to multiple Apple services.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-musics-siri-only-5-voice-plan-appears-to-be-toast-195051054.html?src=rss

Subaru just announced forthcoming support for Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS), joining other big-time manufacturers like Hyundai. The company will update the charging ports of its electric vehicles for North American consumers beginning in 2025. This will give consumers access to more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers across the country.The company also says it will continue to advance NACS adoption for vehicles manufactured and released after 2025, so future EV owners should be in good shape. Subaru will offer an adapter for anyone that owns or leases a vehicle with the Combined Charging System (CCS), further solidifying NACS as the one to beat.This is part of the company's efforts to transform half of its vehicles to EVs by 2030. Subaru has a long way to go in this regard, as it currently sells just one true electric vehicle, the Solterra. This EV starts at $45,000, so it'll have to manufacture some more budget-friendly cars to meet that 50 percent threshold.As previously mentioned, Subaru is just the latest company to jump on the NACS bandwagon. Honda made a similar promise for 2025, as did Toyota and Lexus. As of this writing, there are around 56,000 EV charging stations in America, with many of them integrating the NACS standard in the short-term future.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/subaru-evs-will-support-teslas-nacs-chargers-starting-in-2025-185214250.html?src=rss

Twitch's AI-generated Nothing Forever stream caused a massive sensation when it launched back in February. This is the internet, however, so it wasn't long before the stream's Seinfeld-like protagonist started spewing hateful anti-trans rhetoric, leading to a ban on the streaming platform. Now it's back, but experiencing some serious bugs that could end the enterprise entirely.It started on October 27, when viewers began noticing that the characters had stopped talking, instead standing in absolute silence for hours on end, as reported by Kotaku. After that, a strange orange man appeared to silently patrol the apartment. On October 30 things got even weirder, with 404 Media's Jason Koebler sharing a video of two primary characters walking into one another over and over again. This continued for days.

Arturia just released a free-to-use version of its popular Analog Lab software, called Analog Lab Play. This is a pared-down software suite with 100 presets culled from the original Analog Lab and from VSTs like the well-reviewed Pigments soft synth. There's also a simplified interface for new users called Play View that streamlines visual cues and speeds up the preset selection process, in addition to allowing the purchase of standalone instruments.The available 100 presets with Analog Lab Play is much lower than the 2,000+ found with the original software, but, hey, free is free. Arturia's new software is a good way to familiarize yourself with the company's sound engines, just in time for those likely Black Friday discounts.To that end, the original paid Analog Lab software is also getting a refresh. It's now called Analog Lab Pro. It still allows access to thousands of presets captured from the renowned Arturia V Collection, Pigments and related soft synths. It costs $200 and remains mostly unchanged, but will receive the same UI refresh included with Analog Lab Play. When we reviewed the original Analog Lab, we found it to be the perfect software suite for those who like to tweak presets over creating sounds from scratch.This isn't the first time Arturia has thrust a free version of its software on the world. Analog Lab Intro is a similar product to Play that was offered as a free download with the purchase of select MIDI controllers and occasionally as a standalone software suite. The company also drops free instruments and effects once in a while, like 2021's lo-fi tape plugin based on its Mellotron emulation.Analog Lab Play is available for download right now, so hop to it. The UI refresh for Analog Lab Pro is coming at a later date. In recent months, Arturia has released an effect based on the iconic Leslie rotary speaker and an emulation of the acid house classic Roland TB-303, among other products.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/arturia-releases-new-free-version-of-analog-lab-synth-instrument-172045988.html?src=rss

Apple has announced the latest slate of upcoming games for Apple Arcade, one week after it increased the price of the subscription service for the first time in many markets. Among the titles Apple has in the pipeline is a new, exclusive 3D Sonic platformer.In Sonic Dream Team, Doctor Eggman has found a way to turn dreams into reality. Sonic and his pals will have to navigate strange dreamscapes as they try to stop their old foe. Along with Sonic, you'll be able to play as Tails, Knuckles, Amy Rose, Cream and Rouge. Each character has their own unique abilities. You'll be able to check out Sonic Dream Team when it lands on Apple Arcade on December 5.Hitting the service on the same day is Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition. It's a mashup of an Animal Crossing-style life sim and an adventure game with a host of Disney and Pixar characters you can befriend.Disney Dreamlight Valleyhas been in early access on other platforms since August last year. It was supposed to become a free-to-play title with paid expansions upon its official release in December, but developer Gameloft has changed tack, instead deciding to charge $40 for the base game on consoles and PC. However, you won't need to pay extra to play it on Apple Arcade. You'll also get access to the A Rift In Time expansion at no extra cost.In addition to those titles, six other games are coming to Apple Arcade over the next couple of months, such as Football Manager 2024 Touch. In a first for the soccer management sim series, you'll be able to carry over your progress from Football Manager 2023 Touch.Other upcoming games include cooking title Delicious - Miracle of Life+, Puzzle & Dragons Story (an exclusive) and oil rush-based sim Turmoil+. Knotwords+, a version of the word game that caught fire last year in the wake of Wordle's success, will hit Apple Arcade on November 3. Indie classic Downwell+(from Poinpydeveloper Ojiro Fumoto) will land join the service's lineup on November 17.

