The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has given Waymo permission to expand its robotaxi operations to Los Angeles and more locations in the San Francisco Peninsula despite opposition from local groups and government agencies. "Waymo may begin fared driverless passenger service operations in the specified areas of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Peninsula, effective today," the regulator wrote in its decision (PDF). As CNBC notes, Waymo has been testing its driverless vehicles in those locations for a while now, but this decision will allow it to charge passengers for their robotaxi rides. 

In the CPUC's decision, it admitted that it received letters of protests regarding Waymo's expansion from the City of South San Francisco, the County of San Mateo, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority and the San Francisco Taxi Workers Alliance. And, it received those letters before the agency suspended Waymo's expansion efforts in February for up to 120 days following the Alphabet-owned company's revelation that it had issued a recall for its vehicles. Waymo reported back then that two of its robotaxis collided with a backwards-facing pickup truck that was being towed in December 2023 because its software predicted the truck's movements incorrectly. The company had to develop and deploy a fix to its fleet. 

LA Mayor Karen Bass previously sent a letter to the CPUC (PDF), stating her concerns about the regulator's decision to allow autonomous vehicles to operate in her city. "To date, local jurisdictions like Los Angeles have had little to no input in AV deployment and are already seeing significant harm and disruption," she wrote. David Canepa, vice president for the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, also said in a statement regarding this recent development: "I'm confused and a bit suspicious that the CPUC took only 11 days to change its mind on the suspension. I find this to be egregious and disingenuous. We have had no talks to address our concerns and it says to me that neither Waymo nor the CPUC care about local concerns the public safety of our residents."

Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina, however, assures the public in a statement to Wired that the company will take an "incremental approach" when it comes to deploying the service in LA. It also has "no immediate plans" to expand its service in San Francisco. In addition, she said Waymo will continue to "work closely with city officials, local communities, and [its] partners." Ilina has also noted that while the CPUC did get letters of protest, it also received letters of support for Waymo's expansion from 81 organizations and individuals. They include letters from various groups for the elderly and people with disabilities, local community councils, as well as transportation advocates.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/waymo-gets-approval-to-deploy-its-robotaxi-service-in-los-angeles-100018409.html?src=rss

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OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk has sued the company, his fellow co-founders, associated businesses and unidentified others. He claims that, by chasing profits, they’re violating OpenAI’s status as a non-profit and its foundational contractual agreements to develop AI “for the benefit of humanity.”

The suit alleges that OpenAI has become a “closed-source de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion and holds a 49 percent stake. Microsoft uses OpenAI tech to power generative AI tools such as Copilot.

According to the filing, under OpenAI’s current board, it is allegedly developing and refining an artificial general intelligence (AGI) “to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity. This was a stark betrayal of the Founding Agreement.”

The suit defines AGI as "a machine having intelligence for a wide variety of tasks like a human." Musk argues in the suit that GPT-4, which is purportedly "better at reasoning than average humans," is tantamount to AGI and is "a de facto Microsoft proprietary algorithm."

Musk has long expressed concerns over AGI. He claims the theoretical tech posits "a grave threat to humanity," particularly "in the hands of a closed, for-profit company like Google."

According to the filing, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and fellow co-founder Greg Brockman persuaded Musk to help them start the non-profit and to fund its early operations in a bid to counter Google's advancements in the AGI space with DeepMind. He noted that their initial agreement called for OpenAI's tech to be "freely available" to the public. Musk claims to have donated $44 million to the non-profit between 2016 and 2020 (he stepped down as an OpenAI board member in 2018). As TechCrunch reports, Musk previously said he was offered a stake in OpenAI's for-profit subsidiary, but rejected it due to "a principled stand."

Muskl, of course, has some skin in the game. Since the public debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November 2022, there's been a battle between tech giants to offer the best generative AI tools. Musk joined that rat race when his AI company, xAI, rolled out ChatGPT rival Grok to Premium+ subscribers on his X social network last year.

When Altman swiftly returned to power after OpenAI's board shockingly fired him in November, he's said to have appointed a new group of directors that is less technically minded and more business-focused. Microsoft was appointed as a non-voting observer. “The new board consisted of members with more experience in profit-centric enterprises or politics than in AI ethics and governance,” the lawsuit alleges.

The suit accuses the defendants of breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair business practices. Musk is seeking a jury trial and a ruling that forces OpenAI to stick to its original non-profit mission. He also wants it to be banned from monetizing tech it developed as a non-profit for the benefit of OpenAI leadership as well as Microsoft and other partners.

Competition regulators in the US, the UK and European Union are said to be examining OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft. It was reported this week that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether OpenAI misled investors. Several news organizations have sued OpenAI and Microsoft as well, alleging that ChatGPT repurposes their work "verbatim or nearly verbatim" without attribution, infringing upon their copyright in the process.

In a couple of internal memos seen by Bloomberg, OpenAI said it "categorically disagrees" with the lawsuit Musk has filed. Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon denied that OpenAI has become a "de facto subsidiary" of Microsoft and said that Musk's claims "may stem from [his] regrets about not being involved with the company today." Altman also said in another memo that Musk is his hero and that he misses the person he knew who competed with others by building better technology.

Update, March 02, 2023, 1:47AM ET: This story has been updated to include OpenAI's internal memos about the lawsuit.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/elon-musk-sues-openai-and-sam-altman-for-allegedly-ditching-non-profit-mission-160722736.html?src=rss

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Meta is starting to bring the Threads API online, though it will still be some time before it’s widely accessible to developers. The company has begun testing its new developer tools with a handful of companies, Meta engineer Jesse Chen shared in a post on Threads.

According to Chen, whose post was first spotted by TechCrunch, the API is currently in “beta” but a wider rollout could come “by the end of June.” The initial group of companies testing out the beta version of the API include social media management platforms Sprinklr, Hootsuite, Social News Desk and Sprout Social. Meta is also working with tech news aggregator Techmeme and live video platform Grabyo. For now, it sounds like the API will primarily enable the publishing of content to Threads from these services, but Chen said there are also plans to “enable reply moderation and insights capabilities.”

Having an API could help Threads attract more publishers and power users, who often rely on third-party software for posting and analytics. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has previously expressed some reluctance to woo publishers, saying that his “concern” was that a dedicated API would “mean a lot more publisher content and not much more creator content.” (Mosseri has also said he doesn’t want to “amplify news on the platform.”)

But with 130 million users, Threads is starting to look more and more like a viable alternative to X, and offering professional-level tools is a good way to get publishers and brands to post more to the platform. Having an API could also, potentially, aid the company’s plans to support interoperability with Mastodon and the rest of the fediverse, though Meta hasn’t publicly discussed its API in that context,.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-is-starting-to-test-the-threads-api-with-third-party-developers-200125403.html?src=rss

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Apple has walked back its decision to remove home screen web apps in the European Union (EU). After initially blaming its decision to ditch them on the Digital Markets Act’s (DMA) requirement to support non-WebKit browsers, Apple now says European users will return to enjoying the same web app experience from before when iOS 17.4 arrives early this month.

“We have received requests to continue to offer support for Home Screen web apps in iOS, therefore we will continue to offer the existing Home Screen web apps capability in the EU,” Apple wrote Friday in an updated developer support document. “This support means Home Screen web apps continue to be built directly on WebKit and its security architecture, and align with the security and privacy model for native apps on iOS.”

Progressive web apps (PWAs) act much like native apps with features like dedicated windows, notifications and local storage. Apple removed them for European customers in the second iOS 17.4 beta, instead asking if users want to open the website in Safari.

At the time, the company claimed web app support could compromise security, given the DMA’s requirement to support non-WebKit browser engines. “Addressing the complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps using alternative browser engines would require building an entirely new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS and was not practical to undertake given the other demands of the DMA and the very low user adoption of Home Screen web apps,” the company wrote in February.

The Open Web Advocacy organization chimed in quickly to criticize Apple’s now-reversed move. “Apple has had 15 years to facilitate true browser competition worldwide, and nearly two years since the DMA’s final text,” the organization wrote in February. “It could have used that time to share functionality it historically self-preferenced to Safari with other browsers. Inaction and silence speaks volumes.”

The EU didn’t sound much happier about the web app removal. European Commission officials said in late February they were probing Apple’s decision in what sounded like the build-up to a formal investigation. The Financial Times reported that regulators sent developers questions about the impact of Apple’s PWA removal.

Whatever may have happened between then and now to change Apple’s mind, it’s remaining tight-lipped. Instead, the company is framing its reversal as a simple response to “requests” it received to continue offering home screen web apps. Perhaps EU officials assured the iPhone maker the company wouldn’t need to support PWAs from other browser engines, or maybe the company merely wanted to head off a formal probe (and the bad PR it could generate). Regardless, only European iOS 17.4 beta users are without web apps, and they’ll have them back once the software’s final version arrives.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-backtracks-on-plans-to-get-rid-of-web-apps-on-iphones-in-the-eu-195232177.html?src=rss

© REUTERS / Reuters

I knew what I was getting into when I sat down for a press screening of Dune Part 2: A towering sci-fi epic best viewed on an enormous theater screen, just like Denis Villeneuve's first Dune film. What I didn't realize was that it would also give me a serious back massage — it really does kick butt. That was my experience at an Atlanta-area AMC, where the film whipped the Dolby Cinema seats into such a frenzy that, for one thrilling sequence, I felt like I was actually riding a sandworm plowing through the spice-filled desert of Arrakis.

Now, I can't guarantee you'll have the same ride at a normal theater (unless the subwoofer is cranked up obscenely high). What makes AMC's Dolby Cinema locations unique is that they feature rumbling transducers in every recliner seat, in addition to powerful dual-laser Dolby Vision projectors and enveloping Atmos sound. I've seen tons of films in AMC Dolby Cinemas since those screens began rolling out in 2017, but Dune Part 2 is the first time the haptic seats actually felt like they enhanced my moviegoing experience. When I rushed out to the bathroom in the middle of the film, I noticed that my body was still vibrating, the way you sort of feel after a deep massage by expert fingers.

Technically, you're still better off watching Dune Part 2 in IMAX theaters — it was actually filmed for that enormous format, and true IMAX theaters also deliver enough walloping low-end sound to shake your core without the need for rumbling seats. But it's hard to find full-sized IMAX screens, and for most US viewers it'll likely be easier to find a nearby AMC Dolby Cinema.

Let's be clear: I'm no fan of theater gimmicks, like the moving seats and various weather effects in 4DX cinemas. So I'm genuinely surprised how much I appreciated a heavy dose of recliner rumbling in Dune Part 2. Perhaps it's because the film is also fanbtastic — not that I expected any less from Villeneuve, a director who turned the first Dune into a cinematic feast and was also miraculously able to deliver a Blade Runner sequel that surpassed the original.

Photo by NIKO TAVERNISE for Warner Bros.

Dune Part 2 picks up where the first film abruptly ended, with Paul Atreides and his mother making their way through the desert with its native inhabitants, the Fremen. It's immediately clear that this isn't actually a sequel to the first film, it's genuinely a second half, with all of the action and more spectacle that many felt were lacking before.

Personally, though, I just loved being back in Villeneuve's vision of Frank Herbert's universe. As much as I appreciate the bombastic costumes and environments from David Lynch's Dune adaptation, I find this iteration far more immersive: Every room seems genuinely lived in, every custom feels like an organic outgrowth of a society that's existed for thousands of years. It's the sort of attention to detail we don't often see in films and TV today, when it's easier to shoot faux desert scenes on ILM's StageCraft set (aka "The Volume," the technology that was so thoughtlessly implemented in Quantumania).

Warner Bros.

Even if you don’t end up seeing Dune Part 2 in a Dolby Cinema (I swear, this isn’t an ad), it’s a film worth seeing on the big screen. Its vast scale and ambition can’t be contained on a TV, and its elaborate soundscape (including Hans Zimmer going extra hard for the score) deserves more than tinny flatscreen speakers or a mere soundbar.

Dune has always seemed like an unadaptable work, something so massive that it could only truly exist in Frank Herbert’s shroom-filled dreams. But once again, Villeneuve and his creative team have seemingly done the impossible: They’ve turned the fantasy of Dune into a cinematic reality. You owe it to yourself to pay tribute.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/dune-2-review-dolby-cinema-194415814.html?src=rss

© Photo by NIKO TAVERNISE for Warner Bros.

This week, Adobe revealed an experimental audio AI tool to join its image-based ones in Photoshop. Described by the company as “an early-stage generative AI music generation and editing tool,” Adobe’s Project Music GenAI Control can create music (and other audio) from text prompts, which it can then fine-tune in the same interface.

Adobe frames the Firefly-based technology as a creative ally that — unlike generative audio experiments like Google’s MusicLM — goes a step further and skips the hassle of moving the output to external apps like Pro Tools, Logic Pro or GarageBand for editing. “Instead of manually cutting existing music to make intros, outros, and background audio, Project Music GenAI Control could help users to create exactly the pieces they need—solving workflow pain points end-to-end,” Adobe wrote in an announcement blog post.

The company suggests starting with text inputs like “powerful rock,” “happy dance” or “sad jazz” as a foundation. From there, you can enter more prompts to adjust its tempo, structure and repetition, increase its intensity, extend its length, remix entire sections or create loops. The company says it can even transform audio based on a reference melody.

Adobe says the resulting music is safe for commercial use. It’s also integrating its Content Credentials (“nutrition labels” for generated content), an attempt to be transparent about your masterpiece’s AI-assisted nature.

“One of the exciting things about these new tools is that they aren’t just about generating audio—they’re taking it to the level of Photoshop by giving creatives the same kind of deep control to shape, tweak, and edit their audio. It’s a kind of pixel-level control for music,” Adobe Research scientist Nicholas Bryan wrote.

The project is a collaboration with the University of California, San Diego and the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. Adobe’s announcement emphasized Project Music GenAI Control’s experimental nature. (It didn’t reveal much of its interface in the video above, suggesting it may not have a consumer-facing UI yet.) So you may have to wait a while before the feature (presumably) makes its way into Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/adobes-latest-ai-experiment-generates-music-from-text-184019169.html?src=rss

© Adobe

Spotify has added another subscription option. This time around, it's offering a plan that has little to do with music. The Audiobooks Access Tier (which is US-only for now) offers 15 hours of audiobook listening each month for $10. You'll have access to Spotify's library of more than 200,000 titles You can, of course, still listen to ad-supported music via Spotfy's free tier.

At first glance, it might seem odd for Spotify to offer an audiobook-only tier at this price. Spotify Premium, which costs $11 per month, has the same 15 hours of audiobook listening time as well as other perks. However, audiobooks often take somewhere in the realm of between seven and 11 hours to listen to.

As such, Spotify is undercutting Audible to a degree. That platform offers one audiobook credit per month for $15. So, for $5 less with Spotify, you might be able to listen to roughly two books per month (unless you prefer to enjoy epic novels that are around 1,000-plus pages long in print). It's worth bearing in mind, though, that unused listening time does not carry over into the next month.

Spotify noted that, since it started offering 15 hours of audiobook listening to Premium subscribers at no extra cost in November, there's been a 45 percent increase in those on the free tier searching for and interacting with audiobook material every day (the company also sells audiobooks on its web player). That uptick in interest is a decent enough reason for Spotify to try an audiobook-only subscription tier.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spotify-rolls-out-an-audiobook-only-subscription-180829039.html?src=rss

© REUTERS / Reuters

Axios, a site known for political analysis and extensive use of bullet points, has joined the ranks of pundits fawning over Mark Zuckerberg’s PR strategy. The Meta CEO, they claim, is (as originally headlined) "having a PR moment" which is "casting a halo effect on the company itself." That's obviously untrue, but let's say it in a format more likely to reach Axios's audience.

The big picture: Zuckerberg’s recent PR blitz is neither out of character nor a sign of a freshly rehabbed image. In fact, Meta and Zuckerberg are staring down one of the biggest crises they’ve ever faced.

Why it matters: Praising the PR strategy of a gigantic company which is credibly accused of enabling a variety of mass-scale harms is, at best, irresponsible, even if that PR strategy was working — which it isn't.

• Describing competitor products as inferior is exactly what executives are supposed to do. Zero points awarded.

• The CEO of Meta responding to some of his social media comments isn’t a sign of radical authenticity, it's a ploy for engagement.

• Saying you've "never seen Zuckerberg," who to the best of our knowledge is a living, breathing human man "act so ... real" is an astonishingly low bar to clear!

