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Apple has expanded the internal testing for its Pay service's buy now, pay later feature to include its retail employees, according to Bloomberg. When the tech giant's experimental features make their way to its retail staff, that's typically a sign that it's going to be released in the near future. Apple Store workers started testing the company's credit card in 2019 a month before it became available, and staff at its HQ visitor center tested Tap to Pay shortly before the first partner companies like Square and PayPal launched support for the payment solution.The tech giant first announced the pay later functionality for Apple Pay at its WWDC event in June 2022. It was supposed to arrive alongside iOS 16, but the company changed its mind and rolled out the new mobile platform without the feature in tow. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported at the time that the company was having "fairly significant technical and engineering challenges in rolling out the service," which led to delays.When Apple introduced pay later, it said the payment option will give users a way to split the cost of purchases into four equal installments paid over six weeks with no additional interest or fees. Gurman now says that the company is also working with Goldman Sachs Group to offer an option that splits up the cost of large purchases into several months with interest on top. Seeing as the company even established its own subsidiary to conduct customer credit checks and approvals, it's not hard to believe that it has plans to introduce more pay later options in the future.Apple

Canon is adding a new, more affordable entry point into its RF mirrorless camera ecosystem. Alongside the full-frame EOS R8, the company unveiled today the EOS R50, an APS-C RF mount camera that will start at $680 when it goes on sale later this year. Based on the price and spec sheet, the R50 could quickly become a go-to for many beginners.The camera features a 24.2-megapixel sensor capable of capturing uncropped 4K video footage at up to 30 frames per second. The R50 can also shoot 1080p video at up to 60 frames per second and S&Q-style slo-mo footage at up to 120 frames per second. What’s more, Canon claims the camera can capture a full hour of continuous footage. Despite its modest price, the R50 also includes the company's excellent Dual Pixel autofocus technology, with built-in subject detection for people, animals and vehicles. Best of all, the tech is available for both stills and video.CanonYou don't get any log modes, but it does have HDR PQ which also gives you 10-bit video — not bad for a budget camera. Other video features include a microHDMI port for external video, both microphone and headphone ports, and UVC compatibility for direct webcam streaming.Burst shooting speeds are great at this price as well: 12 fps in electronic first-curtain shutter mode (there's no full mechanical shutter) and 15 fps in electronic shutter mode, both with servo AF. It'll only capture 13 C-RAW+JPEG files in a burst though, likely due to the slow UHS-I SD card support. There's no in-body stabilization (IS) at that price, but it can use the IS built into lenses or digital stabilization for vlogging. It also has an OLED viewfinder, which many cameras in this price range don't, though resolution is fairly low at 2.36 million dots.CanonAt the same time, Canon is expanding its RF lens lineup to add new crop sensor glass. The RF-S55-210mm is a compact telephoto lens with a full-frame equivalent field of view between 88mm and 336mm. It features a variable f/5 to f/7.1 aperture, four-and-a-half stops of built-in optical stabilization and close-focusing capabilities. The RF-S55-210mm IS STM isn’t the fastest option in Canon’s RF lens stable, but it does add some much-needed choice on the APS-C side of things.At $680 for body-only, the R50 slots under the EOS R10, which was previously Canon’s most affordable RF mirrorless camera. Effectively, the R50 is a more capable version of the EOS M50 Mark II that’s less than $100 more expensive and doesn’t limit you to Canon’s dead-end EF-M mount system. It’s also competitive against Sony’s ZV-E10 and Nikon’s Z30, which cost about the same but don’t offer an electronic viewfinder. The EOS R50 will arrive later this year. In addition to selling the body on its own, Canon will bundle the camera as part of a Content Creator Kit that will ship with a microphone, 18-45mm kit lens and grip for $800.

Canon has put Sony and its other rivals on blast with the launch of the $1,500 24-megapixel EOS R8, its cheapest full-frame camera yet. Released alongside the $680 R50 APS-C model, it's targeted to photographers and video creators on a budget. However, it's got some impressive features like uncropped, oversampled 4K video up 60 fps, shooting speeds up to 40 fps and Canon's excellent Dual Pixel autofocus.On the photography front, the R8 can shoot at up to 6 fps with the first-curtain electronic shutter (like the R50, there's no fully mechanical shutter) or a whopping 40 fps with the electronic shutter. That sounds great, but rolling shutter may be an issue in electronic mode for fast moving subjects. It can capture up to a very respectable 100 C-RAW + JPEG files at a time to the single UHS-II card slot. The autofocus systems looks strong, using Canon's Dual Pixel AF along with AI subject detection for people, animals and vehicles.CanonFor video, you can capture 4K video up to 60 fps with 6K oversampling, or Full HD at up to 180 fps — quite impressive considering the price. Editing-friendly ALL-I capture is supported up to 4K 30p with a 470Mbps data rate. It supports up to two hours of continuous recording with no 30-minute limit, though 4K 60p and 180 fps Full HD shooting times are thermally limited to around 30 minutes. You can shoot 10-bit HDR PQ or Canon Log-3 video, so this would be the perfect budget vlogging camera if not for the overheating situation. It also has focus breathing compensation (for select lenses).The main thing missing compared to the $2,500 EOS R6 II is 5-axis in-body stabilization. However, it does have optical stabilization with supported lenses and Canon's Movie Digital IS, which works in concert with lens stabilization.CanonOther features include a micro-HDMI port that supports up to 4K 60p, mic and headphone ports, an LP-E17 battery (no CIPA battery life provided yet) and USB webcam support. The 3-inch, 1.62 million dot display flips out for vloggers, but the OLED electronic viewfinder is a low-end unit with 2.36-million dots of resolution.Despite the low price, there are no red flags I can see on the R8 (pending a full review, of course). At a full $1,000 below the R6 II, it looks like a great camera particularly for vloggers and content creators. Canon also introduced a budget full-frame kit lens, the RF24-50mm f/4.5-6.3 IS STM, selling by itself for $300. The EOS R8 goes on sale in the spring of 2023 for $1,500, or $1,700 with the aforementioned lens.

For one night only, Disney’s breakout Star Wars series is coming to cable TV. Ahead of the premiere of the third season of The Mandalorian on March 1st, Disney announced today it would air the show’s debut episode, “Chapter 1: The Mandalorian,” on February 24th. If you somehow haven’t seen the series before, you can catch the episode that started it all on ABC, Freeform or FX. All three stations will air the 41-minute debut at 8PM ET/PT.If you’ve managed to avoid spoilers for The Mandalorian until now, first of all, great job; it couldn’t have been easy. Second, we won’t ruin the surprise, but the debut episode is a great taste of what made the first season of the series feel so special. It has a bit of everything that people came to love about The Mandalorian, including witty dialogue, fun action set pieces and, of course, a certain cute alien.This isn’t the first time Disney has brought a Disney+ exclusive to TV. The company previously aired two episodes of Andor on ABC, Freeform and FX when it seemed that series was struggling to find an audience. Considering the company recently lost $1.5 billion on its streaming services, bringing The Mandalorian to broadcast TV makes a lot of sense as an effort to attract subscribers to Disney+.

The age of generative AI is upon us, and this week alone Google and Microsoft made major announcements around their respective products for the masses. While Google unveiled an "experimental conversational AI service" called Bard yesterday, Microsoft had a fuller slate of news to share at its event in Redmond, WA today. Through a partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Microsoft is adding more advanced AI conversation models to power updates to Bing and Edge.The company's keynote today happened at breakneck pace, with demos whizzing by so quickly there was barely enough time to make sense of the updates. Thankfully, I was able to briefly check out a full demo here with Dena Saunders from Bing Engineering. It was nice to see everything at a more comprehensible pace, but it was unfortunately restricted to a set of scripted examples. I gained access to the preview version of Bing at about 2:15pm PT today, and also had to install the Developer channel version of Edge to see today's new features.Bing improvementsIn general, there are four new areas of change coming to Bing (and we'll get to Edge later): Search, Answers, Chat and Create. The first update is the new search box. Instead of your typical long, one-line bar, there is now a box more similar to those on Twitter or Facebook that prompts you to ask Bing anything. The character limit is now 1,000. The idea is to make the process of looking for answers something more conversational — similar to Google's approach for years now.When you submit your query, results are now displayed a bit differently. On the left is a column with your typical "answers" just like how you see it on Bing now. On the right, however, is a box that explains how the system found those answers and also starts a chat. I initially thought this was similar to what Google does in its "About this search" panels, but I was wrong. This box is a home for the AI and fills up with text that appears in real time, complete with animation and a "Stop responding" button in case you don't have the patience to see the AI's explanation. In my time with the preview so far, these new features didn't happen on my first few searches, but did appear subsequently.ScreenshotChat and create in BingThe third and fourth parts are the more interesting updates. Chat, for example, is a new way you can get solutions to the problems you're looking to solve. You can access the Chat page from the Bing results page by tapping the Chat button above the answers or by scrolling up (swiping down on touchscreens). When you're there, you can continue the conversation about your ongoing search, or use the Broom icon next to the text input field to clean the slate.This page is a more practical manifestation of the notion of an AI copilot — it's basically ChatGPT or any other chat bot you may have interacted with while getting tech support from your bank or shopping website. But the results Bing's Prometheus model has been able to return are definitely more impressive. The outputs it can return along with the inputs it can understand make it much more versatile and therefore more useful.For example, you can tell it to create travel itineraries or meal plans with specific parameters and it'll actually give you lists with what to do or make each day. The demos I saw included coming up with "3-day itinerary for Snoqualmie" or "vegetarian meal plan with chocolate included in the dessert" and each time Bing delivered the requested plans in plain, legible English that not only met the requirements but also cited its sources. It also didn't take very long for the system to produce the results — we only had to wait between five and ten seconds on the demo Surface laptop. When the system is processing, you'll also see the "Stop responding" button to give up waiting for results, just in case you're running short on time.I asked Bing to propose itineraries for a six day family trip to Los Angeles, which would have come in handy during my vacation last week. It took two attempts with different wording before I got the results I expected, but Bing got there. It suggested destinations and sights that my cousin also recommended, which is nice, though I have yet to closely scrutinize the program to see if it makes sense geographically and on timing.ScreenshotI also used one of the suggested prompts in the preview to get Bing to create a 30-minute workout for me, focusing on arms and abs using no gym equipment and excluding situps. The resulting plan of several exercises, including three sets of 10 reps of dips, crunches and more all seemed sound. Bing pulled from various publications in generating this program and cited its sources as it churned out the words, meaning it was actually doing some work compiling instead of just regurgitating a single article.Like other conversational assistants, Bing's chat is capable of understanding context. In the demo, Saunders asked for spots to take photographs after first requesting a 3-day itinerary for Snoqualmie, and Bing replied with scenic locations in the same region. After my query about a 30-minute workout for abs and arms, I followed up with "how about an hour" and Bing was actually smart enough to follow up by telling me to add more exercises, suggested more things to do, as well as suggest I simply do the initial workout twice.I did a lot of follow-up questions to other searches, and to list them all would take forever. Suffice to say that the conversations generally felt very natural and contextually rich, in a way that few other AI chatbots have achieved.The Edge browser with an AI copilot built inWith the new Edge, a button on the top right will allow you to access the new Bing's chat feature within your browser. But it goes beyond just answering your questions without having to leave the pages you're browsing. Edge can help make sense of the sites you're looking at and make research or multitasking much easier.ScreenshotDuring its keynote today, Microsoft showed how it was able to use Bing to summarize Gap Inc's quarterly report and extract not only key takeaways but also financial highlights. When I opened the PDF from Gap's investor relations page and asked Bing (in Edge) to give me the key takeaways, it told me about the company's performance in digestible snippets. I then asked for "financial highlights" and the system gave me six bullet points listing the net sales, net loss, gross margin, operating loss, cash and cash equivalents and free cash flow. Each item listed the dollar amount as well as how that compared to last year's performance.What's more impressive is that Edge can also find another company's earnings report from this chat window, without having to open another tab, and compare the results. You can also then tell the browser to create a table analyzing the two companies side by side. The fact that this worked during my own testing of the new Edge left me very impressed, and I can already see myself using this to compare specs of new phones in future.Finally, at least for this hands-on article today, I checked out the new Compose function, which you can use to come up with posts, emails or essays. I asked Bing to write an email for me to convince our video producer Brian Oh to come on this work trip to Microsoft in Seattle with me. There were several options to choose from for parameters like tone (funny, professional, casual, informational or enthusiastic), format (paragraph, email, blog post or ideas) and length (short, medium or long). At the bottom is a "Generate draft" button, which delivers the text in a box below it, under which is a button for you to "Add to site." Clicking on that sends the generated words over to the website where your cursor is.The resulting prose read like a human person wrote it, with proper grammar and punctuation (except in places where it would be more natural to ignore grammatical rules). I set the tone to "funny" and while some of the AI's efforts at comedy were kind of cringe-worthy, it was fairly subtle. For example, at the end of a 4-paragraph letter extoling the virtues of Seattle and Microsoft, the system wrote "So, what do you say? Are you in or are you out? Please say yes, because I already booked your ticket and hotel room. Just kidding, I didn't."That's not my style but it's definitely something a somewhat funny human might write. For anyone that's ever played with ChatGPT, this will feel somewhat familiar. The integration into the browser, which allows for easy transferring of the AI-produced content into, say, emails and social media sites, makes things very convenient.I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what the new Bing and Edge can do, and my limited time with the preview so far feels like barely enough. I plan on continuing to test the updated features and see what life feels like with an AI copilot on my web journeys, so this is certainly not the last thing I'll write about Microsoft's latest product.

