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NFT advocates often tout the technology's ability to grant the creator a cut of second-hand sales as one of its major attributes. Artists can earn from one of their digital creations years after first selling it. Others are looking at NFTs to earn a buck from the secondary market too, including the publishers of college textbooks.

Pearson, which said in 2019 it would focus on digital textbook sales, wants a piece of the action. “In the analogue world, a Pearson textbook was resold up to seven times, and we would only participate in the first sale,” CEO Andy Bird told Bloomberg this week. “The move to digital helps diminish the secondary market, and technology like blockchain and NFTs allows us to participate in every sale of that particular item as it goes through its life."

There's an obvious reason why students resell textbooks. They're expensive! Students often have to spend hundreds of dollars on required materials each semester — or even hundreds of dollars on a single textbook. Selling on a textbook when it's no longer needed just makes sense.

Turning textbooks into NFTs and banking on the blockchain to track ownership of them (from “owner A to owner B to owner C,” as Bird put it) seems unnecessary, though. Digital rights management already exists and doesn't need to go anywhere near cryptocurrency. Pearson has a $15 per month subscription service for its textbooks as well.

Bird could simply be bloviating about a zeitgeisty technology to try and keep Pearson's investors happy — even though NFT sales have plummeted this year. In any case, there's still not much he or Pearson could do to stop students from screenshotting every page of a textbook before selling it on.

Twitter is overhauling its Spaces audio chatrooms. The company has confirmed to TechCrunch that it's developing an experiment for the Spaces tab in its social media app. While it didn't say just what that would entail, early screenshots of test code from Watchful hint at a revised interface with major feature additions. You could browse themed stations (such as music or sports), or play a personalized daily digest with a handful of content.

The company warned TechCrunch that the screens were outdated and didn't reflect what you'd see in the final product. The revamp appears to take advantage of Spaces' support for topic tags that help you quickly find a relevant chatroom.

The rethink could help newcomers discover Spaces, not to mention expand it beyond the business and cryptocurrency users that frequently dominate the discussions. While it's not clear how many people currently use Spaces, the current interface is aimed more at veteran users.

Whether or not the update is timely is another matter. The audio chatroom phenomenon has lost some of its momentum, with pioneer Clubhouse laying off staff as it shifts strategy. While Twitter, Meta and Spotify all leaped into the field soon after Clubhouse's rise to prominence, it's not clear these piggyback efforts took off. Internal data obtained by The Washington Post suggested that Spaces was already in decline last summer with under 1 million users by July 2021. The audio chat bubble might have popped a while back, in other words, and there's no guarantee a Spaces redesign will help.

Winamp is the music software that just won't die, apparently. Pitchforknotes that the developers recently released the classic MP3 program's first update (5.9 RC1 Build 9999) in four years. While it isn't a dramatic change on the outside, the producers described it as the "culmination" of years of hard work, including two teams and a pandemic-dictated hiatus. There are significant under-the-hood changes, including a migration to a much newer development platform.

The software has a long history. Winamp gained fame as the playback software of choice during the early music download era — it was the home for all the MP3s you (or possibly your parents) got from fledgling digital stores and peer-to-peer apps. It played numerous common formats, and was well-known for its highly customizable interface skins and visualizers.

Parent company AOL (formerly Engadget's owner) shut down work in 2013, years after rival apps and streaming options like Spotify took hold, but that wasn't the end. Radionomy bought Winamp in 2014 to aid its online music plans. and the team has lately promised a "totally remastered" experience with podcast and radio features as well as a closer connection to artists.

Winamp's return won't revive the turn-of-the-millennium digital zeitgeist. Streaming still dominates, and there's a chance you listen on your phone or smart speaker more than you do your PC. If the llama-themed startup sound is permanently etched in your brain, though, this could be a welcome dose of nostalgia.

Apple tends to roll out its major software versions on a regular cadence, with iPhone and iPad updates usually dropping soon after its after its big annual hardware event in September. Things could be different this year, though. Bloomberg reports that Apple might delay iPadOS 16 by a month or so.

The main issue is said to be with the Stage Manager multitasking tool, which will only be available on M1-powered iPads. It allows users to resize windows and have them overlapping. However, those who tried the beta by and large found the feature buggy. 

"In its unfinished form, Stage Manager is a bit rough around the edges," Engadget's Nathan Ingraham wrote in his iPadOS 16 preview. "When I was using my iPad with an external display, the system crashed and threw me back to the home screen not infrequently, which obviously kills productivity gains. There are also quirks with apps behaving unpredictably when resizing their windows."

