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Uber has expanded its Comfort Electric service "nationwide" to 24 US cities, letting users request rides in all-electric vehicles like the Tesla Model 3, Polestar 2 and Ford Mustang Mach-E. It also expanded to Vancouver in British Columbia, which has the highest sales rate of zero-emission vehicles in North America.

Comfort Electric launched last May in several cities as part of the Uber Comfort service. That allows riders to request extra legroom and other high-end features for a 20-40 percent premium over Uber X trips. It's separate from the Uber Green service, which gives drivers an extra fee for electrified vehicles. Uber Green allows both EVs and hybrids, though, while Comfort Electric is limited to EVs.

Uber said that its partnership with Hertz "helped pave the way for the expansion of Comfort Electric, with more than 25,000 drivers renting a Tesla." Last year, Hertz announced that it would order 100,000 Teslas, and shortly afterwards, said it would make up to 50,000 of those available for rent solely to Uber ridesharing drivers in the US.

The service is now available in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore-Maryland, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Connecticut, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New Jersey, NYC Suburbs, Philadelphia, Portland, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St Louis, Vancouver (Canada) and Washington, DC — up from 11 cities previously.

The expansion looks like a small step in Uber's goal of becoming a zero-emissions platform in the US and Canada by 2030. It has promised to spend $800 million to help drivers transition to all-electric vehicles by 2025. California will require ride-hailing services to be all-electric by 2030, and other states like New York also plan to ban sales of gas-burning cars. 

So after all the hype last week, are the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro any good? And are the Apple Watch SE and Series 8 worth an upgrade? This week, Cherlynn chats with Devindra about her furious rush to review all of Apple’s latest gear. It turns out the iPhone 14 Pro is a pretty big step forward, but the same can’t be said for the plain 14. Also, they discuss the wider impact of removing SIM cards from this iPhone lineup, as well as the value of the Pro’s new 48MP camera.

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

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Topics

• Review of the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 – 2:10

• How does the iPhone 14 series stack up against this year’s other phones? – 45:07

• Apple Watch SE and Series 8 reviews – 48:26

• A few thoughts on iOS 16 – 54:25

• Northeastern University VR lab targeted by mail bomb – 56:47

• Period tracking app Flo gets anonymous mode – 59:22

• We finally got a trailer for the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – 1:01:11

• What we’re working on – 1:03:07

• Pop culture picks – 1:07:31

Livestream

Credits
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos
Graphic artists: Luke Brooks and Brian Oh

If you missed the chance to grab Google's Pixel Buds Pro when they went on sale in August, don't worry: The tech giant is giving you another shot at buying the wireless earbuds at a discount. Google's Pixel Buds Pro (in Charcoal and Lemongrass) are currently on sale for $175, or $25 less than their retail price. That's the same price they were listed for the first time they went on sale, and that's also a record low for the model on the website. Seeing as the earbuds only came out a couple of months ago — and they're the first in the line with active noise cancellation (ANC) — that's already a great deal if you've been thinking of getting them in the first place.

We gave the Pixel Buds Pro a score of 87 in our review, where we praised them for having reliable touch controls and a solid ANC. They use a six-core audio chip powered by Google's algorithms for active noise cancellation, and they also have a feature called "Silent Seal" to ensure that they can keep as much ambient noise out as possible. This Silent Seal tool uses sensors to adapt the buds to your ear shape when ANC is on, thereby minimizing sound leaks, as well. 

We also praised the earbuds for delivering a pleasantly punchy bass. And if Volume EQ, which adapts tuning when you adjust loudness, is on, the bass stays punchy even in low volumes. Another thing we liked about the Pixel Buds Pro is that they support wireless charging unlike their predecessors, and they have a quick-charge feature that gives you an hour of ANC listening after just five minutes.

Bottom line, we found the Pixel Buds Pro to be Google's best earbuds to date. They're also the tech giant's most expensive model to date, so you probably wouldn't want to miss this chance to grab them at a lower price. 

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Apple is rolling out no fewer than three new smartwatches – and we’ve already spent a week with two of ‘em. While we’re still waiting to put the priciest Watch Ultra through its paces, the $399 Watch Series 8 is now Apple’s best wearable. Crash detection and a new skin temperature sensor for ovulation tracking are the key updates. But dollar for dollar, the new $250 Watch SE seems like a steal. The main features you might miss if you get an SE instead of a Series 8 are the Always On Display (AOD), ECG reader, blood oxygen app and the new skin temperature sensor.

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If aesthetics are a priority, you may also find the SE’s thicker borders a little off-putting, but it has a larger screen than the last SE model. Both models are available now.