Roli was an early poster child for the emergence of MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression). The company has had its share of struggles over the last 10 years, but it's still out there trying to spread the gospel of MPE. Its first product after filling for administration in the UK (kind of like bankruptcy) and rebranding as Luminary Roli was a redesigned version of its Seaboard Rise. It's a flagship, pro-level MIDI controller, with a price to match ($1,399). The new Seaboard Block M takes the company's signature squishy, continuous keyboard and puts it in a much more affordable and portable package.The $349.95 Seaboard Block M features the same 5D Touch technology of it's bigger sibling. That means, when paired with the right instrument (and properly configured), you can play incredibly expressive melodies and chords by sliding your fingers around, pressing firmly into the foam like surface or quickly tapping it for sustained plucks.Where as the Seaboard Rise 2 is a 49-key controller, with multiple macro controls and its metal frame screams premium, the Block M has just 24-keys and pared back set of controls. Though, you can connect two Seaboard Blocks together to make one modular 48-key keyboard.Luminary RoliWhile Roli doesn't explicitly say what it's made from other than "premium materials... constructed to withstand the rigors of touring", it seems safe to assume the Block M is primarily plastic. It also appears to lack the "precision frets" of the Rise 2, which made it a lot easier to find your way around the keyboard simply by feel.It has inherited the dedicated MIDI-out jack from the Rise 2, at least. That means you can use it to control a DAW-less setup and skip the computer altogether. This is becoming a lot more common on MIDI controllers at any price point, but it's still a welcome development.Of course, the number of instruments out there - hardware or software - that can take full advantage of the MPE controls here are still somewhat limited. The Block M does come bundled with ROLI Studio, does give you a few options for expressive playing. It's not quite as powerful as Equator 2, the company's flagship soft synth, though.Lastly, Roli says you can expect about 10 hours of battery life with Bluetooth on. Though, you can always connect directly to device with USB-C for zero latency and no worries about battery life. The Seaboard Block M is available to preorder now for $349.95, but it's not expected to ship until March of 2024.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/roli-is-making-is-squishy-mpe-midi-keyboards-affordable-and-portable-again-160044126.html?src=rss

Formula 1 may do its preseason tests right before the new schedule of races begins, but Formula E holds its trials months before the first E-Prix. The official action starts in Mexico City in January, but last week the all-electric series took to the turns of Valencia for its annual preseason test. 2024's Season 10 will be the second for the ultra-efficient Gen3 car, following a debut that delivered lots of wheel-to-wheel racing and a hard-fought driver's championship that was decided in the final two races. While there isn't a new car this year, there's still plenty to know before the lights go out in Mexico.A battery fire cut testing shortTeams lost a considerable amount of track time after a battery fire following the Tuesday morning session. The Race reports that the incident occurred in a pit stall occupied by WAE, the all-electric series' battery supplier. The fire reportedly started from a battery that had been removed from the DS Penske driven by rookie Robert Shwartzman for three separate stints. Shwartzman had to stop on track due to an issue and once the car was back in the pit lane, the battery was removed and taken to WAE for inspection. Motorsport.com reports that the automatic battery safety system was activated causing the driver to stop. According to The Race, witnesses say there was a small audible explosion about 90 minutes after the car came to a halt on the circuit.Formula E canceled the Tuesday afternoon and both Wednesday sessions while it looked into the cause of the fire. One person was taken to the hospital as a precaution but was released without any treatment. The series' governing body, the FIA, deemed conditions safe to resume testing on Thursday afternoon following investigations and findings provided by the technical suppliers," Formula E explained.As The Race notes, there has never been a traction battery fire at an E-Prix in nearly 10 years of events. There were incidents in 2015 and 2017, but those affected the smaller 12-volt battery. This was also unrelated to the new Attack Charge as Shwartzman had yet to demo that infrastructure. Formula E only had eight units for 11 teams and DS Penske didn't have one at the time, The Race reports.The first female driver in a Gen3 carGabriela Jilkova drives the TAG Heuer PorscheSimon GallowayDuring the preseason test in Valencia, teams were required to put rookie drivers in their cars for three of the 18 scheduled hours of running. The lineup included former F2 driver Robert Shwartzman (DS Penske) and current F2 drivers Victor Martins (Nissan) and Zane Maloney (Andretti), among others. The rookie test saw the first female driver in a Gen3 Formula E car as well. LMP3 and GT4 driver Gabriela Jilkova got behind the wheel of the Porsche team's EVs, completing a 46-lap run. Formula E previously held rookie tests ahead of the Berlin E-Prix and during an extra practice session in Rome, both happening earlier this year.The first test of Attack ChargeDuring a 10-hour session last Friday, Formula E held a simulated race, giving teams a 27-lap trial to test setups, run through safety car periods and demo the upcoming Attack Charge pit stops. The series had planned to introduce the stops last season, but supply-chain issues meant the technology would only be ready for the final few races. By then, Formula E felt it would be too late and decided to postpone the debut of Attack Charge to this season.

