ArduinoMania

You may want to check your Google account storage situation if you back up your WhatsApp conversations to Drive on Android. In 2018, WhatsApp and Google announced that you could save your WhatsApp chat history to Drive without it counting towards your storage quota. But starting in December 2023, backing up the messaging app to Drive will count towards your Google account cloud storage space if you're WhatsApp beta user. If you don't use the app's beta version, you won't be feeling the change in policy until next year when it "gradually" makes its way to all Android devices. 

Personal Google accounts come with 15GB of free cloud storage shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos. In its announcement, Google noted that that's "three times more than most mobile platforms." Apple's iCloud, for instance, only comes with 5GB of free space. Still, it's very much possible (and maybe even easy at this point) to hit or go beyond 15GB, depending on how many pictures and files you've backed up and uploaded.

Google has linked to its storage management tools in its post to make it easier to remove large files or photos you no longer need. You can also delete items from within WhatsApp, so they'll no longer be included in your next backup. Of course, you also have the option to purchase extra storage with Google One, which will set you back at least $2 a month for 100GB. The company promises to provide eligible users with "limited, one-time Google One promotions" soon, though, so it may be best to wait for those before getting a subscription. Take note that this change will only affect you if you back up your chat history using your personal account. If you have a Workspace account through your job or another organization, you don't have to worry about WhatsApp taking up a chunk of your cloud storage space. 

Following the pedestrian collision on October 2nd, Cruise had its driverless vehicle permit revoked in California, but the company is now also voluntarily pausing its supervised and manual robotaxi operation in the US "in the coming days." This will be part of an expanded safety probe conducted by independent engineering consulting firm, Exponent, which originally came on board to focus on "a technical root cause analysis" of the aforementioned accident. The suspended manual operation will apparently affect around 70 vehicles — a fraction of Cruise's fleet of 950 robotaxis, which were recalled following the freak accident instigated by a separate hit-and-run.

The same announcement shared that Craig Glidden, General Motors' Executive Vice President of Legal and Policy and Cruise board member, will be joining the subsidiary as Chief Administrative Officer. The exec will oversee Cruise's legal, communications and finance teams, on top of his current role at GM. The company is also continuing its search for a permanent Chief Safety Officer, while retaining "a third-party safety expert in the coming weeks to perform a full assessment of Cruise’s safety operations and culture."

It'll be an uphill battle for Cruise from here on out. Recent reports discovered that these robotaxis struggled to detect children, not to mention the firm's seeming lack of data around child-specific situations on the streets. Despite this known flaw, Cruise continued to operate its autonomous vehicles on the streets. It is also reported that Cruise employees will face layoffs over the next two weeks, as the company struggles to regain trust from the public and authorities — not just for itself, but also for the entire robotaxi industry.

Roland just unveiled its latest software plugin instrument. Galaxias, not to be confused with the Galaga-esque arcade game Galaxia, offers access to 20,000 sounds, leading Roland to call it “one big super instrument.” It runs as a standalone application on both macOS and Windows, in addition to operating as a VST3 or AU plugin.

This looks a lot like Arturia’s amazing Analog Lab software, as Galaxias provides access to sounds across Roland’s entire history. There are presets sourced from nearly every Roland instrument you can think of, from the iconic Jupiter 8 synthesizer to the, uh, even more iconic TR 808 drum machine. These sounds aren’t just from retro darlings, as there are plenty of options culled from recent releases like System 8 and Zenology, among others.

As a matter of fact, the company says Galaxias provides access to any instrument available via Roland Cloud. You can also layer up to four instruments together, along with two effects per layer, to create custom soundscapes that Roland calls Scenes. Additionally, there are some beefed up adjustment parameters here, with macro controls that let you change up 128 parameters via internal LFOs or an external MIDI controller.

Roland

Just like Analog Lab, everything’s designed around a proprietary interface that allows for custom organization options, so you won’t lose your favorite preset in a mad dash to find the beefiest bassline. Roland also says that more sounds and capabilities will be added regularly.

Galaxias is available now and is included with a Roland Cloud Ultimate membership, which costs $200 per year or $20 each month. There’s a 30-day free trial for those curious about what all the fuss is about.

