Today, we are one step closer to the immortal celebrity future we have long been promised (since April). Meta has unveiled Voicebox, its generative text-to-speech model that promises to do for the spoken word what ChatGPT and Dall-E, respectfully, did for text and image generation.
Essentially, its a text-to-output generator just like GPT or Dall-E — just instead of creating prose or pretty pictures, it spits out audio clips. Meta defines the system as “a non-autoregressive flow-matching model trained to infill speech, given audio context and text.” It’s been trained on more than 50,000 hours of unfiltered audio. Specifically, Meta used recorded speech and transcripts from a bunch of public domain audiobooks written in English, French, Spanish, German, Polish, and Portuguese.
That diverse data set allows the system to generate more conversational sounding speech, regardless of the languages spoken by each party, according to the researchers. “Our results show that speech recognition models trained on Voicebox-generated synthetic speech perform almost as well as models trained on real speech.” What’s more the computer generated speech performed with just a 1 percent error rate degradation, compared to the 45 to 70 percent drop-off seen with existing TTS models.
The system was first taught to predict speech segments based on the segments around them as well as the passage’s transcript. “Having learned to infill speech from context, the model can then apply this across speech generation tasks, including generating portions in the middle of an audio recording without having to recreate the entire input,” the Meta researchers explained.
Voicebox is also reportedly capable of actively editing audio clips, eliminating noise from the speech and even replacing misspoken words. “A person could identify which raw segment of the speech is corrupted by noise (like a dog barking), crop it, and instruct the model to regenerate that segment,” the researchers said, much like using image-editing software to clean up photographs.
Text-to-Speech generators haver been around for a minute — they’re how your parents’ TomToms were able to give dodgy driving directions in Morgan Freeman’s voice. Modern iterations like Speechify or Elevenlab’s Prime Voice AI are far more capable but they still largely require mountains of source material in order to properly mimic their subject — and then another mountain of different data for every. single. other. subject you want it trained on.
Voicebox doesn’t, thanks to a novel new zero-shot text-to-speech training method Meta calls Flow Matching. The benchmark results aren’t even close as Meta’s AI reportedly outperformed the current state of the art both in intelligibility (a 1.9 percent word error rate vs 5.9 percent) and “audio similarity” (a composite score of 0.681 to the SOA’s 0.580), all while operating as much as 20 times faster that today’s best TTS systems.
But don’t get your celebrity navigators lined up just yet, neither the Voicebox app nor its source code is being released to the public at this time, Meta confirmed on Friday, citing “the potential risks of misuse” despite the “many exciting use cases for generative speech models.” Instead, the company released a series of audio examples (see above/below) as well as a the program’s initial research paper. In the future, the research team hopes the technology will find its way into prosthetics for patients with vocal cord damage, in-game NPCs and digital assistants.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/metas-voicebox-ai-is-a-dall-e-for-text-to-speech-150021287.html?src=rss
Spotify and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex say they’ve “mutually decided to part ways,” ending a deal for Harry and Meghan to produce podcasts for the company. The agreement, which the two sides reached in 2020, was said to be worth $25 million.
Meghan hosted a podcast called Archetypes. It sought to confront female stereotypes through conversations between Meghan and the likes of Serena Williams and Mariah Carey. The show ran for 12 episodes last year and it was the only podcast that the couple’s Archewell Audio business made for Spotify.
While Spotify and Archewell Audio said they were “proud of the series we made together” and the show won a People’s Choice Award, the former has opted not to renew Archetypes. Meghan is “continuing to develop more content for the Archetypes audience on another platform,” an Archewell spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal.
The Spotify deal was one of the major commercial agreements Harry and Meghan struck after giving up their royal duties. The couple sought media deals in the hope of becoming financially independent but have seen mixed results. Netflix canceled an animated show created by Meghan before production was complete, but a docuseries on the couple hit the streaming service late last year. Harry & Meghan quickly became one of Netflix’s most-watched documentaries.