Nearly two years after its prototype debut and eight months after its public beta, Sony's GT Sophy racing AI for Gran Turismo 7 is back, and going by Gran Turismo Sophy 2.0 now. It will be available to all PlayStation 5 users as part of the GT7 Spec II Update (Patch Update 1.40) being released on Wednesday, November 2 at 2 a.m. ET.We got our first look at the Sophy system back in February 2022. At that point it was already handily beating professional Gran Turismo players. Gran Turismo Sophy is a significant development in AI whose purpose is not simply to be better than human players, but to offer players a stimulating opponent that can accelerate and elevate the players' techniques and creativity to the next level," Sony AI CEO, Hiroaki Kitano, said at the time. In addition to making contributions to the gaming community, we believe this breakthrough presents new opportunities in areas such as autonomous racing, autonomous driving, high-speed robotics and control."The system's public beta this past February saw the AI competing against a small subset of the game's user base in the Gran Turismo Sophy Race Together" event. Players who had already progressed sufficiently through the game were granted access to the special race, where they faced off against four AI-controlled opponents in a limited number of tracks.The difference [between racers] is that, it's essentially the power you have versus the other cars on the track," Sony AI's COO, Michael Spranger, told Engadget in February. You have different levels of performance. In the beginning level, you have a much more powerful vehicle - still within the same class, but you're much faster [than your competition]." That advantage shrank as players advanced through the race rounds and Sophy gained access to increasingly capable vehicles. In September, Sophy learned to drift.We have evolved GT Sophy from a research project tackling the grand challenge of creating an AI agent that could outperform top drivers in a top simulation racing game, to a functional game feature that provides all game players a formidable, human-like opponent that enhances the overall racing experience," Spranger said in a press statement released Wednesday.With Wednesday's announcement, the number of vehicles Sophy can pilot rises from the meager four models available during the beta event, to 340 (yes, three hundred and forty) vehicles across nine unique tracks. Per Sony, that means Sophy can drive 95 percent of the playable in-game models and will select its car for the race based on what the player has available in their garage (that way they're not randomly facing down a 918 in a Nissan Versa or are otherwise disadvantaged). The five percent of models it can't drive are the handful of hyper-spec specialty cars like the karts or Dodge SRT Tomahawk VGT.Players can match against Sophy in Quick Race mode (formerly "Arcade") regardless of their advancement through the game or current skill level. As long as you have a PS5, a network connection and the latest update patch installed, you too can get Toretto'ed by a stack of algorithmic processes. Good luck.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sony-gt-sophy-racing-ai-gran-turismo-7-ps5-130057992.html?src=rss

