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Abode is launching a new Smart Home Security Kit that will integrate with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and the Google Nest line of products. The entry-level kit includes the Abode Security Hub, a mini door/window sensor and a keyfob. The company is previously known for its line of DIY home security systems, which faces increased competition from the likes of Amazon, ADT, SimpliSafe and Cove Security.

users will be able to add new accessories, get event notifications, arm and disarm the system, set up automations and more with the accompanying Abode app. The new system will also be able to integrate with Amazon and Google’s smart home systems if you already have your devices like an Echo or Nest Home. Naturally, that means hands-free control via Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. The Abode Smart Home Security Kit also includes a battery backup and cellular backup in case of a power outage, a 93dB siren and person, package and pet detection.

The one downside to the system compared to the previous system is that you’ll be losing HomeKit integration if you’ve built your smart home ecosystem inside of Apple’s Home app. The old Smart Security System used Z-Wave, Zigbee and HomeKit. If you’re looking for those integrations, you’ll have to buy Abode’s Smart Security Kit instead.

The new Adobe Smart Home Security Kit will be available at a special introductory price of $139.99 and will include free shipping. After this introductory pricing, users will be able to purchase the kit for $159.99.

Arc, a Mac-only internet browser from the aptly-named Browser Company, is one of those apps trying to reimagine a core computing tool. Years after we all decided that a stack of tabs at the top of a browser window is how we’re doing things, Arc has a different approach. Like most modern apps, Arc puts everything in a sidebar and lets you build spaces that you can use to focus on a particular task. For example, all the research and documents I need for a particular article live in their own space, and I can jump over to another for personal tabs or a third for keeping an eye on the news of the day.

Arc, which launched a little over a year ago, certainly has its quirks. A big one is the fact it doesn’t have a bookmarking system like other browsers, and there are a lot of small things that differentiate it from Chrome and Safari. One of those features is taking center stage in a new update that Arc is rolling out today. It’s called Boosts, which the Arc team grandly refers to as a way to take control over the sites they visit. I’ve been testing the Boosts 2.0 release for a few weeks, and while I don’t think it is reinventing the internet, it does open up some fun possibilities.

Boosts first launched about a year ago, and product designer Nate Parrott told me the concept was to “make it 10 times easier” to build a browser extension. “If you’re the kind of person who likes to tinker with things or a person who makes websites, you probably have all the technical skills to make a Chrome extension, like JavaScript and CSS and HTML,” Parrott said, “and yet nobody makes them because it's just really hard.” And while the original Boosts release put a bunch of tools right in the browser to let you customize sites, it still wasn’t exactly user-friendly for people who don’t know things like CSS.

“Ten times easier than making a Chrome extension is not really that easy,” Parrott said. “You have to know how to code, you have to be willing to dig around in the web inspector and figure out what things are called in the code and stuff like that. It's just not that easy.” Boosts 2.0 fixes that in a pretty major way by giving anyone a few simple tools to tweak sites they visit. If the original Boosts made things ten times easier, Parrott wanted Boosts 2.0 to make it 50 times easier.

To that end, Boosts now has a handful of simple but useful ways to customize basically any site. There’s a color picker that lets you change most sites from the standard white or black backgrounds you’re used to, and you can also replace the font in many cases as well. That might not sound like that big a deal, but it can really make things feel fresh – being able to change the Spotify web app from the black-and-green motif was nice, and being able to try some new customization features for my Gmail inbox was fun as well.

Perhaps more useful is the “Zap” feature. This lets you highlight an element of a page that you don’t want to see and just… zap it into oblivion. I tried this with YouTube Music; since the service added podcasts a few weeks ago, the “explore” page has included a “top shows” segment that surfaces some extremely low-quality garbage. I just clicked the zap button, highlighted the section and now I don’t have to think about it anymore.

Results can be a bit hit or miss. For example, I tried to zap some elements on Twitter’s website to essentially make it read-only so I can use it to dig for news without being tempted to actually engage with anything. I was able to delete the row that contains the reply and like buttons below a tweet, but getting that to apply to every tweet didn’t work for me. Of course, if you have the technical knowledge to dig into a site’s code, you can still do that just like you can in Boosts 1.0 and use tools like CSS, HTML and Javascript to tweak things to your liking.

