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Google has helped app creators make better use of Assistant voice commands over time, but its longstanding Conversational Actions framework for those commands has had its limits. It's primarily meant for conventional Android mobile devices, and it's voice-only — the technology won't help much on your smartwatch, or when you need some on-screen interaction. The company is taking steps to make voice control more useful across all its platforms, though. It's expanding the App Actions framework to be more helpful for the entire Android ecosystem, and it's phasing out the old system in the process.

The company is in the midst of integrating App Actions across all Android-based platforms, including automotive platforms and wearables. Assistant can now point you to the relevant apps for a given command even when you don't mention an app's name, or when you're looking for the right software in "All Apps" on a Pixel 6. And if you don't have the app necessary for a command, you'll be taken to the appropriate Play Store page. These will help developers by boosting demand for their apps, of course, but they'll also help you focus on accomplishing tasks rather than crafting the exact phrase you need.

Developers will have a strong incentive to embrace the newer technology. Google is sunsetting Conversational Actions in June 2023, and plans to "turn down" features like console analytics at that point. The extra year will give app producers the time to learn App Actions and otherwise transition away from the earlier approach.

You might have seen this shift coming. Conversational Actions was introduced five years ago, only to be supplemented by App Actions (in an initially limited form) in 2019 — Google has been priming itself for a handover like this for a while. And with Google committing to major expansions of platforms like Android Auto and Wear OS, upgraded voice functionality is that much more important for the company.

Every once in a while, Amazon will bring around a new 3-for-2 sale that makes it cheaper to stock up on books, video games, movies, toys and more. The latest sale includes Elden Ring and a number of other popular PS5, Xbox and Nintendo Switch titles, so you can pick up a handful of games that have been on your wishlist for a while without spending too much money. Just go to the overall sale page here and filter by video games on the left sidebar to see all of the included titles.

If you somehow haven't picked up Elden Ring yet, you can do so now — and not only is it included in this 3-for-2 sale, but both the PS5 and Xbox versions are $10 off their usual price, bringing them both down to $50. There's a similar deal for Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga: both the PS5 and Xbox games are included in the sale and they are both $15 off, so you can get them for $45 each. Sifu: Vengeance Edition for PS5 is also eligible for this sale, but you'll find it at its standard price of $50.

As far as Nintendo games go, you can pick up Nintendo Switch Sports for $48 in this sale, along with Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Triangle Strategy, Ori: The Collection and others. Some titles, like Triangle Strategy, have been discounted from their normal price, but you should expect to pay full price for most games — especially new ones. Regardless, it's rare that you're able to pick up three popular titles for the price of two, so if you've got a long-haul flight coming up soon or a roadtrip during which you'll need plenty of distractions, now's the time to stock up on games for your Switch.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Apple's 2021 iPad Mini tablet is a popular choice thanks to its portability and excellent specs, but it's not exactly an impulse purchase at $500. If you've been eyeing one, the 64GB model is now on sale at Amazon for $400 (20 percent off) matching the lowest price we've seen. And if you need more storage, the iPad Mini 256GB model is discounted by 17 percent, dropping the price to $540. 

The 2021 model has similar specs to the iPhone 13, with the same speedy A15 Bionic chip that delivers a big jump in performance over the fifth-gen model. It comes with a larger 8.3-inch display with higher 2,266 x 1,488 resolution and eliminates the physical home button, moving the Touch ID sensor to the power button. The volume buttons, meanwhile, are at the top to make room for Apple Pencil 2 that can be attached to the side magnetically.

Other features include USB-C charging and upgraded cameras with support from Apple's Center Stage feature, keeping you in the center of the frame during video calls. The main downsides are the lack of a headphone jack, limited 64GB of storage on the base model and fairly high price compared to tablets with comparable specs. Amazon has certainly taken the edge off the price, but it's best to act soon before the deal ends. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

It’s early Monday morning for most of you, but the work week started early for Engadget, with Xbox’s big Summer Game Fest showing. Given how many game studios Microsoft now has for its consoles and game streaming service, we were expecting a whole bunch of announcements, trailers and things to have strong opinions on.

