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Like Apple recently did with its second-gen AirPods Pro, Google is pushing a substantial firmware update to its 2022 earbuds, the company announced during its Made by Google event on Wednesday. Google has already updated the Pixel Buds Pro since they launched last year, adding spatial audio and a full five-band EQ for tuning adjustments. This fall, Google has another robust upgrade planned, including five new features that will expand the abilities of the company's flagship earbuds. 

Apple and Sony already have tools that automatically pause audio when you begin to speak, which allow you to have quick chats without reaching for the earbuds or your phone. Google is preparing to offer something similar called conversation detection. The company says AI on the Pixel Buds Pro detects your voice, pauses music and activates transparency mode. As on competing earbuds, everything returns to its previous state when the buds no longer pick up your voice, including going back to active noise cancellation (ANC) if it had been enabled. 

Google says it's also improved call quality, which was a key complaint in the review we published last year. More specifically, the company claims the Pixel Buds Pro now support Bluetooth Super Wideband, which it says "doubles the bandwidth for voices." Google promises you'll sound "fuller and clearer" compared to a set of the earbuds running the previous software. In addition, the Pixel Buds Pro now support Clear Calling on Pixel, which combats background noise on the other end of your calls.

Google

Hearing health has become a focus for earbud makers in recent years and Google will offer more info on your listening habits to help you keep levels in check. The Pixel Buds app will tell you how loud you've been listening over time and alert you to when you might want to lower the volume to protect your hearing. For mobile gamers, a new low-latency mode on the Pixel Buds Pro is automatically activated when you open a compatible title on a Pixel phone. Google says it has cut latency in half compare to Pixel Buds Pro running the old software. Lastly, the company now offers the Pixel Buds app for these earbuds on Chromebooks, giving you easy access to settings, noise control modes and firmware updates from those devices. 

Since Google is all about color coordination, the company is adding Bay (light blue) and Porcelain (let's call it "cream") colorways for the Pixel Buds Pro to match the new Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel Watch 2. Those options join the existing four colors on the $200 set of wireless earbuds. The Pixel Buds Pro software update will start rolling out today for new and existing users. 

Follow all of the news live from Google’s 2023 Pixel event right here.

French police have arrested five former Ubisoft executives after an investigation into claims of abuse, harassment and discrimination at the company, according to the newspaper Libération. Ex-Chief Creative Officer Serge Hascoët and Tommy François, a former vice president of editorial and creative services, were among those taken into custody. Both men left Ubisoft in 2020 following accusations against them.

When asked about the arrests, Ubisoft told GamesIndustry.biz that it didn't have "knowledge of what has been shared and therefore can't comment."

In 2021, a French workers union and two ex-Ubisoft employees sued the publisher for allegedly enabling a culture of "institutional sexual harassment." Solidaires Informatiques claimed that, rather than addressing the issues head on, Ubisoft found it easier to tolerate alleged misconduct. Francois and Hascoët were among those named in the suit.

According to Libération, police spent more than a year investigating the case. They collected testimonies from approximately 50 staffers and former employees. A lawyer for the plaintiffs claimed (according to a translation) that "beyond simple individual behavior, [the case] reveals systemic sexual violence" in an environment where a "'schoolboy atmosphere' was tolerated."

Several senior employees resigned or were fired in 2020 after reports emerged of widespread misconduct at the company, including at Ubisoft studios in Montreal and Toronto. That summer, CEO Yves Guillemot laid out a plan to address such issues and clean up a culture of toxicity within the ranks.

With Roku facing increased competition from rivals, especially Google, the company has just unveiled its latest OS 12.5 update with a raft of new features. Those include expanded sports content with favoriting and highlights, enhancements to the live TV channel guide, music playlists, expert picture settings and more. 

A feature that'll be high on the list for videophiles is "Expert Picture Setting." That lets users customize key pictures settings like color temperature, color space, gamma correction and noise reduction, adding to the current, more basic picture settings already available. This feature is already available on the mobile app, but it's now debuting for TVs. 

Roku is also expanding what you can do with sports. It'll offer expanded content including motorsports coming in early 2024 and new content from Max "in the coming weeks." It's also introducing favoriting, letting users track live and upcoming events by adding teams to a curated "My Favorites" row by clicking the favorite button on the game page. It's also launching highlights, letting users catch key moments they may have missed or want to relive. 

Roku

The OS update is making it easier to find live TV shows among the 400+ channels as well, letting you personalize the order of channels in the Guide and remove channel numbers. It's also introducing "What to Watch Categories" that let you browse by TV Shows, Movies, New & Popular, Free and more, along with "Experiences" related to a genre or topic like food or home. The update will also bring Visual Search to the Roku mobile app, "in a more visual and immersive way." The company is also launching Music Playlists, adding more than 250 video playlists from partners including Stingray, Vevo and Warner Music Group.

