Microchip Technology Inc. has expanded its portfolio of MPU System-on-Modules (SOMs) with the new SAM9X60D1G-SOM ARM926EJ-S-based embedded MPU that is available with bare metal or RTOS support through MPLAB Harmony 3 or complete Linux mainlined distributions.
This week on the show, Cherlynn is joined by guest co-host Sam Rutherford to talk about the newly launched OnePlus 10T. Why did the company choose to sacrifice an alert slider, wireless charging and some other features in exchange for extreme speed? How does the OnePlus 10T stack up against other midrange phones like the Pixel 6a? Then, our hosts discuss the cloud-gaming handheld that Logitech and Tencent are working on, as well as the curiousheadlines that permeated the consumer tech news cycle this week.
Listen below, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!
Our OnePlus 10T review – 1:37
Logitech and Tencent are working on a handheld cloud gaming console – 24:15
It’s not just you: Uber receipts are actually crashing Outlook – 30:34
Spotify finally adds a play button that doesn’t shuffle, but only for premium users – 32:22
PlayStation Accolades feature is being discontinued because online gamers aren't nice – 36:09
Microsoft negs Activision Blizzard’s game library amid acquisition process – 37:33
No, Google Stadia isn’t shutting down – 39:28
Discovery+ merger leaves HBO Max’s future in doubt, and Batgirl cancellation – 43:04
Working on – 51:58
Picks – 53:12
Credits
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Sam Rutherford
Producer: Ben Ellman
Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos, Luke Brooks
Graphics artists: Luke Brooks, Brian Oh
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
Amazon just took a big step toward cornering the market for household robots. The company has reached a deal to acquire iRobot, the creator of Roomba robot vacuums. The purchase is worth $1.7 billion in cash and will maintain Colin Angle as iRobot's CEO. The two firms didn't say when they expected the deal to close, but that will depend on the approval of both iRobot shareholders and regulators.
In announcing the deal, Amazon didn't outline its exact plans. Amazon Devices Senior VP Dave Limp focused on iRobot's ability to "reinvent how people clean," and said he looked forward to inventing products. Angle said Amazon shared iRobot's "passion" for innovative home products and felt the internet giant was a good fit.
A successful merger will end 32 years of independence for iRobot. The company was founded in 1990 by MIT researchers, and initially focused on military robots like PackBot. It marked a major turning point in 2002, when it unveiled the first Roomba — the robovac quickly became popular and had sold a million units by 2004. The company expanded its lineup to include products like robotic mops (Braava), and became so successful that it sold its military business in 2016.
Developing...
YouTube has quietly introduced an experimental feature called pinch to zoom exclusively for Premium users, Android Police has reported. It lets you zoom into the video player and then pan around to look at different parts of the screen, both in portrait or full-screen landscape view, as shown below.
If you're a Premium user, you can try it out by tapping your profile photo and hitting "Your Premium benefits," opening the "Try new features" section and enabling the zoom function. It might take a while for the feature to kick in, but once it's active you can zoom in at up to 8x.
In the past, YouTube tested interesting features like picture-in-picture with random users and beta app testers. In 2020, though, it launched experimental features for Premium users, letting them try out new options before anyone else. Several experimental features have made their way to the Premium app, including easier playlist management and browser-based voice search. The new feature will be available until September 1st and is only supported on Android devices for now.
Yuri Borisov, the newly appointed chief of Roscosmos, recently announced that Russia is pulling out of the International Space Station after 2024. NASA and Russia's space agency work in tandem to keep the station running, and the latter's exit would change ISS operations tremendously. According to Reuters, though, NASA has actually been preparing for such a possibility way before Borisov made his announcement — and even before the invasion of Ukraine began — in light of the increasing tensions between Russia and the US.
Reuters' sources said NASA and the White House drew up contingency plans for the ISS late last year. Those plans include ways to pull astronauts out of the station if Russia leaves abruptly and ways to keep the ISS running without Russian hardware. While the US module keeps the station balanced and provides the electricity it needs to run using its solar arrays, Roscosmos' module has the thrusters needed to keep the flying lab in orbit. And that is why NASA's contingency plans also reportedly include examining ways to dispose of the station years earlier than planned.
Apparently, NASA was working on creating a formal request for contractors to conjure up ways to deorbit the space station over the past few weeks. That said, the agency roped in private space companies into its contingency planning in hopes of keeping the ISS in orbit even without Russia. The sources said Boeing already formed a team of engineers to figure out how to control the ISS without Russia's thrusters. SpaceX chief Elon Musk also previously expressed interest in helping out when former Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin slammed Western sanctions against his country, asking who would "save the ISS from uncontrolled deorbiting" if the West blocks cooperation with Russia.
Back in June, Northrop Grumman was successfully able to adjust the station's orbit for future operations using its Cygnus capsule, which was then docked to the ISS. Reuters' sources said SpaceX is also looking into the possibility of using its spacecraft to boost the station's orbit.
Borisov said Russia hasn't set a date for its exit yet, but that it would honor its obligations and will give partners a one-year notice before it leaves. Roscosmos and NASA will most likely continue working closely until Russia pulls out of the program — they even recently agreed to swap seats on Crew Dragon and Soyuz flights to the ISS.
