ArduinoMania

The Hasbro Selfie Series is a collaboration between the toy maker and 3D printing specialists Formlabs, can customize an action figure with your own face.

Hasbro

You can scan your face with a smartphone and get a custom-made, look-a-like action figure with opposable limbs: AKA the dream. At launch, options include Star Wars X-Wing pilots, Ghostbusters, Power Rangers, Snake Eyes from GI Joe and a few more. The idea seems to have come from a comic-con competition that offered custom action figures for five winners.

You'll need to download Hasbro Pulse, the company's dedicated mobile app, and wait for the scan feature to open up closer to the expected ship date in the Fall. The six-inch, "collector-grade" figure will cost $60 (plus taxes). Unfortunately, the offering is only available to customers in the US. I wonder if the majority of figures ordered will have childrens’ faces, or their parents’?

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Crypto lending giant Celsius files for bankruptcy

• Netflix partners with Microsoft for upcoming ad-supported subscription tier

• Surgeons at NYU Langone transplanted pig hearts into two brain-dead humans

• The best Amazon Prime Day 2022 deals still available

• BMW will charge $18 per month for heated seats in select regions

• The best board game deals we found for Amazon Prime Day 2022

• The best Amazon Prime Day monitor deals from Samsung, BenQ, LG and others

• Universal Audio's amp sim pedals are an affordable route to convincing tube amp sounds

Magic Leap 2 will go on sale in the US on September 30th

The enterprise headset’s price will start at $3,299.

Magic Leap’s second-generation mixed-reality headset finally has a concrete commercial release date. Magic Leap 2 first made its way to a limited number of users last year as part of the company's early adopter program. Starting on September 30th, though, anybody who wants (and can afford) to get the headset in the US can buy one. It’ll launch in three editions, the cheapest of which is the Base headset meant for professionals and developers who just want access to the augmented reality platform. The edition can be used for full commercial deployments and production environments and will cost $3,299 with a one-year warranty.

Continue reading.

Google files a lawsuit that could kick Tinder out of the Play Store

It's counter-suing Match Group over in-app payments.

Earlier this year, Match sued Google alleging antitrust violations over a decision requiring all Android developers to process "digital goods and services" payments through the Play Store billing system.

Following the initial lawsuit in May, Google and Match reached a temporary agreement allowing Match to remain on the Play Store and use its own payments system. However, Google parent Alphabet claims that Match Group now wants to pay "nothing at all" to Google, including its 15 to 30 percent Play Store fees.

Continue reading.

Preview: Apple’s watchOS 9 beta

Upgrades for workout and sleep tracking.

Engadget

With watchOS 9, the company is bringing a robust slate of Workout updates, alongside new watch faces, redesigned apps and the ability to detect sleep zones. Thanks to the public beta, we’ve been able to take a closer look. We’re fascinated by the addition of cardio zones to the workout features. It might even be worth the risk involved in running beta software.

Continue reading.

PS Plus Extra and Premium games for July include 'Stray' and 'Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade'

You'll get access to 'Marvel's Avengers' and a bunch more Assassin's Creed games too.

Sony has announced the first new batch of games for its higher PlayStation Plus tiers since it revamped the service. Extra and Premium subscribers will have access to Stray, a cyberpunk adventure game in which you play as a cat with a drone companion. It's the first time that a third-party title will be available on a higher PS Plus tier on its release date — something that happens on Microsoft's Game Pass a lot.

Continue reading.

Sega's Genesis Mini 2 hits North America on October 27th

With six-button controller innovation.

Sega

Sega is bringing the Genesis Mini 2 to North America on October 27th. The company previously said its latest retro console will go on sale in Japan on the same day (though it's correctly called the Mega Drive Mini 2 there). It will come with more than 50 games, including Sega CD titles. At the time of writing, the Amazon listing shows that the console will ship from Japan to the US for $103.80 plus a $22 delivery fee.

Continue reading.

Text-to-image generation is the hot algorithmic process right now, with OpenAI’s Craiyon (formerly DALL-E mini) and Google’s Imagen AIs unleashing tidal waves of wonderfully weird procedurally generated art synthesized from human and computer imaginations. On Tuesday, Meta revealed that it too has developed an AI image generation engine, one that it hopes will help to build immersive worlds in the Metaverse and create high digital art.