If you ask Psync Labs, it'll tell you the problem with smart security cameras is that they don't know what they're seeing. Those motion pings you get with other products? Defined by how light shifts in front of its sensor, treating an approaching figure or low-flying bird with equal alarm. So, Psync's focus is to improve machine vision, but to also go one step further and pair this vision with GPT-enabled generative AI to help it, and you, understand what it can see. Its first product, the Genie S, is a security camera that'll send you a written description of what (it thinks) is going on.On paper, the Genie S has a similar feature set to plenty of other affordable home security units I could mention. There's a powered pan-tilt base, five megapixel camera (outputting 2K Video), four LEDs, a microphone and speaker. But there are differences, like the fact it's in the shape of a cube that, when it's not activated, points the lens toward the base. Psync says it's the most compact camera in its class, but probably not by as big a margin as the company hopes. Setup is easy enough - put it on a table, or use the screw mount to place it somewhere more esoteric, plug in the six foot long USB-C cable, and you're on your way.Psync says that a smarter camera will be better-equipped to capture what's going on at home, but that's not its best use case. VP of marketing Echo Wong says that the hardware is able to record those memorable moments that fly by quicker than we can pull out our phones." But I don't think you would want to buy this on the off-chance it catches junior's first word or steps. The more prosaic sales line, the one that probably wouldn't fly as well, is that it's a security camera with the added promise of not bugging you with needless pings because of the promise of AI smarts.Buy one of these, and you'll get the choice of a unit with 32GB built-in storage for $35 or 64GB for $40. I mention this up-front because we're very much in you get what you pay for" territory in terms of the picture and sound quality. It shoots vertically-oriented 2K video but the clips are pretty fuzzy, even if you can zoom in to get some halfway useful detail if required. It doesn't like too much light, so if it's pointed at a window (and/or anything reflective) then chunks of the image will get blown out. Similarly, the sound quality is something of a throwback to an earlier age of crunchy, over-compressed streams. You'll get similarly crunchy audio using the talk feature, which has similarly walkie-talkie" vibes that you won't find on pricier hardware.Psync Labs Of course, that's not what anyone is here for, but to see what this new company - of which little is known -has cooked up with AI. ViewSay is Psync's transcription tool which uses GPT, a form of generative AI, to essentially let the camera describe in text what it's seeing. ViewSay, which currently costs 99 cents a month, promises to identify objects, sort events that triggered the recording in a visual timeline, let you search through the clips with text and, of course, the aforementioned written pings. Pay, your fee, set this up, and your phone will ping when it spots something interesting, and give you the best description of what is going on that it can manage. Users can also set specific categories, like "Person," "Vehicle," "Pet" and will eventually be able to craft tailored alerts, like "a dog jumps on the couch" for alerts.Oh, but there is a catch - because that fairly reasonable 99 cents a month is just a limited-time trial, before leaping up to $7 a month. Which, we can all agree, is more than a little bit too much to spend on a product like this, especially in this economic climate.ViewSay is currently in beta, and while the app splash to get you to sign up promises plenty, the company is keen to keep expectations low. My impression so far is that while Psync has the bones of a workable idea here in theory, the nitty-gritty of practice isn't. I pointed the camera at a neutral corner in my office and play-acted in front of it to see what it would do. My fake phone-call, where I learned that my (fictional) wife had discovered the secret to perpetual motion, went unremarked upon and undocumented. Well, kinda - the camera pinged my phone to say that A man is sitting in a chair in a room, looking at his reflection in a mirror."Actually, I'm being unfair - since the system can also make fairly accurate guesses at other times. Like, while I was setting the hardware up late one evening, I got a ping to tell me that a man is sitting on the floor, holding a cell phone in his hand." A few days later, I pointed the camera at a TV which was turned off, and the Echo Show that was in front of it. I then turned back to use my laptop - which I think was only really visible in the reflection on the TV's screen. Not long after, the app pinged to say it could see a A man is sitting in front of a laptop, looking at the screen, and possibly using it for work or entertainment purposes." Now, this was either a massively-lucky guess, a false positive or a sign of how accurate this will be in future.Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget.When it detects something going on in this manner, the system records a 12-second clip to its local storage. These clips are retained for at least 14 days, and when you've looked at them in the app, you're also able to save them to your phone. I understand you'll also be able to take longer clips when motion is detected but that feature doesn't yet appear to be available. You'll also be able to share a live feed of your camera, using WebRTC, to up to four viewers - through a browser - for up to 30 minutes at a time. You might be wondering about how secure all of this is, and what exactly is happening to your data. Psync told me that its AI model is based on an AWS instance, and the footage is protected using 256-bit AES encryption. The footage recorded will be stored on the device locally, but the initial frame of the video is sent to the cloud for further analysis.As something of an AI skeptic, and someone who isn't thrilled at wiring up every corner of my home with a camera, I'm by default hostile to Psync's plan here. But I can at least see where Psync is looking to add value to the standard security camera proposition. If you're out and about, and you get a ping saying there's a person in your living room, when there shouldn't be, then that's pretty helpful. Especially if you can just tune into the live feed and see for yourself what's going on and if you need to do something about it. As much as the macro story is scary, I can understand the logic someone would apply to buy one or two of these.But it's worth saying too that what I just described isn't yet what Psync is selling, only what it is gesturing toward. The system will require more training, and plenty more data from a broader user base, until it can start offering you more concrete descriptions. Now, I'm sure that in a year or two that will be the case, but until then, you're essentially buying into an ecosystem where you're paying for the privilege of being a beta tester.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/psyncs-genie-s-security-camera-uses-gpt-to-describe-what-it-sees-130043520.html?src=rss

