NVIDIA has begun rolling out a fix for a bug that had caused some of its GPUs to perform worse while people had Discord open. In a tweet spotted by The Verge, the company said Windows will now automatically download an app profile update the next time users log into their PC. The update resolves an issue that prevented some NVIDIA GPUs, including RTX 30 series models like the 3080 and 3060 Ti, from pushing their memory as fast as possible when Discord was open in the background. In some instances, NVIDIA users reported their video cards being throttled by as much as 200Mhz, translating to a modest performance decrease in most games.

Reddit and Linus Tech Tips forum users were among the first to spot and document the issue. The bug was introduced in a recent Discord update that added AV1 codec support. With the new codec, RTX 40 series users can stream their gameplay at up to 4K and 60 frames per second over Discord Nitro. The bug did not appear to affect RTX 40 series cards. That said, NVIDIA quickly acknowledged the issue and offered a temporary workaround. 

The next time you rent a Lyft scooter, you might find the company has a new model for you to ride. Starting today, Lyft is rolling out a “next-gen” electric scooter across its footprint. The device features a redesigned suspension system Lyft claims will result in smoother rides. The company says the new model can also travel to places its previous scooters could not, thanks to a more powerful motor and 11.5-inch airless tires.

Internally, Lyft has equipped the scooter with a swappable battery that provides up to 50 miles of range and that can be charged out in the field. Later this year, the company plans to roll out a variant of the scooter that can recharge at stations connected to local electrical grids. The scooter also features cameras and Lyft’s latest sidewalk detection and parking awareness software. When you need to park the scooter, that software will use visual cues to alert you of restrictions, including areas where you can’t leave the scooter. Last but not least, the scooter comes with a built-in phone mount to make navigating easier.

Lyft

At the same time, Lyft has begun rolling out new docking infrastructure. The company has redesigned its steel bollards to make them more resistant to corrosion and rust, and, thereby, easier to maintain. It has also added solar cells to the bollards and found a way to make them more power efficient. Those are changes Lyft says should make them go longer between battery swaps. As mentioned above, the bollards can also pull power from the local power grid, a feature Lyft claims will increase vehicle availability. If you’ve run into trouble docking a Lyft scooter or e-bike before, you’ll also be happy to learn the new bollards feature a redesigned locking mechanism Lyft says requires “significantly” less physical effort to use. Additionally, they feature flip dots and speakers to make using them more accessible to first-time users.

Lyft hasn’t said when people in specific cities could expect to see its new scooters and docking infrastructure arrive, but it sounds like the rollout will take place gradually throughout the year.

With the third season of Overwatch 2 slated to start on February 7th, Blizzard is stepping up its efforts to combat cheating. In a blog post published Wednesday, the studio said it would begin identifying players who regularly play with known cheaters. Blizzard says the owners of those accounts will face repercussions, even if they’re not cheating themselves. It warns of “severe suspensions” and, in some cases, outright bans.

Next season, Blizzard will also introduce a system for moderating custom game modes. The company says the new technology will automatically remove games with inappropriate titles or content and sanction the accounts that create and post those modes. The system comes after the original Overwatch’s “sexual harassment simulator” custom mode made a brief reappearance last month. The mode tasked players with impregnating the game’s female heroes while playing as Cole Cassidy, the hero Blizzard renamed after allegations about its “frat boy” workplace culture came to light in 2021. After the mode appeared in Overwatch 2’s most popular list, Blizzard took action but didn’t say how it would prevent a similar incident from happening again.

Lastly, Blizzard says it’s taking action against a practice known as stream sniping. If you’ve ever watched a popular streamer play a multiplayer game like Overwatch 2 or Valorant, you know how frustrating it is for content creators when someone tries to queue into the same match and uses a stream to give themselves a competitive edge. Starting with season three, players will have the option to prevent their BattleTag, and the tags of anyone else in their match, from appearing in their game client. Blizzard will also allow players to hide or delay their queue time. The studio says those measures should prevent someone watching a stream from figuring out if they’re in the same lobby as a streamer. You’ll find the toggles to enable those features within Overwatch 2’s social settings.

