The Biden administration plans to bring together 30 countries later this month to discuss the threat ransomware attacks pose to global economic and national security. Per CNN, the virtual meeting is part of what the president says will become an ongoing multilateral initiative to tackle the cybersecurity problem.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told the network the goal of the meeting is "to accelerate our cooperation in combatting cybercrime, improving law enforcement collaboration, stemming the illicit use of cryptocurrency, and engaging on these issues diplomatically."

The alliance marks the latest effort by the Biden administration to tackle the issue of ransomware following a year in which one such attack on the Colonial Pipeline led to gas shortages across parts of the US. In the aftermath of the incident, the president signed an executive order that called for greater cooperation and information sharing between disparate federal agencies. More recently, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on the SUEX cryptocurrency exchange for allegedly facilitating several attacks.

As promised earlier in the year, Samsung is removing ads from its first-party mobile apps. As of today, you won’t see the company advertise things to you in Samsung Pay, Weather, Theme and Health. Reports of the change first started to filter out on Samsung’s Community Forum in South Korea, with 9to5Google and TizenHelp later spotting the posts. Engadget saw the change go through when we updated the software on one of our Galaxy Flip 3 review units.   

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

Almost universally across the apps, you won’t see banner ads anymore. The only exception to this rule is Samsung Pay where there’s a section of the main interface dedicated to special offers, but that makes sense in the context of the software. If you still see ads on your Samsung phone, it looks like you can push through the update by using the force stop functionality in Android to manually restart the Pay, Weather, Health and Theme apps.

Meet the Toyota C+walk. It’s a new three-wheeled electric scooter from the Japanese automaker designed to help people with limited mobility. While it shares some visual characteristics with battery electric vehicles like the Bird Three and Segway PT, its closest antecedent is the Concept-i Walk Toyota showed off back in 2017.

Toyota

A removable lithium-ion battery allows the C+walk to travel about eight and a half miles on a single charge, after which it needs some two hours to recharge from zero to full. It can travel at a maximum speed of just over six miles per hour, though it’s possible to throttle it down to one mile per hour. Some of the more nifty features of the C+walk include an obstacle avoidance system. It will beep when it detects something on your path and slow down the vehicle if a collision is imminent.

Initially, the automaker envisions the scooter helping elderly workers travel across large facilities like warehouses, factories and airport terminals. In the future, the company hopes the Japanese government will certify the C+walk for use on public roads. Toyota dealers in Japan will start selling and leasing the scooter at the start of next month. It will start at ¥341,000, or just under $3,100 with the current exchange rate.

When 343 Industries set out to create Halo Infinite, it says one of its goals was to make the game more accessible to as many people as possible. As part of Microsoft’s recent Xbox Accessibility Showcase, the studio detailed the lengths it went to make that vision a reality. The included accessibility options that will come with Halo Infinite don’t look as comprehensive as they were in The Last of Us Part II, but they come close.

For example, in addition to the usual UI and subtitle options you find in many other games, Halo Infinite will include a feature called Linear Navigation. You can enable it to move through the user interface without the need to see how controls are positioned on the screen. Another new enhancement called Movement Assisted Steering allows you to use additional controls to steer vehicles if the traditional look-to-steer mechanic isn’t doing it for you.

Outside of those, there are options that allow you to tweak the colors of friendlies and enemies beyond the usual red and blue. Another setting lets players enable menu narration, and adjust the reading speed of the feature. It’s also possible to enable text-to-speech and speech-to-text tools to make party chat more accessible. The included options probably won't cover every accessibility need, but they should help make Halo Infinite playable for a much broader group of people when the game comes out on December 8th. 

During the same showcase, Microsoft announced it adding introducing accessibility tags to the Microsoft Store on Xbox. At launch, there will be 20 of these tags, with the company planning to add more with time. Each one will denote a specific accessibility feature. 

Some of the currently available tags include “Narrated Game Menus,” “Input Remapping” and Single Stick Gameplay.” Each one comes with specific implementation requirements. For instance, in the case of a developer that wants to point to the subtitle support in their title, they’ll need to allow players to resize them by up to 200 percent. Members of the Xbox Accessibility Insiders League (XAIL) will see the tags appear in the Microsoft Store starting today. In the coming months, the feature will roll out to Xbox.com, the Xbox app on PC and Xbox Game Pass apps.

After coming to public blows earlier in the week, YouTube TV and NBCUniversal have come to terms on a “short-term” agreement for the streaming service to continue carrying the broadcaster’s content. With the extension, YouTube TV subscribers won’t lose access to more than a dozen channels, including NBC, Bravo and the Golf Channel, while the companies attempt to negotiate a longer-term pact.

“NBCUniversal and YouTube TV have agreed to a short extension while parties continue talks,” a spokesperson for NBCUniversal told Variety. “NBCUniversal will not go dark on YouTube TV at midnight eastern tonight.”

When the dispute first went public, YouTube said it would reduce the monthly price of its service from $65 to $55 per month if subscribers lost access to NBCU content. It’s currently unclear just how long the current extension is slated to last. What appears to be at the center of the disagreement is just how much YouTube should pay for content from the broadcaster.