To recap here, Meta is embroiled in a massive lawsuit from nearly every state over the myriad ways it has allegedly harmed its youngest users. And Zuckerberg’s actions, or lack thereof, are at the heart of many of these claims. Court documents have revealed that the CEO personally intervened to block a proposed ban on plastic surgery filters on Instagram despite advice from experts that these effects could exacerbate body dysmorphia and eating disorders. Under his leadership, Meta turned a blind eye to children using its platform, against its own policies, and did little to stop adults from sexually harassing children. Under his leadership, Instagram’s recommendation algorithm promoted child sexual exploitation content and connected a "vast pedophile network." At the same time, Zuckerberg repeatedly denied or ignored requests from his top lieutenants to invest more in safety. Just last week, his lawyers were in federal court arguing that he should not be held personally responsible in dozens of lawsuits over the harms his platforms have allegedly caused.

The most viral moments from Zuck's Congressional testimony, which Axios bizarrely suggests was good for his image, was a moment when he stammered an apology to the families of children who have been victims of online exploitation on the platforms he controls. One parent in the room described it as “forced.” The second-most viral moment was Senator Ted Cruz pointing to a posterboard of an in-app Instagram warning screen which indicated search results might "contain images of child sexual abuse" and which also provided the option to "see results anyway."

REUTERS / Reuters

Needless to say, Zuckerberg and his handlers are savvy enough to know that none of that is good for the public image of the fourth-richest person in the world. That Zuckerberg has been particularly eager to share his quirky hobbies and newfound love of Japanese McDonald’s is not at all surprising. Distraction is a time-worn PR move, but no amount of light-hearted Instagram posts can blunt a headline like, "Meta Staff Found Instagram Tool Enabled Child Exploitation. The Company Pressed Ahead Anyway."

This also isn’t a new strategy for Zuckerberg. While it’s true he was once a painfully awkward and very sweaty public speaker, he has long since shed that image. And he’s gone through several different versions of himself. He spent much of 2017 on a listening tour of the US visiting farms and factories and random families’ dinner tables (many of whom happened to reside in swing states, fueling speculation that he was eyeing a move into politics.) And well, a political tour is sort of what he was doing: Zuckerberg reportedly has had a pollster whose full-time job is to track public perception of his often alien behavior. One such pollster reportedly quit after just six months, coming to believe the company was bad for society. Mark's favorability in a variety of public polls has ranged from very bad to extremely, laughably, irreparably bad.

This is far from the first time Mark has tried to distract the public with a personal hobby, only for his inability to relate to the average human experience to lead to a swift and spectacular faceplant. Take, for example, his infamous backyard grilling Facebook Live from 2017, wherein he managed to utter the word "meats" 13 times over the course of 30-odd achingly long minutes. It was awkward, but not quite as strange as the time Mark allegedly challenged himself to only eat meat from animals he himself killed, resulting in a moment where he allegedly turned an alive goat into a dead one with "a laser gun and then the knife," according to former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. (And like a true rich weirdo, he opted to learn how to end an animal's life, but, according to the same recollection by Dorsey, outsourced the butchering to someone else.) Perhaps more successfully, in 2019 he appeared to discover his love of foiling — which is like wakeboarding, but dorkier and much more expensive.

In short, Zuckerberg isn’t reinventing himself as much as simply remixing the same PR formula he’s been using for years, particularly when his company is in some sort of distress, which seems to be always. His people are trying very hard to make him seem like a normal guy through a mix of carefully curated social media posts, photo opps and talks with media personalities. It's a strategy that will continue to work on a handful of gullible people. At least as long as some of those media personalities — like Axios CEO Mike Allen — are willing to call men like Mark Zuckerberg "real, daring and unguarded."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/no-mark-zuckerberg-isnt-having-a-pr-moment-171524818.html?src=rss

© Tom Williams via Getty Images

It’s 1995, and I’m trying to watch a video on the internet. I entered the longest, most complex URL I’d ever seen into AOL’s web browser to view a trailer for Paul W.S. Anderson’s long-awaited film adaptation of Mortal Kombat. I found it in an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, tucked away in the bottom of a full-page ad for the film. Online marketing at the time was such an afterthought, studios didn’t even bother grabbing short and memorable web addresses for their major releases, let alone dedicated websites. (Star Trek Generations and Stargate were among the few early exceptions.)

After the interminable process of transcribing the URL from print, I gathered my family around our Packard Bell PC (powered by an Intel 486 DX and, let’s say, 8MB of RAM), hit return and waited as the video slowly came down our 33.6kbps dial-up connection. And waited. It took 25 minutes for it to fully load. After corralling my family once again, I hit play and was treated to an horrendously compressed, low-resolution version of the trailer I’d been dreaming about for months. It was unwatchable. The audio was shit. But that was the moment I became obsessed with online video.

I imagined a futuristic world beyond my boxy CRT set and limited cable TV subscription. A time after VHS tapes when I could just type in a URL and enjoy a show or movie while eating one of those rehydrated Pizza Hut pies from Back to the Future 2. The internet would make it so.

Looking back now, almost 30 years later, and 20 years after Engadget sprung to life, I realize my 11-year-old self was spot on. The rise of online video transformed the internet from a place where we’d browse the web, update our LiveJournals, steal music and chat with friends on AIM to a place where we could also just sit back and relax. For Millennials, it quickly made our computer screens more important than our TVs. What I didn’t expect, though, was that streaming video would also completely upend Hollywood and the entire entertainment industry.

If my experience with the Mortal Kombat trailer didn’t make it clear enough, video was a disaster on the internet in the ’90s. Most web surfers (as we were known as the time) were stuck with terribly slow modems and similarly unimpressive desktop systems. But really, the problem goes back to dealing with video on computers.

Apple’s Quicktime format made Macs the ideal platform for multimedia creators, and, together with its Hypercard software for creating interactive multimedia databases, it spawned the rise of Myst and the obsession with mixed-media educational software. PCs relied on MPEG-1, which debuted in 1993 and was mainly for VCDs and some digital TV providers. The problem with both formats was space: Hard drives were notoriously small and expensive at the time, which made CDs the main option for accessing any sort of video on your computer. If your computer only had a 500MB hard drive, a slim disc that could store 650MB seemed like magic.

But that also meant video had no place in the early internet. RealPlayer was the first true stab at delivering streaming video and audio online — and while it was better than waiting 20 minutes for a huge file to download, it was still hard to actually stream media when you were constrained by a dial-up modem. I remember seeing buffering alerts more than I did any actual RealPlayer content. It took the proliferation of broadband internet access and one special app from Adobe to make web video truly viable.

While we may curse its name today, it’s worth remembering how vital Macromedia Flash was to the web in the early 2000s. (We’ve been around long enough to cover Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia in 2005!) Its support for vector graphics, stylized text and simple games injected new life into the internet, and it allowed just about anyone to create that content. HTML just wasn’t enough. Ask any teen or 20-something who was online at the time, and they could probably still recite most of The End of the World by heart.

With 2002’s Flash MX 6, Macromedia added support for Sorenson’s Spark video codec, which opened the floodgates for online video. (It was eventually replaced in 2005 by the VP6 codec from On2, a company Google acquired in 2009.) Macromedia’s video offering looked decent, loaded quickly and was supported on every browser that had the Flash plugin, making it the ideal player choice for video websites.

The adult entertainment industry latched onto Flash video first, as you’d expect. Porn sites also relied on the technology to lock down purchased videos and entice viewers to other sites with interactive ads. But it was YouTube (and, to a lesser extent, Vimeo) that truly showed mainstream users what was possible with video on the internet. After launching in February 2005, YouTube grew so quickly it was serving 100 million videos a day by July 2006, making up 60 percent of all online videos at the time. It’s no wonder Google rushed to acquire the company for $1.65 billion later that year (arguably the search giant’s smartest purchase ever).

After YouTube’s shockingly fast rise, it wasn’t too surprising to see Netflix announce its own Watch Now streaming service in 2007, which also relied on Flash for video. At $17.99 a month for 18 hours of video, with a library of only 1,000 titles, Netflix’s streaming offering didn’t seem like much of a threat to Blockbuster, premium cable channels or cinemas at first. But the company wisely expanded Watch Now to all Netflix subscribers in 2008 and removed any viewing cap: The Netflix binge was born.

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It’s 2007, and I’m trying to watch a video on the internet. In my post-college apartment, I hooked up my desktop computer to an early-era (720p) Philips HDTV, and all of a sudden, I had access to thousands of movies, instantly viewable over a semi-decent cable connection. I didn’t need to worry about seeding torrents or compiling Usenet files (things I’d only heard about from dirty pirates, you see). I didn’t have to stress about any Blockbuster late fees. The movies were just sitting on my TV, waiting for me to watch them. It was the dream for digital media fanatics: Legal content available at the touch of a button. What a concept!

Little did I know then that the Watch Now concept would basically take over the world. Netflix initially wanted to create hardware to make the service more easily accessible, but it ended up spinning off that idea, and Roku was born. The company’s streaming push also spurred on the creation of Hulu, announced in late 2007 as a joint offering between NBCUniversal and News Corp. to bring their television shows online. Disney later joined, giving Hulu the full power of all the major broadcast TV networks. Instead of a stale library of older films, Hulu allowed you to watch new shows on the internet the day after they aired. Again, what a concept!

Amazon, it turns out, was actually earlier to the streaming party than Netflix. It launched the Amazon Unbox service in 2006, which was notable for letting you watch videos as they were being downloaded onto your computer. It was rebadged to Amazon Video On Demand in 2008 (a better name, which actually described what it did), and then it became Amazon Instant Video in 2011, when it was tied together with premium Prime memberships.

As the world of streaming video exploded, Flash’s reputation kept getting worse. By the mid-2000s, it was widely recognized as a notoriously buggy program, one so insecure it could lead to malware infecting your PC. (I worked in IT at the time, and the vast majority of issues I encountered on Windows PCs stemmed entirely from Flash.) When the iPhone launched without support for Flash in 2007, it was clear the end was near. YouTube and other video sites moved over to HTML5 video players at that point, and it became the standard by 2015.

By the early 2010s, YouTube and Amazon weren’t happy just licensing content from Hollywood, they wanted some of the action themselves. So the original programming boom began, which kicked off with mostly forgettable shows (anyone remember Netflix’s Lillyhammer or Amazon’s Alpha House? Hemlock Grove? They existed, I swear!).

But then came House of Cards in 2013, Netflix’s original series created by playwright Beau Willimon, executive produced (and partially directed) by renowned filmmaker David Fincher and starring Oscar winner Kevin Spacey (before he was revealed to be a monster). It had all of the ingredients of a premium TV show, and, thanks to Fincher’s deft direction, it looked like something that would be right at home on HBO. Most importantly for Netflix, it got some serious awards love, earning nine Emmy nominations in 2013 and walking away with three statues.

By that point, we could watch streaming video in many more places than our computer’s web browser. You could pull up just about anything on your phone and stream it over 4G LTE, or use your smart TV’s built-in apps to catch up on SNL over Hulu. Your Xbox could also serve as the centerpiece of your home entertainment system. And if you wanted the best possible streaming experience, you could pick up an Apple TV or Roku box. You could start a show on your phone while sitting on the can, then seamlessly continue it when you made your way back to your TV. This was certainly some sort of milestone for humanity, though I’m torn on it actually being a net win for our species.

Instant streaming video. Original TV shows and movies. This was the basic formula that pushed far too many companies to offer their own streaming solutions over the past decade. In the blink of an eye, we got HBO Max, Disney+, Apple TV+, Peacock, and Paramount+. There’s AMC+, powered almost entirely by the promise of unlimited Walking Dead shows. A Starz streaming service. And there are countless other companies trying to be a Netflix for specific niches, like Shudder for horror, Criterion Channel for cinephiles and Britbox for the tea-soaked murder-mystery crowd.

And let’s not forget the wildest, most boneheaded streaming swing: Quibi. That was Dreamworks mastermind Jeffrey Katzenberg’s nearly $2 billion mobile video play. Somehow he and his compatriots thought people would pay $5 a month for the privilege of watching videos on their phones, even though YouTube was freely available.

Every entertainment company thinks it can be as successful as Disney, which has a vast and beloved catalog of content as well as full control of Lucasfilm and Marvel’s properties. But, realistically, there aren’t enough eyeballs and willing consumers for every streaming service to succeed. Some will die off entirely, while others will bring their content to Netflix and more popular services (like Paramount is doing with Star Trek Prodigy). There are already early rumors of Comcast (NBCUniversal’s parent company) and Paramount considering some sort of union between Peacock and Paramount+.

Online video was supposed to save us from the tyranny of expensive and chaotic cable bills, and despite the messiness of the arena today, that’s still mostly true. Sure, if you actually wanted to subscribe to most of the major streaming services, you’d still end up paying a hefty chunk of change. But hey, at least you can cancel at will, and you can still choose precisely what you’re paying for. Cable would never.

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It’s 2024, and I’m trying to watch a video on the internet. I slip on the Apple Vision Pro, a device that looks like it could have been a prop for The Matrix. I launch Safari in a 150-inch window floating above my living room and watch the Mortal Kombat trailer on YouTube. That whole process takes 10 seconds. I never had the chance to see the trailer or the original film in the theater. But thanks to the internet (and Apple’s crazy expensive headset), I can replicate that experience.

Perhaps that’s why, no matter how convoluted and expensive streaming video services become, I’ll always think: At least it’s better than watching this thing over dial-up.

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To celebrate Engadget's 20th anniversary, we're taking a look back at the products and services that have changed the industry since March 2, 2004.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/streaming-video-changed-the-internet-forever-170014082.html?src=rss

© Koren Shadmi for Engadget

This Saturday, on March 2, 2024, Engadget turns 20. Originally founded by Peter Rojas — you can read more about those early days here — the site has had eight editors-in-chief and, to my count, seven parent organizations to answer to. What started as a truly influential tech blog has morphed into a media organization aiming to break news, give no-BS buying advice and highlight the stories in tech that matter. We have written millions of words, we've won awards and we’ve somehow survived several media apocalypses. It’s been a ride — and if you’ve been with us since the start, we salute you.

To mark the occasion, our team has been thinking about how the tech industry has changed over the past two decades. At the heart of our anniversary package is a collection of over a dozen retrospectives of seminal gadgets and apps that did not exist 20 years ago, illustrated by the brilliant Koren Shadmi. 

Engadget, believe it or not, is older than YouTube, the iPhone, Uber, WhatsApp, Android, Tesla EVs and countless other things that are a huge part of our lives today.

We planned to open this month of celebration with a letter from the editor, but last Friday, Engadget’s parent company laid off several people from our small team, including our editor-in-chief, Dana Wollman, and our managing editor, Terrence O’Brien.

Though the site does not yet have an editor-in-chief, we do have a strong leadership team that has collectively been at the site for decades. There is no way for things to be “business as usual,” but we are committed to pushing Engadget forward.

While it’s a bittersweet time to be celebrating an anniversary, the show must go on. Having edited Dana’s letter before it was due to be published, I want to take the opportunity to borrow her main talking points, which are more important to the remaining team than ever before:

• People who love tech are still at the heart of this website. Though our masthead is smaller, this is no less true than it was at any point in the last 20 years — you just don’t get into tech journalism without caring about tech.

• All of the stories you see on Engadget are written by human beings. Like all humans, we make mistakes sometimes. If you see a typo or even a misstated fact, you can blame the person behind the keyboard, not a robot.

So, happy birthday to us. We’re kicking things off with a look back at how streaming video changed the fabric of the internet. In the coming days and weeks we’ll have many more articles, including a guest post from Tim Stevens, our editor-in-chief from 2011-2013, on the legacy of the Tesla Model S. Stick around through March for plenty more stories and a heavy dose of nostalgia.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-is-turning-20-170005642.html?src=rss

© Koren Shadmi for Engadget

The latest version of the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max is on sale for $40, which matches the record low Black Friday price. The streaming stick normally sells for $60, so this is a discount of 33 percent.

This is the most advanced streaming stick Amazon has ever made. As the name suggests, it can easily handle 4K video, and it also supports Dolby Vision and HDR10+. The stick integrates with Wi-Fi 6E and boasts 16GB of internal storage, up from eight with the previous generation. There’s a new 2.0 GHz quad-core processor, on-device Alexa and a remote that gives you control over affiliated smart home devices.

This is also the first-ever streaming stick to feature Amazon’s AI Art feature. There’s a built-in image generation model, so you can set the screensaver to be, well, whatever you want. If the idea of a six-pawed cat eating a plate of slightly-off spaghetti doesn’t do it for you, the stick also allows access to more than 2,000 pieces of actual art for use as screensavers.

