Windows 11 widgets could become more useful in the coming months. Microsoft revealed at its Build developer conference that the operating system will start supporting widgets for third-party apps later this year. Developers will be able to create widgets for their Win32 apps and progressive web apps using Microsoft's Adaptive Cards platform.
"We’re energized by the customer feedback on widgets to date. People are enjoying the quick access to content most important to them in a way that is seamless without breaking their flow," Panos Panay, Microsoft's chief product officer for Windows and devices, said.
Microsoft brought back widgets, which previously appeared in Windows 7, when it released Windows 11 last year. However, it tucked the widgets behind a dedicated button. In any case, we felt they weren't all that useful.
Opening up widgets to third-party developers so they can provide some at-a-glance information Microsoft doesn't offer through its own apps could be handy. You might, for instance, eventually see your Twitter timeline or WhatsApp messages in a widget.
The company shut down widgets (aka gadgets) in Windows 7 in part because they could be exploited. Microsoft hasn't revealed too many details about how third-party widgets will work in Windows 11 just yet, so here's hoping there's some quality control to fend off bad actors.
Call of Duty fans might want to start looking into taking some time off around Halloween. The next entry in the franchise, Modern Warfare II, will be released on October 28th. It's the sequel to 2019's Modern Warfare, which was a reboot of the blockbuster series.
Activision Blizzard released a teaser video that doesn't show any gameplay. Instead, it reveals artwork for some of the characters who'll be featured: John “Soap” MacTavish, Simon “Ghost” Riley, Captain John Price, Kyle “Gaz” Garrick and Alejandro Vargas.
A gameplay reveal (if you really need one to know what a modern Call of Duty game looks like) may not be too far away, though. The teaser includes a quick flash of text reading "J-8-22." That may be hinting toward a broader reveal on June 8th, just ahead of major gaming showcases from Summer Game Fest and Xbox and Bethesda.
It's Infinity Ward's turn to release a Call of Duty title and the studio has its hands full, since it's also responsible for Warzone. A "massive evolution" of the battle royale will take place later this year in line with the release of Modern Warfare II. Both games will have a new engine, for one thing.
Modern Warfare II is arguably the most important Call of Duty title for Activision Blizzard in many years. The series is the company's crown jewel. While the most recent release, Call of Duty: Vanguard, was the biggest selling game of 2021 by some estimations, it saw "lower premium sales" at launch than the previous year's entry, Black Ops Cold War.
In the first three months of 2022, the Activision side of the business (which Call of Duty falls under) saw a big drop in engagement year-over-year from 150 million monthly active players to 100 million in the wake of the company's misconduct scandals. With the Microsoft takeover pending and reports that there may not be a new Call of Duty game in 2023, Activision Blizzard will be hoping that Modern Warfare II performs strongly.
EA and developer Maxis are bringing a welcome inclusivity feature to The Sims 4. Starting today, you'll be able to customize the pronouns of your Sims. The feature is only available in the English version of The Sims 4 for now. EA and Maxis plan to improve it over time and make it available in more languages. They say it's "one step in the direction of a more inclusive experience for Simmers."
A screenshot of the feature suggests players will be able to enter whichever pronouns they prefer into text boxes. The settings show how the pronouns will work in context too — e.g. "he/she/they would like a grilled cheese."
The developers worked with GLAAD and the It Gets Better Project to gain a deeper understanding of the impact and use of pronouns. The organizations helped the team grasp where and how binary representations of gender are used in the game.
Although The Sims 4 was originally released in 2014, EA and Maxis have continued to support the game with expansion packs and updates. It has a thriving modding community too. According to Mat Piscatella of The NPD Group, The Sims 4 was one of the 10 most-played games in the US in the first three months of this year, beating out the likes of Rocket League and Elden Ring.