Meanwhile, Spotify recently shifted its podcast strategy. Earlier this month, it laid off 200 people from its podcast teams and merged Gimlet Media and Parcast into a new division, Spotify Studios. The company will continue to produce some original podcasts via Spotify Studios and The Ringer. However, it appears to be more focused on expanding deals with high-profile podcasters from around the world (like Joe Rogan and Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper) and supporting amateur creators in the space through tools such as Anchor.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spotify-ends-its-podcast-deal-with-harry-and-meghan-142710519.html?src=rss
The US has routinely lagged behind Europe and other regions in terms of EV adoption, but no longer. Counterpoint estimates that American EV sales jumped 79 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2023, helping it move past Germany to become the world's second-largest electric car market. Only China is larger, the analyst group says.
EV tax credits are believed to have played a "crucial role" in spurring sales, and may have helped the US automotive industry as a whole. Where sales of combustion engine cars were flat, EVs surged ahead, according to Counterpoint.
It won't surprise you to hear which brands are out front. Tesla represented 62.7 percent of EV sales in the quarter, with the Model Y and Model 3 taking the top two spots. GM was a distant second, with the Bolt EUV and regular Bolt taking it to 7.6 percent. Volkswagen had 6.3 percent of the market thanks to the ID.4. Plug-in hybrids are a different story — Stellantis has nearly 43.9 percent courtesy of Jeep's PHEV Wrangler and Grand Cherokee models as well as the Chrysler Pacifica minivan. BMW was next at 16.1 percent with the X5, and Toyota's RAV4 helped push it to 15.4 percent.
Counterpoint is optimistic about American EV sales going forward. While revised rules narrowed the list of cars that qualify for tax credits, they're still poised to influence demand. The early stages of economic recovery could also help drive interest. We'd add that increasing domestic production of some EVs, such as the VW ID.4 and future Hyundai models, should expand the range of cars eligible for credits.
EV sales were poised to spike at some point. States like California and New York will require that all new passenger car sales are electrified by 2035, and makes like GM have already committed to going all-electric around the same time. If this analysis is accurate, though, that accelerating growth is already underway.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-us-is-now-the-second-largest-ev-market-behind-china-140958789.html?src=rss
After dozens of stories, we’re just about wrapped with our coverage of Summer Game Fest 2023. Following the cancellation of E3 back in March, we had a smaller, stripped-back experience at SGF. It began... before it all began, with Sony holding its own PlayStation Showcase livestream on May 24th. It was a pretty packed show, featuring Bungie's Marathon, Haven's Fairgame$, a Metal Gear Solid 3 remake, more info on Final Fantasy XVI and Spider-Man 2, and a release date for Alan Wake II. There was also the Project Q handheld streaming device.
Then came Summer Game Fest with an opening night event on Thursday, June 8th. We got a gameplay reveal for Mortal Kombat 1, a new (delayed to 2024) release date for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth,and a handful of smaller reveals like Sand Land and Sonic Superstars. There were a lot of sequels and free-to-play MMO trailers, but it was a generally low-key affair, with fewer big names than we've come to expect from the team behind The Game Awards.
The Day of the Devs and Devolver streams immediately following Summer Game Fest's live show were a little more successful, with interesting games from smaller studios, including Baby Steps, Beastieball, Cocoon, Hauntii, Helskate, Simpler Times and Viewfinder.
It wasn't until Sunday's Xbox event that we got an event filled with the AAA announcements you'd expect out of E3. Microsoft had a customarily dense show that featured new announcements and some release dates (or windows) for known games. Among the games featured were Avowed, Fable, South of Midnight, Persona 3 Reload, Forza Motorsport, Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, Metaphor: ReFantazio and Clockwork Revolution. We also finally got an Xbox Series S that has 1TB of built-in storage.
On Monday, we saw a pair of smaller shows. First up was Ubisoft, which featured Star Wars Outlaws and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, a trio of Assassin's Creed games, a new Crew game and a fresh Prince of Persia title. Later that day it was Capcom's turn, and they showed off Exoprimal, again, and offered an intriguing look at Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, which looks like a unique third-person action game. Finally, because it's 2023, there was also an indefinite delay to the company's almost-forgotten AAA sci-fi game, Pragmata. That's a game that was announced for PlayStation 5 way back in June 2020 — before we even knew what the PS5 looked like — and this is its second delay after initially being expected in 2022.