Previous reports indicated that Apple has new iPads lined up for later this year, including a souped-up base model with a USB-C port and an M2-powered iPad Pro. Delaying iPadOS 16 could mean it emerges closer to the arrival of new tablets as well. Pushing back the iPadOS 16 release will also allow Apple to prioritize and polish iOS 16, as Bloomberg notes.

For what it's worth, macOS Ventura also includes Stage Manager. In his preview of the operating system, Devindra Hardawar found that the feature was the standout addition. 

It's expected that Apple will release macOS Ventura in October. Given that Apple has long been trying to pivot away from the perception of the iPad as a big iPhone and make it more of an all-purpose productivity device, rolling out iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura at the same time could send another subtle message about how the company is positioning its tablets.

Earlier this year, the Samsung Gaming Hub brought Xbox Game Pass, NVIDIA GeForce Now, Google Stadia and other gaming services to Samsung smart TVs and smart monitors, promising to add new services like Amazon Luna "soon." Soon, it turns out, is today: Amazon's cloud gaming service is now available on 2022 Samsung smart TVs.

Samsung says that with Luna, the gaming hub now has more than 1000 games available to play. Most of these games will require an extra subscription fee, though if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you already have access to a small library of games. Very small. Right now Prime users can play four games (Steel Assault, MYST, Control: Ultimate Edition and Garfield Kart: Furious Racing) included with their subscription.

The selection of free with Prime games changes every month, but users can subscribe to additional channels to expand their library. Luna Plus, for instance, includes games like Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Mega Man 11, Ghostrunner and Resident Evil VII. Luna's Retro Channel has a collection of classic games, from Centipede to Street Fighter II. Users can also subscribe to channels featuring Ubisoft and Jackbox game packs, all priced between $4.99 and $17.99 a month. If you do subscribe, your games won't be locked to your TV: Luna games are playable on PCs, Macs, tablets and smartphones.

How well all these games work, however, depends on your connection speed. Amazon Luna and Xbox Game Pass both recommended minimum internet speeds of 10Mbps to 20Mbps on a 5GHz WiFi connection — and of course, you'll also need the aforementioned 2022 Samsung Smart TV and a Bluetooth gamepad. If you have all that, Luna's Free with Prime games are a great way try game streaming on your TV.

Behaviour Interactive is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and it marked the occasion with a stream that showed off some things it has in the pipeline, including what's next for Dead by Daylight. Back in May, Behaviour revealed that a DBD dating sim would arrive sometime this summer. Fans can now dive into Hooked on You, since it has just landed on Steam.

Hooked on You is the first DBD spin-off and it was developed by I Love You, Colonel Sanders! studio Psyop. It's a visual novel in which you can romance four of the killers from the main game on (where else?) Murderer's Island. The stories it tells combine humor, romance and horror, though they aren't canon. Still, they could let fans live out some of their DBD fantasies.

As for Dead by Daylight itself, Behaviour shed more light on what to expect from the second Resident Evil chapter, which is coming soon. The Resident Evil: Project W DLC will introduce Albert Wesker (who is called The Mastermind in DBD) and two new survivors: Ada Wong and Rebecca Chambers. In addition, Behaviour is reworking the Raccoon City Police Department map that debuted as part of the original Resident Evil chapter, which arrived last year.

The first Behaviour Beyond showcase included some new game announcements as well. One of them is Meet Your Maker, a base building and raiding game that's slated to arrive next year. You can assemble deadly maze-like outposts packed with traps and guards to protect sought-after genetic material from other players. Of course, you (perhaps with a friend's help in co-op mode) will infiltrate other players' bases to try and steal material from them. A closed playtest starts later this month.

Also on the way is a 3D brawler called Flippin Misfits. Up to four players can battle each other in space. The game will hit Steam in September. In addition, the stream offered a look at a title codenamed Project S. It's an open-world puzzle game that features single-player, co-op and large multiplayer modes. Behaviour is working on Project S, which it plans to release next year, with Lunarch Studios. More details will be revealed soon.

Indonesia has unblocked PayPal, Steam owner Valve and Yahoo (Engadget's parent company), allowing them to resume operations. The country prevented residents from accessing services of several companies that missed a July 29th deadline to register with a government database. The Communications Ministry reopened access to PayPal, Yahoo and Valve services after they signed up.

