At an Alexa developer event, Amazon revealed some tools that will make it possible for developers to create Alexa routines and suggest them to users. With user permission, they can use the Alexa Ambient Home Dev Kit to integrate their devices and services with other products more seamlessly.

For instance, they might suggest a routine that instructs a robot vacuum cleaner to get to work after you leave home and arm your security system. The dev kit will also allow for changes made in one app to be replicated elsewhere. So if you rename a room in the app you use to control your smart lights, Alexa and other compatible connected services can automatically update the room's name on their end too.

Another set of APIs is all about home states for scenarios such as Home, Vacation, Dinner Time and Sleep. Modes and settings can sync between devices and services based on the situation. So, when you go to bed, the home state function can make sure certain electronics turn off, the doors lock (it they haven't already) and the thermostat adjusts the temperature to your preferred nighttime setting.

Allowing companies to create routines could be both a timesaver for consumers and open up their eyes to some smart home possibilities that they might not have previously considered. Amazon says there are now more than 300 million smart home devices that folks have connected to Alexa, so there are a lot of opportunities to improve or streamline people's lives. That is, as long as they're willing to put their faith in Amazon, a company that doesn't exactly have a spotless track record when it comes to privacy in the home. While Amazon laid out more of its vision of the "ambient home" during the event, it said it's years away from truly bringing that to fruition.

Other announcements the company made include more ways it's playing nicely with alternative voice assistants. Universal Device Commands (UDCs) and Agent Transfers (ATs) will allow for simultaneous wake words on the same device, so that it can support multiple voice assistants. With UDCs, developers will be able to let users issue a command "using any compatible voice service’s wake word, even if the service was not originally used to initiate the request." If a voice service can't handle a request, it can be transferred to another assistant through ATs. Amazon expects both capabilities to be enabled on the cloud side in the next 12 months. In addition, certain Skullcandy headphones will be able to handle Alexa and “Hey Skullcandy" requests simultaneously.

The final episode of Space Explorers: The ISS Experience is available starting today and it's closing things out with a bang. The four-part series, which debuted in October 2020, wraps up with the first spacewalk filmed in ultra high-resolution cinematic virtual reality. The episode, which is called "Expand," includes the arrival of a SpaceX crew on the International Space Station for the first time as well. Meanwhile, the astronauts are forced to reckon with the impact of COVID-19 back on Earth.

You can check out "Expand" on Meta Quest and Meta Quest 2 headsets for free. The other Space Explorers: The ISS Experience episodes are still available too. Meanwhile, Felix & Paul, the studio behind the series, plans to livestream the Artemis I launch in VR. The launch of an uncrewed mission to the Moon is currently slated for August 29th, September 2nd or September 5th.

DoorDash is rolling out a new requirement for alcohol deliveries across the US. The delivery person will need to scan a customer's ID with the DoorDash app to make sure the buyer is of legal drinking age. They'll also check for signs of intoxication before handing over the booze (couriers are not allowed to deliver alcohol to someone who is visibly intoxicated).

The identity verification measure builds on DoorDash's existing alcohol delivery rules. You'll still need to scan your ID into the app before you can complete an order for hooch. Until now, customers only had to show their ID to the delivery person. DoorDash's goal with the scanning requirement is to make it harder for users aged under 21 to receive alcohol. DoorDash delivers alcohol in 23 states, as well as Puerto Rico, Canada and Australia.

DoorDash

The company tested the dual ID verification measure in several cities. It said the feature made it easier for couriers to verify the user's identity and age before giving them the order. When it comes to ensuring ID details remain secure, DoorDash says it has "implemented administrative, organizational, technical and physical security controls that are designed to safeguard personal information." According to the privacy policy, it will permanently delete biometric information that's no longer needed.

“At DoorDash, safety is a top priority and our goal is to deliver alcohol in the safest and most responsible way possible,” DoorDash’s general manager of alcohol Erik Ragotte said in a statement. “With today’s announcement of two-step or dual ID verification, we’re setting a new industry standard for responsible alcohol delivery. The new safety measures will help ensure alcohol is delivered to people over the age of 21. We will continue to innovate and find even more ways to promote responsible alcohol delivery.”

Hello Games shows no signs of slowing down when it comes to No Man's Sky. The studio just released the 20th major update, which is called Endurance. The previous big update, titled Outlaws, dropped in April. The focus this time is on fleets and freighters.

With Endurance, Hello Games has overhauled freighters. There's a new bridge with a quick-access teleporter that will take players to and from the new-look hangar in a jiffy. There's the option to teleport between the capital ship and a fleet to carry out repairs on frigates too.