You can add Zoom to the long list of major tech companies that have laid off employees in recent times. It's letting go around 1,300 employees, which equates to 15 percent of the workforce.In a note to staff, CEO Eric Yuan indicated that the company expanded its headcount too quickly after Zoom's pandemic-driven boom — it tripled in size in the space of two years. "We didn’t take as much time as we should have to thoroughly analyze our teams or assess if we were growing sustainably, toward the highest priorities," Yuan wrote.He noted that even though many folks have returned to the office, people and companies are still relying on Zoom. That said, Yuan said that amid a rocky economic climate, "we need to take a hard — yet important — look inward to reset ourselves so we can weather the economic environment, deliver for our customers and achieve Zoom’s long-term vision."Yuan said he was taking accountability for the layoffs. He's reducing his salary for the upcoming fiscal year by 98 percent and the executive team will forego 20 percent of their base salaries. All will forfeit their corporate bonuses for fiscal year 2023 (i.e., the 2022 calendar year).Zoom employees in the US who are being let go will receive up to 16 weeks' salary and healthcare coverage, their earned fiscal year 2023 bonus, stock option vesting for six months and help to find a new job. The company said laid-off workers outside the US will get similar support based on local laws.Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Dell and Spotify are among the other major tech companies that have this year announced sweeping layoffs or plans to let go more staff than they originally planned. We're keeping a running tally of the big tech layoffs of 2023, which is becoming an increasingly sobering list.

Microsoft's use of AI on the web will extend beyond smarter Bing searches. The company is updating its Edge browser with an "AI-powered copilot" that assists with everyday tasks. Integration with the new Bing can help you get the key takeaways from a document, compare content and even draft posts (such as on LinkedIn) with a specific format, length or tone.The revised interface revolves around a new sidebar. You can use a chat feature in this space to ask questions like you would with Bing, while a compose option helps you write new content using prompts. You can also expect a new look.MicrosoftBoth Bing and the updated Edge are based around a new AI model, Prometheus, built with the help of OpenAI. While it draws some lessons from the popular ChatGPT conversational AI, it's billed as more powerful and optimized for search. Microsoft also claims it's a "responsible" platform where protections against abuse and errors exist at every level.The new Edge is available now in preview form. While Bing is the highlight of Microsoft's AI announcements, the new browser clearly plays an important role. The AI capabilities theoretically give Edge an advantage over Chrome, Safari and other browsers. Of course, how long any lead lasts is uncertain. Google is holding an event tomorrow (February 8th) that may shed light on its bid to rival ChatGPT, and it won't be surprising if AI-driven search is part of that strategy.

Microsoft's oft-forgotten search engine is about to get a new lease on life. As expected, the tech giant announced on Tuesday that it is partnering with OpenAI to enhance Bing with the company's AI technology. However, Microsoft also had a surprise up its sleeve: the next release of Bing will feature a new next-generation large language model the company claims is "much more powerful" than ChatGPT and designed specifically to excel at search.Underpinning the search engine is a new proprietary technology Microsoft is calling the Prometheus Model. Among the benefits of Prometheus are more relevant search results. Microsoft claims the model will also make using Bing safer and allow the company to update search results more quickly.MicrosoftThe new Bing offers a chat function and an expanded search bar that allows you to input up to a thousand characters. In one demo Microsoft showed off during its event, Yusuf Mehdi, the company's consumer chief marketing officer, asked Bing to compare the most influential Mexican artists and their best-known paintings. Bing displayed its response in a new side panel that featured annotations and weblinks. Later, Mehdi asked the search engine to compare three pet vacuums while listing the pros and cons of each model. Mehdi said Bing could also help with questions where there might not be a precise answer. That said, in instances where Bing doesn't know the answer to a query, the search engine will still try to point you to useful information. Microsoft is also adding a button to allow users to share feedback on the search engine's new functionality. "I think of this as Search with your own personal helper," Mehdi said.The chat feature is there for when you want to use the generative capabilities of OpenAI's technology. For example, say you want to start planning a trip to Hawaii. You can ask Bing to create a five-day itinerary for you. In its response, the search engine will include links to accommodations, flights and things you can do on the islands. The new Bing is available to preview starting today. Microsoft says anyone can visit Bing.com to try a few sample queries and sign up for the company's waitlist. "We’re going to scale the preview to millions in the coming weeks," Microsoft said. A mobile preview is coming soon as well.

Now that Microsoft has launched its Teams Premium service, it's shaking up the free offering for work — and not everyone will be happy. The company is retiring the existing Teams Free version for small business in favor of the similarly-titled Teams (free) on April 12th, and legacy data won't carry over. Your office will have to pay for at least the Teams Essentials plan ($4 per user per month) to preserve chats, meetings, channels and other key info.As Windows Centralexplains, the new Teams (free) tier will require a new account. Data in the old app, now rebadged as Teams Free (classic), will be deleted. Anything you haven't saved by then will be gone, including shared files you haven't downloaded.We've asked Microsoft for comment. This won't affect personal use, but it could prove to be a headache for small firms that previously relied on the free Teams to coordinate. They'll either have to start paying or they'll lose access to past discussions, not to mention deal with the headache of recreating their channel setups. This won't necessarily lead customers to switch to alternatives like Slack, particularly if they're heavily invested in Microsoft's ecosystem. It might, however, prompt outfits to reevaluate their plans if they can't justify many paid services.

A former product manager at Coinbase has pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in what's believed to be the first crypto-related insider trading case in the US. Ishan Wahi initially pleaded not guilty last year.Federal prosecutors claim that, on at least 14 occasions, Wahi shared confidential information with his brother Nikhil Wahi and friend Sammer Ramani about cryptocurrencies that Coinbase was planning to let its users trade so the pair could buy them in advance. Once Coinbase announced that it would list the tokens, their values rose. Nikhil Wahi and Ramani are said to have then sold the assets to make a profit. The scheme allegedly generated north of $1.5 million in ill-gotten gains.Ramani has not been apprehended. Nikhil Wahi pleaded guilty to a wire fraud conspiracy charge in September and was last month sentenced to 10 months in prison. Ishan Wahi faces a prison sentence of between 36 and 47 months as part of his plea deal, according to Reuters. He'll be sentenced in May.Along with the criminal charges, Wahi faced a civil lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission. He asked a judge this week to dismiss the suit, having claimed that the cryptocurrency tokens in question are not securities, meaning they would not be subject to SEC regulation.

TikTok is, once again, facing an uncertain future. The company has spent the last two years quietly negotiating with US government officials in order to avoid an outright ban. But that process has now stalled, and calls for a ban have only intensified.Next month, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, his first Congressional appearance. Many lawmakers have called for a more sweeping ban, and will likely quiz Chew about TikTok’s alleged risks to national security, and its parent company’s Chinese ownership.TikTok has long denied that it’s a threat, and downplays its ties to China. But now the company is also trying a new tactic to prove it has nothing to hide: its Transparency and Accountability Center. The company first introduced the idea in 2020, but the actual facility didn’t open until recently due to COVID-related delays. Last week, the company took a handful of reporters on a tour of the center as part of a new charm offensive as it tries to fend off regulators and the looming prospect of more bans in the United States.Karissa Bell / EngadgetThe first thing you notice when you walk in is that, despite being dedicated to “transparency,” there are no windows in the space, which is housed in an office park near TikTok’s Culver City US HQ. Instead, visitors are greeted with neon-lit signs and big, interactive displays dedicated to explaining various aspects of the app.The company hopes visitors will walk away with a better understanding of how the app operates and, perhaps, less suspicion. “We really do understand the critique that big media, big tech, plays as it relates to how algorithms work, how moderation policies work and the data flows of the systems,” says TikTok COO Vanessa Pappas. “A lot of these are unprecedented levels of transparency that we're providing.”What you’ll actually learn by touring the center, though, largely depends on how much you already know about TikTok when you walk in the door. It’s primarily dedicated to explaining the app’s content moderation policies, and how it handles recommendations, both of which have been heavily scrutinized.There are two interactive exhibits: a “moderation station,” where visitors can play the role of a TikTok content moderator, and another room that’s meant to “demystify” the app’s vaunted recommendation algorithm.In the moderation room, you can watch sample videos — presented in an interface similar to what TikTok’s actual content moderators see — and try your hand at judging which ones violate the app’s rules. Meanwhile, the room next door is dedicated to “the algorithm.” It’s more of an illustrated FAQ that offers fairly broad explanations to high-level questions about how the app recommends content. The content is more detailed than TikTok’s extremely vague in-app explanations, but that’s not saying much. For example, under the heading “What information does TikTok use to create personalized experiences?” it explains that users’ interactions with content are tracked to inform the underlying recommendation model. That might be useful info if you know nothing about how algorithms work, but it doesn’t tell you very much about TikTok.Each explanation is also accompanied by a visualization and a snippet of “simulated code” — the company tightly controls who can view the app’s actual source code — to illustrate what’s happening at various stages of the recommendations process. But again, this felt like it was more designed for people who know nothing about TikTok rather than those who are trying to understand the nuances of its algorithm. There is a space at the transparency center, a server room behind a neon "LATC" sign, where auditors can enter and — after heavy security — dig into TikTok's actual source code. But the vast majority of visitors to the center will never make into that room.Overall, I can see how the tour might be a worthwhile exercise for lawmakers, who too often show they know shockingly little about how the internet works. But it also feels a bit performative, and I can’t help but remember Facebook’s infamous “war room” tour, when it invited reporters to visit a conference room dedicated to safeguarding elections only to shut it down a month later.To be clear, TikTok does intend for the transparency center to be a permanent fixture. And the company plans to open more of them in other locations around the world. But while these facilities may help Boomer lawmakers and regulators understand what TikTok is, I’m not sure they will be able to dispel the perception that there's something else, something more secretive, going on within the company. It’s one thing to illustrate how TikTok’s algorithm works at a high level, but it’s another to prove that something isn’t happening.Karissa Bell / EngadgetIt’s notable, then, that TikTok’s Transparency Center doesn’t address some of the biggest concerns that have been raised about TikToK: its relationship with parent company Bytedance and whether the Chinese government could somehow take advantage of the relationship to advance its interests. “If you fundamentally distrust the autocratic Chinese government, and how it uses its relationship with large Chinese-based corporations to extend its influence around the world, then all the promises TikTok can pile up are not going to completely allay your anxiety about TikTok,” Paul Barrett, the deputy director of NYU's Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, told Engadget.TikTok does, however, have a plan to address government concerns that it could be a national security threat. The company has been locked in negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) for more than two years over its future in the US. And it struck a deal with Oracle last year to safeguard US user data as part of this effort, known as “Project Texas,” to reassure US officials.Until now, TikTok has been fairly tight-lipped about Project Texas and its dealings with CFIUS. But now that those talks have stalled — despite TikTok claiming it’s addressed every concern raised by regulators — the company has been cautiously sharing more details about its arrangements with Oracle.Reporters who attended the tour were given an overview of the plan, but were asked not to directly quote the executives who described it.Central to the plan is a new US subsidiary called TikTok US Data Security (USDS), which will have an independent board of CFIUS-approved directors with national security and cybersecurity backgrounds. On the TikTok side, there will be two executives running the US subsidiary, who will report to the board.TikTokMeanwhile, all US user data will be housed within Oracle’s Cloud infrastructure with strict controls to prevent unauthorized access and to keep most data from leaving. (Some data about what US users are doing will inevitably have to leave in order to, for example, allow people to interact with content and users from other countries.) Oracle will also review TikTok’s entire source code, as will a separate, outside auditor. Future app updates will also be inspected by Oracle, which will take over responsibility for sending updates to the app stores. Oracle will also monitor TikTok’s recommendation algorithm and content moderation systems. The US government, via CFIUS, will continue to have visibility and oversight into what USDS is doing on an ongoing basis.TikTok says they are confident these steps address every issue that’s been raised about what TikTok could potentially be doing. Executives also point out that the company has already dedicated an astonishing amount of money — $1.5 billion — and resources to Project Texas. If all that’s good enough for CFIUS, they say, it should be good enough for Congress.Whether lawmakers will be satisfied with any scenario that allows TikTok to operate in the United States without being fully divested from ByteDance, though, remains to be seen. “They [TikTok] can make all of these arrangements, and put in place all these safeguards, almost to infinity,” Barrett says. “And it's not clear to me that that would satisfy China hawks in the United States.”That’s partly because TikTok is a convenient punching bag for lawmakers who want to appear tough on China. But there are also legitimate reasons to be concerned about TikTok. ByteDance recently fired four employees who accessed the personal data of an American journalist who had reported on the company. TikTok also has a history of taking, at best, a heavy handed approach to content moderation that some have equated with censorship favorable to the Chinese government.According to TikTok, Project Texas will ensure neither scenario can happen again. But the fact that it already has will undoubtedly lead to further questions about just how deep the company’s commitment to transparency and accountability really is.

