ArduinoMania

The Perseverance Rover has found evidence of organic compounds in the Jezero Crater on Mars. Don’t get too excited: These compounds could have also developed in nonbiological ways. But even if it’s not proof of organic life on Mars, the results hint at complex organic conditions for the “key building blocks for life.” Organic molecules like those observed in the Jezero Crater contain carbon and often hydrogen atoms. They’re the core components of life as we know it on Earth.

The rover found organic materials in all ten targets it observed on the crater floor. “Our results support observations by previous robotic missions to Mars that the Red Planet was once rich in organic material, compounds made primarily of carbon and hydrogen, and that some of that organic material can still be detected billions of years later,” co-author Joseph Razzell Hollis, a London-based astrobiologist, told Gizmodo. “Each detection, each observation, gives us a little bit more information that brings us closer to understanding the history of Mars and whether it could have supported life in the past.”

Hopefully, scientists can maintain this level of excitement. They’ll have to wait for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, which isn’t expected to launch from Earth until at least the late 2020s.

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

Apple's iOS 17 public betas are ready to download

How to install the iOS 17 public beta

Chipotle's guacamole robot is cursed to peel and core avocados for eternity

macOS Sonoma preview: For the widget wonks

Sony's 26-megapixel A6700 is its new flagship APS-C mirrorless camera

iPadOS 17 preview: A smoother multitasking experience

For those who really need it.

Engadget

Just a year ago, Apple announced the biggest software update the iPad has ever seen. iPadOS 16 ushered in Stage Manager, a completely revamped multitasking mode. There were several other new features, as usual, but Stage Manager, in particular, brought the iPad closer than ever to a Mac or Windows PC experience. iPadOS 17, on the other hand, is a subtler update. We preview the beta, which is out on public release now.

Continue reading.

Google's Bard AI chatbot has learned to talk

It understands 40 languages and can speak its responses.

Google Bard’s latest round of updates includes expanded linguistic skills. It can now respond with spoken word in addition to text. It can do so in nearly four dozen languages. Users can now converse with the AI in Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi and Spanish, among others, as well as access the platform from more places on the planet, such as Brazil and "across Europe." Users will have the option to either read or listen to the AI's generated responses, as well as have more control over how friendly Bard is, with five distinct AI tones: simple, long, short, professional or casual. Those are only available for English-language requests at the moment.

Continue reading.

'Roblox' is coming to Meta Quest VR headsets

Zuck says the beta version drops in a few weeks.

Roblox

The immensely popular online game creation platform, Roblox, is coming to VR, thanks to the Meta Quest. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement, which was followed by an official Roblox blog post. A beta version of the app, according to Zuckerberg, launches in just a few weeks, via the Quest platform’s dedicated App Lab. This is going to be a fully cross-platform title, so anything you interact with or make on your phone or console should be accessible in VR.

Continue reading.

Elon Musk’s new AI company aims ‘to understand the true nature of the universe’

The team will be holding a Twitter Spaces chat on Friday.

Elon Musk has a new AI company. A website has appeared for xAI, which will embark on the self-described mission to “understand the true nature of the universe.” The announcement comes after filing documents revealed the existence of a company called X.AI Corp earlier this year. Musk also said in April he wanted to start a venture for “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” which “hopefully does more good than harm.”

Not much else is known yet about Musk’s latest venture. He tweeted yesterday: “Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality.” The company webpage notes the team will host a Twitter Spaces chat on Friday, July 14th.

Continue reading.

Sony plans to boost R&D spending in gaming and focus that extra money on Fortnite-style live service games and mixed reality, Nikkei has reported. It will invest $2.13 billion for the segment in fiscal 2023, accounting for about 40 percent of R&D spending company wide — over double what it spent in 2020. The aim is to better compete in cloud gaming and VR, particularly if Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition goes through. 

Sony has traditionally relied on relied on story-led blockbuster titles like God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn, but live service games use a different model. Instead of developing one game and moving on to the next, companies build titles that can be updated over time, generating revenue with new content like seasonal maps, skins and weapons. Overwatch and League of Legends are examples of those. 

The company lags behind rivals in that area — it had just one live service game in 2021, but plans to have 12 in its portfolio by March 2026. To that end, it plans to spend 55 percent of PS5 game development on live service games by March 2024, and 60 percent by March 2026. It plans to use its Bungie acquisition to further that aim, according to the report. 

Meanwhile, Microsoft is trying to acquire Activision Blizzard, which would give it access to a powerful portfolio of live service games (World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Destiny 2, etc.). Microsoft also holds a considerable lead in live-streamed games with Xbox Cloud Gaming, while Sony has only started testing PS5 game streaming. 