We’ll have more coverage in the coming weeks, and will update this post with links when they go live. For now, enjoy our analysis, previews and all the other big announcements from SGF 2023.
I published this story about the state of AAA gaming on the eve of Summer Game Fest. After a week stuffed full of gaming announcements, I feel exactly the same way. — Jessica Conditt, Senior Reporter
This story from senior reporter (and Engadget's AI expert) Andrew Tarantola looks at the history of NPCs from if-then programming through to finite-state-machines, decision and behavior trees, GOAPs, and modern AIs in games like The Last of Us, and then looks to the future to see how generative AI might impact the future of gaming.
At some point in the last console generation, Ubisoft lost its soul. It was a piecemeal erosion process that started in 2015, and it finally resulted in a complete identity collapse somewhere between the studio’s unironic rollout of in-game NFTs and its sixth delay of Skull & Bones. Ubisoft has 40 years of AAA hits and weird licensing deals to its name, and it used to be a pillar of European innovation — but in 2023, it’s selling live-service blandness, mobile ports with microtransactions and unreliable release dates. What even is Ubisoft anymore? — Jessica Conditt
Senior video producer Brandon Quintana shot this video immediately after Microsoft's Starfield Direct on Sunday, outlining why, after a fuller look at the game, he's more excited than ever for Bethesda's new ambitious RPG.
In early 2021, Night School was in the market for a partnership. It ended up being acquired by Netflix, becoming the company's first game studio. Now, Night School is gearing up to launch its first game for the streaming giant. But that's not the end of Netflix's ambitions.
I’m nervous about Saga’s fate in Alan Wake II — and that only makes me more excited for the full game. This is first-and-foremost a linear, narrative-driven experience, and it looks spooky as hell. – Jessica Conditt
Armored Core, one of the longest-running mech battle series ever, hasn’t been seen in over a decade. Now, developer FromSoftware, flying high from Elden Ring and Dark Souls glory, is returning to mechs, with what it says is a remastered, reimagined take on robot combat. It’s time for a mech gaming boom. – Mat Smith, UK Bureau Chief
Cocoon is a game that makes perfect sense while you're playing it. That would be an unremarkable achievement if it wasn't also a game that forces you to use its levels to solve themselves. It’s the debut title from Geometric Interactive, a studio from folks that previously worked on the award-winning puzzle platformers Limbo and Inside. At Summer Game Fest 2023 I had around half an hour to play through the game’s opening, and it has stuck with me more than anything else I saw at the show. In my mind it’s the game of the show. – Aaron Souppouris, Executive Editor
The long-overdue next title in the Motorsport series (it’s been over five years since the last!) has a bunch of new features, improved physics, better AI and looks absolutely fantastic at 4K/60. The most interesting thing about it to me is that it could well be the last distinct Motorsport game, as Microsoft is moving the series to a game-as-a-service model. In the age of Game Pass, that makes perfect sense to me, and I can’t wait to start driving this October. – Aaron Souppouris
When I saw the announcement trailer for Immortals of Aveum in the winter of 2022, I was surprised by my own interest in the game. Today, I remain interested in Immortals of Aveum and I think I’ve figured out why. There aren’t a ton of first-person action games that rely on mechanics other than guns — Dishonored, Ghostwire: Tokyo and Hexen come to mind, but it’s a small field overall. That might be one reason Immortals stands out as something fresh, but it’s also nice to see a new, AAA-level game that’s single-player and narrative-driven with a contained campaign, rather than an open world of live-service features. – Jessica Conditt
Lysfanga’s isometric views may conjure up memories of Hades, but this is a different kind of game. While you’ll still be slicing and dicing monsters and enemies, protagonist Imë combines her spells and weapon combos with the ability to revert time and do it all over again, differently. The second time around, her shadow from the previous timeline will continue to rush into the enemies. While some action-game prowess helps, you’ll only beat most levels by thinking them through before you act. The controls and play style aren’t remotely similar, but Lysfanga reminded me of old Fire Emblem games, where careful planning decided a fight before it even begins. Even in this early demo, the game offers some incredibly satisfying moments when all your attacking clones come together to wipe out all the enemies in mere seconds. – Mat Smith
Ed Boon's on-stage gameplay reveal of Mortal Kombat 1, the latest entry in the storied fighting game franchise, was one of the stand-out moments of an otherwise subdued opening event. At a private event after the show, Brandon Quintana and Mat Smith sat down to play some MK1 and came away impressed.