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Alexa to provide branded answers to your pressing questions

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• 'Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0' goes live on November 16th

• Korg's Drumlogue is an analog drum machine with a powerful digital engine

• Adobe acquires collaborative design platform Figma for $20 billion

• Apogee's Boom audio interface does DSP on the cheap

Ethereum completes the 'merge' that will make its crypto transactions greener

It now uses 'proof of stake' to approve new transactions.

Ethereum tokens will no longer be minted by "proof-of-work" that uses powerful computers to solve cryptographic tasks. Instead, a new "proof-of-stake" method requires users, called validators, to stake tokens for the chance to approve transactions and earn a small reward. Before now, mining Ethereum (and most cryptocurrencies) demanded vast amounts of energy, and made Ethereum challenging to scale and costly for small transactions.

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Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II review

New tricks deliver improved noise cancellation and other upgrades.

As I wait on upgraded AirPods Pro, there might be another option: Bose has massively improvedhow much sound it can cancel on the QuietComfort Earbuds II, cutting out more everyday noise, including voices. According to Engadget’s Billy Steele, the sound quality is also markedly improved and smaller buds offer a more comfy fit (and less awkward look). At $299, however, they’re still pretty pricey.

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Amazon greenlights 'Blade Runner 2099' sequel series

Ridley Scott will serve as an executive producer.

Amazon

The long-teased Blade Runner sequel series is real. Variety confirms that Amazon has ordered production of a Blade Runner 2099 show for Prime Video, with original movie director Ridley Scott serving as an executive producer. The project could be another ambitious show for Amazon. The first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power reportedly cost $465 million to make, but it set a Prime viewing record on its debut.

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Zoom suffered a major outage that may have canceled your video meetings

Oh no, not my Zoom video meetings…

Zoom is recovering from a major outage that prevented users from starting or joining meetings Thursday morning. The company didn't yet have an explanation for the problem but said it had "identified" the cause and will continue to investigate the fault. However, Zoom managed to fix the issue before 12PM ET.

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'Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile' will bring 120-player matches to Android and iOS

'Warzone' is going mobile in 2023.

Call of Duty is doubling down on portable play with Warzone Mobile, a battle royale game heading to smartphones in 2023. The game will support a shared Battle Pass, social features and cross-progression with Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0, both of which are due out at the end of 2022. While the game is free, expect microtransactions. In-game purchases were part of Call of Duty: Mobile since its debut in 2019. The studio reportedly made more than $1.5 billion off Android and iOS players in less than three years.

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Apple's MacBook Air M2 blends performance, battery life and a tiny size perhaps better than any previous model, but it's also more expensive. If you've been waiting for a deal, now is a good time to act: The silver 256GB model is on sale at Amazon for $1,099, or $100 off the regular price — matching a deal we saw last month. 

The MacBook Air hit one of the best Engadget review scores ever for good reason. Apple went to a uniformly thin design with the MacBook Air M2, finally shedding the wedge shape that's existed since Steve Jobs pulled one out of an envelope back in 2008. That makes it more balanced, but also thinner and lighter than ever at 11.3 millimeters and 2.7 pounds — less than an iPad Pro with its Smart Keyboard. 

Apple also managed to slightly increase the size of the 2,560 x 1,664 Liquid Retina screen to 13.6 inches by shrinking the size of the bezels, while nestling the webcam in a (slightly controversial) screen notch up top. It comes with improved speakers and a MagSafe power adapter, along with a pair of USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports with support for charging, displays, and data transfers up to 40Gb/s.

Engadget

The M2 processor significantly boosts performance over the Air M1, running nearly as quickly as the 13-inch MacBook Pro M2. It starts rapidly, loads apps quickly and offers snappy performance across the board. And you won't need to sweat if you're far from a power outlet, as it lasted up 16.5 hours in our testing — enough for a plane trip from LA to Sydney. 

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Microsoft Teams stores authentication tokens in unencrypted plaintext mode, allowing attackers to potentially control communications within an organization, according to the security firm Vectra. The flaw affects the desktop app for Windows, Mac and Linux built using Microsoft's Electron framework. Microsoft is aware of the issue but said it has no plans for a fix anytime soon, since an exploit would also require network access.

According to Vectra, a hacker with local or remote system access could steal the credentials for any Teams user currently online, then impersonate them even when they're offline. They could also pretend to be the user through apps associated with Teams, like Skype or Outlook, while bypassing the multifactor authentication (MFA) usually required. 

"This enables attackers to modify SharePoint files, Outlook mail and calendars, and Teams chat files," Vectra security architect Connor Peoples wrote. "Even more damaging, attackers can tamper with legitimate communications within an organization by selectively destroying, exfiltrating, or engaging in targeted phishing attacks."

Attackers can tamper with legitimate communications within an organization by selectively destroying, exfiltrating, or engaging in targeted phishing attacks.

