Root Bear is one of those games that seems to get recommended all the time to new Playdate owners looking for somewhere to start. After months of encountering the title on the internet and vaguely wondering what could be so great about a game where all you do is pour root beer for bears, I finally decided to give it a go this weekend. And, yup, I totally get it now. Root Bear is ridiculously fun — emphasis on ridiculous.

Root Bear is a $3 Catalog game in which your goal is to achieve the perfect pour from the root beer tap while picky customers (all bears, of course) judge your work. You can also get it on itch.io. The game requires precise use of the crank to get the root beer flowing at just the right rate, and cut it off at just the right time so it doesn’t go above or fall short of the desired fill line. There’s foam to consider too, and how it settles can really mess you up if you aren’t careful. The closer you get to a perfect pour, the more money you’ll earn.

Alex Sussman/Cole O'Brien/Andrea Cabral/Beau QP

It’s exactly the kind of design to bring out a person’s competitive streak. But the best part about Root Bear is the bears themselves. Or, their reactions. The first time I royally messed up a customer’s order, the bear let loose a Howie Scream that I was in no way prepared for — with a facial expression to match — and I was completely floored. So yes, Root Bear is a really good, really silly time.

Following a report from The Wall Street Journal that claims OpenAI has been sitting on a tool that can spot essays written by ChatGPT with a high degree of accuracy, the company has shared a bit of information about its research into text watermarking — and why it hasn’t released its detection method. According to The Wall Street Journal’s report, debate over whether the tool should be released has kept it from seeing the light of day, despite it being “ready.” In an update published on Sunday to a May blog post, spotted by TechCrunch, OpenAI said, “Our teams have developed a text watermarking method that we continue to consider as we research alternatives.”

The company said watermarking is one of multiple solutions, including classifiers and metadata, that it has looked into as part of “extensive research on the area of text provenance.” According to OpenAI, it “has been highly accurate” in some situations, but doesn’t perform as well when faced with certain forms of tampering, “like using translation systems, rewording with another generative model, or asking the model to insert a special character in between every word and then deleting that character.” And text watermarking could “disproportionately impact some groups,” OpenAI wrote. “For example, it could stigmatize use of AI as a useful writing tool for non-native English speakers.”

Per the blog post, OpenAI has been weighing these risks. The company also wrote that it has prioritized the release of authentication tools for audiovisual content. In a statement to TechCrunch, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company is taking a “deliberate approach” to text provenance because of “the complexities involved and its likely impact on the broader ecosystem beyond OpenAI.”

There’s a new hand-drawn platformer coming to PC and consoles, and it looks absolutely breathtaking. The Eternal Life of Goldman, announced on Friday during THQ Nordic’s Digital Showcase, is an upcoming title from Weappy Studio that’s “inspired by ancient fables and depicted in classic frame-by-frame animation.” There’s no release date just yet, but when it does come out, it’ll be available for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC and Nintendo Switch.

Weappy describes The Eternal Life of Goldman as “a vibrant yet dark platformer adventure that weaves together legends, fairy tales and myths.” 

Its protagonist is an old man who uses his cane to fight off legendary creatures in a land known as the Archipelago. The trailer gives us a glimpse at some gameplay footage, revealing a sprawling and gorgeously animated fantasy world. The developers say it’s designed to be challenging but not grueling, and encourages exploration to uncover all the secrets of the Archipelago.

Apple’s AirTags are the best item trackers an iPhone user can get, and they’re going for cheap right now in a deal on Amazon. A four pack of AirTags — normally $100 — is 23 percent off, making it just $76. That’s only $1 more than the pack was selling for during Amazon Prime Day. AirTags tap into Apple’s Find My network, sending out a signal that can be picked up by nearby devices to guide you to your lost item.

AirTags work seamlessly with other devices in the Apple ecosystem and have a battery life of over a year. In addition to helping locate belongings you may have left somewhere outside the home, AirTags can also help you track down items you’ve misplaced in your immediate surroundings thanks to the Precision Finding feature in the Find My app. You can also ping the AirTag so it’ll play a sound that you can follow.

AirTags don’t have a loop or clip that would allow you to attach them to a keyring, so you’ll need to pick up a case if you want to do so. There are all sorts of accessories available for AirTags to secure them to your belongings, including keyring holders and cases designed to adhere to fabric so you can securely stick them in the lining of a jacket or purse. AirTags have an IP67 rating, meaning they’ll withstand dust and brief exposure to water, and the CR2032 battery is easily replaceable. The Find My app supports tracking up to 32 items.

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Payments relating to a class action lawsuit filed in 2018 over Apple’s butterfly MacBook keyboards have reportedly begun to arrive. The settlement website now states that payments for approved claims will go out in August — and sure enough, 9to5Mac’s Michael Burkhardt reports that he received two settlement checks in the mail on Saturday. Just how much eligible MacBook owners will get varies depending on the extent of the repairs their devices needed. But for some, it could mean a check (or multiple) of up to $395.

After Apple introduced the butterfly keyboard in 2015, complaints arose over “sticky” and unresponsive keys, susceptibility to debris and other major issues. The company ultimately started phasing out the design in 2019. The lawsuit filed in 2018 accused Apple of knowing that its keyboards had problems and concealing this from consumers. While Apple denied the lawsuit’s allegations of defective keyboards and did not admit to any wrongdoing, it agreed to pay $50 million as part of a settlement.

Per the settlement website, people who got two or more topcase replacements within four years of purchasing one of the affected MacBooks are expected to get between $300-$395. MacBook owners who got just one topcase replacement could get up to $125. Claimants who only needed keycap replacements will get a maximum of $50. Of course, to receive a payment, you’d need to have filed any claims by the deadlines outlined in the settlement. And, when the settlement was first reached in 2022, Reuters reported that it will only apply to customers who bought the affected laptops in California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Washington. You can find the full details in the case’s FAQ.

New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.

Toward Eternity by Anton Hur

Toward Eternity does not waste any time in getting to the drama. The novel by Anton Hur begins in the not-so-far-off future, and opens with a moment of crisis: a patient in a nanotherapy research clinic has seemingly vanished into thin air. This patient had been undergoing a new type of treatment that uses android cells (dubbed “nanites”) to cure cancer by replacing the body’s own cells. In doing so, however, it transforms the body entirely into a nanodroid, giving rise to “nano humans” that are no longer subjected to mortality.

The story jumps through time and different perspectives, exploring what it means “to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology.” From the second I started reading this one, I did not want to put it down.

Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere by Rob Jackson

It can be hard not to get swept up in the doom and gloom of climate change, especially amid reports marking Earth’s hottest years on record and still-rising emissions from fossil fuels. Stanford climate scientist Rob Jackson’s new book Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere aims to foster a more optimistic outlook by calling attention to the courses of action that could lead us to a better future for our planet and its inhabitants.

“I view my book as a home repair manual for the planet,” Jackson said in a recent interview published by the scientific journal ACS Central Science. “It highlights the people and the ideas needed to solve the climate crisis. I want most of all to give people hope, a sense of optimism. Yes, climate change is already bad, but we can still fix this problem.”

Epitaphs from the Abyss #1

Legendary comic book publisher EC Comics, which brought us series like Tales from the Crypt and Weird Science more than 70 years ago, is making a comeback with its first new series in decades: Epitaphs from the Abyss. The first issue of the horror series was released at the end of July and features four tales — which are introduced by a ghoulish narrator dubbed The Grave-Digger.

Epitaphs from the Abyss #1 has stories by Brian Azzarello, J. Holtham, Stephanie Phillips and Chris Condon, with art by Lee Bermejo, Phil Hester, Peter Krause and Jorge Fornés. There’s something about those old EC Comics that just hits different, and Epitaphs faithfully slips back into that vibe to deliver spooky new stories that have a classic feel.

NVIDIA has discovered “design flaws” in its upcoming series of AI chips that may push their release back at least three months, The Information reports. The company has reportedly started notifying customers of the delay, including Microsoft. Large orders of the new Blackwell chips were initially slated to start shipping sometime this year, but sources told The Information that they’re now not expected until early 2025. In addition to Microsoft, the publication reports that Google, Meta and other major companies have placed bulk orders of the Blackwell chips that are collectively worth “tens of billions of dollars.”

NVIDIA announced the Blackwell series chips back in March, touting performance boosts of up to 30 times what’s achieved by its flagship H100, which serves as the backbone for some of today’s biggest AI systems. The company at the time also said the Blackwell chips could reduce “cost and energy consumption by up to 25x.” But according to The Information, citing sources involved with the Blackwell chip, “design problems arose unusually late in the production process.”

NVIDIA and its chip manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, are now doing test production runs to get to the bottom of the issues, according to The Information, which reports that the first big shipments may not go out until the first quarter.

Payments relating to a class action lawsuit filed in 2018 over Apple’s butterfly MacBook keyboards have reportedly begun to arrive. The settlement website now states that payments for approved claims will go out in August — and sure enough, 9to5Mac’s Michael Burkhardt reports that he received two settlement checks in the mail on Saturday. Just how much eligible MacBook owners will get varies depending on the extent of the repairs their devices needed. But for some, it could mean a check (or multiple) of up to $395.

After Apple introduced the butterfly keyboard in 2015, complaints arose over “sticky” and unresponsive keys, susceptibility to debris and other major issues. The company ultimately started phasing out the design in 2019. The lawsuit filed in 2018 accused Apple of knowing that its keyboards had problems and concealing this from consumers. While Apple denied the lawsuit’s allegations of defective keyboards and did not admit to any wrongdoing, it agreed to pay $50 million as part of a settlement.

Per the settlement website, people who got two or more topcase replacements within four years of purchasing one of the affected MacBooks are expected to get between $300-$395. MacBook owners who got just one topcase replacement could get up to $125. Claimants who only needed keycap replacements will get a maximum of $50. Of course, to receive a payment, you’d need to have filed any claims by the deadlines outlined in the settlement. And, when the settlement was first reached in 2022, Reuters reported that it will only apply to customers who bought the affected laptops in California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Washington. You can find the full details in the case’s FAQ.

New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.

