ArduinoMania

Apple is already working on a more affordable version of its yet-to-be-announced mixed reality headset, according to Bloomberg and The Information. Based on previous reports about the long-rumored mixed reality device, it will cost around $3,000, which is double the price of the Quest Pro headset Meta released last year. Apple's engineers are reportedly working to develop a more budget-friendly version that's closer to the price of the Quest Pro and are already discussing strategies to achieve that goal, such as using cheaper components. 

While the flagship device will have 4K internal displays for each eye, its more affordable counterpart will likely use ones with lower resolution. The company's engineers are also considering the use of fewer cameras and slower processors, which would, in turn, eliminate the need for internal fans. Apple might ask users to manually adjust their field of view for the cheaper headset instead of equipping it with a motor that can automatically do that. It might choose not to equip the device with its custom H2 wireless chip that would allow it to work better with AirPods, as well. A Bloomberg report earlier this month claimed the tech giant is developing its own Bluetooth and WiFi chip to replace Broadcom's by 2025. The Information said Apple could also choose to use that in-house chip to prevent a third-party company from affecting the device's pricing.

The cheaper mixed reality headset is in its very early stages, the sources reported, and Apple has yet to build a working prototype. According to Bloomberg, though, the majority of Apple's 1,000-person Technology Development Group is working on the two headsets and that the company could release it next year or in 2025. As a result of this dual-device strategy, though, Apple has reportedly put its plans to launch lightweight augmented reality glasses on hold. The company's original vision was to create AR glasses that could one day replace the iPhone, but it has now scaled back work on the project. It's now apparently unclear if the AR glasses will ever launch. 

As for Apple's flagship mixed reality headset, Bloomberg previously said that the company plans to formally announce it this spring ahead of WWDC in June. 

• Read more about Microchip Introduces New Radiation-Tolerant Power Device for Space Applications
• Log in or register to post comments

In 2023, there are cameras and microphones that match and surpass the capabilities of human sight and sound. But for all of our technological advancements, humans haven’t quite managed to build a better nose. After all, evolution has had millions of years to perfect the receptors humans, animals and inspects use to identify odors. But, with the help of nature, scientists may have made a breakthrough on that front.

In a study published Monday in the journal Biosensor and Bioelectronics, a group of researchers from Tel Aviv University (via Neuroscience News) said they recently created a robot that can identify a handful of smells with 10,000 times more sensitivity than some specialized electronics. They describe their robot as a bio-hybrid platform (read: cyborg). It features a set of antennae taken from a desert locust that is connected to an electronic system that measures the amount of electrical signal produced by the antennae when they detect a smell. They paired the robot with an algorithm that learned to characterize the smells by their signal output. In this way, the team created a system that could reliably differentiate between eight “pure” odors, including geranium, lemon and marzipan, and two mixtures of different smells. The scientists say their robot could one day be used to detect drugs and explosives.

A YouTube video from Tel Aviv University claims the robot is a “scientific first,” but last June researchers from Michigan State University published research detailing a system that used surgically-altered locusts to detect cancer cells. Back in 2016, scientists also tried turning locusts into bomb-sniffing cyborgs. What can I say, after millennia of causing crop failures, the pests could finally be useful for something.

Microsoft could announce wide-sweeping layoffs within the next few days. The possibility of the tech giant laying off a significant part of its workforce was first reported by Sky News and later corroborated by Bloomberg. Sky put the number of the cuts at approximately five percent of the company’s 220,000-person workforce or about 11,000 employees total. Bloomberg said it couldn’t find out the scale of the layoffs but reported they would affect “a number of engineering divisions” and that they’re set to be “significantly larger” than other rounds of job cuts undertaken by Microsoft over the last year.

A Microsoft spokesperson told Engadget the company does not comment on rumor and speculation. If the 11,000 figure is accurate, it would equal the 11,000 jobs Meta eliminated last year and fall short of the 18,000 positions Amazon expects to cut once the retailer is done with its far-reaching layoffs. In any case, Microsoft seemingly finds itself on a familiar trajectory. The company saw profits soar during the first two years of the pandemic, and it tried to capitalize on the moment by going on a hiring spree, adding 50,000 employees over that same time frame. But as recently as this past October, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned of imminent belt-tightening due to worsening macroeconomic conditions. “We're focused on helping our customers do more with less, while investing in secular growth areas and managing our cost structure in a disciplined way," he told investors and analysts at the time. He’ll likely have more to say about Microsoft's current position when the company announces its second-quarter earnings on January 24th.

Google has released the online tool it promised to enable Bluetooth support on the Stadia controller. This gives the cloud-streaming gamepad a second life, so owners can use it with PC, iOS or Android devices, preventing the platform’s central accessory from becoming a glorified paperweight. Stadia will shut its doors for good on Wednesday at 11:59 PM PT.

