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Withings is today announcing yet another in its range of class-leading smart scales, Body Comp. The device is pitched as a “complete body assessment scale” which can look at the sort of facets of our bodies normally reserved for clinical settings. That includes weight, muscle mass, fat mass, water percentage, bone mass, BMI and visceral fat counts. You’ll also get information on your standing heart rate and your vascular health (based on PulseWave Velocity), as well as analyzing your nerve health. And, of course, it’s the first Withings product that will be sold to be compatible with Health+, the company’s other new announcement.

Health+ is Withings’ new subscription platform, since recurring revenue is now the one way that most hardware businesses make money these days. It promises to “unlock additional features in the Health Mate app,” offering insights on how to strive for a better body. These include six week habit-forming modules, all of which is contextualized with the data offered by your Withings devices. They will also be offered meal plans and suggested workouts to help them achieve their goals faster. (Health+ will set you back $79.95 after the first year of use, and is only compatible so far with this and any future Withings' products.)

Now, this is actually a different product to Body Scan, the scale that Withings announced back in January which came with its own electrode handle. That, much like other high-end body composition scales, asks you to hold the handle at waist height in order to better read your vital statistics. Armed with the data, it’ll tell you the fat and water ratios in your arms, legs and torso, as well as monitoring your nerve activity. That product hasn’t actually hit stores yet, but it’s already clear that Body Comp will offer the bulk of the same features with a little less fine grain data.

There is now a significant number of devices that have Withings and Body in the name and you’d be forgiven for struggling to keep them all straight in your head. The existing flagship is the Body Cardio, which has all of the current bells and whistles, including weight, BMI, body composition, heart rate and vascular age. Below that, the Body+ offers weight, BMI and body comp, while the vanilla Body just offers weight and BMI.

In 2021, Jabra updated its true wireless lineup with a redesigned, feature-packed budget option and a premium set with both powerful active noise cancellation (ANC) and enhanced call features. Back in January, the company tacked on an affordable fitness-focused model with ANC. At IFA 2022, Jabra has new mid-range earbuds that don't cut a lot of corners to save you money. The Elite 5 are equipped to handle your voice chats, help reduce distractions and offer a list of other handy tools — all for $150. 

The Elite 5 has a similar design to Jabra's other recent earbuds. They're so similar, I'll forgive you for mistaking one model for another. However, the common aesthetic isn't a bad thing since the company opted for a smaller overall size when it began overhauling its buds last year. This compact stature means each option offers a more comfy fit, and that's true of the Elite 5 too. The water resistance is the same as the cheaper Elite 3 at IP55, but the case for the Elite 5 supports wireless charging like the pricier Elite 7 Pro. It too has a familiar look. 

Inside, 6mm driver power the sound and you can customize the EQ via Jabra's app. Qualcomm's QCC3050 chip handles the hybrid active noise cancellation setup, monitoring sound from both outside and inside of the ear to battle unwanted noise. Six total microphones are onboard for calls, up from four on the Elite 3, and they're able to combat wind noise. There's support for Google Fast Pair and Microsoft Swift Pair, plus the ability to summon Alexa or Google Assistant hands free. And for Android users, there's one-touch access to Spotify via the Spotify Tap feature. Jabra doesn't mention ambient sound, or HearThrough as the company calls it, but it's available on the Elite 3, so it would be an odd omission here. 

The Elite 5 has the same battery life stats as the Elite 3: up to seven hours on the buds and up to 28 hours total when you factor in the case. The difference here is that those figures are with ANC on, so if you disable that feature, you're likely to get more listening time than with the more affordable model since it doesn't have ANC. Lastly, multipoint connectivity is available on the Elite 5, so you can link up to multiple devices simultaneously. 

As you make your way up Jabra's Elite line, the features get better with each model. The Elite 5 sits squarely in the middle, with slightly more than the Elite 3 and slightly less than the Elite 7 Pro. Currently though, this newest set of earbuds might be a tough sell. Jabra is offering the Elite 7 Pro for $130 for a limited time, which matches the lowest price we've seen. But if you prefer the Elite 5, they're available starting today in black and gold/beige color options. 

The second-gen Razer Kishi mobile gaming controller is now available for iPhone. As with the Android version Razer revealed a few months ago, the gamepad costs $100. You can order it from Razer's website.

The biggest change from the first Kishi is to the mechanism that holds the two sides together and keeps your phone in place. Razer has ditched the flexible bridge in favor of a sturdier sliding version (similar to the setup used by its rival, Backbone). This makes Kishi V2 compatible with all modern iPhones —namely iPhone 6S and later handsets, as well as both iPhone SE generations. What's more, if you remove the rubber inserts, you may be able to keep your phone's case on when you slot it into place.

