Sony has confirmed that God of War Ragnarok, the sequel to 2018's more dramatic spin on the franchise, will launch on the PlayStation 5 and PS4 on November 9th. That confirms earlier rumors around a November launch date, and it should be welcome news to gamers worried about a delay into 2023. Many major upcoming titles originally slated for this year, like Bethesda's Starfield, have been pushed to next year (Just take your pick for reasons: the ongoing pandemic, rocky working conditions for developers, or the sheer difficulty of pushing out a massive AAA game).
God of War Ragnarok's latest trailer doesn't feature any actual gameplay, but it delivers the usual does of super-powered butt-kicking from Kratos and his son Atreus. It's your typical father and son outing: Facing a variety of demons, a near-death fall off a cliff and a giant wolf of some kind. If anything, Atreus looks like more than just a boy, this time around.
A new sale at Wellbots knocks the Fitbit Charge 5 down to the best price we've seen it. The GPS-toting fitness band is on sale for $110, or $40 off its usual price, when you use the code ENGDTRUN40 at checkout. If you want something more advanced, Fitbit's Sense smartwatch is $120 off and down to $180 when you use the code ENGDTRUN120 at checkout.
The Charge 5 is Fitbit's most capable fitness tracker and it earned a score of 82 from us. It's pretty similar to the Charge 4 that came before it, but it now has a full color touchscreen with an always-on mode that will make it easier to glance down at the time and activity information on your watch screen. It's also 10 percent thinner than its predecessor, making it even more low-profile than before and, more importantly, more subtle than many smartwatches.
The Charge 5 is a good option for those that prefer the band style but don't want to compromise when it comes to fitness chops. It has a built-in GPS for mapping outdoor workouts, plus an all-day heart rate monitor as well. It tracks activity and sleep while you're wearing it, and it comes with Fitbit Pay as a standard feature, which means you can go out for a coffee after your run and pay using NFC tech.
Bands like the Charge 5 also tend to have better battery lives than their smartwatch counterparts. In fact, the Charge 5 lasted about 2.5 days in our testing with the screen in always-on mode. That's already more than you'll get out of most smartwatches, but if you turn off the always-on feature, you'll get a total of five days of life out of the wearable.
But if you're willing to spend a bit more, Fitbit's Sense smartwatch has a few extra features you won't find on the Charge 5. You'll get stress tracking with EDA sensors, plus blood oxygen and skin temperature monitoring. It's the most advanced smartwatch that the company makes, and since it typically costs $300, it's worth considering while you can get it for more than $100 off.
More than 7,000 languages are currently spoken on this planet and Meta seemingly wants to understand them all. Six months ago, the company launched its ambitious No Language Left Behind (NLLB) project, training AI to translate seamlessly between numerous languages without having to go through English first. On Wednesday, the company announced its first big success, dubbed NLLB-200. It's an AI model that can speak in 200 tongues, including a number of less-widely spoken languages from across Asia and Africa, like Lao and Kamba.
According to a Wednesday blog post from the company, NLLB-200 can translate 55 African languages with “high-quality results.” Meta boasts that the model’s performance on the FLORES-101 benchmark surpassed existing state-of-the-art models by 44 percent on average, and by as much as 70 percent for select African and Indian dialects.
Translating between any two given languages — especially if neither of them is English — has proven a significant challenge to AI language models because, in part, many of these translation systems rely on written data scraped from the internet to train on. Super easy to do if you speak what this sentence is in, much more difficult if you’re looking for quality content in Fan or Kikuyu.
Meta AI
Like most of its other publicly promoted AI programs, Meta has decided to open-source NLLB-200 as well as provide $200,000 in grants to nonprofits to develop real-world applications for the technology. Applications like Facebook News Feed or Instagram, for example. “Imagine visiting a favorite Facebook group, coming across a post in Igbo or Luganda, and being able to understand it in your own language with just a click of a button,” the Meta post hypothesized. You can get a sense of how the new model works on Meta’s demo site.
With early Prime Day deals in full swing, Amazon has discounted one of its more niche devices for Prime members. The Glow, Amazon's interactive video-call and projector device, is down to $150 ahead of Prime Day, which is 55 percent off its normal price. That's also the best price we've seen on the gadget since it became widely available in the US earlier this year.
The unique device combines an 8-inch LCD display with a projector that creates a 19-inch touch-sensitive surface in front of it. This allows kids to play games using the projected touch screen while video chatting with parents or other loved ones, who can also see the play surface and what the kids are doing. Adults can also join in on the games via their own smartphones or tablets. The Glow comes with one year of Amazon Kids+, too, which includes a bunch of compatible games for the device.
While admittedly a niche device, the Glow could be a good solution for parents who don't mind their kids playing digital games but would prefer something more interactive than what a standard tablet could offer. Kids can interact with things like digital storybooks with animations, card games, puzzles and more, and create digital art as well. The Glow also works with Tangram Bits, which are physical pieces that kids can use to solve digital puzzles projected in front of them by the device.