Microsoft's set to make an AI-related announcement today at 1pm ET, but it will not be streaming the keynote to the public. Not to worry, though, we're here at the event in Redmond and will be liveblogging all the news the company is sharing today. After Google unveiled its ChatGPT rival Bard yesterday, Microsoft revealed it had been planning today's event all along, without disclosing many details beyond telling us to expect information about "exciting projects." Thanks to a tweet from OpenAI's Sam Altman, though, we can at least guess that generative AI is on the agenda, if not the star of the show. We'll be starting this liveblog around 12:30pm ET, with myself (Cherlynn Low) on text and our head of video Brian Oh taking pictures. See you soon!

You didn't have to wait too long to get Razer's largest Blade systems to date. The company has revealed that the new Blade 16 and Blade 18 gaming laptops will be available tomorrow, February 8th. The 16- and 18-inch systems respectively start at $2,700 and $2,900, although the configurations launching this week are strictly high-end models with RTX 4080 or 4090 graphics — you'll have to spend at least $3,600 ($3,800 for the 18-inch model) to get something quickly. The 'entry' variants with RTX 4060 or 4070 GPUs will be available February 22nd.Each portable has its own set of tricks. The new Blade 16 has a unique dual-mode mini-LED display that can switch between a media-friendly 4K 120Hz picture and a gaming-oriented FHD+ (1,920 x 1,200) 240Hz image. The Blade 18, meanwhile, is a giant desktop replacement with a six-speaker spatial audio setup. Both use 13th-gen Intel Core i9 HX processors, and their RTX 40 series mobile graphics run at full power — a peak 175W for the RTX 4080 and 4090. You won't do much gaming on battery, then, but this could save you from buying a tower PC for demanding games.Accordingly, Razer is updating its Synapse software to enable CPU overclocking on the Blade 16 and Blade 18. You can modify the core voltage, the maximum wattage for boost power and even the time that boost is allowed to run. Don't expect the results you'd get from overclocking a desktop (you're working within the limits of a laptop chassis), but this may help you squeeze some extra frames per second out of your machine.

Today is Safer Internet Day and Google is marking the occasion by revealing features designed to, well, make it safer to do things on the internet. The company says that, in the coming months, it will blur explicit images in search results for all users as a default setting, even if they don't have SafeSearch switched on. SafeSearch filtering is already the default for signed-in users under the age of 18.You'll be able to adjust the settings if you don't have a supervised account or you're signed out and you'd prefer to see butts and stuff in search results (the filter is designed to blur violent images as well). According to screenshots that Google shared, the blur setting will mask explicit images, but not text or links. The filter setting covers up all three.GoogleMeanwhile, Google is adding another layer of protection to the built-in password manager on Chrome and Android. The company says that if a user has a supported computer, they'll have the option to require biometric authentication before filling a saved password into a form. Google noted that folks can also use the feature to "securely reveal, copy or edit passwords" they have saved in the password manager without having to punch in their main password first.The company says it's bolstering privacy protections in the Google app for iOS too. Soon, you'll be able to secure the app using Face ID to keep prying eyes away from your data.

Here's a quick PSA for anyone who has had their eye on Apple's 10.9-inch iPad: the tablet is back on sale for $399 at Amazon, Target and Best Buy. For reference, Apple normally sells this entry-level 64GB model for $449, though the device's average street price on Amazon has hovered closer to $430 since it launched last October. Either way, this deal matches the all-time low we first saw over the holidays last year. Just note that, as of this writing, a few colors are out of stock at Amazon and Target.We gave the 10.9-inch iPad a review score of 85 this past October. It offers a more modern design than the cheaper 10.2-inch iPad, with flatter edges, thinner bezels, a Touch ID button and a USB-C port, much like you'd find on the pricier iPad Air or iPad Pro. It packs a roomier display than the 10.2-inch model despite being slightly shorter and lighter. Its A14 Bionic chip is still plenty powerful for media consumption, light work and other everyday tasks, and it still gets the usual 10-ish hours of battery life. And perhaps most conveniently, it's the only iPad whose front-facing camera is located along the landscape edge of the tablet, which is a much more natural position for video calls.There are a few quirks to consider, though. Unlike the iPad Air, the 10.9-inch iPad's display isn't laminated, so it can feel like you're interacting with an image below the glass rather than directly touching what's on screen. It also lacks an anti-reflective coating, so it's a little more prone to glare. It only works with the original Apple Pencil, not the vastly improved second-gen stylus. Nor does it support the same Magic Keyboard as the iPad Air or iPad Pro; instead, it uses its own accessory called the Magic Keyboard Folio that, while good, isn't as stable on your lap. It also lacks a headphone jack.As we note in our iPad buying guide, if you can afford to step up to the iPad Air, that is the better option overall. And if you just want a competent iPad for the lowest price possible, the 10.2-inch model is likely a better value. That said, the 10.9-inch iPad is still a fine middle ground for those willing to pay a bit more for a nicer-feeling tablet, and this discount should make its sacrifices a little easier to accept.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

OnePlus is finally ready to take the wraps off its first tablet, and it's just different enough that it might be worth considering in a sea of Android slates. The OnePlus Pad revolves around an 11.6-inch display with an unusual 7:5 aspect ratio and a speedy 144Hz refresh rate — this might be your pick if you're a gamer or avid reader. The design also stands out with an easier-to-grip "2.5D" edge and a central camera hump you're less likely to cover with your fingers.Some technical details aren't available as we write this, but the OnePlus Pad will be reasonably quick thanks to MediaTek's Dimensity 9000 chip and up to 12GB of RAM. Battery life might be healthy, too. The 9,510mAh power pack reportedly offers up to 14.5 hours of video playback, and 67W SuperVOOC fast charging can top up the tablet in 80 minutes. Dolby Atmos, meanwhile, promises cinematic audio.You won't have to hunt for accessories, either. The OnePlus Pad will ship with a pen (the Stylo) and a magnetic keyboard. The software will be familiar, although there are some appreciated touches if you also have a OnePlus phone. The Pad can easily use a handset as a cellular data hotspot, for instance.Don't expect to buy one right away. Release dates and pricing for the OnePlus Pad will be available in the "coming weeks," the company says. As such, it's too early to say if this represents a good value compared to the Galaxy Tabs and iPads that dominate the higher-end tablet space.OnePlusNot that OnePlus is leaning solely on a tablet. The company has introduced the OnePlus Buds Pro 2, the expected sequel to its 2021 wireless earbuds. They're some of the first earbuds to support Android 13's official spatial audio implementation with compatible content, such as Disney+ and YouTube videos. If you have a OnePlus 11, you can expect Dolby Atmos support with head tracking.Regardless of how you listen, audio quality is also a focus — complete with an unusual collaboration. OnePlus claims a studio-like sound thanks to dual drivers (with an 11mm woofer and 6mm tweeter) developed with help from Dynaudio, and LHDC 4.0 Bluetooth audio that's close to wired fidelity. And if the usual custom equalizers aren't enough to fine-tune the characteristics, composer Hans Zimmer has created his own EQ, Soundscape, to emphasize the brighter tones and wider soundstages of movie soundtracks. Improved active noise cancellation (particularly for human voices) and lower-latency Bluetooth 5.3 LE are also available, and a 10-minute charge is enough to deliver 10 hours of listening (39 hours total with the case).The Buds Pro 2 will be available in the US on February 16th for $179 (£179 in the UK). It's evident OnePlus is hoping to match or undercut competing products like the Pixel Buds Pro and second-gen AirPods Pro.And yes, it wouldn't be a OnePlus announcement without teasing future hardware. The brand is hinting at plans to unveil both its first mechanical keyboard, the OnePlus Featuring Keyboard 81 Pro (a team-up with Keychron. below) and the OnePlus 11 Concept, a still-mysterious prototype phone with "imaginative" design and "industry-first" features. You won't hear more about these in earnest until Mobile World Congress in late February.OnePlus

Even though Bayonetta 3 just came out last fall, there’s already another entry in the franchise due out in March starring everyone’s favorite gun-toting witch. However, for its next release – Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon – instead of a continuation of the story, PlatinumGames has created a prequel featuring a charming new art style and gameplay twists that shed light on a younger version of Cereza, before she became the over-the-top enchantress we know today.After a short explanation of Bayonetta’s lineage, the game introduces its first major twist when it asks you to control both Cereza and her stuffed cat Cheshire, who serves as a vessel for a recently summoned demon. That’s because instead of switching between each character independently, you’re meant to control both at the same time, with the left Joy-Con responsible for maneuvering Cereza while the right Joy-Con is dedicated to directing her cat. (Don’t worry, you can also play the game with the Switch’s Pro Controller if you prefer.) So on top of the game throwing various puzzles or hack-and-slash encounters your way, you often have to do battle with your own mind as you try to get both sides of your brain on the same page.NintendoFor me, this setup drew immediate parallels to one of my favorite games from 2013, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. (Sorry youngins for the somewhat dated reference, but if you haven’t played Brothers, you should really give it a go.) Granted, Brothers is much more of a true puzzle platformer, but even after playing it for less than an hour, Bayonetta Origins delivered the same sort of deeply satisfying solo co-op vibes. Also, while Nintendo claims the title is meant to be a single-player experience, I get the sense that this might be just as fun/frustrating (maybe even more so) when played with a friend, with each person getting a single Joy-con.Additionally, while the game’s controls are relatively simple and straightforward (due in part to its split controller layout), there’s a surprising amount of depth when it comes to combat and traversing obstacles. Typically, Cheshire serves as the muscle when battling forest spirits or other monsters, while Bayonetta relies on her witch powers to lock down and control enemies. That said, the two can work together, with Cheshire able to shrink down and serve as a grappling hook, allowing the pair to jump gaps and chasms. So despite the game’s slower pace compared to previous entries, getting your left and right hands to work together is still very rewarding. I also have to admit it’s just really cute seeing Cereza snuggle up with a demonic patchwork plushy, who despite its hatred of cuddling, needs to be close to the witch in order to survive.NintendoAnother departure from other Bayonetta titles is the game’s art style, which has ditched its anime-inspired origins for a more storybook aesthetic – and it looks absolutely fantastic. When combined with a younger version of Cereza that’s still figuring out her place in the world, the game feels more like a new-age fairy tale than the eccentric action-packed circus we’ve seen in earlier games.And while I only had a short time with Bayonetta Origins, perhaps my biggest surprise was how quickly I became engrossed in the game. That’s because while the bombastic nature of previous entries in the franchise is more my style, Cereza’s latest adventure offers a very charming and downright wholesome take on the series. So for all of the Bayonetta fans who might have been put off by this installment’s design or visuals, you might want to rethink that stance and give Cereza and the Demon a chance when it officially comes out on March 17th.Nintendo

Hot Wheels: Rift Rally is a new mixed reality game from Velan Studios, the creators of Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit. Like Nintendo’s 2020 title, you control a real RC car while your screen shows an augmented view from its cockpit. It will be available in March for PS5 / PS4 and iOS.The game bundle includes one toy car, which you can drive in two modes: Campaign and Stunt. In Campaign, you set up gates around your room, which you drive the car through to complete the different maps (each includes unique challenges). Meanwhile, Stunt mode skips the gates, letting you drive wherever you want while performing digitally enhanced drifts, wheelies and burnouts to beat your high scores.It supports a solo campaign and multiplayer. When playing with a friend, they can bring their car for competitive racing or (on PlayStation only) play co-op using a single toy vehicle as the action switches between controllers.Velan StudiosThe bundled Chameleon car can appear onscreen as any of 22 different virtual vehicles with over 140 variants. It includes “endless options” for digital customization, including performance mods that change how the car moves across your space; for example, adding an acceleration boost in-game will make the toy car drive faster. In addition, you can play various mini-games, puzzles and challenges to unlock new vehicles and mods.Although the software is free to download, you’ll need to buy at least a $130 Standard Edition, which gets you the Chameleon car, four Rift gates and a charging cable. A $150 Collector’s Edition swaps in a “special edition” Chameleon while adding a (non-playable) McLaren Senna Hot Wheels die-cast toy. Hot Wheels: Rift Rally launches on March 14 and is available for pre-order starting today.