Toward Eternity by Anton Hur

Toward Eternity does not waste any time in getting to the drama. The novel by Anton Hur begins in the not-so-far-off future, and opens with a moment of crisis: a patient in a nanotherapy research clinic has seemingly vanished into thin air. This patient had been undergoing a new type of treatment that uses android cells (dubbed “nanites”) to cure cancer by replacing the body’s own cells. In doing so, however, it transforms the body entirely into a nanodroid, giving rise to “nano humans” that are no longer subjected to mortality.

The story jumps through time and different perspectives, exploring what it means “to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology.” From the second I started reading this one, I did not want to put it down.

Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere by Rob Jackson

It can be hard not to get swept up in the doom and gloom of climate change, especially amid reports marking Earth’s hottest years on record and still-rising emissions from fossil fuels. Stanford climate scientist Rob Jackson’s new book Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere aims to foster a more optimistic outlook by calling attention to the courses of action that could lead us to a better future for our planet and its inhabitants.

“I view my book as a home repair manual for the planet,” Jackson said in a recent interview published by the scientific journal ACS Central Science. “It highlights the people and the ideas needed to solve the climate crisis. I want most of all to give people hope, a sense of optimism. Yes, climate change is already bad, but we can still fix this problem.”

Epitaphs from the Abyss #1

Legendary comic book publisher EC Comics, which brought us series like Tales from the Crypt and Weird Science more than 70 years ago, is making a comeback with its first new series in decades: Epitaphs from the Abyss. The first issue of the horror series was released at the end of July and features four tales — which are introduced by a ghoulish narrator dubbed The Grave-Digger.

Epitaphs from the Abyss #1 has stories by Brian Azzarello, J. Holtham, Stephanie Phillips and Chris Condon, with art by Lee Bermejo, Phil Hester, Peter Krause and Jorge Fornés. There’s something about those old EC Comics that just hits different, and Epitaphs faithfully slips back into that vibe to deliver spooky new stories that have a classic feel.

NVIDIA has discovered “design flaws” in its upcoming series of AI chips that may push their release back at least three months, The Information reports. The company has reportedly started notifying customers of the delay, including Microsoft. Large orders of the new Blackwell chips were initially slated to start shipping sometime this year, but sources told The Information that they’re now not expected until early 2025. In addition to Microsoft, the publication reports that Google, Meta and other major companies have placed bulk orders of the Blackwell chips that are collectively worth “tens of billions of dollars.”

NVIDIA announced the Blackwell series chips back in March, touting performance boosts of up to 30 times what’s achieved by its flagship H100, which serves as the backbone for some of today’s biggest AI systems. The company at the time also said the Blackwell chips could reduce “cost and energy consumption by up to 25x.” But according to The Information, citing sources involved with the Blackwell chip, “design problems arose unusually late in the production process.”

NVIDIA and its chip manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, are now doing test production runs to get to the bottom of the issues, according to The Information, which reports that the first big shipments may not go out until the first quarter.

Apple is apparently looking to take all the help it can get to integrate generative AI into its recently announced Apple Intelligence. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, citing sources with knowledge of the discussions, Apple has held talks with Meta about the possibility of using the company’s generative AI model. It also reportedly had similar discussions with startups Anthropic and Perplexity. As of now, though, nothing has been finalized, WSJ reports.

At WWDC earlier this month, Apple officially announced its much-rumored partnership with OpenAI that will bring ChatGPT to newer iPhones, iPads and Macs with the upcoming generation of the devices’ OS. During the event, Apple’s senior VP of software engineering, Craig Federighi, also name-dropped Google’s Gemini as something that could be added to Apple Intelligence in the future. “We want to enable users ultimately to choose the models they want,” Federighi said. It would make sense, then, for Apple to be shopping around.

But for the time being, only OpenAI has been confirmed as a partner. OpenAI’s GPT-4o will be integrated into Apple Intelligence to bolster Siri and other tools, with some features expected to arrive later this year.

A YouTube Live broadcast that ran for five hours today used a deepfake of Elon Musk to push a cryptocurrency scam, in the latest of a series of similar bogus streams. The video, which has has since been taken down, showed a clip of Musk that was meant to look like a livestream from a Tesla event, with an AI-generated version of his voice instructing viewers to visit a website and deposit their bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin in order to participate in a giveaway. The message, playing on a loop, promised the system would then “automatically send back double the amount of the cryptocurrency you deposited.”

Over 30,000 viewers were tuned into the stream at one point (though we can’t discount the possibility these numbers were inflated by bots), pushing it to the top of YouTube’s Live Now recommendations. The account masquerading as Tesla, @elon.teslastream, had the Official Artist Channel verification badge, so we may be looking at an account hack. Both the video and the channel were removed after Engadget reached out to Google. We’ll update this article if we hear back with any more information.

Screenshot by Cheyenne MacDonald/Engadget

These Elon Musk deepfake scams seem to have surged over the past couple of months, in each instance using an account posing as one of Musk’s companies. This one was titled “Tesla's [sic] unveils a masterpiece: The Tesla that will change the car industry forever.” Earlier in June, Cointelegraph reported on similar scams run by 35 accounts pretending to be SpaceX around the time of the Starship launch. Scammers in April attempted to get in on the eclipse hype using the same tactic, as Mashable reported at the time. And there have been numerous reports of fake Musk livestreams posted on Reddit recently.

Crypto scams targeting Musk’s followers on social media have been a problem for years, as have those involving celebrities in general. Just this Friday, 50 Cent was hit by a hack that used his accounts to carry out a pump-and-dump scheme.

Sometimes we all need to just turn off the ol’ brain for a bit and have some dumb fun. That’s the kind vibe I was after when searching the Playdate Catalog for a new game to play this weekend, and let’s just say I got more than I could ever ask for in Touch Egg. The game, made by Joelle Tindall, is simple: crank wildly to extend a finger Pinocchio-style and poke the egg as many times as you can, but don’t let the horrifying man in the room see you or you’ll lose said finger. It’s all about chasing the high score, and you have 60 seconds to try and get those pokes in.

There is no story (well, none beyond “He lays the eggs and doesn’t want you to touch them”), so no explanation as to who the man is, what sort of creature would hatch from the egg, why you’re bothering it and why everything is so creepy. Don’t worry about any of that, just crank.

You can only touch the egg when the man’s eyes are closed. Three exclamation points will appear in succession to signal that his eyes are about to open and you need to stop cranking. You can also put him to sleep for a few seconds by hitting the ‘A’ button, but this can make it so there’s no warning when he’s going to open his eyes. All the while, the unusually wide cat clock is ticking.

The visuals are wonderfully unsettling, and, just to add to the absurdity of it all, you can unlock little accessories like sunglasses that are worn on the thumb. There are also a few secrets to uncover as you play and — I’m sorry — Egg-Chievements to be earned. I clicked on Egg Touch solely because it made me think of the I Think You Should Leave egg game, and ended up being unable to put it down for a solid hour. (Unlike in ITYSL, there are no NSFW surprises here). 

Egg Touch is only $1 on the Playdate Catalog and free on itch.io. Now get outta here and go touch that egg.

Apple’s third-generation AirPods have dropped back down to the lowest price we’ve seen thanks to a deal on Amazon right now. The AirPods, which normally go for $170, are 17 percent off, making them just $140. Apple overhauled the design of the standard AirPods with this model, which was introduced in 2021. The third-gen AirPods have a shorter stem to look more like the AirPods Pro (but without the eartips), a contoured design for comfort and are rated for sweat and water resistance.

Previous models of the non-Pro AirPods weren’t sweat and water resistant, but the third-generation carries an IPX4 rating, which should be adequate for workouts. They also boast an improved method of automatic pausing over the earlier versions, using both an accelerometer and a sensor that detects skin so they can better sense when they’ve been removed from your ear.

The third-generation AirPods run on Apple’s H1 chip, which allows for one-touch fast pairing and always-on Siri. They offer Adaptive EQ, spatial audio and dynamic head-tracking — but no active noise-cancellation, that’s for the AirPods Pro only — and produce much better sound compared to the earlier models. In Engadget’s review, the third-generation AirPods scored an 88 for their comfort-focused design, audio quality and battery life.

The battery life is noticeably longer in the third-generation AirPods. Apple says these AirPods get about 6 hours of battery life on a charge, but in our tests, they lasted over an hour beyond than that. With the charging case, they can get about 30 hours of life in all. If you need to top them up while you’re out, you only need to pop them in the case for five minutes to get another hour of playtime. If you’re not concerned about features like active noise cancellation, the third-generation AirPods are a great bet, especially at their reduced price.

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50 Cent and his millions of social media followers were reportedly the targets of a pump-and-dump crypto scam on Friday that resulted in hackers pocketing a good chunk of change before it was all shut down. The exact amount they made is unclear; the rapper initially wrote on Instagram that “whoever did this made $300,000,000 in 30 minutes” (per Cointelegraph), but the post has since been edited to say $3,000,000 as of this afternoon. I will not make a Get Rich or Die Tryin’ pun, I will not make a Get Rich or Die Tryin’ pun...

The scammers used 50 Cent’s X account and website, Thisis50, to push $GUNIT. “My Twitter & Thisis 50.com was hacked I have no association with this Crypto,” 50 Cent wrote in an Instagram post containing screenshots of the unfolding mess. “Twitter worked quickly to lock my account back down,” he added. His X account and Thisis50.com still appear to be unavailable. Stay safe out there, and be wary of celebrities shilling crypto.

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew on the much-delayed first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner craft, won’t be coming home from the International Space Station until sometime next month, well past their originally planned return date of June 14. NASA announced last night that it's pushing the date of their return trip back even further in order to allow for more reviews into problems that arose with Starliner during its flight, and to avoid conflicts with upcoming spacewalks. As of now, there’s no date set for the flight back to Earth.

Starliner launched on June 5 and delivered Wilmore and Williams to the ISS about a day later. Their stay was only supposed to last a week or so. During the flight, however, four small helium leaks sprung in the propulsion system, on top of the one that had already been identified prior to launch. And, when Starliner first attempted to approach the ISS on June 6 and begin docking, five of its 28 thrusters went offline. Boeing was able to get four of them back up and running. NASA also revealed a few days after launch that the teams were looking into an issue with a valve in the service module that was “not properly closed.”

