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OpenSea is putting in place a new system to spot NFT fakes and verify accounts, in an effort to cut down on the industry’s growing fraud problem. In a couple of blog posts, the NFT marketplace detailed what changes users can expect, including opening up verification to more users, automated and human-assisted removal of so-called “copymints” or fake copies of authentic NFTs and changes to how collection badges — which identify NFT collections with high sales volume or interest — are doled out on the marketplace.

First off, OpenSea will use a two-part system to detect fakes that combine both image recognition tech and human reviewers. The company says its new system will continuously scan all NFT collections (including newly minted assets) to spot any potential fakes. Human reviewers will vet any removal recommendations.

“Our new copymint prevention system leverages computer-vision tech to scan all NFTs on OpenSea (including new mints). The system then matches these scans against a set of authentic collections, starting with some of the most copy-minted collections — we’ll look for flips, rotations & other permutations,” wrote OpenSea’s Anne Fauvre-Willis in the post. The company says it has already spotted some fakes with its copymint detection system and plans to scale up the technology in the weeks to follow.

The company has also made some updates to its verification and badging system. OpenSea will open up account verification to any creator who holds at least 100 ETH of collection volume, which currently is equivalent to roughly $205,000 USD. This essentially means sellers will have to already own a significant collection of NFTs to be verified by OpenSea. The marketplace stated that it plans to broaden the eligibility criteria for verification as it continues to learn more. NFT collections will also get a collection badge if they’ve generated more than 100 ETH in trading volume. OpenSea will also require a profile name, username, verified email address and a connected Twitter account for account verification. 

All these changes will likely create a number of obstacles for NFT scam artists. Scammers have grown increasingly sophisticated in their tactics — some going as far as to create fake Discord servers and websites or pose as actual employees of NFT companies. Verifying the real-life identity of sellers is a long-standing problem in the world of NFTs, where anonymity is a key part of the culture. NFT artists normally go by aliases instead of their real names, and the same goes for NFT buyers. Unfortunately, it's a culture that has allowed NFT thieves and copycat artists to thrive.

Intel, which is both the biggest semiconductor company by revenue and the largest private employer in Oregon, is facing an apparent bid for unionization among its exhausted engineering workforce. In a press conference Wednesday afternoon led by current engineer and Congressional hopeful Matt West, he described the employment arrangement at Intel as being "expect it to be on call at all times."

"For too long, my fellow engineers have worked 80+ hour weeks, transitioning at a whim between day shift and night shifts as management demanded. We are on call all of the time, to the point where you need a manager's approval to be more than two hours away from the factory," West said standing in front of the aforementioned factory in Hillsboro, Oregon, flanked by colleagues and local labor leaders. "If you were called at 2am on a Saturday, and you're supposed to have off, and if you don't answer that phone within 30 minutes, they call your manager instead. And there are consequences." 

According to a spokesperson for West, the organizing efforts have been ongoing for over a year, but have not been public before today. The engineering unit, which covers an estimated 350+ workers, is "the biggest unionization effort Intel has ever faced," the spokesperson wrote. 

"I once worked more than 80 hours in a week for three months straight. I only had three days off, total, in that time," West said. "I broke down. Both my mind and my body suffered. And at that point, my doctor mandated that I take a two-week emergency medical leave to recover." Once he returned to work he says he "was placed on formal notice for not having warned my manager in advance about my emergency medical leave."

In addition to working long hours — longer hours than allowed by Oregon law, according to West's office — and being asked to be available at the drop of a hat, West further accused Intel of intentionally hiring from the pool of workers who were fresh out of college or graduate school in order to have leverage over them. All this, he said, was doubly felt by those engineers who were working via H1B Visas. "They feel trapped," West said, paraphrasing conversations he's had with colleagues, "They say they cannot raise these issues themselves out of fear of deportation for them and their families."

Beyond his own experiences, West read out a number of anonymous statements from his colleagues, which recounted similar issues. One claimed that on "most days I work 10 to 16 hours," while another stated they were told to "cover a 14-hour night, shift seven nights in a row." A third wrote that "there is no proper path to promotion for high performing engineers." (Transparency around pay and promotions is another issue the union is organizing around.)

