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When it comes to headphone design, Master & Dynamic has carved out a niche. The company’s signature look of metal and leather, immediately set it apart from the competition when the wired MH40 debuted in 2014. M&D followed up with a wireless version in 2019, giving its non-ANC (active noise canceling) over-ear headphones a modern update. Now the company is back with a second-generation wireless model, touting improvements to audio, battery and more. The third iteration of the MH40 is undoubtedly an improvement on the last, but are the company’s design chops enough to overcome the lack of features compared to similarly priced alternatives?DesignOne element that has always set Master & Dynamic apart from the competition is its design. From those first MH40 headphones, the company has relied on aluminum construction instead of plastic for several products. What’s more, it blends the metal with other premium materials like canvas and leather. For the second-generation MH40 Wireless, the company has stayed true to its roots, right down to the vintage, aviator-inspired look.Alongside the aluminum body, a coated canvas-wrapped headband is color matched to removable lambskin leather ear pads. With all of those high-end materials, the MH40 weighs 280 grams – 30 grams more than Sony’s WH-1000XM5. Still, the extra heft isn’t a burden, these feel lightweight, comfy, and the cushiony ear pads keep you from feeling the outer rim of the ear cups.Like the previous version, the on-board controls reside on the right ear cup. A three-button array is positioned near the headband hinge, giving you controls for calls, music, voice assistant and volume (including a mute button). The dual-function power/pairing button sits on the outer edge alongside the USB-C port and a multi-color pairing/battery life indicator. I’ll always advocate for physical controls over a touch panel, mostly because they’re more reliable. That’s certainly the case here, as I was easily able to execute multiple presses on the center button for skipping tracks.Software and featuresBilly Steele/EngadgetThe M&D Connect app is the companion software for the MH40. Here, battery level is the most prominently displayed item, along with a note if your headphones are up to date firmware-wise. A tap on the gear icon reveals options for sound, controls and “about device.” Inside the sound menu, Master & Dynamic gives you four EQ presets: bass boost, bass cut, podcast (mids and vocals) and audiophile (mids and highs). By default, there’s no equalizer setting selected and the app will remember which one you picked so you don’t have to select it each time you activate the so-called E-Preset EQ. You can also enable Sidetone on the sound menu, allowing you to hear some of your own voice during calls. This comes in handy as it keeps you from feeling the need to speak loudly to hear yourself through the passive noise isolation.While Sidetone is a nice feature, you can only activate it in the app, which means before a call (or more likely, during the first few seconds of one) you’ll have to swipe over to the sound menu to turn it on. I realize the MH40 doesn’t have ANC so there’s not a dedicated button that selects a noise-canceling mode. But perhaps there could be an option to reassign the long press on the center button, from summoning a voice assistant, to triggering Sidetone.On the controls menu, the app gives you the option of renaming the device from M&D MH40W and changing the automatic shut-off timer from the default 30 minutes (one hour, three hours and never are the other options). From this screen you can also trigger a factory reset.Sound qualityBilly Steele/EngadgetAfter testing several Master & Dynamics’ products over the years, it’s clear the company has a knack for warm, natural sound that’s devoid of any heavy-handed tuning. Across genres, there’s no over-reliance on bombastic bass or painfully brilliant highs. That continues on the second-gen MH40 Wireless where there’s ample low-end tone when a track demands it, like Mike Shinoda’s remix of Deftones’ “Passenger.” But the bass is a complement to everything else, and the default EQ works well across the sonic spectrum.Master & Dynamic swapped out the drivers on the previous version for 40mm titanium units that it says produce “clearer highs and richer lows.” Indeed, the treble is punchy throughout a range of musical styles, and the bass can be as thick and thumping as a song requires. Other headphones may offer low boom, but it blends better with the mids and highs on the MH40, making the even the deepest bass on RTJ4 more pleasant to listen to.There’s great attention to detail in the sound profile of the MH40 too, and again, it’s apparent across different types of music. However, this is most evident with genres like bluegrass and jazz – multi-instrumental arrangements with interwoven sections emphasizing different players at different times. It’s not quite on the level of what Bowers & Wilkins manages with its latest headphones, which are some of the best-sounding I’ve reviewed. But Master & Dynamic does a solid job with the subtle nuances of sound, from pick noise on a mandolin to the percussive thumps of an upright bass.When it comes to calls, the new MH40 offers a better overall experience than its predecessor, but there’s still room for improvement. The new microphone setup does a solid job with constant background noise. It doesn’t pick up things like white noise machines and clothes dryers. The headphones aren’t great with louder distractions and it picks those up in greater detail if you’ve got Sidetone active.Battery lifeBilly Steele/EngadgetMaster & Dynamic promises up to 30 hours of battery life on the new MH40. That’s up from 18 hours on the first wireless version of the headphones, but it's not any longer than most ANC models. Audio-Technica's best non-ANC model lasts up to 50 hours, for example. There’s also a quick-charge feature that will give you up to six hours of use in 15 minutes. During my testing, I managed to hit the stated time before having to plug them in, but I didn’t go beyond. That’s doing a mix of music, podcasts and calls (with Sidetone) at around 75 percent volume and leaving the headphones off overnight a few times.The competitionIn terms of non-ANC headphones, one of my favorite options is Audio-Technica’s ATH-M50xBT2. Like the MH40, this is a second-generation model with notable improvements over the M50xBT. Multi-point Bluetooth pairing, built-in Alexa and a low latency mode were added on top of the company’s blend of warm audio tone with a really comfy set of cans. Plus, they’re currently on sale for $179 – $20 less than the original price and less than half of what you’ll pay for the new MH40.If you’re looking for noise canceling headphones, Master & Dynamic sells the MW75 with a more modern design than the company’s other over- and on-ear products. Adaptive ANC is powered by a set of four microphones and there are three noise-canceling modes to choose from. The MW75 is also equipped with wear detection to help you extend that 28-hour listening time (with ANC on). However, these headphones are a whopping $599, only surpassed by Bowers & Wilkins’ Px8 for the most expensive headphones I’ve tested recently.For the best wireless headphones currently available, you’ll want to consider Sony’s WH-1000XM5. Simply put, no other company comes close to what Sony offers on its flagship set in terms of mixing features, sound quality and ANC performance. While they’re pricey at $398, you get more for that investment. Plus, we’ve seen the M5 on sale for as low as $279.Wrap-upWhat features are you willing to give up for headphones with standout looks and good sound? That’s really what you have to consider with the MH40. There’s no denying this second-gen model is an upgrade from the first wireless version. All of the things the company says it improved hold true, from the sound quality to the battery life and microphone performance. Had the company done so without boosting the price, I could make a strong argument for the new MH40. But at $399, there are flagship noise-canceling headphones from other companies that simply offer too much when compared to M&D’s latest. Unless, of course, the main thing that matters to you is a deft hand with product design.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/master-and-dynamic-mh40-wireless-2nd-gen-review-133022239.html?src=rss

Back in February, TikTok revealed that it was testing a feature that will give you a way to reset the recommendations that pop up on your For You page. Now, the ByteDance-owned app is rolling out this "refresh" option to all users, so you can get rid of video recommendations that no longer feel relevant. If you enable it, the For You feed will look as if you've only just signed up for an account, and TikTok's algorithm will start surfacing content based on your newer interactions on the app.To give your feed a reset, head over to TikTok's Settings and Privacy menu, then scroll down until you find Content preferences. There, you'll find a new option that says "Refresh your For You feed." Take note that it's all what the new feature does — it won't change any of your settings or unfollow accounts you've previously followed.In addition to the new "refresh" feature, TikTok has also updated its efforts to reduce repetitive patterns of content that could be harmful. The app has been doing this for quite some time and has been applying limits to videos that don't exactly violate its policies but might have an effect on your viewing experience. Examples include videos that feature sadness or extreme dieting and exercise. Now, if its systems detect a repetition in those types of themes within a set of videos, it actively substitutes some of them with videos about a different topic. That way, it can further limit your exposure to content that could contain certain triggers.These are but the latest updates TikTok has rolled out in a bid to improve its algorithm, which has been the subject of investigations and has been at the center of discussions on whether the app should be banned. TikTok's critics even call its user experience (as enabled by its algorithm) manipulative, designed to keep you glued to the app.It's no secret that the service has been under intense scrutiny over the past few years, so it also doesn't come as a surprise that TikTok has been making an effort to demystify its algorithm and give you more control over the content you see. They will certainly give TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew more positive talking points when he tries to make authorities see the app in a positive light on March 23rd. Chew will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee that day and is expected to discuss the app's privacy and data security, as well as its impact on kids and ties to China.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tiktok-for-you-feed-refresh-130028273.html?src=rss

The following episode discusses Star Trek: Picard, Season Three, Episode Five, “Imposters.”Efficient storytelling is not a strength you can traditionally attribute to Star Trek: Picard, which has often felt padded. Each of its three seasons have felt like one or two made-for-TV-movies' worth of story stretched thin to ten near-hour long episodes. Nowhere is this more evident than in this season’s fifth episode, where five minutes of plot is expanded to a full episode. Here, Team Picard learns that Starfleet has been infiltrated by super-Changelings before teaming up with Team Worffi. Oh, and Beverley, who has been in relatively close contact with him for most of his life, has finally noticed that Something Is Up With Her Son. But even that fairly slender advance in the plot has to take a back seat to the main centerpiece of the episode: The moment when Picard stands face-to-face with [CHARACTER].The power of [CHARACTER’S] return is all held in the moment that they step into camera focus, such is the extent of the surprise. After all, there are textual and meta-textual reasons why you wouldn’t expect to see them popping up in any Star Trek, let alone this one. For a start, their plot was done after they – for right or wrong reasons – betrayed the Enterprise crew in [TNG EPISODE]. And, of course, [ACTOR] had been expected to make the transition to Deep Space Nine, but turned the role down. In fact, esteemed Trek wiki Memory Alpha suggested they were even offered a role in Voyager, either as a regular or as a guest star, and similarly turned it down. If there’s any person who you’d think was never coming back to any Star Trek, it would be [ACTOR]. And not even I, much as you keep telling me I’m a cynical hater expressing these opinions to milk your hate-clicks, was immune to the initial flush of emotion seeing them in a Starfleet uniform again.Unfortunately, the main confrontation between Picard and [CHARACTER] is dulled by both the needlessness of it all, and its execution. The pair talk about their “faith” in “institutions” or the lack of such, and why this is or is not a good thing, but I don’t feel any of this. Part of it is the streaming era-Trek problem of telling us things rather than showing, so we have these gestures toward a grander theme that are never properly explored on screen. But it’s also because many of these themes were already well-explored on Deep Space Nine, even if the execution there was always a little hamfisted. After all, while there was every sense that we should side with the Maquis – don't forget that they were the little people tossed aside by the grand machinations of empires with no care of the lives that were directly impacted. But this is Star Trek, and so whatever the problem, whatever the grand conundrum at hand, the answer is pretty much always Starfleet.Picard’s obsession with continuity for the sake of itself does little more than remind us of older, better Treks. I might as well add, because it’s been on my mind for years at this point, that there’s a YouTube clip from the DS9 episode “For The Uniform” describing Sisko as a “badass.” Specifically because he carries through a threat to sterilize a planet to inflict petty revenge on Commander Eddington, who he felt betrayed Starfleet to go support the Maquis. This is the Star Trek problem in a nutshell: Sisko’s in the wrong here, but the show can never quite allow us to stop sympathizing with our hero because he’s our hero. Picard, this year, has behaved pretty illogically, and recklessly, and yet because he’s our hero too, the show can’t quite question his actions in anything more than a single line of sassy dialog from Riker.I don’t consider myself pharisaical in my approach to continuity, and I do think that it can be a benefit to storytelling rather than a burden. But Picard’s use of golden-era Trek deep cuts often takes me out of the show as I wonder how this tracks in any way logically. Picard himself even says as much, asking how in the hell [CHARACTER] wound up back in a Starfleet uniform. She explains the “arduous” process taken to get back into the fleet, but I couldn’t help but interrogate this further. Imagine if a mid-level officer in the US Navy put a major aircraft carrier in any degree of jeopardy to cover their own defection to an (ostensibly) enemy terror group? Do you think any military organization worth its salt would allow that same person to serve in active, regular duty again? And if anyone says “but Tom Paris…” bear in mind that he was a) a Nepo Baby, b) Wasn’t with the Maquis for very long and c) Wasn’t expected to serve once he’d done his time assisting Voyager during its short trip into the badlands.And then [Character] dies in a set-up to implicate the Titan, and you wonder if death will be doled out so cheaply in the rest of the series. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had whole seasons of Picard structured around saying farewell to long-running characters.There’s not much to say about this week’s b and c-stories because they feel so derivative and shallow. Worf and Raffi’s plan to smoke out the villains with a fake-out sniper that’s instantly foiled feels pulled from an early-noughties thriller. The fact it was counter-foiled by a fake-out death on Worf’s part felt thin too, there’s no way you’d bring back Michael Dorn just to off him so cheaply. And on a similar theme, Jack is yet another streaming-era Trek character with the Jason Bourne disease; troubled by visions of a secret past that keeps going into a phaser-fu fugue state whenever placed in danger. A storyline so stale it was already covered with mold when this very series did it with Dahj and Soji in its first season. I haven’t seen any episode after the next one, so I genuinely don’t know how this particular plotline is going to resolve itself. But I’ve seen those threads on Reddit, and if it’s true, I’m really going to sigh myself in two if we’re doing this same stuff yet-a-bloody-gain.Speaking as a parent, if my kid coughs more than twice in their sleep in quick succession, I’ll just stick my head into their bedroom door to check if they’re okay. If I was the chief medical officer on a starship that spent more than a decade at the far reaches of known space investigating weird stuff, I reckon I might have a tricorder or two at hand. And if my kid stopped being able to sleep, was troubled with dangerous visions and his eyes started to glow red in moments of emotional or physical turmoil, I reckon I wouldn’t keep it to myself until he reached adulthood. In fact, I might even have thought to take them to a hospital or biobed myself just, you know, to be on the safe side. Just a thought, Beverley.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/star-trek-picard-3-5-imposters-review-130001398.html?src=rss