The space agency had already pushed the date of the return trip back a few times over the last week and most recently landed on June 26, but now says the flight won’t take place until after the spacewalks planned for June 24 and July 2 have been completed. “We are letting the data drive our decision making relative to managing the small helium system leaks and thruster performance we observed during rendezvous and docking,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, on Friday.

“Starliner is performing well in orbit while docked to the space station,” Stich also said. “We are strategically using the extra time to clear a path for some critical station activities while completing readiness for Butch and Suni’s return on Starliner and gaining valuable insight into the system upgrades we will want to make for post-certification missions.”

Kingdom Hearts fans waited nearly 20 years for Sora, Donald, and Goofy’s adventures through Disney worlds to come to PC, which they finally did back in 2021 via the Epic Games Store. But some fans waited even longer for most of the series to come to Steam on June 13. Whatever floats your steamboat, PC players. Use…

Read more...

Andrea Baroni’s Halfway to Dawn is unbelievably bleak for a game you can play from start to finish in about 10 minutes. I mean that as a compliment; it’s the best horror experience I’ve had on the Playdate yet.

As someone who tends to gravitate towards all things spooky, one of the things I’ve been most interested in as I explore what’s out there for Playdate is seeing how developers will make horror work for the weird little handheld. Halfway to Dawn takes a blended approach: in the first half, it’s a text-based narrative game where you’re scavenging for resources and readying yourself for the long night ahead; in the second, it’s an all-out fight for your life against an onslaught of eldritch creatures.

Halfway to Dawn wastes no time in setting a mood of desolation and impending doom, beginning with dialogue from our protagonist about feeling “as lifeless as these scattered remains of humanity” in a city overtaken by some unnamed terror. During the narrative portion of the game, you must choose among different locations to visit — the mall, pharmacy, gun store and a house — so you can hopefully find things like first aid kits, guns, ammo and traps. But there’s no telling whether each of these trips will be successful.

Andrea Baroni/Cyberleaf Studio

You might find a box of shotgun shells but never get your hands on a shotgun to actually use them. You might even get hurt while scavenging. There is also the option to rest, which will fill up your health bar (while you’ll start with full health on Easy mode, Hard will start you with two out of the six health points already depleted). But an hour will pass after each selection, and you have to stay conscious of the time. The clock starts at 6PM, and once it strikes 1AM, you’ll be forced to go out and defend yourself against the monsters until dawn.

At this point, the game becomes a top-down shooter — and depending on how you fared with resources, a pretty challenging one at that. Monsters will be closing in on you from all sides, some of them harder to take down than others, and you can only replenish ammo and first aid kits from your finite supply at set breaks marking the passage of one hour. If you run out before then, you’ll have no choice but to try and fight off the monsters with a knife, which you can swing using the crank. That’s about as effective as you’d think it is.

Halfway to Dawn is a very, very short game, but it really had me sweating on some runs. It’s a fun one to keep coming back to, since the randomness of resource collection makes for a different experience each time. And the tension of it all is perfectly rounded out by a synth-heavy soundtrack (available on Bandcamp), which could be right out of an ‘80s B-horror movie. If creepy is your thing, this is definitely a game to check out. Halfway to Dawn is on the Playdate Catalog and itch.io for $5.

Xbox’s Summer Games Showcase on Sunday brought a nice little surprise amidst all the expected news: the announcement of a new Life is Strange game, Life is Strange: Double Exposure. The game, which sees the return of its original protagonist Max Caulfield, will be released on October 29 for Xbox Series X/S, PC and PlayStation 5. Anyone dying to get their hands on it a little earlier, though, can pre-order the Ultimate Edition, which will grant them access to Chapters 1 and 2 on October 15. A Nintendo Switch release appears to be coming later, as well.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure picks up years after the events of the first game. Now, Max has found her friend Safi murdered and tries to use her powers of time manipulation to go back and save her — but things go awry. It’s a “full-on murder-mystery, with a supernatural twist” in which Max will have to bounce between parallel timelines to stop the killer.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!

After years of teasing its arrival, Xbox has finally announced a release window for the upcoming Fable reboot. The game is slated to hit Xbox Series X/S and PC in 2025, and will be available on Xbox Game Pass from day one. The company dropped a new trailer during the Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday. Fable, which is being developed by Playground Games, was first announced with a teaser back in 2020.

Xbox is billing it as “a new beginning” for the series. The new Fable focuses on a washed-up ex-hero named Humphry, who we see in the latest trailer. He’ll be “forced out of retirement when a mysterious figure from his past threatens Albion's very existence.” In our last glimpse at the game, released during last year’s Summer Game Fest, we were introduced to a character named Dave, who is voiced by Richard Ayoade. The new trailer gives us a bit more of a look at some in-game footage and doubles down on the offbeat tone of the previous teasers.

We'll still have to wait a while for it to actually be released, but at least now there's a timeframe we can cling to. 

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!

Paramount+ just dropped the full trailer for its upcoming animated TMNT series, Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and it looks like a lot of fun. The show, a spinoff of last year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, will see a slew of actors from the movie return to their roles, including Micah Abbey as Donatello, Shamon Brown Jr. as Michelangelo, Nicolas Cantu as Leonardo, Brady Noon as Raphael and Ayo Edebiri as April O’Neil. It’s scheduled to be released on the streaming platform August 9.

In Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the brothers find themselves up against the villain Bishop (now depicted as a woman), who should be familiar to longtime fans of the franchise. After becoming separated by Bishop, they’ll have to stand on their own until they find each other to fight together again. The show will get 12 episodes, which will be available exclusively on Paramount+.

You can get the new Beats Solo 4 over-hear headphones with two years of AppleCare+ for $80 off thanks to a limited-time deal running on Amazon right now. The Solo 4 headphones were released just this past April and normally go for about $230 with the AppleCare+ bundle. Under the current 34 percent discount, they’re only $150. The deal applies to all three colors of the Solo 4: Cloud Pink, Matte Black and Slate Blue.

The Beats Solo 4 headphones brought significant improvements under the hood compared to earlier models, but stuck to the same familiar design externally. They’re touted to get about 50 hours of battery life on a charge without Spatial Audio on, and 45 hours with the feature enabled — but they managed to last much longer than that in our review, hitting 63 hours with Spatial Audio. Sound quality got a major boost as well. The Solo 4 headphones reflect “a more even-handed tuning,” according to Engadget’s Billy Steele, and don’t suffer from “the overly bass-heavy EQ that dominated the sound on [Beats'] early headphones.”

With the Solo 4, the company also switched to a USB-C charging port, following in Apple’s footsteps. They’re capable of lossless audio when using a wired connection. These headphones don’t offer active noise cancellation, but Beats has implemented a noise-learning algorithm and added beam-forming MEMS microphones for improved call quality.

The Beats Solo 4s aren’t the only headphones on sale right now. Amazon is also running a really good deal on the Beats Studio Pro (without AppleCare+). This model is nearly half off, bringing the price down to just $180 from the usual $350.

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Some Anker and Soundcore products are being recalled due to a manufacturing defect that could cause fires. Anker issued a recall for its 321 Power Bank (PowerCore 5K, A1112) this week, saying, “The lithium-ion battery in the affected power banks can overheat, potentially causing melting of plastic components, smoke and fire hazards.” Its audio brand, Soundcore, issued a recall for its A3102 Speaker in Black as well.

The company has apparently started notifying customers who may own one of the affected devices via email, but you can double check the serial numbers — which are printed on the bottom of each device — using the above links to be sure. Anker says the issue applies only to a small number of devices manufactured between March and April of 2023. Also affected is a workplace conferencing device, the AnkerWork A3302 speakerphone, according to a press release. If you have one of these devices, the company advises you immediately stop using it and dispose of it properly at a facility that takes lithium batteries.

I cannot think of a game from recent times that I’ve tried more aggressively to get my friends into than Cult of the Lamb. Maybe this is the whole cult mindset talking, but something about it all just begs to be enjoyed with a pal. I’m clearly not the only one who feels this way — fans have been asking the developers for months to add a multiplayer option so they can fight side-by-side with their friends. And now, it’s actually happening. Cult of the Lamb publisher Devolver Digital has announced an upcoming free update called “Unholy Alliance” that adds local co-op to the game along with a new playable character: The Goat.

“Unholy Alliance” will be available to download August 12 for PC, PS5 and PS4, Xbox Series S/X and Nintendo Switch. With the update, you’ll be able to take on the full campaign with the help of a second player. Per the announcement notes, “The Lamb and the Goat can swap weapons, deal extra damage when fighting back-to-back, or deal a critical hit if their attacks are in sync.” There will be multiplayer versions of knucklebones and the fishing minigame, too. Unfortunately for anyone who was hoping for online co-op, though, this unholy alliance is local only, and the developers have so far said there aren’t plans to bring it online.

The team behind this game has been really good about keeping it fresh with free updates that actually build on the story and acknowledge fans’ feedback — hello, we got the sex update — and it’s nice to see that continue some two years after its release. If you can’t make the most of the co-op, there will be perks in “Unholy Alliance” for solo players too, including “a heap of new powers and abilities to play with.” The update will also bring “new tarot cards, relics, buildings, fleeces, follower traits, follower quests, and other secrets to discover.”

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!

The first gameplay trailer for Neva is out and, wow, I cannot wait to play this one. Neva, from Gris developer Nomada Studio, is an action-adventure game that follows the story of a woman named Alba and a horned wolf cub that has become her companion in a decaying world. While it appears thematically and artistically similar to Gris, the new trailer shows Neva will have a fair amount of combat, unlike its predecessor. And it looks absolutely stunning.

Publisher Devolver Digital released the latest look at Neva during Summer Game Fest. It doesn’t have a firm release date just yet, but it’s slated to come out this year. Neva will be available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. Prepare for an emotional experience.

Nomada’s first title, Gris (2018), is the kind of game that really sticks with you after you’ve finished it. I cried at the end of it all (which I promise is not as regular a thing as it would seem now that I’ve written about crying over a game twice in the span of a week). Neva seems like it has the potential to be just as impactful — or more, because now there’s a dog involved. It doesn’t hurt that the promotional art is giving some serious Princess Mononoke vibes.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!