YouTube is no longer preventing just a small subset of its userbase from accessing its videos if they have an ad blocker. The platform has gone all out in its fight against the use of add-ons, extensions and programs that prevent it from serving ads to viewers around the world, it confirmed to Engadget. "The use of ad blockers violate YouTube's Terms of Service," a spokesperson told us. "We've launched a global effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad free experience. Ads support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube."YouTube started cracking down on the use of ad blockers earlier this year. It initially showed pop-ups to users telling them that it's against the website's TOS, and then it put a timer on those notifications to make sure people read it. By June, it took on a more aggressive approach and warned viewers that they wouldn't be able to play more than three videos unless they disable their ad blockers. That was a "small experiment" meant to urge users to enable ads or to try YouTube Premium, which the website has now expanded to its entire userbase. Some people can't even play videos on Microsoft Edge and Firefox browsers even if they don't have ad blockers, according to Android Police, but we weren't able to replicate that behavior.People are unsurprisingly unhappy about the development and have taken to social networks like Reddit to air their grievances. If they don't want to enable ads, after all, the only way they can watch videos with no interruptions is to pay for a YouTube Premium subscription. Indeed, the notification viewers get heavily promotes the subscription service. "Ads allow YouTube to stay free for billions of users worldwide," it says. But with YouTube Premium, viewers can go ad-free, and "creators can still get paid from [their] subscription."The website raised Premium's rates to $14 a month in July from $12 before that. YouTube Premium also gives users access to offline viewing, background playback and higher-quality 1080p streaming, but it could be too expensive for those who just want an ad-free experience. The platform used to offer a more affordable option called Premium Lite in certain European regions, and it only cost 7 ($7.42) a month to remove advertisements from videos. However, it never made Lite available worldwide and ultimately killed that option by the end of October.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/youtube-is-taking-its-fight-against-ad-blockers-global-122041223.html?src=rss

LinkedIn is adding a new, AI-powered perk for its premium subscribers: a built-in job coach that uses AI and LinkedIn data to help job seekers find, research and apply for roles. The new feature arrives as the company announced its user base has grown to 1 billion members as it looks to ramp up its investment in AI-driven features.The Microsoft-owned company has increasingly been experimenting with AI features for its paying members. Earlier this year, it introduced the ability to use generative AI to write better profile descriptions and messages to hiring managers. But the latest AI perks aim to provide an even more personalized experience.For now, the most prominent feature for job seekers will be AI-generated insights alongside each job posting. The tool can help summarize lengthy job descriptions and weigh in on whether the role is a good fit for a user based on the contents of their LinkedIn profile. For example, it can highlight specific work experiences users' may want to emphasize in their application and provide tips on how to improve their LinkedIn profile to look more attractive to hiring managers.LinkedInBecause LinkedIn is able to draw on its vast trove of career data, the tips it's able to provide are much more personalized than what you'd likely get if you were to ask other generative AI services for tips, says LinkedIn product manager Rohan Rajiv. This is made possible by generative AI, but also the datasets that bring all of this together," Rajiv tells Engadget. It's your profile, your connections, and all of this that essentially can help you move your job search forward."For now, it's still early days for the feature which is launching in beta to a limited set of LinkedIn Premium subscribers. But the company has signaled it intends to make AI a central part of its service going forward. Today marks the beginning of a new journey, one where the power of AI is your ally in every career question and decision," LinkedIn's Chief Product Officer, Tomer Cohen, wrote in a blog post.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/linkedins-latest-premium-perk-is-an-ai-job-coach-120044855.html?src=rss

