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Apple Music's spatial audio is now available for those who'd rather spend their nights at the club than the concert hall. The service is now offering DJ mixes in Dolby Atmos that promise a more immersive dance music experience — not quite like sweating through an all-night rave, but considerably closer. The initiative kicks off today with an enhanced One Mix set from Detroit techno legend Jeff Mills (above) as well as 15 Boiler Room sets from stars like Boys Noize and The Blessed Madonna.

You can expect more spatial audio mixes throughout the year, including monthly One Mix episodes and Boiler Room albums. Apple hasn't teased future artists, although it is promising the "finest DJs" from the dance and electronic music realms.

Spatial audio is only automatically enabled for AirPods and some Beats headphones. You can use capable third-party gear, but you'll need to manually enable support and forego head tracking.

It's not surprising to see Apple expand Atmos support to the mix-and-scratch crowd. Spatial audio is a selling point for Apple Music and AirPods, of course, but electronic artists were also some of the first to embrace surround sound — just ask anyone familiar with Amon Tobin's gigs. In theory, you're more likely to keep your Apple Music membership knowing that a favorite DJ might produce an Atmos mix you won't get at rival services.

You've long been able to use a DualSense controller with your PC, but it wasn't quite so appealing when you couldn't update the firmware without access to a PlayStation 5. Thankfully, that's no longer necessary. Sony has released a firmware update tool for Windows that lets you upgrade the DualSense through a USB connection on your PC — no console required. You won't miss out on bug fixes or refinements just because you prefer computer gaming.

The software requires Windows 10 or 11. You'll need to update multiple controllers one at a time.

The tool will be helpful for PC-only gamers who want the same controller functionality as their PS5 counterparts, of course. At the same time, it might also useful for Remote Play. You can keep a DualSense by your computer knowing that you won't have to visit the living room (and partly defeat the purpose of Remote Play) just to bring the gamepad up to date.

Just ahead of Earth Day on Friday, Amazon has announced investments in 37 more renewable energy projects around the world. The company says these will increase its renewable energy capacity by almost 30 percent, up from 12.2 gigawatts to 15.7 GW.

The company claims the new investments will help it to power its operations entirely with renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of the original timeline. The latest projects are in the US, Spain, France, Australia, Canada, India, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. They include wind farms, solar farms and eight solar rooftop installations on Amazon buildings. A 500 MW solar farm in Texas will be Amazon's largest renewable energy project to date in terms of capacity.

Amazon has now invested in 310 projects in 19 countries. It says that when they're all up and running, they'll generate enough energy to power 3.9 million homes. The quantity of carbon-free energy they'll generate will help avoid 17.3 million metric tons of emissions each year — the equivalent of taking more than 3.7 million combustion engine cars off roads.

In 2019, Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge, a vow to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. That's 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement's deadline. Along the more than 300 signatories that have joined the pledge are Microsoft, IBM and Best Buy.

Amazon said it will invest $2 billion into decarbonization efforts through the Climate Pledge Fund. Along with the accelerated timeline for fully switching to renewable energy, Amazon aims to make its shipments net-zero carbon. It hopes to be halfway to that goal by 2030 and to help it get there, the company placed an order with Rivian for 100,000 electric delivery vehicles.

BMW isn't letting Mercedes' EQS go unanswered. The German marque has introduced its first completely electric 7 series, the i7 xDrive60. The long-wheelbase luxury sedan offers solid performance, with a dual-motor setup providing 536HP, a 0-60MPH sprint in 4.5 seconds and a preliminary EPA range of 300 miles. As with the conventional 7 series, though, the focus is on creature comforts — this is designed as much for chauffeured executives as it is for drivers.

That driver will see a curved dual-display interface that includes a 12.3-inch instrument panel and a 14.9-inch infotainment screen. BMW is touting a smartphone-like interface, but you'll also find a new "Interaction Bar" that provides touch-sensitive controls for common features like climate settings and hazard lights. You can even customize the bar's lighting to react to certain events, such as incoming calls or invoking BMW's Intelligent Personal Assistant (including from the rear seats, for the first time).