You'll be able to quickly put together a space base with new parts and customizable themed rooms. Cultivate crops in a dedicated chamber, or add a catwalk, observation deck or glass corridor to gaze out at the cosmos. Using the Planetary Probe freighter module, you can remotely discover all celestial bodies in a given solar system.

Players can hire captains and pilots, and they may see engineers, biologists and technicians walking around their freighter. Hello Games upgraded freighters' exterior visuals as well. Additionally, there are new effects for black holes and visual enhancements for nebulae — a perfectly timed update after NASA released the first batch of full-color images from James Webb Space Telescope last week.

Asteroids have been improved too. They're more varied in shape and size and you may see thousands of them on screen simultaneously. Some may even nest creatures. Also new are procedurally generated organic frigates, which you can add to your fleet and deploy on missions. The game already had living starships, which can now leech energy from enemy vessels.

Hello Games

Elsewhere, a new expedition called Polestar will start soon. You'll be tasked with taking your capital ship across the galaxy on a cruise. Rewards include new base parts (such as a flaming barrel), a jellyfish companion and a unique cape design. The update introduces new multiplayer missions too.

In the coming months, No Man's Sky will arrive on yet more platforms. It's coming to Nintendo Switch on October 7th and macOS sometime this year. A PlayStation VR 2 version is in the works as well.

Lightyear didn't hit the box office heights Disney hoped for, despite it being the first Pixar movie to debut exclusively in theaters in over two years. You won't have to wait too much longer to stream the movie at home, though. It's coming to Disney+ on August 3rd, 47 days after it landed in theaters.

While it's technically a Toy Story spinoff, it has a meta element to it. The action figure in the Toy Story movies is supposedly based on Lightyear, an in-universe film characters like Andy seemingly watched (making this a quasi-prequel). This time around, Buzz is in human form and is voiced by Chris Evans. He's an astronaut who, along with his crew and commander, gets stuck on a strange planet and needs to find a way home. The cast also includes Keke Palmer, Peter Sohn, Taika Waititi, Dale Soules, James Brolin and Uzo Aduba.

Back at I/O 2022 in May, Google teased the return of its augmented reality glasses by showing an early prototype of its next-gen glasses. Now, the company is just about ready to start real-world testing. You might spot a Googler wearing the glasses in the wild as soon as August.

"The real-world tests will allow us to better understand how these devices can help people in their everyday lives," Juston Payne, a group product manager at Google's AR and VR division, wrote in a blog post. "And as we develop experiences like AR navigation, it will help us take factors such as weather and busy intersections into account — which can be difficult, sometimes impossible, to fully recreate indoors."

The testing will be limited to a few dozen people (Google employees and trusted testers). The prototype models will be equipped with cameras, microphones and in-lens displays. Google is assessing audio and visual sensing for functions such as translation, transcription and navigation.

However, the features will be limited. The glasses won't capture photos or videos, though Google will use image data to translate text and display directions. Data will be deleted "after the experience is completed" unless it's going to be used for debugging and analysis. In that case, Google will remove sensitive information, such as faces and license plates. The company will delete image data used for research purposes after 30 days.

Google Glass wasn't quite the success the company hoped it would be — it's an enterprise product these days. The company wants to get things right with its next-gen AR glasses, so it's taking things slow. Payne noted that it's early days for the project. There's no release timeline for the glasses as yet.

Researchers at Cornell University have developed an earphone that uses sonar to detect the wearer's facial expression to create an avatar of their face. The so-called "earable" system is called EarIO.

It works by bouncing sound off the wearer’s cheeks — the audio is emitted from speakers on each side of the earphone. A microphone captures the echoes, which change as the face moves and the wearer speaks. The system then uses a deep learning algorithm to turn the echoes into a replica of the person’s expression. EarIO can transmit the facial movements to a mobile device in real time and the avatar can be used in video calls.

Camera-based devices that track face movements are “large, heavy and energy-hungry, which is a big issue for wearables,” said Cheng Zhang, principal investigator of the Smart Computer Interfaces for Future Interactions Lab, who co-authored a paper on EarIO. “Also importantly, they capture a lot of private information.” A sonar-based approach can bolster privacy, affordability, comfort and battery life, he said.

In initial testing, the team found the device works while wearers are sitting and walking, and factors like background chatter, wind and ambient road noise don't impact the acoustic signaling. However, the high sensitivity of the sensing method can cause some issues. “It’s good, because it’s able to track very subtle movements, but it’s also bad because when something changes in the environment, or when your head moves slightly, we also capture that," said co-author Ruidong Zhang, an information science doctoral student. The researchers hope to mitigate such disruptions in future models.