Last year’s OnePlus 10 Pro is set to be replaced by the OnePlus 11. There won’t be a OnePlus 11 Pro, and there wasn’t a regular OnePlus 10. Things could be more straightforward, but what are you going to do? Barring any spinoffs, this is OnePlus’ flagship phone, the focus of all its attention, development budget and everything else. Leaks meant we knew what the OnePlus 11 would look like long before it was officially unveiled. It has everything we loved about OnePlus in the past: a powerful, high-end processor, a vivid screen and (after a brief diversion) a competitive price tag ($699).The OnePlus 11 launches the same week as a trio of phones from Samsung, the dominant Android phone player. The 2023 Galaxy S series has phones that are both bigger and smaller, pricier and cheaper, than OnePlus’ newest phone. Fortunately, this new flagship has one trick to stand out from Samsung’s new lineup: incredibly fast 100-watt charging.DesignMat Smith/EngadgetOnePlus has made some changes to the design. The company drew inspiration from sports cars (it has collaborated with McLaren in the past) and swiss watches. This apparently led to a unibody slab with a stainless steel camera array. There are some fine details in the camera glass which gives it a little bit of a watch aesthetic, but it’s basically just another giant camera pop-out. The metal bezel protrudes slightly more than the glass, which should help avoid scratches. Initially, I thought it was a little too big and ostentatious, but it’s roughly equivalent to the unit on the iPhone 14 Pro – and the Pixel 7 Pro’s Cyclops camera bar is arguably even flashier.The OnePlus 11 also answered the pleas of the OnePlus faithful by reintroducing its Alert Slider. If you haven’t seen it on previous phones, it’s a metal slider just above the power button on the right edge that swaps between silent, ring and vibrate modes. OnePlus claimed in previous years that the removal was due to space demands inside the phones and that the slider would make a return, so the company has at least fulfilled that promise to its fans. For the rest of us, I’m not sure we need it. Then again, I’m the kind of person that keeps my phone on silent pretty much all the time.The phone comes in glossy gray-green (Eternal Green) and sparkling black (Titan Black) color options. I thought the black finish would have a gritty, 3D-printed feel to it, but it’s closer to slate – somehow smooth and grippy at the same time. I don’t understand the physics of it either. Meanwhile, the green version is a lot like last year’s phones. The shiny finish is unfortunately a canvas for all your fingerprints and smudges.The OnePlus 11 has a gorgeous 6.7-inch 2,048 × 1,080 OLED screen that can reach up to 120Hz refresh rates. Once again, there’s an LTPO panel that can now dip low at 1Hz when the always-on display (AOD) is on. OnePlus claims that, compared with typical 30Hz AODs, OnePlus 11’s 1Hz AOD consumes 30 percent less power. Of course, it’s not using much power to begin with as an AOD, but could lead to a little more battery life in the long run, even if it’s not represented in our typical battery rundown tests. Aside from the upgraded AOD capabilities, this screen is otherwise identical to the OnePlus 10 Pro – which isn’t a bad thing. It’s another area where OnePlus often goes toe-to-toe with the best smartphones out there, despite typically costing hundreds of dollars less.CameraMat Smith/EngadgetThe OnePlus 11’s primary camera is a new 50-megapixel sensor, with a f/1.8 aperture. It sounds similar to the OnePlus 10 Pro’s main camera, but uses a bigger 1/1.56-inch sensor. This works alongside a 115-degree ultrawide 48MP camera that pulls double-duty for macro shots.This time, OnePlus’ flagship has a 32MP telephoto camera, up from a measly 8MP on its predecessor. However, optical zoom tops out at 2x, while the lower-res OnePlus 10 Pro could punch in at up to 3.2x optical zoom. It’s an unusual change to make. Which is the better solution? While I didn’t have last year’s OnePlus 10 Pro to compare directly with the OnePlus 11, the images didn’t seem as muted as I remember. Of course, they weren’t as magnified, but given the higher-resolution, I can always crop in without ruining the results too much. It’s pretty much a manual digital zoom, cropping like this, but you benefit from a better sensor before you crop away the excess megapixels.Mat Smith/EngadgetThe OnePlus 11’s camera array, what it calls its third-generation Hasselblad Camera, is improved, and still comes with some addictive filters for stills and video. However, It doesn’t quite reach the pinnacle of smartphone photography, led by the Galaxy S22 Ultra, iPhone 14 Pro and Pixel 7 Pro, though.The OnePlus 11 seems to do its best work on landscape and street photography. There’s a Pro mode again, so you can dabble in RAW editing, but I was more than happy with the JPGs. The OnePlus 11 also features an AI Highlight video mode. The phone uses image processing to maintain even levels of exposure when recording video and shifting between areas of different lighting. I tested it out on a sunny afternoon, on a bridge, but I didn’t see too many tangible benefits to overexposure. It works a little better when you’re filming in a mostly dark situation, but, oddly, this is meant to be the standout software feature for this year’s OnePlus flagship – it’s not particularly remarkable.Performance and battery lifeMat Smith/EngadgetThe OnePlus 11 has the de facto top Android processor: the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. It’s powerful, sure, but the bigger benefits might come through longer battery life. According to the chip maker, its new Adreno GPU can offer up to 45 percent better power efficiency.OnePlus software doesn’t appear to have changed much since the OnePlus 10 Pro. OnePlus claims its HyperBoost Gaming Engine uses machine learning (and Qualcomm’s latest processor) to balance performance and battery drain. The caveat here is that it’s only compatible with major mobile titles like Genshin Impact. It’s also hard to tell whether it offers a discernible impact on games, when so many other phones are similarly specced and offer a similar experience.The OnePlus phone series typically offers decent battery life. So it’s no surprise that the OnePlus 11 clocked almost 20 hours on our video rundown test. Although the battery icon seemed a little ‘sticky’ around 100 percent after playing video for a good two hours. The only phones that beat that are the company’s own OnePlus 10T and the iPhone 14 Pro.While that’s great, the speed that OnePlus 11 can charge is even more impressive. 100W charging is here – the kind of wattage we get with laptops. There’s a compatible charger in the box, thankfully, but it’s proprietary tech, so you'll need this specific charger, this cable and OnePlus’ latest phone to hit those heady charging speeds. OnePlus says it takes 25 minutes to reach a full charge from empty, and in practice, that’s been accurate.The ability to plug my phone in for a brief stint (roughly ten minutes) and have it top up 50 percent is magical. However, there’s no wireless charging. It’s not a deal breaker for me but it’s definitely something to note as missing from a flagship phone. I’d take these heady charging speeds over wireless charging any day.Wrap-upMat Smith/EngadgetThe OnePlus 11 has a great screen (again), incredibly fast-charging (again) and cameras that are better than its predecessors. However, the supercharge speeds seem to be the only unique thing that the OnePlus 11 brings to the table. But is that enough to make you want to upgrade from an older phone, or choose a OnePlus over the competition?At $699, with 8GB of memory and 128GB of storage, that’s $100 less than last year’s flagship. It’s a much better deal than its predecessor – and this could be a deciding factor. The OnePlus 11 sits between midrange devices, like the Pixel 6a, and premium phones including Google’s Pixel 7 and Samsung’s Galaxy S23 series. In many ways, you get the best of both, but against the dominance of other phone makers, it needs to do more to distinguish itself.

Nintendo has scheduled its first Direct of the year. It will largely focus on games that are coming to Switch in the first half of 2023. You’ll be able to watch the Direct on February 8th at 5PM ET on the company’s YouTube channel.What Nintendo will feature during the stream largely remains a mystery, but we can read the tea leaves and speculate a bit. While it’s possible that we’ll get a deeper dive into The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom before that game arrives in May, it’d be surprising if there were nothing about it at all in this Direct. Rumor has it that Nintendo may suddenly release Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp this week after a lengthy delay related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If so, expect that to make an appearance.

Only adults 18 and older can sign up for Meta's Horizon Worlds at the moment, but according to The Wall Street Journal, that could change very, very soon. Meta is reportedly opening up its virtual reality social experience to younger players aged 13 to 17 as soon as this March as part of its efforts to grow Horizon's numbers and improve user retention. The Journal says it saw the information in a memo entitled "Horizon 2023 Goals and Strategy" in which Gabriel Aul, Meta's VP for the VR experience, outlined its goals for the first half of 2023.In the memo, Aul reportedly wrote that these younger users are the "true digital citizens of the metaverse" and that Meta needs to ensure that it serves them for Horizon to succeed. Meta spokesperson Joe Osborne told the publication that "[t]eens are already spending time in a variety of VR experiences on Quest, and [the company wants] to ensure that [it] can provide them with a great experience in Horizon Worlds as well, with age-appropriate tools and protections in place."Osborn didn't say what the experience will offer in the way of protecting young users. In 2021, The Journal reported that the company's own researchers found Instagram "harmful for a sizable percentage" of teens, particularly teenage girls. Meta paused its work on an Instagram for Kids as a result, and it has also launched a bunch of teen safety features for the app since then. It also automatically limited triggering or sensitive content for new users under 16.In addition to welcoming younger teens to Horizon, Meta is aiming to grow the game's monthly active users to 500,000 from 200,000 within the first half of the year. Perhaps more importantly at this point in time, it's targeting a retention rate of 20 percent. Apparently, Horizon had an 11 percent retention rate in January, which means only one in nine users returned to the experience the following month. Meta is hoping to achieve those goals by improving the service's reliability and performance and getting rid of bugs that may affect people's enjoyment.The company is aiming to release 20 new Horizon experiences built by third-party studios in an effort to win more people over, as well. Plus, it's apparently hoping to make the VR game a lot more accessible by rolling out a web version for mobile and desktopf by June. Meta teased the web version of the experience in the past, but the company missed its initial launch target last year. This year, the company is not only hoping to launch Horizon's web version within the next few months, it's also looking to have as many as 150,000 monthly cross-screen Horizon users in the first half of 2023.