Here are the top 10 most played games of Q1 2022 in the U.S. ranked by year of initial release. (Source: The NPD Group's PlayerPulse)
Half of the top 10 weren't launched this decade. Elden Ring ranked 20th. Ahead of it were games like Rocket League, World of Warcraft and Skyrim. pic.twitter.com/eWXKVMFHZj
Many folks mainly associate Samsung with smartphones and TVs, but the company is looking at other parts of its business for long-term growth potential. In the five years to 2026, it will plow 450 trillion won ($356 billion) into strategic areas, with a focus on things like semiconductors, biotechnology and artificial intelligence.
This marks Samsung's largest investment pledge to date and it's an increase from a 240 trillion won commitment it made last August. The figure is 30 percent more than the 330 trillion won the company invested in itself over the previous five-year period.
The Samsung Electronics division will use the funding to bolster its chip design and manufacturing process, according to The Korea Herald. The company is preparing to start making 3nm chips to help it keep pace with TMSC. It's also working on advanced chips for supercomputers, robots and AI purposes, and it plans to focus on the development of 6G tech.
Over the next few years, Samsung expects to create 1 million jobs. It plans to hire 80,000 people by 2026 and create hundreds of thousands more positions with its vendors. Around 80 percent of the announced investment is earmarked for the company's home country of South Korea.
Google has shown off an artificial intelligence system that can create images based on text input. The idea is that users can enter any descriptive text and the AI will turn that into an image. The company says the Imagen diffusion model, created by the Brain Team at Google Research, offers "an unprecedented degree of photorealism and a deep level of language understanding."
This isn't the first time we've seen AI models like this. OpenAI's DALL-E (and its successor) generated headlines as well as images because of how adeptly it can turn text into visuals. Google's version, however, tries to create more realistic images.
To assess Imagen against other text-to-image models (including DALL-E 2, VQ-GAN+CLIP and Latent Diffusion Models), the researchers created a benchmark called DrawBench. That's a list of 200 text prompts that were entered into each model. Human raters were asked to assess each image. They "prefer Imagen over other models in side-by-side comparisons, both in terms of sample quality and image-text alignment," Google said.
It's worth noting that the examples shown on the Imagen website are curated. As such, these may be the best of the best images that the model created. They may not accurately reflect most of the visuals that it generated.
Like DALL-E, Imagen is not available to the public. Google doesn't think it's suitable as yet for use by the general population for a number of reasons. For one thing, text-to-image models are typically trained on large datasets that are scraped from the web and are not curated, which introduces a number of problems.
"While this approach has enabled rapid algorithmic advances in recent years, datasets of this nature often reflect social stereotypes, oppressive viewpoints, and derogatory, or otherwise harmful, associations to marginalized identity groups," the researchers wrote. "While a subset of our training data was filtered to removed noise and undesirable content, such as pornographic imagery and toxic language, we also utilized LAION-400M dataset, which is known to contain a wide range of inappropriate content including pornographic imagery, racist slurs and harmful social stereotypes."
As a result, they said, Imagen has inherited the "social biases and limitations of large language models" and may depict "harmful stereotypes and representation." The team said preliminary findings indicated that the AI encodes social biases, including a tendency to create images of people with lighter skin tones and to place them into certain stereotypical gender roles. Additionally, the researchers note that there is the potential for misuse if Imagen were made available to the public as is.
The team may eventually allow the public to enter text into a version of the model to generate their own images, however. "In future work we will explore a framework for responsible externalization that balances the value of external auditing with the risks of unrestricted open-access," the researchers wrote.
You can try Imagen on a limited basis, though. On its website, you can create a description using pre-selected phrases. Users can select whether the image should be a photo or an oil painting, the type of animal displayed, the clothing they wear, the action they're undertaking and the setting. So if you've ever wanted to see an interpretation of an oil painting depicting a fuzzy panda wearing sunglasses and a black leather jacket while skateboarding on a beach, here's your chance.
Quality assurance workers at Activision Blizzard studio Raven Software have voted to unionize, becoming the first such group to do so at a major gaming publisher in North America. The National Labor Relations board counted the ballots on Monday — 19 workers voted in favor of the union and three voted against. Two ballots were challenged, though they weren't sufficient enough to affect the result. There were 28 eligible voters and no void ballots.
