Bandcamp won't have to worry about Google pulling its app from the Play Store in the near future. The music service has entered into an agreement that will let it use its existing in-app payment system on Android while parent company Epic Games continues its antitrust lawsuit against Google. Artists will keep receiving the same share as before, but Bandcamp will put 10 percent of Android-related sales revenue in escrow until the case is resolved. The company said in a blog post that it would absorb that cost rather than pass it along to musicians.

The arrangement takes effect June 1st, the same day Google is set to enforce a new rule requiring that apps like Bandcamp's use only the Play Store billing system for in-app purchases. Google will still have the power to enforce Play Store policies beyond the exception carved out through this deal.

The move is a compromise for both sides. Epic had filed for a preliminary injunction that would have barred Google from pulling Bandcamp's app without the escrow requirement. It has long argued that Google's billing requirement would hurt both artists and its own bottom line by reducing their revenue shares and delaying payouts. Google, meanwhile, claimed Bandcamp and Epic were simply trying to avoid paying for the Play Store's "value" and that the 10 percent fee is less than what those companies charge through their own systems.

Regardless of the arguments, the pact may be good news for music makers. While Bandcamp may change its payouts if Epic loses its lawsuit, that's not likely to be imminent. Artists can expect the status quo to continue for some time.

Qualcomm is keeping up its habit of releasing speed-bumped chips in the middle of the year, albeit with a couple of twists. The company has introduced a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 system-on-chip that delivers both the usual performance boost and, importantly, battery life. Qualcomm claims a 10 percent processing speed increase and 20 percent higher performance-per-Watt for AI, but it's also boasting a 30 percent power reduction — in theory, you'll wring an extra hour of gameplay out of your flagship-class Android handset.

There won't be a shortage of device partners. Qualcomm expects products to begin arriving in the third quarter (summer) from big-name brands like ASUS, Honor, Motorola, OnePlus, Oppo and Xiaomi. These are more likely to be subtle revisions than major overhauls, but that still means you'll be getting top-of-the-line processing power.

A second announcement is more of a pleasant surprise for budget buyers. Qualcomm has unveiled the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, a sequel to the 778G aimed at upper-mid-range Android hardware. An upgraded Adreno GPU should be about 20 percent faster, while AI processing is about 30 percent quicker. There are a few firsts for the 7 series, too. You can shoot simultaneously from three cameras, take advantage of on-chip data security upgrades and share in the audio upgrades from the 8 Gen 1.

The first Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 phones are due by the end of the second quarter (no later than June) from brands like Honor, Oppo and Xiaomi. You might not see many of these products in the US, then. Still, they could make a big difference in a category where price is often as important as features and gaming frame rates.

Qualcomm's smart glasses technology has come along way in two years. The company has unveiled the Wireless AR Smart Viewer Reference Design, a next-gen pair of augmented reality glasses meant to help hardware partners build their own immersive eyewear. It now tethers wirelessly to a host PC, phone or puck, and it's 40 percent thinner despite packing a newer (if slightly old) Snapdragon XR2 platform. Add better-balanced weight distribution and the device should be considerably more comfortable than its predecessor, even if it still won't win any fashion awards.

Each eye gets a 1080p, 90Hz micro-OLED display that reportedly eliminates motion blur. You'll also have full six-degrees-of-freedom movement thanks to three cameras (two monochrome, one color) as well as hand tracking with gesture recognition. WiFi 6E and Bluetooth help shuffle data quickly while keeping lag under 3ms between the glasses and host device.

A handful of manufacturers already have access to Qualcomm's new AR design, and more should have their turn within the "coming months." You won't buy this exact hardware as an everyday customer. It could, however, lead to a wave of next-generation glasses that you wouldn't mind wearing for games or work — even they might not be as ambitious as some AR projects.

The music world just lost one of its more influential figures. Deadlinereports Vangelis, the composer behind the scores for Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire, has died in France at the age of 79. He broke ground in music by blending synthesizers with jazz, orchestral work and other styles normally seen at odds with each other. He helped the movie business break away from its dependence on classical or pop soundtracks, and joined artists like Brian Eno and Jean-Michel Jarre in defining both electronic music as a whole as well as sub-genres such as ambient and new-age.