At the same time, Sony wants to invest more in the so-called metaverse by boosting development in extended reality (VR, AR, mixed reality etc.). To do so, it aims to combine the resources of nine overseas game studios it owns in whole or in part, including Epic Games, whose Unreal Engine helps power augmented reality apps. That's in light of the upcoming release of Apple's Vision Pro headset, and Sony's recent launch of its own PSVR2 headset. 

The increased investment shows the importance of gaming to Sony's overall portfolio. Its game & network services segment now makes up a large part of the company's earnings, far and above segments like imaging, movies, TVs and more. It also shows Sony recognizing that it must adapt to the reality that game development is shifting away from the traditional model — meaning it will be a lot more dependent on owning game-development studios.

Apple has expanded Tap to Pay's availability and is giving businesses and merchants across the United Kingdom the option to accept contactless payments using just their iPhones. The tech giant initially released the feature in the US in mid-2022 before making it available in Taiwan and Australia. Like in those regions, merchants in the UK will be able to receive payments without having to purchase extra hardware, since the capability uses NFC. As long as they have an iPhone XS or later, they can offer contactless payment as an option for customers who use Apple Pay, contactless debit or credit cards and other digital wallets. 

The company unveiled the feature in early 2022 before testing the payment system at its own visitor center in Cupertino. Following Tap to Pay's rollout, big-name fintech services launched support for the feature, including PayPal, Venmo and Square. 

According to Apple's announcement, Revolut and Tyl by NatWest are the first payment platforms allowing their business customers in the UK to use the company's Tap to Pay technology. Adyen, Dojo, myPOS, Stripe, SumUp, Viva Wallet, Worldline and Zettle by PayPal will be the next financial services to support the feature in the region. Apple didn't mention a specific rollout date for them, only that support for Tap to Pay will be "coming soon" for their customers. In addition announcing the feature's availability, the company has revealed that Tap to Pay will be available in its retail stores across the UK in the coming weeks. That means UK customers will be easily be able to pay for purchases by bumping a card or another phone to the store's iPhone.

Google's Bard gained a handful of new features and functions Thursday in the chatbot AI's latest round of updates, including expanded linguistic knowledge, more nuanced response controls and the ability to respond with spoken word in addition to text. In all the AI can now converse in nearly four dozen languages. 

Users can now converse with the AI in Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi and Spanish, among others as well as access the platform from more places on the planet, such as Brazil and "across Europe," Jack Krawczyk, Bard Product Lead, and Amarnag Subramanya, Bard's VP of Engineering, wrote in a blog post Thursday. "As we bring Bard to more regions and languages over time, we’ll continue to use our AI Principles as a guide, incorporate user feedback, and take steps to protect people’s privacy and data."

Bard now literally speaks. Users will have the option to either read or listen to the AI's generated responses, which Krawczyk and Subramanya believe will help immensely when users want to hear the correct pronunciation of words in those 40 newly-added languages. Users have also been afforded more robust controls over how friendly Bard will be with five distinct options for the AI's tone: simple, long, short, professional or casual. Those are only available on English-language requests for the moment but the company is already working to expand it out to more of the 40, "soon."

The chatbot also has some fancy new multimodal eyes, gaining the capacity to interpret images dropped into the chat through the prompt field. Faster and easier than uploading it as a document, users can request more information about the contents of the image or generate content like captions based on it. This also is currently English-only. 

Getting the information and code that Bard generates out of the chat window and into the hands of collaborators is no longer quite such a slog. Starting Thursday, users will be able to export Bard-generated Python code to Replit, in addition to Colab. They'll also be able to copy and share portions of individual chats with other users. The process of organizing and revisiting old conversations being streamlined as well with the addition of pinned conversations, which are what they sound like, and the ability to rename them.

Twitter has published an update on how its "Freedom of Speech Not Reach" moderation approach is working, and according to the company, it has seen some encouraging results. In April, the website started limiting the reach of tweets violating its hateful conduct policy and applying a label to them that reads: "Visibility limited: this tweet may violate Twitter's rules against hateful conduct." Apparently, Twitter has applied the label to more than 700,000 posts since then and has proactively prevented ads from appearing adjacent to those content. 

The company also said that the label reduces the reach of a post by 81 percent, thereby effectively limiting the visibility of posts that potentially exhibit hateful conduct. In addition, Twitter revealed in its update that more than one-third of users choose to delete labeled tweets themselves once they've been notified that they have violated the website's policy and only four percent of authors have appealed labels. 

