The long-running dispute between the European Commission and Apple over the use of its payment technology could soon come to an end. The Commission has officially announced Apple's plan to open up its Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology, used for tap-and-go payments, to third-party mobile wallet providers. Rumors of Apple's proposal first surfaced in December 2023.
The Commission opened an investigation into Apple in 2020 over potentially restricting rival mobile wallet pay developers' access to necessary technology, thus eliminating Apple Pay's competition. Two years later, it announced charges against Apple for allegedly violating the European Union's antitrust laws, which, if proven, could leave Apple with a massive bill.
Apple's proposal compromises on its previous assertions that third parties could negatively impact security. If approved, Apple would, among other things, allow third parties to APIs with NFC functionality — no fee or use of Apple Pay or wallet required. This shift would include access to technology that keeps payment information secure. Apple would apply this to any developers and iOS users registered in the European Economic Area (EEA). However, people outside the EEA might still be able to use third-party apps. Apple also claims it will call upon an independent reviewer in disputed instances where the company denied NFC access. All suggested changes and prior press releases on the case are available here.
As expected, the European Commission has not rushed to accept Apple's proposed commitments. Instead, it has laid them out and requested feedback from Apple's rivals (and any other interested entities) on whether the laid-out changes are acceptable.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-offers-to-open-up-nfc-payments-to-rival-companies-in-eu-antitrust-case-130528339.html?src=rss
Apple's much-anticipated mixed reality headset, the Vision Pro, is now available for pre-order in the US through the company's website and all its stores across the country. Interested buyers may want to take note that they have to scan their face with an iPhone or iPad using Face ID when they pre-order to make sure they're getting a precise band fit. The company designed the Vision Pro with a modular system so that users can customize it to fit them perfectly — it will, after all, set them back at least $3,499 for the version with 256GB of storage.
People who need vision correction also have the option to add Zeiss optical inserts when they pre-order so that they won't need to wear their glasses inside the headset anymore. They can get reader inserts for $99 and prescription inserts for $149, though they have to provide an updated official prescription with their order to be able to purchase them.
The company's mixed reality headset is powered by visionOS, which users can control via gestures with their eyes and hands or with voice commands through Siri. Apple placed a lot of emphasis on its entertainment features when it officially introduced the device and said that it will support more than a million apps from the iOS and iPadOS ecosystems, along with apps especially made for its platform.
Some popular services like Netflix, YouTube and Spotify won't be available for download at launch, but early adopters will still have access to a number of entertainment apps, including Disney+, Max, Amazon Prime Video and Paramount+. Users will be able to place their apps anywhere in a 3D environment and, in Disney+'s case, be able to watch shows against a special immersive background like the Avengers Tower. They'll also be able to access their Mac on the headset, so they can work or do what they usually do on a laptop on a mixed reality device instead. The Apple Vision Pro will start shipping on February 2.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-vision-pro-pre-orders-are-now-open-130056024.html?src=rss
Ask and you shall receive. On January 16, Massive Monster and Devolver Digital released Cult of the Lamb’s much hyped “Sins of the Flesh” update for consoles and PC, bringing, among other things, a form of in-game sex to its cute-but-brutal world of anatomically incorrect animals and false prophets. It’s exactly what some fans have been asking for, and since its announcement, everyone, including Massive Monster, has been leaning into the fun of “the sex update” actually happening. But it turns out calling it the sex update was a major undersell.
Warning: This article contains spoilers from this point forward.
In actuality, there’s so much more to it — just take a look at the patch notes. As much as it is the sex update, “Sins of the Flesh” is also very much the poop update; the fashion update; the personality update; the lore update; the absolute chaos update. It’s Sozo’s second chance at life.
In order to access the bulk of the new content, you’ll need to be pretty deep into the game. The new spiritual currency (Sin) and the experiences that come with it all unlock after you’ve defeated your third Bishop. If you’re at least that far in, the Sin elements will show up after the first sermon or temple activity you conduct once the update has been downloaded. Otherwise, if you’re starting fresh with a new save file, it’ll be a while before you see most of the new material. Except for the poop, that is. There will be poop everywhere from the moment you start gaining followers — in all sorts of colors and, in some cases, in piles as big as a farming station.