After a small reveal at Summer Game Fest’s opening night event, Ubisoft did a deeper dive into the game during Monday’s “Forward” stream. After that, senior video producer Brandon Quintana got his hands on an early build of the game and had a blast.
Can you imagine assembling 33 players for a 25-minute raid? 33 Immortals plans to do exactly that. Channeling the animation style of retro cartoons (and a little Banner Saga), 33 Immortals is a multiplayer roguelike top-down action game from the creators of Spiritfarer. In this early build of the game I played with five others and had a lot of fun, even if some technical issues spoiled the party a little. I’m excited to play a roguelike as part of a mob, and I'm curious to see what the other character types will be. – Mat Smith
Parallel Studio’s Under the Waves is a calming game. Between the cheers and jeers from Crash Team Rumble players (possibly employees) nearby, I was diving. Diving deeper and deeper into the inky blue, chasing a jettisoned shipping container as it bounced off rocks, spilling soft toys and revealing a mysteriously abandoned submarine hidden deeper still. While I might have been relaxed, I also felt a little unsettled. In a lot of ways, whether it’s the story yet to be revealed or the uneasy tension that is touched on regularly, it reminds me of Firewatch, even if it’s all set undersea. – Mat Smith
All the other big announcements at Summer Game Fest 2023
You can find all of our coverage from Summer Game Fest right here, but here’s a chronological list of the announcements we think really moved the needle.
In early 2021, Night School was in the market for a partnership. The studio’s debut game, Oxenfree,was a breakout success in 2016, and it was followed by Afterparty in 2019 and then 2020’s Next Stop Nowhere, an Apple Arcade exclusive. By 2021, co-founders Sean Krankel and Adam Hines had made deals with the major players in the industry – Xbox, PlayStation, Valve, Nintendo, Apple – and Night School was an acclaimed indie team.
“We were actually talking to Netflix about just bringing some of our existing games over,” Night School co-founder Sean Krankel said at Summer Game Fest, sitting with co-founder Adam Hines and lead developer Bryant Cannon around a small table behind the demo hall.
Krankel said Night School wasn’t in danger of collapsing or laying off any staff in 2021. He and Hines had about 20 employees, they were still dealing with the effects of the pandemic, and they were interested in establishing real stability at the studio. Maybe they’d even find a buyer. They were casually talking with Netflix employee Bill Holmes – whom Krankel described as “the reason why there's a Netflix button on our TV remotes” – about potential publishing deals, nothing more.
“It's like another normal conversation with any first party,” Krankel said. “And then, one day, he literally says, ‘Would you ever be interested in joining?’ And I'm like, hummina hummina – yes. Totally.”
Night School Studio (Twitter)
Night School was the first video game team that Netflix purchased outright, and the deal was announced on September 28th, 2021. This was just two months after Netflix revealed it had hired former EA executive Mike Verdu to lead the company’s formal push into video game publishing and development, with plans to offer titles to subscribers on its streaming platform. Netflix had been messing around with games since 2017, offering mobile experiences and interactive streams based on popular shows like Stranger Things and The Dark Crystal.
Netflix’s first experiment in video games was Stranger Things, a mobile title that landed in October 2017, developed by Texas studio BonusXP. It was well-received and Netflix and BonusXP went on to release a follow-up, Stranger Things 3: The Game, alongside the premiere of the show’s third season in 2019.