The Glow is likely a bit of a hard sell at its normal price of $330, but Prime members may find it more enticing while on sale like this. At $150, it's currently cheaper than picking up a Fire HD 10 Kids Pro tablet, but that could change if you're willing to wait until Prime Day proper, when it's likely that most of Amazon's kid-centric tablets will be discounted, too.
A company in Finland has created an an unusual storage solution for renewable energy: One that uses sand instead of lithium ion or other battery technologies. Polar Night Energy and Vatajankoski, an energy utility in Western Finland, have built a storage system that can store electricity as heat in the sand. While there are other organizations researching the use of sand for energy storage, including the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Finns say theirs is the first fully working commercial installation of a battery made from sand.
Similar to traditional storage systems for renewables, Polar's technology stores energy from wind turbines and solar panels that isn't used at once. To be precise, it stores energy as heat, which is then used for the district heating network that Vatajankoski services. Sand is inexpensive and is very effective at storing heat at about 500 to 600 degrees Celsius. Polar says its technology can keep sand "hotter than the stoves in typical saunas" for months until it's time to use that heat during Finland's long winters.
As the BBC explains, the resistive heating process used to warm the sand generates hot air circulated inside the structure. When it's time to use the stored energy, the battery discharges that heated air to warm water in the district's heating system, which is then pumped into homes, offices and even pools. At the moment, Polar's sand battery only serves a single city, and it's still unclear whether the technology can be scaled up. The BBC also says that its efficiency "falls dramatically" when it comes to returning electricity to the grid instead. It's early days for the technology, though, and other companies and organizations might be able to find solutions for those issues.
A bunch of Amazon devices are starting to go on sale for Prime members ahead of the two-day shopping event next week, and that includes the company's most powerful streaming device. The Fire TV Cube has now been discounted to $60 for Prime members, which is $10 cheaper than its previous all-time low. Amazon appears to be staggering out its early Prime Day deals because the Fire TV Cube is one of two streaming gadgets on sale right now, the other being the Fire TV Stick 4K, which is $10 off and down to $40 for everyone — not just Prime members.
The Fire TV Cube is Amazon's most capable streamer, with support for 4K content, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and HDR10+. It also works as an Alexa speaker as well with its built-in mics. Not only can you ask Alexa to look up TV shows and movies you want to watch, but you can also ask the voice assistant to do things like control smart lights, add things to your shopping list and more. The Cube is the only Fire TV device that has hands-free Alexa support, making it a good option for those that want a new streaming device and basic virtual assistant features in one device.
If you're looking for something more portable, or just an even more budget-friendly device, the Fire TV Stick 4K is a good option. Like the Fire TV Cube, it also supports 4K HDR streaming with Dolby Vision and Atmos support. However, its dongle-like design makes it easy to toss in a bag before you go on vacation or ever so slightly easier to install on your aging TV. It also supports voice commands via the Alexa remote that comes with it.
Good news for those who've been waiting for Apple's colorful laptops to come out: The new M2-powered MacBook Air will be available for pre-order starting on July 8th at 5AM PDT/8AM EDT. It was first introduced in June at WWDC alongside the redesigned 13-inch MacBook Pro that's similarly powered by the tech giant's new M2 chip, but Apple had released the latter first. Those who prefer the redesigned MacBook Air may not have to wait that long to get their laptops after pre-order begins, because it will start shipping to buyers worldwide on July 15th.
The new MacBook Air design gets rid of the model's signature wedge silhouette and swaps it for a squarer look close to its Pro-tier siblings. Even so, it's lighter than its predecessors and is 20 percent smaller in volume. It will also be available in four colors, namely Silver, Space Gray, Midnight (deep blue) and Starlight.
In a nutshell, ASUS’ new powerful gaming phone is all about bigger specs and faster performance. It has a 165Hz 6.78-inch display, with 720Hz touch sampling rate, up to 18GB of RAM and a bigger 6,000mAh battery.
Engadget
The most notable change is the revamped clip-on cooler that's arriving alongside the ROG Phone 6. You can toggle between four cooling settings in the updated Armoury Crate app's console, with a "Frozen" mode that pushes its Peltier chip to the max. This is only available when there's external power plugged into the device but ASUS claims the AeroActive Cooler 6 can lower the ROG Phone 6's surface temperature by up to a staggering 25 degrees Celsius (that’s 77 Fahrenheit), which sounds more like a portable air cooler than a smartphone accessory. As far as availability goes, ASUS says the ROG Phone 6 series will start from €999 (around $1,000) in Europe. US availability remains TBC.