“Sins of the Flesh” adds six new styles of poop, each with its own power. And I hate to say it, but I was squealing with excitement as I discovered each new variant. Golden poop, for example, comes with coins when you find it, and if used as fertilizer it can grow coins and gold bars alongside your crops. Rainbow poop will make your plants ready to harvest in an instant, which is really handy if your followers are starving. You’ll get fancy broom upgrades the more you clean up followers’ excrement, making chores more efficient.
All that poop early on was just a sign of the ruckus yet to come. In the double-digit hours I’ve already spent with the new content, havoc has broken loose in my cult again and again.
Engadget
Engadget
My followers, wasted off Brog Brew, keep getting into fights that I have to break up, and sometimes they chase me down to profess their love or heckle me. I watched a certain mushroom-headed eccentric eat one of his acolytes whole after he begged me to bring them into the cult, then had to throw him in prison for dissenting. I’ve hatched outright abominations, the results of letting followers of different species and cosmic classifications hook up in the Mating Tent.
Basically, we’re having a great time sinning, my followers and I. As a new form of currency, Sin can be spent on follower experiences — yes, including sex — and temple decorations. Similar to how Loyalty has always worked, in which each follower has a Loyalty meter, your followers will accumulate Sin by way of rituals and immoral activities, like getting hammered (excuse me, “befuddled”) at the Drinkhouse. There are new, Sin-based doctrines to further shape the cult’s dogma, and rituals that go all-in on your followers’ wickedness.
Perform the Rite of Wrath and your followers will unleash the most adorable mayhem upon the commune, destroying decorations and beating each other up. (Going hand-in-hand with this, your followers can now become injured, and the process of repairing things has become more interactive, using the same mechanics as when you’re cooking a meal.) Engage in the Gluttony of Cannibals ritual and one of your followers will be eaten by the group. If you prefer to sin peacefully, perform the Rite of Lust, and your followers will dance naked around the flower-adorned shrine.
Engadget
In some scenarios, you’ll need to designate specific followers to receive Sin — but be careful not to go overboard. Once a follower has taken on too much Sin, they’ll become damned and will leave the cult.
These characters aren’t necessarily gone forever, which is good news if you, like me, piled Sin onto your favorite follower (Webber <3) only to be sent into a spiraling panic when they’ve been damned. You’ll run into them again during crusades, and once you’ve killed them three times you’ll be able to bring them back with the resurrection ritual. Dissenters, too, now appear as fightable enemies in the dungeons, which I’ve enjoyed if only for the primal satisfaction of taking revenge on them for stealing from the cult and bouncing.
Multiple new structures tie directly in with the arrival of Sin. At the aforementioned Drinkhouse, your followers can consume beverages including Brog Brew, Juniper Drink, Grape Nectar, Eggnog and, I’m sorry to say, Poop Juice. The resources needed for beverage brewing, like hops and grapes, can be found during crusades or purchased as seeds from Rakshasa.
Engadget
You can build a drum circle, where you’ll play a Guitar Hero-style rhythm game to generate Sin in the follower of your choice. It’s a very short, very basic mini-game that does a fine job of bringing a bit of variation into the day-to-day cult gameplay without feeling completely out of place. If you’re looking for a ‘Get Sin fast!’ sort of solution, it comes in clutch. It functions like a ritual, though, meaning there’s a cooldown period after you play.
And of course, there’s the star of The Sex Update: the Mating Tent. Now, not every character can partake in the activitiesthat go down at the mating tent, and those who can have all been given the agency to reject a mating opportunity if they’re not into it. Sorry, The Lamb (aka you, the player), cannot mate with followers, nor can relatives — like the Bishops — mate with each other. Once you’ve chosen a compatible pair, you can pick traits from each follower to be carried over to their offspring. Then, they’ll seal the deal with a big smooch and into the tent they go.