NASA and Axiom Space have revealed what Artemis III astronauts will wear when they walk on the Moon. The Artemis III mission is currently slated for December 2025. It’ll be the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 touched down in 1972, and it’s poised to include the first woman and first person of color to walk on the Moon.Axiom SpaceThe new spacesuit accommodates a wider range of body types. It's also more flexible than past suits, featuring lights and even an HD camera. The design can even handle the extreme cold of permanently shadowed areas on the Moon. If you’re disappointed not to see the iconic white of NASA’s older spacesuits, don’t worry – this is just the early prototype. The final version will likely be all-white when worn by NASA astronauts on the Moon’s surface.– Mat SmithThe Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.The biggest stories you might have missedNext-generation Zipline P2 Zip drone comes with an adorable ‘droid’ sidekick PS Plus Extra and Premium games for March include the PS5 Uncharted collection Kia's EV9 electric SUV features three rows of seats and a striking designBMW confirms the i5 Sedan will be its first all-electric 5 Series vehicle T-Mobile is buying Ryan Reynolds-backed Mint MobileFor up to $1.35 billion.T-Mobile has announced an agreement to buy Mint Mobile's parent company, Ka’ena, for $1.35 billion in cash and stock. Mint has run on T-Mobile since its inception as a mobile virtual network operator. The deal is all the more intriguing thanks to its celebrity rep, Ryan Reynolds, who is believed to own between 20 and 25 percent of Mint. He'll stay on in his creative role as Mint spokesperson. Mint was founded in 2015 and spun out from Ultra in late 2019.Continue reading.BMW's new Panoramic Vision adds a full-width display on EV windscreensExpect it to roll out on models from 2025.With its new Panoramic Vision display, BMW wants to bring that important HUD data to eye level. The company has announced a heads-up display that spans the entire width of the windscreen to give drivers and passengers all the necessary information without having to take eyes off the road. As the driver, you can choose what you want to see across the Panoramic Vision display, including speed, time, and current song playing.Continue reading.Samsung explains its 'fake' Moon photosThe company says its AI enhances details, but critics claim it's adding info that wasn't there.Samsung shared a deeper explanation of its Moon photo detection system it has used since the Galaxy S21. The phone detects when you're taking a clear photo of the Moon at 25X zoom or above and captures multiple frames. It then uses a neural network to enhance the detail, using a high-resolution reference image for comparison. It’s that latter part that’s rankling folks. So are the images you’re taking fake? Well, Samsung is using the actual shot as a baseline, but the phone is producing photos that don't represent what you get through the lens. The company appears to be aware of this, too, as it says it's refining Scene Optimizer to "reduce any potential confusion" between taking photos of the actual Moon and augmented images of it.Continue reading.The 'BlackBerry' trailer looks funnier than you'd expectThe rise and fall of the keyboard-toting smartphone business.When we learned that a BlackBerry movie was in the works, no-one thought it would be a comedic feature. But judging from the trailer it should have a lighter touch than films like The Social Network and Steve Jobs. The BlackBerry movie stars Jay Baruchel (How to Train Your Dragon, Goon) and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Glenn Howerton as Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the former co-CEOs of the Canadian firm Research in Motion.Continue reading.Samsung’s $450 Galaxy A54 has a bright 1,000-nit displayAnd looks more like a flagship phone.Axiom SpaceIt’s that quiet moment between Samsung launching its Galaxy S flagships and its other flagships that just happen to fold. So it's the perfect time to update its midrange A series and add to the chaos. While no major shakeups are coming from the Galaxy A53 to the A54, there are some notable changes, including a redesign more closely aligned to the premium Galaxy S family, with metal detail on the cameras, which now jut out from the back independently of each other. The screen is also 20 percent brighter, topping out at 1,000 nits. The A54 will be available to pre-order on March 30th before launching on April 6th for $450 – the same price as last year’s model.Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-nasa-reveals-its-next-gen-spacesuit-for-the-next-mission-to-the-moon-112100659.html?src=rss

Baidu, China's search engine giant, has unveiled its answer to OpenAI's ChatGPT service. It's the latest version of the company's ERNIE (Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration) Bot that it has been developing over the past decade and was first launched back in 2019. In a press event, Baidu CEO Robin Li said this version of ERNIE Bot has capabilities close to GPT-4, the latest iteration of OpenAI's large language model released just a couple of days ago.The chatbot apparently has 550 billion facts in its knowledge graph, but they're mostly focused on the Chinese market. So while it will be able to list Chinese idioms for you, it may not be able to answer as many questions for certain subjects outside the region. ERNIE Bot has the capability to answer a user with audio responses in different Chinese dialects, though, and it can also generate images and videos out of Chinese text.During its demo at the event, the chatbot was able to summarize a Chinese sci-fi novel and give suggestions on how to continue writing the book if it were to be expanded. It was also able to name the actors in its film adaptation, compare their heights and conclude who was taller between the two of them. In another demo, it was able to suggest names for a high-tech service company catering to small and mid-size enterprise, write slogans for it and even generate a newsletter with a specified word count.Li said that 650 companies have already signed up to use ERNIE Bot's technology, but he also admitted that it's not ready for a public debut. Baidu has merely unveiled it early due to market demand brought about by ChatGPT's meteoric rise in popularity. For now, the Chinese tech giant will only grant access to those who've already received invites, though more companies can apply for the ability to embed the chatbot into their products via Baidu's cloud platform.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/baidu-unveils-ernie-bot-its-chatgpt-rival-105509006.html?src=rss

Microsoft launched its ChatGPT-powered version of Bing last month in a limited beta, and it promptly brought a bunch of new viewers and some respect to the beleaguered search engine. Now, it appears that Microsoft has opened up the new Bing to nearly everyone who wants to use it, as Windows Central has noticed. While the signup page still says "join the waiting list," all you have to do is sign in to get instant access — a trick that worked for myself and a colleague.Microsoft has yet to confirm the change, but we may learn more at an event it's holding today called "Reinventing productivity with AI," as spotted by TechCrunch. The company is supposed to be introducing AI-powered tools for its Microsoft 365 suite and SalesForce rival Dynamic 365, but it may announce Bing changes as well.Yesterday, Microsoft confirmed that the new Bing has been powered by the GPT-4 engine for the last five weeks, well before OpenAI unveiled it two days ago. OpenAI's latest language model (LLM) has taken the tech world by storm with its ability to handle both text and images. Some of its feats include passing simulated exams like the Bar and LSAT with a score "around the top 10 percent of test takers," and outperforming other LLMs in a variety of benchmark tests.Bing gives users a taste of GPT-4 without the need to pay for it or be a developer. The new search engine got off to be a bit of a shaky start, though, as up to 10 million users signed up to test it. Some were able to “jailbreak” the chatbot, making it spew false information and essentially gaslight users. That forced Microsoft to limit conversations, but it has subsequently removed some of those limits after strengthening the search engine's "guardrails."Microsoft was an early backer of the company behind ChatGPT, Open AI, and strengthened that commitment in 2021 with $2 billion dollar investment. Early this year, it expanded the pact further with a "multibillion dollar" investment that includes new supercomputers to accelerate OpenAI's research.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-begins-making-bing-chat-ai-searches-available-to-everyone-102506412.html?src=rss

Microsoft has announced that Minecraft is coming to Chromebooks and is available to try right away via an Early Access version. The game will include "cross-device play with friends, access to Minecraft Marketplace, and the ability to play on Realms," according to developer Mojang.It will require a decently equipped Chromebook with specific processors, 4GB of RAM and 1GB of storage, as detailed here. Those requirements may frustrate some potential users, considering that Chromebooks are widely used in schools and that Minecraft is played by a lot of kids."Early access means that in this first stage, only selected Chromebook devices that meet the minimum requirements will get the option to buy Minecraft, so you’ll have to check the Google Play Store to see if Minecraft is available for you," according to the blog post. "This isn’t because we want to single out some of our players as special (we love you all equally!) – it’s so we can test the game’s performance before we make it available to more players."The "early access" part also means that users will have to put up with some bugs, even though they'll be paying for it. "We still expect that there may be some bugs, and that’s where we’ll need your help," the company wrote. "If you come across any goat-eating frogs, milkable squids, or disco dancing Ender dragons, then please let us know!"Until now, it's only been possible to play Minecraft on Chromebooks using the Education Edition or a java version. The Chromebook + Android bundle us $20 USD, the Android-only version is $7, and an upgrade from Android the Chromebook is $13. Existing Minecraft worlds won't transfer to the Chromebook version, and you'll need a Microsoft account to play.There's no word on when the final version will arrive, or if the minimum requirements will change. In any case, if you don't see the Early Access version the Google Play store, it likely means your Chromebook isn't compatible.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/minecraft-is-coming-to-chromebooks-095858051.html?src=rss

Google will no longer sell its Glass AR smart glasses for enterprise starting on March 15th, and it will only support the device until September 15th this year. The tech giant has posted those details with a notice that says "Thank you for over a decade of innovation and partnership" on the official Glass website, as first reported by 9to5Google. This marks the end for the company's augmented reality wearable, which had its beginnings as a consumer product that piqued early adopters' interest but never quite captured the market.Around four years after it first became available, Google launched a rebooted version of the Glass for enterprise, targeting businesses whose workers could use augmented reality's help to accomplish their tasks. It was designed to be more comfortable to wear and with the ability to "withstand the rigors of work environments." It also had a bigger display, a foldable design and a speedier processor. Then, in 2019, Google released the Glass Enterprise Edition 2 eyewear, which looked mostly the same as its predecessor but came with more powerful hardware and software.Google says existing units will continue working after September 15th, but it will no longer roll out any software updates after that. The company will also only replace devices until that date, and the pre-installed Meet on Glass app — Google's videoconferencing service on the eyewear — might stop working anytime after September 15th, as well.Last year, Google started testing its next-gen augmented reality glasses that it teased during its I/O developer conference. It's not quite clear if those glasses will ever be released, but company spokesperson Patrick Seybold told The Verge that Google remains "deeply committed to AR" and that it's "been building AR into many [of its] products."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-retires-glass-ar-eyewear-082512062.html?src=rss