Vangelis is synonymous with sci-fi thanks to his iconic Blade Runner soundtrack, but he was also a proponent of space exploration who produced multiple albums in tribute to major missions. He helped score Carl Sagan's 1980 Cosmos TV series, wrote Mythodea to celebrate NASA's Mars Odyssey mission in 2001 and produced a tribute to the Rosetta comet probe in 2016. His last full album, 2021's Juno to Jupiter, honored its namesake spacecraft right as it was shedding more light on the gas giant. He received NASA's Public Service Medal in 2003.

The musician was born in Greece in 1943 as Evangelos Odessey Papathanassiou. He started his music career in pop and soundtracks in the mid-1960s, but it was his 1970s forays into electronic music that helped develop his signature style. Cosmos, Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner cemented his reputation, while high-profile projects like 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Alexander drew further attention.

Vangelis leaves a strong legacy. On top of his role in Hollywood, you can hear his influence in electronic artists like Robert Rich and Steve Roach. Even modern performers outside of his core genre, such as Armin van Buuren and Run the Jewels' El-P, cite him as a hero. He'll be missed, but you may hear echoes of his sound for decades to come.

The Justice Department doesn't want security researchers facing federal charges when they expose security flaws. The department has revised its policy to indicate that researchers, ethical hackers and other well-intentioned people won't be charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act if they're investigating, testing or fixing vulnerabilities in "good faith." You're safe as long as you aren't hurting others and use the knowledge to bolster the security of a product, the DOJ said.

The government made clear that bad actors couldn't use research as a "free pass." They'll still face trouble if they use newly-discovered security holes for extortion or other malicious purposes, regardless of what they claim.

This revised policy is limited to federal prosecutors, and won't spare researchers from state-level charges. It does provide "clarity" that was missing in the earlier 2014 guidelines, though, and might help courts that weren't sure of how to handle ethical hacking cases.

It's also a not-so-subtle message to officials who might abuse the threat of criminal charges to silence critics. In October 2021, for instance, Missouri Governor Mike Parson threatened a reporter with prosecution for pointing out a website flaw that required no hacking whatsoever. The DOJ's new policy might not completely deter threats like Parson's, but it could make their words relatively harmless.

Android already has some accommodations for typing in braille, but Google is taking that one (important) step further with Android 13. As hinted at I/O, Android 13 will begin offering "out-of-the-box" support for braille displays through the platform's Talkback screen reader. You won't have to download the BrailleBack app to use physical input instead of the virtual keyboard.

You'll have access to "many" of Talkback's features, whether it's navigating the interface or shortcuts for common tasks like sending text messages. New shortcuts are aimed specifically at braille displays, such as jumping to the next line in a document or copying text.

Braille display support will first arrive in the next Android 13 beta, due "in a few weeks." The move will help people with blindness use their phones without using voice commands, and could make smartphones far more viable for people with deafblindness that can't rely on audio cues.

Epic is betting that you're looking for games to keep you entertained this summer. The Epic Games Store is running a "Mega Sale" from today (May 19th) through June 16th that offers significant discounts on a host of PC games, including a few recent blockbusters. Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is 29 percent off, while the open-world shooter Far Cry 6 is a whopping 50 percent off. Bethesda's recently launched Ghostwire: Tokyo is on sale for the first time at 34 percent off, while Tiny Tina's Wonderlands and the tough brawler Sifu both see 20 percent drops.

The deals are effectively larger than that. Every Epic Games account is receiving a 25 percent coupon that applies to any full-game purchases worth at least $15 after any other discounts, including the heftier ones mentioned above. You'll get a coupon after each transaction, too. The sale doesn't apply to add-ons, in-game content or non-game software.

The promo will dovetail with four weekly giveaways for "tentpole" games. You won't have to pay a thing to get at least something out of the Mega Sale, then, even if Epic is clearly hoping you'll buy something else while you're downloading your free titles.