This is part of a larger Amazon sale on all of its various streaming devices, from sticks to actual televisions. Of note, the Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite has been discounted to $20, which nearly matches a record low price. The Fire TV Stick Lite made our list of the best streaming devices, thanks to its simple interface and support for all of the major streaming platforms.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-new-amazon-fire-tv-stick-4k-max-is-on-sale-for-a-record-low-of-40-164541303.html?src=rss

© Amazon

It's Friday, which means it's time for another roundup of the week's best tech deals. This week's highlights include a small but rare discount on Sony's PlayStation 5, as a bundle that includes Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is $50 off and down to $450 at Best Buy. If you don't need a new game console, Apple's AirPods Pro are back at an all-time low of $189, while Amazon's Echo Show 8 and Fire TV Stick 4K Max are at respective lows of $90 and $40. A number of recommended Anker accessories are on sale as well, including the Soundcore Space A40, our favorite budget earbuds, down to $53 and the PowerConf C200, one of our favorite webcams, down to $48. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still buy today.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-ps5-slim-spider-man-2-bundle-drops-to-450-plus-the-rest-of-the-weeks-best-tech-deals-162102658.html?src=rss

© Aaron Souppouris/Engadget

The popular budgeting app Mint is going away. Parent company Intuit will shut down the service on March 24, 2024, and has suggested folks migrate to its other personal finance app, Credit Karma. I’m one of Mint’s 3.6 million active users (as of 2021, according to Bloomberg), using the app to track all of my accounts in one place without having to log into too many disparate banking apps. I’ve also used it to monitor my credit score, stick to a monthly budget, and set goals like building a rainy-day fund or paying down my mortgage faster.

With this news, looking for a Mint alternative beyond Credit Karma became a top priority. Intuit has not commented on whether it intends to fold Mint’s budgeting features into Credit Karma but as it stands, Credit Karma is not a Mint substitute. After trying Credit Karma and being unimpressed, I downloaded a number of competing money apps to see if any could cut it as a permanent Mint replacement. The following guide lays out my experiences, the results of my testing and our picks for the top Mint replacement apps available today. I also pledge to update this guide as the various apps I tested continue to add more features and, in some cases, correct known bugs.

How to import your financial data from Mint

Mint users should consider getting their data ready to migrate to their new budgeting app of choice soon. Unfortunately, importing data from Mint is not as easy as entering your credentials from inside your new app and hitting “import.” In fact, any app that advertises the ability to port over your stats from Mint is just going to have you upload a CSV file of transactions and other data.

To download a CSV file from Mint, do the following:

1. Sign into Mint.com and hit Transactions in the menu on the left side of the screen.

2. Select an account, or all accounts.

3. Scroll down and look for “export [number] transactions” in smaller print.

4. Your CSV file should begin downloading.

Note: Downloading on a per-account basis might seem more annoying, but could help you get set up on the other side, if the app you’re using has you importing transactions one-for-one into their corresponding accounts.

How we tested

Before I dove into the budgeting-app world, I had to do some research. To find a list of apps to test, I consulted trusty ol’ Google (and even trustier Reddit); read reviews of popular apps on the App Store; and also asked friends and colleagues what budget tracking apps they might be using. Some of the apps I found were free, just like Mint. These, of course, show loads of ads (excuse me, “offers”) to stay in business. But most of the available apps require paid subscriptions, with prices typically topping out around $100 a year, or $15 a month. (Spoiler: My top pick is cheaper than that.)

Since this guide is meant to help Mint users find a permanent replacement, any services I chose to test needed to do several things: import all of your account data into one place; offer budgeting tools; and track your spending, net worth and credit score. Except where noted, all of these apps are available for iOS, Android and on the web.

Once I had my shortlist of six apps, I got to work setting them up. For the sake of thoroughly testing these apps (and remember, I really was looking for a Mint alternative myself), I made a point of adding every account to every tracking app, no matter how small or immaterial the balance. What ensued was a veritable Groundhog Day of two-factor authentication. Just hours of entering passwords and one-time passcodes, for the same banks half a dozen times over. Hopefully, you only have to do this once.

The best Mint alternative: Quicken Simplifi

No pun intended, but what I like about Quicken Simplifi is its simplicity. Whereas other apps try to distinguish themselves with dark themes and customizable emoji, Simplifi has a clean user interface, with a landing page that you just keep scrolling through to get a detailed overview of all your stats. These include your top-line balances; net worth; recent spending; upcoming recurring payments; a snapshot of your spending plan; top spending categories; achievements; and any watchlists you’ve set up. You can also set up savings goals elsewhere in the app. I also appreciate how it offers neat, almost playful visualizations without ever looking cluttered. I felt at home in the mobile and web dashboards after a day or so, which is faster than I adapted to some competing services (I’m looking at you, YNAB and Monarch).

Getting set up with Simplifi was mostly painless. I was particularly impressed at how easily it connected to Fidelity; not all budget trackers do, for whatever reason. This is also one of the only services I tested that gives you the option of inviting a spouse or financial advisor to co-manage your account. One thing I would add to my initial assessment of the app, having used it for a few months now: I wish Simplifi offered Zillow integration for easily tracking your home value (or at least a rough estimate of it). Various competitors including Monarch Money and Copilot Money work with Zillow, so clearly there's a Zillow API available for use. As it stands, Simplifi users must add real estate manually like any other asset.

Dana Wollman / Engadget

In practice, Simplifi miscategorized some of my expenses, but nothing out of the ordinary compared to any of these budget trackers. As you’re reviewing transactions, you can also mark if you’re expecting a refund, which is a unique feature among the services I tested. Simplifi also estimated my regular income better than some other apps I tested. Most of all, I appreciated the option of being able to categorize some, but not all, purchases from a merchant as recurring. For instance, I can add my two Amazon subscribe-and-saves as recurring payments, without having to create a broad-strokes rule for every Amazon purchase.

The budgeting feature is also self-explanatory. Just check that your regular income is accurate and be sure to set up recurring payments, making note of which are bills and which are subscriptions. This is important because Simplifi shows you your total take-home income as well as an “income after bills” figure. That number includes, well, bills but not discretionary subscriptions. From there, you can add spending targets by category in the “planned spending” bucket. Planned spending can also include one-time expenditures, not just monthly budgets. When you create a budget, Simplifi will suggest a number based on a six-month average.

Not dealbreakers, but two things to keep in mind as you get started: Simplifi is notable in that you can’t set up an account through Apple or Google. There is also no option for a free trial, though Quicken promises a “30-day money back guarantee.”

The best Mint alternative (runner-up): Monarch Money

Monarch Money grew on me. My first impression of the app, which was founded by a former Mint product manager, was that it's more difficult to use than others on this list, including Simplifi, NerdWallet and Copilot. And it is. Editing expense categories, adding recurring transactions and creating rules, for example, is a little more complicated than it needs to be, especially in the mobile app. (My advice: Use the web app for fine-tuning details.) Monarch also didn’t get my income right; I had to edit it.

Once you’re set up, though, Monarch offers an impressive level of granularity. In the budgets section, you can see a bona fide balance sheet showing budgets and actuals for each category. You'll also find a forecast, for the year or by month. And recurring expenses can be set not just by merchant, but other parameters as well. For instance, while most Amazon purchases might be marked as “shopping,” those for the amounts of $54.18 or $34.18 are definitely baby supplies, and can be automatically marked as such each time, not to mention programmed as recurring payments. Weirdly, though, there’s no way to mark certain recurring payments as bills, specifically.

Dana Wollman / Engadget

Not long after I first published this story in December 2023, Monarch introduced a detailed reporting section where you can create on-demand graphs based on things like accounts, categories and tags. That feature is available just on the web version of the app for now. As part of this same update, Monarch added support for an aggregator that makes it possible to automatically update the value of your car. This, combined with the existing Zillow integration for tracking your home value, makes it easy to quickly add a non-liquid asset like a vehicle or real estate, and have it show up in your net worth graph.

The mobile app is mostly self-explanatory. The main dashboard shows your net worth; your four most recent transactions; a month-over-month spending comparison; income month-to-date; upcoming bills; an investments snapshot; a list of any goals you’ve set; and, finally, a link to your month-in-review. That month-in-review is more detailed than most, delving into cash flow; top income and expense categories; cash flow trends; changes to your net worth, assets and liabilities; plus asset and liability breakdowns. In February 2024, Monarch expanded on the net worth graph, so that if you click on the Accounts tab you can see how your net worth changed over different periods of time, including one month, three months, six months, a year or all time.

On the main screen, you’ll also find tabs for accounts, transactions, cash flow, budget and recurring. Like many of the other apps featured here, Monarch can auto-detect recurring expenses and income, even if it gets the category wrong. (They all do to an extent.) Expense categories are marked by emoji, which you can customize if you’re so inclined.

Monarch Money uses a combination of networks to connect with banks, including Plaid, MX and Finicity, a competing network owned by Mastercard. (I have a quick explainer on Plaid, the industry standard in this space, toward the end of this guide.) As part of an update in late December, Monarch has also made it easier to connect through those other two networks, if for some reason Plaid fails. Similar to NerdWallet, I found myself completing two-factor authentication every time I wanted to get past the Plaid screen to add another account. Notably, Monarch is the only other app I tested that allows you to grant access to someone else in your family — likely a spouse or financial advisor. Monarch also has a Chrome extension for importing from Mint, though really this is just a shortcut for downloading a CSV file, which you’ll have to do regardless of where you choose to take your Mint data.

Additionally, Monarch recently launched investment transactions in beta. It also says bill tracking and an overhauled goals system are coming soon. Monarch hasn't provided a timeline for that last one, except to say that the improved goals feature is coming in early 2024.

The best up-and-comer: Copilot Money

Copilot Money might be the best-looking budget tracker I tested. It also has the distinction of being exclusive to iOS and Macs — at least for now. Andres Ugarte, the company’s CEO, has publicly promised that Android and web apps are coming in 2024 (more likely the second half of the year, Ugarte tells me). But until it follows through, I can’t recommend Copilot for most people with so many good competitors out there.

There are other features that Copilot is missing, which I’ll get into. But it is promising, and one to keep an eye on. It’s just a fast, efficient, well designed app, and Android users will be in for a treat when they’ll finally be able to download it. It makes good use of colors, emoji and graphs to help you understand at a glance how you’re doing on everything from your budgets to your investment performance to your credit card debt over time. In particular, Copilot does a better job than almost any other app of visualizing your recurring monthly expenses.

Behind those punchy colors and cutesy emoji, though, is some sophisticated performance. Copilot’s AI-powered “Intelligence” gets smarter as you go at categorizing your expenses. (You can also add your own categories, complete with your choice of emoji.) It’s not perfect. Copilot miscategorized some purchases (they all do), but it makes it easier to edit than most. On top of that, the internal search feature is very fast; it starts whittling down results in your transaction history as soon as you begin typing.

Dana Wollman / Engadget

Copilot is also unique in offering Amazon and Venmo integrations, allowing you to see transaction details. With Amazon, this requires just signing into your Amazon account via an in-app browser. For Venmo, you have to set up fwd@copilot.money as a forwarding address and then create a filter, wherein emails from venmo@venmo.com are automatically forwarded to fwd@copilot.money. Like Monarch Money, you can also add any property you own and track its value through Zillow, which is integrated with the app.

While the app is heavily automated, I still appreciate that Copilot marks new transactions for review. It’s a good way to both weed out fraudulent charges, and also be somewhat intentional about your spending habits.

Like Monarch Money, Copilot updated its app to make it easier to connect to banks through networks other than Plaid. As part of the same update, Copilot said it has improved its connections to both American Express and Fidelity which, again, can be a bugbear for some budget tracking apps. In an even more recent update, Copilot added a Mint import option, which other budgeting apps have begun to offer as well.

Because the app is relatively new (it launched in early 2020), the company is still catching up to the competition on some table-stakes features. Ugarte told me that his team is almost done building out a detailed cash flow section, which could launch before the end of 2023, but more likely in early 2024. On its website, Copilot also promises a raft of AI-powered features that build on its current “Intelligence” platform, the one that powers its smart expense categorization. These include “smart financial goals,” natural language search, a chat interface, forecasting and benchmarking. That benchmarking, Ugarte tells me, is meant to give people a sense of how they’re doing compared to other Copilot users, on both spending and investment performance. Most of these features should arrive in the new year.

Copilot does a couple interesting things for new customers that distinguish it from the competition. There’s a “demo mode” that feels like a game simulator; no need to add your own accounts. The company is also offering two free months with RIPMINT — a more generous introductory offer than most. When it finally does come time to pony up, the $7.92 monthly plan is cheaper than some competing apps, although the $95-a-year-option is in the same ballpark.

The best free budgeting app: NerdWallet

You may know NerdWallet as a site that offers a mix of personal finance news, explainers and guides. I see it often when I google a financial term I don’t know and sure enough, it’s one of the sites I’m most likely to click on. As it happens, NerdWallet also has the distinction of offering one of the only free budget tracking apps I tested. In fact, there is no paid version; nothing is locked behind a paywall. The main catch: There are ads everywhere. To be fair, the free version of Mint was like this, too.

Even with the inescapable credit card offers, NerdWallet has a clean, easy-to-understand user interface, which includes both a web and a mobile app. The key metrics that it highlights most prominently are your cash flow, net worth and credit score. (Of note, although Mint itself offered credit score monitoring, most of its rivals do not.) I particularly enjoyed the weekly insights, which delve into things like where you spent the most money or how much you paid in fees — and how that compares to the previous month. Because this is NerdWallet, an encyclopedia of financial info, you get some particularly specific category options when setting up your accounts (think: a Roth or non-Roth IRA).

Dana Wollman / Engadget

As a budgeting app, NerdWallet is more than serviceable, if a bit basic. Like other apps I tested, you can set up recurring bills. Importantly, it follows the popular 50/30/20 budgeting rule, which has you putting 50% of your budget toward things you need, 30% toward things you want, and the remaining 20% into savings or debt repayments. If this works for you, great — just know that you can’t customize your budget to the same degree as some competing apps. You can’t currently create custom spending categories, though a note inside the dashboard section of the app says “you’ll be able to customize them in the future.” You also can’t move items from the wants column to “needs” or vice versa but “In the future, you'll be able to move specific transactions to actively manage what falls into each group.” A NerdWallet spokesperson declined to provide an ETA, though.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that NerdWallet had one of the most onerous setup processes of any app I tested. I don’t think this is a dealbreaker, as you’ll only have to do it once and, hopefully, you aren’t setting up six or seven apps in tandem as I was. What made NerdWallet’s onboarding especially tedious is that every time I wanted to add an account, I had to go through a two-factor authentication process to even get past the Plaid splash screen, and that’s not including the 2FA I had set up at each of my banks. This is a security policy on NerdWallet’s end, not Plaid’s, a Plaid spokesperson says.

Precisely because NerdWallet is one of the only budget trackers to offer credit score monitoring, it also needs more of your personal info during setup, including your birthday, address, phone number and the last four digits of your social security number. It’s the same with Credit Karma, which also does credit score monitoring.

Related to the setup process, I found that NerdWallet was less adept than other apps at automatically detecting my regular income. In my case, it counted a large one-time wire transfer as income, at which point my only other option was to enter my income manually (which is slightly annoying because I would have needed my pay stub handy to double-check my take-home pay).

Budgeting apps we also tested

YNAB

YNAB is, by its own admission, “different from anything you’ve tried before.” The app, whose name is short for You Need a Budget, promotes a so-called zero-based budgeting system, which forces you to assign a purpose for every dollar you earn. A frequently used analogy is to put each dollar in an envelope; you can always move money from one envelope to another in a pinch. These envelopes can include rent and utilities, along with unforeseen expenses like holiday gifts and the inevitable car repair. The idea is that if you budget a certain amount for the unknowns each month, they won’t feel like they’re sneaking up on you.

Importantly, YNAB is only concerned with the money you have in your accounts now. The app does not ask you to provide your take-home income or set up recurring income payments (although there is a way to do this). The money you will make later in the month through your salaried job is not relevant, because YNAB does not engage in forecasting.

The app is harder to learn than any other here, and it requires more ongoing effort from the user. And YNAB knows that. Inside both the mobile and web apps are links to videos and other tutorials. Although I never quite got comfortable with the user interface, I did come to appreciate YNAB’s insistence on intentionality. Forcing users to draft a new budget each month and to review each transaction is not necessarily a bad thing. As YNAB says on its website, “Sure, you’ve got pie charts showing that you spent an obscene amount of money in restaurants — but you’ve still spent an obscene amount of money in restaurants.” I can see this approach being useful for people who don’t tend to have a lot of cash in reserve at a given time, or who have spending habits they want to correct (to riff off of YNAB’s own example, ordering Seamless four times a week).

My colleague Valentina Palladino, knowing I was working on this guide, penned a respectful rebuttal, explaining why she’s been using YNAB for years. Perhaps, like her, you have major savings goals you want to achieve, whether it’s paying for a wedding or buying a house. I suggest you give her column a read. For me, though, YNAB’s approach feels like overkill.

PocketGuard

PocketGuard is one of the only reputable free budget trackers I found in my research. Just know it’s far more restricted at the free tier than NerdWallet or Mint. In my testing, I was prompted to pay after I attempted to link more than two bank accounts. So much for free, unless you keep things simple with one cash account and one credit card. When it comes time to upgrade to PocketGuard Plus, you have three options: pay $7.99 a month, $34.99 a year or $79.99 for a one-time lifetime license. That lifetime option is actually one of the few unique selling points for me: I’m sure some people will appreciate paying once and never having to, uh, budget for it again.