“PayPal is fully committed to complying with applicable laws and regulations in the markets where we do business," a PayPal spokesperson told Engadget. "We have registered as an Electronic Systems Operator in Indonesia, having connected directly with the Ministry of Communication and Informatics. PayPal customers can send, receive, and access their money as usual. We regret any disruption our customers may have experienced last weekend.”

Controversial licensing rules that Indonesia established in 2020 allow authorities to force registered platforms to turn over data from certain users. There's a content moderation aspect as well. Platforms are required to remove content that "disturbs public order" or is considered unlawful. If the content takedown demand is urgent, they have just four hours to comply. Otherwise, they have 24 hours to yank the offending content.

Even though the rules were brought in two years ago, some notable companies are said to have scrambled to register on time and keep their services available. According to Reuters, Meta, Amazon and Google signed up just days before the deadline. However, it seems Epic Games Store and EA's Origin service remain blocked.

Medical science is nowhere near overcoming death, but it might be closer to delaying harm in dying and seriously damaged organs. The New York Timesreports that Yale University researchers successfully revived cells in the organs of pigs that had been dead in the lab for an hour. Hearts started beating, and the pigs' bodies didn't stiffen like they normally would. 

The team mixed the animals' blood and an artificial hemoglobin with OrganEx, a solution that includes anti-inflammatory medicine, nerve blockers (to prevent a return to consciousness), nutrients and drugs that fight cell death. The project is a follow-up to a years-old breakthrough where the scientists revived dead pigs' brain cells using a precursor solution, BrainEx. After that finding, the group wondered if it could revive an entire body.

The work isn't close to helping human patients. Further studies will show if the organs are functioning. Researchers will also have to gauge the effects of OrganEx without nerve blockers, and eventually test their work on humans. There are ethical concerns that pigs might regain brain function, and it's not clear just when it would be viable to experiment with people. If synthetic blood isn't yet ready for emergency rooms, this is even further away.

The ramifications could be huge if and when solutions like OrganEx are suitable for humans, though. They could extend the viability of organ transplants — it might be possible to collect healthy organs long after the moment of death. That, in turn, could make more transplants available and save additional lives. The technology could also limit the damage to organs after serious heart attacks and strokes. Ideally, this will give people a fighting chance to recover from potentially fatal conditions.

TikTok has teamed up with Ticketmaster to help users discover events and buy tickets directly through the app. Creators such as music artists, comedians, sports teams and venues can search for relevant Ticketmaster events and link to them on their videos. The feature is only open to select creators at the outset, though more will gain access over time.

Demi Lovato, OneRepublic, Usher, the Backstreet Boys and WWE are among those who can use the feature at the jump. Event links will appear on the bottom left of the screen. Users can tap or click through to an in-app browser to buy a ticket.

Ticketmaster says the partnership with TikTok will help event organizers and creators reach more fans and potential ticket buyers. Along similar lines, Snapchat added a Ticketmaster Mini app in February to help users find events.

Earlier this week, it emerged that TikTok may be working on its own music streaming service. According to a trademark filing, the mooted TikTok Music service would allow folks to "purchase, play, share, download music, songs, albums, lyrics... live stream audio and video... edit and upload photographs as the cover of playlists... [and] comment on music, songs and albums."

That big-name guest might not have appeared on your favorite podcast out of the kindness of their heart. Bloomberg has learned that podcast guests are routinely paying big money to appear on popular podcasts. Guestio, a marketplace for these deals, has seen huge transactions in the past six months. Four podcasters made $20,000 from charging for appearances, while one made $50,000. The most profitable show, Entrepreneurs on Fire, regularly charges $3,500 for guest spots and has sometimes taken a cut of product sales.

It's not clear how widespread this activity is. However, Bloomberg interviews suggest pay-to-appear systems are popular for business, cryptocurrency and wellness podcasts. Hosts like Entrepreneurs on Fire's John Lee Dumas see appearance fees as filters. Guests will be well-prepared if they're making an "investment" in airtime, the creator said.

However, there are ethical and legal concerns surrounding the practice. This could be considered a modern take on payola, or the pay-for-play schemes used to boost songs on the radio — is a guest appearing because they're relevant, or just because they're willing to pay? And while disclosures are mandatory for those radio plays, the situation isn't so clear with podcasts. While many shows on Guestio have disclosures, not all of them properly reveal when an interview subject is paying to show up.

That could pose a problem in the future. A Federal Trade Commission spokesperson said that there's deception whenever consumers are mislead about the nature of advertising and promotional messages, regardless of the media format. The regulator didn't say if it would crack down on podcasters who improperly disclose paying guests, but the message could serve as a warning to show hosts.