After helping tens of thousands of people get started with the world of electronics and Arduino-based microcontroller projects with the Arduino Workshop book, it was time to help and guide people further into more complex ideas and concepts that can enable a greater variety of possibilities.

To make this possible the great people at No Starch Press have published my latest book – “Arduino for Arduinians – 70 Projects for the Experienced Programmer“, which is written for several groups of people:

• Those who have worked through “Arduino Workshop” or a lesser book and are curious to learn more about what can be done with an Arduino or compatible board,
• Anyone with some experience in electronics and coding, who is happy to skip into more intermediate topics straight away.
• People who need a reference book for the wide variety of hardware and software tools described in the book,
• You. Yes, you. Learning is for a lifetime, and you’re reading this – so why not continue with the world of electronics and microcontrollers? Or give a copy to someone who enjoys learning more about technology?

Arduino for Arduinians is printed using a convenient lie-flat technology, so you can have the book open to your side and not worry about the pages flapping about and losing your position while working on your projects. All the required code is included in the book, however you can also download them along with a list of parts and supplier information from the book’s website.

Anyone with a modicum of Arduino knowledge can use this book, and if you’re coming from a different microcontroller platform – I genuinely believe you can get started with this book as well.

In some of the chapters, the use of external circuitry is required for ease of assembly, and in these cases you can download gerber files to have your own PCBs manufactured by one of the many low-cost providers. A sample of the project prototype PCBs are shown below:

And unlike some other books, each and every project has been built and tested so you can be confident of finding success very quickly.

The 8-bit Arduino platform is still, in my opinion, an inexpensive and most approachable way of learning about electronics and microcontrollers – and opens up a whole new world of creativity or even the pathway to a career in technology. A copy of Arduino for Arduinians will help the accomplished Arduino beginner continue with their journey.

To learn more about Arduino for Arduinians, you can review the table of contents, download a sample chapter, Arduino sketches and parts list and order copies for yourself and others from the No Starch Press online store. Orders from No Starch Press also include a free electronic copy so you can get started immediately.

You can also purchase copies from amazon, kindle, or your preferred bookseller.

If you are reading via Kindle on a PC – don’t copy and past the code from the Kindle reader. Instead, download the files from the book website.

And whatever you do, have fun and make something!

If you or a loved one are in the market for a new fitness tracker, you may want to check out Amazon’s early Black Friday deal on the Fitbit Charge 6. Just launched in September, the wearable — which works with Android and iOS smartphones — brings back the physical side button and deepens its Google integration. The tracker typically costs $160, but this Amazon Black Friday deal drops its price to $100, a record low.

Fitbit says the Charge 6 is the company’s most accurate heart rate tracker, offering up to 60 percent more accurate stats compared to previous models. In addition, it includes an ECG app to let you know about any heart rhythm irregularities and an EDA sensor that can tell you how your body is responding to stress. The tracker can also measure blood oxygen levels (SpO2) and skin temperature. You can even wear it to bed and receive a Sleep Score to keep tabs on your rest patterns.

The Fitbit Charge 6 Black Friday deal lets you choose from three colors: black case (with a black band), gold case (red band) or silver case (white band). All three combinations are eligible for the $60 discount on Amazon. The tracker includes both small and large bands in the box, so you don’t have to worry about measuring your wrist and buying a correct version in advance.

As far as integration with Google apps, the tracker can display Google Maps for turn-by-turn directions on your wrist, and it supports Google Wallet for mobile payments and YouTube Music for streaming audio on the go.

The wearable tracker has a face made of aluminum, glass and resin. It includes a 1.04-inch AMOLED touchscreen to display all your stats, and its battery is estimated to last seven days on a full charge. If you own a compatible exercise machine from companies like Peloton, Tonal and Nordic, the Fitbit Charge 6 should have no problem connecting. (Just make sure the workout machine supports Bluetooth Heart Rate Profile.)

Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

Tesla apparently won’t sue Cybertruck buyers for reselling the vehicle within the first year of buying it. Its newly-updated purchase agreement, which had included the controversial clause as of last week, has now been removed, according to Electrek, which first spotted the change.