From the main screen, you’ll see tabs for accounts, insights, transactions and the “Plan,” which is where you see recurring payments stacked on top of what looks like a budget. The main overview screen shows you your net worth, total assets and debts; net income and total spending for the month; upcoming bills; a handy reminder of when your next paycheck lands; any debt payoff plan you have; and any goals.

Dana Wollman / Engadget

Like some other apps, including Quicken Simplifi, PocketGuard promotes an “after bills” approach, where you enter all of your recurring bills, and then PocketGuard shows you what’s left, and that’s what you’re supposed to be budgeting: your disposable income. Obviously, other apps have a different philosophy: take into account all of your post-tax income and use it to pay the bills, purchase things you want and maybe even save a little. But in PocketGuard, it’s the “in your pocket” number that’s most prominent. To PocketGuard’s credit, it does a good job visualizing which bills are upcoming and which ones you’ve already paid.

PocketGuard has also publicly committed to adding some popular features in early 2024. These include rollover budgeting in January 2024, categorization rules in February and shared household access in March.

Dana Wollman / Engadget

Although PocketGuard’s UI is easy enough to understand, it lacks polish. The “accounts” tab is a little busy, and doesn’t show totals for categories like cash or investments. Seemingly small details like weirdly phrased or punctuated copy occasionally make the app feel janky. More than once, it prompted me to update the app when no updates were available. The web version, meanwhile, feels like the mobile app blown up to a larger format and doesn’t take advantage of the extra screen real estate.

Of note, although PocketGuard does work with Plaid, its primary bank-connecting platform is actually Finicity. Setting up my accounts through Finicity was mostly a straightforward process. I did encounter one hiccup: Finicity would not connect to my SoFi account. I was able to do it through Plaid, but PocketGuard doesn’t make it easy to access Plaid in the app. The only way, as far as I can tell, is to knowingly search for the name of a bank that isn’t available through Finicity, at which point you get the option to try Plaid instead. Like I said: the experience can be janky.

What is Plaid and how does it work?

Each of the apps I tested uses the same underlying network, called Plaid, to pull in financial data, so it’s worth explaining in its own section what it is and how it works. Plaid was founded as a fintech startup in 2013 and is today the industry standard in connecting banks with third-party apps. Plaid works with over 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada and Europe. Additionally, more than 8,000 third-party apps and services rely on Plaid, the company claims.

To be clear, you don’t need a dedicated Plaid app to use it; the technology is baked into a wide array of apps, including the budget trackers I tested for this guide. Once you find the “add an account” option in whichever one you’re using, you’ll see a menu of commonly used banks. There’s also a search field you can use to look yours up directly. Once you find yours, you’ll be prompted to enter your login credentials. If you have two-factor authentication set up, you’ll need to enter a one-time passcode as well.

As the middleman, Plaid is a passthrough for information that may include your account balances, transaction history, account type and routing or account number. Plaid uses encryption, and says it has a policy of not selling or renting customer data to other companies. However, I would not be doing my job if I didn’t note that in 2022 Plaid was forced to pay $58 million to consumers in a class action suit for collecting “more financial data than was needed.” As part of the settlement, Plaid was compelled to change some of its business practices.

In a statement provided to Engadget, a Plaid spokesperson said the company continues to deny the allegations underpinning the lawsuit and that “the crux of the non-financial terms in the settlement are focused on us accelerating workstreams already underway related to giving people more transparency into Plaid’s role in connecting their accounts, and ensuring that our workstreams around data minimization remain on track.”

My top Mint alternative picks: Quicken Simplifi and Copilot Money

To conclude, you might be wondering what app I decided on for myself after all of this research. The answer is actually two apps: Quicken Simplifi, my overall top pick, and Copilot Money. For now, I am actively using both apps and still deciding, long-term, which I feel more comfortable with. I tend to prefer Copilot's fast, colorful user interface, but as I explained above, it's too lacking in table-stakes features for me to go so far as to name it the best overall option.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-budgeting-apps-to-replace-mint-143047346.html?src=rss

© Getty

Razer’s Blade family of gaming laptops are among the most premium on the market. And while there aren’t a ton of major changes on the 2024 Blade 14, for the first time ever, it will be available in both classic black and Mercury (aka silver) at launch. Now this might not sound like a big deal, but it means you can get a portable rig with strong performance that doesn’t shout about it like a lot of other gaming laptops do. When you combine that with an exquisite chassis milled from a single block of aluminum and a wealth of ports, you end up with a system that straddles the line between a beefy gaming machine and a portable all-rounder.

Design: Now in silver from the jump

On the outside, Razer is definitely taking the approach of “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.” That’s not a bad thing on a laptop that’s pretty much the closest thing to a MacBook Pro for gaming. The entire system feels incredibly solid with only the slightest bit of flex on spots like the lid. And unlike a MacBook, the Blade offers a wide variety of ports including four USB (two 3.2 Type-A and two Type-C with USB 4), a 3.5mm audio jack and a full-size HDMI 2.1 connector). 

Plus, there’s a dedicated power socket so you don’t need to hog an extra slot while charging. The Blade 14 even supports USB-PD (power delivery) so you can use third-party chargers in a pinch, though you won’t get full performance this way due to a lower 100-watt limit (versus 230 watts when using Razer’s included brick).

The two small downsides to the Blade 14 are that its super sturdy frame weighs a touch more (4.05 pounds) than similar laptops like the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (3.31 pounds). You also don’t get an SD card reader like you do on the bigger Blade 16. That’s a bummer for anyone planning to occasionally use this thing as a photo or video editing machine, but it’s not a deal breaker.

Display and webcam: Bright and blazing-fast

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Though there’s only a single display option for the Blade 14, it’s a good one. It features a 2560 x 1600 LCD panel that supports AMD FreeSync and a gamut that covers 100% of the DCI-P3 spectrum. It’s also more than bright enough at over 450 nits while the matte anti-glare coating helps keep reflections to a minimum. This means not only do games and movies look great with vivid hues, it’s also accurate enough for editing. The only thing I wish there was a config with an OLED panel like there is on the Blade 16.

Meanwhile, above the display, there’s a 1080p webcam with an IR sensor for Windows Hello. But my favorite thing about this component is that Razer included a tiny physical shutter, which should reduce concerns about government agents spying on you.

Performance: Class-leading speed

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

The Blade 14 is available in two basic configurations: a base model with an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS chip, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage and an NVIDIA RTX 4060 GPU. There’s also an upgraded model with 32GB of memory and an RTX 4070 (which is the version we reviewed). In short, this thing flies, delivering about as much performance as you can get out of a 14-inch laptop. In PCMark 10, the Blade 14 scored 7,436 versus 6,170 from an ASUS ZenBook 14 OLED with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H chip. But more importantly, it can handle almost any game you can throw at it with ease.

In Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p and ultra settings, the Blade 14 hit 101 fps compared to 67 fps from an MSI Stealth 14 Studio with an RTX 4060. When I increased the resolution to 1440p, it still pumped out a very playable 66 fps. Meanwhile in Returnal at 1080p and epic presets, Razer enjoyed a similar lead reaching 92 fps versus 78 for the MSI. So unless you feel like moving up to a larger 15- or 16-inch system with room for an RTX 4080 or above, this performance is essentially as good as it gets in this segment.

Battery life: Better than expected unless your gaming unplugged

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Gaming laptops are notorious for short run times. However, on PCMark 10’s Modern Office rundown test, the Blade 14 turned in a respectable time of 6 hours and 46 minutes. That’s more than an hour longer than the MSI Stealth Studio 14 (5:19) and nearly good enough to last through an entire workday. But it still falls way short of more typical ultraportables without discrete graphics like the ZenBook 14 OLED (12:43).

That said, even with some power-saving tricks like automatically reducing its display to 60Hz when running on battery, you’re still going to want to keep the Razer’s power brick handy. When I played Teamfight Tactics, the Blade’s battery dropped from 85 to 45 percent after a single 40-minute game.

Wrap-up

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

With a starting price of $2,200 or $2,700 as configured, the Blade 14 is on the pricey side. But that’s not really new for Razer’s laptops and there’s no doubt this thing delivers a thoroughly premium experience, with its excellent build quality, beautiful display and great performance. It’s equally adept at gaming or editing on the go, and with the silver model being available at launch, you can get a machine that blends in better outside of LAN parties. The main thing that would stop me from buying one is the existence of ASUS’ refreshed ROG Zephyrus G14, which has similar specs and a much lower starting price of $1,600. But if you have the means, the Blade 14 won’t do you wrong.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/razer-blade-14-2024-review-a-portable-but-pricey-powerhouse-specs-price-160020891.html?src=rss

© Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Fisker has announced its future plans alongside preliminary 2023 and Q4 earnings, and it's not looking great for the EV manufacturer. The company plans to lay off 15 percent of its workforce — nearly 200 people — as it shifts from a direct-to-consumer to a Dealer Partner model. The company is halting all investments in upcoming models and will resume only if in partnership with another automaker.

The company's fourth-quarter revenue increased to $200.1 million from $128.3 million in Q3. However, its gross margin was negative 35 percent, and it lost $1.23 per share. Its sole EV on the market, the Ocean SUV, also had 10,193 units produced but 4,929 vehicles delivered.

The automaker first introduced its pivot to a Dealer Partner Model in January and claims it has received interest from 250 dealers across North America and Europe, along with 13 signed agreements. "We are aware that the industry has entered a turbulent, and unpredictable period," Henrik Fisker, chairman and CEO of Fisker, said in a statement. "With that understanding and taking the lessons learned from 2023, we have put a plan in place to streamline the company as we prepare for another difficult year. We have adjusted our outlook for 2024 to be much more conservative than in 2023." The company plans to deliver between 20,000 and 22,000 Ocean models across the world. 

Fisker is currently negotiating with "a large automaker" for an investment and joint production of future EVs. This means that previously announced vehicle production, such as the Alaska EV pickup with humungous cup holders and a designated cowboy hat space, will be on hold indefinitely. Fisker originally planned to start production on the Alaska EV pickup in early 2025. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fisker-halts-work-on-new-ev-models-until-it-finds-more-money-140050091.html?src=rss

© Fisker Inc.

After years of buildup, Fisker has finally started building its ambitious electric Ocean SUV in Austria. The company pledged to start production by the end of 2022, so it has met that target with around six weeks to spare.

If you didn't lock in a pre-order for the EV swiftly, you may still be in for quite a wait before you get your hands on the Ocean. Fisker will ramp up production gradually. It plans to build more than 300 units in the first quarter of 2023, increasing to more than 8,000 the following quarter. For Q3, the aim is to make more than 15,000 units. All told, Fisker expects to assemble around 42,400 units in 2023.

Two of the Ocean trims have sold out in the US for 2023 and the company has received more than 63,000 reservations in total. The limited-edition Ocean One trim, which is based on the high-end Ocean Extreme, required a $5,000 deposit and sold out within 30 days earlier this year. Fisker will crank out 5,000 units of the Ocean One before moving on to other variants.

Peter Reiter Photography

The Ocean Extreme, which starts at $68,999, is capable of traveling 350 miles on a single charge, according to Fisker. The SUV boasts what the company claims is the first digital radar system as a safety feature. The Ocean Extreme has dual-motor, all-wheel-drive with 550 horsepower, which can accelerate the vehicle from 0 to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds. It also includes three driving modes, a 17.1-inch rotating screen you can play games on and a solar roof.

The base-level Ocean Sport is selling for $37,499, while the mid-tier Ocean Ultra will set you back $49,999. The Sport has one 275 hp engine that can take the car from 0 to 60 mph in 6.6 seconds. The dual-motor Ultra has 540 horsepower and a 0 to 60 mph time of 3.9 seconds.

Fisker claims the Ocean is the planet's "most sustainable vehicle." The SUV is being assembled in a carbon-neutral factory. The vehicle also includes more than 50 kg (110 pounds) of recycled, biodegradable and overall eco-conscious materials.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fisker-electric-ocean-suv-production-starts-173013409.html?src=rss

© Fisker Inc.

This week, Cherlynn and Devindra discuss some of the editorial changes happening at Engadget. We’ve lost some amazing colleagues, but we’re still here aiming to deliver the best tech coverage possible. As for this week’s news, we chat about the reported death of Apple’s “Project Titan” EV car project. It never felt quite real, but it still would have been fun to see.

Here’s a hot take: Maybe the Apple Car felt redundant since Tesla basically built it already. Say what you will about Elon Musk today, but Tesla certainly disrupted the car industry in all of the ways we’d expect Apple to. Agree? Disagree?

---

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!

Topics

• What happened with Engadget last week: layoffs and our continued commitment to tech journalism – 0:31

• RIP Apple Car 2014-2024 – 9:11

• Nintendo’s successor to the Switch delayed to 2025 – 21:53

• Microsoft opens more Xbox exclusives to PS5 and Switch – 25:24

• Google renames AI suite, ends up in hot water over image generation – 33:47

• Pop culture picks – 43:21

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Credits
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-podcast-farewell-apple-car-133039218.html?src=rss

© NurPhoto via Getty Images

The right controller can make your Nintendo Switch gaming experience feel like new again. If you’ve been relying on the included Joy-Cons ever since you bought a Switch, there’s a good chance you’re missing out on extra comfort and improved ergonomics. Don’t get us wrong: Joy-Cons are perfectly serviceable, but there are more customizable options out there and controllers that will suit certain games better. Whether you want a better grip when you’re battling armies of Bokoblins in Tears of the Kingdom, or you want affordable and comfortable spares for impromptu Mario Kart competitions with friends, you have plenty of options. We’ve tested a bunch of controllers over the years and these are the best Switch controllers you can get right now.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-nintendo-switch-controllers-160034389.html?src=rss

Video doorbells manufactured by a Chinese company called Eken, sold under different brands for around $30 each, have serious security issues, according to Consumer Reports. These doorbell cameras are sold on Walmart, Sears and even with an Amazon Choice badge on Amazon.

As is often the case with basic technology products, the device is available under multiple brands, including Eken, Tuck, Fishbot, Rakeblue, Andoe, Gemee and Luckwolf, among others. Most pair with an app called Aiwitt.

Amazon

These devices aren’t encrypted and can expose the user’s home IP address and WiFi network name to the internet, making it easy for scumbags to gain entry. Worse, somebody could easily take control of it by creating an account on the Aiwit app, going up to the doorbell and then pressing a button to put it into pairing mode, which then connects it with their phone.

Worse still, even if the original owner regains control, the hijacker can still get time-stamped images from the doorbell, as long as they know its serial number.

There’s no way to protect yourself if you do own this doorbell series. Temu told Consumer Reports it’s looking into the issue. Amazon, Sears and Shein reportedly didn’t respond.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

Microsoft plans to streamline game upscaling across different graphics cards

The best DACs for Apple Music Lossless

This week’s gaming news: layoffs and weird PR emails

​​You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!

Dell XPS 16 laptop review

Beauty and power come at a cost.

Engadget

The XPS 16 stands out from most other large laptops by combining power and beauty. But you’ll have to suffer through some usability tradeoffs. For example, the XPS 16’s invisible trackpad, a lovely divisive design feature, is still annoying and not for everyone. A lack of ports counteracts that minimalist design. (No HDMI, no SD card reader.)

Continue reading.

UK government wants to use AI to cut civil service jobs

That's not a typo.

The UK government is actively promoting the use of AI to do the work normally done by civil servants, including drafting responses to parliamentary inquiries, the Financial Times reports.

UK Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden will unveil a red box tool that can allegedly absorb and summarize information from reputable sources, like the parliamentary record. A separate instrument is also being trialed that should work for individual responses to public consultations. The Telegraph quoted Dowden arguing that implementing AI technology is critical to cutting civil service jobs — something he wants to do. “It really is the only way, I think, if we want to get on a sustainable path to headcount reduction.”

Continue reading.

Meta is killing the Facebook News tab in the US and Australia

The tab is already gone in the UK, France and Germany.

In early April, the Facebook News tab will disappear for users in the US and Australia. Meta has announced it’s pulling the dedicated tab to “align [its] investments to [its] products and services people value the most.” Meta added that the number of people using the News tab in the US and Australia over the past year has dropped by 80 percent.

By pulling the News tab in Australia, the company will stop paying publishers in the country for their content after their current deals end. A few years ago, Facebook blocked Australian news links in response to the then-proposed law requiring companies like Meta to pay media organizations for their content. The company unblocked news links just a few days after striking deals with Australian media organizations.

