Every so often, it seems broadcasters remember Twitter is a platform they can use to promote their content. Case and point: ViacomCBS just announced a multi-year deal that will see the social media network stream video from across its brand portfolio. Additionally, the two companies plan to host three Paramount+ watch parties. ViacomCBS didn’t say what shows it will air through the effort, but they’ll all be from the platform’s original content library. As part of the deal, ViacomCBS also plans to leverage Twitter’s marketing tools, including Moments.

The deal builds on a previous agreement Twitter had in place with Viacom prior to the company’s $30 billion merger with CBS in 2019. Notably, it’s more expansive in scope, with Twitter gaining access to ViacomCBS’ entire portfolio, including brands like CBS Sports, BET and Nickelodeon, in addition to the ability to stream content globally. Twitter and ViacomCBS did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement. In theory, the deal is a win for everyone. ViacomCBS gets a chance to promote its content, and Twitter gains access to additional revenue. 

Unity Technologies, the company behind the Unity engine, is buying Weta Digital. If you’re a film buff, you need no introduction to Weta. It’s the VFX house Peter Jackson co-founded in 1993. It has worked on movies like the Fellowship of the Ring, Avatar and Black Widow. Under the $1.625 billion deal, Unity is obtaining the company’s technology division, including its artist tools and engineering talent. Weta’s VFX and animation teams will form a separate entity known as WetaFX, which Peter Jackson will continue to hold a majority stake in. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year, pending regulatory approval.

Weta’s technology suite includes tools for facial animation, creating virtual cityscapes and modeling the deformation of objects, among many other applications. Unity’s plan is to not only integrate those programs into the Unity Engine but to also eventually offer them as part of cloud-based subscription offering. At some point, many of the assets Weta Digital has created over the years will make their way to the engine as well, allowing anyone with access to Unity to use them. 

The company didn’t say exactly when those things will happen, but the vision here is to put Unity at the forefront of the metaverse since whatever it entails will likely need a lot of 3D models. “The unified tools and the incredible scientists and technologists of Weta Digital will accelerate our mission to give content creators easy to use and high performance tools to bring their visions to life,” Unity said in a blog post. “Whatever the metaverse is or will be, we believe it will be built by content creators, just like you.”

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has introduced legislation that would give people more control over the algorithms that shape their online experience. If passed, the Filter Bubble Transparency Act would require companies like Meta to offer a version of their platforms that runs on an "input-transparent" algorithm that doesn't pull on user data to generate recommendations.

The bill would not do away with "opaque" recommendation algorithms altogether but would make it a requirement to include a toggle that allows people to switch that functionality off. Additionally, platforms that continue to use recommendation algorithms need to have a notification that informs people those recommendations are based on inferences generated by their personal data. The prompt can be a one-time notice, but it would need to be presented in a "clear, conspicuous manner," according to the proposed bill.

The legislation was introduced by Representatives Ken Buck (R-CO), David Cicilline (D-RI), Lori Trahan (D-MA) and Burgess Owens (R-UT). It's a companion bill to legislation Senators John Thune of South Dakota and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut introduced this past June. "Consumers should have the option to engage with internet platforms without being manipulated by secret algorithms driven by user-specific data," Buck told Axios, the first outlet to report on the legislation.

Lawmakers have frequently criticized social media giants for using recommendation algorithms to boost user engagement, but so far, there's been little legislative action to curb their use. In the aftermath of the January 6th US Capitol attack, a group of more than 30 Democratic lawmakers called on Meta (then known as Facebook), Twitter and YouTube to make substantive changes to their recommendation engines but ultimately stopped short of threatening regulatory action. Although the Filter Bubble Transparency Act has bipartisan support across the House and Senate, it's unclear if it would pass.

One of the best deals in gaming just added something for anime fans. Starting today, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate includes a free 75-day trial to Crunchyroll. The promotion comes with access to the platform's Mega Fan tier, which allows you to watch Crunchyroll's entire library of more than 1,000 anime titles without ads. It also includes offline viewing and the ability to stream content on four devices concurrently. 

Game Pass Ultimate subscribers have until February 8th, 2022, to take advantage of the promotion through the Game Pass Perks gallery. The deal is only available to new Crunchyroll customers. Additionally, it's set to auto-renew, so keep that in mind if you want to avoid a surprise on your credit card.

Crunchyroll is a particularly interesting addition for Game Pass Ultimate when you consider Sony recently spent $1.175 billion to buy the service from AT&T. The fact it competes with Microsoft in the console market seems secondary to Sony here compared to the potential of attracting new customers to the service. In the less than a year it took for the Crunchyroll deal to close, the platform added approximately 2 million subscribers, a trend Sony likely hopes to continue.

Four years after shutting down, The Tomorrow Children is coming back. First announced in 2014, the game was a short-lived PlayStation 4 exclusive that spent a year in early access through the better part of 2017. Now, Q-Games, which led development on the title alongside Sony’s defunct Japan Studio, has obtained the intellectual property rights to The Tomorrow Children and plans to relaunch it.

“I am now tweaking and re-working parts of the game every week, and I hope everyone follows along and gets involved in this process,” said Dylan Cuthbert, the founder and director of Q-Games. “We plan to make quite a few changes for the better, and give The Tomorrow Children the re-launch it deserves!” Q-Games didn’t say when fans can expect to play the game again. It also didn’t mention anything about platform availability, but the relaunch will give both fans and new players alike a chance to experience the quirky game again. 

Black Friday may be almost three weeks away, but the TV sales have already started. Amazon has discounted some of its 4-series and Omni 4K TVs, marking the first time they’ve been on sale since the company introduced them at the start of September. At the moment, you can get the 50- and 55-inch Omni models for $360 and $410. Typically, those sets cost $510 and $560, so you’re saving almost 30 percent off the price of both TVs.