Away from the entertainment side, Roku is also introduce smart home features, including "Event History" that shows Camera subscription users a history of who was at their front door, along with Notifications that will tell you if a package has arrived, for example. Finally, the new app now supports Google Photos, making it easier to do slideshows for friends more easily. Roku OS 12.5 will roll out to customers in the coming weeks, but some of the features may take awhile to arrive after that. 

With Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and Amazon already having had their fall announcement events this year, Google's hardware keynote is ostensibly the last major launch of 2023. The company has more or less told us what it's going to be unveiling today, teasing us with trailers of the Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel Watch 2. If the keynotes of the other tech giants told us anything, it's that we should expect Google to also pile on with a ton of updates about its developments in generative AI, in addition to the new phones and smartwatch. We'll also probably learn more about features coming to Android 14, and it's highly likely the Assistant gains some new skills as well. 

The show kicks off on October 4 at 10AM ET, and I'll be bringing you the updates live right here, along with a healthy dose of context and analysis. Make sure to join us then!

Long gone are the days when you needed to swipe a physical credit card, with your phone typically being all you need to complete in-person transactions. PayPal is finally getting on board with the change, announcing that you can now add it and Venmo's credit and debit cards to your Apple Wallet. As part of their motivation for the expansion, the company cites a 2022 Morning Consult survey that found 42 percent of people in the United States have used a mobile wallet.

PayPal has long offered credit cards, while Venmo launched its first in 2020 (and has made sure you know about it anytime you use the app or the company sends you an email). With this further offering, you can pay for in-person transactions with PayPal or Venmo using Touch or Face ID on your iPhone or Apple Watch, as well as use Apple Pay to complete digital purchases on these devices and your iPad or Mac.

Adding a PayPal or Venmo card to your Apple Wallet is the same process as any other card. Visit your Apple Wallet app, choose the option to add a debit or credit card and then scan in or manually enter its details. You can also immediately add your PayPal credit or debit card to your Apple Wallet through PayPal's site. However, the PayPal Business Debit Card and Venmo's credit and debit cards will be available to add through their respective apps "in the coming months." PayPal previously rolled out tap-to-pay support on iPhones and Androids, but it was through the company's apps. 

Airbnb chief executive Brian Chesky told the Financial Times that the company is going "a little bit beyond its core business" starting next year. Chesky wants Airbnb to expand its focus and is currently planning a push into long-term rentals. The service already offers monthly rentals, but apparently, only 18 percent of gross nights booked in the second quarter of 2023 come from stays longer than 30 days. Chesky believes the company can do more to drum up interest in long-term bookings and that offering rentals for up to a year represents a "huge opportunity." 

"In this post-pandemic world, there's this   unrecognized market of a month, two months, three months, because people can work from laptops, people are going away for the summer," he told the publication. 

Chesky's plan, if executed well, could be what the company needs to be able to regain lost NYC listings. The city used to be one of the biggest Airbnb markets with the most number of listings available, but officials recently started enforcing new regulations that wiped out most of them. NYC mandated that hosts will have to lodge an application to be able to rent homes to guests for less than 30 days, and it has reportedly been slow to issue approvals. Further, hosts can only rent out homes for short-term stays if they're also staying there, and only two guests are allowed at any one time. 

In addition to putting a focus on long-term rentals, Chesky also intends to expand its experiences selection, so it could offer more "things to do on your trip." He presented more ideas under consideration to the Times, as well, including dining pop-ups and car rentals. "The second biggest asset usually in someone's life after their home is their car," he said. "That'll be the next thing." His statement hints at a business model similar to services like Turo's, which people have been calling "Airbnb for cars."

A Florida-based company called X Social Media has accused Elon Musk’s X Corp. of trademark and service mark infringement. With SpaceX, AI venture xAI (not to mention the brief existence of banking startup x.com), Musk really loves the letter X. At the time of the renaming, trademark attorney Josh Gerben told Reuters there was “about a 100 percent probability that both opportunistic and legitimate plaintiffs will sue Twitter/X over the new name.” Conveniently, Gerben’s law firm is representing the plaintiff in this case.

X Social Media says it’s “offered its advertising and social media services connecting law firms and those in need of advocates since 2016.” While its logo looks vastly different from the logo used by the social network formerly known as Twitter, it apparently “frequently emphasizes the ‘X’ portion of its mark throughout its advertising.” The plaintiff told the court it has already suffered losses in revenue due to Twitter’s rebranding and that the confusion will probably continue to its “financial detriment.”