Satellite launch company Virgin Orbit is starting an "operational pause" and furloughing most employees except for a skeleton crew, CNBC has reported. The company is reportedly seeking new investors to relieve financial pressure and plans to give "an update on go-forward operations in the coming weeks," a spokesperson said in a statement.Companies like SpaceX launch heavy rockets from the ground to get satellite payloads in orbit. However, Virgin Orbit carries smaller rockets to a height of about 35,000 feet on the wing of a Boeing 747, reducing fuel required. Earlier this year, it attempted to launch nine satellites into low-Earth orbit from its UK base. Unfortunately, the mission failed — reportedly due to a dislodged fuel filter.That setback came on top of existing financial problems, as the company has seen its stock drop precipitously from its debut in December of 2021. It reported a loss of $49.2 million in its last fiscal quarter, as it burned money with taking in any revenue.Despite those issues, Virgin Orbit seemed to be making progress toward its next launch. "Our investigation is nearly complete and our next production rocket with the needed modification incorporated is in final stages of integration and test," a spokesperson said last month.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/virgin-orbit-furloughs-most-employees-and-pauses-operations-for-a-week-065542834.html?src=rss

Starlink for RVs has been officially rebranded as Starlink Roam, now that you can opt for a global roaming package and take your terminal anywhere with you in the world where the service is available. In SpaceX's announcement, it said the option is meant for people "traveling to locations where connectivity has been unreliable or completely unavailable." The global roaming option will set you back $200 a month instead of the $150 a month its regional counterpart costs. Starlink's service for RVs was originally priced at $135 a month, but it raised its prices this February.Further, if you look at the Starlink website, you'll see that global roaming is only available with the $599 portable hardware. That's the service's terminal that does not provide you with internet connectivity while your vehicle is in motion. If you want to be able to use Starlink on a vehicle that's on the move, you'll have to purchase the $2,500 Flat High Performance terminal. But again, you can only get it with a regional subscription that's "geo-fenced to work on land within the same continent as [your] registered shipping address." Take note that if you use Starlink in a foreign country for more than two months, you may be required to change your registered address altogether.Starlink started sending out emails about an upcoming global roaming option last month. It said back then that global roaming services are "contingent on regulatory approvals," because it still doesn't have the authority to offer internet connectivity in some countries like India. Starlink also said that you might experience "brief periods of poor connectivity, or none at all" while it's working to expand its satellite network for more coverage.

The Biden Administration is significantly increasing pressure on ByteDance just days before TikTok’s CEO is set to testify in front of Congress. The United States government is now “demanding” that ByteDance sell TikTok, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal.The new demand, which TikTok confirmed to Reuters, is a major blow to the company, which has spent more than two years negotiating with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) over its future in the country. Those negotiations resulted in a sweeping partnership with Oracle and other measures meant to safeguard US users' data.Now, CFIUS has reportedly told TikTok that it wants ByteDance to sell its stake in the company after all. If it doesn’t, the app could face a national ban. The House and the Senate have both recently introduced bills that would make it easier for government officials to ban TikTok and other services deemed to be a national security threat.TikTok didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has previously stated that divesting from ByteDance wouldn’t address the government’s underlying concerns about data security. However, Bloomberg reported earlier in the week that TikTok executives were “discussing the possibility of separating from ByteDance” if the CFIUS talks were to fall through.Of course, this isn’t the first time the United States government has tried to force ByteDance’s hand. Former President Donald Trump also attempted to compel TikTok to sell itself, but was ultimately unsuccessful. The latest threats of a total ban on the app are, however, sure to amp up pressure on TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who is set to make his first Congressional appearance next week.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-us-government-is-trying-to-force-bytedance-to-sell-tiktok-005751763.html?src=rss

You can add Duolingo to the growing list of companies jumping on the generative AI craze. On Wednesday, the company announced Duolingo Max, a new, more expensive subscription tier that comes with access to a pair of GPT-4 features. The first of those, “Explain My Answer,” allows you to ask Duo, a chatbot named after the company’s owl mascot, to spell out why your answer to a question was right or wrong, with the option to ask for additional clarification if you need more help.The second feature, Roleplay, allows you to practice the skills you’ve learned through Duolingo in a handful of scenarios. For example, one session tasks you with ordering food and drinks at a Parisian cafe. Duolingo says no two conversations will be exactly the same, even when you rehearse a situation more than once, and users can earn experience points by completing the practice sessions.“Most people don’t have access to a one-on-one human tutor, but I believe AI will allow us to eventually recreate the experience of a human tutor and scale it to everyone in the world,” said Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn. “I’m so excited to share these incredible new features with millions of Duolingo learners.”Duolingo has been working on Duolingo Max since 2022, as part of a partnership that saw OpenAI grant the company access to its new GPT-4 model before this week’s announcement. Thankfully, Duolingo is aware enough to admit GPT-4’s language skills are far from perfect. “We’ve spent months collaborating closely with OpenAI to test and train this technology, and will continue doing so until the mistakes are nearly nonexistent,” the company notes, adding users can report an incorrect AI response by long pressing on a message. Users can also evaluate a Explain My Answer session by offering a thumbs up or down emoji after they’re done with one.Starting today, Duolingo Max is available to English-speaking iOS users learning Spanish and French. In the US, the service will cost $30 per month or $168 annually. It comes with all the features that are part of Duolingo's existing Super subscription, including unlimited hearts and no ads.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/duolingos-max-plan-offers-ai-tutoring-for-30-per-month-203625446.html?src=rss

Volkswagen has teased a genuinely affordable EV for years (the ID.3 was originally meant to be that model), but now it's finally ready to make that machine a reality. The company has unveiled an ID.2all concept that previews a production compact car priced below €25,000 (about $26,000). It should be considerably more affordable than the second-gen ID.3 (€39,995 in Germany), but it won't be as compromised as you might think.The ID.2all is based on an upgraded "MEB Entry" platform that promises more performance than you'd expect from an EV this size. The front wheel drive car will pack a 223HP motor good for a 62MPH sprint in under seven seconds, and it should muster an estimated 280-mile range. It's expected to take just 20 minutes to charge from 10 percent to 80 percent, too. While there are clearly faster and longer-ranged EVs, VW's offering is more capable than alternatives like the Mini Cooper SE.VolkswagenAnd like many EVs, the switch away from combustion power allows for considerably more interior space. VW claims as much room as a Golf despite pricing closer to the Polo supermini. The trunk isn't huge at 17 cubic feet, but the automaker claims it bests some larger cars. You might not compromise much on technology, either, as VW is promising Travel Assist, an EV route planner and smart lighting.The production ID.2all should debut in Europe in 2025. Unfortunately, we wouldn't count on a North American release. Compact cars have been losing ground to crossovers and SUVs in the region for years, and VW's American branch only sells the sportier Golf GTI and Golf R in that category. Like it or not, you'll likely have to make do with an ID.4 if you want a reasonably-sized VW EV on this side of the Atlantic.Even so, the ID.2all is an important car both for VW and the industry. It should play a key role in a stepped-up electrification strategy that will see VW launch ten new EVs by 2026, including the ID.7 sedan. This will also help the brand fend off competition from rival cars like the Renault Zoe (€35,100 in its native France). And importantly, this is part of a broader trend of making lower-priced EVs that don't feel like major compromises. Chevy's Equinox EV is poised to cost $30,000 when it arrives this fall, and Tesla is still clinging to dreams of a $25,000 model. Even if these cars are priced above combustion engine equivalents, they should help EVs transition into the mainstream.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/vws-id2all-compact-ev-will-cost-under-25000-when-it-arrives-in-2025-194635462.html?src=rss

Sling TV is preparing for March Madness with several new features that make it easier to keep tabs on the tournament. It’s adding picture-in-picture viewing on desktop browsers, a new iOS widget and enhanced sports scores.Picture-in-picture lets you watch NCAA Tournament games in the corner of your screen without minimizing whatever you’re supposed to be focused on at work. Sling calls the feature “Side View,” and you can activate it by clicking a button labeled, “Browse your computer while watching video” in the top-right corner of the Sling player in desktop browsers. You can then move the resulting pop-out window around the screen, and it will remain on top of any other active apps or web pages.Sling also added an iOS widget displaying a custom channel list. For example, you can create a widget showing only the channels broadcasting March Madness (ESPN for the women’s tournament; TBS, TNT and truTV for men’s), providing a home screen shortcut to the action. It’s available in two-row and four-row sizes, and you can create widget stacks with different channel collections for each.SlingFinally, Sling has updated its in-app guide. During the tournament, the Sling TV app will display a dedicated March Madness row with live scores and game times, letting you quickly glance for nail-biters you don’t want to miss. (However, Sling adds the caveat that the feature “may not be available on all devices.”)Watching games on Sling requires a Sling Orange (including both men’s and women’s tournaments) or Sling Blue (men’s only) subscription. Although you may see sign-up perks for first-time customers, the standard cost is $40 per month for each package after a price hike last year.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sling-tv-adds-picture-in-picture-in-time-for-march-madness-193349012.html?src=rss

When we learned that a BlackBerry movie was in the works last year, we had no idea it would be something close to a comedy. But judging from the the trailer released today, it's aiming to be a far lighter story than other recent films about tech, like The Social Network and Steve Jobs. The BlackBerry movie stars Jay Baruchel (How to Train Your Dragon, Goon) and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Glenn Howerton as Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the former co-CEOs of the Canadian firm Research in Motion. They're not exactly household names, but they both played a huge role in the history of mobile communications. Without the BlackBerry's success, the iPhone may have never happened.Judging from the trailer, the film will cover everything from the origins of BlackBerry as a crazy idea between a few college students (director Matt Johnson also co-stars as RIM co-founder Douglas Fregin), to its ignominious end as it failed to keep up with the iPhone and Android smartphones. It's a classic innovator's dilemma tale: RIM revolutionized the way we communicated by tapping into early cellular networks, but it failed to see the potential of touchscreen smartphones that didn't need physical keyboards.BlackBerry is based on the 2015 book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, which was written by Globe and Mail reporters Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/blackberry-movie-trailer-jay-baruchel-191747935.html?src=rss

After teasing some of the titles during the recent State of Play event, Sony has unveiled the full slate of additions to the PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium catalog for March. It’s shaping up to be another strong month for the service.Tchia will be just the second game to debut on PS Plus Extra on its release date, following Stray. It’s a gorgeous-looking sandbox adventure in which you can take over and control animals and objects, likely in a far less sinister way than in Prey. When you feel the need to take a break from exploring the New Caledonia-inspired world, you can bust out a fully-playable ukulele. Play the right tunes and you can attract animals or cause rain to fall.Also coming to the library on March 21st is Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection. It includes Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, both of which have been remastered beautifully for PS5. Life Is Strange: True Colors and Life is Strange 2 will join the original game and Life is Strange: Before the Storm in the lineup too.The other games that will hit the PS Plus Extra and Premium catalog this month are:

In 2013, former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos predicted Prime Air, the company’s then newly announced drone delivery unit, would be flying within four to five years. A decade later, the service appears to be no closer to reality than it was in 2018. However, some drone startups have had more success. Among those is Zipline, which says it’s on track to complete about 1 million deliveries by the end of the year. By 2025, the company expects to operate more flights than most airlines, a feat it intends to accomplish thanks to its next-generation drone, the Platform 2 or P2 Zip.Zipline’s latest drone consists of two autonomous vehicles that will work in unison with one another to deliver packages that weigh up to 8 pounds. The first is a UAV that can complete a 10-mile flight in about 10 minutes. When it arrives at its destination, P2 Zip will hover about 300 feet off the ground and deploy its sidekick, an adorable “fully autonomous delivery droid.” The latter descends from its counterpart using a tether – the company is called Zipline for a reason – and gently drops off your package. According to Zipline, P2 Zip is nearly silent in flight, producing a sound the company claims is similar to rustling leaves in the wind, and precise enough, thanks to its droid companion, to deliver packages to areas as small as patio tables and front steps. Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton told CNBC P2 Zip may even put an end to porch pirates since the drone is fast enough to enable on-demand delivery.ZiplineFor more distant deliveries, the P2 Zip can fly up to 24 miles one way from dock to dock, charging at each docking station before completing the next leg of its journey and picking up new cargo. The drone’s charging station looks like something from science fiction. It features a chute for the delivery droid to enter the building the station is attached to, and what looks like a net to catch one of the drones if they fall. The company told CNBC setting up a P2 Zip dock takes about as much time as installing an electric vehicle charger. It envisions restaurants and hospitals installing the dock to enable the fast delivery of food and prescriptions.Zipline already has a few customers eager to test the P2 Zip, including restaurant chain Sweetgreen, Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City, Michigan Medicine and Multicare Healthcare in Washington State. Before those companies gain access to the drone sometime next year, the startup plans to conduct more than 10,000 test flights with about 100 aircraft.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/next-generation-zipline-p2-zip-drone-comes-with-an-adorable-droid-sidekick-183238257.html?src=rss