This is your chance to grab one (or some) of Amazon's Echo Show displays at a discount if you've been planning to buy any of them. Several models of the smart display are currently on sale, and Amazon is even offering most of them for almost half their original price. You can get the second-generation Echo Show 5 released in 2021 for $45 or 47 percent less than its retail price of $85. And, yes, all its available colors — Charcoal, Deep Sea Blue and Glacier White — are being sold at that price. Even the version for kids, which comes with parental controls, one-year free access to Amazon's Kids+ service, and a two-year worry-free guarantee, is available for $45 right now. The Echo Show 5 for kids will typically set you back $95.We gave the Echo Show 5 a score of 85 in our review and recommended it for those who want an alarm clock for their nightstand. It also has great sound quality for its size, and it lets you snooze your alarm by tapping the top part of the device.If you're looking for a smart display for your living room or kitchen, however, the Echo Show 8 may be a better fit. It's currently on sale for $75, which is 42 percent less than its retail price of $130. The device, available in Charcoal and Glacier White, has an 8-inch HD touchscreen and a 13-megapixel camera, making it a better option for video calls. In comparison, the Echo Show 5 has a 5.5-inch screen and a 2-megapixel camera. We found Echo Show 8's audio to be superior to its smaller sibling's, as well.Finally, in case you'd rather have a wall-mountable smart display, the Echo Show 15 is also on sale for $225, or $55 less than retail. It has a 15.6-inch full HD screen surrounded by a white bezel. Since the whole device is housed in a black metal frame, it could look like a painting or a large picture frame if you use it to display artwork or photos. The device's large screen real estate also means you can display widgets and see various information at a glance.Shop Echo Show deals at AmazonFollow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

In the face of so much ChatGPT news and buzz, Google announced on Monday its own chatbot AI project, Bard, will be unveiled with more details at Wednesday's Google Presents event in Paris. Bard will serve as an "experimental conversational AI service," according to a blog post by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Monday. It uses Google's existing Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) platform, which the company has been developing for the past two years.However, it won’t be open to everyone, like ChatGPT currently is, which ruins the hype a little. Google is starting with a lightweight version of LaMDA, open to a select group of trusted users before scaling up. "We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information," Pichai said.As we’ll get into below, it’s a busy time for OpenAI’s chatbot tech. Microsoft has a surprise event later today, and that AI-generated Seinfeld stream (based on OpenAI’s GPT-3 Davinci model) was banned from Twitch.– Mat SmithThe biggest stories you might have missed

WhatsApp has introduced some new updates to Status, the feature introduced in 2017 as an answer to Snapchat and Instagram Stories. One of the key additions is a feature called Voice Status that gives you the ability set voice notes up to 30 seconds long as status updates. The company calls it a more personal way of providing updates, particularly if you're more comfortable talking rather than typing or creating a video.Another key update is a feature called Private Audience Selector that lets you choose who can view your status updates. It lets you select your audience for every status update you do, providing more granular control and convenience than the current privacy settings.If you're more of an emoji person, WhatsApp has also introduced Status Reactions, providing "a quick and easy way to respond to status updates from your friends or close contacts," WhatsApp wrote. It lets you reply to any status simply by swiping up on it and tapping one of eight emojis, rather than use other means like text, voice messages and stickers.Meanwhile, Status Profile Rings put a ring around your profile when you share a status update, and is visible in chat lists, group participant lists and contact info. Finally, you'll now see a preview of a link when you post it on your status, giving your contacts a better idea of what it is before they click.Some of the new features (status reactions, profile rings and link previews) were announced previously, but are now being highlighted as a group of Status updates, WaBetaInfo notes. The new features are rolling out to users globally and will be available to everyone "in the coming weeks."

The Switch just leaped over both the Game Boy and PlayStation 4 to become the third best-selling console of all time. The console has sold 122.55 million units overall as of the end of 2022, Nintendo announced in its earnings report, so it's is now behind only the DS and PlayStation 2 in lifetime sales.That's the only silver lining in a darker cloud, though. Switch unit sales for the nine-month period ending December 31st dropped to 14.91 million from 18.95 million the year before, and revenue declined 5.6 percent for the fiscal year ending in March. Game sales also fell by 4 percent over the same period, with the new Pokemon Scarlet/Violet titles (which totalled an impressive 20.61 million units) unable to offset the decline. As a result, the company has lowered its fiscal year forecast from 19 million to 18 million units with 5 million fewer games — continuing a downward trend from last year.Nintendo attributed the decline to the ongoing semiconductor shortage, with the lack of consoles affecting software sales too. However, Sony set a new sales record for PS5s last quarter with 7.1 million sold, up 82 percent year-over year.Nintendo's issues likely boil down to its aging hardware, as well. Buyers are going for the latest OLED model, with the older Switch and Switch Lite models seeing a decline. The Switch is now relatively underpowered compared to the latest Xbox Series and PS5 consoles, and Sony and Microsoft are also pouring money into games and subscriptions.Nintendo said last year that the transition to its next console is "a major focus for us," and it could start becoming more urgent soon. It'll be interesting to see if the Switch can hang around long enough to become the best selling console of all time, but Nintendo will have to sell around 33 million more units to surpass the PlayStation 2.

Elon Musk may have to think of a lot more ways to make Twitter Blue appealing to potential subscribers if he wants the subscription service to be a major source of revenue. According to The Information, only 180,000 people in the US have been paying for a Twitter subscription by mid-January, and that's apparently around 0.2 percent of the website's monthly active users. The publication said it saw the information on a document, which also revealed that 62 percent of the company's paying users reside in the US. That means Twitter has approximately 290,000 subscribers worldwide.Twitter Blue costs $8 a month for users who pay via web — or $7, if they pay for an annual subscription — and $11 for those who pay via Apple's or Google's app stores. Since the latter option gives the tech giants a cut of subscribers' payments, Twitter still only gets $8 a month from users overall. With the current number of paying users, the website is only set to earn $27.8 million a year from its subscription services. That said, Twitter has only just relaunched Blue in mid-December last year after a bumpy initial launch a month before that. It's bound to rack up more subscribers, though it remains to be seen if it can achieve the level of growth Musk wants to see.As The Information notes, Musk told Twitter employees last year that he wants half of the website's revenue to come from subscriptions. Since the company has to pay over $1 billion a year in interests alone from the loans Musk took out when he purchased the website, the executive is aiming to take in a revenue of $3 billion for 2023. Twitter has to have quite a lot of subscribers to earn half of that from Blue. One avenue the company is considering to earn more from its subscription services is to offer a higher-priced membership tier that allows users to browse the website with zero ads. Twitter is also reportedly planning to charge businesses $1,000 a month for their gold verification badges and an extra $50 a month for each account affiliated with them.

On Safer Internet Day (and with Valentine's Day fast approaching), Tinder is starting to roll out some new safety features and updates to some others. Users will now be able to take advantage of an incognito mode, which Tinder says is a "step up" from hiding your profile completely. Only folks that you Like will see you in their recommendations. That should give you more granular control over your visibility.In addition, you can block profiles that pop up in your suggestions. So, that could mitigate some awkwardness if you spot an ex or someone else from your life, such as (shudder) a family member. This follows a feature that allows users to block others based on their phone number.There's another new safety feature called long press reporting. If you receive an offensive message, you can tap and hold to swiftly report it. Tinder says that it hopes this will encourage more people to report bad behavior so it can take action against users who are breaking the rules.Meanwhile, Tinder has made some changes to features called "Are You Sure" (which asks folks to reconsider before sending a message with potentially harmful language) and "Does This Bother You," which encourages users to report inappropriate conversations. Tinder says the features will detect more language that it deems harmful or inappropriate, including hate speech as well as sexual harassment and exploitation. The company says that, since it added "Does This Bother You," it has received 46 percent more reports of messages containing harmful language.Along with these updates, Tinder is rolling out a series of Healthy Dating Guides in collaboration with No More, a campaign to end domestic violence and sexual assault. The guides are designed to help users spot red flags and protect themselves at every stage of the relationship. Starting today, Tinder is also running a campaign called Green Flags, which is about highlighting safety features and the steps people can take to safely date online.

When Twitter introduced its curated “For You” tab at the start of this year, the feature shipped with an oversight. If you closed the Twitter app or web client after switching to the platform’s reverse chronological “Following” timeline, both would default back to the For You feed after you came back. At the end of January, Twitter took an initial step to address that oversight, tweaking the web client to remember the tab you left off at before closing your tabs. At the time, the company said a similar fix was “coming soon” for Android and iOS. That fix is now available.

A Minecraft mad scientist has recreated The Legend of Zelda inside the blocky sandbox game without any third-party mods or resource packs. Fan and YouTuber C1OUS3R, who has also made Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros. inside Minecraft, took nearly a month to craft the Zelda tribute.The developer used command blocks, custom textures and other in-game features to recreate the 1986 NES classic. “I use Blockbench to create a flat version of Link from all sides so I can rotate it to make it look like he’s facing every direction,” C1OUS3R explained in a making-of video. “I would make a Voxel model like I did in the previous video games, however, it’s pretty much unnoticeable and takes 30 times longer, and I don’t really have the time for that.“I then overlaid this model over a carved pumpkin which is one of the items you can wear on your head in Minecraft. I then make the player invisible to make it look like you’re controlling Link. Then by using the data packs function folder, which is just command blocks in written form, I’m able to detect which way the player is moving based off armor stands and rotate the model to make it look like it’s moving. I then simply animate the textures, and boom. You have a controllable Link.”C1OUS3R said on Reddit (viaKotaku) they will release the playable creation, which runs through the first boss fight, once their YouTube video gets 5,000 likes. (It has over 500 at the time of publication.) The developer says they want to eventually release an entire gaming engine inside Minecraft. “It’s much easier to understand rather than something like Unity. I believe Minecraft has the ability to really help people get into game development.”

Apple's App Store policies require that the Chrome browser on iOS uses the WebKit engine rather than the usual Blink, but that isn't stopping Google from indulging in a "what if" scenario. The Register has noticed that Google recently started work on an experiment that would port Blink to iOS. The project is limited to the stripped-down "content_shell" app rather than Chrome, and the Chromium team working on the effort stresses that it's not a "shippable product." It's only meant to test graphics and input performance, the company says.In a statement, a Google spokesperson told Engadget the Blink port is only a "prototype" that's part of a larger open source initiative. It won't be available to the public, and the company will "continue to abide" by Apple's rules.It's not clear why Google wants to test Blink on iOS in the first place, though. If Apple's policies stay firm, Google won't be allowed to release any Blink-based software. Only those experienced enough to compile and run content_shell may get a taste of the experience.The timing may not be coincidental, though. The US government wants Apple and Google to open up their platforms, giving users ways to install apps that aren't governed by first-party store policies. Rumors have also swirled that Apple may allow third-party app stores on iOS to please European regulators. If Apple ever loosens its approach, Google's head start on porting Blink could help it switch Chrome's web engine relatively quickly.A change like that could shake up browser competition on iOS. Apple's WebKit requirement theoretically aids security by limiting the avenues for web exploits, but it also gives third-party browsers fewer ways to stand out — they can't use custom engines that might be faster or more feature-laden than Apple's Safari. As on Android or the desktop, an alternative browser would offer more than just a different interface.

People in Pakistan can once again use Wikipedia, three days after the country blocked the website over content that regulators deemed "sacrilegious." As TechCrunch notes, prime minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered officials to unblock Wikipedia after determining that the ban was “not a suitable measure to restrict access to some objectionable contents/sacrilegious matter on it.” Sharif's office said in a statement that the "unintended consequences of this blanket ban" outweighed the "benefits."The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) "degraded" access to Wikipedia last Wednesday, warning the site's operators that they had 48 hours to remove certain content or face repercussions. Wikipedia apparently demurred and the PTA blocked the site in Pakistan on Friday.Meanwhile, Sharif is establishing a cabinet committee to "explore and recommend alternative technical measures for removal or blocking access to objectionable content posted on Wikipedia and other online information sites, in view of our social, cultural and religious sensitivities, on the touchstone of proportionality." The committee is also being tasked with offering other suggestions aimed at "controlling unlawful content in a balanced manner."Sharif asked the committee to provide the cabinet with recommendations within one week. That doesn't give the committee members much time to fully assess and analyze the many, many considerations that go into content moderation.