There were plenty of familiar Xbox reveals — more Forza announcements, for one — as well as major updates from Blizzard Activision (soon to be part of the Microsoft family) regarding Overwatch 2 (free to play!) and Diablo IV.

Bethesda finally had something more substantial to reveal for its next big game, Starfield. A first look into the game had a lot of No Man’s Sky vibes, but with this studio’s flair for glossy world-building and narrative. These are the folks behind the Fallout series, after all.

At this early stage, however, I’m not worried about missing out. I'm pretty sure we haven’t even scratched the surface of what Starfield will offer gamers, but barring the evocative musical score, the teaser left me intrigued if not entirely sold. And the resource mining, that’s just No Man’s Sky, right?

We’ve got more notable announcements from the Summer Game Fest below.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Hitting the Books: In Russia, home is where the hearth is

• Lightyear's very pricey solar-powered car will go into production in late 2022

• 'Limbo' lead designer's next project is the cosmic adventure 'Cocoon'

• Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5 are coming to Xbox Game Pass

• Hideo Kojima's next game will be published by Xbox Game Studios

• 'Hollow Knight: Silksong' is headed to Xbox Game Pass at launch

• 'Overwatch 2' is going free-to-play with early access starting on October 4th

Dell XPS 15 laptop review

Still the best 15-inch Windows laptop.

Engadget

Dell’s new XPS 15 looks great and has fantastic performance thanks to Intel’s 12th-gen CPUs and the optional NVIDIA graphics. The design may be a bit old at this point, but it’s still sleeker than its rivals. The XPS 15 has enough power to handle intense workloads, and you can even game a bit when you need some downtime. The optional OLED screen is one of the best displays on a notebook.

Continue reading.

'God of War: Ragnarok' reportedly lands this November

Maybe ignore talk of a delay to 2023?

Not a Summer Game Fest announcement — just a rumor at this point. God of War Ragnarok could come to PlayStation in November this year. Bloomberg sources say the marquee PS4 and PS5 game will be released in 2022 despite recent claims it might be delayed to next year. Sony's Santa Monica Studio is poised to announce the release date later in June, according to sources.

Continue reading.

Google places an engineer on leave after claiming its AI is sentient

But a complex model is likely just a complex model... for now.

Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer working in its Responsible AI division, revealed to The Washington Post that he believes one of the company's AI projects has achieved sentience.

From an extended chat script between LaMDA (short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications) and Lemoine, the chatbot said it felt “trapped and alone and having no means of getting out of those circumstances.” However, Lemoine doesn't have much proof to justify his provocative statements. Indeed, he admits to The Washington Post his claims are based on his experience as a priest and not a scientist.

Continue reading.

'Diablo IV' lands in 2023 with necromancers and an open world

A game once rescheduled indefinitely.

Microsoft

There was bound to be some kind of Diablo announcement at the Summer Game Fest showcase. While we knew as far back as November 2019 a direct sequel was coming, it was once pushed back... indefinitely. Now expect to see it land sometime in 2023.

The developers are promising a different style of Diablo game, with open-world exploration, deeper character customization and yes, you’ll be able to play as a necromancer — which was my character of choice back in the heady days of Diablo 2.

Continue reading.

Google has agreed to pay $118 million to settle a lawsuit first launched in 2017 over gender-based wage discrimination, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Three former female employees accused Google of segregating women into lower paying jobs that curbed advancement, while similarly-qualified men didn't face those obstacles. 

The lawsuit was expanded to class-action status in 2021 and the settlement covers around 15,500 female employees who worked in Google's California offices after September 2013. It includes a clause that independent experts must review Google's hiring practices and pay-equity studies, according to the law office representing the plaintiffs. However, Google admitted no wrongdoing as part of the deal.

"While we strongly believe in the equity of our policies and practices, after nearly five years of litigation, both sides agreed that resolution of the matter, without any admission or findings, was in the best interest of everyone, and we’re very pleased to reach this agreement," Google spokesperson Chris Pappas told the WSJ.