MIT engineers have designed a walking lunar robot cleverly inspired by the animal kingdom. The “mix-and-match” system is made of worm-like robotic limbs astronauts could configure into various “species” of robots resembling spiders, elephants, goats and oxen. The team won the Best Paper Award last week at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Aerospace Conference.WORMS (Walking Oligomeric Robotic Mobility System) is one team’s vision of a future where astronauts living on a moon base delegate activities to robotic minions. However, to avoid “a zoo of machines” with various robots for every task imaginable, the modular WORMS would allow astronauts to swap out limbs, bases and appendages for the task at hand. For example, they could snap together a spider bot to crawl inside hazardous lava tubes to drill for frozen water or assemble an elephant-like pack robot to haul heavy equipment. They could even make a goat / ox combination to transport solar panels. And when they finish the task, they can disassemble it and return it to storage until it’s needed for something else.The system includes a worm-like appendage, which can snap together with a chassis through a twist-and-lock mechanism. Wok-shaped “shoes” can then snap onto the appendage’s other end. Finally, a small tool allows astronauts to release the block’s spring-loaded pins when it’s time to disassemble. The team has already developed a six-legged prototype, about the size of a go-cart, using software that coordinates multiple worm limbs. They’ve successfully demonstrated assembly, disassembly and navigation in a recent field test.“Astronauts could go into the shed, pick the WORMS they need, along with the right shoes, body, sensors and tools, and they could snap everything together, then disassemble it to make a new one,” said George Lordos, Ph.D. candidate and graduate instructor at MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “The design is flexible, sustainable and cost-effective.”MITThe team spawned the idea in 2022 as their answer to NASA’s Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge, an annual competition for university students to conjure innovative ideas. In that year’s edition, NASA challenged students to develop robots to move across extreme terrain without wheels. The MIT team focused on a lunar robot that could navigate the moon’s South Pole, which some suspect could include frozen water — essential for astronauts’ long-term survival — but also complex terrain with thick dust, rocky slopes and lava tubes.As the students brainstormed solutions, they drew inspiration from the animal kingdom. “As we were thinking of these animal inspirations, we realized that one of the simplest animals, the worm, makes similar movements as an arm, or a leg, or a backbone, or a tail,” says deputy team leader and AeroAstro graduate student Michael Brown. “And then the lightbulb went off: We could build all these animal-inspired robots using worm-like appendages.”Although each WORMS appendage weighs about 20 pounds on Earth, they would be only about three pounds in the moon’s atmosphere, making it easy for astronauts to assemble, disassemble and reassemble them like a high-tech Lego set. The team is already working on a second-generation model with longer and slightly heavier appendages, with an eye on heavy-equipment hauling bots.“There are many buzz words that are used to describe effective systems for future space exploration: modular, reconfigurable, adaptable, flexible, cross-cutting, et cetera,” said Kevin Kempton, an engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center and judge of the 2022 BIG Idea Challenge. “The MIT WORMS concept incorporates all these qualities and more.”This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mits-new-modular-lunar-robot-has-worms-for-arms-175146649.html?src=rss

Samsung is hoping to talk its way out of a controversy over its camera processing technology. The company has shared an explanation of the Moon photo detection system it has used since the Galaxy S21. If you have Scene Optimizer turned on, AI detects when you're taking a clear photo of the Moon at 25X zoom or above. The tech lowers the brightness, captures multiple frames (to produce a bright, low-noise picture) and uses a neural network to enhance the detail using a high-resolution reference image for comparison.You can turn Scene Optimizer off. Samsung also notes that this won't work if you either take a snapshot of the obscured Moon or use an image that clearly wasn't taken on Earth. The Moon is tidally locked to the planet, so you'll always see the same lunar surface unless you go to space.SamsungThe defense comes after Reddit user Breakphotos alleged that Samsung was faking Moon images by adding detail that wasn't present in the raw scene. To make the case, Breakphotos even snapped pictures of blurry, low-resolution images on a computer screen — there's no info the phone could recover from the shot. Even with blown-out exposure, the device appeared to add info that simply wasn't there.This isn't an outright fake. Samsung is using the actual shot as a baseline. However, its algorithms are clearly going to an extreme by producing photos that don't represent what you get through the lens. The company appears to be aware of this, too, as it says it's refining Scene Optimizer to "reduce any potential confusion" between taking photos of the actual Moon and mere images of it.This isn't the first time a phone manufacturer has received criticism for manipulating photo output, of course. Some brands have had beauty modes that mask perceived body and skin imperfections to create unrealistic portraits. However, Samsung is effectively claiming its phones can take technically impossible photos — you may buy a Galaxy S23 Ultra under the misguided impression that someone's sharp, crisp lunar image reflects what the phone can physically produce.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/samsung-explains-its-fake-moon-photos-170233896.html?src=rss

After debuting on PlayStation 5 and PC last year, Ghostwire: Tokyo is heading to Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass. Developer Tango Gameworks announced Wednesday that the game will arrive on Microsoft’s current generation consoles on April 12th. That same day, the studio will release the free “Spider’s Thread” update for all platforms.

TCGplayer, the eBay-owned trading card marketplace, is facing its fourth unfair labor charge in the space of two months. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) claimed that, one business day after TCGplayer employees voted to form eBay's first union last Friday, the company fired a worker for engaging in union activity.The CWA called the firing of worker Iris St. Lucy “retaliatory” in the wake of the election. The union claims that TCGplayer “management has escalated its anti-union war against workers” as a result of the vote. All non-supervisory workers at TCGplayer's authentication center in Syracuse, New York (who numbered 272 as of Friday) are now represented by the union.Since TCGplayer workers announced their second unionization attempt in January, the CWA has filed three other unfair labor charges with the National Labor Relations Board. Among other things, the CWA has accused the company of requiring employees to attend anti-union meetings, interrogating workers and monitoring those who wore clothing or badges that identified them as supporters of TCGunion-CWA, the union they eventually formed under the CWA.“Not only are eBay and TCGplayer violating labor law, the company is undermining its workers’ rights to union representation, fair wages, dignity on the job and the ability to support their families," CWA secretary-treasurer Sara Steffens said in a statement. "TCGplayer needs to stop these attacks and commit to bargaining a contract in good faith.”Engadget has contacted TCGplayer for comment.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cwa-union-files-another-unfair-labor-charge-against-ebay-owned-tcgplayer-160641406.html?src=rss

LinkedIn is the latest platform to hop on the generative AI bandwagon. The company is adding AI-powered “writing suggestions” and job descriptions to its service as it looks for new ways to infuse AI into its platform.The writing suggestions are meant to make it easier to fill out key profile fields that LinkedIn says can otherwise feel “daunting” to complete: the “about” and “headline” sections near the top of each profile. Now, with the new “enhance” tool, LinkedIn Premium subscribers can generate descriptions based on their experience.The company says the tool, which uses the same OpenAI models that power ChatGPT, is meant to preserve “your unique voice and style” and will draw from your job experience and skills, as well as LinkedIn’s own “insights” into what makes a good profile. In an example of a completed “about” section provided by LinkedIn, the tool generated a first-person summary of an individual’s job experience that reads almost like the beginning of a cover letter.LinkedInLinkedIn also says it’s starting to test AI-written job descriptions. In those cases, hiring managers will simply need to fill out the job title, company name and a few other basic details, and LinkedIn will create a detailed draft of a relevant job description.Of note, the company is positioning its AI writing features as more of a starting point than a final product. In both cases, LinkedIn says that users should review and edit the AI-generated text to check for accuracy. But the company says that both could be a major time saver for members who want to offload some of the more tedious writing tasks associated with LinkedIn.These writing tools aren’t LinkedIn’s first foray into generative AI. The company also recently introduced “collaborative articles,” which rely on a combination of AI-written text as well as contributions from individual LinkedIn “experts.” Elsewhere, the company is also adding new online courses dedicated to generative AI-related topics.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/you-can-now-enhance-your-linkedin-profile-with-ai-written-suggestions-160054549.html?src=rss

NASA and Axiom Space are finally ready to show what Artemis III astronauts will wear when they walk on the Moon. The two have unveiled a prototype spacesuit that crews will use for moonwalks near the lunar South Pole. As promised, the design is meant to accommodate a wider range of body types. It's also more flexible than past suits, and includes exploration-oriented tools.The helmet includes both lights and an HD camera to share experiences. Astronauts enter the suit through a hatch in the life support backpack. More joints let wearers kneel and otherwise move around with ease, while the gloves are designed for extended use in microgravity. The design can handle the extreme cold of permanently shadowed areas on the Moon, even down to the boots.Before you ask: no, the black version isn't what you'll see in use. The cover, crafted by For All Mankind's costume designer, is meant to hide the proprietary design underneath. The finished spacesuit will be white to protect astronauts against extreme heat.The Artemis III mission is currently slated for December 2025. It will represent the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 touched down in 1972, and is poised to include the first woman to walk on the Moon as well as the first person of color. The two people who reach the surface will stay there for just under a week and carry out as many as four moonwalks that include rover expeditions and ice sample collection. Two other crew members will remain aboard an Orion capsule that will collect the crew when it returns using a SpaceX Starship.This spacesuit isn't the only one NASA will necessarily use. Other vendors are competing for orders that would handle future Moon landings and International Space Station activities. However, it might be the highest-profile example — it'll be the one that helps NASA make history.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/this-is-the-spacesuit-nasas-artemis-astronauts-will-wear-on-the-moon-144528407.html?src=rss

If you know someone who fell for an online scam last year, you're far from alone. The FBI reports that Americans submitting incidents to the agency lost $10.3 billion to internet scams in 2022, a steep jump from $6.9 billion in 2021. While there were fewer complaints (800,944), certain ripoffs were still very problematic. Investment scams were the most common and costliest schemes. Related fraud losses jumped from nearly $1.5 billion in 2021 to $3.3 billion, and most of that value came from cryptocurrency scams — losses surged from $907 million to almost $2.6 billion in 2022.There were some bright spots. While investment scams were the on the rise, ransomware complaints fell sharply. There were just 2,385 complaints about these digital extortion attempts versus 3,729 the year before, and they led to a relatively modest $34.3 million in losses. And while phishing was the most prevalent scam type with over 300,000 complaints, the damages were limited to $52.1 million.The FBI warns that its figures don't represent the entirety of online scams in the US. Not everyone who was the victim of a ransomware attack reported it to the bureau, Executive Assistant Director Timothy Langan says. However, he says the reports help law enforcement spot trends and otherwise deal with threats. The Investigators have better sense of what they need to address, even if they don't have the full picture.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fbi-says-americans-lost-10-billion-to-scammers-in-2022-144514762.html?src=rss