West called on Intel to sign a neutrality agreement (in effect, saying the company would not interfere with organizing efforts, subject workers to anti-union messaging, engage in captive audience meetings or other familiar tactics) and asked the company to voluntarily recognize the union. While it's not clear what union the engineers intend to join — or if, like Amazon workers in Staten Island they intend to form their own from the ground up — West's spokesperson confirmed the Intel cohort have been in touch with the Communications Workers of America. 

As mentioned, West is — outside of his job at Intel and organizing activities — on the ballot to run for the House of Representatives for Oregon's 6th district. That election takes place less than a week from today.

Engadget has reached out to Intel for comment and will update if we hear back.

For the first time since the start of the pandemic, Google’s annual I/O developer conference returned to the historic Shoreline Amphitheatre. In an in-person event that saw the company share details on its latest breakthroughs in AI, machine translation and more, Google also found time to outline some of the hardware it plans to release later this year. In case you missed the chance to watch the event live, here are the biggest announcements from I/O 2022.

Pixel 6a

Google may have teased its latest flagship devices at I/O, but the company’s new Pixel 6a stole the show. Available to pre-order on July 21st, the $449 device will feature the search giant’s homegrown Tensor AI chipset and a 12-megapixel camera that shipss with the latest version of Google's Magic Eraser photo editing tool. The company also promised to support the Pixel 6a with five years of security updates.

Pixel 7

Google

Google only shared a brief glimpse of its latest flagship smartphones at I/O, but we did get to see the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro ahead of their formal debut later this year. The company said both devices would feature its next-generation Tensor chip, and come with a refined design made from recycled aluminum. There’s no word on pricing or availability yet. Expect Google to share those details this fall.

Pixel Watch

After months of leaks, Google finally confirmed the Pixel Watch is real. Arriving this fall, the wearable features a nearly bezel-less watch face flanked by a “tactile crown.” It runs Wear OS 3 and includes deep integration with Fitbit software for its health and fitness-tracking features. The Pixel Watch will be available later this year, arriving alongside the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro. Google promised to share more details about the wearable in the days and weeks leading up to that point.

Separately, Google said companies like Samsung, Fossil and Montblanc would release new Wear OS devices later this year as well.

Pixel Buds Pro

Google

While you might have to wait a while to get your hands on the Pixel 7 and Pixel Watch, the new $199 Pixel Buds Pro are coming much sooner. Set to arrive on July 28th, with pre-orders opening on July 21st, key features include support for multipoint connectivity, IPX4-certified waterproofing and active noise cancelation. They’ll also support spatial audio when paired with a compatible Pixel phone.

Android 13

With the introduction of Google’s new Material You design language, customization was a big part of the appeal of Android 12. The latest version of Google’s mobile operating system will double down on that focus with new features that allow you to personalize your device even more. For instance, one new tool will allow you to set a different default language for all the disparate apps on your phone. Another new feature lets you color match more of the icons on your home screen, not just ones from Google.

Android 13 will also feature a new Wallet app with the option to store your personal government-issued ID on your phone. Safety and security were another focus for Google, with the company noting that Android 13 will protect your privacy by automatically deleting your clipboard history.

And after years of neglect, Google is about to furnish Android with some tablet-specific functionality. Android 13 will introduce new multitasking capabilities on large screen devices, including an updated taskbar and split view. Additionally, the company said it would update many of its first-party apps to take advantage of the new tablet features it plans to introduce with Android 13.

Beyond a renewed software focus, Google is also developing new tablet hardware. We got a brief glimpse of the Pixel Tablet, which the company plans to release sometime in 2023. As with many of the other devices Google showed off today, we didn’t get many details on the Pixel Tablet. But what we do know is that it looks similar to a Nest Hub. It will also run on of the company’s custom Tensor chips.

Lastly, if you want to try Android 13, Beta 2 is available to download today.

