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It’s not always easy (or affordable) to wrangle kids together for a trip to the cinema. And for new parents, it’s often tough to find childcare for a date night. A better option for dads and moms is a home entertainment upgrade – something that can help them relax once the kids are asleep, or to have a fun family movie night. Here are some of our favorite gift options to elevate any parent’s viewing experience.

Sonos Beam

There are plenty of soundbars out there, but few are as versatile as the Sonos Beam. It's a sleek box that'll instantly upgrade any TV with expansive and detailed sound. But, it's also a smart speaker with support for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. That makes it a viable alternative to devices like the Echo. Being able to shout "Play some Sesame Street songs!" comes in really handy for new parents. Trust me.

LG C2 OLED

There’s no better home entertainment upgrade than a new TV, and LG’s C2, like the company’s previous flagship OLEDs, remains one of the best. It’ll deliver astounding 4K HDR and Dolby Vision content, with all of the eye-searing contrast and inky blacks you’d expect from an OLED panel. While LG has a newer C3 model, we think the C2 remains a better option for most people, especially since it costs far less.

PlayStation 5 Media Remote

If your entertainment runs through a game console, and dad just wants to kick back to watch a game or some Blu-ray discs, then he’ll appreciate navigating things with a remote instead of a gamepad. The PS5 Media Remote matches the console aesthetically, and includes shortcut buttons for several popular apps. Plus, its batteries will last longer than the one in a DualSense so it will always be ready to go. Your biggest problem could be probably finding one in stock, although if you managed to snag the console then we think you’ll be able to figure this out too. For Xbox owners, the PDP Media remote works for systems from the One through the new Series X/S. Instead of shortcut keys it includes a fairly standard universal remote setup so that there’s not a lot of re-learning involved.

Roku Streaming Stick 4K

Anyone with an older TV set would appreciate Roku’s Streaming Stick 4K. It’s a $50 dongle that’ll do just about everything you’d want from a streaming device: Access a vast library of apps, offer fast performance and play content in 4K (and on supported TVs, it can also handle HDR and Dolby Vision). Even if a TV already has built-in apps, there’s a good chance the Streaming Stick will be faster, especially if the set is a few years old. Roku’s stick also makes for a great travel companion: Instead of logging into services on a hotel TV, dad just needs to plug this in.

Apple TV 4K 2022

The latest version of the Apple TV 4K is, unsurprisingly, the best. It’s faster than ever, it’s far more affordable and it includes Apple’s revamped Siri Remote, which has a responsive (and clickable) circular trackpad. The new version is a solid upgrade for anyone with the original 4K model, and it’s even a bigger leap for owners of the company’s older set-top boxes. Sure, Apple’s TV app is also available on many competing devices, but we still prefer the user experience of the Apple TV 4K. Consider it a must buy for any iPhone-toting parents in your life.

Sony WH-1000XM5

Sony’s latest pair of noise-canceling headphones are among the best we’ve ever seen. The XM5 are supremely comfortable, offer excellent sound quality, and have far more powerful noise-blocking capabilities than before. While they’re not great for group watching, they’re the perfect pair of cans for a new dad who wants to fully immerse themselves in the latest Fast and Furious movie.

Philips Hue White + Color Starter Kit

Whether the house is already leaning into automation or not, this starter kit of Philips Hue White and Color lights should be a good fit. It comes with three bulbs that can glow in millions of colors, as well as a button for easy manual control and a Hue bridge. The latter will be important if dad eventually wants to add to its lighting system as it supports up to 50 connected lights. He’ll be able to control his lights from anywhere using the companion mobile app, set schedules and routines and use Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri commands to change the lighting in the house as he sees fit. That means it’ll be easier than ever for dad to get the right ambiance for his next movie night.

BenQ HT2050AA projector

For the biggest and best screen possible, you’ll always want a projector. The BenQ HT2050A is as good of an option as you’ll find, and your dad can brag about how much of a deal it was at under $750. What this 1080p projector lacks in resolution and dynamic range it more than makes up for in value, and is a perfect choice to get someone started on live the projector lifestyle. Just find a blank wall and pop this on a table for an incredible movie or game night with a few vaccinated friends. A proper projection screen, blackout shades and seating upgrades are follow-up gifts that everyone will get to use.