A lot of work into creating an image based on just the phrase, “there's a horse in the hospital,” when using a generation AI. First the phrase itself is fed through a transformer model, a neural network that parses the words of the sentence and develops a contextual understanding of their relationship to one another. Once it gets the gist of what the user is describing, the AI will synthesize a new image using a set of GANs (generative adversarial networks).

Thanks to efforts in recent years to train ML models on increasingly expandisve, high-definition image sets with well-curated text descriptions, today’s state-of-the-art AIs can create photorealistic images of most whatever nonsense you feed them. The specific creation process differs between AIs.

Meta AI

For example, Google’s Imagen uses a Diffusion model, “which learns to convert a pattern of random dots to images,” per a June Keyword blog. “These images first start as low resolution and then progressively increase in resolution.” Google’s Parti AI, on the other hand, “first converts a collection of images into a sequence of code entries, similar to puzzle pieces. A given text prompt is then translated into these code entries and a new image is created.”

While these systems can create most anything described to them, the user doesn’t have any control over the specific aspects of the output image. “To realize AI’s potential to push creative expression forward,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in Tuesday’s blog, “people should be able to shape and control the content a system generates.”

The company’s “exploratory AI research concept,” dubbed Make-A-Scene, does just that by incorporating user-created sketches to its text-based image generation, outputting a 2,048 x 2,048-pixel image. This combination allows the user to not just describe what they want in the image but also dictate the image’s overall composition as well. “It demonstrates how people can use both text and simple drawings to convey their vision with greater specificity, using a variety of elements, forms, arrangements, depth, compositions, and structures,” Zuckerberg said.

In testing, a panel of human evaluators overwhelmingly chose the text-and-sketch image over the text-only image as better aligned with the original sketch (99.54 percent of the time) and better aligned with the original text description 66 percent of the time. To further develop the technology, Meta has shared its Make-A-Scene demo with prominent AI artists including Sofia Crespo, Scott Eaton, Alexander Reben, and Refik Anadol, who will use the system and provide feedback. There’s no word on when the AI will be made available to the public.

Joshua Schulte, the former CIA engineer arrested for what's being called the biggest theft of classified information in the agency's history, has been convicted by a federal jury. Schulte was arrested in relation to the large cache of documents that Wikileaks had published throughout 2017. That string of CIA leaks known as "Vault 7" contained information on the tools and techniques the agency used to hack into iPhones and Android phones for overseas spying. It also had details on how the CIA broke into computers and how it turned smart TVs into listening devices. A federal jury has found Schulte guilty on nine counts, including illegally gathering national defense information and then transmitting it.

According to The New York Times, Schulte was arrested after investigators traced the leaks to him. The former CIA engineer worked with a team in a secret building protected by armed guards to create tools, like malware, that were used to target the devices of suspected terrorists. In 2018, he was formally charged with 13 counts that included theft of classified information, obstruction of justice, as well as possessing and sending images and videos with child pornography. He's still awaiting trial on charges of possessing child pornography, which he allegedly downloaded from 2009 until March 2017. 

Schulte's original trial back in 2020 was declared a mistrial after jurors couldn't come to an agreement regarding some of hist most serious charges, illegally gathering and transmitting national defense information included. After that event, the former CIA engineer had decided to represent himself. As part of his closing arguments, he told the jurors that the CIA and the FBI made him a scapegoat for their embarrassing failure, repeating what his side had been saying from the time he was arrested.

While the judge, AP said, was impressed with his closing arguments, they weren't enough to get the jury on his side. In court, he argued that the government's case is full of holes and that he didn't even have motive to leak the CIA's hacking tools. Prosecutors, however, accused him of being a disgruntled employee who felt that he was disrespected when the agency ignored his complaints about his work environment. As retaliation, he allegedly tried "to burn [the CIA] to the ground." US Attorney Damian Williams said his actions rendered the "most valuable intelligence-gathering cyber tools used to battle terrorist organizations and other malign influences around the globe" essentially useless. Williams also accused Schulte of trying to leak more classified materials against the government while he was behind bars. 

Schulte will have to face the court again to face charges related to possession of child pornography before a sentencing date can be set. The nine counts he was convicted of, however, are enough to keep him in prison for up to 80 years.