Both Omni sets feature support for HDR10, HLG and Dolby Digital Plus. They also come with the usual assortment of Fire TV features, and they’re deeply integrated with Amazon’s other products. For example, if you own a Ring doorbell, you’ll be able to speak to your visitors. You can also connect a web camera to the TVs to use them for both Alexa and Zoom video calling. If you’re in the market for a TV with Dolby Vision, you’ll need to look at the more expensive 65- and 75-inch Omni sets for that feature.

If you’d like to spend less on a TV and hands-free Alexa isn’t a selling point for you, Amazon has also discounted its 50- and 55-inch 4-series models. They’re currently priced at $330 and $380, down from $470 and $520. Again, you’re saving about 30 percent off the price of both sets.

It’s worth pointing out the LED panels on all four sets are limited to 60Hz, so they’re not ideal for gaming. But if you’re primarily looking for an affordable TV that you plan to use exclusively for streaming video, you could do a lot worse than a TV from either the Omni or 4-series families.

Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by visiting our deals homepage and following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter.

Italian automaker Alfa Romeo is developing an all-electric version of its four-door Giulia sedan. In an interview with Auto Express, Jean-Philippe Imparato, the company’s CEO, said Alfa Romeo would debut the EV sometime in 2024. Additionally, he revealed the car will be built on the STLA Large platform from its parent company Stellantis.

The conglomerate announced the architecture this past summer. At the time, it said it would allow its cars to go from zero to 60 in as little as two seconds, and allow for a potential range of up to 500 miles. Dodge, one of the other automakers under the Stellantis umbrella, will use the platform in the all-electric muscle car it plans to debut in 2024. Alfa Romeo could also offer a Quadrifoglio variant of the Giulia, but Imparato said that will depend on whether it can get the kind of performance that’s associated with the moniker.

The Guilia is one part of a more extensive foray into EVs Alfa Romeo has planned for the second half of the decade. “The first full EV will come in 2024 and we’ll see a big launch in 2025, 2026, and we’ll see Alfa Romeo as a full BEV in 2027. This is validated and funded,” Imparato told Auto Express. If it can go fully electric by 2027, Alfa Romeo would be the first Stellantis brand to do so.

The US Department of Energy wants to accelerate the development of carbon capture technology. On Friday, the agency announced a program called Carbon Negative Shot. Part of its Energy Earthshots initiative, the goal here is to foster the development of carbon capture technology that can sequester CO2 at a cost of less than $100 per ton, and can be deployed at the gigaton scale. To put that in perspective, that much carbon is equivalent to the annual emissions of approximately 250 million cars.

“By slashing the costs and accelerating the deployment of carbon dioxide removal — a crucial clean energy technology — we can take massive amounts of carbon pollution directly from the air and combat the climate crisis,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “With our Carbon Negative Shot, we can help remove the greenhouse gases already warming our planet and affecting our health — positioning America as a net-zero leader and creating good-paying jobs for a transitioning clean energy workforce.”

If it wasn’t clear already, the Energy Department has set an ambitious target. In September, Orca, the largest direct carbon capture facility ever, opened in Iceland. The plant will capture 4,000 tons of CO2 per year at a cost of about $600 per ton for bulk purchases. Chimeworks, the company that operates Orca, aims to reduce the cost to $300 or less per ton by 2030. That’s a long way away from the Energy Department’s goal of less than $100 per ton, but sustained and substantial support and investment from the government is exactly what could make that happen.

When most of us pick up an object, we don’t have to think about how to orient it in our hand. It’s something that comes naturally to us as we learn to navigate the world. That’s something that allows young children to be more deft with their hands than even the most advanced robots available today.

But that could quickly change. A team of scientists from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has developed a system that could one day give robots that same kind of dexterity. Using a model-free reinforcement AI algorithm, they created a simulated, anthropomorphic hand that could manipulate more than 2,000 objects. What’s more, the system didn’t need to know what it was about to pick up to find a way to move it around in its hand.

The system isn’t ready for real-world use just yet. To start, the team needs to transfer it to an actual robot. That might not be as much of a roadblock as you might think. At the start of the year, we saw researchers from Zhejiang University and the University of Edinburgh successfully transfer an AI reinforcement approach to their robot dog Jueying. The system allowed the robot to learn how to walk and recover from falls on its own.

As things stand, the system isn’t perfect either. It can reorient many smaller objects, including things like tennis balls and apples, with a nearly 100 percent success rate, but tools like screwdrivers and scissors present a challenge. When it comes to those types of objects, its success rate falls closer to 30 percent. Still, the potential of the system is huge. It could one day make robots better at manipulating tools and make them much more efficient at tasks like packing boxes.

Every month, Amazon pushes a slate of updates to its Alexa-enabled devices. One of the more noteworthy features Amazon added this month is the ability to move music between Echo devices using your voice. If you want to do so between different speakers in your home, say “Alexa, pause” to the one currently playing music, and then say “Alexa, resume music here” to the device where you want to move your tunes to. The feature also works with Echo Buds and Echo Auto, allowing you to take your music on the go.

If you’re a football fan with an Echo Show, another new feature allows you to ask Alexa to play the Two-Minute drill, an NFL pregame show that will offer expert analysis on the next match your favorite team is about to play. Amazon will release new episodes two days before a game.

Meanwhile, Fire TV device owners now have access to TikTok. You can say “Alexa, play TikTok” to open the app. Lastly, Amazon has added a new automotive hub within the Alexa app that will detail how you can use the digital assistant in your car. Available in the US, the interface allows you to see if your car can work with Alexa. Additionally, it will point you to automotive skills. All told, they’re minor additions individually but should make Alexa more helpful to those who use the digital assistant every day.