If you’re three or older, you might remember a brief window of happiness in the annus horribilis that was 2021: Wordle. It was such a lovely time, not just because of Josh Wardle’s splendid little daily puzzle game that provided light in an era of lockdowns, but also because of the multiple variants that sprang up…

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The new 13-inch M4 iPad Pro is really, really thin. That’s inevitably going to make certain aspects of repairing the device even more difficult, which iFixit confirmed in a teardown published this weekend. But it does shine in one area — when it comes to replacing the battery, Apple made some seriously helpful changes.

“For the first time in an iPad Pro, we’re able to remove the battery immediately after removing the screen,” Teardown Tech Shahram Mokhtari wrote in a blog post. Mokhtari notes that “immediately is relative,” as there are still some screws and brackets to remove before the battery can be taken out, and the video documenting the process shows it takes a bit of work to get to the pull tabs beneath the batteries, but the new setup still shaves hours off the process compared to earlier models.

“The fact that you can remove the battery without having to remove every major component inside this device is still a huge win for repairability,” Mokhtari says in the video. “It’s a massive improvement over the previous generation.” Everything else, on the other hand, is going to be pretty tricky to repair without causing damage. “From the daughterboard to the speakers and coax cables, we found a whole bunch of stuff that’s glued down because there just isn’t enough space for screws.”

And, the teardown shows the new Apple Pencil Pro is a repairability nightmare. Mokhtari — who got cut by the Pencil while trying to get to its insides — called it “a disposable piece of crap once the battery dies.”

OpenAI reportedly made exiting employees choose between keeping their vested equity and being able to speak out against the company. According to Vox, which viewed the document in question, employees could “lose all vested equity they earned during their time at the company, which is likely worth millions of dollars” if they didn’t sign a nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreement, thanks to a provision in the off-boarding papers. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed in a tweet on Saturday evening that such a provision did exist, but said “we have never clawed back anyone's vested equity, nor will we do that if people do not sign a separation agreement (or don't agree to a non-disparagement agreement).”

An OpenAI spokesperson echoed this in a statement to Vox, and Altman said the company “was already in the process of fixing the standard exit paperwork over the past month or so.” But as Vox notes in its report, at least one former OpenAI employee has spoken publicly about sacrificing equity by declining to sign an NDA upon leaving. Daniel Kokotajlo recently posted on an online forum that this decision led to the loss of equity likely amounting to “about 85 percent of my family's net worth at least.”

In Altman’s response, the CEO apologized and said he was “embarrassed” after finding out about the provision, which he claims he was previously unaware of. “[T]here was a provision about potential equity cancellation in our previous exit docs; although we never clawed anything back, it should never have been something we had in any documents or communication,” he wrote on X. “this is on me and one of the few times i've been genuinely embarrassed running openai; i did not know this was happening and i should have [sic].” In addition to acknowledging that the company is changing the exit paperwork, Altman went on to say, “[I]f any former employee who signed one of those old agreements is worried about it, they can contact me and we'll fix that too.”

All of this comes after two more high-profile resignations from OpenAI this week. OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever announced on Wednesday that he was leaving the company, and was followed soon after by Jan Leike, who was a team leader on OpenAI’s now-dissolved “Superalignment” AI safety team.

Blue Origin is back in the space tourism game. Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company successfully flew six paying customers to the edge of space and back this morning, breaking its nearly two-year-long hiatus from crewed missions. This was Blue Origin’s seventh trip with humans on board. The mission — a quick jaunt to cross the Kármán line, or the boundary of space, about 62 miles above Earth — lifted off from the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas shortly after 10:30AM ET.

The six people inside the New Shepard crew capsule included 90-year-old Ed Dwight, a former Air Force Captain who was the first Black astronaut candidate when he was picked for the training program in 1961. He went through training but ultimately wasn’t selected for NASA’s Astronaut Corps, and never made it to space until now. Also on board were Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller and Gopi Thotakura. They were briefly able to unbuckle their seatbelts and experience zero gravity.

The crew safely landed back on the ground about 10 minutes after launch. One of the capsule's three parachutes didn't properly deploy on the return trip, but this didn't pose any problems for its touchdown thanks to the redundancies in the system that account for exactly that type of situation. 

This was also the 25th mission for a New Shepard rocket. It last flew a crew in August 2022, but suffered a structural failure in its engine nozzle the following month during the launch of a payload mission and didn't fly again at all until December 2023. It returned to flight then with another payload mission, making today's launch its first with human passengers in almost two years. 

Video game horses tend to play a fairly uncomplicated role, at least in mainstream titles. Like semi-sentient meat bicycles, they often exist as little more than a way to make the player travel faster, jump farther or occasionally defy the laws of physics. With the exception of Red Dead Redemption 2, an outlier beloved for its equine verisimilitude and breadth of riding-related activities, horses in video games are generally emotionless props, notorious for janky animations and unnatural anatomy.

That’s fine for most players’ needs, but for those who are drawn to certain games in part because they have horses, there's a lot to be desired. Especially since the alternatives — dedicated horse games — haven’t proven to be much better. The genre is plagued with shoddy graphics, unoriginal storylines and drawn-out, repetitive caretaking tasks like hoof-picking. While horse games of the aughts, like the Barbie Horse Adventures series, sparked a lasting interest in the niche for a lot of young gamers, we’ve yet to really see what their maturation can look like for the now-adults still chasing that high.

The biggest actual horse game today, the decade-old MMORPG Star Stable Online, is distinctly tween-girl-coded. Suffice it to say, there’s a hole in the market as big as a Clydesdale. But some extremely passionate developers are trying to change that.

Alice Ruppert, who runs The Mane Quest — the go-to blog for all things relating to horse games — has cultivated a community of “horse-interested gamers and game-interested equestrians” over the last five years by churning out news, reviews, analyses and wishful editorials covering the latest developments in the genre. As a lifelong equestrian who also has a professional background in game design, she’s become an authoritative voice at the intersection of these two worlds.

The way Ruppert sees it, dedicated horse games have long been stuck in place. Budgets for new titles over the years were kept tiny based on the assumption that these games would only land with a very small niche of gamers, namely young girls. Limited resources resulted in the creation of subpar games, with “basic mistakes of game design and usability,” causing those games to be poorly received. Bad sales and negative reviews ensured future projects wouldn’t be given bigger budgets, and the cycle repeats.

There’s been a shift more recently, she says, “as the game development space is getting democratized and more people start trying to make games.” That has introduced a host of new issues, like “very amateur teams launching really big projects… and not being able to deliver,” Ruppert said, but she thinks that's “a better problem to have than just nobody making any games at all.”

After Ruppert panned Aesir Interactive’s Windstorm: Start of a Great Friendship (Ostwind in its original German, based on a movie), the studio got in touch and later brought her on as a consultant and eventually creative producer for its 2022 title, Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch. The game is far from perfect, Ruppert admits, but despite joining the project at a pretty late stage, she says she was able to make some contributions toward creating an experience that could be appreciated by people who actually know and love horses.

Aesir Interactive

That included helping to correct funky details that might not have registered to a non-equestrian but would stick out like a sore thumb to anyone in that world — like a bizarre transition when changing a horse’s leading leg in a canter. “Whenever I spotted something that was wrong, I was like, okay no, we need to fix this because the horse game crowd is going to care,” she says.

Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch is an open world adventure game where players can explore on horseback, tame wild horses, breed and train horses, and maintain their own ranch. It takes a realistic approach to breeding and genetics, and the horses each have unique personality traits. The team crowdsourced horse names, too, so the game’s automatic name generator spits out the names of community members’ real horses.

Still, the game drew some harsh criticism after its release, and the reviews overall have been mixed, with common complaints of game-crashing bugs and a world that feels empty. (The team released a final patch for the game in April devoted entirely to bug fixes.) It has its fans, though, and if there’s one thing players seem to agree on, it’s that the horses and the riding mechanics look great.

Aesir also announced last month that it’s releasing a remastered version of Windstorm: Start of a Great Friendship. The revamped game includes improvements like “replacing those horse animations that I’ve been complaining about for the past five years,” wrote Ruppert — who has separated from the studio — in a blog post. It’s slated for release in June.

As more and more efforts from the horse games community pop up, “The really promising developments are going to come when either those amateur projects learn and grow into something better, or when more experienced indie devs start picking [them] up,” Ruppert says.

One such example she points to is The Ranch of Rivershine, a horse game developed and published by Canadian studio Cozy Bee Games that’s currently in Early Access. The studio, founded by developer Éloïse Laroche, focuses on cozy games (think Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing), as the name would suggest, and already had a handful of highly rated titles under its belt before putting out The Ranch of Rivershine. That includes Capybara Spa and the baking sim Lemon Cake.

While it may not be “the horse game to end all horse games,” Ruppert says, “I do think it does a lot of things really well.” The Ranch of Rivershine takes a format Cozy Bee Games has shown it excels in, and applied horses. It isn’t groundbreaking — players are tasked with building up their own ranch, where they can breed, take care of and train horses — but it doesn’t necessarily need to be. There are trail rides, cross country competitions, villagers to interact with, auctions and lots of pretty horses. Unlike many of its peers, The Ranch of Rivershine has mostly positive reviews.

Rockstar Games

To this day, Red Dead Redemption 2 stands widely accepted as the best horse game out there despite it not technically being a horse game. Red Dead Online has drawn hordes of equestrian-minded players over the last few years for organized in-game meetups, trail rides, horse shows and other horse-centered activities. The horses themselves, though they’re not without flaws, are far more lifelike than others heretofore have achieved. And the game places importance on actually bonding with them.

It’s so good, it’s become a pain point for projects that have emerged in its wake. AAA games like Red Dead Redemption 2 set a bar that is “almost impossible for an indie game studio to reach, which puts a lot of pressure on creators,” says Jonna Östergren, a 3D animator working with the Hungary-based developer Mindev Games on Unbridled: That Horse Game. Nevertheless, they’re aiming high.

Engadget caught up with the Mindev team recently over a Discord group chat. “I have loved horses for as long as I can remember,” Östergren says, they’ve “been a big part of my life.” So have video games, and in 2017, she started learning how to make them using tools like Unity and Blender. Östergren by chance connected with Jasmin Blazeuski, the founder of Mindev, years later while working on her own horse game that had hit a dead end. “I had big aspirations but I was alone and I was trying to learn all the things, from coding to animation. It was a lot,” Östergren said.