The company charging for API access means most researchers studying hate speech can't independently verify these claims. But Twitter is clearly claiming that its approach has been effective so far. In fact, the website is pushing through with its plan to expand its labels and include more types of policy violations. According to its announcement, it will now also label and downrank posts that violate its Abusive Behavior and Violent Speech policies. Tweets that will be labeled in the coming weeks include posts with malicious content targeting individuals, those that encourage others to harass an individual or group of people, those that threaten to inflict physical harm on others, and tweets that encourage others to commit acts of violence or harm. 

The Federal Trade Commission isn't giving up on its attempt to halt Microsoft's pending $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard. The agency has appealed Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley's denial of its request for a preliminary injunction to temporarily stop the deal from going through.

The FTC has sued to prevent the merger from happening over antitrust concerns. An administrative trial is set to start in August, but the companies have a merger deadline of July 18th. The agency was concerned Microsoft and Activision would close their deal by then despite a UK regulator blocking the deal in that country.

Bloomberg first reported that the agency was considering an appeal against Corley's decision. The FTC told Engadget after Tuesday's ruling that it would announce its "next step to continue our fight to preserve competition and protect consumers" in the following days.

Corley ruled that, unless the FTC obtains an emergency stay from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals by 11:59PM PT on July 14th, a temporary restraining order that's currently preventing Microsoft and Activision from closing the deal will be dissolved. The restraining order was put in place until Corley made a decision on the preliminary injunction.

Meanwhile, after Corley's ruling, Microsoft, Activision Blizzard and the UK's Competition and Markets Authority said they agreed to pause their legal battle and see if they could reach a compromise. The CMA later clarified that although "merging parties don’t have the opportunity to put forward new remedies once a final report has been issued, they can choose to restructure a deal." It added that doing so could lead to a fresh merger investigation, which would likely delay the takeover beyond July 18th.

It's easy to look at every new macOS release and wonder where the upgrades actually are. Unlike iOS and iPadOS, Apple doesn't often push for bold and visible changes on the desktop (last year's Stage Manager was a surprising addition, but even that was brought over from iPadOS). Instead, most of the enhancements to the Mac experience are usually under the hood — don't forget, the company completely rebuilt macOS for its new Apple Silicon chips.

So it goes with macOS Sonoma, an update that doesn't truly make itself known until you see its new high-res video screensavers (something the Apple TV has done for years), or try to drag over a widget to your desktop. If widgets are a highlight in a new OS, you know it's a slow year.

This isn't a knock against Sonoma, exactly. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that Apple is saving its bolder UI concepts for iPhones, iPads, and the Vision Pro. Macs are computers that don't even have touchscreens yet! Playing it safe makes the most sense.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

So let's talk about screensavers. While not exactly Earth shattering, Apple's new aerial footage looks great in macOS Sonoma. It adds a dose of elegance to an already refined operating system — having footage from Hawaii or Patagonia pop up in the middle of the workday is like a mini-vacation. (Don't judge me, I know it sounds sad.)

I also liked being able to turn aerial screensavers into wallpapers. Doing so lets them play as videos on your lock screen, but once you log in, the video slows down and smoothly settles on a static image. I'm sure that's done to avoid motion sickness from some users, but I'm hoping Apple or some intrepid hacker unlocks the ability to let the video constantly play on your desktop. I'll risk a bit of squeamishness for more of that slick drone footage.

As for the widgets, well... they're widgets. On your desktop. It's a pretty straightforward concept. I'll admit, being able to quickly see the weather or an upcoming appointment under my windows is easier than popping open the notification tray. But it's not exactly a killer feature. But hey, if you really do love these things, at least you can easily bring over your iOS widgets. And if you also have an iPad, I'm sure it'll be helpful to have all of your widgety goodness across your devices.

Beyond those two features, Sonoma's upgrades are a bit more subtle. If you jump into a video chat, you can use hand gestures to kick off some fun special effects. A double thumbs up triggers fireworks behind you, while a peace sign surrounds you with floating balloons. They're certainly fun at first, but thankfully you can turn them off easily for more professional video chats.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

The new presenter overlay features, on the other hand, are a lot more useful. In supported screen sharing apps, like FaceTime or Zoom, you can place a small or large window of yourself on top of whatever window you're sharing. It's the sort of feature I'm surprised Apple didn't roll out sooner, as it can help to humanize boring video chats. Instead of just sharing a spreadsheet, for example, your colleagues can also see what you think of your data as you're discussing it.

Here are a few other Sonoma updates to keep an eye out for:

• Safari supports profiles for different use cases. For example, one profile could house all of the bookmarks and settings that you need for work.

• You can also turn any website into a web app with Safari. It's the perfect way to read Engadget without any distractions!

• Stickers and Memoji now synchronize with all of your Apple devices over iCloud.