You can also share your Boosts with other Arc users, something else that’s new to this release. (Any Boost that uses Javascript is unable to be shared for security reasons, though.) If you’ve come up with a particularly inspired tweak to a site, you can share it directly with a friend, as each Boost has a permalink. Arc will also be curating a gallery of its favorite custom options as well.

The Browser Company

I asked Parrott if he had any concerns that giant corporations would take issue with users tweaking their websites, but he had the good point that Arc’s user base is so small that it’s hard to imagine it would be an issue. He also had some philosophical thoughts about the tension between how people want the internet to look versus how companies and designers want it to look. “We've swung so far in the direction of ‘users do not have agency over the web tools that they use,’ while the companies have so much control,” he said. “I think that really anything that swings the pendulum a little bit in the other direction of ‘the users actually have a little bit of agency over this’ I think is gonna be a positive thing and a healthy thing.”

Right now, Arc is still Mac-only and you need to sign up on a waitlist to get access, so whatever weird things people try with Boosts 2.0 will remain a minor part of the internet landscape for now. And after playing around with them a bit, I can’t say they’d be a key driver in my decision to use Arc over another browser – but then again, I’m not much of a tweaker. Maybe the people who prefer Android over an iPhone, or those who are spending hours making wild contraptions in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom are exactly the kind of people who might enjoy painting Engadget’s home page in a lovely shade of teal.

Acer just announced two new laptops at this year’s Computex expo in Taiwan. For gamers, there’s the new Predator Triton 16 line and for creatives (and everyone else), there’s the Swift Edge 16.

The new Predator Triton 16 is a serious gaming computer that Acer says can easily handle “intense AAA” titles, though it also features a relatively modest design that could fit into office environments. Did somebody say dual-use? This laptop boasts a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, up to a 13th Gen Intel Core i9 processor, up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM and up to 2TBs of storage.

This is a gaming laptop, so visuals get special attention here, with a 16-inch WQXGA 2560 x 1600 display that features a 240Hz refresh rate, 500 nits peak brightness and full support for NVIDIA G-Sync. It’s still plenty thin, at 0.78-inches, and ships with next-generation cooling fans for those times when you just have to max out a game’s settings. The Triton 16 launches in September, with a starting price of $1,800.

The thin and light Swift Edge 16 is made for those who game a bit on the side but primarily use a laptop for creative work or just for browsing the web. You get the latest AMD Ryzen 7040 series processor, AMD Radeon 780M graphics, a 16-inch 3.2K OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and integration with the newest wireless standard on the block, the mythical Wi-Fi 7. The Windows 11 PC ships with up to 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, up to 2TB of SSD storage and enhanced fans for cooling. It launches in July at a starting price of $1,300.

Acer didn’t stop with just laptops. The company also announced a forthcoming tri-band router called the Acer Connect VERO W6m. This is billed as the company’s first “eco-friendly router” and is designed for data protection, as it adheres to strict European cyber security standards.

This has been a big year of announcements for the company. In just the past few months, we’ve seen a new Chromebook Spin with a 2K webcam, the Swift X 16 flagship notebook and much more.

Sometimes, it’s just better to share your screen when you’re trying to show how to do something or get an idea across. The latest version of iOS on iPhones has made it easier to do this — you can even share your screen via Facetime now, too. But you don’t have to force your not-so tech savvy mom or dad to jump on FaceTime to show them how to check their email. iPhones have another built-in feature that makes screen recording and sharing easy. The steps below will work on iOS 11 and later. Any older iPhone will have to rely on third-party screen recording apps from the App Store.

How to screen record on iPhone

To start screen recording, you first need to make the option more accessible by editing your Control Center.

1. Go to the Settings app and tap Control Center.

2. Here you’ll see a list of tools you can add to your Control Center for easy access. Scroll down the list and tap the green plus icon next to Screen Recording. That will move it up to the “Included Controls” list.