The previous version of the agreement stated that Tesla “may seek injunctive relief to prevent the transfer of title of the Vehicle” if buyers breach its resale provision, or it may “demand liquidated damages from you in the amount of $50,000 or the value received as consideration for the sale or transfer,

whichever is greater.” Buyers who tried to flip their Cybertrucks could also be banned from buying Tesla vehicles in the future, the previous agreement said. It was also unclear how long Tesla would enforce this clause.

Electrek noted that clauses like these have been used by other car companies like Ferrari, Ford, and Porsche before to prevent resellers from scalping rare or expensive cars. But the Cybertruck, whose first deliveries are due around the end of this month, is supposed to be a mass-produced vehicle, with Tesla claiming to be able to build around 125,000 of them each year. The company has delayed the Cybertruck numerous times and won’t start full-fledged production until 2024.

Music gear and plugin maker Arturia is known for its annual Black Friday sale and it’s that time of year again. The sale is officially live, offering deep 50 percent discounts on most of its software instruments and effects plugins.

That means you can snag the stellar V Collection 9 for $300 instead of $600. The latest and greatest collection of vintage synth recreations now features 32 instruments, along with thousands upon thousands of presets. The sounds are pristine, the interface is solid and the presets are easily accessible, thanks to integration with the company’s Analog Lab software. You even get integration with those newer Mac chipsets.

The sale also applies to Arturia’s collection of effects plugins, which recently added a rotating Leslie speaker to its roster of studio-grade effects. Other than that, the collection includes everything you need to finish up high-quality tracks, from compressors to reverbs and beyond. The sale brings the price down to $250 from $500.

The discounts aren’t just for collections of virtual instruments and plugins. You can also get the well-reviewed Pigments synthesizer for $100 instead of $200. This is the company’s flagship modern soft-synth, with two engines working in parallel to create unique sounds. Arturia also frequently updates this software with new engines and effects.

Analog Lab is also on sale for $100 instead of $200, making for an extremely attractive entrypoint to Arturia’s many offerings. The Black Friday sale starts today and ends on December 5, so you have a couple of weeks to set aside plugin money.

Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

Android has long had an iMessage problem. In the US, Apple’s proprietary chat platform reigns supreme, particularly among teens. In fact, many Americans won’t switch for fear of the perceived social stigma that comes with the green chat bubbles iMessage assigns to messages from Android phones. Google has tried a few different things to convince Apple to open the platform, including turning to the European Commission for regulatory relief. For most Android users, that's meant there's been little they've been personally able to do about the situation. Until now.    

Nothing today announced Nothing Chats, a messaging app that supports both RCS and iMessage. Nothing Chats builds on Sunbird, a unified messaging platform that has been available in closed beta since the end of last year. Sunbird allows users to access all of their chats, including iMessage, from a single interface. As of this past April, the app had a waitlist more than 100,000 entries long. Sunbird is one of a few apps that Android users can turn to chat with their iPhone-touting friends. The most well-known player in the space is Beeper, which is the brainchild of Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky.

Nothing

With Friday’s release of Chats, Nothing isn’t just promising to allow Phone 2 owners to “camouflage” themselves as iPhone users. Out of the box, Chats will ship with support for many of iMessage’s signature features, including typing indicators, high-resolution media sharing and proper group messaging. Read receipts and Tapback reactions will arrive at a later date. As mentioned above, Chats also supports RCS, meaning you can enjoy iMessage-like features when messaging your Android friends too.

“We understand that the blue bubble vs. green bubble dilemma, especially in North America — although seemingly ridiculous — is real. Nothing Chats allows for freedom of communication between anyone regardless of their brand of smartphone - which is how it should be,” said Nothing CEO Carl Pei. “We want to remind consumers that they do have a choice when it comes to device selection and that their daily behaviors should not be dictated by any one company.”

So, what’s the catch? “There’s no data saved on the platform, so users don’t have to worry about their privacy,” Pei told Inverse. But there are some concerns. Sunbird, like Beeper, employs a workaround that Apple doesn’t officially support, and that the company would almost certainly argue puts users at risk. Nothing told Inverse Sunbird’s “patented” process for bringing iMessage to Android involves server farms of Mac minis that route a user’s messages through to Apple.