Are you ready for Samsung’s summer salvo of foldables, wearables and peripherals? Yes, it’s that time again, and the company’s Unpacked event is likely to share two foldable smartphones, a new Pro wearable and probably some new software tricks.
Judging by the leaks, it won’t be a major shakeup, but the new Galaxy Z Fold may borrow design cues from the S22 Ultra, ensuring a more contemporary look. The next-gen Galaxy Z Flip, the clamshell one, looks even more like its predecessor, so we’re waiting on confirmation on exactly what has changed. This is the series helping Samsung sell its foldable family to the world — hopefully, the company has ways to capitalize on this enthusiasm. And throw in a bigger battery.
Samsung looks set to reveal its Galaxy Watch 5 Pro next week, too. You might not get the knurled bezel of previous Samsung smartwatches, but the Pro would upgrade from a steel case to light-but-strong titanium. Samsung inadvertently hinted at the Pro name in its Health app, although it didn’t provide further clues.
Samsung Unpacked will stream on Wednesday, August 10th at 9 AM ET, and we’re reporting live on all the big reveals. We’ll probably have some minty fresh opinions on foldable phones, too.
— Mat Smith
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The Switch continues to approach the status of Nintendo’s best-selling “home console” ever — and seven Switch games have already outsold the Wii U console. It’s thanks to the Switch’s unique hybrid format and an ever-growing game library with uncharacteristically strong third-party support. However, the Switch's online store isn't the easiest to navigate, so this guide helps the uninitiated start their journey on the right foot, once again updated for 2022.
ViacomCBS has revealed that Paramount+ added 3.7 million subscribers in the second quarter, with more than 43 million total users. And that's after withdrawing from Russia. The company partly credited the surge of expansions to more countries, including the UK, Ireland and South Korea. These gains are good, but the overall Paramount+ subscriber count is still tiny compared to Netflix (220.7 million) and Amazon Prime Video (over 200 million).
Sure, it sounds like some bleak sci-fi premise, but it’s happening. According to scientists, midnight on June 29th arrived 1.59 milliseconds sooner than expected. It was the shortest day in over half a century. Scientists believe earthquakes, stronger winds in El Niño years, ice caps melting and refreezing, the Moon and the climate could all affect rotation speed. Some have suggested the Chandler wobble — a small deviation in the Earth’s point of rotation — may be having an effect, too.
After months of rumors, Microsoft is starting to test an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate family plan in the wild. Xbox Insiders in Colombia and Ireland can try out the new offering that allows them to add up to four other people to their plan, as long as they're in the same country. Those folks will get access to all the benefits of Game Pass Ultimate, including a library of hundreds of titles for console, PC and cloud gaming. If you're in either country, you can buy the Xbox Game Pass — Insider Preview plan from the Microsoft Store, though enrolment is limited.
Once we’ve all collectively sighed, Instagram is doubling down on digital collectibles. After a test launch in May, the app is expanding its NFT features to more than 100 countries across Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and the Americas. Instagram users can include NFTs in their feed and messages, as well as in augmented reality stickers in Stories. NFT creators and collectors are automatically tagged for attribution. You can't buy or sell NFTs on Instagram just yet, but the company has strongly hinted it's working on a marketplace. Perfect timing, Meta: The non-fungible token (NFT) market just fell off a cliff.
Last year, NASA launched the Lucy spacecraft designed to explore the Trojan asteroids trapped near Jupiter's Lagrange points. However, a problem arose just 12 hours after launch — one of the large solar arrays designed to generate power from an increasingly distant Sun had failed to fully deploy and latch. Now, NASA has announced that a team was able to troubleshoot the problem sufficiently for the mission to continue — thanks to several clever tricks.
Hours after the problem was first discovered, NASA pulled together an anomaly response team with members from the science mission lead Southwest Research Institute, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the spacecraft's builder, Northrop Grumman.
Since there's no camera aimed at the solar arrays, the team had to figure out another way to find the problem. To that end, they fired the spacecraft's thrusters to measure any anomalous vibrations, and created a detailed model of the array's motor assembly to determine the array's rigidness. They finally figured out that a lanyard designed to pull the array open was probably snagged on its spool.
The team quickly honed in on two potential solutions. One was simply to use the array as it was, because it was still generating 90 percent of expected power. The other was to attempt to pull the lanyard harder by using the back-up deployment motor as well as the primary motor, hopefully allowing it to wind further and engage the latching mechanism.
Both motors were never designed to work at the same time, so the team modeled it to test out possible outcomes and potential ripple effects. After months of simulations, they decided to proceed with the two-motor option. They ran both the primary and backup solar deployment motors simultaneously seven times, and succeeded in further opening and tensioning the array.
Unfortunately, it didn't close enough to latch, but it's now "under substantially more tension, making it stable enough for the spacecraft to operate as needed for mission operations," NASA said. It's now "ready and able" to complete its next deadline, getting a boost from Earth's gravity in October 2022. It's scheduled to arrive at its first asteroid target in 2025.