“For the duration of our agreement, YouTube TV seeks the same rates that services of a similar size get from NBCU so we can continue offering YouTube TV to members at a competitive and fair price," the Google-owned service said at the start of the week. A spokesperson for YouTube also told Variety NBCU had asked the company to bundle Peacock Premium with its TV service, a demand they said would have effectively double-charged customers for the same content.

One week after introducing a new invite system, Clubhouse is introducing a host of new features. The first of those new is Clips, a tool people can use to share previews of public rooms. When creators and hosts enable the feature, you’ll see a new icon that looks like a pair of scissors. Tap it and Clubhouse will capture the last 30 seconds of audio, which you can then share on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, iMessage or WhatsApp. Clubhouse says it’s rolling out Clips in beta to select creators today. In most public and open rooms, you should see the scissors icon there unless the host has gone out of their way to disable the feature.

Sometime in the next few weeks, Clubhouse also plans to introduce a way for people to share archives of past live rooms. The feature is called Replays. As with Clips, it’s something that people will be able to disable if they want. When active, however, it will make past rooms discoverable for as long as a host or creator wants people to find that conversation. Clubhouse says it plans to start rolling out Replays sometime in October.

Rounding things out, Clubhouse is introducing a search tool that allows you to look for specific people, clubs, live rooms and future events. Initially, that functionality will live in the Explore tab for about a week or two before Clubhouse moves it to the hallway sidebar. Last but not least, Android users can look forward to Clubhouse rolling out support for spatial audio. In many ways, the updates Clubhouse announced today address shortcomings that have been in the app for a while. The absence of a way to share audio was a particularly notable omission.  

Back in 2012, Congress directed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to create a special do-not-call registry to protect 911 call centers from robocalls. The system was never implemented in part due to security concerns that came up when the FCC and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) started looking into the feasibility of the idea. Specifically, there was a worry that a bad actor could use the registry to flood a call center with automated calls and thereby prevent them from helping people in need.

Fast forward to the present and the FCC says it has a better idea on how to accomplish the goal assigned to it by Congress. On Thursday, the agency proposed new rules that would require telephone companies to block robocalls made to those facilities. As Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel points out, the advantage of this approach is that it would limit access to the do-not-call registry to a select group of verified telephone companies and carriers. And by limiting access to that list, the FCC and FTC can put in place better safeguards to protect it. With today’s decision, the FCC isn’t ready yet to implement that system, but what it does plan to do is collect feedback before moving forward. “We believe this is a promising approach, but we want to get this right,” Rosenworcel said. 

EV automaker Nikola has signed a memorandum of understanding with Opal Fuels to build and operate hydrogen fueling stations across North America. Under the preliminary agreement, the two companies will work to co-develop the technology necessary to accelerate the adoption of fuel-cell electric vehicles. They also plan to explore the use of renewable natural gas.

Initially, they say they plan to focus on infrastructure for private shipping companies before looking at whether it makes sense to make something similar available to the public. To date, Opal has built more than 350 renewable natural gas stations.

“Today marks another important step forward in Nikola’s stated energy infrastructure plans and its focus on providing hydrogen fueling services to customers,” said Pablo Koziner, the president of Nikola’s energy and commercial operations.

The announcement comes just months after federal prosecutors indicted Nikola founder and former executive chairman Trevor Milton of fraud. Among other allegations, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Milton of falsely claiming the company was producing hydrogen at four times less than the market rate.

After debuting on Nintendo Switch toward the start of the year, Monster Hunter Rise is finally making its way to PC. The latest entry in Capcom’s much-loved action RPG series will make the jump to Steam on January 12th, 2022, the publisher announced on Thursday.

It looks like PC fans can look forward to a thoughtful port. Not only will the Windows release include all previously available content for the title, but Capcom has also promised it will allow you to play the game at 4K with an unlocked framerate and on widescreen monitors. Additionally, the PC version will feature optimized keyboard and mouse controls and much sharper textures than you’ll find on the Switch release. Lastly, Monster Hunter Rise’s upcoming Sunbreak expansion will arrive on both Switch and PC sometime in the summer of 2022.

Ahead of the game’s January 12th release date, Capcom will release a Steam demo of Monster Hunter Rise on October 13th. It will include all 14 weapons types found in the final game, allowing players to get a good sense of what Rise is all about.

For months there have been rumors that ASUS has been working on the stuff of nerd dreams: an RTX 3070 GPU with built-in Noctua fans. This week, an ASUS employee in Vietnam prematurely posted images and information about the collaboration on Facebook. Wccftech first spotted the listing, and managed to download images of the GPU before ASUS took them down, giving us a good look at the chunky 3D card.

Wccftech

If you're not familiar with Noctua, the company consistently makes some of the most efficient and quiet fans you can buy for a PC build. It's also known for its signature brown and beige color scheme, which, as you can see, is on full display here. Oh, and the card looks like Noctua's owl mascot. Good stuff.

The same employee who posted images of the GPU also said it would cost about 26 million đồng (approximately $1,100). In other words, it will very likely have a higher MSRP than the RTX 3070 Founders Edition, which ostensibly sells for $499 — but good luck getting at that price with the current global chip shortages. And that's the GPU market in a nutshell at the moment. OEMs like ASUS know they can charge extra for RTX 30 series cards because the demand for NVIDIA's latest GPUs is so high.