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-your-cheap-video-doorbell-may-have-serious-security-issues-121525353.html?src=rss

© Eken via Amazon

X has updated its abuse and harassment page in January, and it has added a new section that explains its new rule against intentionally using the wrong pronouns for a person or using a name they no longer go by. As noticed by Ars Technica, the new section entitled "Use of Prior Names and Pronouns" states that the service will "reduce the visibility of posts" that use pronouns for a person different from what they use for themselves and those who are now using a different name as part of their transition. 

The social networking service formerly known as Twitter removed its longtime policy against deadnaming and misgendering transgender individuals just as quietly back in April 2023. GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said at the time that X's decision was "the latest example of just how unsafe the company is for users and advertisers alike." It's worth noting that Elon Musk, the website's owner, has a history of liking and sharing anti-trans posts and talking points. 

Under the new policy, X will only act on a post if it hears from the target themselves "given the complexity of determining whether such a violation has occurred." That puts the onus on the target who might end up being blamed for not reporting if they choose to distance themselves from the abuse. Jenni Olson, GLAAD's senior director of social media safety, told Ars that the organization doesn't recommend self-reporting for social media platforms. Still, policies clearly prohibiting the deadnaming and misgendering of trans people are still better than vague ones that don't clarify whether or not they're in violation of a platform's rules, Olson said. 

X reduces the visibility of posts by removing them from search results, home timelines, trends and notifications. These posts will also be downranked in the replies section and can only be discovered through the authors' profiles. Finally, they will not be displayed on the X website or app with ads adjacent to them, which could prevent a repeat of the ad revenue losses the company suffered last year. In late 2023, advertisers pulled their campaigns from the website just before the holidays after Media Matters published a report showing ads on the website right next to antisemitic content.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-reinstates-policy-against-deadnaming-and-misgendering-114608696.html?src=rss

© Robert Way via Getty Images

In early April, the Facebook News tab will start disappearing for users in the US and Australia. Meta has announced that it's deprecating the dedicated tab found in the bookmarks section of its social network as part of its efforts to "align [its] investments to [its] products and services people value the most." The company already retired the News tab in the UK, France and Germany in early December 2023, explaining that it's funneling its resources to other things that people want to see more of, such as short form videos. 

In Meta's new post, it said the number of people using the News tab in the US and Australia over the past year has dropped by 80 percent. News makes up less than three percent of what users see on Facebook apparently, and it's just not a big part of their experience. "We know that people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content — they come to connect with people and discover new opportunities, passions and interests," the company wrote. 

By pulling the News tab in Australia, the company will also stop paying publishers in the country for their content after their current deals end. A few years ago, Facebook blocked news links in the country in response to the then-proposed law that would require companies like Meta to pay media organizations for their content. The company unblocked news links just a few days later after it started striking deals with Australian media organizations.

According to The Age, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission believes that Google and Meta inked deals with dozens of outlets, including Guardian Australia and News Corp Australia, worth about $200 million a year. Meta is responsible for around one-third or $66 million of that total amount, meaning its decision is bound to have a huge impact on the news business in the country. And there seems to be no room for negotiation: The company made it clear in its announcement that it's not going to enter new commercial deals for traditional news content in any of the regions where it has already removed the News tab. 

Meta has not blocked news links in the aforementioned countries, however, and Facebook users can still access any that's been posted on the social network. Publishers can also continue posting links to their stories on their official pages as usual. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-is-killing-the-facebook-news-tab-in-the-us-and-australia-082750820.html?src=rss

© Justin Sullivan via Getty Images

Saber Interactive has reportedly found an exit strategy from the death grip of its parent company, Embracer Group AB. Bloomberg reported Thursday that “a group of private investors” will buy the studio in a deal worth roughly $500 million. Saber would then become a private company with about 3,500 employees.

Engadget emailed a spokesperson from Saber for confirmation about the alleged buyout. The studio declined to comment.

The alleged agreement would be one of Embracer’s most significant cost-cutting moves since the collapse of a reported $2 billion deal with a group backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Some criticized the imperiled deal as the gaming equivalent of “sportswashing,” using popular sporting acquisitions and partnerships to boost beleaguered governments’ global images. That followed US intelligence’s conclusion that the Saudi regime murdered The Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi in late 2018.

Other cost-cutting moves at Embracer have included laying off about 900 employees in September, cutting another 50 or so jobs at Chorus developer Fishlabs and implementing more layoffs at Tiny Tina’s Wonderland developer Lost Boys Interactive, Beamdog, Crystal Dynamics and Saber subsidiary New World Interactive. Embracer also closed Saints Row studio Volition Games and Campfire Cabal.

LucasArts / Aspyr

According to Bloomberg, Saber’s sale won’t affect the studio’s role in developing an upcoming Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) remake. That game has already changed hands once: One of Saber’s Eastern European studios took over from Aspyr Media in the summer of 2022.

Aspyr had reportedly already been working on the game for years before providing a demo for Lucasfilm and Sony in June 2022; a week later, Aspyr fired its design director and art director. (Reports of the KOTOR demo costing a disproportionate amount of time and money may indicate a possible reason for the fallout.) By late that summer, Saber had taken over the development of the highly anticipated — and indefinitely delayed — remake.

Embracer bought Saber for $525 million in 2020 as it scooped up gaming studios left and right. It acquired at least 27 companies during that period, folding some of them (Demiurge Studios and New World Interactive) into Saber. Bloomberg reports that the deal to sell Saber to private investors includes an option to “bring along multiple Embracer subsidiaries.”

One studio that’s far too big to be included in this transaction is Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment. However, Kotaku reported Thursday that Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford told staff this week that a decision about the studio’s future had been made. He allegedly said he’d be able to share more details with them next month.

In the meantime, a cloud of uncertainty envelops Gearbox — and Embracer’s other remaining studios. “I’ve personally been looking for roles elsewhere not just due to the Embracer layoff fears, but due to pay,” an anonymous developer reportedly said to Kotaku. “Vague and in a holding pattern is definitely par for the course at the moment and has been for most of 2023.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/saber-interactive-may-escape-embracers-death-hug-and-become-a-private-company-203623311.html?src=rss

© Saber Interactive / Embracer Group AB

Activision studio Toys for Bob has announced that it's leaving the corporate rat race and is spinning off as an independent developer. This comes just weeks after Activision Blizzard's parent company Microsoft instituted sweeping layoffs at Toys for Bob that impacted 86 employees. That’s more than half of the entire staff.

The developer said the choice to go indie will allow it to return to “being a small and nimble studio”, harkening back to its early days of the 1980s and 1990s when it made hit titles like Star Control. To that end, the company says it's already developing a new game, though there won’t be any official announcements for a while.

Additionally, there looks to be no hard feelings for former parent company Activision and, uh, grandparent company Microsoft. Toys for Bob said that both entities have “been extremely supportive of our new direction and we’re confident that we will continue to work closely together as part of our future.”

Toys for Bob is primarily known for the Skylanders franchise, but was also behind the well-reviewed Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time and the Spyro Reignited Trilogy. It’s also been involved with creating content for Call of Duty: Warzone.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/activision-studio-toys-for-bob-is-going-independent-after-sweeping-xbox-layoffs-201548396.html?src=rss

© Toys for Bob

Dell's XPS 16 takes the minimalist design of the XPS 13 Plus and scales it up to a 16-inch system that's far more powerful and functional. But just like with that earlier machine, which was Dell's first attempt at implementing an "invisible" trackpad in its palm rest, there are some usability tradeoffs. It's hard not to be impressed by how sleek the XPS 16 looks — personally, I consider it one of the most attractive Windows laptops around — but power users who demand a wide variety of ports may find it lacking. (Even Apple can fit a full-sized SD card slot and HDMI port on the MacBook Pros, why can't Dell?)

It's no surprise why Dell is leaning so hard on the XPS 13 Plus's design language: That machine looked unlike any other Windows PC when it debuted two years ago. Now instead of being a separate "Plus" variant, it's talking over the XPS 13 mantle entirely. (Pour one out for the traditional XPS 13 design we've loved so much.) The XPS 14 and 16, meanwhile, are more powerful MacBook Pro competitors that fix some of the problems with the smaller model. They both have headphone jacks, for one, and they also offer a total of three USB-C ports (instead of just two) and a microSD card slot.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

I'll admit, even though I had issues with the XPS 13 Plus, I was still wowed by the XPS 16 the instant I opened it up. Its 16.3-inch OLED screen was glorious to behold, with the barest amount of bezel around the edges. Its all-glass wrist rest and touchpad looked like a crystal clear pond that was frozen over with an elegant layer of frost. And the XPS 16’s elegant keyboard was practically begging to be typed on. It's just so damn pretty.

But will that beauty get in the way of its functionality, as it did for the XPS 13 Plus? The mere presence of more ports (and a headphone jack!) makes it clear that Dell is thinking more practically with the XPS 16. It is, after all, a potential successor to the XPS 15, a product that we've praised as one of the go-to options for 15-inch Windows notebooks.

While Dell is sticking with the invisible trackpad that I found frustrating on the XPS 13 Plus, it's a bit less of a problem on the XPS 16. For one, the actual trackpad area is far larger, stretching between the Windows key on the left and Copilot button on the right, so there's far less chance you'll miss it. Dell also offers adjustable haptics for the touchpad, which you can tweak from absolutely no feedback (a setting for the criminally insane) and to truly deep and satisfying clicks. There's still no real justification for hiding the trackpad entirely, though, and using it takes some adjustment.

I'm all for PC makers taking wild design swings, but Dell's invisible trackpad remains more of a party trick than a leap forward for computing. Techies often criticize Apple for emphasizing aesthetics over functionality, but at least I can clearly tell exactly where a MacBook's trackpad is without looking down. There's still a continuous feeling of smoothness across Apple's palm rests, so Dell doesn't have a major advantage either.

The XPS 16's capacitive top row of buttons, which can switch between function keys and multimedia controls, is another design conundrum. Sure, it looks a bit cleaner than a typical laptop keyboard, and it allows for better airflow since Dell can fit in more cooling hardware underneath it, but it's impossible to touch type any of those keys. Even after several days of testing, I couldn't train my fingers to immediately make their way to a specific function key. That's bad for general usability, as well as for users with accessibility needs.

Most damning of all, the capacitive top row buttons completely disappear in direct sunlight (or even on a cloudy-yet-bright day (see below). You'll need to cup your hands over them or find some sort of shade to change your volume or screen brightness. Is that really worth avoiding another standard row of keys?

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

At least Dell got the keyboard right, and that's always been a highlight of the XPS lineup. The XPS 16's keyboard is luxuriously wide, with large key caps and a deep 0.3mm dish. Dell was able to make more room for those features by shaving away the space between the keys. I'll admit, it also takes some getting used to since it feels different than most other laptops, but once I suffered through a few hours of typos, I found myself enjoying the typing experience overall. For once, my hands had room to spread out.

The keyboard and trackpad experience will likely feel similar across all of the new XPS models, but it's the glorious 16.3-inch screen that sets the XPS 16 apart. You can choose between a 1080p+ LCD screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, or a 4K+ OLED panel that tops out at 90Hz. The OLED option (which our review unit came with) is the one to go for if you're looking for true color accuracy, since it supports 100 percent of the DCI-P3 gamut (the LCD model covers 100 percent of the sRGB minimum spec). And of course, it also comes with all of the advantages of OLED: High levels of contrast and inky dark black levels.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

The XPS 16's massive display allowed me to multitask easily, and it allowed me to see an expansive timeline while working on an Audacity recording in full screen. With its high level of color accuract, everything just popped on the XPS 16, from browsing the web to watching movies on Netflix. (It also supports Dolby Vision HDR, which adds more depth to dark scenes and higher peak brightness highlights).

It's worth noting that the OLED display is rated at 400 nits of brightness, 100 nits less than the LCD model, but I didn't have any trouble reading off our review unit's screen outdoors in direct sunlight. (It's annoying that the pricier OLED can't reach a 120Hz refresh rate, but it still looks decently smooth at 90Hz.)

In addition to having a tremendous display for creative tasks, the XPS 16 also packs in enough power to get you through an overwhelming work day (and also enough to let you game a bit when you need a break). Our XPS 16 review unit was equipped with Intel's Core Ultra 7 155H, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and an NVIDIA RTX 4070 GPU, a configuration worth a hefty $3,399.

None	PCMark 10	3DMark (TimeSpy Extreme)	Geekbench 6	Cinebench R23
Dell XPS 16 (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, NVIDIA RTX 4070)	7,436	4,087	2,298/13,117	1,676/14,755
Framework Laptop 16 (AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS, Radeon RX 7700S)	8,129	4,770	2,557/11,961	1,675/14,448
Razer Blade 18 (Intel i9-13950HX, NVIDIA RTX 4060)	7,326	5,009	2,708/12,874	1,900/15,442
ASUS Zephyrus G14 (2022, AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS, Radeon RX 6800S)	7,170	3,821	N/A	1,521/12,212

While I've seen Intel's new CPU in action on the ASUS ZenBook 14 OLED, it was far more impressive on the XPS 16, where it scored almost 3,000 points higher than the ZenBook in the Geekbench 6 CPU benchmark. The XPS 16 was also nearly twice as fast in the Cinebench 2024 benchmark when it came to multi-threaded CPU work. (These scores also make me wonder if the ASUS machine was just terribly unoptimized, since it was one of the first notebooks released with a Core Ultra chip.)

The XPS 16 also soundly bested the Framework Laptop 16, another big screen notebook targeted at creative professionals (along with being almost entirely modular). It scored over 1,000 points higher than the Framework machine in the Geekbench 6 multithreaded CPU benchmark, and it was over twice as fast in the Cinebench 2024 GPU test.

Curiously, the XPS 16 only scored a few hundred points higher in PCMark 10 compared to the 2022 XPS 15 (which used an Intel Core i7-12700H CPU and NVIDIA RTX 3050 Ti), but the advantage this year is that Intel's new chips also feature an NPU for AI tasks. The XPS 16 scored 3,109 points in the Geekbench ML test, a cross-platform benchmark for comparing machine learning capabilities. That puts it on par with an iPad Pro with Apple's M2 chips.

In Windows, NPUs mainly enable special features like Studio Effects, which can blur your background or optimize your lighting in video chats. But developers like Adobe and Audacity have committed to adding more AI-powered tools in their apps, so having a capable NPU could pay off down the line.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

The XPS 16's raw horsepower also makes it a capable (if overpriced) gaming machine. I was able to play Halo Infinite in 1440p+ (2,560 by 1,600 pixels) with maxed out graphics settings at an average of 63fps. Cyberpunk 2077 also reached 63fps on average in 1440p, so long as I enabled NVIDIA's DLSS upscaling and avoided ray tracing. These aren't very impressive scores when compared to dedicated gaming systems, but it's certainly better than what I saw on the XPS 15 a few years ago. The XPS 16's keyboard is well suited to shooters, thanks to its large keys and tactile feedback, but it's a pain if you're playing something that frequently uses function buttons. If you're really eager to game on this system, you're better off opting for the 1080p LCD screen, since it can hit a higher 120Hz refresh rate and requires less GPU rendering power.

After living with the XPS 16 for a few weeks, I'm still genuinely impressed by its sheer beauty and power. But it's not the easiest machine to travel with, since it clocks in at 4.8 pounds. That's about the same weight as the most powerful MacBook Pro 16-inch, so it's not overkill, but is still something to consider. In comparison, the latest XPS 15 weighs 4.5 pounds, while the new XPS 14 is far more portable at 3.7 pounds. If you need a ton of screen space, you've probably already resigned yourself to having a large machine. But it's still worth considering what your actual workflow looks like. Do you truly need a 16 inch screen at all times, or would you rather have something lighter for travel that you pair with a roomier monitor at your desk?

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

Another big benefit of a large machine? Tons of battery life. The XPS 16 lasted eight hours and 30 minutes in the PCMark 10 Modern Office benchmark, while the Framework Laptop 16 survived for only four hours. The ZenBook 14 OLED is still our top performer for that test — it went for 12 hours and 43 minutes — but you'll still be able to last a typical workday with the XPS 16 without searching for power.

As you can probably tell from our review unit’s cost, the XPS 16’s price is its biggest potential issue. It starts at $1,899 with the Intel Core Ultra 7, Intel Arc graphics, 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, a 512GB NVMe SSD and a 1080p+ LCD screen. The latest XPS 15 starts at $1,099 with a 13th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU and a similar build. At the very least, it’s nice to see that Dell isn’t shipping workhorse machines with 8GB of RAM by default (like Apple and so many other companies are). Other upgrades for the XPS 16, unfortunately, will cost you dearly: It’s another $400 to get an NVIDIA RTX 4050 GPU ($600 for the 4060 and $1,100 for the 4070), bumping up to OLED costs another $300 and stepping up to 32GB of RAM is an astounding $600 extra.