After talking with Blazeuski, “I offered to help them make some 3D models if they needed it. One thing led to another and I became a much bigger part of the team than I had first imagined.”

Unbridled’s creators envision the game as one that allows the player a lot of freedom. “You decide how you want to play and manage your stables,” Blazeuski said. “If you want to make money over competitions, breeding horses or farming — it is all up to you.” They’re striving for realism, in terms of the horses’ physical appearances but beyond that, too. “I have never had a horse game with a simple yet so cute detail such as horses looking outside the stable. Casual, real things horses do, we want them all in the game.”

The emotional elements are crucial. Even in games where horses are the main subject, they often “lack personality and liveliness,” Östergren said. “They are not really their own being with their own mind… That is something that I would love to change in our game. Not making the horse a nuisance that never does what you want it to do, but to make it so that your horse feels alive in the world that you are in as your character.”

The team, also including 3D artist and longtime equestrian, Sara Wermuth, points to childhood games like Horse Illustrated: Championship Season, Riding Champion: Legacy of Rosemond Hill, Pippa Funnell: Ranch Rescue, My Horse Friends, and Pony Girl (1 and 2) as sources of inspiration. Only Unbridled’s programmer, Amon Ahmad, comes from outside the world of horses and horse games, and had to watch “a lot of gameplays from different horse games” to get up to speed.

Between the old and new games, “I noticed that nothing has actually ever changed, apart from the graphics or the style,” Ahmad said. “New functions, new gameplays, new ideas in general are missing.” The team aims to avoid those trappings with Unbridled, which is being built meticulously using the Unreal Engine.

Mindev Games

Horse games have a tendency toward tedious and repetitive tasks or mini-games, which can be detrimental “no matter how much detail and love was put into it,” Östergren said. They don’t want to go down that road. And Unbridled will have unique systems for dressage and jumping to give players a challenge, without predetermined points that will guarantee a well-executed jump, according to Ahmad. Instead, players will have to train their horses and develop a feel for the timing.

But making a game of this scope that is fun, engaging and realistic can be a slow process, not to mention an expensive one. The team’s recent Kickstarter campaign failed to reach its funding goal, and it’s relying on avenues like Patreon for financial support to see the project through. An update posted in February noted that half of the team has picked up part-time jobs to bring in additional income.

The animation alone is a huge undertaking. The complexity of horses’ bone structure, all the bending points, plus “getting the gaits right and all those little details of movement is very difficult [to do] by hand,” Blazeuski said. But, “we will take our time to perfect everything.”

Unbridled: That Horse Game has been in a closed beta since November, allowing the developers to get direct feedback from the community, but the team estimates it’ll be a few years yet before the full release.

Astride, another horse game being developed by a small team with big ambitions, is setting itself apart with its focus on Nordic horse breeds, like the Norwegian Fjord Horse and the Norwegian Dole, as well as gaited breeds like the Icelandic Horse. The studio behind it, Raidho Games, was formed in 2021 after Maja Nygjelten (CEO and concept artist) and Mathilde Kvernland (Community Manager and 3D artist) decided to get serious about their idea to create the horse game they’d always been in search of.

Raidho Games

They put word out on a Norwegian Facebook group for gamers and ultimately expanded the team to five people, including fellow equestrian Tirna Kristine Mellum, who joined as a 3D artist and Project Manager. Using their combined experience with horses in real life to guide the process, Mellum said, “We are hoping to have a horse game where the horses feel like horses.”

“We know what to look for in references” to provide their animator, Marius Mobæk Strømmevold, so the horses’ gaits and other movements look true to life, Nygjelten said. “I think that's very important, to [not] take a random animation from YouTube” but instead provide him with references that they’re confident show the proper result.

The main focus of the game at launch, which is somewhat scaled down from the original vision, will be on breeding horses in the fictional Scandinavian town of Eldheim and training them to compete. “Most [horse games] have show jumping as the first feature, including us… [but] I think we will stand out a lot with the breeding and everything,” Nygjelten says. “We have very realistic horse genetics,” according to Mellum, and that will initially be what the game leans into most.

The early gameplay is centered around the stable and interactions in the Eldheim community rather than grand adventures. It’s being designed to be an online multiplayer game, so players will also be able to meet up with friends. Down the line, the plan is to implement more complex storylines and quests to keep building out the experience.

The project has had some successful funding efforts, including a Kickstarter campaign in spring 2022, but it’s also suffered delays. An Early Access version of the game was released behind schedule last June to very mixed reviews. But, the team emphasizes, it’s still a work in progress.

“Astride still has some years left of development,” says Nygjelten, “The game will continue to grow every single day, and it will probably be very different in a year.”

It might be a good time to finally upgrade your iPhone if you’ve been hanging onto an older model — according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple will be offering a little more than usual for some trade-ins starting next week in the US and Canada. The company itself hasn’t said anything about the promotion, but according to Gurman, it’ll be offered in-store to customers who’ll be using the credit toward any model in the iPhone 15 lineup. This will reportedly be in effect starting this Monday and last until June 3.

Apple lists trade-in values on its website for all iPhone models going back to the iPhone 7. Something that old currently goes for something in the ballpark of $50, while a more recent model like the year-and-a-half-old iPhone 14 Pro Max has an estimated trade-in value of up to $630. Of course, the online estimates aren’t always what you end up getting, but it gives you an idea. Since Apple hasn’t said anything about a temporary value boost, it’s unclear by how much these numbers may go up.

A full trailer just dropped for the upcoming animated show based on the popular game Dead Cells, and it looks like the creators have made a few unexpected choices. For one, the Beheaded can apparently talk. 

Dead Cells: Immortalis is being produced by Bobbypills, the studio behind the game’s animated trailers, and the French streaming service, Animation Digital Network. Along with the trailer, the series now has a release date: June 19. It’ll come out in French first, with English subtitles, before getting an English-language release later this year, according to Dead Cells developer Motion Twin.

The trailer shows a different animation style than we saw in the teaser that came out last year when the series was first announced. As hinted back then, the main character — who the show introduces now as “The Chosen One” — takes on the purple-flame-headed Bobby design. He’s accompanied by a character named Laurie Esposito, Guardian of the Truth. There’s an overall silliness to the trailer, too, so while it looks like there will be plenty of action, don’t expect the show to take itself too seriously.

Several models of Beats headphones and earbuds are deeply discounted right now in a deal from Amazon, including the noise-canceling Studio Buds, which are nearly half off. The limited time deal also includes the option for two years of AppleCare+ coverage. The Beats Studio Buds with AppleCare+, which would normally cost $180, are only $100 right now. If you don’t want AppleCare+, you can get them for even cheaper, at a record-low $80 compared to the usual price of $150. The deal applies to five colors: Black, Moon Gray, Red, Sunset Pink and White.

The Beats Studio Buds are a good option for anyone looking for true-wireless, noise-canceling earbuds that perform well but won’t break the bank. They offer fast pairing for both iOS and Android devices, and will work with both operating systems’ Find My networks so you can track them down if ever misplaced. They also support Spatial Audio for tracks that come in that format. The Beats Studio Buds get about eight hours of battery life without active noise-cancellation enabled, and around five hours with it turned on.

If you’re looking for earbuds to use while you’re working out, the Beats Fit Pro, also on sale, may be a better option. These are among our top picks for true-wireless earbuds. The Beats Fit Pro earbuds (without AppleCare+) have dropped down to $160 in the current sale. This model is normally priced at $200, and comes in a slew of colors. The Fit Pro buds have a wingtip to help keep them securely in place while you’re exercising, and come with features like active noise-cancellation and adaptive EQ.

Also on sale right now are the wireless Powerbeats Pro earbuds, which hook onto the ear, and over-the-ear headphones including the Studio Pro, Solo3 and Solo4. These also come with the option to add AppleCare+.

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

It seems Apple’s recently added option for App Store developers to include links to external payment methods isn’t actually all that appealing. In a hearing on Friday as part of the ongoing legal battle with Epic, Apple said only 38 developers have applied to add such links — out of roughly 65,000 that could, according to Bloomberg. The new guidelines, introduced in January, require developers get Apple’s approval before they can add alternative payment options and stipulate that they’ll still have to pay a commission fee of up to 27 percent.

The changes were intended to satisfy an injunction ordered by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in 2021, but, per Reuters, Epic in March called Apple’s attempt at compliance “a sham” and filed a complaint with the court. At this point, Rogers doesn’t really seem impressed either. “It sounds to me as if the goal was to then maintain the business model and revenue you had in the past,” Rogers said of Apple's solution during the latest hearing, according to Bloomberg.

On top of Apple’s commission, developers also need to consider payment processing fees, which altogether could lead to them paying even more than they did before. “You’re telling me a thousand people were involved [in approving the new fee] and not one of them said maybe we should consider the cost [to developers]?” the judge reportedly said.

Space weather has been known to cause disruptions to GPS and communications systems, and perhaps no one is feeling those headaches more than farmers this weekend. 404 Media reports that the heightened solar activity over the last few days has led to outages in the GPS navigation systems that guide some modern tractors from John Deere and other brands. The technology has allowed farmers to plant more efficiently in ultra-tight, straight lines, but they’ve been advised to temporarily stop using it due to the potential for inaccuracies that could cause havoc down the line come harvesting time.

John Deere’s tractors connect to what are known as Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) systems, 404 reports, which allow for precision planting down to the centimeter level. If farmers were to go ahead and plant without their usual accuracy, “we expect that the rows won't be where the AutoPath lines think they are” when it’s time to tend and harvest the crops, Landmark Implement, owner of some John Deere dealerships, told 404 Media.

The timing is terrible — it’s peak planting season for corn, and one Nebraska farmer, Kevin Kenney, told 404, “All the tractors are sitting at the ends of the field right now shut down because of the solar storm.” Many farms have had to pause planting, while others are carrying on and just hoping for the best.

The geomagnetic storm we’re currently experiencing is the strongest observed in the last 20 years, and reached G5 levels on Friday and Saturday morning, which is considered to be “extreme.” It later died down some to G4/G3, but is expected to surge again on Sunday evening when some intense but slower-moving coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the sun reach Earth. That’s great if you want to see the northern lights, but not so much if your livelihood depends on the technology the storm is interfering with.