Owners of the Stadia controller can visit this web-based tool to unlock Bluetooth. The process is quick, simple and easy to follow. First, you’ll need to connect your controller to your computer using a USB-C cable and ensure it’s charged to at least 10 percent. Then, you can open the tool in Chrome and follow the website’s instructions.

Google announced in September that it would shut down its cloud gaming service. It refunded all game and hardware transactions starting in November, and several game studios stepped in to assist with porting progress. For example, IO interactive released a promised Progression Carryover tool for Hitman players, and Ubisoft is offering free PC copies of its games purchased through Stadia.

I dusted off my Stadia controller to test out the tool. After half an hour of charging (it had been in a box for two years), I connected it to my MacBook, fired up Chrome and had no problems completing the process. After finishing, you can hold down the Stadia button and the ‘Y’ button to pair it with compatible devices.

The Bluetooth tool disables the controller’s WiFi, required for Stadia gameplay, so you may want to wait until after the closure if there's a chance you’ll want to play one last time. You could even seize the opportunity to try the Worm Game Google released last week as a “thanks” to its loyal users. Stadia had its share of enthusiastic and dedicated fans; they just fell short of the numbers needed to keep the service afloat.

Apple has agreed to review its labor practices in the US after regulators and employees accused the company of union busting. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of its annual shareholders meeting, Apple said it would carry out an assessment of its "efforts to comply with its Human Rights Policy as it relates to workers’ freedom of association and collective bargaining rights in the United States by the end of calendar year 2023."

The company will bring in a third-party firm to conduct the audit, according to The New York Times. A group of investors, including five New York City public worker pension funds, that controls around $7 billion worth of Apple stock called for the assessment in a September shareholder proposal. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who started talks with Apple on behalf of the city pension funds, told the Times that Apple agreed to the audit if the investors withdrew the proposal.

“Workers organizing at Apple for a collective voice in their workplace have reported strong pushback from the company — that flies in the face of Apple’s stated human rights commitment to workers’ freedom of association,” Lander said in a statement. “I’m grateful to Apple’s board of directors for listening to the concerns of shareholders regarding worker rights and hope the company will heed the findings of the third-party assessment and take concrete steps to adopt a genuine commitment to non-interference that respects the rights of its workers."

In a letter to Apple chairman Arthur Levinson, the investor group urged Apple to hire a firm with expertise in labor (and that has not advised clients on how to prevent workforces from unionizing) to carry out the review. The investors also brought Microsoft's neutral stance on labor organizing to Levinson's attention and urged Apple to include its global supply chain and non-US operations as part of the audit.

"Apple has made commitments to worker rights globally as well as in its supply chain, and while much of the current organizing activity has occurred in the US, there are Apple worker organizing efforts occurring around the world, including in Australia and the UK," they wrote. "Addressing these topics at a global level can add credibility to the assessment and address other potential areas of concern proactively and efficiently."

News of the assessment comes amid talks between Apple and unionized workers at a store in Towson, Maryland over their first union contract. Workers in at least a half-dozen stores have accused Apple of violating labor laws, claiming that the company has clamped down on attempts to organize. The Communications Workers of America, which represents a collective of Apple Store workers in Oklahoma City, said in a National Labor Relations Board filing that the company set up an illegal union controlled by management at a store in Columbus, Ohio to thwart support for an independent employee union.

"While a credible, independent assessment by individuals or organizations with the appropriate expertise on workers' freedom of association could uncover important information about Apple's response to worker organizing, including its use of union busting consultants, workers need concrete solutions now. Apple must commit to a true policy of neutrality toward union organizing efforts," the Communications Workers of America told Engadget in a statement. "Apple's workers deserve respect and a voice on the job, not just another self-congratulatory exercise in corporate image management. We support investor advocates’ efforts to ensure this is a credible audit."

Several days after Twitter abruptly cut a number of third-party apps off from its API, the company has quietly acknowledged the move. “Twitter is enforcing its long-standing API rules,” the company said in a tweet from its developer account. “That may result in some apps not working.”

However, the company offered no explanation which “long-standing API rules” developers of apps like Twitterrific and Tweetbot were violating. It also doesn’t address why some smaller third-party Twitter apps are still up and running. Twitter no longer has a communications team.

The company’s two-sentence acknowledgement that it had cut off access to several longtime developers follows a report in The Information that the moves was an “intentional” one. Some have speculated that Twitter made the decision because third-party clients don’t show ads and may be perceived as siphoning off already declining ad revenue from the company. Twitter, under Elon Musk, likely has less enthusiasm for supporting its developers. As Twitterrific’s creator pointed out, many of the company’s employees overseeing the developer platform were cut in mass layoffs.

Last September Getty Images banned the inclusion of AI-generated works in its commercial database over copyright concerns. On Tuesday, Getty Images announced that it is suing Stability AI, maker of the popular AI art tool Stable Diffusion, in a London court over alleged copyright violations. 