Good looks don’t come cheap. But the same is true for every other premium 16-inch laptop (the MacBook Pro 16 starts at $2,499!). This isn’t necessarily a category for finding a good deal, unless you’re looking through older or refurbished models. The XPS 16 is meant for people with deep pockets who demand an enormous screen, tons of power and beautiful hardware. In that respect, it’s a total success — as long as you’re not too annoyed by its invisible trackpad.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/dell-xps-16-review-beauty-and-power-comes-at-a-cost-200513721.html?src=rss

© Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

There's a lot to like about Microsoft's Surface Laptop Studio 2, which is a highly versatile system. However, the normally high price was one of our major complaints about the system when we reviewed it last October. That sticker shock is slightly less of a concern now, as the laptop is on sale at Amazon. The price has dropped by $400 to $2,399. That's a new record low for a configuration that includes 32GB of RAM, a 13th-gen Intel i7 processor and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 GPU.

Those specs make the laptop more than capable of handling everyday tasks, while the 1TB of included storage should be enough for most folks' needs. You should be able to run most current games on this computer too.

Microsoft says the Surface Laptop 2 will run for up to 18 hours on a single charge, which is respectable. The system has a 14.4-inch touchscreen with true-to-life color and a 120Hz refresh rate. There's Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support too. As for connectivity, you'll get two USB-C 4.0 ports with Thunderbolt 4, a USB-A port, a microSD card reader and Surface Connect for docking and charging.

We gave the Surface Laptop 2 a score of 85 in our review, lauding it for many of those factors as well as the unique design. Since the lid is split into two halves, you can pivot the screen 180 degrees or tilt it down into an easel. It effectively gives you the versatility of a 2-in-1 with the power of a mid-range laptop.

On the downside, the Surface Laptop 2 is bulkier than other 14-inch ultraportables and you'll need to buy the Surface Slim Pen 2 separately if you want it. That said, the laptop should be capable of handling all of most people's day-to-day needs.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-surface-laptop-studio-2-is-400-off-at-amazon-185728432.html?src=rss

© Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Microsoft has developed a new API to simplify super-resolution coding in PC gaming. The company’s DirectSR, developed with hardware partners Nvidia, AMD and Intel, will provide a more streamlined tunnel for developers to tap into the companies’ three distinct approaches to graphical upscaling in Windows games.

The company describes DirectSR as enabling “seamless integration of Super Resolution (SR)” for Windows games. “DirectSR is the missing link developers have been waiting for when approaching SR integration, providing a smoother, more efficient experience that scales across hardware,” Microsoft program manager Joshua Tucker wrote in a company blog post.

Super-resolution is a technology that enhances games’ visual quality without pushing the graphics card too hard. It runs games internally in a lower resolution but uses machine learning (and other tricks) to upscale the resolution of what you see on the screen. The result is sharper graphics with only a minimal extra demand on the GPU.

Nvidia

Microsoft says the DirectSR API opens the door to “multi-vendor” super-resolution via “a common set of inputs and outputs.” Tucker wrote that a single code path would enable “a variety of solutions” through the companies’ three (otherwise distinct) answers to super-resolution: Nvidia’s DLSS, AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and Intel’s XeSS.

The three GPU vendors’ SR solutions differ. Nvidia’s AI-powered DLSS appears to perform the best but requires an Nvidia graphics card. AMD’s FidelityFX is more versatile, supporting competitors’ hardware in addition to its own, while Intel’s XeSS offers AI upscaling for Intel hardware while still providing limited support for non-Intel GPUs.

Earlier this month, X (Twitter) user @PhantomofEarth noticed an AI-powered “Automatic super resolution” setting in a Windows Insider preview build (24H2). Although it isn’t confirmed that it’s the same thing, it sounds like it. The setting would allow you to “Use Al to make supported games play more smoothly with enhanced details.” The preview version offers the choice of using a universal / automatic upscaling approach or a per-game one. Initially speculated to be a rival super-resolution feature from Microsoft, it now appears “Automatic super resolution” may end up as the consumer-facing version of the DirectSR API.

Microsoft says DirectSR will arrive for developers “soon” in a public preview build of the Agility SDK (a component of DirectX 12). If you’re a PC gaming developer, the company plans to go into more detail about the new API in its DirectX State of the Union on March 21 at GDC.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-plans-to-streamline-game-upscaling-across-different-graphics-cards-183052450.html?src=rss

© ASSOCIATED PRESS

Google just announced a trio of features for its Chrome browser to allow for “more helpful suggestions.” Some of these tools are for the smartphone app, while others work with the standard PC-based browser.

First up, desktop Chrome users are getting new search suggestions that pull from what others have been using the browser to look for. The browser will still remember your recent queries and auto populate related search suggestions, but you’ll also see user-generated options to the right of those usual autofill suggestions, under a tab marked “People also search for.”

Chrome users on iOS and Android will now see more images to accompany suggested searches. In the past, Chrome only displayed images for search suggestions in the address bar that exactly matched a specific query, with Google giving an example of “Isanti dining table.” Now, broader searches — say, “bohemian table” — will tie an image to each option from the pull-down menu. A picture’s worth a thousand words, right?

Google

Perhaps the most puzzling new feature is that Chrome for iOS and Android is getting an optimization tool that allows for search even when users have a bad network connection. Google hasn’t revealed how this works, simply stating that it's due to “improved on-device capabilities.” The company says search will continue to work with a “bad” connection, so it’s likely some level of connection will still be necessary.

All three of these features are available today, so have at it. These are just the latest tools for the search engine, as Google seems to be constantly tweaking the service. The company recently added a trio of generative AI features and a Gemini-based writing tool.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-chromes-new-slate-of-features-will-allow-search-even-with-a-bad-network-connection-181522574.html?src=rss

© Google

Following the launch of Copilot Pro in January, Microsoft will start rolling out a slew of upgrades today to make its AI assistant more useful in Windows 11. The biggest addition is support for plugins, something that only worked with Copilot on the web previously. You could, for example, connect Copilot to OpenTable so you can make a reservation from within its chat window. If you're low on groceries, you could start an order using the Instacart plugin. Microsoft says that plugins from Kayak, Klarna and Shopify will also be arriving over the next month. The goal, of course, is to keep you locked into the Copilot window for as long as possible.

Microsoft doesn't even want you to leave Copilot to access system settings. With this new update, you'll be able to turn battery saver mode on and off, or view your system's hardware profile, from within the AI chat view. You could also request that Copilot turn on Windows 11's Live Captions, Narrator or Screen Magnifier. It can even display a list of available Wi-Fi networks to connect to. Mainstream users might end up loving the ability to tap into Windows 11's features without navigating through the Settings app, so Copilot's enhanced integration could end up being a usability win for Microsoft. 

Windows 11 apps that use AI-powered features, like Photos and Clipchamp, are also getting a few AI enhancements. Photos now has a Generative Erase feature that can help you remove unwanted objects and elements from a picture, while Clipchamp will begin previewing a Silence Removal AI tool to cut out awkward video moments.

Microsoft says it will begin rolling out these Copilot and AI upgrades starting today for users running Windows 11 with the 22H2 (2022) and 23H2 (2023) year-end updates. If you're eager to try out the new features, make sure you've enabled the option to "Get the latest updates as soon as they're available." The company expects to have most features available when it launches the optional March 2024 non-security preview update. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/windows-11-gets-microsoft-copilot-plugins-and-more-ai-upgrades-180002527.html?src=rss

© Microsoft

Let's all take a breath. Layoffs are still churning in the video game industry, even as the frigid winter air is beginning to thaw. Amid the turmoil of these past few months, there are still things to be excited about: new games and hardware, the evolution of established franchises, and plenty of small teams building surprises to shake up the status quo. Look at all of the rad things happening over at Playdate for just one example of positive momentum in video games (we'll talk more about this next week).

Breathe in, breathe out.

Now, let's dive back into the news cycle:

This week's stories

PlayStation layoffs

The layoffs crisis in video games isn’t slowing down, and the latest company to announce drastic staffing cuts is PlayStation. Sony on Tuesday fired roughly 900 people from its PlayStation division and fully shut down its London Studio, which had been building a co-op multiplayer game for PS5. Insomniac, Naughty Dog and Guerrilla all lost employees, despite being behind some of the platform’s most successful games in recent memory. First-party studio Firesprite was also hit by the layoffs, and it reportedly had to cancel a live-service Twisted Metal project. It’s barely March, but already more than 7,000 video game workers have been laid off in 2024; last year, more than 9,000 people in the industry lost their jobs to layoffs.

Happy Pokémon Day!

February 27 was Pokémon Day, and in celebration, Nintendo revealed two new games: Pokémon Legends Z-A and Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket. Pokémon Legends Z-A is set in Lumiose City, which you might remember from Pokémon X and Y on the 3DS, and it looks like it features Mega Evolutions. Pokémon Legends Z-A is due to hit Switch in 2025. The other title, Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, is a mobile game that should land on Android and iOS devices by the end of the year. It’s exactly what it sounds like — Nintendo is putting the physical card-opening mechanic inside your phone, complete with flashy animations and addictive sound effects when you rip off the digital packaging. You’ll also be able to engage in quick battles. Nintendo has clarified that Pocket will not have NFTs, but it is described as “free to start,” so expect microtransactions.

Random PR roundup

It’s been a strange and slow week here in Engadget video game land, so I thought we’d have some fun this episode. As tech reporters, we receive ridiculous emails from startups and PR agencies literally every day, and even though we don’t end up covering many of the proposed products, some of the messages themselves deserve a moment in the spotlight. Many of the pitches we get are just silly or tone deaf, but some of them are outright dystopian. And honestly, I thought you all might enjoy seeing some of the weirdness that hits our inboxes.

This is all meant in good fun — I appreciate the communications teams who are just trying to sell their stuff in creative ways. The real enemy here, as always, is capitalism.

So, here are some emails that recently found their way into my inbox and made me go wut:

GameScent - New Groundbreaking Device Enhances Player Immersion by Releasing Gameplay Corresponding Scents

“As players dive into a game, GameScent’s patent-pending adaptor captures audio in real-time. These real-time audio cues are processed by GameScent's innovative AI to release scents that correspond with the on-screen action. Inhale the smoky aroma of battle, the exhilarating scent of speeding race cars, the calming fragrance of a forest, or the fresh smell of rain after a storm.”

Unsurprisingly, this little doodad comes with replaceable scent cartridges, though it's unclear how to actually buy those at the moment. Scents include gunfire, explosion, racing cars, blood, sports arena and other brotastic flavors.

Is this... cool? There's definitely a fun idea here about the future of immersion, right? Or I've completely lost the plot. Either could be true.

---

Seeking Products for Pickleball Stories? (Samples Available)

Ma'am, this is Engadget.

---

Deconstructeam Delivers a Valentine's Day Surprise of Cosmic Proportions

This was for the game The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, and the surprise was a huge dildo. I thought the whole email was cute, actually — it was tasteful and coyly advertised a giveaway in partnership with a well-known adult toy company. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a sexy game and it stars a muscular behemoth the size of a planet, so it all made sense. It just didn’t fit in our general news feed, ya know?

---

(Story Idea:) Here’s Doom Running On A Robotic Lawn Mower: Yes, A Robotic Lawn Mower! (You Have To See It To Believe It!) (Video Included)

"I am reaching out with a great story that is sure to go viral… This spring, Husqvarna will make the iconic 1993 video game DOOM, available to play on the company’s robotic lawn mowers."

I find this email charming because it’s just a traditional, infomercial-style email with lots of unnecessary exclamation points and parenthesis. I respect it. But seriously, are we still doing this Doom thing? Next you’ll be asking me if this lawn mower can run Crysis and making jokes about Leeroy Jenkins, and I’m just here in 2024, begging for some new references.

The best part of this one is the fact that, after I added it to my list of silly emails, we actually hit this as news on Engadget dot com. Who's the joke now? (It's me).

---

Meet My Regina | PC Preview – Dickhead-Destroying Extravaganza Cookie Cutter

“I’ve got something to show you, Jessica.

She’s one of the most incredible things I’ve ever held between my legs.

She’s small but tough and can take a beating.

And everyone knows she’s smart because she has a British accent.

She’ll giggle if you tickle her just right.

And she even glows in the dark!

Are you ready to meet her?

Well, are you?

Don’t be shy now.

Good. Well, here she is!”

I asked to be removed from this list.

Bonus Content

• In more layoffs news, Until Dawn studio Supermassive Games fired about a third of its workforce, or roughly 90 employees, and the team is reorganizing. Also, indie studio Die Gut Fabrik, which created Sportsfriends, Johann Sebastian Joust and Saltsea Chronicles, has halted production amid funding issues and developers there are looking for other jobs.

• Nintendo is suing Yuzu, a popular and long-running emulator that allows players to put their Switch games on other platforms. Nintendo argues that the app is "facilitating piracy at a colossal scale,” and says it illegally circumvents DMCA protections. Nintendo wants Yuzu shut down and the company is seeking damages.

• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth finally comes out on February 29 and our review from Mat Smith is live now. He’s a really big Final Fantasy nerd, and he really liked Rebirth.

Now Playing

Home Safety Hotline is the perfect game to play at your desk, on the PC, so you can let the mid-90s computer interface fully engulf your senses. In this game, you take calls from people complaining about pests and paranormal creatures invading their homes, and using a detailed reference guide, you identify what’s going on and help them sort it out. Or, you get it wrong and get fired while a family of three screams for their lives on the other end of the line. There’s also a broader meta-horror unfurling in the background, and I’m having a lovely, spooky time sorting through all of it. Home Safety Hotline is out now on Steam.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/layoffs-and-weird-pr-emails--this-weeks-gaming-news-173041054.html?src=rss

Woot is selling Amazon's largest tablet, the Fire Max 11 for $140. That's $89 below the list price and $37 cheaper than it's selling for on Amazon right now. The price applies to the 64GB model with ads on the lockscreen and just the tablet alone — the magnetic case, stylus and keyboard case are all sold separately. The tablet hit $150 for the shopping holidays last year, so the Woot deal represents a $10 discount off the all-time low price. The sale should run through Sunday or until the tablet sells out. 

We had a chance to briefly check out a sample when the latest generation came out in May of last year and were impressed by how much you get for the money. There's an 11-inch LCD screen (Amazon's largest tablet screen) with a 2,000 x 1,000 resolution. Most of Amazon's Fire Tablets are built for casual use like browsing, streaming and for kids to play games on, but the Max 11 could be seen as the grown-up of the lineup. It's designed to handle a bit of work and multitasking with its octa-core MediaTek processor that Amazon says is 50 percent faster than the next fastest model. Just keep in mind that Fire Tablets rely on the Amazon Appstore, which does have Microsoft 365 apps, but you can't natively get Google's productivity apps without sideloading.  

Still, you get an aluminum build, support for Wi-Fi 6, 8-megapixel front and rear cameras, a fingerprint sensor and picture-in-picture capabilities. That last feature could be particularly useful for keeping tabs on your Alexa-enabled smart home cameras while you watch a show or flip through YouTube. In fact, when set up with a stand, it can go into "show mode" and act like one of Amazon's smart displays, providing you with Alexa's controls and interactivity. 

Even though it's perfectly suitable for adults who want to get some work done, Fire Max 11's claimed 14-hour battery life, comprehensive parental controls and access to an Amazon Kids+ subscription (currently $5 monthly) makes the tablet particularly well-suited for kids, too. Plus Amazon says the Max 11 is "three times as durable as the iPad 10.9 (10th generation)."  

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-fire-max-11-tablet-drops-to-a-record-low-of-140-171039269.html?src=rss

© Amazon

Apple has been steadily expanding its Self Service Repair program since spinning it up two years ago. Starting today, you can access the tools, parts and repair manuals you need to fix the latest MacBook Pros and iMacs that run on the company's M3 chips. 

As of sometime next month, folks with M3 systems will be able to use Apple Diagnostics for Self Service Repair on their systems too. The web-based tool gives end users the same capabilities as the company's authorized service providers and independent repair shops to pinpoint parts that may need to be repaired, as well as to test for "optimal part functionality and performance," Apple says. The company debuted this tool for iPhone and Mac last year.

On top of that, Apple notes that it's trying to improve the Mac repair process and make it more efficient through tweaks to system configuration procedures. As of early March, you'll no longer need to contact its Self Service Repair team to carry out the final step of a repair. However, the team will still be available in case you need a hand.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-self-repair-program-now-covers-m3-powered-macbook-pros-and-imacs-165109070.html?src=rss

© Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

Meta and LG have partnered up to “expedite” the former company’s extended reality (XR) business. What does that mean exactly? We don’t know, but Meta’s current VR/XR business is fairly robust, with the recent release of the Quest 3 headset.

LG says the ultimate goal of the partnership is “to combine the strengths of both companies across products, content, services and platforms to drive innovation in customer experiences within the burgeoning virtual space.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg traveled to LG’s headquarters in Seoul to announce the collaboration. During this visit, LG CEO William Cho tried out the Quest 3 and the recently-released Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The business leaders discussed “business strategies and considerations for next-gen XR device development.” LG’s CEO also seemed to take a particularly keen interest in Meta’s large language models and the potential to further integrate AI into standalone devices.