As we mentioned, though, the best experience is likely in the back. Spring for the optional Theater Screen and you'll get a 31-inch, 32:9 ratio 8K rear display with a Fire TV interface. Rear window shades will even close when you switch the system on. Each rear door has its own 5.5-inch touchscreen for climate, media and seating controls, while a standard panoramic LED roof can produce a light show in addition to showing the sky above. You'll have access to 5G, including a "Personal eSIM" that can migrate between cars. 

Other tech upgrades include an optional Highway Assistant (part of a Driving Assistance Professional Package) that provides hands-free driving up to 80MPH, a smarter Parking Assistant Professional with remote control and a Maneuver Assistant that can replicate tricky driving scenarios (such as a tight parking garage). An augmented reality view on the instrument screen merges video with directions and similar info, while the doors will both detect potential hazards and (with another option) automatically open by touching the handles or Interaction Bar. Owners of recent, UWB-equipped iPhones can also use Digital Key Plus to automatically lock and unlock the doors, and eventually open the doors or activate the alarm system.

Unsurprisingly, this excess will cost you. The i7 xDrive60 will start at $120,295 ($119,300 plus a destination fee) when it reaches the US in the fourth quarter of the year, and that's before you add extras like the 36-speaker Bowers & Wilkins Diamond Surround Sound System. That's not an outlandish price for BMW's target audience, though, and it undercuts the $125,900 of the EQS 580.

With self-driving vehicles possibly arriving on UK roads later this year, the government is starting to put rules in place to accommodate them, the BBC has reported. As part of that, it will allow drivers in autonomous vehicles to watch TV from an infotainment screen in self-driving mode, as long as they're ready to take back control. That's a modification of a law that has been on the books since 1986 that prohibits drivers from viewing a "television-receiving apparatus" when behind the wheel.

It will still not allow the use of mobile phones, which were officially banned in the UK last year. That's because automakers can implement technology to stop a car's built-in screen from displaying content when the driver needs to take back control, but can't do the same on a smartphone. The government also decided that insurance companies and not people will be liable for accident claims in a number of circumstances. The changes will be an "interim measure" until an all-new set of rules can be put in place by 2025.

Self-driving cars are not yet legal in the UK, but the Department for Transport (DfT) said they may be ready later in 2022. A year ago, the government announced that basic self-driving cars with automated lane-keeping systems could arrive on British roads by the end of last year. 

The UK government predicted that self-driving tech could "improve road safety across Britain by reducing human error, which is a contributory factor in 88 percent of all recorded road collisions." In the meantime, though, self-driving tech has gone nowhere over the last few years, apart from a few exceptions like GM's Cruise offering public driverless taxi rides in San Francisco. 

A court in London has formally issued the order to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US. That puts his fate in the hands of UK home secretary Priti Patel, who'll be the one deciding whether Assange will be sent back to the US where he's set to face espionage charges. WikiLeaks made waves in 2010 after publishing thousands of classified documents and diplomatic cables sent to the US State Department. Assange is wanted in the US for 18 criminal charges due to those leaks, and he could face up to 175 years in prison if convicted.

Assange sought refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy of London in 2012 and stayed there for years until his asylum was withdrawn in 2019. WikiLeaks claimed back then that the embassy spied on its founder and took photos, videos and audio recordings of him. He was arrested from the embassy, and the US government has been trying to get him extradited since then. 

In January 2021, a British court ruled that he shouldn't be extradited to the United States to stand trial, because "the risk to his mental and physical wellbeing was too great." However, the US government appealed and argued that he had no history of "serious and enduring mental illness." A UK appeals court reversed the previous ruling in December 2021, opening the doors for his extradition. 