Meta has set up an internal task force after reporters and researchers discovered its systems helped "connect and promote a vast network of accounts" devoted to underage-sex content, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Unlike forums and file transfer services, Instagram not only hosts such activities but promotes them via its algorithms. The company acknowledged enforcement problems and has taken actions including restricting its systems from recommending searches associated with sex abuse. 

"Child exploitation is a horrific crime," Meta told the WSJ in a statement. "We’re continuously investigating ways to actively defend against this behavior."

Along with the task force, Meta told reporters that it is working on blocking child sexual abuse material (CSAM) networks and taking steps to change its systems. In the last two years, it has taken down 27 pedophile networks and is working on removing more. It has blocked thousands of related hashtags (with millions of posts for some) and took action to prevent its systems from recommending CSAM-related terms. It's also trying to stop its systems from connecting potential abusers with each other.

However, the report should be a wakeup call for Meta, the company's former security chief Alex Stamos told the WSJ. "That a team of three academics with limited access could find such a huge network should set off alarms at Meta," he said, noting that the company far better tools than outside investigators to map CSAM networks. "I hope the company reinvests in human investigators." 

Academics from Stanford's Internet Observatory and UMass's Rescue Lab were able to quickly find "large-scale communities promoting criminal sex abuse," according to the report. After creating test users and viewing a single account, they were immediately hit with "suggested for you" recommendations of possible CSAM sellers and buyers, along with accounts linking to off-platform content sites. Following just several recommendations caused the test accounts to be inundated with sex-abuse content. 

“Instagram is an onramp to places on the internet where there’s more explicit child sexual abuse,” said UMass Rescue Lab director Brian Levine. The Stanford group also found that CSAM content is "particularly severe" on the site. "The most important platform for these networks of buyers and sellers seems to be Instagram."

Meta said the company actively seeks to remove such users, having taken down 490,000 accounts violating child safety policies in January alone. Its internal statistics show that child exploitation appears in less than one in 10 thousand posts, it added. 

However, until queried by reporters, Instagram was allowing users to search terms that its own systems know may be associated with CSAM material. A pop-up screen warned users that "These results may contain images of child sexual abuse" that can cause "extreme harm" to children. However, it then allowed users to either "Get resources" or "See results anyway." The latter option has now been disabled, but Meta didn't respond when the WSJ asked why it was allowed in the first place. 

Furthermore, attempts by users to report child-sex content were often ignored by Instagram's algorithms. And Facebook's own efforts to exclude hashtags and terms were sometimes overridden by the systems, suggesting users try variations on the name. In testing, researchers found that viewing even one underage seller account caused the algorithm to recommend new ones. "Instagram’s suggestions were helping to rebuild the network that the platform’s own safety staff was in the middle of trying to dismantle."

A Meta spokesperson said it's currently building system to prevent such recommendations, but Levine said the time to act is now. "Pull the emergency brake. Are the economic benefits worth the harms to these children?" Engadget has reached out to Meta for comment. 

Wordpress is getting an AI writing assistant of its own called Jetpack AI, and it's built into the content management system's editor. For Wordpress blogs hosted elsewhere, owners will still be able to access the tool through the Jetpack plugin. Like any other generative AI tool, Jetpack can spit out content based on the prompt users type in, whether it's a traditional article, a list or a table. The assistant can also switch the tone of the post, depending on what the user is going for: It could sound informative, optimistic, humorous or even sarcastic. 

If the user wants to write their own post, they could still ask Jetpack for help. They could either make the tool generate a headline based on what they'd written or use it to automatically check their grammar or correct any spelling mistakes. And if they want to include a translation of their article, they can use Jetpack AI to quickly translate it into any of its 12 available languages, including Spanish, French and Korean. According to TechCrunch, Jetpack is free to use for all WordPress.com customers for the first 20 requests as sort of a free trial period. After that, users will have to pay $10 per month to be able to access the tool. 

While Jetpack AI can be especially useful for people already using Wordpress, it's just one of the AI-powered writing tools that have recently popped up. The Microsoft 365 Copilot, for instance, can create a proposal on Word based on spreadsheet data or change a written report's tone. Google also recently imbued its Workspace apps with AI capabilities and gave Docs the power to generate text based on the topic written on the page.

After a few teases, Volvo is finally revealing the EX30, its all-electric small premium SUV. Designed to have the lowest carbon footprint of all its offerings, Volvo’s fourth EV brings the company’s plan to go all-electric by 2030 one step closer to becoming a reality. 

