YouTube TV is now offering users the option to subscribe to standalone add-on channels without signing up for the platform's base plan. You can choose from 20 channels, including HBO Max, Showtime and NBA League Pass. Epix and Starz, which will soon be rebranded in certain territories, are among the options as well. YouTube TV is following the likes of Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Roku and Sling TV in adding standalone channel subscriptions.
The cable-style YouTube TV base plan costs $65 and includes more than 85 channels (the full line up will vary slightly, depending on your location). But you'll no longer need that to access MLB.TV, Cinemax et al through the service. Users who opt out of the base plan can still take advantage of YouTube TV features such as unlimited DVR space, up to six profiles per household and three simultaneous streams.
To some, it might seem unnecessary to sign up for standalone channels through services like YouTube TV when they have their own apps. There are some benefits though, especially if you subscribe to more than one. You'll be able to access the services from a single app that might be available on more platforms than standalone apps for Shudder, Acorn and so on. Managing your subscriptions with a single bill may be useful too.
Anker's Soundcore audio brand has revealed yet more products. Among them are the Liberty 4 earbuds, which can track your heart rate. The heart rate sensor is in the right earbud, so you'll need to wear that one to use the feature. When it's measuring your blood oxygen levels, the earbud will emit a red light. Soundcore hasn't disclosed the waterproof rating, which is odd given that heart-rate tracking functions are closely linked to workouts.
Soundcore says an algorithm can tune the spatial audio function depending on whether you're watching a movie or listening to music. The earbuds offer dynamic head tracking too. Soundcore is using a gyroscope to ensure sound always surrounds you. In addition, Liberty 4 offers adaptive noise canceling (which automatically adjusts noise cancellation levels based on environmental audio) and personalized sound.
You'll get up to nine hours of use on a single charge, Soundcore claims, and 28 hours in total before you need to top up the charging case's battery. These figures drop to five and 15 hours with spatial audio on, and seven and 24 hours when ANC is enabled. That said, Soundcore says you'll get up to three hours of use after charging for 15 minutes.
Soundcore has also unveiled new sleep earbuds. It says the Sleep A10 buds can block out up to 35dB of noise thanks to a four-point noise masking system.
Unlike Bose Sleepbuds 2, which only allow you to listen to sleep sounds from a certain app, you can play any audio through Sleep A10 via Bluetooth. Soundcore says its earbuds have dynamic drivers designed to deliver low-frequency sound that induces sleep. Crucially, the earbuds are seemingly comfortable for folks who sleep on their side. They have ear wings and twin seal ear tips to help keep them snug in your ears during the night.
Other features include sleep monitoring and a personal alarm clock. Anker claims the buds have a battery life of up to 10 hours, so they should be able to help wake you up in addition to lulling you to sleep. The Sleep A10 buds, which cost $69 less than Bose's Sleepbuds 2, are available from Soundcore's website for $180.
The group that oversees USB wants to make it easier for you to understand what various cables and ports can actually do. It's trying to ditch branding like SuperSpeed and USB4 in an attempt to simplify matters, but manufacturers may not necessarily adopt the changes.
The steps are part of a broader drive by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) to rebrand USB standards. The group brought in new logos for cables, ports and packaging last year. The updated branding is about helping people understand what the standards are capable of in terms of data transfer speeds and performance, as well as charging speeds, USB-IF president and chief operating officer Jeff Ravencraft told The Verge.
SuperSpeed (also known as USB 3) has been around over a decade. You may have seen it on USB cable boxes. Going forward, USB-IF wants cable makers to use “USB 10Gbps” instead of “SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps” and “USB 20Gbps” instead of “USB4 20Gbps." Meanwhile, USB-C cables certified by the USB-IF will need to list both data transfer speeds and charging wattage.
The changes recently came into effect, and the updated branding could start appearing on labels and packaging by the end of the year. The branding guidelines apply to products with any type of USB port except for USB 1.0, which you won't see much these days anyway, and USB 2.0 (aka USB Hi-Speed). The USB-IF reckons that, in the latter case, using "USB 480Mbps" may create confusion for those who might see that on packaging and believe it to be faster than USB 5Gbps, simply because of the larger number.
The rebranding requirements only apply to devices and cables certified by the USB-IF. But, because USB is an open standard (unlike, say, Thunderbolt 4), there's nothing really to stop manufacturers from using SuperSpeed and USB4 branding if they really want to, as The Verge notes. As such, it remains to be seen how much these measures will actually clear things up for people who just need a cable for their device.
Knowing which cable you need is already complicated enough. Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 connectors and ports look exactly the same as USB-C ones, for instance. The updated guidelines won't do much to help you understand if a cable supports DisplayPort or a certain fast-charging standard either.