EarIO has some limitations as things stand. The device runs for around three hours on a single charge despite being far more energy efficient than a camera-based system the team previously used. The researchers hope to improve the battery life in the future. They also aim to make EarIO a plug-and-play device but it currently needs 32 minutes of facial data training before the first use.

Android developers who distribute apps on the Google Play store can now use third-party payment systems in many European countries. The measure applies to the European Economic Area (EEA), which comprises European Union states as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. However, the policy will not apply to gaming apps, which still need to use Google Play's own billing system for the time being.

Google is making the move after the EU's legislative arm, the European Commission, passed the Digital Markets Act (DMA) this month. Along with the Digital Services Act, the law is designed to rein in the power of big tech by, for instance, prohibiting major platform holders from giving their own systems preferable treatment.

The DMA isn't expected to come into effect until sometime in 2024. However, Google's director of EU government affairs and public policy, Estelle Werth, wrote in a blog post that the company is "launching this program now to allow us to work closely with our developer partners and ensure our compliance plans serve the needs of our shared users and the broader ecosystem."

The move partially reverses a policy that required all in-app payments to be processed through the Play Store's billing system. Developers who opt for a different billing system won't be able to avoid Google's fees entirely. However, Google will lower the service fees it charges them by three percent.

Google says that 99 percent of developers qualify for a fee of 15 percent or less. The others typically pay 30 percent. The fees Google charges would drop to 12 percent (or lower) or 27 percent, respectively, if they select a third-party billing system. Developers may end up paying around the same amount in fees anyway, depending on what the alternative payment provider charges.

Developers will also "need to meet appropriate user protection requirements," Google says. The company plans to allow gaming apps to use alternative payment systems in the EEA sometime before the DMA comes into effect.

Google has long resisted the idea of opening up the Play store to alternative payment providers in the face of pressure from multiple sides, but the EU forced its hand in this case. The company adopted a similar measure in South Korea last year after the country passed a law requiring Google and Apple to offer third-party payments.

Transit app Moovit is aiming to be more helpful when it comes to helping users get to their destination. Starting today, the app is rolling out more personalized trip-planning features in 3,500 cities across 112 countries to build on its existing route suggestions.

One of new functions is called Smart Cards. Intel-owned Moovit will populate travel suggestions on the home screen based on factors such as your location, the time of day and week, your previous activity and items you mark as favorites. For instance, if you're out and about and you have your home set as a favorite destination, Moovit will automatically suggest the best transit options to get back there. On the flip side, if you have your work address saved, the app will offer transit suggestions for traveling there during weekday morning commute hours.

A "recent trips" card will display transit options for destinations you've searched within the last 30 days on the same day of the week and at around the same time. You'll also get transit suggestions for a nearby stop that you've marked as a favorite and departure details for nearby stations. In addition, you'll have the option to return to your last trip itinerary. You can swipe between all these cards, which will appear just below the search bar.

Moovit

Another of the three new features is called Smart Trips. You'll be able to set your preferred transit options when you set up the app or through the preferences menu on the Suggested Routes screen. That should be useful for those who, for instance, prefer not to take the subway. While you can select transit options in Google Maps, it's on a trip-by-trip basis. Being able to save preferred modes of transport should save Moovit users some time.

The last of the new features is Smart Returns. You can quickly select a trip back to the last location you departed from. You'll be able to set a departure time for the return journey on the Itinerary screen and receive a notification with suggested routes when it's time for you to get going.

The Atari brand recently turned 50 and the latest way that its current owner, Atari Interactive, is marking the occasion is with a Lego kit for its most popular console. The Atari 2600 set will be available on August 1st and it costs $240/€240.

The Atari 2600 debuted in 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (the name was changed in 1982). The Lego kit is based on a four-switch version that arrived in 1980. The set has 2,532 pieces. It includes a moveable joystick that Lego says feels like the original. 

Lego

There are cartridges for Asteroids, Adventure and Centipede that you can slot into the main body. There's a matching buildable mini model for each game and the cartridges can be stored in a holder. Sliding open the front panel reveals a pop-up scene of an '80s gaming room, which is a fun detail.

Atari is celebrating its milestone in other ways. For one thing, it teamed up with Cariuma for a sneaker collection. This fall, it will release a collection of 90 games from the Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, ST, Jaguar and Lynx on the Atari VCS mini PC, modern consoles, Steam and the Epic Games Store.