New AR glasses

Google

Just when you thought the keynote was over, Google had one more piece of news to share. The company revealed it was working on a new pair of augmented reality smartglasses designed to "break down communication barriers." The early prototype Google demoed could transcribe spoken language, providing real-time captions for the wearer. Google didn’t share the name of the prototype device, nor did it say when it might release it to consumers.

Everything else

Google

It wouldn’t be I/O without Google sharing news on its latest AI and machine learning breakthroughs, and 2022 was no exception. The company had a lot to share on that front, but highlights include enhancements to Translate (which now supports 24 additional languages) and a new "AI Test Kitchen” app that offers a demo of the company’s LaMDA 2 learning model.

The company also announced new feature updates for Workspace, YouTube and Lens. One of the most interesting allows you to check out a new “Immersive View” in Maps for exploring popular tourist destinations.

Follow all of the news from Google I/O 2022 right here!

Nintendo held its latest Indie World stream today and, as is often the case at these events, a few games that were shown off suddenly popped up in the Switch eShop. One of those is Mini Motorways, a puzzle strategy game that debuted on Apple Arcade in 2019 before making its way to PC last year. Dinosaur Polo Club's follow up to Mini Metro (which is also available on Switch) is making its console debut.

The core idea is that you'll build out roads to keep traffic flowing in a growing city. Things will naturally get more complicated as demand grows. You'll also be able to compete against other players in daily and weekly challenges. The Switch version of Mini Motorways costs $14.99.

Three other indie games landed on Switch today: Soundfall, OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition and Gibbon: Beyond the Trees. Soundfall is a rhythm-based dungeon crawler with dynamically generated levels that are based on the music you select. There are more than 140 tracks to choose from and there's support for local and online multiplayer. OPUS: Echo of Starsong is a visual novel-style puzzle game, while Gibbon: Beyond the Trees is a slick-looking 2D platformer.

It was also revealed that We Are OFK is coming to Switch this year, as are Cult of the Lamb, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator,Ooblets and ElecHead. One of the other games that caught my eye in the showcase was Gunbrella from Doinksoft and Devolver Digital (which recently released the terrific Trek to Yomi). It's a "noir-punk adventure" in which you wield a gun that's also an umbrella. However, you play as a woodsman who's seeking revenge rather than a Batman villain. 

Another game that looked intriguing was Another Crab’s Treasure from Aggro Crab. It's a soulslike (meaning it takes inspiration from FromSoftware titles such as Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls) that takes place in an undersea world. You play as a hermit crab who has to use trash as makeshift shells to protect yourself from enemies. Like Gunbrella, this one should land on Switch in 2023.

The Indie World stream shone a spotlight on several other titles, such as Wildfrost and Wayward Strand, but there was sadly no sign of Hollow Knight: Silksong. You can check out the showcase in full below.

Redbox has tried to keep itself relevant over the years with on-demand streaming video and free live TV, but it's still best-known as the company pushing movie disc rentals at kiosks. It might soon have a better shot at shaking that reputation, however. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, the company that rebooted Sony's Crackle service, is acquiring Redbox in an all-stock deal. The move will help Chicken Soup build an ad-supported streaming service for "value-conscious customers" and "accelerate" Redbox's shift from physical to digital.

The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2022. Chicken Soup will own a 76.5 percent stake, while Redbox will own the rest. There weren't mentions of leadership changes, but Chicken Soup won't change its name as part of the purchase.

It may seem unusual to buy a company best known for supporting shrinking video formats. Chicken Soup stands to gain a lot, though. The new owner will have access to tens of millions of potential customers, including 40 million Redbox Perks members —even if only a fraction embrace streaming, that's still a large potential audience. Although we wouldn't expect it to challenge heavyweights like Amazon or Netflix, it might help Redbox and Chicken Soup compete with free-to-watch alternatives like Tubi or The Roku Channel.

Sonos devices have supported Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant for almost five years now. The Sonos One from 2017 was the first speaker the company made with built-in microphones, and almost every speaker it’s made since has worked with Alexa, not to mention Google Assistant. Despite supporting those popular services, though, Sonos has decided to build its own voice assistant. Dubbed Sonos Voice Control, the feature is specifically designed to work with music only, so this isn’t exactly a competitor to Alexa and Google Assistant. Instead, it’s meant to control your music as quickly as possible, and with privacy in mind. 