Assange joined the most recent trial via video call from the Belmarsh Prison in London. The extradition order was issued by Paul Goldspring, the chief magistrate, who said during the trial: "I am duty bound to send your case to the secretary of state for a decision." According to The Guardian, Assange's side will have the chance to sway Patel's decision by sending the home secretary "serious submissions" and could also challenge issues he lost in court but haven't appealed yet. And it is possible to convince a home secretary to block extraditions — former UK home secretary Theresa May blocked Scottish hacker Gary McKinnon's extradition on human rights grounds. British activist Lauri Love also successfully convinced the UK High Court to side with him when he appealed his extradition orders. 

Researchers in Japan have developed a set of electric chopsticks they claim enhance the taste of salt. The device is attached to a wristband computer. It uses electrical stimulation to transmit sodium ions from food to the eater's mouth, according to Meiji University professor Homei Miyashita, who developed the chopsticks with food and drink maker Kirin.

Reuters

Miyashita is also the person behind the lickable TV that was announced a few months ago. Japan was also where I first saw a similarly specced-out electric fork, using the same theories, but with the Western implement. It’s an unusual sensation: like air-fried food compared to actually fried food, it was a different, almost salty, kind of experience.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Amazon ordered to reinstate warehouse worker who was fired after protest

• Bang & Olufsen's Beoplay EX earbuds have an AirPods-like design

• Mercedes' EQS SUV arrives in US showrooms this year

• 'Love Death and Robots' Season 3 comes to Netflix on May 20th

• Amy Hennig's studio is making a Star Wars game

• Apple workers at New York store call for minimum wage of $30 per hour

• Sega's Super Game project already has a ‘Crazy Taxi’ reboot underway

• Apple's 14-inch MacBook Pro is back down to a record low of $1,749

Samsung's Pokémon-themed Galaxy Z Flip 3 is a delight

It comes with a Pokédex pouch.

Samsung

If this doesn’t get you into foldables, nothing will.

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Audi’s Urbansphere EV concept is for tomorrow's megacities

What can a car be when it has to be more than a car?

Audi

Audi is reimagining the role of the vehicle’s cabin space — from a rigid, safety-centered, face-forward setup to a more open, communal design. This is the biggest Audi concept vehicle to date. It sits on 24-inch rims and measures a whopping 18 feet in length — the same as GM’s Hummer EV; it's over 6.5 feet wide and 5.8 feet tall. And because the Urbansphere doesn’t have to account for a conventional arrangement of a combustion-powered car's components, “it prioritizes the occupants’ need to experience ample space as a distinctive comfort factor.”

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The best webcams you can buy

Time to upgrade from your tiny laptop cam.

Even if you’re back to taking some of your meetings in the office, chances are back-to-back Zoom calls are now a permanent part of your professional life. Once an afterthought, your computer’s webcam has become one of its most important components — and the fact remains that most built-in cameras are not able to provide consistent high-quality video chat experiences. We tested out a bunch of the latest webcams to see which are worth your money and which you can safely skip.

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This third-party Sony camera battery has a built-in USB-C port

Why isn't this how all rechargeable batteries work?

Nitecore's UFZ100 has a built-in USB-C port so you don’t need to use a proprietary Sony power adapter to charge it. The battery also includes a handy LED indicator to tell you when it’s below 10 percent charge. With a 2,250mAh capacity, it’s only slightly smaller than Sony’s 2,280mAh NP-FZ100 and works with many of the company’s most recent camera models, including the A6600 and A7 IV. One thing we don’t know about the UFZ100 yet is how much it’ll cost. Third-party battery manufacturers tend to price their offerings lower than Sony, Canon and Nikon, but the added USB-C port on the UFZ100 could make it more expensive.

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Lexus has today announced the RZ, the luxury marque’s second entry into the EV market, and the first designed from the ground-up as an electric vehicle. With a 71.4kWh battery and a claimed range of around 280 miles, the RZ will also show off a new active four-wheel drive system dubbed DIRECT4. That will, so the company says, enable the car to automatically distribute force to each wheel according to its need. And Lexus says that DIRECT4 will offer “excellent driving performance” with a “stronger human-machine connection.”