That’s as explicit as it gets; Cult of the Lamb is no less wholesome with the introduction of sex. When the mating is over, your followers will come out exhausted and present you with an egg. It’s then up to you to make a choice: either crack that egg and feed it to one of your followers, or tend to the egg daily at the Hatchery, a structure that’s unlocked at the same time as the Mating Tent. If you go the cannibalism route, a yolk meal can be used as a youth elixir to give an elderly follower more time among the living. Or, you can make Eggnog. If you decide to hatch the egg instead, you’ll have to nurture the child until it reaches adulthood. As a Tamagotchi addict, I love this.
Massive Monster/Devolver Digital
With the update, you’ll also be able to unlock the Tailor building, and during your crusades you’ll find cotton to use for garment-making and meet the silkworm NPC, Berith, who will have the blueprints for clothes. This will allow you to craft new outfits for your followers. That includes a French maid outfit, which appears after you’ve earned it by cleaning up a ton of poop, and a bunch of different robes and tunics. It’s great to have a way to customize your followers’ appearances and, by consequence, the overall aesthetic of the cult a little more. You unfortunately can’t deck out your entire cult in French maid outfits, though — unlike other clothing items, it can only be worn by one follower at a time.
Tidbits of lore are now scattered throughout the dungeons, and you’ll have a new weapon — the Blunderbuss — to fight with. I’ll admit the Blunderbuss isn’t my favorite, but weapon choice is really personal and there are probably some who love it. It’s capable of rapid firing to some degree, but just know you’ll have to take reloading time into account.
There are a few new follower forms, including snake, worm and a shaggy dog. That last form was made in honor of the Art Director’s deceased pet, which breaks my heart and warms it simultaneously. Additional follower traits have added a little more depth to the cult members themselves, too; it turns out some of my followers are absolute cowards. And, for anyone who was gutted to find Sozo dead after building the mushroom shrine, rejoice — he’s back with an extended questline. You just need to visit the Spore Grotto to pick up his mushroom hat so you can plant it back at the cult and resurrect him. But don’t trust him for one second.
Engadget
Engadget
If you’ve played all the way through Cult of the Lamb and have long since earned every achievement, “Sins of the Flesh” injects a welcome amount of freshness into the year-and-a-half-old game. It doesn’t expand the map in any significant way to give you more room for your cult, which may be a disappointment to some whose home bases have become overcrowded, and a new cap that prevents followers from exceeding level 10 will be a blow to players who have been trying to push Narinder to extreme levels of devotion.
But the promise of new discoveries and achievements for completionists to work toward gives you more incentive to keep venturing back into the dungeons. The cult life feels more dynamic now, requiring the player to engage a bit more with the home environment, and in turn letting you deepen your connection to your followers by providing more ways for you to keep up with their care.
Honestly, it’s hard to believe it’s all free. Kudos to the team for that. Alongside the update, the developers have also released some cosmetic DLC in the $7 Sinful Pack, which adds a few more decorations and follower forms — aptly including a Sphynx cat, a nude icon.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sins-of-the-flesh-adds-longevity-and-sex-to-cult-of-the-lamb-130041583.html?src=rss
A Call of Dutygame sells. That’s what it does. And it usually tops the sales charts each year. Pretty much every year since 2009. Activision’s warfare simulations (we can just call them first-person shooters, right?) have mostly done just that. Last year’s a bit different: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III landed in second place.
To convey the gravitational pull of CoD, when Microsoft was fighting to buy Activision Blizzard – makers of the game series — the Xbox maker had to make concessions and ensure the games would come to PlayStation and other platforms to make the purchase happen.
This time around, however, Hogwarts Legacy — a game not without its own controversies — beat it to the top spot. It did benefit from being the only Harry Potter game in a decade. In that time, there have been 11 Call of Duty releases. Headlines aside, the series will be fine. Another thing worth noting: 2022’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II still took the number seven spot.