Well, that’s taken a turn. Just yesterday we reported on NASA’s latest steps towards getting a human back on the Moon, but the agency has lost contact with CAPSTONE, a tiny satellite that left Earth's orbit on July 4th. The small satellite stopped communicating with engineers shortly after deploying from an Electron rocket bus and exiting Earth's orbit. Handlers are attempting to re-establish contact with the cubesat.
The Digital Markets and Services Acts are designed to level the playing field.
The European Union has passed a pair of landmark bills designed to rein in Big Tech’s power. The Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act are intended to promote fairer competition, improve privacy protection, as well as banning many forms of targeted advertising. The EU has given both bills plenty of teeth, and can dole out a maximum penalty of 10 percent of its total worldwide turnover from the previous year, should regulators find non-compliance. This figure will, however, jump to 20 percent of worldwide turnover if officials find “repeated non-compliance.”
The company also filed a complaint against a scraping-for-hire firm.
On Tuesday, Meta filed separate federal lawsuits against a company called Octopus and an individual named Ekrem Ateş. According to Meta, the former is the US subsidiary of a Chinese multinational tech firm that offers data scraping-for-hire services to individuals and companies.
Octopus also sells software that allows people to carry out their own data collection campaigns. According to Meta, this program first compromises the Facebook and Instagram accounts of the user by providing their authentication information to Octopus before proceeding to scrape all the data accessible to that individual’s accounts.
Back in June, Ubisoft confirmed it would share information about the future of Assassin's Creed during a special event in September, and this appears to be that. The company is currently working on two Assassin's Creed projects: one is a live multiplayer experience spanning multiple time periods code-named Infinity, and the other is a standalone series installment code-named Rift.
Amazon has already started selling a bunch of its smart home devices at a discount, almost a week before Prime Day even begins. One of the most notable deals that's already available is Amazon's smart thermostat, which you can get for $42 — as long as you're a Prime member. That's 30 percent off its regular retail price of $60 and a new all-time low for the device. Amazon's smart thermostat debuted in September 2021, giving you an affordable option to control your home temperature.
It's not quite as feature-rich as its more expensive counterparts, like the Google Nest thermostat. But it's Energy Star-certified and can save you an average of $50 on your electric bills every year. Plus, it's Alexa-compatible and allows you to use the voice assistant to set custom routines for heating and cooling. The thermostat itself doesn't have a speaker or a microphone, though, so you'll need to use the Alexa app or another Alexa-enabled device like an Echo speaker to do so.
That brings us to another deal you can get right now: Amazon's smart thermostat bundled with an Echo Dot speaker. The bundle with a fourth-gen Echo Dot speaker will set you back $62, or $48 off its usual price, which is the lowest we've seen for it on the website. Meanwhile, the smart thermostat bundle with a second-gen Echo Show 5 smart display is also on sale for $77, or $68 lower than its retail price. That's also a new all-time low for the duo.
In case you're mainly looking to buy Amazon's Alexa-powered speakers, you can get a fourth-gen Echo Dot with an Amazon smart plug for $25. You'll save $50 if you get the bundle, which typically sells for $75 and has never been discounted this deeply before. Amazon's smart plug adds Alexa voice control to any outlet, allowing you to control any non-smart device plugged to it, such as lights, fans and other appliances.
Amazon has announced a handful of new perks for Prime members ahead of Prime Day this month, including free deliveries from nearby restaurants. All Prime members in the US will now get access to a one-year Grubhub+ membership, which typically costs $10 a month, for free. Amazon used to have a restaurant delivery service of its own in an attempt to create a homegrown UberEats rival, but the company ultimately shut it down in the UK and the US. This time, it's teaming up with an established delivery service.
Grubhub+ members enjoy $0 food delivery fees, so long as their orders go over $12. They also get rewards that include free food and discounts on their orders. Prime subscribers can redeem their free Grubhub+ membership by going to the official perk page on Amazon, activating the offer and then sharing their Prime status with the delivery service. Even existing Grubhub+ users can claim the freebie, with their free year kicking in after their current billing cycle ends. People who cancel their Prime membership will also lose access to their free year of Grubhub+, while those who stick around will be charged $10 a month for the delivery service after 12 months.
This partnership is part of the commercial agreement Amazon has entered with Just Eat Takeaway.com, the Dutch parent company of Grubhub. Under the agreement, Amazon will receive stock warrants worth 2 percent of Grubhub’s fully-diluted common equity. Grubhub says it "continues to actively explore the partial or full sale" of the company, but whether Amazon will swoop in with an offer remains to be seen. For now, Grubhub expects this partnership to add more members to its subscription service.
Adam DeWitt, CEO of Grubhub, said in a statement:
"I am incredibly excited to announce this collaboration with Amazon that will help Grubhub continue to deliver on our long-standing mission to connect more diners with local restaurants. Amazon has redefined convenience with Prime and we’re confident this offering will expose many new diners to the value of Grubhub+ while driving more business to our restaurant partners and drivers."