On the surface, at least, these seem like positive moves to reduce confusion and get rid of unnecessary verbiage. Still, it's unclear whether abandoning the SuperSpeed moniker, which was arguably less commonly used than USB 3 in any case, will actually help clarify things for most users. It may not matter much anyway given the increasingly widespread adoption of USB-C as a more universal standard — which is the whole point of USB in the first place.
Ahead of bringing its Arc desktop GPUs to everyone in a couple of weeks, Intel has revealed more details about what to expect from the graphics cards in terms of specs and performance. The A770, which starts at $329, will have 32 Xe cores, 32 ray-tracing units and a 2,100MHz graphics clock. In terms of RAM, it comes in 8GB and 16GB configurations, with up to 512 Gb/s and 560 Gb/s of memory bandwidth, respectively.
As for the A750, which Intel just announced will start at $289, that has 28 Xe cores, 28 ray-tracing units, a 2,050MHz graphics clock, 8GB of memory and up to 512 Gb/s of memory bandwidth. All three cards, which will be available on October 12th, have 225W of total power.
Intel claims that, based on benchmarking tests, you'll get more bang for your buck with these cards than NVIDIA's mid-range GeForce RTX 3060. It says the A770 offers 42 percent greater performance per dollar vs. the RTX 3060, while the A750 is seemingly 53 percent better on a per-dollar basis.
It claims that, in most of the games it tested, the A770's 16GB configuration delivered better ray-tracing performance than the similarly priced RTX 3060 (which, in fairness, debuted back in early 2021). When it came to Fortnite, Intel says the A770 had 1.56 times the ray-tracing performance of the RTX 3060.
Of course Intel is going to tout its GPUs as being better than the competition. We'll have to wait for the results of our own Intel Arc benchmarking tests to have a true sense of the performance.
In any case, it's looking like NVIDIA is about to have more competition on the GPU front. Only this time, it's from an established brand that just so happens to be behind many of the processors powering the PCs that might very well have used NVIDIA cards otherwise.
As with many other industries, the tech sector has been feeling the squeeze of the global economic slowdown this year. Meta isn't immune from that. Reports in May suggested that the company would slow down the rate of new hires this year. Now, Bloombergreports that Meta has put all hiring on hold. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also said to have told staff that there's likely more restructuring and downsizing on the way.
Meta declined to comment on the report. The company directed Engadget to a comment that Zuckerberg made during Meta's most recent earnings call in July. “Given the continued trends, this is even more of a focus now than it was last quarter," Zuckerberg said. "Our plan is to steadily reduce headcount growth over the next year. Many teams are going to shrink so we can shift energy to other areas, and I wanted to give our leaders the ability to decide within their teams where to double down, where to backfill attrition, and where to restructure teams while minimizing thrash to the long-term initiatives.”
In that earnings report, Meta disclosed that, in the April-May quarter, its revenue dropped by one percent year-over-year. It's the first time the company has ever reported a fall in revenue.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure has joined the rapidly expanding list of PlayStation games that Sony is bringing to PC. The PS5 launch title (which is also available on PS4) will pop up on Steam and the Epic Games Store on October 27th.
Sony says the PC version will support 4K resolution, have a targeted framerate of 120 FPS and offer variable refresh rates. You'll be able to explore Craftworld in an ultra-wide format as there's support for a range of screen ratios, including 21:9. Those with recent NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs should get a performance boost as well via DLSS2. There's also haptic feedback and dynamic trigger support if you use a DualSense controller. Alternatively, you can play with a mouse and keyboard.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure won't require an ultra powerful gaming rig. You will need at least an Intel Core i5-6400 or AMD FX-6300 CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or AMD Radeon R7 265 GPU, 8GB of RAM and 60GB of storage.
It's shaping up to be a busy fall for PlayStation on the PC gaming front. The Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves collection will hit Steam and the Epic Games Store on October 19th. Spider-Man: Miles Morales is also slated to land on PC by the end of the year.
Despite claims to the contrary as recently as July, Google is shutting down its Stadia games streaming service after all. The company says players will have access to their games library and be able to play them until January 18, 2023. Sadly, Stadia will join the long, long list of products that have been killed by Google.
Those who have invested money into Stadia will be fully reimbursed. "We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store," Google wrote in a blog post. "We expect to have the majority of refunds completed by mid-January, 2023. We have more details for players on this process on our Help Center."
NASA made history this week after an attempt to slam its DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft into an asteroid nearly 7 million miles away proved successful. While NASA shared some close-up images of the impact, it observed the planetary defense test from afar as well, thanks to the help of the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes. On the surface, the images aren't exactly the most striking things we've seen from either telescope, but they could help reveal a lot of valuable information.