— Mat Smith
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Younger users won’t be able to turn off the Nighttime Nudges.
Instagram’s latest mindfulness feature targets teens. When a younger user scrolls for more than 10 minutes in Reels or their DMs, the app will suggest they close the app and get to bed. Nighttime Nudges will automatically appear on teen accounts, and it won’t be possible to switch them off. Instagram didn’t specify whether the feature will be for all teenagers or just under 18s.
According to Bloomberg, Google’s YouTube and Spotify don’t have any plans to develop an application for Apple’s Vision Pro, at the moment. YouTube won’t make its iPad app available for download on the headset, either. For these apps — including Netflix — users will have to watch things through the web browser. In most cases, this will mean losing the ability to watch or listen to content offline. According to MacStories, Meta’s Instagram and Facebook might also be missing from the Vision Pro’s app store. Companies might be waiting to see whether it’s worth dedicating resources for the $3,500 headset — the Apple Watch took time to generate its own app library.
The Rabbit R1 launch left many questions unanswered, with some of us wary of it being the vaporware candidate from this year’s CES. Now, Rabbit has revealed which LLM (large language model) will power the device’s interaction: Perplexity. Fortunately, you won’t need to pay for a subscription. The first 100,000 R1 buyers will receive a year of Perplexity Pro, for free. This advanced service adds file upload support, a daily quota of over 300 complex queries. Perplexity is a San Francisco-based startup with investment from NVIDIA and Jeff Bezos.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-is-call-of-duty-losing-its-grip-on-gamers-121526020.html?src=rss
X (formerly Twitter) rolled out audio and video calling for iOS users back in October 2023. Now, the feature is coming to Android, with an engineer at X, @enriquebrgn, sharing the news in a post: "Audio and video calls on X slowly rolling out for Android users today! Update your app and call your mother."
audio and video calls on X slowly rolling out for android users today! update your app and call your mother
Linda Yaccarino, X's CEO, first announced video chat on the platform last August as part of her and owner Elon Musk's plan to create an "everything" app. Of course, the perks that come along with their grand plan, including placing audio and video calls, are primarily available only to premium subscribers. However, any users can receive calls, whether or not they help fund Musk's dreams (which will cost you $8 per month or $84 annually).
If WhatsApp, Zoom, Teams and more are enough for you, it's easy to turn calls off on X. Go into settings and click privacy and safety, then direct messages. There, you'll see an option that says enable audio and video calling, which you can make sure is switched off. Alternatively, you can control who can call you on X. Limits include people in your address book, verified users and people you follow. These restrictions can be helpful to avoid unwanted calls, as the person on the other end of the line doesn't need your phone number to contact you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-introduces-audio-and-video-calls-for-android-users-104015500.html?src=rss
UP CM Signs The Much-Awaited Semiconductor Policy 2024
As per the policy, the state government would provide 50 percent subsidy of the capital subsidy offered by the central government
The state government of Uttar Pradesh has now finally signed the much-awaited semiconductor policy 2024. Uttar Pradesh is now the fourth state in India after Gujarat, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu to have its own semiconductor policy. According to the state cabinet, the policy would provide incentives to the investors, which will help the state in becoming a massive hub of semiconductor industry.
When the earliest users of Apple's Vision Pro get their headsets in February, they'll find a few of the most popular entertainment apps missing from its system's app store. According to Bloomberg, Google's YouTube and Spotify don't have any plans to develop an application for visionOS, the device's platform, at the moment. A YouTube representative also told the publication that it's not going to make its iPad app available for download on the headset for now. "YouTube users will be able to use YouTube in Safari on the Vision Pro at launch," the spokesperson said. As for Spotify, a source told the publication that it doesn't intend to make its iPad app downloadable on the Vision Pro, as well.