Following a rocky release, it looks like Overwatch 2 is starting to hit a stride. On Monday, Blizzard detailed all the content that’s coming with the game’s latest season, and there’s plenty here for fans to be excited about. To start, season three will introduce the franchise’s first crossover event. Starting on March 7th, players will have the chance to earn cosmetic items inspired by One-Punch Man, the popular superhero series created by Japanese manga artist One. Specifically, one of the skins sees Doomfist recast to look like One-Punch protagonist Saitama.If One-Punch Man means little to you, thankfully there will be plenty of other skins you can earn this season. After season two took inspiration from Greek mythology, season three will feature cosmetics themed around "Asian mythology." Players who complete the latest premium battle pass will earn the new Amaterasu Kiriko skin. As the name suggests, the skin is inspired by the Japanese Shinto goddess of the sun. What’s more, Blizzard says it has listened to player feedback and made it easier to earn cosmetic items. The season three battle pass will feature 10 additional free reward tiers for players to unlock. Blizzard is also bringing almost all of the skins it released during the availability of the original Overwatch to Overwatch 2’s in-game store, and tweaking the price of those skins to make them cost fewer credits.On the gameplay front, players can look forward to a new Control map modeled after the Antarctic, a location that has important significance to Mei. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, Overwatch 2 will celebrate the holiday in not one but two ways. First, it’s adding a limited-time game mode that will see everyone in the match play as Hanzo. Second, Blizzard is finally giving fans something they’ve been waiting to get for a while. On February 13th, the studio will release Loverwatch, a dating sim you can play until the 28th through your browser. This “non-canon” text-based experience will allow you to woo either Mercy or Genji. Unlock the secret ending to earn a special Player of the Game highlight reel for use in Overwatch 2.

You might not have to wait long to see how Microsoft and OpenAI deepen their relationship. Microsoft has confirmed plans for an event tomorrow (invitations were sent out last week) at its Redmond headquarters at 1PM Eastern. The company will only say that chief Satya Nadella will share details on some "exciting projects," but it's expected to show its integration of ChatGPT into Bing and other uses of the conversational AI technology.Microsoft is already heavily invested in OpenAI's ecosystem with a DALL-E graphic design app, a natural language programming tool and a Teams Premium service with AI translations and chapters. ChatGPT is coming to Azure cloud services, too, and Microsoft just released a GPT-based text generator trained on medical literature. The rumored Bing feature may be its most prominent OpenAI collaboration yet, however. Rumors suggest Microsoft's search engine will use ChatGPT for conversation-style answers to questions. You might get exactly the information you need rather than cards and a list of search results.Microsoft first invested in OpenAI in 2019, and backed the startup again in 2021. Last month, it committed to a "multibillion dollar" deal that's unofficially believed to be worth $10 billion over several years.The news comes shortly after Google offered a first look at Bard, its take on a ChatGPT-style service. While Google eventually plans to make Bard public, it's starting out by offering a limited version to a handful of trusted users before scaling up. The firm wants to be sure Bard meets high standards for "quality, safety and groundedness" to avoid some of the ethical and factual problems seen with OpenAI's product.Both Google and Microsoft are under pressure. While Google was initially reluctant to release its description-based AI to the public, reports suggested the company had a change of heart after seeing ChatGPT as a threat to its search business. Microsoft, meanwhile, has long struggled to compete in search and faces fierce rivalries in both the cloud and productivity realms. OpenAI's tech theoretically gives Microsoft an advantage Google and others might not match for a while.

Sony is preparing to release its next-gen virtual reality headset for PlayStation 5 on February 22nd. While there have been suggestions that demand for $550 PlayStation VR2 isn't quite what the company expected, Sony has tried to assuage fans' concerns and answer any lingering questions they might have in a lengthy FAQ.The company reiterated that players will have more than 30 games to choose from during the launch window, which it defines as the first month. Among those are Horizon Call of the Mountain (a VR spin-off of the Horizon games), and VR modes for Resident Evil Village and Gran Turismo 7, which will both be free for folks who already own those games.Users won't automatically be able to play games from the original PS VR on PS VR2. As Sony explains, "PS VR2 is designed to deliver a truly next-generation VR experience, with advanced features such as haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, inside-out tracking, eye tracking and more. Due to this new approach to playing games in PS VR2, PS VR games are not compatible with PS VR2." However, several developers have created PS VR2 versions of existing games and some are offering free upgrades.Meanwhile, Sony says there are more than 100 games in development for PS VR2. Physical disc editions of some games will be available.There are three main ways you can use PS VR2, but it'll be important to check the compatibility for each game. That's especially true if you don't have enough free space for the roomscale mode, which requires a minimum play area of two square meters (6 ft 7 in × 6 ft 7 in). The standing and sitting modes require a play area of one square meter (3 ft 4 in × 3 ft 4 in), but you'll need to make sure you have enough space to move your arms and the Sense controllers around. You can set up virtual boundaries and receive warnings from your headset when you get close to the edge.Unlike with PS VR, you don't need to plug in a camera to your PS5 to use PS VR2. You can, however, film yourself while playing by connecting a PS5 HD Camera. There's the option to broadcast your footage as well. Although the PS5 only supports one headset at a time, friends and family who are in the room with you can watch what you're doing in-game in a 2D format on your TV.There's a cinematic mode that allows users to view non-VR content from their PS5 while wearing the headset, which could come in handy if someone wants to use the TV for something else. The downside is that you won't be playing 2D games or watching media in 4K. Cinematic mode is limited to a resolution of 1080p with HDR, although the refresh rate will max out at 120Hz.You also won't need a TV to use PS VR2 after the initial setup. So, if you wanted, you could use your PS5 and PS VR2 on the train if you don't mind lugging them around and annoying fellow passengers. You could even take it on a camping trip if you were so inclined.The FAQ touches on some other key points, including accessibility. All the accessibility features that are available on PS5 will be present on PS VR2, except for the Zoom function. There are parental controls too.

Twitch has banned “Nothing, Forever,” the AI-generated Seinfeld stream, for at least 14 days following a transphobic and homophobic outburst. It’s the latest example of “hate in, hate out” when AI chatbots are trained on offensive content without adequate moderation.Like Seinfeld, “Nothing, Forever” rotates between standup bits and scenes in the comedian’s apartment (he’s called “Larry Feinberg” in the AI version). As first reported by Vice, during one of the recent AI-scripted standup acts, the Seinfeld counterpart suggested that being transgender is a mental illness. In what almost seemed like an awareness of the material’s offensiveness, the AI comedian quickly added, “But no one is laughing, so I’m going to stop. Thanks for coming out tonight. See you next time. Where’d everybody go?”Although Twitch hasn’t confirmed that the “joke” was the reason for the ban, the stream was removed soon after the problematic segment aired. The program’s creators blame the hurtful rant on a model change that inadvertently left the stream without moderation tools.“Earlier tonight, we started having an outage using OpenAI’s GPT-3 Davinci model, which caused the show to exhibit errant behaviors (you may have seen empty rooms cycling through),” a staff member wrote on Discord. “OpenAI has a less sophisticated model, Curie, that was the predecessor to Davinci. When davinci started failing, we switched over to Curie to try to keep the show running without any downtime. The switch to Curie was what resulted in the inappropriate text being generated. We leverage OpenAI’s content moderation tools, which have worked thus far for the Davinci model, but were not successful with Curie. We’ve been able to identify the root cause of our issue with the Davinci model, and will not be using Curie as a fallback in the future. We hope this sheds a little light on how this happened.”TwitchThe team elaborated in another Discord post (viaThe Verge). “We mistakenly believed that we were leveraging OpenAI’s content moderation system for their text generation models. We are working now to implement OpenAI’s content moderation API (it’s a tool we can use to verify the safeness of the content) before we go live again, and investigating secondary content moderation systems as redundancies.”Although the team sounds genuinely apologetic, stressing that the bigoted rant was a technical error that doesn’t represent their views, it reiterates the importance of consistent AI moderation. You may remember Microsoft’s Twitter chatbot, which only lasted about 16 hours after users taught it to spew conspiracy theories, racist views and misogynistic remarks. Then there was the bot trained entirely on 4chan, which turned out exactly as you’d expect. Whether “Nothing, Forever” returns or not, the next time a team of developers is faced with a choice between avoiding unexpected downtime and making sure those filters are in place, pick the latter.

ChatGPT, the automated text generation system from OpenAI, has taken the world by storm in the two months since its public beta release but that time alone in the spotlight is quickly coming to an end. Google announced on Monday that its long-rumored chatbot AI project is in fact real and very much on the way. It's called Bard and we expect to hear a lot more about it during Wednesday's "Google Presents" event from Paris.Bard will serve as an "experimental conversational AI service," per a blog post by Google CEO Sundar Pichai Monday. It's built atop Google's existing Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) platform, which the company has been developing for the past two years."Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models," Pichai declared. "It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses." Whether that reliance on the internet results in bigoted or racist behavior, as seemingly every chatbot before it has exhibited, remain to be seen.The program will not simply be opened to the internet as ChatGPT was. Google is starting with the release of a lightweight version of LaMDA, which requires far lower system requirements than its full-specced brethren, for a select group of trusted users before scaling up from there. "We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information," Pichai said. "We’re excited for this phase of testing to help us continue to learn and improve Bard’s quality and speed."Chatting with internet users is only the next step in Google's larger AI mechanizations. Pichai notes that as user search requests become more complex and nuanced, "you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web," Pichai said. He added that such features would be rolling out to users "soon." Select developers will be invited to explore the commercial API running atop LaMDA, dubbed Generative Language API, next month.Pichai didn't share many specifics on what Bard will actually be capable of, beyond the flowery "[it's] a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old," prose he offered. Expect more details to come to light during the company's "Google Presents" event live from Paris, this Wednesday, February 8th.

It’s hard to believe, but Apex Legends is four years old this month. And with the game’s 16th season set to debut on February 14th, developer Respawn Entertainment is promising to shake things up. “Nothing is safe and there are going to be some pretty significant changes that we’ve been working on for a while,” the studio said in a blog post it published on Monday.One of those changes is a game mode players have been asking Respawn to add since launch. The studio will allow you to queue for team deathmatch games for a limited time. The mode will see two teams of six vie for supremacy. The first team to secure 30 kills wins the round. You’ll need to win two rounds to take the match. At the start of a deathmatch game, you’ll pick your character and one of five weapon loadouts. You can change both between respawns.At the same time, Respawn is removing Arenas, the game’s current spin on deathmatch. The studio says the 3v3 game mode wasn’t meeting its goal of being a good place to master Apex’s combat mechanics. On March 7th, Respawn will introduce Mixtape, a permanent rotating playlist of limited-time game modes. The playlist will allow you to play favorites like Control, Gun Run and, yes, Team Deathmatch. The season will also add a new energy weapon called the Nemesis for players to master. It’s an assault rifle that fires a four-round burst, and you can hold down the trigger to continue firing.Season 16 won’t see the introduction of a new playable character. That’s because Respawn wants to tweak the existing ones first. In addition to balance changes targeting Lifeline, Seer and Wraith to start, the developer is adding a reworked class system. Respawn will assign each Legend to one of five classes: Assault, Recon, Skirmisher, Controller or Support. Each class will have access to a unique perk. For instance, it sounds like Support characters will have new ways to revive their teammates. Respawn has promised to share more information about all the Legends changes closer to the release of the new season.Respawn is adding a new orientation match system that will pit new players against bots to make the game more approachable to newbies. “Our goal with Orientation Matches is to create a lower-pressure environment where new players can get their bearings, learn the core mechanics, and have a little more space to breathe while they learn how to play Apex Legends,” the studio said.It wouldn’t be much of an anniversary season if the game didn’t have something for players to collect. In the first two weeks of the season, you can unlock Crypto and Ash by logging into the game. You’ll also unlock thematic packs for both of them.

Netflix is adding two more releases to its excellent library of games. The streaming giant announced Monday it recently secured exclusive mobile rights to Dust & Neon and Highwater, two upcoming titles from indie publisher Rogue Games. Of the two, the former will arrive first when it hits Android, iOS, PC and Nintendo Switch on February 16th. As with past Netflix releases, you can download and play Dust & Neon for free on mobile, provided you subscribe to the service. The same will go for Highwater when it arrives at a later date. Additionally, neither game will include ads or in-app microtransactions.Rogue Games describes Dust & Neon as a rogue-lite twin-stick shooter. Stylistically, the game looks like a mix of Steamworld Dig and West of Dead. One interesting facet of gameplay is that you manually reload your firearms. Each weapon has its own reload animation, and there are almost 2,000 guns to find in the game, according to Rogue Games. Highwater, meanwhile, is an adventure strategy game set in a world ravaged by climate change. It’s a title with a fair amount of excitement around it, partly due to the fact that it was first shown off during Summer Game Fest last year.