People who pre-ordered the PC port of Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut in countries that don’t have access to PlayStation Network (PSN) were reportedly notified this weekend that their purchases have been canceled and auto-refunded. Steam, Green Man Gaming and the Epic Games Store have all been canceling these orders, Eurogamer reports. Developer Sucker Punch previously said that a PSN account would only be needed for the game’s multiplayer mode, and the single-player campaign would be playable without it. But, here we are — and just days after the Helldivers 2 mess that transpired last week.

According to Eurogamer, people in affected areas were sent an email letting them know their orders were being refunded, saying, “The publisher of this game is now requiring a secondary account to play portions of this game — and this account cannot be created from your country.” Prior to this, Ghost of Tsushima was delisted from Steam in the over 170 countries without PSN, PCGamer and other outlets have reported. Sony hasn’t said anything publicly about the whole debacle yet. Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut is slated to be released for PC on Thursday.

The strongest geomagnetic storm in 20 years made the colorful northern lights, or aurora borealis, visible Friday night across the US, even in areas that are normally too far south to see them. And the show may not be over. Tonight may offer another chance to catch the aurora if you have clear skies, according to the NOAA, and Sunday could bring yet more displays reaching as far as Alabama.

The NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center said on Saturday that the sun has continued to produce powerful solar flares. That’s on top of previously observed coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or explosions of magnetized plasma, that won’t reach Earth until tomorrow. The agency has been monitoring a particularly active sunspot cluster since Wednesday, and confirmed yesterday that it had observed G5 conditions — the level designated “extreme” — which haven’t been seen since October 2003. In a press release on Friday, Clinton Wallace, Director, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, said the current storm is “an unusual and potentially historic event.”

Geomagnetic storms happen when outbursts from the sun interact with Earth’s magnetosphere. While it all has kind of a scary ring to it, people on the ground don’t really have anything to worry about. As NASA explained on X, “Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere” to physically affect us. These storms can mess with our technology, though, and have been known to disrupt communications, GPS, satellite operations and even the power grid.

Fans have been waiting a long, long time for another installment in the 28 Days Later franchise, and we now know when the next followup is coming out: June 20, 2025. Per Variety, Sony Pictures announced the release date for the upcoming film 28 Years Later on Friday. It would have been kind of cool if it were timed with the original film’s actual 28th anniversary in 2030, considering how close we are to that now (horrifying, I know), but I can't blame them for not keeping people hanging even longer.

28 Days Later, starring Cillian Murphy in what turned out to be his breakout role, came out in 2002, and was followed by a sequel with a different cast, 28 Weeks Later, in 2007. There were at one point murmurs of plans for 28 Months Later, but it looks like we’re skipping over that. The new film will be directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, who both helmed the first movie, The Hollywood Reporter reported earlier this year. Murphy will be among its executive producers, according to Variety, but don’t get your hopes up for seeing him in a starring role. As of now, it doesn't seem like that’ll be the case.

We don’t know anything about the plot yet, but 28 Years Later will reportedly star Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes. And it could be the first of three new movies in the franchise. According to THR, the plan is ultimately for a trilogy.

The strongest geomagnetic storm in 20 years made the colorful northern lights, or aurora borealis, visible Friday night across the US, even in areas that are normally too far south to see them. And the show may not be over. Tonight may offer another chance to catch the aurora if you have clear skies, according to the NOAA, and Sunday could bring yet more displays reaching as far as Alabama.

The NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center said on Saturday that the sun has continued to produce powerful solar flares. That’s on top of previously observed coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or explosions of magnetized plasma, that won’t reach Earth until tomorrow. The agency has been monitoring a particularly active sunspot cluster since Wednesday, and confirmed yesterday that it had observed G5 conditions — the level designated “extreme” — which haven’t been seen since October 2003. In a press release on Friday, Clinton Wallace, Director, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, said the current storm is “an unusual and potentially historic event.”

Geomagnetic storms happen when outbursts from the sun interact with Earth’s magnetosphere. While it all has kind of a scary ring to it, people on the ground don’t really have anything to worry about. As NASA explained on X, “Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere” to physically affect us. These storms can mess with our technology, though, and have been known to disrupt communications, GPS, satellite operations and even the power grid.

Fans have been waiting a long, long time for another installment in the 28 Days Later franchise, and we now know when the next followup is coming out: June 20, 2025. Per Variety, Sony Pictures announced the release date for the upcoming film 28 Years Later on Friday. It would have been kind of cool if it were timed with the original film’s actual 28th anniversary in 2030, considering how close we are to that now (horrifying, I know), but I can't blame them for not keeping people hanging even longer.

28 Days Later, starring Cillian Murphy in what turned out to be his breakout role, came out in 2002, and was followed by a sequel with a different cast, 28 Weeks Later, in 2007. There were at one point murmurs of plans for 28 Months Later, but it looks like we’re skipping over that. The new film will be directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, who both helmed the first movie, The Hollywood Reporter reported earlier this year. Murphy will be among its executive producers, according to Variety, but don’t get your hopes up for seeing him in a starring role. As of now, it doesn't seem like that’ll be the case.

We don’t know anything about the plot yet, but 28 Years Later will reportedly star Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes. And it could be the first of three new movies in the franchise. According to THR, the plan is ultimately for a trilogy.

Proton Mail has introduced Dark Web Monitoring for its paid users, which will keep them informed of breaches or leaks they may have been affected by. If anything's been spotted on the dark web, the feature will send out alerts that include information like what service was compromised, what personal details the attackers got (e.g. passwords, name, etc.) and recommended next steps. At launch, you’ll have to visit the Proton Mail Security Center on the web or desktop to access these alerts, but the company says email and in-app notifications are on the way.

Proton

Dark Web Monitoring is intended to be a proactive security measure. If you’ve used your Proton Mail email address to sign up for a third-party service, like a social media site, and then hackers steal user data from that service, it would let you know in a timely manner if your credentials have been compromised so you can take action (hopefully) before any harm is done. It seems a fitting move for the service, which already offers end-to-end encryption and has made privacy its main stance since the beginning. Dark Web Monitoring won’t be available to free users, though.

“While data breaches of third-party sites leading to the leak of personal information (such as your email address) can never be entirely avoided, automated early warning can help users stay vigilant and mitigate worse side effects such as identity theft,” said Eamonn Maguire, Head of Anti-Abuse and Account Security at Proton.

Tesla has reduced the price of its Full Self-Driving software in the US and Canada. Per a post from the company on X, it now costs $8,000 in the US (or $11,000 for buyers in Canada) to add the so-called Full Self-Driving (FSD) Capability. This is down from $12,000 ($16,000 CAD), according to Electrek, which also reports that Tesla has discontinued the $6,000 Enhanced Autopilot option. Current owners with that package can upgrade to FSD for $2,000.

Tesla’s driver assistance features have been under scrutiny from regulators for years, and despite the name, Full Self-Driving isn’t meant to fully take over for a human driver at this stage. On its website, Tesla notes that current FSD features “require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.” In March, the company reportedly introduced a mandate requiring its staff to give buyers a demonstration of FSD before they’re able to take home their new cars, so they can see what the software has to offer.

The latest price drop comes a few days after Tesla slashed the monthly cost of its subscription for FSD — which it has recently been referring to as Full Self-Driving (Supervised). The subscription, which previously cost $199/month, now goes for $99/month. Tesla also cut the starting prices of its Model Y, X and S vehicles this weekend by $2,000 each. Earlier this month, Tesla reported that its vehicle deliveries for Q1 2024 fell short of expectations, with an eight percent drop year-over-year.

President Biden this weekend signed into law a bill that reauthorizes a controversial spying program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Section 702 of FISA, which has now been extended for two more years, allows for warrantless intelligence gathering on foreign targets. While its focus is on the communications of targets located outside the US, that includes any exchanges with people stateside, meaning Americans’ records can get swept up in these collections too.

The Senate vote on reauthorizing Section 702 came down to the wire. It was set to expire on Friday at midnight, but was recently given an extension until April 2025, according to The New York Times, lest it lapse while disagreements over proposed amendments dragged on. Section 702’s extension period was also shortened, cutting it down to two years instead of the previous five. Congress did ultimately miss the deadline on Friday, but it passed with a 60-34 vote, CBS News reported. The White House issued a statement not long after saying the president “will swiftly sign the bill into law.”

Section 702 was first signed into law in 2008 and has been renewed twice already, allowing US intelligence agencies to use data from internet and cell phone providers without a warrant to keep tabs on foreign targets’ communications. It’s faced strong opposition from both sides over its implications for Americans’ privacy. Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), called the passage of the bill “profoundly disappointing” in a statement released over the weekend, going on to say that it “gives the government more ways to secretly surveil us — with little power to hold spy agencies accountable.”

“Senators were aware of the threat this surveillance bill posed to our civil liberties and pushed it through anyway, promising they would attempt to address some of the most heinous expansions in the near future,” Hamadanchy said. “We plan to make sure these promises are kept.”

Update, April 21 2024, 1:21PM ET: This story has been updated to include a statement from the ACLU.

The US House of Representatives passed a bill on Saturday that could either see TikTok banned in the country or force its sale. A revised version of the bill, which previously passed the House in March but later stalled in Senate, was roped in with a foreign aid package this time around, likely meaning it will now be treated as a higher priority item. The bill originally gave TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, six months to sell the app if it’s passed into law or TikTok would be banned from US app stores. Under the revised version, ByteDance would have up to a year to divest.

The bill passed with a vote of 360-58 in the House, according to AP. It’ll now move on to the Senate, which could vote on it in just a matter of days. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said today that the Senate is working to reach an agreement on when the next vote will be for the foreign aid package that the TikTok bill is attached to, but it is expected to happen this coming Tuesday. President Joe Biden has previously said he would support the bill if Congress passes it. 

The bill paints TikTok as a national security threat due to its ties to China. There are roughly 170 million US users on the app, at least according to TikTok, and ByteDance isn't expected to let them go without a fight. In a statement posted on X earlier this week, the TikTok Policy account said such a law would “trample the free speech rights” of these users, “devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the U.S. economy, annually.” Critics of the bill have also argued that banning TikTok would do little in the way of actually protecting Americans’ data.