In 2016, Studio Ghibli co-founder and director Hayao Miyazaki, responsible for beloved anime classics like Princess Mononoke and Kiki’s Delivery Service, made headlines around the world for his reaction to an AI animation program. “I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all,” Miyazaki told the software engineers who came to show their creation to him. “I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.” A half-decade later, artificial intelligence and the potential role it could play in anime productions is once again in the spotlight.

This week, Netflix shared Dog and Boy, an animated short the streaming giant described as an “experimental effort” to address the anime industry’s ongoing labor shortage. “We used image generation technology for the background images of all three-minute video cuts,” said Netflix Japan of the project on Twitter, according to a machine translation. The short is touching but was immediately controversial. As Motherboard points out, many Twitter users accused Netflix of using AI to avoid paying human artists.

Others took issue with how Netflix and Wit Studio, the company that produced the short, credited those who worked on Dog and Boy. As you can see at the end of the video, human animators were not only involved in the creation of the short’s backgrounds, but they also revised the AI’s work. However, the background designer is listed as “AI (+Human).” The credits go on to list Rinna Inc, an AI artwork company, and a handful of AI researchers.

Many artists worry about the potential for AI to devalue their work, but that concern is particularly acute among anime creators. The labor shortages Netflix points to are the result of unsustainable labor practices that see the majority of Japan’s animation studios depend on essentially unpaid freelancers to complete much of the work that makes anime possible.

According to data from the Japanese Animation Creators Association published in 2018, in-between animators, the workers who draw the frames that make a scene look fluid, earn about ¥200 (or less than $2) per drawing. With many frames taking more than an hour to produce, the average in-between animator can expect to make about ¥1.1 million (or $10,000) per year. For context, in 2019, Japan’s poverty line was at ¥2.2 million.

All good things must come to an end. Since September 2020, Sony has offered the PlayStation Plus Collection to PlayStation 5 owners with an active PS Plus membership. That bundle comes with some of the PlayStation 4’s best games, including Bloodborne, God of War, The Last of Us Remastered, Batman: Arkham Knight, Fallout 4 and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Come May 9th, however, Sony will no offer the PlayStation Plus Collection, the company announced today.

If you haven’t claimed any of the 19 titles included in the bundle, you have until May 9th to do so. Once those games are associated with your account, you’ll continue to have access to them as long as you maintain an active PlayStation Plus subscription. Sony says it plans to focus its efforts on growing the PS Plus library of monthly games and its Games Catalog, which PlayStation owners can access by subscribing to either PlayStation Plus Extra or Premium.

On that note, the company also revealed February’s slate of PlayStation Plus games. This month’s lineup features Evil Dead: The Game, OlliOlliWorld, Destiny 2:Beyond Light and Mafia: The Definitive Edition. You can download all four games starting on February 7th, and they’ll be available until March 6th. Of the titles on offer, you should definitely give OlliOlliWorld a try. It was one of Engadget’s favorite games of 2022.

The Federal Trade Commission has suffered a setback in its attempt to prevent Meta from buying Supernatural developer Within Unlimited. According to Bloomberg, a federal court this week denied the agency’s request for a preliminary injunction to block the purchase. The deal reportedly won’t close for at least another week yet, as the court also issued a temporary restraining order to give the FTC time to decide whether to appeal the ruling.

Engadget could not confirm Bloomberg’s reporting because the court documents announcing the decision are sealed. Meta did not immediately respond to a comment request. The FTC sued the company last July, arguing Meta’s acquisition of Within would reduce competition in the emerging virtual reality market. Within is the creator of Supernatural, one of the most popular VR exercise apps on the Oculus Quest Store. An eight-day trial in December saw Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Technology Officer Andrew “Boz” Bosworth testify. During the hearing, Bosworth said Meta could abandon the acquisition if it did not “close in a timely manner.”

With Wednesday’s decision, the FTC must decide whether to move forward with its antitrust case against Meta. The agency has a hearing scheduled for February 13th with its administrative judge. If the FTC chooses to let the order stand, it will mark an early defeat for agency head Lina Khan. President Biden appointed Khan to the FTC for her expertise in antitrust law. The Meta decision could impact the FTC’s effort to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a case where the agency already faces an uphill battle due to the vertical nature of the proposed merger.