As stated above, we don’t know exactly what this partnership will entail. LG says it hopes to bring together “Meta’s platform with its own content/service capabilities” from its TV business. That sounds pretty boring, but LG also said the partnership will combine “Meta’s diverse core technological elements with LG’s cutting-edge product and quality capabilities.”

This leads to the lens-shaped elephant in the room. Meta XR and VR devices require displays and LG makes displays. It could be just that simple. After all, even Apple relied on Sony for the micro-OLED displays inside of the Vision Pro headset.

This news follows LG creating a dedicated XR business unit last year, which was founded to “accelerate the pursuit of new ventures in the virtual space arena.” This led to rumors that the company was planning to launch its own VR/XR headset, which could still happen.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-partners-up-with-lg-to-expedite-its-extended-reality-ventures-163251353.html?src=rss

© LG

The number of smart home devices on the market today is intimidating to say the least. With so many companies in the game now, and different IoT standards and voice assistants to consider, it can get confusing to even know where to start building a smart home ecosystem from scratch. But we at Engadget can help: before you dive in, we recommend not trying to outfit your whole home in one go. Not only can this be quite expensive, but also we think it’s generally best to buy just one or two items first to see if you like them. You should also pick a preferred voice assistant and stick with it. Below are the best smart home gadgets you can get right now, plus some advice on how to choose the right voice assistant for your needs.

Best smart home gadgets: Smart speakers

Best smart home gadgets: Smart displays

Best smart home gadgets: Smart lights

Best smart home gadgets: Security cameras

Best smart home gadgets: IoT gear

How to pick the right voice assistant before you buy

While plenty of the best smart home devices are platform agnostic, there are some — smart speakers and smart displays in particular — that require you to choose your voice assistant. Currently, that means deciding if you’ll use the Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa on a regular basis (I’ll address Siri in a moment.) They’re both compatible with various smart home products from light bulbs to robot vacuums, but there are certain devices that work best with either Google or Amazon. Nest products, for example, are more compatible and have more functionality with Google-powered speakers and displays. They can still work with Amazon devices, but certain features might be disabled. The same holds true with Amazon products: They work better if they’re in the same ecosystem.

Amazon Alexa

So how do you choose between Alexa and Google Assistant? It really depends on your personal preferences. Do you listen to Audible, watch Prime Video and tend to do a lot of shopping on Amazon? Then you might lean toward an Alexa-powered smart home device.

Google Assistant

If you want a voice assistant that’s great at answering questions, Google Assistant tends to be better than Alexa. Amazon’s helper, on the other hand, currently supports more smart home products. The company’s smart speakers and displays also support the Zigbee smart home protocol, and some devices even have built-in smart home hubs. Both Google and Amazon devices can sync with your calendar, though Google’s tend to work better with Google services. Plus, if you already have an Android phone, you might be more comfortable with Google Assistant anyway.

Siri

But what about Siri? Apple’s assistant supports voice commands as well, but it doesn't have as many compatible devices as Google or Amazon. The HomePod mini and the full-sized HomePod are the only Siri-compatible speakers on the market at the moment, too. That said, it’s not too hard to find Apple HomeKit-compatible gear as more third-party companies add support for it, but you currently have a smaller pool of devices to choose from.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-smart-home-devices-154557162.html?src=rss

The White House has announced an investigation into cars built in China and other unnamed "countries of concern." The Biden administration notes that cars are "constantly connecting" with drivers' phones, other vehicles, American infrastructure and their manufacturers, and that newer models use tech such as driver assist systems.

"Connected vehicles collect large amounts of sensitive data on their drivers and passengers; regularly use their cameras and sensors to record detailed information on US infrastructure; interact directly with critical infrastructure; and can be piloted or disabled remotely," the White House said in a statement. Officials are concerned that "new vulnerabilities and threats" could arise from connected vehicles if foreign governments are able to access data from them. They are especially wary that said countries of concern could use such information in ways that put national security at risk.

The Department of Commerce will lead the investigation. "We need to understand the extent of the technology in these cars that can capture wide swaths of data or remotely disable or manipulate connected vehicles, so we are soliciting information to determine whether to take action under our ICTS [information and communications technology and services] authorities," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said.

Through its advance notice of proposed rulemaking [PDF], the agency is looking for feedback from the public to help determine "the technologies and market participants that may be most appropriate for regulation." The investigation will help the Commerce Department decide whether to take action. It's the first time that the agency's Bureau of Industry and Security is carrying out an investigation under Trump-era Executive Orders "focused on protecting domestic information and communications technology and services supply chains from national security threats," the White House said.

"China is determined to dominate the future of the auto market, including by using unfair practices. China’s policies could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security. I’m not going to let that happen on my watch," President Joe Biden said. "Connected vehicles from China could collect sensitive data about our citizens and our infrastructure and send this data back to the People’s Republic of China. These vehicles could be remotely accessed or disabled."

As The Washington Post points out, cars built in China aren't especially common on US roads as yet, but they're becoming an increasingly familiar sight in other markets, such as Europe. While many of the vehicles that are causing concerns are EVs, its cars' cameras, sensors and software that are the focus of the probe.

It's not the first time that the US has investigated Chinese companies over concerns that they pose security risks to the country's infrastructure. A few years ago, it banned the import and sale of telecom networking equipment made by Huawei and ZTE (after stopping government employees from using the companies' phones). The government also required telecoms to remove and replace Huawei and ZTE gear in existing infrastructure at great expense.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-us-will-investigate-cars-built-in-china-over-security-concerns-155037465.html?src=rss

© ASSOCIATED PRESS

If you've been looking to pick up a set of Apple's AirPods Pros, today might be a good day to pounce. The latest version of the noise-canceling wireless earphones, which arrived last September and includes a USB-C charging case, is back down to $190 at Amazon and Best Buy. We've seen this discount several times over the last few months, but it still comes within a dollar of the lowest price we've tracked. For reference, Apple sells the pair for $249, though it's regularly available for less at third-party retailers. Note that this offer may be available for Thursday only, as Best Buy lists it as a 24-hour "Deal of the Day" and Amazon is likely price-matching.

We gave the second-generation AirPods Pro a score of 88 back in September 2022. That review applied to the model with a Lightning charging case; this USB-C model is virtually identical, only it has slightly better dust resistance and technically supports lossless audio with Apple's Vision Pro headset. Otherwise, it continues to offer effective active noise cancellation (ANC), a stellar ambient sound mode and pleasantly warm sound with slightly elevated bass. Its biggest perk, though, is still how well it works with other Apple devices. With those, you get a simpler pairing process, faster device switching, an adaptive EQ, hands-free access to Siri, automatic ear detection, Find My tracking and spatial audio support. The pair's settings menu and battery life indicator are baked into iOS as well. 

All of that makes the AirPods Pro the "best for iOS" pick in our wireless earbuds buying guide, but you need to an iPhone to get the most out of them. Even then, their six-ish hour battery life is just OK, their call quality could be better and their touch controls may take some getting used to. The Beats Fit Pro offers a mostly similar feature set in a more workout-friendly design, while Sony's WF-1000XM5s remain our favorite wireless earbuds overall. It's also worth noting that Apple may release new AirPods later this year, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, while those who just need the USB-C case can buy that separately. Still, if you're a dedicated Apple user who needs new earbuds today, this is a solid deal.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-apple-airpods-pro-are-back-on-sale-for-190-152417164.html?src=rss

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The two primary fears around AI are that the information these systems produce is gibberish, and that it'll unjustly take jobs away from people who won't make such sloppy mistakes. But the UK's current government is actively promoting the use of AI to do the work normally done by civil servants, including drafting responses to parliamentary inquiries, the Financial Times reports.

UK Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden is set to unveil a "red box" tool that can allegedly absorb and summarize information from reputable sources, like the parliamentary record. A separate instrument is also being trialed that should work similarly but with individual responses to public consultations. While it's unclear how quickly the AI tool can perform this work, Dowden claims it takes three months with 25 civil servants. However, the drafts would allegedly always be double-checked by a human and include sourcing. 

The Telegraph quoted Dowden arguing that implementing AI technology is critical to cutting civil service jobs — something he wants to do. "It really is the only way, I think, if we want to get on a sustainable path to headcount reduction. Remember how much the size of the Civil Service has grown as a result of the pandemic and, and EU exit preparedness. We need to really embrace this stuff to drive the numbers down." Dowden's statement aligns with hopes from his boss, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, to use technology to increase government productivity — shockingly, neither person has offered to save money by giving AI their job. 

Dowden does show some restraint against having AI do everything. In a pre-speech briefing, he noted that the government wouldn't use AI for any "novel or contentious or highly politically sensitive areas." At the same time, the Cabinet Office's AI division is set to grow from 30 to 70 employees and to get a new budget of £110 million ($139.1 million), up from £5 million ($6.3 million).

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/uk-government-wants-to-use-ai-to-cut-civil-service-jobs-140031159.html?src=rss

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X's audio chat rooms called Spaces can now broadcast live video, but only for those hosting the session. As The Verge reports, a Dogecoin designer posted an official walkthrough of the feature on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Hosts will now be able to choose whether to enable video and switch on their cameras when they create a Space. They can then broadcast with either their front or rear cameras and in vertical or landscape orientation. We're still not seeing the option to enable video in Spaces on Android, but it's reportedly already available for iOS devices. 

The platform already has a separate feature allowing users to broadcast live video, but that option's not quite as interactive as a Space. In a Space session, participants can still speak or co-host, even though only the host has the capability to broadcast live video.

Based on follow-up posts by some users, X has to fix a few bugs and other issues for the feature to work smoothly. Enabling video apparently introduces quite a lengthy lag into chat sessions, and broadcasting in landscape makes it impossible to manage a Space, since the video takes up the screen. Also, participants on desktop don't have the ability to see videos yet. Mobile users that do see videos are shown an interface that prominently displays the host's visual feed next to participants' user icons. The Verge says videos only live inside the chat sessions as they happen in real time and that users will have to join to see them, which means recorded Spaces are still audio-only at the moment. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-enables-live-video-broadcasts-in-spacesye-133051972.html?src=rss

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Video doorbells manufactured by a Chinese company called Eken and sold under different brands for around $30 each come with serious security issues that put their users at risk, according to Consumer Reports. The publication found that these doorbell cameras are sold on popular marketplaces like Walmart, Sears and Amazon, which has even given some of their listings the Amazon Choice badge. They're listed under the brands Eken, Tuck, Fishbot, Rakeblue, Andoe, Gemee and Luckwolf, among others, and they're typically linked to a user's phone via the Aiwit app. Outside the US, the devices are sold on global marketplaces like Shein and Temu. We found them on Chinese website Alibaba and Southeast Asian e-commerce website Lazada, as well. 

Based on Consumer Reports' investigation, these devices aren't encrypted and can expose a user's home IP address and WiFi network name to the internet, making it easy for bad actors to gain entry. Worse, somebody with physical access to the doorbell could easily take control of it by creating an account on the Aiwit app and then pressing down on its button to put it into pairing mode, which then connects it with their phone. And, even if the original owner regains control, the hijacker can still get time-stamped images from the doorbell as long as they know its serial number. If they choose "to share that serial number with other individuals, or even post it online, all those people will be able to monitor the images, too," Consumer Reports explains. 

Based on the ratings these doorbells' listings got on Amazon, the platform has sold thousands to people who were probably expecting the devices to be able to provide some form of security for their homes. Instead, the devices pose a threat to their safety and privacy. The doorbells could even put people's well-being and lives at risk if, say, they have stalkers or are domestic violence victims with dangerous exes who want to follow their every move. 

People who own one of these video doorbells can protect themselves by disconnecting it from their WiFi and physically removing it from their homes. Consumer Reports said it notified the online marketplaces selling them about its findings in hopes that their listings would get pulled down. Temu told the publication that it's looking into the issue, but Amazon, Sears and Shein reportedly didn't even respond. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/surprise-this-30-video-doorbell-has-serious-security-issues-130630193.html?src=rss

© Eken via Amazon

A lot of people started to care about “high resolution” digital audio when Apple launched its upgraded music service to the masses. Call that the “Apple effect,” as infuriating as it may be, but the iPhone maker isn’t the only one in the hi-res audio game: Qobuz, Tidal and Deezer have been doing it for a while, and Spotify has been toying with releasing its own version for a while. However, as many were quick to point out, some of Apple’s own products don’t necessarily support the higher sample rate and bit-depths on offer. No worries, there’s a dongle for that, and there are options for Android and desktop, too. We’ve tested dozens of these devices and the best DACs listed in this guide will play nice with any of the aforementioned services (aside from Tidal's MQA, which is a little more specific).

What is a DAC?

James Trew / Engadget

A digital-to-analog converter takes the digital (D) music from your phone or computer and converts (C) it into analog (A) sound you can hear. All phones and PCs have them, but since handsets moved to USB-C, Lightning or Bluetooth for music, the task of converting that signal was generally outsourced to either your adapter or your wireless headphones.

DACs can be used with phones, laptops and desktops but tend to be much simpler than a regular external audio interface. One basic distinction is that DACs are usually for listening only whereas an audio interface might have ports to plug in microphones and instruments (but an external audio interface is also technically a DAC).

The best DACs tend to be lightweight, making them more suitable for mobile use, although it still gets a little tricky with the iPhone as you still might need to add another dongle to make it play nice with Lightning. Also, not all DACs support all the higher audio resolutions. Most standalone DACs require external power or an onboard battery, though some can use the power from whatever you plug them into — in which case expect a hit to your battery life.

Why do I need new hardware to listen to music?

Apple

The short answer is, you don’t. You can play “hi-res” audio files on most phones and PCs, you just might not be getting the full experience. If your device’s audio interface tops out at 44.1 or 48kHz (which is fairly common and covers the vast majority of music online) then that’s the experience you’ll get. If you want to enjoy better sounding music at a higher sample rate and bit-depth (aka resolution), you’ll need an interface that supports it and wired headphones.

It’s worth pointing out that “lossless” and “hi-res” are related terms, but not the same thing and will vary from service to service. Apple uses ALAC encoding which is compressed, but without “loss” to the quality (unlike the ubiquitous .aac or .mp3 file formats). CDs were generally mastered to at least 16-bit / 44.1kHz which is the benchmark that Apple is using for its definition of lossless. In audio circles, a general consensus is that hi-res is anything with a sample rate above 44.1kHz. Increasingly, though, the term is being used for anything 96kHz and above.

This, of course, isn’t only about Apple’s new streaming formats. External DACs and audio interfaces are a great way to get the best sound and upgrade your listening experience generally. Especially if you want to get into the world of more exotic (read: pricey) headphones, as they often even require a DAC to provide enough clean digital signal to drive them. For audiophile headphones, a phone or laptop’s internal sound chipset often doesn’t have the oomph needed to deliver a hi-fi experience.

Okay, but can’t I just use the headphone adapter for my phone?

No. Well, yes, but see above. A Lightning or USB-C to 3.5mm headphone adapter often is an audio interface and most of the ones you’re buying for $7 (or that come free in the box) do not support hi-res audio beyond 48kHz / 24-bit. Android is a little more complicated, as some adapters are “passive” and really just connect you to the phone’s internal DAC like old school headphones. Others (active ones) have a DAC built-in and good luck finding out what your specific phone and the in-box adapter delivers. (Hint: connect it to a PC and see if it comes up as an audio interface. You might find some details there if it does).

What about Bluetooth headphones?

Chances are that over the last few years you’ve migrated from wired to wireless headphones (thanks, Apple). The world of Bluetooth headphones changes things a little when it comes to seeking better audio performance. What matters here is twofold, the headphones you’re using (as those will technically be the “DAC”) and the codec — the method used to send the musical data over to the headphones. It’s worth checking to see if your headphones support aptX and which version — aptX HD, aptX Adaptive are better than standard and becoming more common. Other systems exist, like Sony’s LDAC, but Qualcomm’s AptX has wider support thanks to its prevalence in Android devices.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-dac-for-lossless-high-resolution-music-iphone-android-160056147.html?src=rss

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Ford EVs will gain access to Tesla's Superchargers across the US and Canada starting today, becoming the first non-Tesla vehicles to do so, Ford announced. The companies cemented the fast charging pact last year and numerous other automakers followed suit later on. The expanded network will be a big benefit for the Ford and its customers amid news that sales of its EVs have heavily sagged.

Current Ford EVs use CCS type chargers, so current customers must order the Fast Charging Adapter (NACS) compatible with Tesla's Superchargers (below). That will be available at no charge to new and existing clients in the BlueOval charge network until June 30, 2024. After that, it will cost $230 including estimated taxes and shipping. Starting in 2025, Ford EVs will come standard with the NACS charging system. 