Additionally, Razer has swapped out the switches, replacing the V1's membranes with the microswitches from its Wolverine V2 console controllers. "This delivers advantages in actuation responsiveness, comfort and tactile feedback," Razer claims. Meanwhile, there's now a Share button on the front and two additional programmable buttons next to the triggers.

Users can set up those buttons in the Razer Nexus app. You'll also need that app to share your gameplay on YouTube or Facebook when you hit the Share button. Moreover, you'll be able to find supported games through the app, which you can launch with a dedicated gamepad button.

The Kishi V2 works with cloud gaming devices (including Xbox Cloud Gaming and Google Stadia), remote play apps for consoles and PC and iPhone games that support MFi controllers. There's a Lightning port for passthrough charging but, sadly, no 3.5mm headphone jack.

ARM has filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm and subsidiary Nuvia over alleged trademark infringement and a breach of some license agreements. It wants certain Nuvia CPU designs to be destroyed, as well as "fair compensation."

Qualcomm bought Nuvia last year to leverage the latter's custom processor cores for its chips. According to the filing (which was obtained by The Register), Nuvia used licensed ARM tech to build the cores. ARM claims Qualcomm did not obtain the necessary permission to transfer and use the licenses it granted to Nuvia.

ARM asserts that Qualcomm's acquisition of the company resulted in Nuvia breaching its licenses. As such, ARM terminated those licenses earlier this year. It added that, as a result, Qualcomm and Nuvia are obliged to stop using and destroy any ARM-based technology that was developed under the licenses. Additionally, ARM argues that Qualcomm plans to continue using its trademarks to market and sell products containing Nuvia cores without having permission to do so. 

"Because Qualcomm attempted to transfer Nuvia licenses without ARM’s consent, which is a standard restriction under ARM’s license agreements, Nuvia’s licenses terminated in March 2022," ARM said in a statement. "Before and after that date, ARM made multiple good faith efforts to seek a resolution. In contrast, Qualcomm has breached the terms of the ARM license agreement by continuing development under the terminated licenses. ARM was left with no choice other than to bring this claim against Qualcomm and Nuvia to protect our IP, our business, and to ensure customers are able to access valid ARM-based products.”

This is a significant development as Qualcomm is one of its key customers. Qualcomm built its name on ARM-based processors, after all. And adding to the confusion, Qualcomm still has its own license with ARM, under which it can build custom cores with the latter's architecture. It's not clear what overlap, if any, might exist between the licensing agreements made to Qualcomm and Nuvia.

"ARM's lawsuit marks an unfortunate departure from its longstanding, successful relationship with Qualcomm. ARM has no right, contractual or otherwise, to attempt to interfere with Qualcomm's or Nuvia's innovations," Qualcomm told The Register in a statement. "ARM's complaint ignores the fact that Qualcomm has broad, well-established license rights covering its custom-designed CPUs, and we are confident those rights will be affirmed."

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If there was ever a fundamental divide between Twitter’s leadership and its users, it was about the existence, or lack, of an edit button. The company has for most of its life been against the ability for users to amend tweets after they were published. That changes, more or less, from today, since Twitter has announced that it will indeed be rolling out an edit button to its users. As The New York Times reports, it marks the most fundamental shift in how the platform works since 2017, when it doubled the character limit of a message from 140 to 280 characters.

In a statement, Twitter said that it was hoping that the presence of an edit button would make the act of tweeting a little less stressful. Unfortunately, the button isn’t yet ready to roll out to the platform’s several hundred million users just yet, and is currently still in testing by employees. Later this month, access will be granted to Twitter Blue users, who pay $5 per month to remove in-feed ads and undo a tweet that you might want to change before it’s seen by everyone. The company added that the test will be localized to a single country, and will expand worldwide slowly so that the company can make sure the feature is being used as intended.

One of the reasons that Twitter resisted an edit button for so long was the risk of bad actors abusing the system. For instance, you could amend a tweet that was widely retweeted or embedded in other sites, changing the meaning for something its boosters did not intend. That’s why there will be guardrails put in place — like the fact that edits can only be made 30 minutes after the initial publication. And edits will be labelled as such to ensure people know you’ve been tweaking your text — with the revision history also available for everyone to view. Still, it's one way to at least spare some of your blushes when you send a Tweet that's got on3 or twoo annoyeeng typizos. 

The United Kingdom’s antitrust regulator is concerned that Microsoft’s blockbuster purchase of Activision Blizzard could create a monopoly in the nascent cloud gaming space. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which began investigating the deal back in July, says that it’s not yet reassured by the promises Microsoft has made to get the deal done. It feels that, once Activision is a part of Microsoft, the Xbox maker could use its “control over popular games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft” to “harm rivals” by boxing them out of access to popular titles. Microsoft has already publicly committed not to hoard exclusives, (and said that Actiblizz's library isn't all that anyway) but sweet words haven’t appeased the officials.