It's almost time for Samsung's first big event of the year, Unpacked 2023. The company hasn't said what to expect from the presentation, but it has strongly hinted that the Galaxy S23 is on the way. Samsung's reservation page suggests a new high-end Galaxy Book laptop is on the way as well. Of course, there's always the chance the tech giant could surprise us too. 

You can watch the livestream below. Samsung's event starts at 1PM ET, but Engadget is kicking things off a bit early with a pre-show at 12:30PM ET. Join Engadget Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low and Senior Writer Sam Rutherford as they break down all of Samsung's announcements.  

Star Wars fans will need to wait an extra month and a half to play the next chapter of Cal Kestis' story. On Tuesday afternoon, Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment announced the delay of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor to April 28th. The game was previously slated to arrive on March 17th. 

"In order for the team to hit the Respawn quality bar, provide the team the time they need, and achieve the level of polish our fans deserve, we have added six crucial weeks to our release schedule — Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will now launch globally on April 28th," Respawn posted on Twitter. The studio said it would use the extra time to fix bugs and polish the game to improve performance, stability and the player experience. The delay means Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will arrive on the same day as Dead Island 2, provided that title doesn't suffer a last-minute delay.   

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor picks up five years after the events of Fallen Order, and features an older, harder Cal Kestis. Respawn has promised the game will feature new worlds in the Star Wars galaxy for players to explore. Cal, now a Jedi Knight, also has new skills and weapons in his arsenal to take on the Galactic Empire.   

PayPal is about to become the latest tech company to lay off a substantial part of its workforce. The payments firm announced Tuesday plans to cut approximately 2,000 employees, a number that equates to about seven percent of its total staff. According to PayPal president and CEO Dan Schulman, the layoffs will occur over the next few weeks, with some parts of the company affected more than others.

“We will treat our departing colleagues with the utmost respect and empathy, provide them with generous packages, engage in consultation where required and support them with their transitions,” Schulman said. “I want to express my personal appreciation for the meaningful contributions they have made to PayPal.”

The company joins a growing list of tech companies that have announced layoffs in recent months. Earlier this month, Google disclosed plans to lay off 12,000 employees, or about around six percent of its global workforce. Before that, Microsoft said it would cut 10,000 jobs. Schulman, like his counterparts at Microsoft, Google and other tech firms, blamed PayPal's layoffs on the “challenging macro-economic environment” the company finds itself in recently. “While we have made substantial progress in right-sizing our cost structure, and focused our resources on our core strategic priorities, we have more work to do,” he said.

It’s worth noting the US economy has not entered into a recession yet. At 3.5 percent, the national unemployment rate is at a 50-year low, and the gross domestic product grew over the last quarters. Turning specifically to PayPal, the company beat Wall Street expectations during its most recent earnings call, with revenue and income increasing by 11 percent and 7 percent year on year, respectively.

Peacock has stopped offerings its free tier to new customers. As first reported by The Streamable, potential subscribers who visit Peacock’s website will now only see two ways to access the platform: Peacock Premium and Premium Plus. Either way, if you’re new to Peacock, you’ll need to pay to access the service’s library of content. According to The Streamable, the free tier still exists but is only available to current users who cancel their Premium subscription or those who had access to a paid tier for free (for example, Cox internet customers). NBCUniversal did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.

The Streamable reports the removal is the result of a strategy shift within the company. NBCUniversal plans to release approximately 100,000 hours of new content to Peacock Premium through the end of 2023, including live sports content from the Premier League and Women’s World Cup. The platform’s subscriber total grew to 20 million in 2022, up from 9 million the year before. However, Peacock has yet to generate a profit for NBCUniversal owner Comcast. The company expects the service to start inching toward profitability in 2024. Presumably, it hopes to accelerate that timeline by doubling down on Peacock's Premium tiers. 

To make up for the removal, Peacock is offering a promotion to new subscribers. You can get an annual subscription to the ad-supported Premium tier for $30, down from $50 normally. We'll update this article with more information when we hear back from NBCUniversal.