• A new Game Mode will prioritize resources while gaming. I didn't notice any major differences with Apple Arcade titles during my testing, though.

• Autocorrect should be better too, but again, I didn't notice any major changes.

You'll want to act quickly if you're shopping for a truly stand-out TV set. Samsung's 2023 Frame TVs are on sale at Amazon for Prime Day, and the discounts are particularly steep for some models. The line now starts at $548 for the bedroom-friendly 32-inch model, but the sweetest deal is for the 55-inch model, which has dropped to a record low of $988 — 34 percent off. You won't get an add-on bezel at those prices, but the savings are large enough that you might not mind.

The appeal of Frame TVs is as clear as ever: it's a set that doubles as artwork when it's not in use. Mount it on your wall (the kit is thankfully included) and it blends into the decor using either professional images or your own. You'll usually have to subscribe to the Samsung Art Store or buy individual works if you want classics, but it could be worthwhile to have a Van Gogh or Vermeer in your living room. The 2023 models have a matte finish that cuts reflections and gives them a canvas-like appearance.

These aren't Samsung's highest-end TVs, so you won't get the crispness of an 8K panel or the vivid contrast of OLED. They still offer an accurate 4K picture, however, and they're full-featured sets with voice assistant control, a game mode and a wide range of apps. At these prices, they're easy choices if you either want a wall-mounted TV or were otherwise resigned to buying an ordinary screen.

Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for the best Amazon Prime Day tech deals. Learn about Prime Day trends on In the Know. Hear from Autoblog’s car experts on must-shop auto-related Prime Day deals and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

A Congressional investigation concluded that several tax prep providers shared sensitive filing data with Meta and Google. It follows a 2022 report from The Markup highlighting the practice in which TaxSlayer, H&R Block and TaxAct used Meta’s Pixel tracking tool to harvest info like filing status, approximate adjusted gross income, refund amount, names of dependents and which text-entry fields users clicked on. Meta is already facing a lawsuit connected with the initial reporting.

The panel sent the conclusions to the IRS, FTC, DOJ and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGA), urging the agencies to investigate and prosecute if applicable. “Big Tax Prep has recklessly shared tens of millions of taxpayers’ sensitive personal and financial data with Meta for years, without appropriately disclosing this data usage or protecting the data, and without appropriate taxpayer consent,” the report reads. “The findings of this report reveal a shocking breach of taxpayer privacy by tax prep companies and by Big Tech firms that appeared to violate taxpayers’ rights and may have violated taxpayer privacy law.”

The review found the Meta Pixel tracker also gathered data about “whether taxpayers had visited pages for many revealing tax situations, such as having dependents, certain types of income (such as rental income or capital gains), and certain tax credits or deductions.” In addition, it transmitted the full names, email, country, state, city, zip codes, phone numbers and gender as hashed values. The information was also collected from taxpayers using TaxAct’s Free File service — which is through a partnership with the IRS.

Congressional investigators listed in the report include Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA).

“The tax prep firms were shockingly careless with their treatment of taxpayer data,” the investigation concluded. “They indicated that they installed the Meta and Google tools on their websites without fully understanding the extent to which they would send taxpayer data to these tech firms, without consulting with independent compliance or privacy experts, and without full knowledge of Meta’s use of and disposition of the data.” The panel also chided Meta and Google for acting “with stunning disregard for taxpayer privacy.”

The report cites laws that say, “a tax return preparer may not disclose or use a taxpayer’s tax return information prior to obtaining a written consent from the taxpayer,” while mentioning that the tax prep companies failed to do that. Although tax-filing companies can legally hand data to “auxiliary service providers in connection with the preparation of a tax return,” the panel said Meta and Google don’t meet that definition since the tracking was used for advertising. Violations can lead to fines of up to $1,000 per instance (likely pocket change for these companies) and up to a year in prison.

The magnetic compass has been a crucial navigational tool for around a thousand years or so, perhaps longer. While classical versions still work perfectly well, you can now get digital magnetometers that work in much the same way. [mircemk] decided to whip up a digital compass to demonstrate the value of these parts.

The build uses a HMC5883L magnetometer. While this can detect magnetic fields in three axes, just one is necessary for building a device that operates akin to a traditional compass. The output of the device is read by an Arduino Nano, which is hooked up to a string of WS2812B LEDs and a small OLED display. The LEDs display the bearing of magnetic north, while the OLED screen shows the current angle between the compass’s arrow and magnetic north.

It’s a tidy build that would be a great educational resource for teaching both electronics and navigational skills. We’ve seen similar projects before, like the hilarious Pizza Compass. Video after the break.