Before someone can access iMessage on Nothing Chats, they must first sign into their Apple ID through Sunbird’s platform. Nothing told Inverse all iMessage content sent through Chats is encrypted, and that “at no point can Sunbird access your messages or Apple ID.” Additionally, Nothing notes the startup will delete a user’s Apple ID credentials after two weeks of inactivity. Still, if you decide to use Nothing Chats to access iMessage, you’re effectively handing over the keys to your Apple ID to a company that isn’t Apple.

Nothing

As for whether Nothing Chats is long for this world: Asked about the possibility of Apple taking legal action against Nothing and Sunbird, Pei told Marques Brownlee he thought the tech giant would “probably [do] nothing.” 

In a separate interview with The Washington Post, Pei said Nothing has sold “about six figures’ worth” of Phone 2 devices in North America, Britain and Europe. In other words, it’s a small fish in a big pond. More importantly, Apple finds itself in a regulatory environment where attempting to shut down a platform that is opening up iMessage would draw the attention of regulators in the European Union and beyond.

Nothing Chats will be available to download from the Play Store starting on November 17. For the time being, a Nothing Phone 2 is required to access the platform, with regional availability limited to the US, Canada, UK, EU and other European countries, including Norway and Switzerland.

If you want extra help in the kitchen for this Thanksgiving (and beyond), Amazon has the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro on sale for $130 off its sticker price. The stainless steel countertop oven is incredibly versatile, offering 13 settings for cooking and heating. Typically costing an eye-opening $450, this oven is down to a tempting $320 in this Amazon Black Friday deal.

The Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro is one of Engadget’s best air fryers for 2023 and the best air fryer toaster oven on the list. It’s powerful enough to act as a secondary oven (or your only one if your primary oven is out of commission), but it can also do things as simple as reheat leftovers or toast a slice (or nine) of bread.

Its modes include air frying, toasting, broiling, baking, pizza, dehydrating, slow cooking and proofing. It has an internal capacity of one cubic foot and can cook an entire 14-pound turkey and fit things like a five-quart Dutch oven, a 9 x 13 pan or 12 muffin trays. It’s also spacious enough to spread out things like fries for optimal crispiness.

The Breville oven has an LCD that makes it easy to choose heating modes. It can indicate when it reaches a pre-heat temperature and automatically begins counting down the cooking time.

The oven supports a temperature range of 80 to 480 degrees Fahrenheit. Breville says its super convection feature can reduce cooking time by up to 30 percent for crispy-golden air frying, dehydration or roasting. However, the oven takes up a decent amount of counter space, so ensure your kitchen has room for the 21.5-inch wide x 17.5-inch deep x 12.7-inch high product before taking the plunge.

Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

After a series of delays, Hogwarts Legacy is now available for the Nintendo Switch console. The wizardly game was released in February for PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, with the PS4 and Xbox One versions following in May. The Switch version was also expected during the first half of the year. However, it was pushed to July and finally, November 14.

Hogwarts Legacy developers said the Switch version was delayed to create the “best possible experience” for players. The Switch's aging hardware may have also contributed to the delay as this isn't the first setback we've seen for third-party publishers bringing their games to the console.

As for gameplay, Hogwarts Legacy is, as you’re probably aware, based on the Harry Potter series. The game is a prequel, set over a hundred years before Harry and the gang entered the school of witchcraft and wizardry. Once the game starts, players can choose and customize their characters, including which Hogwarts House to join. After that, players will learn to cast spells, brew potions and master different magical abilities. Hogwarts Legacy is currently available for $60 in the Nintendo Store. There's also a deluxe edition with a Dark Arts Pack, featuring a Dark Arts cosmetic set and a new battle arena. The Hogwarts Legacy: Digital Deluxe Edition will cost $70.

Since its release, Hogwarts Legacy has sold millions of copies — making it one of the best-selling games of 2023 so far. But despite its obvious popularity across platforms, Hogwarts Legacy did not snag a single nomination for this year's Games Awards.