Engadget

3. Now when you go to the Control Center by swiping down from the top right corner of your iPhone’s screen. (On anything older than the iPhone X you’ll swipe up from the bottom.) Screen Recording is represented by an icon with a white dot with a circle around it.

4. Tap that icon and wait for the three second countdown to begin.

Engadget

How to stop screen recording

Depending on your iPhone model, you’ll see a red timestamp at the top left of your screen or a red dot near the center while recording. Tap either of those and the iPhone will ask you if you want to stop recording. Hit “confirm” and you’ll then see a pop up that tells you your video is saved and where to find it.

How to turn on your microphone

If you want to add audio to your recording, go to the Control Center. Press and hold the Screen Recording icon and tap the microphone icon in the context menu. Now, every time you screen record, your iPhone will collect sound along with video.

How to find a screen recording

Screen recordings are treated like any other video, so you’ll find them in the Photos app where you can edit them if needed. However, if you would like your recording to go to a different location, press and hold the Screen Recording icon in the Control Center. You’ll then see a list of apps to which you’re able to send your video and share with others. For example, if you want to send that screen capture to Discord, all you have to do is tap the app in the menu and add a check next to it. Next time you want to show your gaming buddies what's on your screen, you can send the video straight to them.

Engadget

OpenAI first launched its ChatGPT iOS app across the US in mid-May and now it has made good on its promise to expand to more countries in the "coming weeks" by launching in 11 new countries. The countries are a global mix with iOS users in Albania, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Jamaica, Korea, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria and the UK now able to access the app.

The ChatGPT app works and looks like the website does with conversation history synced between the computer and iPhone. ChatGPT Plus subscribers can access GPT-4 through the app and receive faster responses. The app does have one new feature compared to the website, allowing people to use voice input through OpenAI's Whisper speech recognition. For now, it's only formatted for iPhones, so iPad users still need the desktop version.

As for when ChatGPT will be available on smartphones globally, OpenAI says "soon." Keep in mind there still isn't a ChatGPT app available for Android users anywhere, though OpenAI's original iOS app announcement said, "Android users, you're next!"

The expansion itself and continually easing access to AI hastens the global debate over policies. According to Reuters, Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, has expressed the possibility of pulling ChatGPT from the European Union if the company decides it can't work within upcoming regulations. Meanwhile, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai is working closely with the European Commission to enact AI guidelines.

The big streaming story this week is the confusing launch of Warner Bros.' Max service, but the artist formerly known as HBO is not the only game in town. Paramount+ has been steadily gaining subscribers, thanks in part to a unique bundle that also includes cable stalwart Showtime. This combination platter typically costs $12 per month, but a new promo halves that price for new subscribers.

In other words, you get a full Paramount+ Premium subscription with Showtime for just $6 per month, though this discount vanishes into thin air after three months. The company is hoping you’ll keep the bundle after that, as the combined might of the two streaming services offers a whole lot of content.

Paramount+ is home to all things Star Trek, including the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds that premieres on June 15th. It also airs next-day CBS content, live news, plenty of sports, and original dramas that aren’t set in space, like Sylvester Stallone’s Tulsa King and that weird Fatal Attraction reboot. The service also hosts a bunch of hit movies not based on comic books, like Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Top Gun: Maverick.

Showtime may not have the content stable of main rival HBO, but it does have plenty of standout shows like Yellowjackets, Twin Peaks: The Return, Billions and Dexter, in addition to recent theatrical hits like The Fabelmans and Everything Everywhere at Once. The deal is live right now and lasts until June 4th.

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It took just a few minutes for Lego 2K Drive to sink its hooks into me. The second I left the road, my sports coupe converted into an off-road buggy. Just before hitting some water, the vehicle's Lego bricks swiftly contorted themselves into a speedboat. Those satisfying transformations are something you'll see a ton of as you explore multiple open areas and compete in races that play out across ever-changing terrain.

This arcade racer is the first Lego game from Visual Concepts, a developer that has otherwise focused on NBA and WWE games over the last few years. The studio hasn't hit the same heights of humor and wit as TT's Lego games (to be fair, Visual Concepts doesn't have nine movies worth of iconic Star Wars movies to riff on), but 2K Drive is still packed with surprises and clever ideas.