Another round of price cuts has shaved $2,000 off the starting prices of Tesla’s Model Y, Model X and Model S for buyers in the US, Reuters reports. The company’s North America branch posted on X about the change to the Model Y on Friday night, at the same time announcing that Tesla is ditching its referral program benefits in all markets. According to Tesla, the “current referral program benefits will end after April 30.”

Tesla’s Model Y now starts at $42,990 for the rear-wheel drive base model, $47,990 for the Model Y Long Range or $51,490 for the Model Y Performance. The base Model S has dropped to $72,990 while the Model S Plaid now starts at $87,990. The Model X starts at $77,990 (base) or $92,990 (Plaid). The changes come during a rocky few weeks for the company, which just issued a recall for Cybertrucks over possible issues with the accelerator pedal, reportedly laid off 10 percent of its employees and reported a decline in deliveries for the first quarter.

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) used to be considered too slow to be of practical use in semiconductor manufacturing, but it has emerged as a critical tool for both transistor and interconnect fabrication at the most advanced nodes.

ALD can be speeded up somewhat, but the real shift is the rising value of precise composition and thickness control at the most advanced nodes, which makes the extra time spent on deposition worthwhile.

ALD is a close cousin of chemical vapor deposition, initially introduced in high volume to the semiconductor industry for hafnium oxide (high-k) gate dielectrics. Both CVD and ALD are inherently conformal processes. Deposition occurs on all surfaces exposed to a precursor gas. In ALD, though, the reaction is self-limiting.

The process works like this: First, a precursor gas (A) is introduced into the process chamber, where it adsorbs onto all available substrate sites. No further adsorption occurs once all surface sites are occupied. An inert purge gas, typically nitrogen or argon, flushes out any remaining precursor gas, then a second precursor (B) is introduced. Precursor B reacts with the chemisorbed precursor A to produce the desired film. Once all of the adsorbed molecules are consumed, the reaction stops. After a second purge step, the cycle repeats.

ALD opportunities expand as features shrink
The step-by-step nature of ALD is both its strength and its weakness. Depositing one monolayer at a time gives manufacturers extremely precise thickness control. Using different precursor gases in different ratios can tune the film composition. Unfortunately, the repeated precursor/purge gas cycles take a lot of time. In an interview, CEA-Leti researcher Rémy Gassilloud estimated that in a single wafer process, two minutes per wafer is the maximum cost-effective process time. But two minutes is only enough time to deposit about a 2nm-thick film.

Some process adjustments can improve throughput. Silicon dioxide ALD often uses large furnaces to process many wafers at once. Plasma activation can ionize reagents and accelerate film formation. Still, Gassilloud estimates that 10nm is the maximum practical thickness for ALD films.

As transistors shrink, though, the number of layers in that thickness range is increasing. Transistor structures also are becoming more complex, requiring deposition on vertical surfaces, into deep trenches, and other places not readily accessible by line-of-sight PVD methods. Replacement gates for gate-all-around transistors, for instance, need a process that can fill nanometer-scale cavities.

As noted above, HfO₂ was the first successful application of ALD in semiconductor manufacturing. Its precursors, HfCl₄ and water, are both chemically simple small molecules, whose by-products are volatile and easily removed. Such simple chemistries are the exception, though. ALD of silicon dioxide typically uses aminosilane precursors.⁠[1] Metal nitrides often have complex metal-organic precursor gases. Gassilloud noted that ligands might be added to a precursor molecule to change its vapor pressure or reactivity, or to facilitate adhesion to the substrate. In selective deposition processes, discussed below, ligands might improve selectivity between growth and non-growth surfaces. These larger molecules can be difficult to insinuate into smaller features, and byproducts can be difficult to remove. Complex byproducts can also become a contamination source.

One of the advantages of ALD is its very low process temperature, typically between 200°C and 300°C. It is thermally compatible with both transistor and interconnect processes in CMOS, as well as with deposition on plastic and other novel substrates. Even so, Aditya Kumar and colleagues at GlobalFoundries showed that precise temperature control is important.^⁠[2] TDMAT (tetrakis- dimethylamino titanium) condensation in a TiN deposition process was a significant source of particle defects. To maintain the desired process temperature, both the precursor and purge gas temperatures matter. Introducing cold purge gas into a warm process chamber can cause rapid condensation.

As ALD has become a mainstream process, the industry has found applications for it beyond core device materials, in a variety of sacrificial and spacer layers. For example, double- and quadruple-patterning schemes often use ALD for “pitch-doubling.” By depositing a spacer material on either side of a patterned “mandrel,” then removing the mandrel, the process can cut the original pitch in half without the need for an additional, more costly lithography step.^⁠[3]

Fig. 1: Self-aligned double patterning with ALD spacers. Source: Creative Commons

Depositing a doped oxide on the vertical silicon fins of a finFET device is a less directional and less damaging alternative to ion implantation.[^⁠4]

Selective deposition brings lateral control
These last two examples depend on surface characteristics to mediate deposition. A precursor might adhere more readily to a hard mask than to the underlying material. The vertical face of a silicon fin might offer more (or fewer) adsorption sites than the horizontal face. Selective deposition on more complicated structures may require a pre-deposited growth template, functionalizing substrate regions to encourage or discourage growth. Selective deposition is especially important in interconnect applications. In general, though, a comprehensive review by Rong Chen and colleagues at Huazhong University of Science and Technology explained that selective deposition methods need to replenish the template material as the film grows while needing a mechanism to selectively remove the unwanted material.⁠[5]

For example, tungsten preferentially deposits on silicon relative to SiO₂, but the selectivity diminishes after only a few cycles. Researchers at North Carolina State University successfully re-passivated the oxide by incorporating hydrogen into the tungsten precursor.[⁠6] Similarly, a group at Eindhoven University of Technology found that SiO₂ preferentially deposited on SiO₂ relative to other oxides for only 10 to 15 cycles. A so-called ABC-cycle — adding acetylacetone (“Inhibitor A”) as an inhibitor every 5 to 10 cycles — restored selectivity.⁠[7]

Alternatively, or in addition, atomic layer etching (ALE) might be used to remove unwanted material. ALE operates in the same step-by-step manner as ALD. The first half of a cycle reacts with the existing surface, weakening the bond to the underlying material. Then, a second step — typically ion bombardment — removes the weakened layer. For example, in ALE etching of silicon, chlorine gas reacts with the surface to form various SiCl_x compounds. The chlorination process weakens the inter-silicon bonds between the surface and the bulk, and the chlorinated layer is easily sputtered away. The layer-by-layer nature of ALE depends on preferential removal of the surface material relative to the bulk (SiCl_x vs. Si in this case). The “ALE window” is the combination of energy and temperature at which the surface layer is completely removed without damaging the underlying material.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, Keren Kanarik and colleagues at Lam Research found that higher ion energies actually expanded the ALE window for silicon etching. High ion energies with short exposure times delayed the onset of silicon sputtering relative to conventional RIE.[8]

Adding and subtracting, one atomic layer at a time
For a long time, the semiconductor industry has been looking for alternatives to process schemes that deposit material, pattern it, then etch most of it away. Wouldn’t it be simpler to only deposit the material we will ultimately need? Meanwhile, atomic layer deposition has been filling the spaces under nanosheets and inside cavities. Bulk deposition and etch tools are still with us, and will be for the foreseeable future. In more and more cases, though, those tools provide the frame while ALD and ALE processes fill in the details.

Correction: Corrected attribution of the work on ABC cycles and selective deposition of SiO₂.

References

1. Wenling Li, et al., “Impact of aminosilane and silanol precursor structure on atomic layer deposition process,”Applied Surface Science, Vol 621, 2023,156869, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2023.156869.
2. Kumar, et al., “ALD TiN Surface Defect Reduction for 12nm and Beyond Technologies,” 2020 31st Annual SEMI Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference (ASMC), Saratoga Springs, NY, USA, 2020, pp. 1-4, doi: 10.1109/ASMC49169.2020.9185271.
3. Shohei Yamauchi, et al., “Extendibility of self-aligned type multiple patterning for further scaling”, Proc. SPIE 8682, Advances in Resist Materials and Processing Technology XXX, 86821D (29 March 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2011953
4. Kalkofen, et al., “Atomic layer deposition of phosphorus oxide films as solid sources for doping of semiconductor structures,” 2018 IEEE 18th International Conference on Nanotechnology (IEEE-NANO), Cork, Ireland, 2018, pp. 1-4, doi: 10.1109/NANO.2018.8626235.
5. Rong Chen et al., “Atomic level deposition to extend Moore’s law and beyond,” 2020 Int. J. Extrem. Manuf. 2 022002 DOI 10.1088/2631-7990/ab83e0
6. B Kalanyan, et al., “Using hydrogen to expand the inherent substrate selectivity window during tungsten atomic layer deposition,” 2016 Chem. Mater. 28 117–26 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.5b03319
7. Alfredo Mameli et al., “Area-Selective Atomic Layer Deposition of SiO2 Using Acetylacetone as a Chemoselective Inhibitor in an ABC-Type Cycle” ACS Nano 2017, 11, 9, 9303–9311. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.7b04701
8. Keren J. Kanarik, et al., “Universal scaling relationship for atomic layer etching,” J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 39, 010401 (2021); doi: 10.1116/6.0000762

The post Enabling Advanced Devices With Atomic Layer Processes appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

The US House of Representatives passed a bill on Saturday that could either see TikTok banned in the country or force its sale. A revised version of the bill, which previously passed the House in March but later stalled in Senate, was roped in with a foreign aid package this time around, likely meaning it will now be treated as a higher priority item. The bill originally gave TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, six months to sell the app if it’s passed into law or TikTok would be banned from US app stores. Under the revised version, ByteDance would have up to a year to divest.

The bill passed with a vote of 360-58 in the House, according to AP. It’ll now move on to the Senate, which could vote on it in just a matter of days. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said today that the Senate is working to reach an agreement on when the next vote will be for the foreign aid package that the TikTok bill is attached to, but it is expected to happen this coming Tuesday. President Joe Biden has previously said he would support the bill if Congress passes it. 

The bill paints TikTok as a national security threat due to its ties to China. There are roughly 170 million US users on the app, at least according to TikTok, and ByteDance isn't expected to let them go without a fight. In a statement posted on X earlier this week, the TikTok Policy account said such a law would “trample the free speech rights” of these users, “devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the U.S. economy, annually.” Critics of the bill have also argued that banning TikTok would do little in the way of actually protecting Americans’ data.