Vectra created a proof-of-concept exploit that allowed them to send a message to the account of the credential holder via an access token. "Assuming full control of critical seats–like a company’s Head of Engineering, CEO, or CFO — attackers can convince users to perform tasks damaging to the organization."  

The problem is mainly limited to the desktop app, because the Electron framework (that essentially creates a web app port) has "no additional security controls to protect cookie data," unlike modern web browsers. As such, Vectra recommends not using the desktop app until a patch is created, and using the web application instead.

When informed by cybersecurity news site Dark Reading of the vulnerability, Microsoft said it "does not meet our bar for immediate servicing as it requires an attacker to first gain access to a target network," adding that it would consider addressing it in a future product release. 

However, threat hunter John Bambenek told Dark Reading it could provide a secondary means for "lateral movement" in the event of a network breach. He also noted that Microsoft is moving toward Progressive Web Apps that "would mitigate many of the concerns currently brought by Electron."

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If a traveler's phone, tablet or computer ever gets searched at an airport, American border authorities could add data from their device to a massive database that can be accessed by thousands of government officials. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) leaders have admitted to lawmakers in a briefing that its officials are adding information to a database from as many as 10,000 devices every year, The Washington Post reports. 

Further, 2,700 CBP officers can access the database without a warrant and without having to record the purpose of their search. These details were revealed in a letter Senator Ron Wyden wrote to CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus, where the lawmaker also said that CBP keeps any information it takes from people's devices for 15 years. 

In the letter, Wyden urged the commissioner to update CBP's practices so that device searches at borders are focused on suspected criminals and security threats instead of allowing "indiscriminate rifling through Americans' private records without suspicion of a crime." Wyden said CBP takes sensitive information from people's devices, including text messages, call logs, contact lists and even photos and other private information in some cases. 

While law enforcement agencies are typically required to secure a warrant if they want to access the contents of a phone or any other electronic device, border authorities are exempted from having to do the same. Wyden also pointed out that travelers searched at airports, seaports and border crossings aren't informed of their rights before their devices are searched. And if they refuse to unlock their electronics, authorities could confiscate and keep them for five days.

As The Post notes, a CBP official previously went on record to say that the agency's directive gives its officers the authority to scroll through any traveler's device in a "basic search." If they find any "reasonable suspicion" that a traveler is breaking the law or doing something that poses a threat to national security, they can run a more advanced search. That's when they can plug in the traveler's phone, tablet or PC to a device that copies their information, which is then stored in the Automated Targeting System database.

CBP director of office of field operations Aaron Bowker told the publication that the agency only copies people's data when "absolutely necessary." Bowker didn't deny that the agency's officers can access the database, though — he even said that the number was bigger than what CBP officials told Wyden. Five percent of CBP's 60,000 personnel have access to the database, he said, which translates to 3,000 officers and not 2,700.

Wyden wrote in his letter:

"Innocent Americans should not be tricked into unlocking their phones and laptops. CBP should not dump data obtained through thousands of warrantless phone searches into a central database, retain the data for fifteen years, and allow thousands of DHS employees to search through Americans’ personal data whenever they want."

Two years ago, the Senator also called for an investigation into the CBP's use of commercially available location data to track people's phones without a warrant. CBP had admitted back then that it spent $500,000 to access a commercial database containing "location data mined from applications on millions of Americans’ mobile phones."

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Uber was hacked, and it had to take its internal messaging service and engineering systems offline to investigate the incident, according to The New York Times. Sources who talked to the publication said employees were instructed not to go on Slack, where the bad actor had posted a message that read "I announce I am a hacker and Uber has suffered a data breach" (along with a bunch of emoji) before it was pulled offline. In a tweet confirming the breach, the company said that it's currently responding to a cybersecurity incident and that it's now in touch with law enforcement. 

The company didn't say what exactly the hacker was able to access and if user data was compromised. The Times says the hacker's Slack message also listed databases they claim they were able to infiltrate, though. And based on screenshots seen by The Washington Post, the bad actor boasted about being able to gather internal code and messaging data. An Uber spokesperson explained that the bad actor was able to post on the company Slack after compromising a worker's account. They then gained access to Uber's other internal systems and posted an explicit photo on an internal page.

Bug bounty hunter and security researcher Sam Curry tweeted information reportedly from an Uber employee that could be about that explicit photo:

Uber admitting the incident and getting in touch with authorities shortly after it happened is a massive departure from how it handled the data breach it suffered back in 2016. The company hid that attack for a year and instead of reporting the incident, it paid the hackers $100,000 to delete the information they stole. Former Uber security chief Joseph Sullivan was fired and eventually charged with obstruction of justice for the role he played in the coverup, though his lawyers argued that he was used as a scapegoat. Uber settled with the Justice Department for failing to disclose the breach in July this year.