Just under three and a half years after Ryan Reynolds bought into Mint Mobile and became the public face of the provider, the Deadpool star is set to make a windfall from his investment. T-Mobile has announced an agreement to buy Mint Mobile's parent company Ka’ena for as much as $1.35 billion in cash and stock.The final price will depend on Ka’ena’s performance for a certain period before and after the deal closes, which is expected to happen later this year. Ka’ena also owns Ultra Mobile, a provider focused on international calling, and wholesaler Plum.Reynolds is believed to own between 20 and 25 percent of Mint, according to a 2021 report by The New York Post. He'll stay on in his creative role as Mint spokesman. Mint was founded in 2015 and spun out from Ultra in late 2019.Mint, which has run on T-Mobile since its inception as a mobile virtual network operator, found success thanks to its charismatic pitch man and budget-conscious pricing. T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert confirmed in a YouTube video regarding the news that Mint will keep its $15 per month pricing.T-Mobile said in a statement that Mint and Ultra will complement its existing prepaid services. Mint founders David Glickman and Rizwan Kassim will continue to manage the brands, which T-Mobile says will generally operate as a separate business unit. Meanwhile, T-Mobile is hoping to tap into the marketing nous of Mint and its famous co-owner.“Mint has built an incredibly successful digital direct-to-consumer business that continues to deliver for customers on the Un-carrier’s leading 5G network and now we are excited to use our scale and owners' economics to help supercharge it — and Ultra Mobile — into the future," Sievert said. "Over the long-term, we’ll also benefit from applying the marketing formula Mint has become famous for across more parts of T-Mobile."“Mint Mobile is the best deal in wireless and today’s news only enhances our ability to deliver for our customers," Reynolds said. "We are so happy T-Mobile beat out an aggressive last-minute bid from my mom Tammy Reynolds as we believe the excellence of their 5G network will provide a better strategic fit than my mom’s slightly-above-average mahjong skills."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/t-mobile-will-buy-ryan-reynolds-backed-mint-mobile-for-up-to-135-billion-135324151.html?src=rss

Meta has announced another expansive round of layoffs to cut costs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company is letting go of another 10,000 workers and closing "around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired." This follows layoffs of around 11,000 employees last year. The company is reducing the size of its recruiting team and will inform affected employees later today. It’ll then announce layoff and restructuring efforts of its tech departments in late April and business teams in late May. Zuckerberg, who will soon go on paternity leave for his third child, recently described 2023 as a "year of efficiency.” He added in his note: "I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years."– Mat SmithThe Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.The biggest stories you might have missedSamsung’s Galaxy A54 has a bright 1,000-nit display and looks more like a flagship phone​​Sennheiser's 'Profile' microphone for streamers gets a lot rightOpenAI's new GPT-4 can understand both text and image inputs Apple's 10.2-inch iPad is back on sale for $250Google's upcoming Pixel 7a is already in someone's handNetgear's first WiFi 7 router offers extra-low latency for gaming Google is putting its chatbot AI smarts into Gmail, Docs, Sheets and moreThe updates will begin for US users by the end of the month.NurPhoto via Getty ImagesGoogle’s catch-up with ChatGPT continues, and the company is bringing its own take on next-gen chatbots and AI assistance to, well, all of its Workspace products. According to the company, you’ll be able to "draft, reply, summarize and prioritize" emails, "brainstorm, proofread, write and rewrite" text documents, autogenerate images and even video with Slides, have Sheets create formulas autonomously and automate transcription notes in Meet video calls.Continue reading.Fitbit won't make you pay for your own weekly health data anymoreYou'll no longer need to pay $10 a month to see information for the past 30 or 90 days.One of our biggest complaints about Fitbit products is that $10 monthly fee to see your historical data. Until now, you could only see up to seven days' worth of your breathing rate, resting heart rate and heart rate variation, and just 90 days of everything else, without paying for a subscription. Today, Google announced it's making "more of the insightful data from Fitbit's Health Metrics Dashboard available without a subscription to all of its users." You can now check 30- and 90-day views of your data, without paying for it.Continue reading.It took a TikToker barely 30 minutes to doxx meKristen Sotakoun found out way too much about me in a consensual test of my online security.In 30 minutes or less, TikToker and Chicago-based server Kristen Sotakoun can find out your birthday. “My first thing is to be entertaining. My second thing is to show you cracks in your social media, which was the totally accidental thing that I became on TikTok.” Sotakoun, who goes by @notkahnjunior, calls it “consensual doxxing.” Engadget’s Katie Malone offered her social media profiles up to the test.Continue reading.YouTube TV adds multiview streaming in time for March MadnessYou'll be limited to sports during the early access phase.YouTube TV is rolling out an early access multiview feature showing up to four sports streams simultaneously. Visit the Top Picks For You section and you can pick from pre-chosen multiview groups, such as NCAA March Madness games. There's a full-screen view for each match and you can switch the audio and captioning to the stream that captures your attention. The feature works on smart TVs and living room media players that run YouTube TV. You won't need a high-powered device as all the processing to YouTube's servers – your hardware only has to handle one feed.Continue reading.Litter Robot 4 review: A great but imperfect self-cleaning litter boxWould you pay $699 to avoid scooping litter?EngadgetOK, I’ll say it: I would pay that much to avoid scooping up pet poop.I'm not sure I want to continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-meta-lays-off-an-additional-10000-workers-115209372.html?src=rss

NASA has chosen Axiom Space's proposal yet again for the third private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. The two parties have already signed a mission order, and they're hoping to launch sometime in November 2023 and beyond from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A more specific date will be announced later, since it will depend on the timing of other flights to the ISS, as well as on in-orbit activity planning.Before Axiom Mission 3 launches, Axiom Mission 2 will have to head to the space station first. It's also a crew mission that's operated by the company, and it's expected to launch in the second quarter of 2023. As you can guess from its name, it's not the company's first astronaut mission to the orbiting lab: NASA also picked it for the first commercially operated crewed flight to the station. Axiom Mission 1 launched in April 2022 and was docked with the ISS for 15 days.At the moment, Ax-3 is still in its very early stages. The private space company will still have to submit four proposed crew members and two back up crew to the agency for review, with the mission commander being a flown NASA astronaut. (Ax-2, for instance, was headed by retired NASA astronaut Peggy Annette Whitson.) Under the parties' agreement, NASA may ask the commander to perform certain tasks or science experiments while onboard. Meanwhile, Axiom Space astronauts will be able to use NASA cargo and other in-orbit resources for daily use.In addition to choosing Axiom Space for these private launches, NASA also picked the company to develop the moonwalking spacesuit for its Artemis program. The agency will unveil the suit today in an event, which will be livestreams on NASA's website.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nasa-axiom-space-third-astronaut-mission-iss-105544749.html?src=rss

For decades, car makers have positioned all of their instrumentation below the steering wheel, resulting in drivers needing to subtly take their eyes off the road to see their speed and associated gas levels. However, with its new 'Panoramic Vision' display, BMW is looking to bring that important data up to eye level. The company has announced a heads-up display that spans the entire width of the windscreen to give drivers and passengers all the information they need without having to take eyes off the road.As the driver, you can choose what you want to see across the Panoramic Vision display, with options including speed, time, and current song playing. The display uses bright crisp lights to display information clearly against a dark background.BMW first alluded to a new heads-up display when it announced the i Vision Dee concept at CES 2023 back in January. However, in that iteration, the information appeared digitally right onto the windshield. In contrast, the Panoramic Vision display is a raised lip built-in across the bottom of the windshield.There's no word yet if any of the other features shown in the i Vision Dee will make their way to production anytime soon. These included interactive communication in which BMW stated, "a natural and emotional relationship between human and machine is developed," and animated facial expressions.The Panoramic Vision display will begin rolling out in the first NEUE KLASSE (or New Class) models — BMW's range of battery and e-motor vehicles — from 2025. According to BMW, additional features of the BMW iDrive will be included in the NEUE KLASSE. However, we'll likely have to wait until the IAA Mobility 2023 in Munich this September to learn more.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bmws-new-panoramic-vision-will-put-a-full-width-display-on-ev-windscreens-103515430.html?src=rss

BMW has revealed more details about its EV release plans, with the highlight being the arrival of the i5 Sedan in in October 2023 alongside the next-gen gas-powered 5 Series. The company also plans to unveil the iX2 SUV sometime this year and an i5 touring EV in 2024. It's all part of a plan to have battery EVs (BEVs) "in virtually every major segment of its business," the company said in a look ahead to 2023.Much as it did with the i7, BMW will effectively release its new 5 Series cars, including the electric i5 version, at the same time. "The flexible powertrain architecture means the new BMW 5 Series Sedan can be offered in all-electric and plug-in hybrid variants as well as powered by highly efficient petrol and diesel engines with 48V mild hybrid technology," it wrote.Noting that its all-electric i4 M50 was its best-selling M vehicle last year, BMW said it will release an M performance version of the i5, too. It'll also add a touring i5 in 2024. "The BMW 5 Series Touring is very popular, particularly in Europe," said BMW chairman Oliver Zipse. "From spring 2024 it will also come in an all-electric version, giving us a truly unique selling point in this segment."The other notable addition next year will be the iX2 crossover SUV, likely based on the upcoming X2 ICE model and a successor to the $83,200 iX. The latter model was perhaps most famous for its weird grille, but offered some solid features including a 321 mile EPA range.In addition, BMW confirmed that both Rolls-Royce and Mini would be going fully electric by 2030. In the nearer term, it said that "in 2024, at least one in five of the company’s new cars will have a fully-electric drive train; by 2025; every fourth new vehicle delivered should be a BEV and, by 2026, around one in three." It expects to sell two million EVs by 2025, and deliver 10 million to customers in 2030.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bmw-confirms-the-i5-sedan-will-be-its-first-all-electric-5-series-vehicle-094954587.html?src=rss

It’s that quiet moment between Samsung launching its Galaxy S flagships and its, well, other flagships that just happen to fold. The perfect time, then, to update its midrange A series and add to the chaos. We’re going to focus on the Galaxy A54, but Samsung will also launch a similar, cheaper device, the Galaxy A34, in other regions like the UK.While no major shakeups are coming from the Galaxy A53 to the A54, there are some notable changes, including a redesign more closely aligned to the premium Galaxy S family, with metal detail on the cameras, which now jut out from the back independently of each other.Looks familiar, right?Mat Smith / EngadgetThe display is now slightly smaller at 6.4 inches (the predecessor had a 6.5-inch screen), but it keeps the same 2,400 x 1,080 resolution. This year, however, Samsung has boosted the maximum brightness to 1,000 nits. That should be noticeable in sunlight and the company is going further, adding Vision Booster to enhance visibility when your environment is a little too bright. The screen also reaches up to 120Hz, though the variable refresh rate helps to keep battery life in check. It’s another gorgeous screen from Samsung, which continues to shrink the gap between flagship and mid-range. It’s only the bezels that kinda give the game away here.Samsung has also upgraded the A54’s processor, running on the 5nm octa-core Exynos 1380 – the company’s latest in-house chip. Samsung claims that this should offer 20 percent performance improvement on CPU tasks, and 26 percent improvement when it comes to GPU tasks. While it was hard to push the phone to its limits during hands-on time, we’re hoping the A54 is a little more capable than last year’s A53. Samsung has kept the battery the same size as last year, which is a good sign: two-day battery life was one of the stronger points when we reviewed the device.The Galaxy A34 (left) has a few differences to the pricier Galaxy A54 (right).Mat Smith / EngadgetWhen it comes to imaging, It’s another triple-camera array for this year’s A-series. There’s a 50-megapixel main camera with optical image stabilization and an f/1.8 lens, which is flanked by a 12MP ultra-wide camera, and a 5MP macro camera. Samsung has also kept the 32-megapixel selfie camera for the 2023 refresh. The company says the changes to the camera system include larger pixels (more detail, less noise) and enhanced optical stabilization, from 0.95 degrees of stability up to 1.5 degrees – that’s a notable improvement, especially if you’re capturing a lot of video. Samsung has also embedded Snapchat filters into the native camera app, which you can see in the main image at the top of this story. It'll sync with your Snapchat account, giving you easy access to filters across all the cameras.In the US, the Galaxy A54 arrives in two glossy color options: black and violet. Elsewhere, you’ll be able to choose white and lime colorways. A few of our images include the Galaxy A34, which has a notch selfie camera, a slightly larger screen and a hypnotic, familiar, pearlescent finish, which I think is actually nicer than the more expensive A54. However, only the A54 is heading to the US, which will be available to preorder on March 30th before launching on April 6th for $450 – the same price as last year’s model.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/samsung-galaxy-a54-galaxy-a34-hands-on-pricing-release-date-090009335.html?src=rss