If it feels like there was a weird gap between these releases, that’s because there was – but not in the way you might think. Throughout 2018, Telltale Games was building an episodic narrative adventure (as it generally did) based on Stranger Things, signalling the start of a broader partnership with Netflix. At the same time, Telltale tapped Night School to create a companion mobile game set in the world above The Upside Down. Telltale and Night School had collaborated before on the 2016 Mr. Robot mobile title, Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n.
As reported by The Verge, Night School began work in January 2018 on a first-person narrative adventure that would feed directly into the wider-platform game, and Krankel and Hines hired four new people for the project. Telltale missed a number of milestone payments to Night School and was generally difficult to communicate with, according to studio members who spoke with The Verge. And then, in September 2018, Telltale effectively shut down. Night School was left floating for a while, until it was clear their game was dead, too. There’s been a Netflix-shaped ghost in Night School’s résumé ever since.
By 2021, Krankel and Hines had seen the best and worst of what publishers had to offer, and Netflix was finally ready to admit its video game ambitions. The Night School team had considered acquisition offers from other companies over the previous few years, but “there was always something off,” Krankel said.
“After the first chat that I had with the executive team [at Netflix] about this next thing, it was so exciting, because they didn't ask me, you know, ‘Are you in the red on this?’ Or, ‘What's going on with that?’ It was more like, ‘What can we do to unblock your team from making your dreams?’”
Hines added, “Our big concern was the autonomy aspect. We’ve all worked at bigger studios before, and have just seen and felt how long it would take to get decisions made, how the creative would kind of get choked out of things because there's too many cooks in the kitchen. But just talking to Netflix a lot before we joined up, we felt really at ease, just like we were talking the same language about how to make games.”
Night School’s latest project is Oxenfree II, a hotly anticipated sequel coming to PlayStation 4, PS5, Steam, Switch and mobile devices via Netflix on July 12th. (There’s no drama behind the Xbox exclusion, Krankel said: “Nothing happened honestly; it is just where we are in our development.”)
Night School has expanded its team size and moved into the Netflix offices, and they’re able to fly remote employees in as often as they need. One obvious benefit of the Netflix partnership in Oxenfree II is its inclusion of 32 languages at launch.
“That’s crazy,” Hines said at Summer Game Fest.
Lead developer Bryant Cannon agreed: “Especially for a game with hundreds of thousands of words in it. All that's really exciting. I think the game is going to be better because we have this battery in our back.”
Night School was the first purchase in September 2021, but Netflix today owns six video game studios, including Alphabear developer Spry Fox and two internal teams in California and Finland. Netflix has plans to expand into AAA development and past mobile platforms; it offers more than 50 games in its library right now, and the company plans to add 40 more by the end of 2023.
Netflix is publishing more games than it’s buying outright, including Spiritifarer, Into the Breach, Poinpy and Kentucky Route Zero. One of the biggest names in its pile is Laya’s Horizon, the latest title from Alto’s Adventure and Alto’s Odyssey studio, Snowman. Laya’s Horizon is a serene wingsuit game set in a sprawling mountainside sandbox, and it’s exclusive to Netflix Games on Android and iOS.
Snowman
Snowman got its start publishing the iOS versions of the Team Alto games in 2015 and 2018, followed by the Apple Arcade timed exclusives Skate City and Where Cards Fall. Snowman developed and released Lucky Luna for Netflix in 2022, followed by Laya’s Horizon this May. Snowman’s games tend to end up on multiple platforms, eventually, but Android has generally been an afterthought. Its last two projects landed on Android and iOS simultaneously because of Netflix.
In April, Snowman founder Ryan Cash told Engadget that the Netflix partnership hadn’t been a barrier for players. Yes, you need a Netflix account to play the games. But:
“Everyone I've had this conversation with has Netflix,” Cash said. “So they just get to playing right away. Whereas before, it was either, I have to sell them a $5 game or I have to tell them, OK, it's free to play, there are ads but you can remove them if you want. Or it's like, you gotta sign up for Apple Arcade, or you need an Xbox or whatever it is. So it's been the most barrier-free way to tell people what I do.”