Given this is Toyota’s luxury brand, there’s plenty of mention of omotenashi, the Japanese concept of overwhelming your guests with hospitality. Here, Lexus says that owners can expect lots of interior space and plenty of comfort, both for the driver and their passengers. Rear passengers look like they’ll get decent legroom, and a dimming panoramic roof will help make those seats feel a little more spacious, especially compared to most Lexus crossover SUVs.

Lexus

Of course, the only thing anyone will likely want to focus on is the steering yoke, because you can’t drive a futuristic EV with something as old-fashioned as a wheel, come on. (Don't worry, it's an option, the default version comes with a wheel). 

The RZ isn’t Lexus first foray into making a battery electric vehicle, and offered a EV version of its UX series (the 300e), which garnered lukewarm praise from critics. The Lexus build quality and luxury on offer might have been appreciated, but with a range under 200 miles, cramped rear space and poor charging dimmed its shine. Thankfully, the RZ is based on the same e-TNGA EV platform you’ll find underpinning both Toyota’s new bZ4X and Subaru’s Solterra. And we’d expect the RZ to sit as a fancier-pantsier version of the bZ4X, with better interior options and the already-mentioned longer range.

Lenovo launched a new smart clock at CES earlier this year, and it improved upon its previous models by giving it a pogo docking pin at the bottom and support for Amazon's Alexa. If you've been thinking of picking it up but haven't gotten the chance to until now, you may want to head over to the device's listing at Best Buy. Lenovo's Smart Clock Essential with Alexa is currently on sale for $45 on the retailer's website only for today — there's less than 20 hours left for the deal as of this writing. That's $25 off the smart clock's $70 retail price and lower than a previous deal at Amazon. 

The Smart Clock Essential with Alexa retains the brand's Smart Clock 2 cloth design. While its predecessors only supported Google Assistant, though, this model only supports the Alexa voice assistant. It has a 4-inch LED display that shows the time, day and real-time decibel levels in white text on a black background. Lenovo clearly kept things minimal for the model and gave it just a few buttons for the volume, for activating assistant and for setting the alarm.

Lenovo's compatible docks for the device are optional, but they do improve the experience. The brand has docks that can accommodate the clock along with a wireless charging-capable device like smartphones, for instance. It also sells the Ambient Light Dock in either a sea lion or a squid design that works as a nightlight. You can get the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential from Best Buy at a discount right now in both Misty Blue and Clay Red. 

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

Following a breach of its systems in January, Okta has released a forensic report finding that the threat group Lapsus$ accessed just two active customers via a third-party company. Lapsus$ "actively controlled" a workstation belong to an engineer at support firm Sitel for 25 minutes on January 21st, the company said. 

"The threat actor actively controlled a single workstation, used by a Sitel support engineer, with access to Okta resources," wrote Okta chief security officer David Bradbury. "During that limited window of time, the threat actor accessed two active customer tenants within the SuperUser application and viewed limited additional information in certain other applications like Slack and Jira that cannot be used to perform actions in Okta customer tenants."

While just two customers were accessed, many more users might have been affected, as Otka has 15,000 customers but over 100 million individual users. Despite the access, though, Lapsus$ was not able to do any MFA or password resets, configuration changes or customer support impersonation, Okta said. "The threat actor was unable to authenticate directly to any Okta accounts." 

It took Okta two months to notify customers of the Lapsus$ breach, and eventually released a statement saying it "made a mistake" in how it handled things. In a blog post last month, it revealed that 2.5 percent of its customers may have had their data viewed or acted upon during a five day window.

It now looks like the breach was far more limited in scope, but Okta said it took lessons from the situation. It terminated its relationship with the contractor in question and promised to strengthen audit procedures for others. It's also going to directly manage the devices of third parties with access to customer support tools so it can respond more "effectively" to incidents. Finally, it's adopting new systems to "help us communicate more rapidly with customers" on security issues.