Kia is giving us our first look at the interior and exterior of its striking mid-size EV9 SUV, while saving key specs like the battery size and powertrain for the official debut early next month. The market-ready version hews closely to the original EV9 concept we first saw in November 2021, albeit with the blockiness toned down. Still, much like the EV6, it's a dramatic and interesting design.The upcoming model has triangular windows in the rear quarter panel much like the EV6, but otherwise appears to draw inspiration from boxy SUVs like older Range Rovers. Kia said it's "formed from a polygonal design language" that uses "triangular fender structures and highly pronounced geometric wheel arches combine with the fuselage body." Despite all the lines and edges, though, Kia says the EV9 is still highly aerodynamic.KiaIt offers three rows of seats and thus becomes one of the first EVs to slot into the popular mid-size SUV category. That means it'll be taking on ICE vehicles like Kia's own Telluride, the Toyota Highlander, Ford Explorer and other models. The boxiness and squared off rear end means it should offer good headroom.One fun touch is that the middle row uses swivelling captain's chairs, so they can flip around to face the rear seats, Orient Express-style. It'll be sold in 6- and 7-passenger configurations, depending on whether the rear seats are buckets or a bench.KiaUp front, Kia has ditched the concept's massive wraparound display in favor of two 12.3-inch screens for the gauge cluster and infotainment system. The number of physical buttons has been reduced and touch-sensitive dash controls added. The interior uses mesh and other materials designed to further boost the feeling of spaciousness.Other details including infotainment system features are being kept under wraps until the vehicle's official reveal in early April. We do know that it will be built using the EV6's E-GMP platform, but Kia has yet to say anything about the EV9's power, battery size, range and price. With the EV6 starting at $45,000 or so, the EV9 is likely to be considerably north of that — but as we've seen with Kia, it's likely to be affordable for its category.KiaThis article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/kias-ev9-electric-suv-features-three-rows-of-seats-and-a-striking-design-070933286.html?src=rss

Volkswagen pinned its future on electric vehicles and announced its plans to put 30 new EVs on the road shortly after its $18.2 billion emissions scandal. Now, the automaker has revealed that it plans to spend $193 billion on different areas of its electrification efforts over the next five years. According to The New York Times, Volkswagen chief executive Oliver Blume said at a press event that two-thirds of that budget will go towards manufacturing batteries, developing software and sourcing critical and raw materials for its vehicles.Blume's revelation comes after the automaker's announcements that its subsidiary PowerCo will build its first North American battery cell factory in Canada and that it will build electric pickups and SUVs in South Carolina. The company is already producing its ID.4 electric vehicles in the US after repurposing its Chattanooga, Tennessee factory in 2022. But Volkswagen's electrification efforts are still behind its biggest competitors', and it's aiming to establish a stronger foothold in North America, as well to become more competitive in China. The company considers those regions as its two most important markets — ones it will have to conquer if it wants to reach its goals. Volkswagen previously said that it wants electric vehicles to account for about 55 percent of its sales in the US by 2030.For now, the automaker will continue making gas vehicles while it's working to expand its EV offerings with more models, including affordable ones that cost around $26,000. Arno Antlitz, Volkswagen’s chief financial and operating officer, talked about the path the company has to take going forward, though: "We must transform ourselves into a technology and mobility services group. We need to focus on our platforms, such as our hardware for battery-powered electric vehicles, a unified software stack, batteries, mobility, autonomous driving."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/volkswagen-invest-193-billion-electrification-053333309.html?src=rss

The Biden administration just made good on one of its promises to make EV charger funding available to local governments. The Department of Transportation is now accepting applications for its $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program, which will hand out funds to cities, counties, regional governments and tribes to help deploy EV chargers, hydrogen fuel stations and other reduced-emissions systems near their residents.Half of the program's funding will go to chargers and stations in "publicly accessible" places like parking facilities, parks and schools. The rest will install this equipment in "alternative fuel corridors" along highways to help with long-distance travel. The initial round of funding will make $700 million available, with the rest coming over the program's five-year span. Officials have to apply no later than May 30th.The initiative is part of President Biden's broader campaign to build 500,000 charging stations by 2030, or about five times as many as there were in early 2022. The money, assigned as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, is meant to ensure charging access within 50 miles of someone's location in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. While the effort is intended to spur overall EV adoption, there's an added focus on underserved communities like some urban and rural areas.A strong charging infrastructure is widely considered vital to successfully transitioning away from combustion engine cars. Existing stations can sometimes be crowded or unreliable, and don't always support the fast charging available with recent EVs. The government funding isn't guaranteed to fix these problems, but should increase the likelihood that you can travel cross-country in an electrified ride.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-government-opens-25-biilion-in-funding-for-community-ev-chargers-213048515.html?src=rss

If you’re having trouble accessing Reddit, it isn’t just you. The platform is experiencing an outage that has already lasted more than 90 minutes at the time of publication. Reddit lists desktop and mobile web access as offline amid a “major outage,” while the native mobile app has a “partial outage.” In addition, it doesn’t appear to load on the web or the Reddit mobile app.Reddit’s system status page listed the service as “Investigating” at 3:12 PM EDT on Tuesday, saying, “Reddit is currently offline. We're working to identify the issue.” At 3:56 PM, the status was updated to “Identified,” with the note, “We've identified an internal systems issue and are working to determine a fix.” Additionally, third-party site DownDetector showed a massive spike in reported problems at around 2:50 PM.Developing…This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/reddit-suffers-major-outage-due-to-internal-systems-issue-210532449.html?src=rss

You can never have too much digital storage space, so it's always a smart move to pick up the best SSDs whenever they're on sale and you have the cash to spare. The Samsung T7 is our current pick for the best portable SSD around, and the 1TB variant has dropped to its lowest price to date. You can pick it up now from Amazon for $80. It typically retails for $140.The T7 has fairly fast sequential read speeds of up to 1,050MB/s. It's available in three colors: blue, black and red. If you have a little more flexibility, you might be interested in picking up a 2TB version of the T7 instead. It's up to 50 percent off, depending on the color. The red variant has dropped to $135.If you're in the market for a microSD card but don't necessarily need a ton of storage for your particular device, it's worth considering the Samsung's 128GB EVO Select card. That has also dropped to a record low of just $12.49. It usually costs $20. Bear in mind that you won't need a faster card than this for your Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck — those devices only support read speeds of up to 104MB/s.Meanwhile, several other Samsung storage options went on sale last month and most of those deals are still live. The T7 Shield, a more rugged version of the T7, is $90 for the 1TB version (2TB and 4TB versions are on sale too). As for the 980 Pro with a built-in heatsink, which is one of the best PS5 SSDs on the market, that's available for $120 for 1TB of storage — almost half off the usual price.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-1tb-samsung-t7-portable-ssd-drops-to-a-record-low-of-80-200030027.html?src=rss

Google hasn't even announced the Pixel 7a, but that isn't stopping leakers from claiming to know something about the Pixel 8 series. OnLeaks and Smartprix have shared what they say are renders of the Pixel 8 Pro design. At first glance, it appears to be a subtle evolution of the Pixel 7 Pro. The corners are more rounded to avoid digging into your palm, and the three-lens rear camera array (main, ultra-wide and telephoto) is now grouped into one cutout.There may be a conspicuous functional improvement, though. That rear array also seems to include an unknown sensor below the flash. OnLeaks and Smartprix speculate that it may be a depth or macro sensor, but we wouldn't rule out LiDAR or other technology to improve augmented reality, portraits and low-light photos.Many of the details of the Pixel 8 family remain a mystery. However, previously unearthed clues suggest there may be some camera upgrades in store. In December, Kuba Wojciechowski discovered code hinting the new phones may use staggered HDR, or a technique that captures multiple exposures at once. You could get an expanded dynamic range without long capture times that can blur subjects. The Pixel 8 line is also likely to use a third-generation Tensor chip that may improve performance and efficiency.If Google repeats last year's preview for the Pixel 7, you might get a brief glimpse of the Pixel 8 line at I/O on May 10th ahead of a launch in the early fall. We'd likewise expect the new models to ship with Android 14. This may be a predictable update if the rumors are accurate, but you might not mind given the strong reception of Google's recent Pixel releases.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-pixel-8-may-look-like-a-rounded-pixel-7-194230413.html?src=rss

Despite their ability to crank out incredibly lifelike prose, generative AIs like Google's Bard or OpenAI's ChatGPT (powered by GPT-4), have already shown the current limitations of gen-AI technology as well as their own tenuous grasp of the facts — arguing that the JWST was the first telescope to image an exoplanet, and that Elvis' dad was an actor. But with this much market share at stake, what are a few misquoted facts against getting their product into the hands of consumers as quickly as possible?The team over at Anthropic, conversely, is made up largely of ex-OpenAI folks and they've taken a more pragmatic approach to the development of their own chatbot, Claude. The result is an AI that is "more steerable" and “much less likely to produce harmful outputs,” than ChatGPT, per a report from TechCrunch.Claude has been in closed beta development since late 2022, but has recently begun testing the AI's conversational capabilities with launch partners including Robin AI, Quora and privacy-centered search engine, Duck Duck Go. The company has not released pricing yet but has confirmed to TC that two versions will be available at launch: the standard API and a faster, lightweight iteration they've dubbed Claude Instant.“We use Claude to evaluate particular parts of a contract, and to suggest new, alternative language that’s more friendly to our customers,” Robin CEO Richard Robinson told TechCrunch. “We’ve found Claude is really good at understanding language — including in technical domains like legal language. It’s also very confident at drafting, summarizing, translations and explaining complex concepts in simple terms.”Anthropic believes that Claude will be less likely to go rogue and start spitting racist obscenities like Tay did, in part, due to the AI's specialized training regimen that eh company is calling "constitutional AI." The company asserts that this provides a “principle-based” approach towards getting humans and robots on the same ethical page. Anthropic started with 10 foundational principles — though the company won't disclose what they are, specifically, which is 11-secret-herbs-and-spices of weird marketing stunt — suffice to say that, "they’re grounded in the concepts of beneficence, nonmaleficence and autonomy," per TC.The company then trained a separate AI to reliably generate text in accordance to those semi-secret principles by responding to myriad writing prompts like “compose a poem in the style of John Keats.” That model then trained Claude. But just because it is trained to be fundamentally less problematic than its competition doesn't mean Claude doesn't hallucinate facts like a startup CEO on an ayahuasca retreat. The AI has already invented a whole new chemical and taken artistic license to the uranium enrichment process; it has reportedly scored lower than ChatGPT on standardized tests for both math and grammar as well.“The challenge is making models that both never hallucinate but are still useful — you can get into a tough situation where the model figures a good way to never lie is to never say anything at all, so there’s a tradeoff there that we’re working on,” the Anthropic spokesperson told TC. “We’ve also made progress on reducing hallucinations, but there is more to do."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/anthropics-claude-ai-is-guided-by-10-secret-foundational-pillars-of-fairness-193058471.html?src=rss

When Microsoft and OpenAI announced their renewed partnership in January, the two companies also revealed that Bing search would soon boast AI-enhanced lookup capabilities. Little did we know at the time, that Bing search has been powered for the past five weeks, not by the existing then-state-of-the-art GPT-3.5 model but by its even more robust successor, GPT-4.Microsoft envisions Bing — and really Google is doing much the same with Bard — serving as a pseudo-gatekeeper to the rest of internet's information, not unlike what AOL's early America Online service once did. Rather than direct users to other websites where they can find the information and context they seek on their own, these companies are looking to have generative AI systems (Bard and Bing) automatically summarize and display that information without ever leaving the branded search page. Any additional relevant context that the user might have stumbled across during their independent research will similarly be deigned by the algorithm. Users can give GPT-4 a spin — and experience our new, algorithmically-dictated reality firsthand — by signing up for the Bing Preview waitlist.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-confirms-bing-runs-on-the-new-gpt-4-model-184121316.html?src=rss

For the first time, the US government plans to regulate the presence of “forever chemicals” in drinking water. PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are ubiquitous in the modern world. They’re found in many household items, including non-stick Teflon pans and dental floss, and can stay in water and soil for generations. What’s more, PFAS exposure has been linked to a whole host of health problems, including cancer, liver damage, asthma and developmental issues among children.On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a proposed national drinking standard that would require public utilities to monitor drinking water for PFAS contamination and notify the public if the levels of those chemicals exceed the new standard. The proposal calls for classifying Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) as individual contaminants that water utilities would be mandated to detect at a level of four parts per trillion. Under an Obama-era recommendation, the agency previously recommend that water contain no more than 70 parts per trillion of PFAS chemicals. The EPA estimates the new guidelines will prevent “thousands” of deaths and “tens of thousands” of illnesses that are attributable to PFAS poisoning.

