Hinge is the latest dating app that's making a push into audio. Starting today, users can attach voice clips to profiles, in what's said to be a first for a major dating app. You can also send audio notes to your matches.

You can add an audio clip to your profile by going to the Edit Profile section of the settings and selecting Voice Prompt. You can choose a prompt (a question or comment suggested by the app to highlight something about you) and respond with a 30-second recording. “This is just the beginning of a lot of things that we’ll see come out over the next six to 12 months that really help people tell a richer story in their profiles,” Hinge CEO Justin McLeod told CNBC.

Hinge

Some users might find it easier to get to know matches through voice messages rather than text. Many dating apps have added video and audio features, particularly after the onset of COVID-19 made in-person dating more difficult. 

Rival dating app Bumble has allowed would-be lovebirds to send audio messages to each other since April 2020, while Tinder started allowing users to add videos to their profiles this summer. Hinge, however, has had the latter feature since 2017.

Hinge is introducing more features for LGBTQ+ users too. As of Thursday, the app will introduce a non-binary gender category to its algorithm. McLeod noted that although other apps let users identify as non-binary, they typically require those users to say whether they want their profile to be seen by people looking for men or women. Prompts designed for LGBTQ+ users will also be added in November.

Spotify isn't the only service PlayStation 5 owners can stream music from while they're playing Deathloop, Returnal or other games. Starting today, you can fire up tracks from Apple Music as well.

The PS5 is the first console with Apple Music integration. Subscribers can access the service's library of more than 90 million songs, playlists, Apple Music Radio and 4K music videos on a PS5. You can control playback while playing games by hitting the PS button on the controller and going to the music tab. You'll also see music recommendations for the game you're playing.

The Apple Music app (which you can download via the Media section) will let you view music videos too. If you're watching a video and leave the app to switch to a game or another screen, the music will keep playing. 

It's the second Apple app to hit the console after Apple TV landed on PS4 and PS5 last year. This summer, Sony and Apple offered PS5 owners six months of free access to Apple TV+.

Spotify has been a part of the PlayStation ecosystem since it arrived on PS4 in 2015. Six years later, it's neat to see players getting another option for streaming music. It'll be a nice perk for Apple Music subscribers who've managed to score a PS5.

Ahead of the UN's COP26 climate change conference, which starts on Sunday, Microsoft has revealed more details about its plans to make its data centers greener. Among those is a goal of reducing the amount of water its data centers use by 95 percent by 2024 — around 5.7 billion liters each year.

Data centers often use water to keep servers cool. Microsoft has researched server performance at higher temperatures and found that it's able to "create higher set points for a variety of different climates for when water-based, evaporative cooling is necessary to preserve server performance and reliability," as Noelle Walsh, Microsoft's corporate vice president of cloud ops and innovation wrote in a blog post.

The company says this project, which it expects to be fully implemented by 2024, could completely eliminate the need to use water for cooling in locations such as Amsterdam, Dublin, Virginia and Chicago. It may reduce water use in desert data center locations (like Arizona) by up to 60 percent.

Meanwhile, Microsoft continuing its research into liquid immersion cooling to reduce its dependency on water. The company says that, this year, it became the first cloud services provider to run "two-phase liquid immersion cooling in a production environment." It's been looking into overclocking as well and found liquid cooling can increase performance of some chipsets by 20 percent.

"Because of the efficiencies in both power and cooling that liquid cooling affords us, it unlocks new potential for datacenter rack design," Walsh wrote. "In short, liquid cooling paves the way for more densely packed servers in smaller spaces, meaning increased capacity per square foot in a datacenter — or the ability to create smaller datacenters in more strategic locations in the future. This adds to the benefits of waterless cooling design."

Last September, Microsoft announced plans to become "water positive" (i.e. to replenish more water than it uses) by 2030, and these data center efforts will be a key part of that goal. It also aims to be carbon negative by the end of the decade by removing more carbon than it emits. By 2050, the company plans to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it has generated since it was founded in 1975.

In addition, Microsoft says it's designing data centers with local ecosystems in mind "to renew and revitalize the surrounding area so that we can restore and create a pathway to provide regenerative value for the local community and environment."

It's attempting to use more environmentally friendly processes in designing and building data centers to reduce its carbon footprint. The aim is to use building materials that reduce "embodied carbon," or emissions linked to materials and construction during a building's life cycle. Concrete and steel are said to be major contributors of such emissions. Microsoft says it has found ways of reducing embodied carbon from those materials by up to 60 percent.

Elsewhere, the company has opened up a public preview of a tool called Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability to help companies and other organizations record and report their carbon emissions. The tool will also offer suggestions on how to reduce emissions. Earlier this month, Google announced similar features for its Cloud Platform customers.

If you haven't yet been able to add a sticker containing a link to an Instagram Story, fret not. The platform has been gradually expanding access to the feature over the last several months, and now Instagram says it's rolling out the option to just about everyone.

It works in a similar way to any other sticker in Stories. Tap the sticker icon at the top of the screen, scroll down to or search for the link option, select it, paste in the URL and position the sticker on your photo or video. Instagram says it's working on options for users to customize the sticker and provide more context to viewers about the page it leads to.