This was the first time that Hubble and JSWT have observed the same celestial target simultaneously. While that was a milestone for the telescopes in itself, NASA suggests the data they captured will help researchers learn more about the history and makeup of the solar system. They'll be able to use the information to learn about the surface of Dimorphos (the asteroid in question), how much material was ejected after DART crashed into it and how fast that material was traveling.
.@NASAWebb & @NASAHubble caught the DART impact on camera – the 1st time that Webb & Hubble were used to simultaneously observe the same celestial target.
JWST and Hubble picked up different wavelengths of light (infrared and visible, respectively). NASA says that being able to observe data from multiple wavelengths will help scientists figure out if big chunks of material left Dimorphos' surface or if it was mostly fine dust. This is an important aspect of the test, as the data can help researchers figure out if crashing spacecraft into an asteroid can change its orbit. The ultimate aim is to develop a system that can divert incoming asteroids away from Earth.
NASA says that JWST picked up images of "a tight, compact core, with plumes of material appearing as wisps streaming away from the center of where the impact took place." JWST, which captured 10 images over five hours, will continue to collect spectroscopic data from the asteroid system in the coming months to help researchers better understand the chemical composition of Dimorphos. NASA shared a timelapse GIF of the images that JWST captured.
NASA/ESA/CSA/Cristina Thomas (Northern Arizona University)/Ian Wong (NASA-GSFC)/Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
At around 14,000 MPH, Dimorphos was traveling at a speed over three times faster than JWST was originally designed to track. However, the telescope's flight operations, planning and science teams were able to develop a way to capture the impact.
As for Hubble, the 32-year-old telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 captured its own images of the collision. "Ejecta from the impact appear as rays stretching out from the body of the asteroid," according to NASA. The agency noted that some of the rays appear curved, and astronomers will have to examine the data to gain a better understanding of what that may mean.
NASA/ESA/Jian-Yang Li (PSI)/Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
According to their initial findings, though, the brightness of the asteroid system increased threefold after impact. That level of brightness stayed the same for at least eight hours. Hubble captured 45 images immediately before and after DART's impact. It will observe the asteroid system 10 additional times over the next few weeks.
It took 10 months for DART, which is about the size of a vending machine, to reach Dimorphos. The football stadium-sized asteroid was around 6.8 million miles away from Earth when DART rammed into it. Pulling off an experiment like that is no mean feat. The learnings scientists gain from the test may prove invaluable.
It's been a turbulent year for Peloton to say the least. Part of the company's plan to right the ship is to offer its connected fitness gear through third-party retailers. It started selling equipment through Amazon in August and now Peloton has an exclusive deal with a brick-and-mortar retailer. So, you soon may be able to walk into a Dick's Sporting Goods location and pick up a Bike, Tread or Guide after seeing it in person. It seems Dick's won't carry Peloton's new rowing machine for now, though.
The fitness gear and some accessories will be available in more than 100 Dick's retail locations in the US (there are more than 700 in total, as CNBC points out) and through the company's online sales channels in the coming weeks. The physical locations will have Peloton-branded fitness shops where the gear will be displayed and Dick's employees will be trained to help shoppers with the equipment.
Peloton says Dick's will be the only retailer that offers this selection of its hardware outside of its own online and physical stores. However, Peloton plans to start closing at least some of its showrooms next year.
At least to begin with, Peloton will handle delivery and setup if you order a Bike or Tread from Dick's. That may not last for long as the company announced plans in August to lay off members of its distribution team and rely entirely on third-party companies for deliveries and setting up equipment.
Ubisoft has once again delayed its long, long-awaited pirate sim Skull and Bones. Last we heard, the game was scheduled to hit Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 5, Steam, Epic Games Store, Google Stadia, Amazon Luna and Ubisoft Connect on November 8th. That's no longer the case, as the publisher has pushed back the release date to March 9th.
"We’re very eager for you all to get your hands on Skull and Bones and dive in headfirst to the dangerous and exciting world of building your own pirate empire," the company wrote in a blog post. "To give you the best possible experience we’ve decided to take a little more time to make sure we can deliver exactly that."
Skull and Bones was already four years behind schedule. We had our first hands on with it in 2017 and it was supposed to be out the following year. However, Ubisoft went back to the drawing board when the game was already deep into development to turn it into a more realistic pirating experience.
While the news of yet another delay will come as a disappointment to those who've already been waiting five years for the game, you still might be able to get your hands on it before March. Ubisoft is planning to run an open beta of Skull and Bones. It will share more details soon.