"It is Getty Images’ position that Stability AI unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright and the associated metadata owned or represented by Getty Images absent a license to benefit Stability AI’s commercial interests and to the detriment of the content creators," Getty Images wrote in a press statement released Tuesday. "Getty Images believes artificial intelligence has the potential to stimulate creative endeavors."

"Getty Images provided licenses to leading technology innovators for purposes related to training artificial intelligence systems in a manner that respects personal and intellectual property rights," the company continued. "Stability AI did not seek any such license from Getty Images and instead, we believe, chose to ignore viable licensing options and long‑standing legal protections in pursuit of their stand‑alone commercial interests." 

The details of the lawsuit have not been made public, though Getty Images CEO Craig Peters told The Verge, that charges would include copyright and site TOS violations like web scraping. Furthermore, Peters explained that the company is not seeking monetary damages in this case so as much as it is hoping to establish a favorable precedent for future litigation.

Text-to-image generation tools like Stable Diffusion, Dall-E and Midjourney don't create the artwork that they produce in the same way people do — there is no imagination from which these ideas can spring forth. Like other generative AI, these tools are trained to do what they do using massive databases of annotated images — think, hundreds of thousands of frog pictures labelled "frog" used to teach a computer algorithm what a frog looks like. 

And why go through the trouble of assembling and annotating a database of your own when there's an entire internet's worth of content there for the taking? AI firms like Clearview and Voyager Labs have already tried and been massively, repeatedly fined for scraping image data from the public web and social media sites. An independent study conducted last August concluded that a notable portion of Stable Diffusion's data was likely pulled directly from the Getty Images site, in part as evidenced by the art tool's habit of recreating the Getty watermark.  

It's Ubisoft's turn to face strikes from unhappy game developers. Solidaires Informatique Jeu Vidéo has called for Ubisoft Paris employees to strike on January 27th to demand better working conditions. The labor union wants an "immediate" 10 percent salary increase to account for inflation and improved hours that include a four-day work week. Solidaires Informatique also wants greater transparency on workforce changes, as well as pledges to avoid thinly-disguised firings and "abusive" management practices that push staff to quit.

The strike plan comes in response to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot's internal email following news the company was cancelling three games and otherwise grappling with tough economic conditions. As PC Gamernotes, Guillemot called for workers to be "especially careful" with spending and warned of moves that included "targeted restructuring" and "natural attrition." To Solidaires Informatique, the executive is attempting to "shift the blame" to staff while not-so-subtly hinting at layoffs, pay cuts and quiet studio closures.

Ubisoft Paris declined to comment to Engadget. This isn't the first time Solidaires Informatique has taken Ubisoft to task over its behavior. The labor group sued Ubisoft in 2021 for allegedly fostering a culture of "institutional sexual harassment" where it was easier to tolerate horrible behavior than fix it. The company had already fired key managers accused of misconduct, but others remained in place.

The call to action joins a growing labor movement across the gaming world. Microsoft just recognized the game industry's largest union, while more Activision Blizzard workers are winning union votes. That's on top of a gradual turn away from the long hours of crunch time that have often defined game development. Eidos' Quebec studios started four-day weeks in 2021, and talent has sometimes left to form independent studios where crunch is forbidden. Simply put, employees are no longer willing to accept the status quo.

Our current favorite budget robot vacuum is $95 off its usual price at Amazon right now. iRobot's Roomba 694 usually retails for $274 but is seeing a 35 percent discount, putting it just $4 above its all-time low of $174, which the vac dipped to in advance of Black Friday. If you've been curious about automated floor cleaning, but were waiting for a good deal, now might be a great time to see whether a robot vac is for you. We've tested a number of these machines over the years and this model is our current "best overall" pick in our budget robot vacuum guide. 

What really sets the Roomba 694 apart from other budget vacuums is the easy-to-use app. While the unit has three physical buttons that allow you to start, stop and dock the unit, you'll mostly be controlling it through the app via a WiFi connection and your smartphone. After following the setup instructions, you can set schedules so the vac runs regularly and keeps your floors clean with minimal input on your part. 

The 694 can run for 90 minutes on hard floors, but we got about half that using the vac on a mixed landscape of carpet and tile. It automatically returns to the dock when the battery runs low, so it can handle larger homes with a pit stop to recharge. We found the Roomba 694 did a good job picking up dirt and debris, but it did get tripped up if charging cables were left on the floor. Getting those out of the way and emptying the unit when it's full are two of the times you'll need to physically interact with the unit. Keep in mind that this one doesn't come with extra brushes, you'll need to order them when the time comes. 

If you want to interact with your robot vac even less frequently, you could opt for a self-emptying model, like the iRobot Roomba j7+. You also get better obstacle detection and customized room mapping options. Of course you'll pay more for these upgrades, but right now the j7+ is 25 percent off, bringing the $800 unit down to $600. The Roomba s9+ is also on sale. It's our current pick for a premium robot vacuum in our guide, and right now the $1,000 unit is down to $800, or 20 percent off. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.