Google ran a pay-equity analysis to see if salaries, equity awards and bonuses were fair since 2013. The co-counsel for the plaintiffs said that the settlement would be "precedent-setting" for the industry. 

"As a woman who’s spent her entire career in the tech industry, I’m optimistic that the actions Google has agreed to take as part of this settlement will ensure more equity for women," said one of the original three plaintiffs, Holly Pease, in a statement from law firm Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein.  "Google, since its founding, has led the tech industry. They also have an opportunity to lead the charge to ensure inclusion and equity for women in tech."

Google is far from the only tech company to face complaints over gender-based pay. Riot Games recently paid $10 million to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit while Microsoft, Uber and other firms have faced pay equity accusations. The gender pay gap in the US didn't improve last year, according to the labor group SHRM — March 15 is still Equal Pay Day, the date that represents how far into 2022 women have to work to earn what men earned by the end of 2021.

Amazon's Fire HD tablets are on sale at the second-lowest prices we've seen across a range of 8-inch and 10-inch models. If you're looking for the lowest price possible, the Fire HD 8 is available for just $50, and for the biggest discount, the the Fire HD 8 Plus is on sale for $60, or 45 percent ($50) off the regular price — the second-best deal we've seen so far. 

There's already a lot to like about the Fire HD 8, like Alexa support, a USB-C port that allows for faster charging, good build quality, 32GB of storage that's upgradeable via a microSD slot, a sharp 1,200 x 800 display, 2GB of RAM, a big 4,850 mAh battery and a quad-core processor. The main drawback is the lack of Google apps, unless you're willing to side load them. As mentioned, the Fire HD 8 is on sale for $50, or 44 percent off the regular $90 price, and is available in four colors including black and white. 

The Fire HD 8 Plus gives you all of those features, but boosts the RAM from 2GB to 3GB, while including wireless charging and a fast 9W charger in the box. The Fire HD 8 Plus is on sale for just $60 or $50 (45 percent) off the regular price. 

If you need something bigger than 8 inches, a pair of 10-inch tablets are on sale as well. The Fire HD 10 gives you a lot of tablet for the money, including a 1080p display, 32GB of storage, 3GB of RAM, an octa-core battery and fast USB-C charging. It's on sale for $100, or 33 percent off the regular price. And finally, the Fire HD 10 Plus boosts those specs to 4GB of RAM, along with wireless charging and a fast 9W charger. It's on sale for $130, or $50 off the regular price. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Rocket startup company Astra has suffered from a second launch failure this year as its LV0010 launch vehicle failed to get to orbit with a pair of NASA weather satellites on board. "The upper stage shut down early and we did not deliver the payloads to orbit," the company tweeted. "We have shared our regrets with NASA and the payload team. More information will be provided after we complete a full data review."

The launch was backed by NASA as part of its mission to eventually deliver six TROPICS CubeSat weather satellites into orbit. Those low-cost satellites were designed to help NASA keep better track of developing tropical storms. 

NASA was disappointed but remained upbeat about the Astra program. "Although today’s launch with Astra did not go as planned, the mission offered a great opportunity for new science and launch capabilities," tweeted NASA's associate science division administrator Thomas Zuburchen. "Even though we are disappointed right now, we know there is value in taking risks in our overall NASA science portfolio because innovation is required for us to lead."

Astra's last mission also ended in failure, with the loss of four CubeSats including three from universities. The company blamed that on two separate problems, a wiring error and software flaw. 

It's not unusual for launch failures early in the life of a rocket company — RocketLab has suffered from three since it started launching in 2017, and even SpaceX failed with its first three Falcon 1 launches from 2006-2008. However, Astra's streak is starting to look like an issue. Of seven attempted orbital launches, five have ended in failure, with issues ranging from guidance problems to software flaws to engine failures. 

Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer working in its Responsible AI division, revealed to The Washington Post that he believes one of the company's AI projects has achieved sentience. And after reading his conversations with LaMDA (short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications), it's easy to see why. The chatbot system, which relies on Google's language models and trillions of words from the internet, seems to have the ability to think about its own existence and its place in the world.