It's a fun blend of Forza Horizon 5 and Mario Kart. Zooming through the open areas can be a blast and losing bricks from your vehicle when you take damage is a neat touch (smashing breakable objects will restore your health and increase your boost meter). So, it's a shame that the actual races can get pretty frustrating.

Visual Concepts has tuned races to make them feel as close and exciting as possible, for better and worse. No matter your vehicle loadout, every other competitor in the race storms ahead of you as soon as the light goes green. At first, finding a way to overtake your race-specific rival and other Lego drivers to win is thrilling, but the game quickly shows its hand. You can never build up too much of a lead. If you spin off the track at a tight corner, enemies will kindly slow down a little for you. The rubberbanding works both ways, but it makes races ultimately feel overly contrived. More than once, I was on the verge of victory only for an opponent to storm past me at the last second.

There are some Mario Kart-style powerups you can grab during races and in the open world. On the surface, the powerups seem to add another dimension to races, though any enemy car I destroyed was quickly back in the thick of the action. They can work against you too. In one race, I was about to take the checkered flag when an enemy launched a spider web to obscure my vision and slow me down.

Winning races is essential to progress through the story, and it's annoying that there's no quick restart option when you aren't victorious. You have to go back to the open world before you can try a race again.

Those quibbles aside, the game is plenty enjoyable. There's a ton to do after beating the campaign, even if you don't care about online races. There are dozens upon dozens of challenges, side missions and collectibles to discover. You might find yourself smashing alien robots to protect some towers or scooting around a small town to pick up residents and protect them from skeleton attackers. There are fetch quests galore too. The story missions and challenges can become too much of a grind — you have to reach a certain experience level to unlock some races — but there was just enough variety to keep a smile on my face.

Visual Concepts/2K

The most exciting aspect of Lego 2K Drive for many players will be the vehicle builder. You can use virtual Lego bricks to build pretty much anything you want, including replicas of pre-made cars you unlock or even toy vehicles you've built in real life. The one car I made is a monstrosity, but at least it works, unlike many of the janky vehicles I've seen in Tears of the Kingdom clips.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the game nudges you in the direction of microtransactions for the pre-made cars. You'll slowly earn currency, but it'll take you quite a while to unlock vehicles from the shop for free. After playing for seven hours, I still didn't have enough Brickbux for a car. As it happens, you can pay real cash to unlock cars and drivers faster, as well as more types of bricks for your custom builds.

Lego 2K Drive is almost a great game. Most of the right pieces are in place and younger players may get more of a kick out of it than more experienced gamers. Hopefully, Visual Concepts can tweak the race AI and other minor flaws to make it really sing. In the meantime, I'll still be hunting for rainbow bricks in Big Butte County.

Among a barrage of game announcements during PlayStation’s State of Play yesterday, Sony revealed it’s getting into the increasinglybusy world of game streaming devices. No, this isn’t a next-gen PS Vita (sadly), but an eight-inch screen, bookended by DualSense controls. Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan said the device would allow PlayStation gamers to stream any PS5 game, excluding PlayStation VR2 titles, over WiFi and the company's Remote Play protocol.

However, there aren’t many specs for the device just yet, but Sony says it’ll have an LCD screen that can stream games at up to 1080p and 60 fps over WiFi. The controller part will also have the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers of the PS5 controller. It’s set to launch later this year.

– Mat Smith

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.

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Twitter struggled with Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid announcement

One backer said servers were 'kind of melting.'

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Ron DeSantis was supposed to take to Twitter Spaces yesterday to announce his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination officially. Unfortunately, Twitter was not prepared for the influx of people waiting to listen to the announcement. The announcement eventually got underway after Twitter moved the Space to Republican megadonor David Sacks' account because Musk's "account was breaking the system." Sacks said the Space, with more than 500,000 people tuned in to listen at one point, was the largest group that had "ever met online," a claim quickly ridiculed.

So why did Twitter struggle with those kinds of numbers? It might be that since Musk’s acquisition, the majority of the workforce has been gutted, including much of the team responsible for its infrastructure.