The EX30 includes all of Volvo’s typical safety features and an updated Park Pilot Assist that will help you find parking spaces, along with getting into them. It also comes in five exterior colors and ambient light offerings inspired by Scandinavia, including a northern lights setting, with paired ambient soundscapes. It comes off more like what you’d get in a spa than a car, but as long as you don’t get too cozy while driving, it should be nice. 

The EX30 is available as a Single Motor Extended Range or Twin Motor Performance. They charge from 10 to 80 percent in 26 and a half minutes, have 64 kWh of usable battery and 268 rear horsepower. Plus, they have 31.9 cubic feet of luggage space. 

Now, where they differ: The Single Motor is real-wheel drive, offering an estimated range of 275 miles, going 0 to 60 in 5.1 seconds and with 253 lbs-ft of torque. The Twin Motor is all-wheel drive with a slightly shorter range at 265 miles, goes 0 to 60 in 3.6 seconds and has 400 lbs-ft of torque. Built with performance in mind, the Twin Motor delivers 154 more horsepower (a total of 422 HP) than its single motor sibling.

The Volvo EX30 is available for pre-order in the US starting at $34,950, with a cross-country variant launching next year. In a statement about the EX30’s release, Volvo’s chief executive Jim Rowan commented on the frequent financial barrier to buying an EV. “We know that price and cost of ownership is still one of the biggest challenges when people consider switching to an electric car,” he said. “With the Volvo EX30, we aim to bring premium, fully electric mobility to a much broader audience, helping to advance and speed up the transition to full electrification that our industry and society needs.” The EX30 is significantly cheaper than Volvo’s C40 and XC40 EVs — both with a starting price around $55,000 and the upcoming EX90, which Volvo says will be “under $80,000.” 

Volvo

Receiving an unsolicited image is an unpleasant experience at the best of times, and one that technology has made all too common. At WWDC, Apple announced iOS 17 will use an on-device machine learning model to scan both images and videos for nudity. When detected, you’ll get a pop-up, telling you the system thinks the file may be inappropriate.

I wonder how much of this is a response to the practice of AirDropping inappropriate images to an unsuspecting person’s phone. One notable incident from 2022 saw a person removed from a flight after they had shared an image of themselves with other passengers. That AirDrop images have visible previews, too, currently makes it harder for people to avoid catching an eyeful.

– Dan Cooper

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Apple bought the AR company behind the tech in Nintendo’s ‘Mario Kart’ ride

Mira also had several military contracts.

Universal Studios / Nintendo

Apple has bought Mira, the company that built the AR headsets used in Super Nintendo World’s Mario Kart-themed ride. It had previously built its own smartphone-based headset, which we tried in 2017. Back then, it garnered some praise despite its low price and low tech. As well as the Mario headsets, the startup was also supplying heads-up display gear for the US military. It’s not clear when the deal happened, or if any of Mira’s technology went into the Vision Pro. But it’s likely, if it hasn’t already, Apple will be quietly scooping up plenty of small AR and VR startups in the coming years.

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Twitter's ad sales have reportedly dropped by 59 percent since last year

Advertisers are nervous about the content Twitter is happy to host.

Twitter has reportedly seen ad revenue fall by 59 percent in the last year as brands flee the platform. After Elon Musk bought the company to remake it in his own image, advertisers have backed off due to the surge in hate speech and adult content. In 2021, under the old regime, Twitter cleared annual revenue of $5.1 billion, while the first year of Musk’s tenure is expected to make just $3 billion. Maybe, just maybe, gutting the moderation and ad-sales staff of a platform reliant on moderation and ad-sales wasn’t the smartest business move.

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Western Digital's first Xbox Series X/S storage cards start at $80

No more are users locked into Seagate’s storage options.

Western Digital

If you wanted to expand the storage of your Xbox Series X or S, you had the choice of any manufacturer you wanted, so long as it was Seagate. Now, however, Western Digital has launched its own range of expansion cards to boost the size of your local library. The WD Black C50 starts at $80 for a 500GB model, with a 1TB card costing $150, a fair bump cheaper than Seagate’s offerings. Not to mention it’s just nice to have a choice.

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Chinese startup says its new EV battery doesn’t lose range in the cold

It says the Phoenix cell has a top range of 621 miles.