Laya’s Horizon doesn’t have a currency system, microtransactions, pop-ups or billboards advertising real-life products lining the slopes of its virtual mountain – because Snowman doesn’t need these features for the game to be adequately profitable. The Netflix partnership took care of that aspect, and creative director Jason Medeiros didn’t have to implement monetization in the actual game.
“I didn't want any of that stuff,” Medeiros said. “Because I mean, I liked games before all that stuff happened. So having a platform like Netflix, it's just like, none of that matters. Like, you don't have to do that stuff. It's a breath of fresh air; we jump on opportunities to make games that way.”
When I initially asked the Night School crew why they chose to be bought by Netflix, Krankel immediately got to the heart of the matter and volleyed, “Why not remain independent?” And then he answered his question:
“A small subset of teams are good to go for the next 10 years, but others have these peaks and valleys, and we were somewhere in between. We weren't in danger of anything going sideways. But we were at a spot where we're like, it would be cool to tether to somebody who has a similar vision, and somebody that we could work with that would like, de-risk us.”
Signing up to be acquired by a massive media company comes with its own risks, but they’re different concerns than those of a fully independent operation, which has to manage funding and paying salaries without a safety net. The challenge for indie studios is to sign up with a parent company that can strike a healthy balance between support and autonomy, and Netflix has a proven track record in this space when it comes to film and television. Games are just the next frontier when it comes to streaming entertainment.
Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/why-the-oxenfree-ii-team-became-netflixs-first-game-studio-130035607.html?src=rss
What good is Reddit without the support of its community? This week, Cherlynn and Devindra discuss the recent subreddit revolts, following the company’s decision to dramatically increase the cost of its API for third parties. They’re joined by Ryan Broderick, the internet culture reporter behind the must-read newsletter Garbage Day. Will the protests amount to any sort of change? Or will Reddit CEO Steve Huffman prevail and make the company ready for a potential IPO? Also, we dive into our reviews of the new MacBook Air 15, as well as the M2 Ultra Mac Studio. Who needs a Mac Pro when Apple has such a powerful desktop already?
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!
Why are Redditors protesting Reddit’s API changes? – 1:15
M2 Mac Studio and 15-inch MacBook Air reviews – 19:14
U.S. Federal Trade Commission files injunction to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision/Blizzard – 27:04
Alan Wake 2, South of Midnight and Baby Steps are Summer Games Fest standouts – 30:29
Working on – 34:06
Pop culture picks – 36:26
Livestream
Credits Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar Guest: Ryan Broderick Producer: Ben Ellman Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos Graphic artist: Luke Brooks and Joel Chokkattu
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-podcast-reddit-revolt-macbook-air-15-review-123056098.html?src=rss
Even if you already have a Father’s Day gift on lock, Sonos’ sale for the holiday is worth checking out while it’s still live. The audio gear maker has knocked up to 25 percent off its speakers and home entertainment gadgets through June 18th, meaning you still have a few days to grab things like the Arc soundbar and the Move portable speaker while they’re discounted to some of the best prices we’ve seen.
One of our favorite soundbars, the Sonos Arc comes in at $900 normally, but you can pick one up for $720 in this sale. We like it’s modern design, stellar sound quality and convenient Sonos-specific features, like being able to automatically calibrate depending on your room’s shape — and adjust accordingly if you add more speakers to your setup. It supports Dolby Atmos, AirPlay 2 and voice commands, and if you pair it with a Sub or Sub Mini, you’ll already have a solid home theater setup with those two components. Of course, $720 isn’t cheap even if it represents a solid discount; those with tighter budgets should consider the Sonos Beam or Ray, both of which are on sale now, too.
The new Sonos Era 100 and 300 speakers aren’t discounted on their own in this sale, but the Sonos Move and Roam are. Both portable speakers, they allow you to take Sonos’ generally solid sound quality outdoors, with the Move being a more beefy cousin to the Roam. The Move is IP56-rated while the Roam is waterproof with an IP67 rating, and both support AirPlay 2, voice commands and connectivity over Bluetooth and WiFi. You can expect stronger, louder sound from the Move, making it a good option for those with big backyards, while the Roam is more backpack-friendly.