Another round of price cuts has shaved $2,000 off the starting prices of Tesla’s Model Y, Model X and Model S for buyers in the US, Reuters reports. The company’s North America branch posted on X about the change to the Model Y on Friday night, at the same time announcing that Tesla is ditching its referral program benefits in all markets. According to Tesla, the “current referral program benefits will end after April 30.”

Tesla’s Model Y now starts at $42,990 for the rear-wheel drive base model, $47,990 for the Model Y Long Range or $51,490 for the Model Y Performance. The base Model S has dropped to $72,990 while the Model S Plaid now starts at $87,990. The Model X starts at $77,990 (base) or $92,990 (Plaid). The changes come during a rocky few weeks for the company, which just issued a recall for Cybertrucks over possible issues with the accelerator pedal, reportedly laid off 10 percent of its employees and reported a decline in deliveries for the first quarter.

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) used to be considered too slow to be of practical use in semiconductor manufacturing, but it has emerged as a critical tool for both transistor and interconnect fabrication at the most advanced nodes.

ALD can be speeded up somewhat, but the real shift is the rising value of precise composition and thickness control at the most advanced nodes, which makes the extra time spent on deposition worthwhile.

ALD is a close cousin of chemical vapor deposition, initially introduced in high volume to the semiconductor industry for hafnium oxide (high-k) gate dielectrics. Both CVD and ALD are inherently conformal processes. Deposition occurs on all surfaces exposed to a precursor gas. In ALD, though, the reaction is self-limiting.

The process works like this: First, a precursor gas (A) is introduced into the process chamber, where it adsorbs onto all available substrate sites. No further adsorption occurs once all surface sites are occupied. An inert purge gas, typically nitrogen or argon, flushes out any remaining precursor gas, then a second precursor (B) is introduced. Precursor B reacts with the chemisorbed precursor A to produce the desired film. Once all of the adsorbed molecules are consumed, the reaction stops. After a second purge step, the cycle repeats.

ALD opportunities expand as features shrink
The step-by-step nature of ALD is both its strength and its weakness. Depositing one monolayer at a time gives manufacturers extremely precise thickness control. Using different precursor gases in different ratios can tune the film composition. Unfortunately, the repeated precursor/purge gas cycles take a lot of time. In an interview, CEA-Leti researcher Rémy Gassilloud estimated that in a single wafer process, two minutes per wafer is the maximum cost-effective process time. But two minutes is only enough time to deposit about a 2nm-thick film.

Some process adjustments can improve throughput. Silicon dioxide ALD often uses large furnaces to process many wafers at once. Plasma activation can ionize reagents and accelerate film formation. Still, Gassilloud estimates that 10nm is the maximum practical thickness for ALD films.

As transistors shrink, though, the number of layers in that thickness range is increasing. Transistor structures also are becoming more complex, requiring deposition on vertical surfaces, into deep trenches, and other places not readily accessible by line-of-sight PVD methods. Replacement gates for gate-all-around transistors, for instance, need a process that can fill nanometer-scale cavities.

As noted above, HfO₂ was the first successful application of ALD in semiconductor manufacturing. Its precursors, HfCl₄ and water, are both chemically simple small molecules, whose by-products are volatile and easily removed. Such simple chemistries are the exception, though. ALD of silicon dioxide typically uses aminosilane precursors.⁠[1] Metal nitrides often have complex metal-organic precursor gases. Gassilloud noted that ligands might be added to a precursor molecule to change its vapor pressure or reactivity, or to facilitate adhesion to the substrate. In selective deposition processes, discussed below, ligands might improve selectivity between growth and non-growth surfaces. These larger molecules can be difficult to insinuate into smaller features, and byproducts can be difficult to remove. Complex byproducts can also become a contamination source.

One of the advantages of ALD is its very low process temperature, typically between 200°C and 300°C. It is thermally compatible with both transistor and interconnect processes in CMOS, as well as with deposition on plastic and other novel substrates. Even so, Aditya Kumar and colleagues at GlobalFoundries showed that precise temperature control is important.^⁠[2] TDMAT (tetrakis- dimethylamino titanium) condensation in a TiN deposition process was a significant source of particle defects. To maintain the desired process temperature, both the precursor and purge gas temperatures matter. Introducing cold purge gas into a warm process chamber can cause rapid condensation.

As ALD has become a mainstream process, the industry has found applications for it beyond core device materials, in a variety of sacrificial and spacer layers. For example, double- and quadruple-patterning schemes often use ALD for “pitch-doubling.” By depositing a spacer material on either side of a patterned “mandrel,” then removing the mandrel, the process can cut the original pitch in half without the need for an additional, more costly lithography step.^⁠[3]

Fig. 1: Self-aligned double patterning with ALD spacers. Source: Creative Commons

Depositing a doped oxide on the vertical silicon fins of a finFET device is a less directional and less damaging alternative to ion implantation.[^⁠4]

Selective deposition brings lateral control
These last two examples depend on surface characteristics to mediate deposition. A precursor might adhere more readily to a hard mask than to the underlying material. The vertical face of a silicon fin might offer more (or fewer) adsorption sites than the horizontal face. Selective deposition on more complicated structures may require a pre-deposited growth template, functionalizing substrate regions to encourage or discourage growth. Selective deposition is especially important in interconnect applications. In general, though, a comprehensive review by Rong Chen and colleagues at Huazhong University of Science and Technology explained that selective deposition methods need to replenish the template material as the film grows while needing a mechanism to selectively remove the unwanted material.⁠[5]

For example, tungsten preferentially deposits on silicon relative to SiO₂, but the selectivity diminishes after only a few cycles. Researchers at North Carolina State University successfully re-passivated the oxide by incorporating hydrogen into the tungsten precursor.[⁠6] Similarly, a group at Argonne National Laboratory found that SiO₂ preferentially deposited on SiO₂ relative to other oxides for only 10 to 15 cycles. Adding acetylacetone (“Precursor C”) as an inhibitor every 5 to 10 cycles — restored selectivity.⁠[7]

Alternatively, or in addition, atomic layer etching (ALE) might be used to remove unwanted material. ALE operates in the same step-by-step manner as ALD. The first half of a cycle reacts with the existing surface, weakening the bond to the underlying material. Then, a second step — typically ion bombardment — removes the weakened layer. For example, in ALE etching of silicon, chlorine gas reacts with the surface to form various SiCl_x compounds. The chlorination process weakens the inter-silicon bonds between the surface and the bulk, and the chlorinated layer is easily sputtered away. The layer-by-layer nature of ALE depends on preferential removal of the surface material relative to the bulk (SiCl_x vs. Si in this case). The “ALE window” is the combination of energy and temperature at which the surface layer is completely removed without damaging the underlying material.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, Keren Kanarik and colleagues at Lam Research found that higher ion energies actually expanded the ALE window for silicon etching. High ion energies with short exposure times delayed the onset of silicon sputtering relative to conventional RIE.[8]

Adding and subtracting, one atomic layer at a time
For a long time, the semiconductor industry has been looking for alternatives to process schemes that deposit material, pattern it, then etch most of it away. Wouldn’t it be simpler to only deposit the material we will ultimately need? Meanwhile, atomic layer deposition has been filling the spaces under nanosheets and inside cavities. Bulk deposition and etch tools are still with us, and will be for the foreseeable future. In more and more cases, though, those tools provide the frame while ALD and ALE processes fill in the details.

References

1. Wenling Li, et al., “Impact of aminosilane and silanol precursor structure on atomic layer deposition process,”Applied Surface Science, Vol 621, 2023,156869, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2023.156869.
2. Kumar, et al., “ALD TiN Surface Defect Reduction for 12nm and Beyond Technologies,” 2020 31st Annual SEMI Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference (ASMC), Saratoga Springs, NY, USA, 2020, pp. 1-4, doi: 10.1109/ASMC49169.2020.9185271.
3. Shohei Yamauchi, et al., “Extendibility of self-aligned type multiple patterning for further scaling”, Proc. SPIE 8682, Advances in Resist Materials and Processing Technology XXX, 86821D (29 March 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2011953
4. Kalkofen, et al., “Atomic layer deposition of phosphorus oxide films as solid sources for doping of semiconductor structures,” 2018 IEEE 18th International Conference on Nanotechnology (IEEE-NANO), Cork, Ireland, 2018, pp. 1-4, doi: 10.1109/NANO.2018.8626235.
5. Rong Chen et al., “Atomic level deposition to extend Moore’s law and beyond,” 2020 Int. J. Extrem. Manuf. 2 022002 DOI 10.1088/2631-7990/ab83e0
6. B Kalanyan, et al., “Using hydrogen to expand the inherent substrate selectivity window during tungsten atomic layer deposition,” 2016 Chem. Mater. 28 117–26 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.5b03319
7. Yanguas-Gil A, Libera J A and Elam J W, “Modulation of the growth per cycle in atomic layer deposition using reversible surface functionalization,” 2013 Chem. Mater. 25 4849–60 https://doi.org/10.1021/cm4029098
8. Keren J. Kanarik, et al., “Universal scaling relationship for atomic layer etching,” J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 39, 010401 (2021); doi: 10.1116/6.0000762

The post Enabling Advanced Devices With Atomic Layer Processes appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

The Biden administration plans to loosen the limits on tailpipe emissions proposed last year by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), giving automakers more time before they’ll be required to sell significantly more electric vehicles than gas-powered cars, The New York Times reported this weekend. Under the proposed regulations laid out by the EPA, EVs would have to account for 67 percent of new car and light-duty truck sales by 2032.

Rather than forcing manufacturers to start ramping up EV sales right away, the changes would allow them to make the shift more gradually through the remainder of the 2020s, sources told the NYT. After 2030, though, EV sales would need to drastically increase. Automakers have argued that the current cost of electric vehicles and the lack of charging infrastructure stand in the way of hitting such extreme targets as those proposed by the EPA. Last year, just 7.6 percent of new cars sold in the US were EVs, per NYT.

The revision is likely a move in part to appease labor unions, which represent a demographic seen as a key area of support for Biden and have expressed a need for more time to unionize new EV plants among other concerns, according to NYT. The rules are not yet finalized, but are expected to be published in the spring.