Oh yeah, and it's voiced by none other than Giancarlo Esposito. 

Sonos

Sonos Voice Control will be available on every Sonos speaker that has a microphone, going all the way back to the first-generation Sonos One. Like other voice assistants, you use a wake phrase (Hey Sonos) to get the speaker’s attention. From there, you can ask it to play songs, albums or artists from Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer or Pandora. You can also ask it to play stations from Sonos Radio. Nope, Spotify and YouTube Music aren’t available right now, though Sonos says it plans to add more services in the future. 

As I alluded to earlier, Sonos Voice Control isn’t a full-fledged Alexa competitor. You can’t ask it for the weather or to add items to your to-do list; instead, it’s specifically tailored for music and controlling your Sonos system. That means you can ask Sonos to move music you’re playing from one speaker to another, or to play on all the connected speakers in your house. Simple commands like volume and skipping tracks work, as well. 

Those limited commands, plus play and pause controls, will even work on Bluetooth speakers like the Roam and Move when they’re not connected to WiFi. Sonos also promises that setup will be a simple matter of turning on the feature in the Sonos app – since you’re not connecting to a third-party system, you don’t have to bounce between multiple apps to get things working here. 

You may be wondering why you’d use Sonos Voice Control over one of the other voice assistants that work with its speakers. The company thinks privacy will be a big selling point here, as it cites research that a lot of people who don’t set up voice commands on Sonos speakers do so because of privacy concerns. But Sonos Voice Control gets around that by doing everything on-device – the company was explicit about this in a press conference, saying that no voice commands are saved or sent off the device back to Sonos. 

This has another benefit: Sonos Voice Control is fast. Most of the time, there’s no need for the speaker to verbally respond to your query, so you just ask it to play a song and the song plays. Obviously, we’ll need to do more testing with the software’s final version, but in a demo I saw earlier this week, the performance was extremely impressive. When I ask smart speakers to play music, there’s usually a noticeable pause as the speaker pings the internet and starts streaming music. Most of the time, the assistant also repeats what you asked for before it starts playing. But with Sonos Voice Assistant, there’s no verbal response, and the time it takes to process and understand commands seems to be much faster than when I use Google Assistant or Alexa on my Sonos speakers. In my unscientific testing, Alexa is definitely faster than Google Assistant for most queries, but the Sonos assistant seemed faster still.

If you’re already using Alexa on your Sonos speakers, you can add the Sonos Voice Assistant to work alongside Alexa. You can use the “Hey Sonos” wake phrase to control your music and still ask Alexa to do all the things it can do. Unfortunately, though, that’s not the case with Google Assistant; you can only use Google’s voice commands or Sonos, not both. In the past Sonos has alluded to Google being the reason that you couldn’t use both Alexa and the Google Assistant on its speakers, and that appears to be the case here, too.

As for how Sonos landed on Giancarlo Esposito for their voice assistant, the company says it considered numerous different options, including computer-generated male, female and gender-neutral options. But ultimately, the company wanted to go with a voice that would be familiar to many users – one that had more personality than you’d get from a generic voice. That said, you don’t hear Esposito talk too much, as the system is designed to talk back to you only when you directly ask it for information, like what song is playing. Sonos says it will add more voices over time as Voice Control arrives in more regions, but a company spokesperson declined to say whether they would come from well-known actors like Esposito. 

Sonos Voice Control is set to arrive in the US on June 1st, followed by France later this year. 

Once in a blue moon, Sonos releases its speakers in some fun colors or finishes, but most of the time, people just have to pick between black and white. But starting today, you can get the portable Sonos Roam in three new shades; Wave, Sunset and Olive. As you might guess, Wave is a chill shade of light blue, Sunset straddles the line between orange and pink and olive is a cactus sort of green. 