As MacStories noted in a report listing popular apps that will be compatible with the headset at launch, apps for the iPhone and iPad will automatically show up on the device's store by default. Developers have to opt out of making their apps downloadable on the Vision Pro. It's unclear why YouTube and Spotify have chosen not to make their apps available on the headset, but they're not the only ones. Bloombergpreviously reported that Netflix won't be releasing a dedicated app for the Vision Pro either. In addition, Netflix told the publication that subscribers will have to access its service from a browser on the device, which means its iPad app won't be downloadable. Based on MacStories' report, Meta' Instagram and Facebook might also be missing from the Vision Pro's app store.
These companies may have chosen to wait and see whether it's worth dedicating resources towards creating a dedicated app for the $3,500 headset. They may also be worried about having to deal with potential issues that Vision Pro users could encounter if they use the iPad versions of the apps on a device that's from a totally different category. That said, the first Vision Pro users will still have a lot of entertainment apps to choose from, including Disney+, which is giving users access to special immersive environments that can serve as backdrops for its shows.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-vision-pro-wont-have-access-to-youtube-and-spotify-apps-at-launch-083434306.html?src=rss
[Heath Paddock] wanted to confound his friends with a game that mimics an escape room in a box. About six months after starting, he had this glorious thing completed. It’s a hardware version of a game called Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes where players have five minutes to defuse a suitcase bomb. This implementation requires at least two players, one with the box-bomb itself, and one who holds all the knowledge but can’t see the box-bomb to defuse it.
The wiring of the Mastermind module.
[Heath]’s version has twice as many modules as the original game, each hand-wired one driven by an Arduino. One of the modules is an LED maze. There are two green anchor LEDs in one of six configurations, and and blue and a red LED.
The object is to move the blue LED next to the red one without touching any walls. Of course, the box-holder can’t see the walls and must describe the configuration of the anchor LEDs to their partner in order to get started.
All of the modules are quite different, which likely makes for an extremely fun and challenging five minutes. [Heath] reports that getting inter-module communication down was a long road. Eventually, [Heath] settled on a mesh network configuration and connected everything in a big loop. Be sure to check out the walk-through video after the break.
Welcome to the DIY world of Circuit Digest! In this blog, we're going to show you How to build your own Simple CCTV Security Camera using an ESP32 camera module. From tinkering with hardware connections to coding functionalities and enabling remote access, join us on a step-by-step tutorial to craft a cost-effective and customizable surveillance solution.
The components we will need to build these parts are: -
The Rabbit R1 launch at CES left many questions unanswered, but earlier today, the brand finally shed light on which LLM (large language model) will be powering the device's interaction with us mere mortals. The AI provider in question is none other than Perplexity, a San Francisco-based startup with ambitions to overtake Google in the AI space, which is no wonder that it has already received investments from the likes of NVIDIA and Jeff Bezos.
Perplexity will be providing up-to-date search results via Rabbit's $199 orange brick — without the need of any subscription. That said, the first 100,000 R1 buyers will receive one year of Perplexity Pro subscription — normally costing $200 — for free. This advanced service adds file upload support, a daily quota of over 300 complex queries and the ability to switch to other AI models (GPT-4, Claude 2.1 or Gemini), though these don't necessarily apply to the R1's use case.
In case you were wondering:
Today we announced that we will use Perplexity as one of our key LLM services for r1 – and r1 still does not require any subscription to benefit from this partnership.
The $200 credit for Perplexity Pro is a standalone bonus kindly offered by… https://t.co/qYMM7TKFyZ
The Rabbit R1, designed by Teenage Engineering, features a 2.88-inch touchscreen, a scroll wheel, two mics, a speaker, a rotational camera and a "Push-to-Talk" button. By leveraging its Large Action Model (LAM), this dedicated gadget can perform tasks like booking rides, finding recipes based on the ingredients you have, identifying people and objects (including items in, say, your fridge), or just fact checking — which we now know will rely on Perplexity's real-time search engine. The R1 is available for pre-order now ahead of shipment in March or April.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-rabbit-r1-will-offer-up-to-date-answers-powered-by-perplexitys-ai-031313883.html?src=rss