Uber is facing a lawsuit filed by more than 500 women who allege they were assaulted by drivers, CNBC has reported. The complaint states that "women passengers in multiple states were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, sexually battered, raped, falsely imprisoned, stalked, harassed, or otherwise attacked," by Uber drivers. The San Francisco law firm that filed the suit said it has about 550 clients with at least another 150 claims being investigated. 

Earlier this month, Uber released its second safety report showing that sexual assault reports in the five most severe categories fell 38 percent from 5,981 in 2017 and 2018 to 3,824 for the years 2019 and 2020. However, that may be correlated with the COVID-19 pandemic which saw a severe drop in ridership from 2020-2021. "We’re constantly innovating and investing in the safety of our platform," Uber chief legal officer Tony West wrote in the report.

However, the law firm said that safety is not the company's highest priority. "Uber's whole business model is predicated on giving people a safe ride home, but rider safety was never their concern – growth was, at the expense of their passengers' safety," said Slater Slater Schulman LLP founding partner Adam Slater. "While the company has acknowledged this crisis of sexual assault in recent years, its actual response has been slow and inadequate, with horrific consequences."

The law firm criticized Uber for lax policies related to driver background checks and enforcement. It noted that Uber has "opted to hire drivers without fingerprinting them or running their information through FBI databases... [and] has a longstanding policy that it will not report any criminal activity – even assaults and rape – to law-enforcement authorities." 

Uber has yet to respond to the lawsuit, but Engadget has reached out for comment. An Uber spokesperson told Fox Business that it can't comment on pending litigation, but that the company "takes reports of this nature very seriously and has worked closely with advocates to develop a survivor-centric approach to handling such cases when they arise." 

Uber has a history of settlements and complaints related to passenger and driver safety. In 2016, The Guardian reported that Uber had paid out $161.9 million in safety-related lawsuits since 2009. In 2017, it faced a class-action lawsuit accusing it of "giving perpetrators of sexual assault, sexual harassment and physical violence access to thousands of 'vulnerable victims' nationwide." And in 2019, the company was sued for $10 million by a woman who was sexual assaulted by an Uber driver, saying the company put her in harm's way. 

• Read more about High-Side Switch Controller with Flexible Diagnostics and Intelligent Fuse Protection for Automotive Applications
• Log in or register to post comments

Celsius has filed for bankruptcy protection a month after it paused all customer withdrawals and transfers, according to The Wall Street Journal. The crypto lending giant left almost two million users unable to access their funds back in June due to what it described as "extreme market conditions." Back then, the company said that freezing withdrawals would help stabilize the liquidity of its assets to, in turn, help it meet withdrawal obligations. 

Celsius was one of the companies caught in the crypto crash, and it saw its token's value fall from $7 a year ago to $3 by early April this year. Based on the most current information from Coinbase, its token is now worth around 56 cents. As The Journal notes, Celsius offered much better yields than traditional banks to its customers — over 18.6 percent for deposits — and granted large loans backed by little collateral. That left the company with very little wiggle room to move when it felt the effects of the crypto downturn.

The crypto lender's board of directors explained that pausing withdrawals was difficult but necessary. They said when they filed for bankruptcy:

"Without a pause, the acceleration of withdrawals would have allowed certain customers — those who were first to act — to be paid in full while leaving others behind to wait for Celsius to harvest value from illiquid or longer-term assets before they receive a recovery."

Since Celsius isn't seeking court approval for withdrawals, they will likely remain inaccessible as the company restructures under the chapter 11 process. While filing for bankruptcy protects Celsius from some enforcement actions by regulators, though, it will not prevent authorities from investigating the company. Texas State Securities Board's director of enforcement, Joseph Rotunda, said the agency will continue its probe into the crypto lender. The states of Alabama, Kentucky, New Jersey and Washington are also looking into Celsius after it cut off people's access to their money. 

While Tesla, Ford and GM all (very publicly) vie for the top spot in the American electric vehicle market, Hyundai has quietly built a powerhouse lineup of EVs that threatens to surpass them all. On Wednesday (Thursday in Korea), Hyundai Motor Group officially unveiled the Ioniq 6, a streamlined sedan that offers an estimated 610km (380 mile) range and an intelligent interior that George Jetson would mistake for magic.

The Ioniq 6, like the other iterations of the Ioniq lineup, is built atop Hyundai's e-GMP platform. As such, the 6 is outfitted with an industry-leading 800V electrical architecture enabling a 10-80 charge in just 18 minutes.