If you are itching to get a new Era 100 or 300, they’re included in a few home theater sets that are discounted. The most affordable option is the Surround Set with Beam, which includes the Beam sounder and two Era 100 speakers for just under $900. Considering the Era 100 and the Beam are some of our top picks for smart speakers and soundbars right now, that set will go a long way towards upgrading your living room setup.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sonos-25-percent-off-fathers-day-sale-ends-this-weekend-120529289.html?src=rss
Prepare your ovenable protein of choice, hang out the ornaments and make haste to invite your friends. We’re rapidly approaching this year’s Prime Day, and so it’s about time you got yourself ready to indulge in Amazon’s two-day sales event. We’ve published our latest guide to help you get set, with information on how best to prepare your shopping and, crucially, where to compare historic price trends to make sure the deal you’re offered is actually a deal.
It’s worth noting that plenty of other retailers also plan to take advantage of loosened wallets in the same period. Walmart, Target and Best Buy, alongside plenty of others, will be offering deals on the same or similar items, so it’s doubly worth shopping around. If all of that feels like too much effort, then rest assured that Engadget will also be hunting and picking the best deals, which can be found in our dedicated deals newsletter.
– Dan Cooper
The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.
Intel feels it’s time to tidy up its chip branding, ditching the "i" in front of its series numbers and cleaving the line in two. Rather than Core i3/i5/i7/i9, we’ll just see a lineup of Core 3/5/7/9 chips, with higher-end processors now dubbed Core Ultra. This naming revolution will start with the launch of the new Meteor Lake chips, which are expected to land later this year.
Engadget’s Sam Rutherford has spent the last few weeks with MSI’s new and fully-redesigned Stealth Studio. It seems to be an extraordinary mea culpa from the company after last year’s lackluster effort, and Sam’s already happy to call it the “most improved gaming laptop of the year.” Notable tweaks include a better chassis, longer battery life, great performance and a bright, fast display. Even more impressive is that MSI managed to tune this machine to outperform laptops costing much more, including the Razer Blade 18.
They say the platform does nothing to prevent IP misuse.
A coalition of music publishers believes Twitter isn’t doing enough, or anything, to combat copyright infringement on its platform. After talks to set up a licensing deal failed, the National Music Publishers Association has taken Twitter to court, suing for $250 million in damages. It said that the platform is regularly informed of instances of infringement, but opts to do nothing, saying that the problem has become much worse since Elon Musk – a noted critic of the DMCA – bought the company.
Volkswagen has announced its new Tiguan PHEV will be able to travel for up to 62 miles in electric-only mode. It’s a significant figure, and much more than other PHEVs on the market such as the Prius and Outlander. VW says the range improvements come from the use of newer EV tech and that we’ll learn more about that when it launches later this year. It’s expected to hit dealerships at some point next year, which might make it the last gas-powered car some people ever buy.
It’s now clear that the Reddit blackout will have a significant impact on the platform, but perhaps not in the way its organizers intended. Rather than walk back the API policy changes that will force third-party apps like Apollo to shut down, the company’s leadership has repeatedly doubled down on its position.
"I think it's time we grow up and behave like an adult company,” CEO Steve Huffman toldNPR. “These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free,” he said in an interview with The Verge. Reddit also used the media blitz to downplay the impact of the blackout, which at its peak saw more than 8,000 subreddits go dark in a move that was so destabilizing it temporarily took down the whole platform.
While the initial 48-hour blackout period has passed, the protest is far from over. Thousands of subreddits remain private or restricted. These include the massively popular r/funny, which has more than 40 million subscribers, as well as r/aww, r/Music and others with tens of millions of subscribers. Many of these subreddits’ moderators say they plan to continue their protests indefinitely.
In the short term, massive Reddit communities going dark doesn’t just affect Redditors. It also has an outsize impact on search results because so many people rely on the collective advice, conversations and shared knowledge of the discussions that are central to the platform. As many have pointed out, one of the biggest immediate impacts of the blackout was not a vastly different front page, but search results that lead to dead ends rather than answers.