In December, 60 workers (including contractors and full-time employees) at the Call of Duty support studio went on strike after it laid off 12 QA testers. They demanded that the company hire those workers back. The strike ended the following month, but not before the QA workers announced plans to unionize with the Communication Workers of America (CWA). Once they were back at work, Raven split them up among various departments, in an apparent attempt to make their unionization efforts more difficult.
The workers asked Activision Blizzard to voluntarily recognize their union, which they called the Game Workers Alliance. However, the company declined to do so. Last month, the National Labor Relations Board gave the workers the go-ahead to hold a union election.
Activision Blizzard has been accused of union busting. Last July, it hired the law firm WilmerHale, which has reportedly engaged in efforts to stamp out union drives at Amazon and other companies, to review its human resources policies. It also shared anti-union messaging in company Slack channels.
In April, Activision Blizzard said it was hiring 1,100 QA workers on a full-time basis, increasing their pay in many cases and providing benefits. However, it claimed the Raven QA workers were not eligible “due to legal obligations under the National Labor Relations Act.”
Earlier on Monday, the NRLB determined that Activision Blizzard violated the National Labor Relations Act. It claimed the company threatened employees who sought to organize and imposed an 'overbroad social media policy.'
Activision Blizzard is being bought by Microsoft for $68.7 billion, pending regulatory approval. Microsoft has said it "will not stand in the way if Activision Blizzard recognizes a union." The company told Axios in March that it “respects Activision Blizzard employees’ right to choose whether to be represented by a labor organization and we will honor those decisions.”
A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board has determined there's "merit to the allegations" that Activision Blizzard violated the National Labor Relations Act. It says there are indications the company and its subsidiaries Blizzard Entertainment and Activision Publishing maintained an "overbroad social media policy" and that Blizzard threatened employees who were exercising their right to organize. The findings were first reported by Bloombergand confirmed to Engadget.
“These allegations are false. Employees may and do talk freely about these workplace issues without retaliation, and our social media policy expressly incorporates employees’ NLRA rights," an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told Engadget in a statement. "Our social media policy explicitly says that it ‘does not restrict employees from engaging in the communication of information protected by law, including for example, rights of employees in the United States protected by the National Labor Relations Act.’”
If the company does not settle the case, the NLRB's Los Angeles office will file a complaint. That will lead to a hearing in front of an NLRB Administrative Law Judge (unless a settlement is reached in the meantime).
While the agency can't impose punitive measures against a defendant, it can require them to reverse punishments or policies; reinstate fired workers and provide backpay; or post notices containing promises not to break the law. An NLRB regional director can petition a district court for a temporary injunction if workers' rights have been violated. The agency can also file cases in federal court.
The allegations were made in September by the Communications Workers of America (CWA). It accused Activision Blizzard in an Unfair Labor Practice filing of telling employees they can't discuss wages, hours or working conditions; enforcing an "an overly broad social media policy" against workers who "engaged in protected concerted activity" (i.e. their right to organize or discuss unionization); and threatening or suveilling such employees.
The news comes on the same day that votes will be counted in a Raven Software union election. Quality assurance workers at the Activision Blizzard studio, who are organizing with the CWA as the Game Workers Alliance, got the go-ahead from the NLRB to hold a vote. If they're successful, the group of 21 or so workers will form the first union at a AAA game publisher in North America, despite the company's reported attempts to stymie their efforts.
Activision Blizzard's labor practices came under intense scrutiny last July when California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing accused it in a lawsuit of fostering a "frat boy" culture where sexual harassment and discrimination were present. Other suits have been filed against the company since, including a wrongful death case.
In the wake of the initial suit, Activision Blizzard workers formed an employee advocacy group called A Better ABK. They used social media to organize and share their concerns and demands publicly.
Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and Team Coco's other podcasts now belong to SiriusXM. O’Brien has sold his digital media company and podcast network to the satellite radio giant.
As part of the deal, which The Wall Street Journal says is worth around $150 million, O'Brien has signed a five-year talent agreement to keep hosting his podcast. He'll also create and produce a Team Coco comedy channel. In addition, SiriusXM will have the right to distribute some videos from O'Brien's podcast, along with archival footage from his TBS late-night show.
Team Coco's staff of around 50 will continue to produce existing shows and work on other SiriusXM content. The network's other podcasts include Conan O’Brien Needs a Fan (a spin-off of the flagship show) and Parks and Recollection, a Parks and Recreation behind-the-scenes show hosted by star Rob Lowe and writer Alan Yang. Collectively, the 10 podcasts have been downloaded more than 418 million times.
Don't worry too much if you listen to Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and other Team Coco shows elsewhere. They'll still be available on other podcast platforms.
"When I started in television my ultimate goal was to work my way up to radio," O'Brien said. "This new deal with SiriusXM builds on the great relationship that began several years ago with a team that is the standout in their field."
SiriusXM has been trying to become a bigger player in podcasting amid stiff competition from the likes of Spotify. Over the last couple of years, it has scooped up the Stitcher platform and podcasts such as 99% Invisible. SiriusXM has also beefed up its original content with exclusive shows from the likes of Marvel. It bought podcast hosting and analytics platform Simplecast too.
Meta's Cambridge Analytica woes are far from over. Karl Racine, the Attorney General of the District of Columbia, has sued Mark Zuckerberg. He accused the Meta CEO of having a direct hand in making the decisions that led to the major data breach.
Racine claims that Zuckerberg "contributed to Facebook’s lax oversight of user data and implementation of misleading privacy agreements." That, according to the suit, allowed consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to acquire personal data on more than 70 million Americans, including more than 340,000 DC residents. The company allegedly used the data to help sway voters in the 2016 presidential election through political ad targeting.
The AG previously sued Meta (then known as Facebook) over the scandal in 2018. That case is still ongoing. This time, Racine is targeting Zuckerberg directly. Under the jurisdiction's Consumer Protection Procedures Act, which bans unfair and deceptive trade practices, individuals are liable for a company's actions that they were aware of, controlled or failed to stop.
Racine is seeking a jury trial against Zuckerberg. He wants Meta's CEO to refrain from future CPPA violations and to pay damages and civil penalties. Engadget has contacted Meta for comment.
“Since filing our landmark lawsuit against Facebook, my office has fought tooth and nail against the company's characteristic efforts to resist producing documents and otherwise thwart our suit. We continue to persist and have followed the evidence right to Mr. Zuckerberg," Racine said in a statement. “This unprecedented security breach exposed tens of millions of Americans’ personal information, and Mr. Zuckerberg’s policies enabled a multi-year effort to mislead users about the extent of Facebook's wrongful conduct. This lawsuit is not only warranted, but necessary, and sends a message that corporate leaders, including CEOs, will be held accountable for their actions.”
Galaxy Watch 4 users can now start using Google Assistant on the device. Along with being available in the app tray, you can trigger Assistant via voice command and assign it to a long press on the home button. In addition, today's update offers users access to Google Pay, Maps and YouTube Music.
During Google I/O earlier this month, Samsung said Google Assistant support would arrive on the device sometime this summer, so it's arriving earlier than some may have expected. Patrick Chomet, Samsung's executive vice president of products and experience, noted that Assistant would allow for "faster and more natural voice interactions."
Samsung also said Spotify control will be available via Google Assistant and support for other third-party apps is on the way. Google apps and services will be optimized for the Galaxy Watch lineup will later this year.
While Galaxy Watch 4 owners are able to sideload Google Assistant, official support should make it easier for most folks to start using the feature. The move comes a year after it emerged that Samsung and Google are collaborating on Wear OS. Samsung is phasing out the Tizen platform on its wearables and will use Wear OS going forward.