It will be available with either a standard 55kWh battery pack or an optional 77.4kWh pack, equivalent to what the Kia EV6 and Polestar 2 offer. Combined with a miniscule 0.21 drag coefficient (which is also one of the best on the market), the Ioniq 6 is expected to top 610 km on a single charge. And like the Ioniq 5, the 6 also offers V2L capabilities, enabling it to charge your house, accessories and even other vehicles.

Its exceedingly aerodynamic exterior, available in a dozen different colors, has been likened to that of an Apple Mouse come to life — like someone shortened the back of Mercedes-Benz’ ambitious AVTR Concept and gave it a duck lip. And optional 20-inch rims.

Hyundai

Drivers will have the option between RWD and AWD (2- and 4-motor) variants. Per Hyundai, the AWD will output 239 kW (320HP) with 605 Nm of torque and hit 60 from a standstill in 5.1 seconds. You’ll have to opt for the small battery RWD model to achieve maximum efficiency and get the sub-14 kWh/100 km WLTP-estimated energy consumption.

Drivers will be able to tightly customize their preferred driving experience using the Ioniq 6’s EV Performance Tune-up system. Dial in everything from steering effort and motor power, to accelerator pedal sensitivity and driveline mode. You can also group various aspect settings into quick selectable packages — like a loadout in Call of Duty, or Focus Modes in iOS.

"Our engineers have worked hard to deliver a car with human-centric purposeful features to ensure a completely stress-free driving experience with its focus on design sustainability, technology, and usability," Thomas Schemera, Hyundai EVP of Product and Strategy, said during a recent press call.

Its "cocoon-inspired" interior has been built as a “comfy and personalized hideaway” where, according to the company’s launch video, people can take naps, bang out some light coding or office work and even conduct livestreams to their myriad social media followers — or, in reality, will serve as a quiet place to cry during lunch breaks. (Phil is a terrible manager and he doesn’t deserve your efforts, you should just quit.)

Hyundai

To get you back into the mood before your next shift starts, the Ioniq 6 will offer Dual Color Ambient Lighting which lets the driver select from 64 shades and a half dozen preset themes and tint their vehicle’s interior to their taste. The Relaxation Comfort Seats are optional but are designed specially for electric vehicles and are therefore 30 percent thinner than those used in gas vehicles. When combined with a completely flat floor (look Ma, no driveshaft!) and elongated 2,950-mm wheelbase, the Ioniq 6 should provide, "more space for passengers but without compromised to comfort," Schemera said. It’ll also offer four type-C and one type-A USB ports in the front cabin to keep your various live streaming gadgets fully charged.

The interior features a 12-inch full-touch infotainment display and 12-inch digital cluster, which provide real-time travel radius mapping to inform the driver how far they’ll be able to go on the charge they have remaining. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are both standard, as is Bluetooth multi-connection — meaning you can wirelessly connect two devices to play through the 8-speaker Bose sound system.

While Hyundai (quite responsibly) does not claim any semblance of "self-driving" capability, the Ioniq 6 does feature a slew of Level 2 driver assist functions as part of the Hyundai SmartSense ADAS. That includes Highway Driving Assist, Smart Cruise Control, and Forward Collision-Avoidance Assist all of which operate around the same theme of keeping you from smashing headfirst into other vehicles. The higher trim packages will also offer Junction Crossing, Lane-Changing Oncoming and Lane-Changing Side features, which will work to keep other vehicles from smashing headfirst into you at intersections. Blind-Spot Collision-Avoidance Assist will keep you from smashing headfirst into obstacles you can’t even see.

Intelligent Speed Limit Assist and High Beam Assist will ensure that you don’t speed but do turn down your high beams. The 6 will even watch you watch the road and issue a Driver Attention Warning if you start nodding off. Parking assist, cross traffic/parking collision avoidance and safe exit warnings are also available. Hyundai plans to continually tweak and update the Ioniq 6’s features through OTA updates.

Pricing has yet to be announced for the Ioniq 6, though production is slated to begin in Q3 2022. Stay tuned, Hyundai will make the Ioniq 6’s official American introduction in November.

Earlier this summer, physicians at NYU Langone were able to successfully transplant pig hearts into two recently-deceased humans. The medical team performed the procedures on June 16 and July 6, using special pig hearts that were genetically modified to be more acceptable for transplantation into a human body. Both the bodies were donated by recently deceased individuals and were placed on ventilator support so the efficacy of the pig hearts could be measured more accurately.