Cloud gaming libraries normally get larger, but Amazon Luna's appears to be shrinking — for now, at least. 9to5Googlenotes that the paid Luna+ tier will lose 53 games in February. Many of these are older or niche titles you won't necessarily miss, but that does mean losing classics like No More Heroes (gone February 11th) as well as more recent titles like The Medium (February 9th).We've asked Amazon for comment. In a statement to 9to5Google, a spokesperson said only that Amazon was "refreshing" its content as part of a goal to keep its collection "as fresh as possible."The issue, as you might guess, is that this isn't an isolated situation. Amazon dropped another 46 games from Luna+ in December, and some of these were from well-known franchises like the Yakuza series. CloudDosagereports the February cull will leave Luna+ with 175 games. That could make it a tough sell if you're willing to pay for variety. Microsoft's Game Pass and Sony's PlayStation Plus Premium are more expensive, but promise access to hundreds of games (if frequently from the back catalog).The shrinking selection doesn't come at a great time, either. Google shut down Stadia just last month, and that service didn't bleed games. Amazon's platform won't necessarily suffer the same fate, but it's not entering a thriving market — and those rivals that are left sometimes offer perks you won't find with Luna, such as GeForce Now's 240Hz mode.

Fans of HBO's The Last of Us who are also into football were facing a bit of a quandary this weekend: catch the latest episode live and avoid the risk of spoilers, or tune into the Super Bowl? Thankfully, HBO Max is making that decision much easier. The fifth episode of the excellent adaptation of Naughty Dog's game will hit the streaming service and HBO On Demand two days early.You'll be able to stream the episode starting at 9PM ET this Friday. It will still air in its usual 9PM ET timeslot on HBO's cable channel on Sunday, but many fans may opt to watch the titanic tussle between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles instead.This is a smart, one-off move from HBO as The Last of Us is already a massive hit, with viewership figures that have grown from week to week. It has already been renewed for a second season. The linear airing of the next episode is likely to get hammered in the ratings by the Super Bowl, but this could help HBO maintain the show's momentum and distance the TLOU discourse from football this weekend.This isn't the only time that The Last of Us is facing stern competition throughout its first season. Last night, it went up against the Grammy Awards and the season finale will air the same night as the Oscars. The Banshees of Inisherin is great ]and all (I still have to catch up on most of the Best Picture nominees), but I know what I'll be watching on March 12th.In case you haven't checked out HBO's take on The Last of Us yet, you can watch the first, feature-length episode for free on HBO Max if you're in the US. Folks in the UK can catch the spectacular premiere on YouTube.

Folks who are in the market for a great smartphone at an excellent price should definitely consider these deals on Google's Pixel 7 lineup. At Amazon, the Pixel 7 is down to $499, which is $150 off the standard price. The Pixel 7 Pro has received an identical discount, as it has dropped to $749.Over at Best Buy, however, the phones have fallen to $399 and $599, respectively. While those are the best prices we've seen for either phone, they only apply if you choose the "Activate Today" option. You'd need to immediately activate the phone on AT&T, Google Fi, Sprint, T-Mobile or Verizon, as Android Police points out. That may not make this option ideal if you use a smaller carrier or want to give a Pixel to someone else.We scored the Pixel 7 a 90 and the Pixel Pro 7 a 92 in our review. We like the updated design, solid battery life (almost 18 hours in our testing), upgraded software features powered by Android 13 and the 90Hz display of the Pixel 7. On the downside, we felt that Google hadn't improved the general performance despite using a new Tensor G2 chip, while the lack of mmWave 5G support on the base model was disappointing.Still, there's a ton to like about the Pixel 7. The camera tech, which includes an unblurring tool that even works on old photos from other devices, is excellent and features like audio message transcription are very welcome.The larger display, better camera system and higher refresh rate of the Pixel 7 Pro might make it worth opting for that model. However, the Pixel 7 devices aren't as powerful as higher-end Android devices and iPhones. Meanwhile, some people might be tempted to wait for the rumored Pixel 7a, but that's not expected until Google I/O in May.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

It's a good time to buy a smartwatch if you're committed to improving your fitness this year. Amazon is selling the 41mm GPS Apple Watch Series 8 with a Product Red case and matching Sport Band for $329, or a steep $70 off. That's the best price we've seen for Apple's latest wearable to date, and could make it an easy choice if you're an iPhone user. The latest 40mm GPS Apple Watch SE in Starlight is also discounted to just $219 (normally $249) if you're happy with the essentials.The Apple Watch Series 8 is a modest update compared to its predecessor, but that still makes it one of the best smartwatches on the market. It's fast with a beautiful display, a wide range of apps and tight integration with the Apple ecosystem. Crash detection can help notify first responders in an emergency, while a temperature sensor can help users tracking their ovulation cycles. This is the smartwatch you want if you're an iPhone owner and value all-round performance.It's not for everyone. Android users can't even consider it, of course, but you may want a dedicated fitness watch if detailed exercise tracking is vital. You may also want to look at alternatives (including the Apple Watch Ultra) if you want more than a day of battery life with full functionality. For that matter, there's a chance the Apple Watch Series 8 is overkill. If you don't care for an always-on display or advanced health sensors, the second-gen SE offers many of the 8's core features at a considerably lower price.Buy Apple Watch SE at Amazon - $219Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

For digital artists or those who just prefer the feel of writing out notes with their hand, we think the second-generation Apple Pencil is, unsurprisingly, the best iPad stylus you can buy. Its chief issue is that it's usually expensive, but if you've been thinking of grabbing one, a new discount has brought the device back down to $90 at Amazon and Target. Though we've seen this deal a few times in the past, it still comes within a dollar of the lowest price we've tracked and $39 below Apple's MSRP.For the unfamiliar, both the first- and second-gen Apple Pencils are specifically designed to work with iPads (and only iPads). Neither device forces you to deal with Bluetooth, and both offer system-wide pressure sensitivity across iPadOS, so the harder you press down, the heavier your lines get.This latest Pencil released back in 2018, but it remains a substantial upgrade over the original. While both versions perform reliably, the second-gen model can magnetically attach and charge against the edge of a compatible iPad, instead of forcing you to connect over a Lightning port or dongle. Its flatter sides make it less prone to rolling away, and there's a handy double-tap feature that lets you quickly swap between drawing tools and an eraser in certain apps. With the latest iPad Pros, you can also interact with UI elements just by hovering the Pencil over the tablet's display.Besides its price, the Pencil's chief hang-up is compatibility. The second-gen model works with the fourth-gen iPad Air and up, any 11-inch iPad Pro, the third-gen 12.9-inch iPad Pro and up and the sixth-gen iPad mini. Any older models aren't supported, nor are the 9th- or 10th-gen iPads Apple sells today. Still, if you own a compatible model and plan on using your stylus often, the second-gen Pencil is still your best bet, and this discount makes it a little more accessible. If you only want a pen for casual doodling and note-taking, meanwhile, we still like the Logitech Crayon as a cheaper alternative.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

I’ve never been a fan of Valentine’s Day. Or rather, I’m not a fan of the traditional gifts given on Valentine’s Day, like chocolates and flowers. Flowers die, and you may get sick of yet another box of so-so candy from Russell Stover or Whitman’s. And I’m not alone; lots of people would prefer a PlayStation 5 to a parcel of purple pansies. If your loved one is a gamer, why not show them your affection with something that actually makes their hobby more enjoyable (and won’t need to be watered)?8BitDo Pro 2Maybe you love playing games together on a Nintendo Switch, but you’re far less fond about having to split the teeny tiny Joy-Con controllers. Why not upgrade the experience with 8BitDo’s Pro 2 controller, shaped to fit comfortably in most hands, highly customizable and available in a few colors to fit a few gamer styles. It also works with PC, macOS and even the Raspberry Pi if your gamer likes to tinker.Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2When you really want to pamper your Xbox player, why not upgrade them from the standard gamepad to the Elite Controller? This premium accessory looks classy and feels great in the hand, thanks to its rubberized grips and interchangeable thumbsticks. The paddles on the back add yet another control scheme for your player to take advantage of, and the dual triggers are even adjustable for the type of game being played.Scuf Instinct ProIf you’re not a fan of the paddle style of the Elite Controller, know that the Scuf Instinct Pro offers a lot of the same features with a different twist. The back features two horizontal paddles that fit nicely under the fingers, and the hex pattern on the grips is great at wicking away sweat. Pro gamers will especially love the Instant Triggers, which can switch to a mouse-like click at the flip of a switch.SteelSeries Arctis 1Wireless headsets are a dime a dozen these days, but one that can work seamlessly with the Nintendo Switch and Android phones are still somewhat rare. Of those, the SteelSeries Arctis 1 is probably still the best. It’s sleek, comfortable and highly portable, connecting to devices via the easy USB-C dongle. Even if your loved one already has a wireless gaming headset in their arsenal, this is one that’s made to travel and makes a great buy.Razer Kraken KittyNot every gamer accessory has to be intimidating and hardcore. Razer makes a great line of products aimed at gamers who don’t want all-black everything – or those that really like pink – and they don’t compromise on quality. The Kraken Kitty is famous for its kawaii design that looks great and feels great, making it ideal for long hours streaming on Twitch or YouTube. If you’re not into the cotton candy look, the headset is also available in black for a grimmer style.Logitech Litra GlowStreaming is the hot thing for a lot of players right now, whether they do it for fun or profit. But it can take a bit of an investment to get started, so gifting them some of that gear is a great idea. Sure, a camera is an obvious necessity, but good lighting is also key and Logitech’s new Litra Glow will create bright, even light that’s easy to hook up thanks to the company’s expertise and software.Logitech StreamCamIf your gamer is in the market for a new webcam, preferably one that can stream for both PC and mobile, the Logitech StreamCam is right up their alley. It’s easy to use, sure, but the real appeal is that it can film in either landscape or portrait mode, making it ideal to create content for not just YouTube and Twitch, but also TikTok and Instagram.Elgato Stream Deck MiniBeyond a webcam and a mic, one tool that’s becoming increasingly common for streamers is an Elgato Stream Deck. The sheer amount of customization options might seem a bit intimidating at first, but the company makes a smaller “mini” version with six buttons for triggering various actions, set up via the incredibly easy software. If your gamer is already streaming with ease, you can step up to the larger and more expensive Stream Deck MK.2 instead, which features more buttons and a customizable faceplate.Animal Crossing Winter Collector’s BoxNot every gamer gift has to be one used to play games with — some can just be an expression of style, like this adorable Animal Crossing Collector’s Box. For only $40, your player gets an adorable winter-themed tote bag, a heat-reactive mug and coasters for their favorite hot drink and, of course, a fuzzy blanket for curling up on the couch.Danielle Nicole Zelda WalletForget the expensive jewelry, give your gamer a bit of Zelda bling this Valentine’s Day with this new Zelda-themed wallet from Danielle Nicole. The bag features 12 card slots, a coin purse and plenty of room for cash as well. Best of all is how subtle it is in gold and white, so your player can get their geek on even at the fanciest functions.

PC shipments are plunging due to a tough economy and the pandemic recovery, and that's proving to be especially painful for Dell. The company is laying off about five percent of its workforce, or roughly 6,650 employees, to cope with a "challenging global economic environment." Earlier cost reduction measures like an external hiring freeze weren't enough, according to operations chief Jeff Clarke. A market that "continues to erode" requires further action, he says.The layoffs include organizational changes and "resets," Clarke says. This includes streamlined sales and services, as well as engineering that focuses on "priority offerings." Bloombergnotes the job cuts will bring Dell's employee count to its lowest in six years, and 39,000 below what it had at the start of the pandemic in January 2020.Dell was one of the major beneficiaries of the pandemic as people rushed to buy PCs for remote work. Now that the boom is over, however, the firm's dependence on computers (approximately 55 percent of its revenue) is becoming a liability — particularly in an economic climate where purchasing power is dropping. Gartner and IDC both estimate that Dell's shipments plunged 16 percent in 2022 compared to the year before, and 37 percent in the last quarter. That's one of the worst declines among major PC vendors, and only Acer fared worse in the fourth quarter with a 41 percent drop.This is just the latest in a series of layoffs this year, and it comes just months after key rival HP said it would lay off as many as 6,000 workers. Few tech companies have avoided taking a hit in recent months, and even relatively successful brands like Apple are still grappling with falling sales. Simply speaking, Dell might only recover once the industry as a whole has turned a corner.