Aside from these colors, there's nothing else new with the $179 speaker — it has a built-in battery for about 10 hours of play time, Bluetooth for when you're away from WiFi, a microphone for voice commands via Alexa and Google Assistant and auto Trueplay technology to tune the speaker for optimal sound wherever you place it. I really liked the speaker when I reviewed it last year, and even though it costs $10 more than it did when it launched, I still think it's a great portable speaker that is a smart addition if you're already using other Sonos products.

There will be one new features for the Roam on June 1st, though. The speaker is one of many in the Sonos portfolio that'll work with the just-announced Sonos Voice Command platform. It's the company's own voice assistant that's specifically focused on controlling your speakers with speed and privacy top of mind. You can read more about that here, and you can order the Roam in these new colors today at the Sonos website.

Sonos products have never been cheap; in fact, the company raised prices on most of them last year. But Sonos has also recently released some products that push things into more affordable territory. Last year, the company released the $179 portable Sonos Roam speaker, and later followed up with a microphone-free version for $159, the cheapest Sonos yet. Home theater speakers, however, have remained premium products, with the $449 Beam being the cheapest soundbar option the company makes.

That changes today with the Ray, Sonos’ most compact and inexpensive soundbar, which arrives June 7th. At $279, it’s not competing on price with bargain options like Roku’s $130 Streambar. But in an advance demo earlier this week, it was clear that the Ray is a powerful soundbar that will provide a massive upgrade over just about any TV’s built-in speakers. Sonos made a few compromises to hit that $279 price point, but I think for a lot of people, it will make more sense than spending $449 on the Beam.

Like other Sonos speakers, the Ray connects to WiFi so you can stream audio to it from a range of popular services. You can group it with other Sonos speakers for multi-room playback and send songs to it via AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect. Since it’s a soundbar, it connects to your TV with an optical cable to play whatever audio is coming through your television. And, like other Sonos soundbars, you can wirelessly pair the Ray with the Sonos Sub for extra bass, or a pair of Sonos One speakers for true rear surround sound. This last point makes it an ideal entry point into a Sonos home theater system that you can build up over time.

Sonos

To keep the price below $300, Sonos made some changes that it believes won’t be a major concern to its target audience. Since the Ray uses optical audio rather than HDMI, it has less audio bandwidth than the Beam and Arc soundbars. This means that the Ray is only capable of decoding Stereo PCM, Dolby Digital and DTS Digital Surround; it’s incompatible with Dolby Atmos, a major difference from Sonos’ other home theater products. It does keep an ethernet port for faster networking performance, though.

Sonos also skipped out on including a microphone here, so you can’t use it directly with the new Sonos Voice Control feature or other assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant. In addition, the Ray has simpler speaker internals than what you’ll find on the Beam and Arc. All told, you get two center midwoofers, two tweeters with split waveguides to broaden the speaker’s soundstage, a bass reflex system that provides a surprising amount of low-end performance, and four Class-D amplifiers.

Sonos

The speaker has a tapered design and forward-facing speaker components, unlike the Beam and Arc. Sonos says this is so you can tuck the Ray inside of a media stand without sound bouncing off the walls. This is part of the overall vision for a product built for smaller spaces than other Sonos soundbars, which are both large and loud. (As usual with Sonos products, it comes in both black and white, either of which should look just fine in a wide variety of homes.)

Naturally, the Ray’s speaker setup is more modest than more expensive Sonos speakers, but in practice it still provides an impressively well-balanced listening experience, whether it be music or movies. Sonos said that it focused on areas where it felt built-in TV speakers were particularly lacking, like dialog reproduction and bass. Both of those characteristics were definitely noticeable in the demo. Naturally, we’ll need to do some closer listening to see how it compares to other soundbars from Sonos as well as its competitors, but the Ray made a positive first impression. Like other Sonos speakers, too, you can use an iOS device to enable Trueplay speaker-tuning technology to optimize the Ray’s sound for your specific environment.