It’s now asking the court for an injunction against Musk’s X, asking for damages equivalent to three times its losses or the defendant’s profits. If it’s looking for X/Twitter’s profits, it might struggle.

— Mat Smith

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The original Apple Watch lineup is officially obsolete

The 2015 original series includes a $17,000 edition.

Engadget

Apple’s first-generation Watch is now officially obsolete, including the Hermes and $17,000 18-carat gold Watch Edition models, according to Apple’s latest obsolete product list seen by MacRumors. That means the Series 0 Watch models, first released in 2015, are no longer eligible for hardware service and providers cannot order parts. Still, the original watch fulfilled a role, like the very first iPhone, of proof of concept. Apple improved on the wearable to become the most popular smartwatch by a fair margin — it’s just not a watch that grows in value.

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A pedestrian was pinned under a Cruise robotaxi after another car’s hit-and-run

The woman is in critical condition.

A Cruise autonomous car was involved in a horrific accident in San Francisco on Monday evening. A pedestrian crossing a street was hit by another car, which sped off. However, the hit-and-run hurled her in front of a Cruise driverless taxi, which stopped atop her leg as she screamed in pain. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the woman was still in critical condition at 9:30 AM ET on Tuesday. Cruise says there weren’t any passengers in the AV, which was in autonomous mode. Cruise and Waymo got approval from California regulators this year to operate and charge fares for fully autonomous cars in San Francisco at any time of the day. However, the state’s DMV asked the company in August to reduce its fleet of driverless taxis by half, pending an investigation into crashes involving the AVs.

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Surface Laptop Go 3 review

Microsoft’s basic PC grows up.

Engadget

When the Surface Laptop Go debuted three years ago, it seemed like Microsoft made the cheapest possible notebook without sacrificing that Surface flair. The result was a $549 computer with such mediocre specs it just wasn’t worth considering. Now, with noticeably faster than previous Laptop Go models and better build quality, Microsoft’s getting a lot of things right, even though prices start at $799.

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How to watch Google unveil the Pixel 8

Find out all the juice about the Pixel 8 lineup and the Pixel Watch 2.

Yes, we know everything already. So. Many. Leaks. But Google may have some surprises or fancy Pixel features to warrant watching along with its livestream. (I hope so.) It all starts at 10 AM ET on October 4. We’ll have full coverage of all the Pixel news right here on Engadget, including our own liveblog.

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After closing its 3DS and Wii U eShops earlier this year, Nintendo will shut down online services for those consoles in "early April 2024," it announced. That will put a halt to multiplayer features, along with "online co-operative play, internet rankings and data distribution," Nintendo wrote. Nintendo's Badge Arcade that allowed users to decorate their Nintendo 3DS home menu will also disappear. The date isn't fixed in stone yet, and Nintendo said it may even discontinue services "earlier than planned." 

Most online play on those consoles will end, but the company will continue to operate its Pokémon Bank cloud storage service, although "that may also end at some point in the future," Nintendo said. In addition, you'll still be able to redownload previously purchased games and get patches "for the foreseeable future," according to a FAQ. Nintendo shut down online play for the Wii U versions of Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon in March 2023 to resolve security issues, only bringing them back online in August.

Finally, though SpotPass features are disappearing, StreetPass links within the 3DS ecosystem will keep working as long as you can find another player who has one. "For example, you will be able to use StreetPass in StreetPass Mii Plaza, which is pre-installed on Nintendo 3DS family systems, but you will no longer be able to use features that use online communication (such as receiving new panels in Puzzle Swap)." 

The Wii U console was released in 2012 and discontinued in 2017, becoming one of the company's worst-selling consoles. The 3DS, launched in 2010 and discontinued in 2020, was a bigger success. The Nintendo Network, which arrived in 2012, provided online services for both devices. 

Gmail already has some handy Smart Replies you could use for when you're incredibly busy or when impersonal responses would do for certain emails. But what if you don't really have anything to say, and the best reply to an email is just... an emoji? Well, Google has got your back. The tech giant has launched emoji reactions for Gmail — and, yes, that means you'll be able to react to emails like you can to instant messages. 

Google has started rolling out the feature to Android devices, and you'd know that you already have access to it if you see a smiley face icon at the bottom of an email when you open it on the app. You can tap on the icon to bring up a menu where you can find the emoji options to choose from. Everyone's reactions will show up right next to the icon, and some of them will come with their own short animations. If you choose the party popper, for example, prepare for digital confetti on your screen upon sending one or upon opening a message with party popper reactions. It'll be a lot less fun for people on the email chain not using Gmail, though, because they'll receive each reaction as a separate email. 

While you can only access emoji reactions on Android at the moment, the feature will make its way to iOS devices and the web over the next few months.

Google