EVs have countless benefits over their gas-powered rivals, but battery degradation in low temperatures isn’t one of them. It’s an issue Chinese company Greater Bay Technology says it’s now fixed, claiming its new Phoenix battery can reach ideal temperature in six minutes. It added Phoenix has a potential range of 1,000km (621 miles) and will be in a new EV made by (Chinese manufacturer) Aion at some point next year. If true, this could be the quantum leap that will see EVs trounce the competition once and for all.

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Reddit is going through a restructuring, and according to an email by company chief Steve Huffman as seen by The Wall Street Journal, one of the moves it's going to make is laying off 90 employees. That's around 5 percent of the company's current workforce with 2,000 employees. 

In addition, Reddit is slowing down hiring this year and reducing the intake of new workers to 100 from the 300 personnel it had originally planned. Apparently, the social network wants to focus on achieving its biggest goals, such as breaking even next year. Huffman reportedly wrote in the email that Reddit has "had a solid first half of the year," and that this restructuring will position it "to carry that momentum into the second half and beyond."

This is but one of the moves Reddit is taking in an effort to earn money: Back in April, it also announced that it will start charging developers for access to its API. The company made the decision just as the biggest players in tech got into generative AI, which is typically trained using data from the internet accessed via API. "[A]s a platform with one of the largest corpus of human-to-human conversations online, spanning the past 18 years, we have an obligation to our communities to be stewards of this content," the company said. 

While Reddit may have been looking to earn from large companies, even independent developers are affected by its decision. Christian Selig, the sole developer of Apollo for Reddit, said it would cost him $20 million a year to keep his app running as is. Other third-party apps, such as Narwhal and Reddit is Fun, have already warned users that they can't afford paying for Reddit's API and will likely shut down. Dozens of subreddit communities across various topics are now planning to go dark starting on June 12th as an act of protest. Some of them plan to remain inactive for 48 hours, while others intend to stay dark permanently until Reddit addresses the issue. 

If you're in the market for some serious storage add-ons, now might be your chance. Samsung's 1TB 980 Pro SSD is down to $66.49, a new all-time low. Its counterpart, the 980 Pro SSD with Heatsink, is also at the best price we've seen yet at $80. 

Samsung's 980 Pro SSD supports read speeds up to 7,000MB/S, comes as a compact M.2 2280 form factor and uses a special thermal control algorithm to control heat levels with extended use. The SSD also includes Samsung Magician so you can monitor its health over time and includes a two-month membership to Adobe Creative Cloud Photography with your purchase. 

If you're a PS5 owner looking to upgrade, the heatsink will offer better performance and reliability. Heatsink keeps the device from overheating and performance dropping on the PS5 or your PC by dispersing heat as it occurs. 

If you prefer Western Digital's storage options, its WD_Black SN850X SSD is still part of a big sale, with a 57 percent discount bringing the 4TB model from $700 to $300. The smaller memory options also have significant price cuts, with the 2TB option down to $140 from $290 and the 1TB down to $78 from $160.  

Amazon's Blink doorbells and cameras are an inexpensive way to get into smart home security, and now it's running a sale that makes them significantly cheaper. In one key deal, the Blink Video Doorbell and Sync Module 2 is priced at $57, a savings of 40 percent and one of the lowest prices we've seen. You can also pick up the Blink Mini Pan-Tilt Camera for just $42 (30 percent off), a three-pack of the Blink Mini indoor cam for $54 (45 percent off) and the Blink Outdoor (3rd Gen) for $60 (40 percent off). 

The Blink Video Doorbell offers live video at 1080p resolution with infrared capabilities for nighttime use and two-way audio. You don't need to worry about wires, and it'll run for up to two years on a pair of AA batteries. It's also weather resistant thanks to a seal that offers protection against water, Amazon says. Alexa can manage the doorbell by operating the two-way audio function, arming and disarming the device and giving you chime and motion alerts. You can get a live display on an Alexa-powered device or your smartphone. 

The Sync Module 2, meanwhile, enables users to control Blink devices from the Blink Home Monitor app. Plug a USB storage drive into the Sync Module 2, and you'll be able to save recordings of motion-activated video clips. You'll be able to view the footage via the Blink app or by plugging the flash drive into your computer.

Beyond the Video Doorbell, other notable deals include a three-camera kit of Blink's indoor security cam for $54 and the Blink Outdoor Cam, another pick from our best smart home device guide, for $60 ($99 for a two pack). And if you're looking for a flexible indoor camera, the Blink Mini Pan-Tilt model is on sale for $42, or $18 off the full price. Those are just several of a large number of deals in Amazon's big Blink sale. 

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