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iOS 17 will reportedly turn your locked iPhone into a smart display

Your phone could be more useful when you aren't using it.

Bloomberg sources claim Apple's iOS 17 update may introduce a lock screen that effectively turns an iPhone into a smart display when the device is on its side. You'll reportedly see calendar items, notifications and other details in a high-contrast layout reminiscent of an Amazon Echo Show or Google Nest Hub. The new lock screen is said to be more advanced than the one Google brought to Android 10. Rumors say Apple is developing multiple smart home devices, which could include a mountable screen, so this could dovetail neatly into that push.

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'Fairgame$' looks like Payday and The Division with a Gen-Z twist

It's the first title out of Jade Raymond's Haven Studios.

Sony

The first project out of Haven Studios (a new studio founded by veteran producer Jade Raymond, who's best known for her work on the Assassin's Creed franchise) is Fairgame$, and it looks like it packs plenty of neon-tinged anarchist multiplayer action. The online competitive heist game has a lovely, timely focus on rebelling against billionaires, and it's heading to PlayStation 5 and PC.

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Assassin's Creed Mirage will arrive on October 12th

The parkour-heavy stealth game will be available this fall.

Talking of Assassin’s Creed, the next game in the series has a release date. On October 12th, Assassin’s Creed Mirage will put players in the robes of Basim Ibn in the city of Baghdad, 861 CE, and will have a stronger focus on stealth mechanics and parkour-based movement than its predecessor. That makes it look a lot like older games in the series from the trailers we've seen so far, but you still get a pet eagle.

Continue reading.

WhatsApp has been rolling out a constant stream of updates lately across its platform. The latest news comes in the form of a profile update, with WhatsApp reportedly working on a new username option, WABetaInfo reports. Included in the latest WhatsApp beta for Android update is a new field in the profile section of the app, which asks users to choose their own unique handle.

The added option brings WhatsApp one step closer to how people communicate on fellow Meta-owned app Instagram, though not much is known about how a username will work on the messaging app. It could mean a significant change in how people find each other on WhatsApp and increase their privacy — instead of a person needing to share their personal phone number or QR code to chat, a user-chosen username might be enough. End-to-end encryption is said to still be deployed on WhatsApp conversations started by username.

This announcement comes on the heels of another sought-out feature release: message editing. The update allows WhatsApp users to alter a message within 15 minutes of sending it, with the caveat that it will have the word "edited" written beside the timestamp. The messaging app also rolled out "Chat Lock" in May, a tool that lets you make specific one-on-one or group chats available solely through entering your password or biometric scanning. It also stops messages from popping up as notifications.

As for usernames, WhatsApp has yet to set a release date or even confirm the feature. It will likely be offered to beta users first when it does arrive before rolling out across all devices. 

A variety of storage products are on sale from SanDisk and its parent company, Western Digital, including the SanDisk microSD Extreme for Mobile Gaming. The small but mighty 256GB card has a 21 percent discount, dropping the price from $28 to $22. This memory size (along with the slightly reduced 64GB and 128GB options) has A2 app performance for quicker recall, with a minimum random read speed of 4,000 IOPS. The SanDisk 256GB microSD's Nintendo Switch Fortnite Edition is also on sale, down to $28 from $50 — a 44 percent price cut.

Other discounted SanDisk products include the 512GB Extreme PRO Flash Drive, with a 28 percent drop bringing the price from $97.52 to $70. The flash drive works at speeds up to 420MB per second for reading and 380MB per second for writing while transferring photos and videos to a Mac or PC. It also offers RescuePRO for retrieving any accidentally deleted data. If you need extra storage, the 1TB version is 45 percent off at $117.

Western Digital, which acquired SanDisk for $19 billion in 2015, has discounts on an even larger storage device — its 2TB WD_BLACK D30 Game SSD Portable External Drive. The two-and-a-half inch Game Drive for Xbox is 45 percent off, bringing its cost down from $290 to $160. The price also includes one month of an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership. It can store an average of 50 games and works at speeds up to 900MB per second. If you also want compatibility with a Playstation or PC, that model has a slightly smaller discount, with a 33 percent drop bringing the price to $180.