Virgin Galactic has announced that its commercial space tourism service has been delayed yet again, from the end of this year until Q2 2023. During its earnings report, the company said that the delay is "due to the extended completion dates [i.e., delays] within the mothership enhancement program."
The mothership VMS Eve is a crucial part of its launch system, carrying the VSS Unity spacecraft to 50,000 feet before it launches to the edge of space. The enhancement program launched July 7th with the aim of improving flight frequency, along with "reliability, predictability and durability."
At the same time it revealed the updates, Virgin Galactic announced that Boeing's Aurora Flight Sciences will design and manufacture its next-gen motherships, expected to enter service in 2025. The company is also working on a new spaceship, the VSS Imagine, set to make a debut test flight in Q1 2023.
Virgin Galactic had already delayed its first paid flights from Q3 to Q4 2022 out of an "abundance of caution" due to a possible flight control system issue. The next flight was supposed to launch three Italian Air Force members to the edge of space, to study the effects of transitioning from regular Earth gravity to microgravity on both humans and the environment. Yesterday, the company reported a $111 million quarterly loss and plans a $300 million stock offering.
Elon Musk is accusing Twitter of fraud for hiding the real number of bots on its platform, according to The New York Times. In the latest installment of the Twitter-vs-Musk saga, the Tesla chief's team claimed in a legal filing that 10 percent of the social network's daily active users who see ads are inauthentic accounts. If you'll recall, Twitter has long maintained that bots represent less than five percent of its userbase, and Musk put his planned acquisition of the social network on hold in mid-July to confirm if that's accurate.
The Tesla and SpaceX chief, who's also a prolific Twitter user, launched an aggressive takeover of the social network in April after it became the company's largest shareholder. While Twitter quickly accepted his offer, they butted heads over the number of fake accounts on the platform shortly after that — he also accused the company of not giving him access to enough information to verify the number of bots on the website. Twitter gave him full access to its internal data in response, but in the end, Musk told the Securities and Exchange Commission that he wanted to terminate the acquisition over "false and misleading representations" made by the social network.
Twitter sued its largest shareholder for trying to back out of its $44 billion buyout deal, telling the court that Musk is wrongfully breaking their agreement by doing so. The website accused him of backing out because Tesla's and Twitter's shares went down due to the economic downturn and the "deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests."
In this new filing, Musk's camp said its analysts found a much higher number of inauthentic accounts than Twitter claimed using Botometer. That's a machine learning algorithm designed by Indiana University that "checks the activity of Twitter accounts and gives them a score based on how likely they are to be bots." Musk's lawyers said the social network concealed its bot problem to get Musk to agree to buy the company "at an inflated price." They also said:
"Twitter was miscounting the number of false and spam accounts on its platform, as part of its scheme to mislead investors about the company’s prospects. Twitter’s disclosures have slowly unraveled, with Twitter frantically closing the gates on information in a desperate bid to prevent the Musk parties from uncovering its fraud."
Twitter fired back with its own legal filing, calling his claims "factually inaccurate, legally insufficient and commercially irrelevant." The company said the Botometer is unreliable and had once given Musk's own Twitter account a score indicating that it's "highly likely to be a bot." Twitter's lawsuit against Musk is heading to court in October.
HBO Max as we know it will soon be no more. At its first earnings call since the two media properties merged earlier this year, Warner Bros. Discovery announced it is planning on combining HBOMax and Discovery+ into a single streaming service — set to debut in the summer of 2023. It's unclear whether the new streamer will reference HBO at all — the company’s head of global streaming JB Perrette said the company is still doing research on how consumers perceive the brand name.
The news arrives on the heels of the newly-merged company’s $3.42 billion net loss during the second quarter. “At the end of the day, putting all the content together was the only way we saw to make this a viable business,” Perrette told analysts.
Warner Bros. leadership is planning a significant shakeup of its streaming offerings and also needs to cut $3 billion in costs, which spawned rumors that a gutting of HBO Max is underway. Executives didn’t reveal the name of the new platform or any pricing details, but did disclose that it will include an ad-free and less costly ad-supported plan. It may also add a free, ad-supported tier to further expand its audience.
No mention was made of layoffs at HBO Max at today’s earnings call — which The Wrap reported were imminent as the two streaming platforms are restructured. Engadget has reached out to HBO Max for comment, and will update if we hear back.
It’s unclear exactly how the merger will impact future content offerings at the newly unified streamer. The company abruptly announced this week that it was canceling two movies in development for HBO Max — Batgirl and Scoob!. Around the same time, the streamer announced it was canceling the show The Gordita Chronicles and putting an end to live-action kids and family programming altogether. A number of shows and movies have disappeared from HBO Max in recent weeks, including Moonshot, The Witches and An American Pickle, and more are reportedly to follow.
One thing is certain: We’ll see far fewer blockbuster films premiere on the new streamer, as was customary during the pandemic. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said releasing films in movie theaters simply generated higher profits. “That’s why most people got in this business — to be on the big screen when the lights went out,” Mr. Zaslav said. “That is the magic, and the economic model is much stronger.”