Following President Joe Biden's sweeping executive order regarding AI development last week, at the UK AI Safety Summit yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced even more machine learning initiatives, as well as the establishment of the United States AI Safety Institute. In cooperation with the Department of Commerce, the Biden administration will establish the United States AI Safety Institute (US AISI) within the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). It will be responsible for creating and publishing guidelines, benchmark tests, best practices and more, for evaluating potentially dangerous AI systems. Tests may even include the red-team exercises President Biden mentioned in his executive order last week.The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) - it's an acronym-heavy morning - will release the administration's first draft policy guidance on government AI use later this week.- Mat SmithYou can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!The biggest stories you might have missedThe Google Pixel 7a is cheaper than ever at $374 in this early Black Friday dealApple's Scary Fast Mac event: Everything announced about the M3 MacBook Pro and M3 iMacThe best wireless earbudsSamsung credits strong smartphone and mobile display sales for income growthThe best iPhone cases Microsoft's Windows 11 2023 update brings Copilot AI to more usersSurface Laptop Studio 2 reviewThe ultimate all-rounder?EngadgetMicrosoft's Surface Laptop Studio packs a unique blend of performance and adaptability - even among 2-in-1 PCs. Thanks to refreshed specs plus a USB-A port and a microSD card reader, it seems like Microsoft's second-gen mobile workstation has pretty much everything it needs. Unfortunately, with a high starting price and costly upgrades, the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is still difficult to recommend to everyone.Continue reading.Chrome for iOS now lets you move the address bar to the bottomPerfect for those iPhone Pro Max owners.Google's new feature for Chrome on iOS doesn't massively change the browser, but it could be helpful if you find tapping the top of your iPhone screen a bit of a stretch. The company has rolled out the ability to move the browser's address bar to the bottom of the screen from the top, a la Safari. Oddly, this isn't yet a feature in Android's Chrome app.Continue reading.Tesla's Autopilot was not to blame for fatal 2019 Model 3 crashThe crash killed the car's 37-year-old driver and severely injured two passengers.Tesla was not at fault for a fatal 2019 crash that allegedly involved its Autopilot system, according to a jury in California. It's the first US trial for a case claiming its software directly caused a death, with the car's driver killed in the crash. The lawsuit alleged Tesla knowingly shipped cars with a defective Autopilot system. The jury ultimately found there was no defect, and Tesla was cleared on Tuesday.Continue reading.Ayaneo's Kun is an even more powerful gaming handheldThis powerful handheld could also be your favorite laptop.EngadgetThe Ayaneo Kun is the highest-spec gaming machine the company has ever made, and after using it for a couple of weeks, Engadget's James Trew says it's both a fantastic gaming handheld and (if you want) a decent portable general-use PC. But it feels, he said, that the Kun is just a placeholder for the Kun 2, or the Kun 1S, Kun Pro or... whatever they call the next upgraded handheld. Notable specs include a huge 75Wh battery and the ability to play games at 1600p resolution - a substantial nudge above the usual 1200p max of other Ayaneo devices. Read on for the full breakdown.Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-us-government-announces-ai-safety-institute-111551804.html?src=rss

A bunch of Sony headphones, earbuds and other audio devices are on sale at Amazon, including the Sony WH-CH720N headset, which is currently selling for the lowest price we've seen for it on the website. You can get the noise canceling wireless headphones for $98, down 35 percent from their original list price of $150. They have a lightweight, over-ear design with ample space around your ears so that they'd be comfortable to use. And while you can completely block out outside noise for full immersion, you can also switch on their Adjustable Ambient Sound mode that comes with 20 levels for when you want to be aware of your surroundings.You can pair the WH-CH720N with two Bluetooth devices at the same time, and you can easily switch between them at the touch of a button. Plus, the model supports both Alexa and Google's voice assistants, and Sony says it can last for up to 35 hours on a single charge.The most deeply discounted product among the ones currently on sale, however, are the Sony WH-XB910N wireless headphones. They have the power to enhance low-end frequencies for extra bass with their "dedicated bass duct on the headphone housing" and "increased airtightness between the driver units and eardrums." The headphones use dual noise cancelation technology to keep ambient sounds out, and like the WH-CH720N, you can quickly switch between two connected Bluetooth devices. You can get the Sony WH-XB910N headphones right now for $118, which isn't quite a record-low for the model but is still 53 percent lower than its original price.If you're looking for earbuds instead of headphones, you can also grab a pair of Sony LinkBuds S with noise canceling capabilities for $128 (36 percent off) from the sale. Want earbuds designed to let ambient sounds in? The Sony LinkBuds earbuds with an open-ring design now also cost $128, or 29 percent less than their original list price. Finally, you can find deals on subwoofers and sound bars from Amazon, as well, if those are what you've been eyeing for the upcoming holiday season.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/sony-anc-headphones-are-up-to-53-percent-off-at-amazon-095038076.html?src=rss