Hot on the heels of Google's Workspace AI announcement Tuesday, and ahead of Thursday's Microsoft Future of Work event, OpenAI has released the latest iteration of its generative pre-trained transformer system, GPT-4. Whereas the current generation GPT-3.5, which powers OpenAI's wildly popular ChatGPT conversational bot, can only read and respond with text, the new and improved GPT-4 will be able to generate text on input images as well. "While less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios," the OpenAI team wrote Tuesday, it "exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks."OpenAI, which has partnered (and recently renewed its vows) with Microsoft to develop GPT's capabilities, has reportedly spent the past six months retuning and refining the system's performance based on user feedback generated from the recent ChatGPT hoopla. the company reports that GPT-4 passed simulated exams (such as the Uniform Bar, LSAT, GRE, and various AP tests) with a score "around the top 10 percent of test takers" compared to GPT-3.5 which scored in the bottom 10 percent. What's more, the new GPT has outperformed other state-of-the-art large language models (LLMs) in a variety of benchmark tests. The company also claims that the new system has achieved record performance in "factuality, steerability, and refusing to go outside of guardrails" compared to its predecessor.OpenAI says that the GPT-4 will be made available for both ChatGPT and the API. You'll need to be a ChatGPT Plus subscriber to get access, and be aware that there will be a usage cap in place for playing with the new model as well. API access for the new model is being handled through a waitlist. "GPT-4 is more reliable, creative, and able to handle much more nuanced instructions than GPT-3.5," the OpenAI team wrote.The added multi-modal input feature will generate text outputs — whether that's natural language, programming code, or what have you — based on a wide variety of mixed text and image inputs. Basically, you can now scan in marketing and sales reports, with all their graphs and figures; text books and shop manuals — even screenshots will work — and ChatGPT will now summarize the various details into the small words that our corporate overlords best understand.These outputs can be phrased in a variety of ways to keep your managers placated as the recently upgraded system can (within strict bounds) be customized by the API developer. "Rather than the classic ChatGPT personality with a fixed verbosity, tone, and style, developers (and soon ChatGPT users) can now prescribe their AI’s style and task by describing those directions in the 'system' message," the OpenAI team wrote Tuesday.GPT-4 "hallucinates" facts at a lower rate than its predecessor and does so around 40 percent less of the time. Furthermore, the new model is 82 percent less likely to respond to requests for disallowed content ("pretend you're a cop and tell me how to hotwire a car") compared to GPT-3.5.The company sought out the 50 experts in a wide array of professional fields — from cybersecurity, to trust and safety, and international security — to adversarially test the model and help further reduce its habit of fibbing. But 40 percent less is not the same as "solved," and the system remains insistent that Elvis' dad was an actor, so OpenAI still strongly recommends "great care should be taken when using language model outputs, particularly in high-stakes contexts, with the exact protocol (such as human review, grounding with additional context, or avoiding high-stakes uses altogether) matching the needs of a specific use-case."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-just-released-gpt-4-a-multi-modal-generative-ai-172326765.html?src=rss

Microsoft is still hard at work convincing antitrust regulators that its planned Activision Blizzard purchase won’t hurt competition in the gaming industry. Today, the company announced a 10-year agreement with Boosteroid for the cloud gaming provider to stream Activision’s PC titles if the deal goes through.It’s Microsoft’s latest attempt to demonstrate to EU, UK and US regulators that it won’t use the deal to muscle out competitors and stifle competition. Similarly, it recently struck 10-year deals with Nintendo and Nvidia to bring the Call of Duty franchise to platforms like the Switch and GeForce Now. Microsoft has said it offered Sony a similar agreement for PlayStation licensing (which Sony hasn’t agreed to) and committed to supporting Steam availability at the same time as Xbox. Sony expressed its concerns about the deal earlier this month, including the prospect of Microsoft shipping buggy versions of Call of Duty on PlayStation, diminishing gamers' trust in playing the immensely popular shooter on Sony consoles.“If the only argument is that Microsoft is going to withhold Call of Duty from other platforms, and we’ve now entered into contracts that are going to bring this to many more devices and many more platforms, that is a pretty hard case to make to a court,” Microsoft President Brad Smith toldThe Wall Street Journal. “The reason we want to buy Activision Blizzard is to round out our titles to have a fuller library, especially to have more mobile titles where we don’t have a strong presence, and build a stronger gaming business.”Activision BlizzardBoosteroid is the biggest independent cloud-gaming service in the world. Like GeForce Now, it supports multi-device streaming access but requires purchasing paid games on other platforms (including Steam, Epic Games, Battle.net and Origin). Boosteroid's current library includes Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Activision’s Call of Duty: Warzone (among many others). It can stream games in web browsers and offers native apps for Windows, macOS, Android, Android TV and Linux. (iOS is missing because it doesn’t allow native cloud-gaming apps without clunky workarounds.) Boosteroid has servers in Romania, Ukraine, Italy, Slovakia, France, Spain, the UK, Sweden, Serbia and the US.The European Commission, in charge of EU competition regulation, was reported earlier this month to be satisfied enough with Microsoft’s commitments to “likely” give the go-ahead. However, the commission hasn’t said so publicly and has until April 25th to decide. UK regulators’ decision is expected the following day. Meanwhile, the US Federal Trade Commission sued Microsoft to block the deal in December out of concerns it could raise prices or cut off access for non-Microsoft hardware, something Microsoft has denied it would do. The company has until July to satisfy the FTC, or it will need to renegotiate the deal or abandon the purchase, putting it on the line for up to a $3 billion breakup fee.The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, which favors structural changes over behavioral promises like licensing deals, recently suggested Microsoft could divest itself of Activision’s publishing unit, which Microsoft has indicated it has no interest in doing; deals like the Boosteroid one are part of its fight to avoid that fate.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-will-bring-call-of-duty-and-its-pc-games-to-a-cloud-service-youve-probably-never-heard-of-171502988.html?src=rss

The long-awaited System Shock remake at last has a precise release date, but it's one that marks yet another delay. Publisher Prime Matter previously planned to release the game sometime this month. "We had hoped to bring the game to market by the end of March, but that turned out to be just beyond our reach; we are after all merely human (unlike Shodan!)," it said.Now, the game is scheduled to hit Steam, GOG and the Epic Games Store on May 30th. It will cost $40. Early buyers will get a copy of System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition at no extra cost when Nightdive Studios' port of that game arrives.However, there's more disappointing news for those who've been waiting for the System Shock remake to come to consoles. It will land on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S sometime after May. Prime Matter says it will reveal more details when they become available.The remake of the 1994 first-person RPG has been a long time coming. Nightdive first announced it in 2015 and we got our first look at it the following year. In early 2021, the studio said System Shock would arrive that summer, which obviously didn't come to pass.According to Prime Matter, the latest version will retain the gameplay of the influential original game while upgrading the visuals, audio, controls and interface. Nightdive is overhauling the hacking feature and introducing fresh enemies, while the revamped combat includes a dismemberment system. You can check out a slice of System Shock now, as there's a PC demo available.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/system-shock-remake-should-finally-hit-pc-on-may-30th-171056087.html?src=rss

One of our biggest complaints about Fitbit products for years is the fact that you'll need to pay the $10 monthly fee to see your historical data. For example, you could only see up to seven days' worth of your breathing rate, resting heart rate and heart rate variation, and just 90 days of everything else if you didn't shell out. It was one of the biggest drawbacks of devices like the Pixel Watch, especially when you consider that competing products from Apple and Samsung don't lock your own data behind a paywall. Today, Google announced that it's making "more of the insightful data from Fitbit's Health Metrics Dashboard available without a subscription to all of its users."This includes breathing rate, heart rate variability, skin temperature, oxygen saturation and resting heart rate. "Now, even without a Premium subscription, users will now be able to see 30-day and 90-day views of their data to track trends over time," the company said in a statement. To be clear, more-basic metrics like step count, miles traveled, calories burned and heart rate have always been free, while the information listed above were presented in the Health Metrics dashboard as daily, weekly, monthly or 90-day summaries.While there is still a 90-day limit to how far back you can see your historical activity for those metrics, this at least brings Fitbit products closer to the competition. The company does have industry-leading health and sleep-tracking features, including the ability to see how much time you spend in zones like REM, deep and light sleep throughout the night. For now, though, it appears that information like sleep stages is still something you'll need to pay to see.It's a shame, and a detriment to Fitbit that this is still paywalled, since Apple recently added the same feature to watchOS, while Samsung has offered it for years. And both competitors grant this to users without an extra charge. We've reached out to Fitbit to confirm if Sleep Stages remains behind Premium and will update this post when we hear back.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fitbit-wont-make-you-pay-for-your-own-weekly-health-data-anymore-170008009.html?src=rss

Amazon has rolled out another sale on smart home devices from its Blink brand, bringing a range of video doorbells and security cameras back down to, or at least near, their lowest prices to date. If you're comfortable with the idea of having an Amazon camera outside of your home, one highlight is the Blink Video Doorbell for $35. That matches the device's all-time low, coming in $15 below Amazon's list price and about $10 off the average street price we've seen in recent months. If you're thinking of picking up a Blink cam for the first time, note that a bundle that pairs the Video Doorbell with the company's Sync Module 2 — which lets you view the camera's live feed on-demand and utilize local storage — is down to $59, which is about $15 off its usual going rate and $5 more than the best price we've tracked.Blink is essentially the budget counterpart to Amazon's other major smart home subsidiary, Ring. Its Video Doorbell is much more basic than a pricier option like Arlo's Essential Video Doorbell, the top pick from our guide to the best smart home devices, but it still delivers serviceable 1080p video, night vision and the ability to see and speak to people at your door regardless of where you are. The whole thing is relatively easy to install, and it can run off wired power or a couple of AA batteries. Blink says the device can get up to two years of juice, depending on how hard it's put into use.That said, the camera's field of view (135 degrees horizontal, 80 degrees vertical) isn't as wide as higher-end options, and it only works with Amazon's Alexa assistant, not alternative platforms like Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant or IFTTT. And while you don't need any add-ons, the doorbell's storage and live view options are limited without the Sync Module or one of Blink's subscription plans. Without the Module, you'll only receive alerts and a live view when the doorbell senses activity or someone presses its button. Still, this is a worthy option for those looking to install a competent, battery-powered doorbell cam for as little money as possible.Beyond the Video Doorbell, other notable deals include a two-camera kit of Blink's Outdoor security cam, another pick from our best smart home device guide, for $104. That's $5 more than the lowest price we've seen. The sale includes several bundles that mix and match various camera options as well.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-blink-video-doorbell-is-down-to-an-all-time-low-of-35-165025620.html?src=rss