In a statement, it said that it was giving Microsoft and Activision five days to submit proposals that would address its concerns. If those did not pass muster, however, then the office will open a lengthy “Phase 2” investigation involving an independent panel to scrutinize the deal in greater depth. That will likely delay any completion of the deal, which would then only be rubber-stamped if regulators were convinced that the deal would not cause a “substantial lessening of competition.” It’s likely that, whatever happens, Microsoft will need to commit to not using its growing clout to hurt other companies in the space by depriving them of key franchises.

Microsoft’s gaming chief Phil Spencer has already responded to the announcement, affirming the previous pledge not to pull Call of Duty from PlayStation, for instance. Spencer pointed to the cross-platform appeal of Minecraft, a title Microsoft purchased in 2014, as evidence of the company’s good faith. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick published an open letter to employees, saying that the company will “fully cooperate” with regulators, which are taking “appropriate” steps to ensure that there are no risks to competition.

Music publishers, songwriters and musicians have struck a deal with streaming services for US mechanical streaming rates for 2023-2027, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) has announced. The NMPA, Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) and Digital Media Association (DiMA) agreed on a 15.35 percent rate, avoiding a potentially contentious battle.

That's up only mildly from the 2018-2022 rate of 15.1 percent. It's also less than expected, according to Variety, as the NMPA previously said it was pushing for 20 percent. However, the agreement will reportedly also modernize the way "bundle" rates offered to students and families are treated, and increase so-called Total Content Costs, to make up some of the difference. 

"This agreement... ensures that all parties will benefit from the growth of the industry and will be motivated to work together to maximize that growth," the press release states. "Instead of going to trial and continuing years of conflict, we instead of move forward in collaboration with the highest rates ever, guaranteed," added NMPA's CEO David Israelite. 

Last time, a legal battle between the parties dragged on for three years. The 15.1 percent rate for the 2018-2022 period was decided in 2018, but Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube and Pandora appealed the ruling, arguing it would be untenable for their business model. Publishers and songwriters prevailed earlier this year, as the Copyright Royalty Board reaffirmed the 15.1 percent rate.

Back in May, NASA reported that the Voyager 1 space probe was sending back jumbled or inaccurate telemetry data. The probe itself seemed to be in good shape, with a signal that's still strong enough to beam back information, and nothing was triggering its fault protection systems that would put it in "safe mode." According to NASA, the Voyager team has not only figured the problem out since then — it has also solved the issue.

Turns out we're getting jumbled data here on Earth, because the probe's attitude articulation and control system (AACS) has been sending back information through an onboard computer that had stopped working years ago. The computer was corrupting the data before it even went out. Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd said that when her team suspected that this was the issue, they implemented a low-risk fix: They commanded the AACS to send its data through the probe's working computer again.

While the engineers have fixed the glitch, they've yet to figure out why the AACS started routing information through the old computer in the first place. They believe it was triggered by a faulty command by another onboard computer, which was itself triggered by an underlying issue with the spacecraft. Voyager's engineers will keep looking for the problem's root case, NASA said, but they don't think it will have a huge effect on the spacecraft's operations.

Voyager 1 has been operational for almost 45 years and had reached interstellar space in 2012. NASA expects it to continue being able to run at least one science instrument until 2025, after which it will keep drifting away from our solar system until it loses contact with NASA's Deep Space Network. 

As expected, NASA has ordered five more astronaut missions from SpaceX in a new $1.44 billion contract, raising the total number of Crew Dragon launches to 14. It's designed to ensure a steady flow of crew members to the International Space Station (ISS), as SpaceX rival Boeing struggles to get its own Starliner crew system launch-ready. 

The latest award "allows NASA to maintain an uninterrupted U.S. capability for human access to the space station until 2030, with two unique commercial crew industry partners," the space agency said in a press release. It brings the total Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract with SpaceX to $4.93 billion. 

SpaceX was certified for crew transportation in November 2020, launching its latest Crew-4 mission on April 27, 2022. Earlier this year, NASA announced that it would order three additional missions for $900 million, upping its original $2.6 billion contract to $3.49 billion. 

All of this is to the detriment of Boeing, which has suffered numerous delays with its Starliner capsule that's compatible with ULA's Atlas V and other rockets. Following a long delay due to valve issues, the latest unmanned test flight launched on May 19th this year, with the capsule returning to Earth six days later. The first crewed flight was originally planned for 2017, but still hasn't launched. Boeing and NASA are now targeting early 2023 for the first mission carrying astronauts.