But there are other, longer term effects we’re only just beginning to get a hint of. For one, the blackout could lead to significant changes in Reddit’s own policies and its dealings with moderators. In an interview with NBC News, Huffman suggested he was considering changing the site’s rules to make it easier to remove moderators.
From NBC:
Huffman, also a Reddit co-founder, said he plans to pursue changes to Reddit’s moderator removal policy to allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular. He said the new system would be more democratic and allow a wider set of people to hold moderators accountable.
One change that is “really important,” he said, “is making sure that, for example, the protests, now or in the future, are actually representative of their communities. And I think that may have been the case for many at the beginning of this week, but that’s less and less the case as time goes on.
A post from Reddit admins also alluded to such a change. In response to a question on r/ModSuport, a company representative raised a similar point. “Active communities are relied upon by thousands or even millions of users, and we have a duty to keep these spaces active,” the unnamed employee wrote. “If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod who wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team.”
While the post cited Reddit’s existing policies for moderators, the comment has been interpreted by some longtime moderators as a direct threat. For now, it’s unclear exactly how Reddit’s policies may change for its legions of volunteer moderators. The company didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether it plans to change its moderator removal policy. But at the very least, it seems that Reddit is at least interested in shifting the power dynamics that have historically given its unpaid moderators an outsize influence over the platform
Meanwhile, the blackout has affected Reddit in other important ways. There’s been a small, but growing push among some power users to federated Reddit alternatives like Lemmy and kbin. These decentralized platforms are still niche, and have many of the same challenges as Mastodon and other Twitter alternatives. Yet there seems to be growing interest from some corners of Reddit in recent weeks. Other large communities are simply moving to a more familiar platform: Discord.
And, as much as Reddit’s leadership tries to downplay the impact of the blackout, advertisers have noticed. According to AdWeek, some ad buyers have at least temporarily paused advertising while they wait for the blackout to play out. And while Huffman has suggested that the company’s ad revenue hasn’t taken a significant hit from the protest, that could change if it drags on indefinitely in communities advertisers are particularly interested in reaching. “[Advertisers] didn’t want to become the subject of users’ opinions about Reddit’s decisions,” one unnamed ad buyer told the publication.
All of this could ultimately leave Reddit in a much different place than it was before the blackout. As Rory Mir, the associate director of community organizing for digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, recently wrote, Reddit seems to be following a familiar pattern. “What we see time and time again, though, is that when a platform turns its back on the community, it doesn’t end well,” Mir said. “They’ll revolt and they’ll flee, and the platform will be left trying to squeeze dwindling profits from a colossal wreck.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-reddit-blackout-is-already-forcing-unexpected-changes-103521266.html?src=rss
The developer of Forza Motorsport, Turn 10, is teaming with F1 Clash's Hutch on a new mobile game. The title will be focused on a "car customization experience and tuned for a broad audience on mobile platforms," the companies announced in a joint statement. There's no word yet on a title or release date.
The companies have been in discussions to do a joint project since 2020. The aim is to take advantage of Forza's "world-leading gameplay and visual style" and Hutch's experience in mobile live ops. The partnership is "rooted in both companies' desire to create a platform-leading automotive gaming experience," they said.
UK-based Hutch is perhaps best known as the developer of F1 Clash, originally called F1 Manager. However, it offers other automotive games, including Top Drives, Hot Wheels Race Off and the discontinued Race Kings. Turn 10, of course, is known for the Forza racing series that first launched in 2005. Its latest entry, Forza Motorsport, is set to arrive on October 10th.
The only previous Forza mobile title was Forza Street, effectively a rebadged version of Miami Street from Electric Square. It was shut down last year after launching in May 2020. With F1 Clash, Hutch does have some experience in car customization, allowing players to tweak and update cars as part of race management decisions.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/forza-maker-turn-10-teams-with-hutch-on-a-car-customization-mobile-game-091439587.html?src=rss