The study arrives as the field of xenotransplantation — or the act of transferring organs from one species to another — is under increased scrutiny. The first person to undergo a pig heart transplant died earlier this year, of what scientists believe was an adverse reaction to a drug to prevent rejection. The heart also contained DNA associated with a pig virus. Since the incident, the medical community has called for more meaningful research on the subject, as well as better safety protocols. Meanwhile, the FDA is considering approval of clinical trials for pig heart transplantation in humans, the Wall Street Journalreported last month.

Both human subjects — a 72-year-old Navy veteran and a 64-year-old retired New York City teacher — were monitored for three days before being taken off life support. Neither heart needed any outside support and functioned normally, which researchers are seeing as a promising sign for future research. Despite the NYU experiment’s positive outcome, surgeons cautioned that much more research is needed before pig heart transplants can be a viable alternative for people with heart disease.

“This is not a one-and-done situation. This is going to be years of learning what’s important and what’s not important for this to work,” NYU’s Dr. Robert Montgomery told the Associated Press.

Panasonic announced on Wednesday that it's inked a $4 billion investment deal with the state of Kansas to build and operate the world's largest battery cell production facility. The company has already identified a site near the city of De Soto, at a former ammunition factory.

“As the largest private investment in Kansas history and one of the largest EV battery manufacturing plants of its kind in the country, this project will be transformative for our state’s economy, providing in total 8,000 high-quality jobs that will help more Kansans create better lives for themselves and their children,” Kansas Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, said during Wednesday's press conference.

The plant will produce high-capacity cells for Tesla, according to Nikkei Asia. Panasonic already jointly operates the Reno, Nevada Gigafactory with the automaker. Tesla opened a third Gigafactory, in Austin, this past April. This project is expected to produce 4,000 permanent jobs at the factory as well as 16,500 construction jobs.

Despite the global economic shock and supply chain shortages instigated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Tesla saw its vehicle deliveries jump nearly 90 percent between 2020 and 2021. The company had begun developing a proprietary line of batteries in 2019 and has been routinely snapping up exclusive deals with lithium suppliers.

Similarly, GM and Ford have made sizable investments in both battery and EV production facilities, in recent years. GM is spending $7 billion in Michigan alone, part of which is going towards a $2.4 billion battery and EV facility outside Lansing, while Ford has put up a whopping $29 billion towards its electrification and autonomous technology commitments. 

As of July 1st of this year, Amazon has provided Ring footage to US law enforcement 11 times without user consent or a court order, according to a disclosure shared by Senator Edward Markey on Wednesday. The Massachusetts Democrat sent Amazon a letter last month with questions about the company’s policies related to Ring and its relationships with police. Amazon responded to the letter at the start of July.

The disclosure marks the first time Amazon has shared this kind of information with the public. In its law enforcement guidelines, Ring says it reserves the right to “immediately” respond to police requests in cases where someone could die or suffer serious injury.

“In each instance, Ring made a good-faith determination that there was an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to a person requiring disclosure of information without delay,” wrote Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice-president of public policy, of the 11 videos. Huseman didn’t say the specific footage Ring shared with police.

In his letter, Markey asked Amazon to agree not to accept financial contributions from police or participate in sting operations. The company did not agree to those restrictions. In the past, Ring has actively courted partnerships with law enforcement and even gone so far as to author statements shared by police.

“It’s simply untrue that Ring gives anyone unfettered access to customer data or video, as we have repeatedly made clear to our customers and others,” a Ring spokesperson told Engadget. “The law authorizes companies like Ring to provide information to government entities if the company believes that an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person, such as a kidnapping or an attempted murder, requires disclosure without delay. Ring faithfully applies that legal standard.” 

The news that Amazon shared footage with police without user consent at least 11 times this year is likely to add to the concerns many privacy experts have about the company. In 2021, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that the Los Angeles Police Department requested footage from Ring of Black Lives Matter protests captured by residential cameras. 

Markey used the disclosure to call on lawmakers to pass the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, a bill he introduced alongside Senator Jeff Merkley and Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Ayanna Pressley. “As my ongoing investigation into Amazon illustrates, it has become increasingly difficult for the public to move, assemble, and converse in public without being tracked and recorded,” said Markey. “We cannot accept this as inevitable in our country.”