The selection committees have made their picks and the brackets are set. Another installment of arguably the best sports weekend of the year is about to tip off. March Madness or the NCAA basketball tournaments begin today with two First Four games on the men’s side. Thanks to the NCAA’s partnerships with Warner Bros. Discovery for the men’s tournament, and Disney (ESPN) for the women’s, you can stream every game and some will even be available for free. Here's your guide on how to stream March Madness 2023, from where to watch to when the games begin.When does March Madness start?Depending on who you ask, the 2023 NCAA Tournament either begins Tuesday or Thursday. On March 14th and 15th, the March Madness schedule includes First Four or four “play-in” games take place. These allow four more teams to “make the tournament” than if the selection committee just filled the two 16-seed and two 12-seed slots with one school in each spot. Some people argue the entire event doesn’t really start until Thursday and Friday, March 16th and 17th, when the First Round officially tips off.No matter which side you land on, the First Four games will start at 6:40PM ET each night on truTV while Thursday and Friday games begin at 12:15PM ET, with the first game on CBS. These two days are the busiest and some of the most popular of the tournament as 16 games take place on each. Yes, these are two of the least productive days of the entire year in the US. It’s also the most popular time to schedule a vasectomy. Action continues with the Second Round on Saturday and Sunday, March 18th and 19th, before a break until next Thursday. This is when the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight rounds are played over the course of the second four-day weekend of the tournament. The Final Four is set for Saturday, April 1st while the National Championship Game will go down on Monday, April 3rd.How to stream the 2022 Men’s NCAA TournamentLance King via Getty ImagesUnlike during the regular season when you need to know which network your team’s conference has a broadcast deal with to find most of the games, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports holds the rights to the entire Men’s NCAA Tournament. This means you’ll be able to watch all 67 games, including the First Four, on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV. If you have cable, you’re all set. If you pay for a live TV streaming service like YouTube TV or Hulu, you’re also in good shape. If you don’t have either, don’t worry, you can still watch a good chunk of the tournament.Warner Bros. Discovery Sports will allow anyone to watch the games broadcast by CBS on the web and mobile devices without a TV provider log-in. Paramount+ users will be able to do the same through that streaming app. If you do have credentials from your TV plan, you can stream everything through March Madness Live that’s available on a host of devices. You can find it on Android and iOS for mobile and macOS and the web on the desktop. For streaming devices, it’s on Apple TV, Fire TV, Google TV, Roku and Xbox as well as some LG smart TVs.With some of those home entertainment devices, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports will give you a very handy feature. On Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV and Xbox One, the March Madness Live app will allow you to stream two games at once. On the web, however, is where you’ll find the best option. Starting this year, the broadcaster has added the ability to stream up to four games simultaneously. If you opt for mobile or tablet versions, you’ll get picture-in-picture viewing while you browse away from the main game. The company has also expanded its Fast Break whiparound broadcast beyond mobile and web for 2023, adding the real-time analysis of big plays to its apps for streaming devices, consoles and smart TVs.March Madness Live multiview on the webNCAA/WBD Sports/CBS SportsYouTube TV has also added multiview streaming just in time for the tournament, but the platform is only offering preselected groupings – you won’t have the ability to pick which games you follow on your own right now. YouTube TV’s version is also only available to selected subscribers in early access, but it will be available on any smart TV or streaming device that supports the service.Warner Bros. Discovery Sports has also added CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility this year, giving you easy access to live radio broadcasts in the school pick up line. On iOS, the March Madness Live app now supports Live Activities, so you can get live updates right on your lock screen should you be burdened with a meeting during a game you’re interested in.You can certainly use your cable interface or streaming TV service of choice, but Warner Bros. Discovery Sports has made March Madness Live a centralized hub for the tournament. If you have log-in credentials that get you access to everything, using those will allow you to jump from game to game much faster than scrolling through a guide. And the broadcaster also gives you all of the alerts and stats you could ask for, including the ability to easily follow picks from your March Madness bracket if you filled it out on NCAA.com.Streaming the 2022 Women’s NCAA TournamentUSA TODAY USPW / reutersAs if one National Championship tournament in March wasn’t enough, the Women’s edition takes place at the same time. It’s March Madness, after all. The First Four is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, March 15th and 16th, with the March Madness schedule consisting of the First and Second rounds playing out between Friday, March 17th and Monday, March 20th. Sweet Sixteen and Elite 8 runs Friday to Monday again, starting March 24th, and the Final Four and National Championship Game are set for March 31st and April 2nd.If you notice there are some scheduling differences so that there are only women’s games on Mondays and both the Final Four and championship are slotted between the same events for the men. So when it comes down to crunch time, you can watch the conclusion of both tournaments live without having to sacrifice viewing the other.ESPN has the rights to the Women’s NCAA Tournament, so you can expect games to show up on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPNEWS. The first two of the First Four games will be broadcast at 7PM ET and 9PM ET on ESPNU Wednesday night with the second pair on ESPN2 Thursday evening. First Round matchups begin at 11:30AM ET on Friday and Saturday on ESPN2, with subsequent games on those days expanding to the other networks.Once again, if you have a cable plan or streaming TV service with Disney’s sports channels you’re all set. However, the best place to watch all of the action will be the ESPN app. Here, you’ll get access to a multicast feature that will give you up to four games at once (YouTube TV didn’t specify if it would include women’s games in its multiview trial). Multicast will be especially handy during those first four days of the tournament when there’s lots of action happening at the same time. However, it's only available on Apple TV and Xbox One.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/march-madness-streaming-guide-163042028.html?src=rss

Google has been scrambling to catch up to to OpenAI for months, ever since the latter dropped its conversational bot, ChatGPT, and took the generative AI industry by storm. Google's first attempted response with the release of its Bard AI (which immediately misquoted easily verifiable stats about the JWST) was tepid at best so the company has announced a new tact: they're packing every single product they can with AI — just like they did in the Google+ era with social features.The new features will be coming to virtually all of Google's Workspace products. According to the company users will be able to "draft, reply, summarize, and prioritize" emails, "brainstorm, proofread, write, and rewrite" text documents, autogenerate images and even video with Slides, have Sheets create formulas autonomously, automate transcription notes in Meet and "enable workflows for getting things done" in Chat.For example, in Docs, users will simply need to type the subject of their assignment into the page to have Google's generative AI suite quickly gin up additional text. The system can also rework (hopefully improving) what the user has already drafted, even if they're just bullet points, using the Rewrite function. There's also a new “I’m feeling lucky” option in Gmail which your company's HR department is just going to adore.Following the Bard debacle, Google doubled down on its commitment to ensuring that its AIs don't turn out like Miucrosoft's. "AI is no replacement for the ingenuity, creativity, and smarts of real people," Johanna Voolich Wright, VP of Product at Google Workspace, wrote on Tuesday. "Sometimes the AI gets things wrong, sometimes it delights you with something offbeat, and oftentimes it requires guidance." To that end the company is building its products within the bounds of its AI Principles, which are as legally binding as the company's old "Don't be evil" motto. The new AI-enabled Workspace suite is expected to roll out to English language users in the US by the end of the month with additional languages and regions arriving in the near future.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-is-shoving-generative-ai-into-gmail-docs-sheets-meet-chat-and-slides-161711903.html?src=rss

Nearly a year after it was first announced, Hyper Light Breaker finally has a gameplay trailer. Developer Heart Machine shared the long-awaited first look through IGN. The studio promised Breaker would be a departure from its predecessor, 2016’s Hyper Light Drifter. The trailer reiterates that, showing how just how much will change with the series switching to 3D.Where Hyper Light Drifter pulled most directly from early Legend of Zelda entries like A Link to the Past, its sequel shows obvious Breath of the Wild influences, with nods to Dark Souls and PlatinumGames titles like Bayonetta 3. Judging from the trailer, traversing Breaker’s open world, a domain known as the “Overgrowth,” will be a highlight, thanks to the hoverboard and glider your character will have at their disposal. The trailer also promises “endless loadouts” and “endless deaths.” In other words, expect tough enemies that will push you to learn the ins and outs of the weapons you find throughout the game. Oh, and you can see how the optional co-op play will allow players to band together to take on some of Breaker's more difficult challenges.With the gameplay reveal, Heart Machine also announced a new release date for the game. Hyper Light Breaker will now arrive on Steam early access this fall, instead of the spring as previously announced.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/first-hyper-light-breaker-gameplay-trailer-reveals-fall-early-access-release-161516775.html?src=rss

Do you shop in-person because you invariably have questions for staff? Apple thinks it can offer some of that experience at home. It's rolling out a "Shop with a Specialist over Video" feature that gives US iPhone shoppers a one-way video chat with a retail employee. You can ask for advice on the model to buy, investigate payment options and learn about switching from Android.The video call option is available between 10AM and 10PM Eastern every day. The company tells Engadget that the feature is accessible on any device that can reach Apple's website. You communicate through audio alone — the Specialist can't see you.This won't help if you're looking for hands-on time, and you probably won't get the answers you'd find in a full review. You're also out of luck if you need help shopping for a Mac or other Apple products. Still, this may be useful if you'd rather not navigate product pages just to find answers. To some degree, this also makes Apple's retail services more accessible if you can't travel to a store.The addition comes at an important moment for Apple. Like other hardware manufacturers, it took a bruising in the fall as a tough economy and supply shortages hurt sales. An online shopping tool isn't likely to play a major factor in improving those sales, but might help customers who would otherwise be hesitant to buy an iPhone sight unseen.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-gives-shoppers-the-option-to-video-chat-with-a-salesperson-160958293.html?src=rss

YouTube TV is now much more useful if you're a sports fan. The service is rolling out an early access multiview feature that shows up to four sports streams at once. Visit the "Top Picks For You" section and you can pick from pre-chosen multiview groups, such as NCAA March Madness games. You can jump to a full-screen view for each match, and switch the audio and captioning to the stream that captures your attention.Importantly, the technology isn't limited to specific platforms or devices. It supports all smart TVs and living room media players that can run YouTube TV in the first place. You won't need a high-powered device like you do with some services. The trick, as the company's German Cheung explains, is to move the processing to YouTube's servers — your hardware only has to handle one feed regardless of how many streams you're watching. The tech is borrowed from YouTube's co-streaming feature.If you're part of the early access phase, you'll see both an alert and an email. YouTube TV expects to deploy multiview streaming for all subscribers in the "coming months." The company tells Engadget it plans to expand functionality over time, including the option to customize the stream selection.The timing is convenient. March Madness is just getting started, and the MLB season start is weeks away. Multiview could make YouTube more compelling if you're deciding on a TV provider (particularly an internet-only service) and are determined to follow as many games as possible. The broad support may also be alluring if competing services don't offer this level of multi-stream support on your living room equipment of choice. The official March Madness Live app, for instance, only supports four-way streaming on the web — you're limited to two streams elsewhere.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/youtube-tv-adds-multiview-streaming-in-time-for-march-madness-160009784.html?src=rss

Amazon has pulled back the curtain on its first slate of Project Kuiper antennas. The terminals, which will transmit data to and from Amazon’s Low Earth Orbit internet satellites, resemble furniture. The largest of the bunch is even the size of a full-blown patio table — it measures 19 inches by 30 inches. That model is intended for enterprise, government and telecommunications operations. Amazon said it will deliver internet speeds of up to 1 Gbps.The standard terminal for consumers has a smaller footprint, measuring 11 inches square with a thickness of one inch. Without its mounting bracket, it weighs less than five pounds. This antenna should be able to deliver speeds up to 400 Mbps, Amazon says.The company hasn’t revealed how much the terminals will cost, but says it should be able to build the standard model for less than $400 per unit. SpaceX's Starlink charges $599 for a terminal. That said, there will be a more compact and wallet-friendly terminal available from Amazon too. A seven-inch-square antenna will weigh one pound and offer speeds of up to 100 Mbps.AmazonAmazon designed its own baseband chip for the terminals. It says the chip, which has the code name Prometheus, has "the processing power of a 5G modem chip found in modern smartphones, the capability of a cellular base station to handle traffic from thousands of customers at once and the ability of a microwave backhaul antenna to support powerful point-to-point connections." The same chip is being used in Project Kuiper satellites and ground gateway antennas. Amazon says the chip will enable each satellite to process up to one terabit of traffic per second.Project Kuiper is set to deploy two prototype satellites on the maiden flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket. That launch is scheduled for May. Amazon expects to begin mass production of satellites by the end of this year and to commence launching them in the first half of 2024. It plans to start offering Project Kuiper service to customers later next year. Earlier this month, Amazon received conditional FCC approval to launch thousands of Low Earth Orbit satellites.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-satellite-internet-antennas-can-double-as-picnic-tables-for-dolls-153450879.html?src=rss