Ford

Customers can use the FordPass App to locate the new Tesla Superchargers, just as they would when looking for BlueOval chargers. Tesla Superchargers will also be coming to Apple Maps EV routing, Google Maps EV routing, and the Ford Connected built-in navigation BlueOval charge network.

As for payment, you'll be able to handle that through the FordPass app and Charge Assist app in the vehicle's touchscreen. "This means customers simply have to plug in and charging will automatically start with [costs] managed through FordPass." BlueOval charge network membership is required, and if you're not yet enrolled, you'll be prompted to do so when order the NACS adapter (check's Ford's website for more details).

Tesla's 15,000+ strong Supercharger network will more than double Ford EV owners' access to fast DC chargers. With that, it will have 28,000 fast chargers and 126,000 chargers total. The company notes that a lack of charging stations is the second largest barrier after price for customers potentially selecting EVs instead of ICE or PHEV vehicles. 

The news is good for Ford and other automakers who will get a big boost in the number of fast charging spots. However, Tesla owners will see a lot more Supercharger competition. Last year, the US government opened $2.5 billion in funding for community EV chargers

With declining EV sales, Ford was recently forced to lower Mach E prices by $3,100 to $8,100, it recently said in a financial statement. The company also cut production of that model and the F-150 Lightning pickup truck due to the slowdown.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ford-ev-owners-can-now-use-tesla-superchargers-in-the-us-and-canada-130053549.html?src=rss

© Ford

Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against the creators of a popular Switch emulator called Yuzu, which gives users a way to play games developed for the platform on their PCs and Android devices. In the lawsuit, the company argues Yuzu violates the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). 

While Nintendo taking down online offenders isn’t new, this case could set a precedent for future lawsuits against emulators, which aren’t themselves illegal. Nintendo is arguing their very nature is unlawful. It could be a big deal.

Nintendo says it protects its games with encryption and other security features meant to prevent people from playing pirated copies: “Without Yuzu’s decryption of Nintendo’s encryption, unauthorized copies of games could not be played on PCs or Android devices,” the company wrote in its complaint.

Nintendo revealed The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was illegally distributed a week and a half before its official release. It was apparently downloaded over a million times from pirated websites, which specifically noted people can play the game file through Yuzu. The company also mentioned that Yuzu’s creators are making money from their emulator: $30,000 a month from their Patreon supporters and around $50,000 from the paid version of their Google Play app.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

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More news organizations sue OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright infringement

TikTok is muting all Universal Music-related songs

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Biden executive order aims to stop Russia and China from buying Americans’ personal data

The bulk sale of geolocation, genomic, financial and health data will be off limits.

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In a fun bleak imagining of future late-stage capitalism, President Joe Biden is issuing an executive order to limit the mass sale of Americans’ personal data to “countries of concern,” including Russia and China. The order specifically targets the bulk sale of geolocation, genomic, financial, biometric, health and other personally identifying information.

Researchers and privacy advocates have long warned about the national security risks posed by the largely unregulated multibillion-dollar data broker industry. Last fall, researchers at Duke University reported that they could easily buy troves of personal and health data about US military personnel by posing as foreign agents. The loophole: This order will do nothing to slow the bulk sale of Americans’ data to countries or companies not deemed to be a security risk.

Continue reading.

LG’s latest OLED evo TVs start at $1,500

And go up to a sky-high $25,000.

LG

LG’s 2024 OLED evo TVs finally have prices. They’ll start at $1,500 for the midrange C4 models and go up to an impressive $25,000 for the 97-inch G4 flagship. The big theme this year is AI, and the company’s latest Alpha 11 processor is supposed to boost graphics performance by 70 percent, but it’ll only be in the high-end G4 series. The C4 models, meanwhile, will get the updated Alpha 9 Gen 7 chip. Both promise improved brightness (150 percent for the G4 compared to the G3), along with more AI features, like upscaling.

Continue reading.

Samsung’s new microSD card is faster than some SSDs

If your device supports SD Express.

Samsung’s upcoming microSD card will not only cram in 256GB of space but will offer a dramatic speed boost. The company’s 256GB SD Express microSD — Samsung’s first SD Express card — can read data at up to 800 MB/s, significantly faster than the microSDs you can buy today. However, we don’t yet know how much it will cost, and the card won’t be available until later this year. It will probably be pricey, but it may be worth the premium depending on how you use microSDs.

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-nintendo-steps-up-its-fight-against-switch-emulators-and-game-piracy-121549460.html?src=rss

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Apple TV+ has announced it's adapting William Gibson's Neuromancer into a 10-episode series. The novel debuted in 1984 and is largely thought to mark the birth of cyberpunk, which includes creations like The Matrix and Robocop. In fact, it's crazy that it has taken four decades for it to get the Hollywood treatment. 

Neuromancer follows "a damaged, top-rung super-hacker named Case who is thrust into a web of digital espionage and high stakes crime with his partner Molly, a razor-girl assassin with mirrored eyes aiming to pull a heist on a corporate dynasty with untold secrets," a release states. The story is being brought to the small screen by Graham Roland (Dark Winds, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan) and JD Dillard (Devotion, Sweetheart), who will act as showrunner and director, respectively. Skydance Television and Anonymous Content will co-produce it with support from Drake's DreamCrew Entertainment.

Production on Neuromancer has yet to start, so details like the cast and release date are still up in the air. In the meantime, you can check out the existing video game and graphic novel versions of Neuromancer and Amazon's series, The Peripheral, based on another one of Gibson's works and starring Chloë Grace Moretz. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/a-neuromancer-tv-series-is-coming-to-apple-tv-103403046.html?src=rss

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Google's Pixel Tablet can also serve as a smart display for your home, and if you've ever wanted to get one, todays' the day. The company's official Amazon store is selling the 256GB Pixel Tablet with a charging speaker dock for only $449 — that's $150 less than retail and is an all-time low for the device on the website. It's the first tablet with the Google Tensor G2 chip, which enables artificial intelligence-powered features such as high-quality video calls and smooth streaming, among other things. The 11-inch device is also the first tablet you can Chromecast to and use as an extra screen. 

As a smart display, the Pixel Tablet can serve as a digital photo frame or a control center for your smart home devices. Its charging dock can keep it charged 24/7, and you can also use it as a speaker for when you want to play music. We gave the tablet a score of 85 in our review, praising it mostly for its abilities as a smart display. It responded well to our commands — if you want to use it to control connected devices with your voice, just wake it up by saying "Hey Google." But it also comes with a Hub Mode that brings up a dashboard, showing your smart devices and giving you a quick way to monitor your security cameras or to switch lights on and off. 

We also tried using the tablet as a TV substitute, since it has the capability to act as a Chromecast receiver. While it does work that way as Google promised, take note that the tablet has to be docked for you to be able to cast movies and shows to it. As a tablet, the device runs full Android and can open any app for the platform. It's a better smart display than it is a tablet, but we still found the device enjoyable to use.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-256gb-google-pixel-tablet-with-charging-dock-is-cheaper-than-ever-091352263.html?src=rss

© Google

Legal claims are starting to pile up against Microsoft and OpenAI, as three more news sites have sued the firms over copyright infringement, The Verge reported. The Intercept, Raw Story and AlterNet filed separate lawsuits accusing ChatGPT of reproducing news content "verbatim or nearly verbatim" while stripping out important attribution like the author's name.

The sites, all represented by the same law firm, said that if ChatGPT trained on copyright material, it "would have learned to communicate that information when providing responses." Raw Story and AlterNet added that OpenAI and Microsoft must have known that the chatbot would be less popular and generate lower revenue if "users believed that ChatGPT responses violated third-party copyrights." 

The news organizations note in the lawsuit that OpenAI offers an opt-out system for website owners, meaning that the company must be aware of potential copyright infringement. Microsoft and OpenAI have also said that they'll defend customers against legal claims around copyright infringement that might arise from using their products, and even pay for incurred costs.

Late last year, The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, saying it "seeks to hold them responsible for the billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages". OpenAI asked a court to dismiss that claim, saying the NYT took advantage of a ChatGPT bug that made it recite articles word for word.

The companies also face lawsuits from multiple non-fiction authors accusing them of "massive and deliberate theft of copyrighted works," and by comedian Sarah Silverman over similar claims. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/more-news-organizations-sue-openai-and-microsoft-over-copyright-infringement-061103178.html?src=rss

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Video game company Electronic Arts will lay off 5 precent of its workforce according to a report it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. More than 650 EA employees will lose their jobs as a result of the move, part of a broader restricting that will see the company cutting back on office space and ending work on some video games.

EA’s cuts are the latest in a long line of layoffs that have rocked the video game industry since last year. In 2023, more than 10,500 video game workers lost their jobs, and more than 6,000 people in the industry were cut in January 2024 alone. The video game companies that have laid off workers so far include Microsoft, Riot Games, and Unity among many others. On Tuesday, Sony announced that it was laying off 900 people from its PlayStation division, roughly 8 percent of its headcount.

In a memo sent to EA employees, CEO Andrew Wilson wrote that the company is “streamlining our company operations to deliver deeper, more connected experiences for fans everywhere.” EA expects to finish making the cuts by early next quarter, the memo says. The cuts, Wilson adds, will let EA focus more on its “biggest opportunities — including our owned IP, sports, and massive online communities.”

One of the games that the move will directly impact is a Star Wars first-person shooter being worked upon by Respawn, a game development studio that EA acquired in 2017, according to IGN. "It's always hard to walk away from a project, and this decision is not a reflection of the team's talent, tenacity, or passion they have for the game," EA Entertainment president Laura Miele reportedly told staff in a note. "Giving fans the next installments of the iconic franchises they want is the definition of blockbuster storytelling and the right place to focus."

Update, February 28 2024, 5:45 PM ET: This story has been updated with more details of the canceled Star Wars game.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ea-is-laying-off-over-650-employees-221221637.html?src=rss

© REUTERS / Reuters

You can grab a three-pack of Google’s Nest Cam Indoor / Outdoor for $100 off. Best Buy is offering the battery-powered security cameras for nearly a record-low price. The cameras record in 1080p HDR with night vision and magnetic mounting, making your home security setup as close to painless as possible. Usually $450, you can get the trio of cameras for only $350. (And Best Buy Total members can drop it down to $300.)

The Nest Cam can differentiate between people, animals and vehicles, processed locally on the device. You can receive alerts on your phone when it detects any of those types of movement, and you can choose which alert types you get in the Google Home app. A premium feature, Familiar Faces, learns trusted people and notifies you accordingly. (It requires a $8 monthly Nest Aware subscription.)

Like most products in this category, the Nest Cam has a built-in speaker and mic, allowing you to check in with visitors and hold a remote conversation. The camera’s HDR capabilities make seeing details in bright sunlight easier, while a night vision mode (using six built-in infrared LEDs) makes things clearer in the dark. The camera is water-resistant and rated IP54.

Google estimates each camera’s battery will last about seven months between charges, provided it only records around two to four events per day. (You can buy a $35 weatherproof cable if you prefer a wired setup.) The three-pack includes three Nest Cams and magnetic mounting plates, three wall plates, six wall anchors and the appropriate screws.

Best Buy’s deal expires Wednesday evening, so you’ll want to act soon if you’re in the market for new security cameras.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/three-packs-of-googles-nest-cam-security-cameras-are-100-off-today-215952131.html?src=rss

© Google

TikTok is being forced to take down more music from its platform as a royalties spat with Universal Music Group (UMG) rumbles on. UMG recently yanked recordings it owns or distributes from TikTok including tracks from the likes of superstars Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and The Weeknd. The standoff is now impacting songs published by UMG.

"We are in the process of carrying out Universal Music Group's requirement to remove all songs that have been written (or co-written) by a songwriter signed to Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), based on information they have provided," TikTok said in a statement. "Their actions not only affect the songwriters and artists that they represent, but now also impact many artists and songwriters not signed to universal." TikTok added that it is still committed to "reaching an equitable agreement" with UMG.

Due to an issue called split copyrights, if a UMPG-contracted writer has contributed to a song in any way, that track has to be removed from TikTok. So artists who have collaborated with the likes of Swift, Adele, Justin Bieber, Mariah Carey, Ice Spice, Elton John, Harry Styles and SZA will see their songs disappearing from TikTok and being muted on videos that currently use them. The move will prevent more artists from plugging their work on the most important platform for promoting music.

According to the BBC, UMG removed around three million songs from TikTok after an agreement over its recording catalog expired. UMG's deal with TikTok over its publishing catalog (which covers some four million songs) ends later this week, at which point all relevant tracks will have vanished from the short-form video service.

Update 2/28 3:30PM ET: Added confirmation that TikTok is removing songs by UMPG-contracted songwriters.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tiktok-is-muting-more-songs-amid-its-tussle-with-universal-music-161839190.html?src=rss

© ASSOCIATED PRESS

Panic just held a games showcase for its portable Playdate console, revealing over a dozen upcoming exclusives. The company also announced a March 12 release date for the long-anticipated Mars After Midnight, which is likely the console’s first marquee title.

Mars After Midnight is a game created by renowned developer Lucas Pope, the guy behind Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn. Both of these titles were critically acclaimed and commercially successful.

Mars After Midnight looks to take a few cues from Papers, Please, as you play as a door guard of an alien colony tasked with letting people in. The lo-res graphics look stunning, which is a calling card of both Pope and the Playdate itself. It also makes use of the console’s adorable little crank.

However, Lucas Pope’s latest creation wasn’t the only news to come from today’s presentation. Panic also showed off 16 games that are scheduled to hit the platform “in 2024 and beyond.” These include a cool-looking rogue-like/golf hybrid called Faraway Fairway, the pixel-art brawler Midnight Raider and a sci-fi RPG named For Home, among 13 others.

Company CEO Cabel Sasser also took the time to reiterate that the Playdate console is actually now available to purchase, with no wait times. This was a long time coming and Panic says it has finally “caught up” with the more than 70,000 preorders.

The Playdate online store, called the Catalog, is approaching its one-year anniversary. To celebrate, Panic is holding its first-ever storewide sale from March 7 to March 14. Many of the titles are already pretty cheap, so console owners will likely have a field day here.

For the uninitiated, the Playdate is a truly unique portable gaming console. It’s cute and bright yellow, with a manually-operated crank that's used as an additional control mechanism in many games. Each $200 console comes with 24 free titles, with two unlocking each week for 12 weeks.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/lucas-popes-mars-after-midnight-hits-the-playdate-console-on-march-12-193110110.html?src=rss

© Panic

Samsung’s upcoming microSD card will offer a dramatic speed boost. The company’s 256GB SD Express microSD — Samsung’s first SD Express card — can read data at up to 800 MB/s, significantly faster than the microSDs you can buy today. However, we don’t yet know how much it will cost, and the card won’t be available until later this year.

The 256GB SD Express microSD will have (theoretical) sequential read speeds of up to 800 MB/s, which is over 2.5 times as fast as the read speeds in UHS-II microSD cards and 1.4 times faster than SATA SSDs. So, at least in theory, Samsung’s new card should be noticeably faster than the cheapest solid-state drives.

Samsung added heat management capabilities to help keep temperatures in check. “To ensure stable performance and reliability for the small form factor, Dynamic Thermal Guard (DTG) technology maintains the optimum temperature for the SD Express microSD card, even during long usage sessions,” the company wrote in a press release announcing the new card.

Samsung (perhaps unsurprisingly) is shoehorning the almighty “AI” buzzword into the card’s zippier speeds. “With our two new microSD cards, Samsung has provided effective solutions to address the growing demands of mobile computing and on-device AI,” Samsung VP Hangu Sohn wrote.

The company’s Galaxy S24 series goes big on AI, but Samsung hasn’t included a microSD slot in its flagship phones for the last four generations. (Nor has most of the rest of the smartphone playing field.) So, while future AI-powered devices could benefit from the extra speeds, Samsung’s current batch of high-end phones aren’t on that list. In addition, although SD Express is backward compatible, not many devices (yet) support SD Express, which requires an extra row of pins on the host device. In other words, the card’s full potential won’t be realized until we have new gear to support it.

Samsung

Although unrelated to the speedy SD Express card, Samsung also unveiled a new 1TB microSD with UHS-1 speeds. “Samsung’s new 1TB microSD card stacks eight layers of the company’s 8th generation 1-terabit (Tb) V-NAND within a microSD form factor, realizing the high-capacity package that used to be possible only in SSDs,” the company wrote. The 1TB card includes protection against water, extreme temperatures, drops, X-rays and magnets.

Samsung’s zippy 256GB SD Express microSD card will launch “later this year,” while the 1TB UHS-1 microSD arrives in the third quarter of 2024. The company hasn’t said how much either will cost.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/samsungs-new-microsd-card-is-faster-than-some-ssds-191251687.html?src=rss

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