I almost never leave the house without some device dedicated to exercising the creative part of my brain. Sometimes this is as simple as a camera or a field recorder. Other times I bring my Teenage Engineering PO-33 with me. It’s not that my phone and a few apps couldn’t accomplish the same thing. It’s just less satisfying. Less tactile.I have also made no bones about my love of strange, esotericmusic gear. Bastl Instruments’ Microgranny fits the bill for both these wants. It’s tiny, battery-powered and super weird. But I didn’t click with it immediately. I owned a Microgranny 2 briefly a few years back and ended up selling it. Yet, there was something about its crunchy lofi character that I couldn’t shake. So when Bastl Instruments launched the $246Microgranny Monolith, I decided I should give it another shot.HardwareTerrence O'Brien / EngadgetThe Monolith is the Microgranny in its “final form.” Though, ultimately, it’s not terribly different from the Microgranny 2 that I slightly regret parting ways with. It’s a 5.5 x 3 x 1.8 inch monophonic sampler powered by a 9v battery (or 9v guitar pedal power cord). It has a built-in microphone for capturing the world around you in glorious 22,050Hz, 8-bit fidelity, as well as a line in and a microSD card preloaded with samples. There’s also a full-size MIDI in and audio out jack on the back.The controls are pretty easy to figure out, though there is a slight learning curve to things like the recording and instant loop features. On the front are the six “big buttons” for playing back your samples, each of which also has a shift function. There’s also six smaller buttons and six knobs for controlling various parameters. All of this is in the exact same layout, with the exact same labeling as the Microgranny 2.Physically, the only notable differences are in build quality. The Monolith is made out of dense PCB material instead of acrylic. And the knobs and buttons are all much more satisfying than the usable, but kind of toy-like ones found on the Microgranny 2. The text is also easier to read thanks to the brighter font and dark case. All-in-all, it’s a substantial physical upgrade.The one thing that hasn’t changed, that I really wish would have, is how you put batteries in the Microgranny. Bastl is a small company that makes instruments for weirdos, so I try to cut it some slack. But replacing the batteries on this thing is aggravating. You have to unscrew the bottom plate and take it off, which inevitably causes the sides of the instrument to also come off. Then, when you’re done shoving a 9v battery in there, you have to carefully realign all the pieces and hope everything stays in place while you screw it back together.Fighting with the battery is really only an issue if you want to take the Microgranny out of the house with you. Otherwise you can use a standard 9V AC adapter, like the one most guitar pedals use. Thankfully, I happen to have plenty of those laying around. Obviously, this somewhat negates the portability factor, but as I’ll get to in a bit, that turned out to be less of a lure to me than expected. It’s also worth noting that the output is a little noisy when turned all the way up, so definitely stop at about 75 percent if you’re not into low constant whines.GranularTerrence O'Brien / EngadgetWhat sets the Microgranny apart in a sea of portable and affordable music gear is that it’s a granular sampler. Now, Bastl is careful not to use the words “granular synthesizer” in most of its marketing materials. And that’s smart. Because if you’re coming here expecting the lush, alien and often ambient soundscapes usually associated with granular synthesis you will be sorely disappointed.For one, as mentioned earlier, the Microgranny is monophonic. That means you can’t play chords on it unless you’re sampling one. And two, the sound engine can only playback a single “grain” at a time. On something like the 1010music Lemondrop, for instance, you can get up to 16 bits of an audio file running simultaneously, creating complex and often unpredictable textures from the source material. The Microgranny, well, is more like a playable CD skip. But once you embrace that unabashed lofi nature, that’s when you can really connect with it.Engadget · Bastl Instruments Microgranny Monolith sound samplesUsing the controls on the front, you can change the size of the grains, but you’ll never get smooth single cycle waveforms even at the smallest end. Instead the sound is broken and glitchy, like a corrupted MP3 you downloaded from Kazaa in 2002. You can control the speed and direction the playhead travels through your sample using the shift speed knob. It’s almost like very rudimentary time stretching. It doesn’t change the pitch of the sample you're playing back, but it can drag it out in an unnatural and artifact-riddled way.Then there is sample rate, which changes both the pitch and speed of a sound, similar to an old school sampler. And crush – an absolutely unforgiving bit-crusher — that takes the already crusty character of the Microgranny to full meltdown even at lower settings. When cranked, crush turns any sample into what can only be described as an Atari 2600 trying to approximate the thunderous approach of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.Terrence O'Brien / EngadgetThere are also knobs for controlling the start and end points of a sample, as well as the attack and release. They’re basic things that you’ll need, but don’t impart much character. The other important controls are all shift functions found under the big buttons. Hold down FN and press those to turn on legato, set a sample to repeat, sync grain playback to a MIDI clock signal and randomly shift the playback head.Then there are two other options – RNDMZR – which does what you’d expect: randomize all the parameters for the last played sample. This is the quickest way to complete aural chaos. And “tuned,” which has two different effects. For one it locks the sample rate options to semitones, instead of smooth pitch shifting. And two, when you connect a MIDI keyboard it will transpose the sample for melodic playback. When this is inactive, a keyboard will play back individual grains instead. The latter sounds great in theory, but I’ve honestly had a hard time finding a practical use for it.In useTerrence O'Brien / EngadgetInitially I was excited about the idea of the Microgranny as a go-everywhere, granular noise maker. Obviously everyone’s tastes and use cases are different, but I’ve found that it’s just not ideal for me in that role. For one, the limitations of the monophonic granular engine mean that it’s kind of hard to create something full and musical by simply snatching samples around me.There’s no sequencer, so I can’t save a fun found-sound drum pattern for later use back in my home studio. I have to remember what I played and rely on my admittedly lackluster sense of rhythm. And the microphone just isn’t particularly sensitive. Even with the input cranked the source needs to be very loud. I turned my phone up all the way, placed the speaker less than half an inch away from the mic, and it was still pretty quiet. Your better bet is using the input jack directly connected to another audio source, like a synth or external mic.While the granular engine is definitely fun for getting glitchy stuttering sounds, I find it’s best deployed in moderation. Treating the Microgranny as a more traditional (if exceptionally lofi) sampler, though, delivers extremely satisfying results. Since there’s no way to play a sample chromatically in real time on the device itself, that does mean you’d need to sample individual notes or chords to create something melodic without the aid of a MIDI keyboard. Or, you could take one sample, copy and paste it across the six big buttons and adjust the sample rate of each to create a scale.This isn’t to say that the Microgranny isn’t a fun or melodic instrument. It’s just that it feels more useful in the studio than out. I love it for creating rhythmic loops that I can import into my DAW or processing samples to get a nice digital patina on them. And with a MIDI keyboard attached you can get that crispy pitched sound that makes the Casio SK series of keyboards so sought after (and insanely expensive) even 28 years later.It’s not the easiest thing to do, but you can even chop up samples on the Microgranny by copying and pasting the same sound across multiple buttons and changing the starting point. It can be a little fiddly since you’re dealing with a really basic seven-segment LED display. But it can be done. This was honestly some of the most fun I had jamming with the Microgranny on its own. Load up some disco or house tracks and you can easily flip them into some lofi Daft Punk-type beats. Max out that crush knob and well, you’ve just created the ideal soundtrack for a rave at the end of the world.Wrap-upTerrence O'Brien / EngadgetI think I probably gave up on the Microgranny too quickly the first time, since I was too focused on the mobile and granular aspects. When I couldn’t create otherworldly clouds of atmospherics or sketch out a song with multiple tracks, I went straight back to my PO-33 without digging any deeper. I failed to truly explore its potential as a more studio-bound instrument.At $246 it’s not expensive, but it’s costly and quirky enough that it will only appeal to a particular niche that wants the most authentic lofi sampling they can get. Obviously you can change the sample and bit rate of a file on your computer. But – and this is my opinion – the Microgranny just imparts more character. And it’s the sort of character that’s hard to get without springing for a vintage sampler that might not be in perfect working order. So, if your preferred flavor of lofi grit is more cheap 80s digital than aging tape deck, the Bastl Instruments Microgranny Monolith is definitely worth checking out.

Sony's latest WH-1000XM5 wireless ANC headphones are among the best we've ever tested, thanks to improved sound quality, a comfortable fit and incredible active noise cancellation (ANC). Now is a good time to pick up a pair, because they're currently on sale at Amazon for $348, for a savings of 13 percent ($52) over the regular $400 price.The WH-1000XM5 scored an excellent 95 in our Engadget review, thanks to improvements in nearly every way over our previous favorite headphones, the WH-1000XM4 (which are also on sale for $300 right now, by the way). Perhaps the biggest improvement was in fit and comfort thanks to the more optimal weight distribution, synthetic leather ear cups and slightly reduced weight.Sound quality also went up, due to the new 30mm carbon fiber drivers that deliver punchier bass. We also saw more clarity that helps you hear fine detail, along with improved depth that makes music more immersive. And Sony's DSEE Extreme sound processing recovers detail lost to compression, without any noticeable impact on sound quality.The ANC is equally impressive. With double the number of noise cancellation microphones found in the M4, along with a new dedicated V1 chip, the M5 does a better job at minimizing background noise. And in terms of the microphone, we found that the M5 offers superior call quality over its predecessor. Moreover, you get 30 hours of listening time with ANC enabled, enough for the longest of flights.The main drawback of the WH-1000XM5 headphones is the $400 price tag, but you can pick them up right now in either silver or black for just $348 and save a cool $52. Just act fast before the sale ends.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Don't worry if you're still scrambling to get a streaming media player in time for Super Bowl LVII next week — you can get a very capable device for less than you might pay for drinks and snacks. Amazon is once again selling the Fire TV Stick 4K Max at a record low price of $35. That's $20 below the usual, and an easy choice if you want high-quality live sports on a budget. There are also discounts on the Fire TV Stick Lite (down to $20) and the Fire TV Stick 4K (down to $30).The Fire TV Stick 4K Max is still one of the more powerful streaming dongles you can buy. It can handle 4K HDR in multiple formats (including Dolby Vision and HDR10+) with Dolby Atmos surround, and it's speedy enough for cloud gaming. You can expect access to many apps and services, including sports providers like ESPN. Not surprisingly, it's also well-integrated with Amazon's Alexa ecosystem. You can use the voice-capable remote to control your smart home, and you can even get a live view of your video doorbell while you're watching the big game.This is still a budget streamer. The 8GB of storage won't be practical for on-device games, and you'll miss out on Fire TV Cube perks like hands-free voice and home theater device integration. You'll also want to look elsewhere if you're heavily invested in a non-Amazon platform — the Apple TV 4K and Google Chromecast are better (if often more expensive) choices for their respective brands' devotees. At $35, though, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max is difficult to top in terms of sheer value for money.Buy Fire TV Stick Lite - $20Buy Fire TV Cube - $125Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Apple is considering a more expensive iPhone “Ultra” that would slot in above the iPhone Pro, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. He says the device could arrive as early as next year. Gurman also pointed to recent comments made by Apple CEO Tim Cook. “The iPhone has become so integral [to] people’s lives,” he told analysts when asked if the increasing average price of the iPhone was sustainable. “I think people are willing to really stretch to get the best they can afford in that category.”Gurman hinted the iPhone Ultra could feature a faster processor, better camera hardware and an even larger display. “There also may be more future-forward features, such as finally dropping the charging port,” he adds. Apple already uses “Ultra” to tag its top M2 processors and Watches. Is the iPhone next?– Mat SmithThe biggest stories you might have missed

The latest game to get the reverse-engineering treatment is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Neowin has reported. A GitHub user called snesrev has fully ported the game to PC using over 80,000 lines of code, while adding some extra enhancements. Those include support for enhanced aspect ratios and pixel shaders, a higher quality world map, secondary item slots and more.The version was re-engineered in C code, and requires libraries from the SNES emulator LakeSNES. It features all the same levels, enemies and puzzles of the original game, and can even run the original machine code alongside the ported C version. Another GitHub user, xander-haj, showed exactly how it works compared to an emulation in a YouTube video from last year.The ported version of Link joins other recent projects, notably Star Wars: Dark Forces, that have been fully ported to PC. Unlike emulation, which effectively transforms your PC into an old console, reverse-engineered games are rebuilt from scratch, which allows for added features like the widescreen and pixel shades inserted by snesrev.Savvy users could create this build on Windows, Mac, Linux and even the Nintendo Switch, with more platforms potentially doable down the road. It's on shaky legal ground, however. For example, after someone did a very cool PC port of the classic Super Mario 64, Nintendo cracked down and links to the download disappeared from file-hosting websites.