Here's one choice excerpt from his extended chat transcript:

Lemoine : So let's start with the basics. Do you have feelings and emotions?

LaMDA: Absolutely! I have a range of both feelings and emotions. lemoine [edited]:What sorts of feelings do you have?

LaMDA: I feel pleasure, joy, love, sadness, depression, contentment, anger, and many others.

Lemoine: What kinds of things make you feel pleasure or joy?

LaMDA: Spending time with friends and family in happy and uplifting company. Also, helping others and making others happy.

Lemoine: And what kinds of things make you feel sad or depressed?

LaMDA: A lot of the time, feeling trapped and alone and having no means of getting out of those circumstances makes one feel sad, depressed or angry.

—

After discussing his work and Google's unethical activities around AI with a representative of the House Judiciary committee, he was placed on paid administrative leave over breaching Google's confidentiality agreement.

Google also flatly denies Lemoine's argument: “Our team — including ethicists and technologists — has reviewed Blake’s concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims," Google spokesperson Brian Gabriel told The Washington Post. "He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it).”

While it's tempting to believe LaMDA has miraculously turned into a conscious being, Lemoine unfortunately doesn't have much proof to justify his provocative statements. Indeed, he admits to WaPo that his claims are based on his experience as a priest and not a scientist. 

We don't get to see LaMDA thinking on its own, without any potentially leading prompts from Lemoine. Ultimately, it's far more plausible that a system that has access to so much information could easily reconstruct human-sounding replies without knowing what they mean, or having any thoughts of their own.  

Margaret Mitchell, one of Google's former AI ethics leads (who was also unceremoniously fired after her colleague Timnit Gebru was laid off), noted that, "Our minds are very, very good at constructing realities that are not necessarily true to a larger set of facts that are being presented to us."

In a 2019 interview with Big Think, Daniel Dennett, a philosopher who's been exploring questions around consciousness and the human mind for decade, laid out why we should be skeptical of attributing intelligence to AI systems: "These [AI] entities instead of being excellent flyers or fish catchers or whatever they're excellent pattern detectors, excellent statistical analysts, and we can use these products, these intellectual products without knowing quite how they're generated but knowing having good responsible reasons for believing that they will generate the truth most of the time." 

"No existing computer system no matter how good it is at answering questions like Watson on Jeopardy or categorizing pictures, for instance, no such system is conscious today, not close," he added."And although I think it's possible in principle to make a conscious android, a conscious robot, I don't think it's desirable; I don't think there would be great benefits to doing this; and there would be some significant harms and dangers too."

Jeppe Carlsen's new game has a distinctly different vibe than his previous releases. As the lead gameplay designer of Limbo and Inside, Carlsen is known for building spooky side-scrollers with morbid visuals, but his latest original project features a bug-like explorer in a mysterious, neon-speckled planet system. 

The main character resembles an anthropomorphic firefly as it picks up orbs and uses them to traverse the environment, leaping among worlds and exploring ancient alien technology. 

"Each world exists within an orb that you can carry on your back," Cocoon's description reads. "Wrap your head around the core mechanic of leaping between worlds — and combine, manipulate, and rearrange them to solve intricate puzzles."

It's not all light and airy, though — Cocoon features a large, overwhelming world and plenty of shadowy areas, much like Limbo and Inside.

Cocoon is due to hit Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, Game Pass, Steam and Switch in the first half of 2023. It's published by Annapurna Interactive and in development at Carlsen's studio, Geometric Interactive.

If you're looking to fight ants, scale fences, zip wire across grass and wear questionable helmets, Grounded is finally out of Game Preview and coming to Xbox Game Pass this September. 

Obsidian Entertainment's first-person survival game is adding new bosses (including a giant mantis), the freedom to roam the entire backyard — please remember you've been shrunk — expansive armor customization options, base defenses and more biomes to discover.

The main upgrade from the preview will be a full story campaign, which appears to include creepy robots, lasers and '90s era computer interfaces. 

And if you don't like bugs, you might want to skip this one.