Reddit's war over GameStop stock has claimed a major casualty. Bloomberg and The New York Times report Melvin Capital, the hedge fund considered the nemesis of the meme stock affair, is shutting down. Fund owner Gabe Plotkin told investors that the "appropriate next step" after steep losses was to liquidate assets and return cash to investors, and that it was time to "step away" from managing others' capital. At least half of the cash will transfer by May 31st, with the rest coming by June 30th.

Melvin Capital had been a successful fund, starting 2021 with over $12 billion. However, its public bet against GameStop and other struggling companies made it one of the largest victims of a GameStop-centric investing spree by people coordinating across Reddit and social networks. Plotkin's fund reported a 53 percent loss in January 2021, and it took a $2.75 billion cash infusion to soften the blow and keep losses down to 39 percent for the year.

The GameStop saga wasn't the only factor involved, however. While a recovery appeared possible, Melvin posted a 23 percent loss through April that was partly linked to poor stock positions. The fund was clearly in peril after the Reddit battle — it's just that some miscalculations finished the company once and for all.

Reddit speculators shifted their attention to BlackBerry and other companies in the aftermath of the GameStop drama, and there hasn't been fallout on par with Melvin's in the months since. Still, the shutdown illustrates the power of coordinated internet investors — they can demolish conventional stock managers in the right circumstances.

New York State wants to understand the part internet services may have played in the deadly Buffalo mass shooting. Attorney General Letitia James is launching investigations into Discord, Twitch, 4chan and 8chan over concerns they let the attacker "discuss and amplify" his plans. It was "chilling and unfathomable" that the shooter could post his intentions months in advance without facing consequences, James said.

The perpetrator reportedly talked about his plans for racism-fuelled violence on Discord, 4chan and 8chan. He tried to livestream the entire attack on Twitch. The service took down the shooter's channel within two minutes and has clamped down on attempts to reshare the video, but that didn't stop others from trying to distribute the video on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. On Discord, meanwhile, the culprit invited others to review his plans half an hour in advance. Both 4chan and 8chan have long focused on an anything-goes approach to content and have been accused of harboring hate speech.

A Discord spokesperson told Engadget the company would cooperate with the investigation. We've also asked Twitch for comment. Discord has a long history of banning extremist chat servers. Likewise, Twitch has previously pulled violent streams and curbed efforts to share the associated clips.

The investigations won't necessarily lead to action against the involved sites. Whether or not they do, the move underscores the pressure on internet services to proactively remove hate and threatening speech, rather than reacting to incidents.

YouTube Music on Wear OS now works the way you'd expect. As The Vergenotes, Google's music service now streams directly from its Wear OS app, whether you're on LTE or WiFi. You'll need to pair with an Android phone for full functionality (cellular streaming isn't an option for iPhone users), and a Premium subscription is necessary regardless of platform. If you meet those criteria, though, you can leave your phone at home knowing you'll still have access to all your tunes.

The upgrade also lets you add a YouTube Music tile for quick access to the browse section or your most recently played playlist. If you do need offline listening, Smart Downloads will automatically refresh your on-watch library whenever you're connected to WiFi. The streaming upgrade should finish rolling out this week.

First-party music streaming on Wear OS has been problematic, to put it mildly. Google Play Music was available on the platform, but the app didn't carry over when the company shut down the service in 2020 and transitioned to the YouTube offering. YouTube Music came to Wear OS (with offline-only playback) in summer 2021, but it was initially restricted to the Galaxy Watch 4 and didn't come to Wear OS 2 devices until September that year. You've had to turn to Spotify and other third-party services for streaming, and in some cases it wasn't an option at all.

There's plenty of pressure to add streaming, though. Google is releasing the Pixel Watch this fall with optional LTE, and it wouldn't look good if you couldn't stream the company's music service on its official smartwatch. The improved YouTube Music app should ensure a consistent experience when the Pixel wristwear arrives, at least if you're determined to use an all-Google setup.