At first glance, it seems the Ray offers a lot of value for $279. In some ways, Sonos is positioning it as the “gateway drug” for its home theater lineup, similar to how the Roam serves as an entry into the Sonos ecosystem. Like the Roam, the Ray costs more than some competing products, but that cost gets you a full-fledged Sonos device with all the benefits that entails, including a focus on audio quality. You could definitely get a less expensive soundbar, but Sonos isn’t trying to be the cheapest by any means necessary. Instead, it’s trying to bring the power and clarity of its other soundbars to a smaller, more affordable package. How successful it’ll be remains to be seen, but at first listen the Ray could attract a lot of people interested in something like the Sonos Beam, but who were otherwise scared off by its price.

A lone electric scooter sits abandoned on a busy sidewalk. It’s an all too frequent sight in cities around the world and one of the primary reasons local governments have been resistant to partnering with companies like Spin to bring micromobility services to their communities. But with the help of Google and the company’s new ARCore Geospatial API, Bird believes it has a solution to the problem. With its new Visual Parking System technology, Bird claims it’s developed a way to locate parked scooters with pinpoint accuracy.

The next time you use a Bird scooter in a city where the company supports VPS, its app will prompt you to use your phone’s camera to scan the surrounding area. The software will then compare your images against a Google database that includes photos from Street View. When you need to park your scooter, an augmented reality interface will help you do so in the right spot. Bird says the technology will allow it to reward riders who show good parking behavior more easily.

“The end result is cleaner sidewalks, more organized parking and better functioning micromobility programs thanks to the world’s first scalable, hyper-accurate, virtual parking system,” the company says of VPS. Bird is currently testing the technology in New York City, San Francisco and San Diego. It will expand the availability of VPS to more cities in the coming weeks and months.

As you might imagine, Bird isn’t the only company trying to solve the problem of inconsiderate customers parking their rental scooters in all the wrong places. Most of the companies in the space, including Ford-owned Spin and Europe’s Voi, have announced their own proposed solutions to the problems. But many of those rely on AI and remote piloting. Bird’s tool would appear to offer something different with an approach that rewards customers for being considerate of the public and other users.

Follow all of the news from Google I/O 2022 right here!

The privacy-focused browser DuckDuckGo has updated its Chrome extension to block two new ad targeting methods that are a part of Google’s Privacy Sandbox. In a blog post, DuckDuckGo informed users that they can block Google Topics and FLEDGE via its extension, or just disable the “Privacy Sandbox” setting in Chrome. The search giant’s Privacy Sandbox initiative — its alternative method of tracking and targeting users for online ads that Google argues is more privacy-focused — has been met with scrutiny by regulators and privacy advocates. DuckDuckGo has joined the chorus criticizing Google’s new ad tech, which the search giant is currently testing on a limited number of users.

“While some suggest that Topics is a less invasive way of ad targeting, we don't agree. Why not? Fundamentally it’s because, by default, Google Chrome will still be automatically surveilling your online activity and sharing information about you with advertisers and other parties so they can behaviorally target you without your consent,” wrote DuckDuckGo’s product director Peter Dolanjski in the post.

The company also called out Google’s FLEDGE (short for First Locally-Executed Decision over Groups Experiment), its new method of ad re-targeting (otherwise known as those obnoxious ads that follow users wherever they go on the web). Unlike older methods, Google claims that FLEDGE allows for re-marketing with relying on a personal identifier about users. FLEDGE will also be directly baked in Google’s Chrome browser, instead of traditional ad re-targetting which occurs through third-party cookies.

“When you visit a website where the advertiser may want to later follow you with an ad, the advertiser can tell your Chrome browser to put you into an interest group. Then, when you visit another website which displays ads, your Chrome browser will run an ad auction based on your interest groups and target specific ads at you. So much for your browser working for you!,” wrote Dolanjski.

It’s possibly just lip service, but Google has emphasized that it’s accepting feedback from privacy advocates and regulators as it continues to test Privacy Sandbox. UK’s competition watchdog gave Privacy Sandbox a cautious stamp of approval earlier this year. Phasing out third-party cookies has taken Google longer than expected. Google has regularly updated its Privacy Sandbox timeline, and the new estimate is that it will gradually stop supporting third-party cookies over a three-month period in late 2023.