The "swipe up" link function that the sticker replaces was only available to verified accounts or those with at least 10,000 followers. But soon enough, almost all users will be able to add links to their Stories.

It's worth noting that not every single person will be able to use the link sticker. New accounts and those that often share misinformation and hate speech will be blocked from using the feature, as will those who post other content that goes against the community guidelines. Instagram says that this is part of its efforts to limit harmful content on the platform.

However, some users say they lost access to the sticker unfairly. BuzzFeed News reported last week, for instance, that Instagram prevented one creator from using the sticker after they shared a photo of kids from the waist up in a bath that was pulled for “nudity or sexual activity.” Instagram said it would look into claims of users being mistakenly told they won't be able to use link stickers anymore.

Even though Valve usually keeps the dates of Steam sales close to the chest until almost the time they go live, the details usually end up leaking anyway. This time, though, Valve is getting ahead of the curve. It confirmed when the next three sales will take place.

As spotted by Eurogamer, the Steamworks Documentation page notes that the Steam Halloween sale is this weekend and it runs between October 28th and November 1st. The autumn sale will take place from November 24th-30th. As for the Steam winter sale, one of the platform's two biggest sales of the year alongside the summer edition, you'll be able to score discounts on a ton of games between December 22nd and January 5th.

It's not a bad idea to reveal the dates well in advance. Steam connoisseurs know the sales are coming anyway and the dates are less important than announcing which games will be included beforehand. If a player knows that a game they want to buy will likely get a hefty discount in a couple of months, they'll be less inclined to buy it now. In any case, Steam users now know when they'll be able to stockpile games for their Steam Deck.

No one in their right mind would actually want to live in the world of A Quiet Place, where denizens walk around barefoot and move as silently as possible to avoid incurring the wrath of highly noise-sensitive aliens. But, if you'd like to find out how well you might cope in that universe, you can test your nerves in the franchise's first video game, which is scheduled to arrive next year.

Publisher Saber Interactive has announced that a single-player, story-driven horror adventure is in development by iLLOGIKA and EP1T0ME. The iLLOGIKA team includes developers who have worked on the Rainbow Six and Far Cry franchises, and the studio helped with the development of games including Hyper Scape and Cuphead.

There aren't many other details about A Quiet Place just yet, such as the platforms on which it will be available. However, it will have an original story and "gameplay that captures the compelling suspense, emotion and drama for which the series is famous," according to a press release. Saber plans to reveal more information about the game by the end of the year.

One of the main complaints players had about Returnal, aside from the high level of difficulty, is that, until now, there was no real way to save your game in the middle of a run. Sure, you could leave your PS5 on or put it in rest mode, but if there was a power outage or an overnight automatic system software update, you'd lose all of your progress. Given that runs can last several hours, not having any kind of save state option wasn't great.

Housemarque, now a PlayStation-owned studio, has finally attempted to remedy that problem in Returnal's 2.0 patch. With the Suspend Cycle option, you can pause your run, create a suspend point and close the game without worrying too much about losing progress. 

There are some caveats, though. You'll only be able to resume your run from any suspend point one time. So, don't expect to return to that point if (or more likely when) Selene dies. It's a smart way to introduce a save system and let players take a break without disrupting the game's start-over-when-you-die roguelite structure.

You won't be able to create a suspend point in certain scenarios either. If you're in the midst of a boss battle, intense combat sequence, cinematic or first-person section, you'll need to see it through, one way or another. "We felt there are certain moments in Returnal that are best experienced unfragmented to preserve the intended challenge and flow," game director Harry Krueger wrote in a PlayStation blog post.

As deadly as the biomes of Atropos are, they're often gorgeous too. To help you capture the sights, another feature that Returnal players have been clamoring for is now in the game — Photo Mode. Other than in certain situations (such as first-person sections), you can pause the PS5 exclusive and enter Photo Mode.

You have a selection of tools at your disposal, including settings like focal distance, aperture, color gradient, saturation and contrast, as well as a way to change the scene's lighting. There are also filters, effects, frames, coloring options and other ways to jazz up your image before you capture it.

Meanwhile, Sony is set to host its next State of Play stream on Wednesday. The showcase will run for around 20 minutes and primarily focus on third-party games, but don't be surprised if Sony sneaks a first-party game or two in there.

Amazon is said to be working on a live audio app that sounds like it will let anyone be the DJ of their own radio show — including music. Project Mic, as the app is currently known, will reportedly focus on the US market at first, though the launch timeline is not clear.

Creators will be able to play songs from the vast Amazon Music library, according to The Verge. Along with music, it seems programming will include pop culture, sports and comedy. Amazon is said to be looking at bringing in celebrities and influencers to host shows. You’ll be able to search for shows by name, topic or music, and it appears Amazon will highlight live content, including trending topics and certain creators.

The presentation showed that in addition to the app, creators will be able to broadcast shows on Amazon Music, Twitch, Audible and Alexa-enabled devices. With the latter, listeners will reportedly get to interact with the shows, even from their car.

The report doesn’t mention whether listeners will need to be Amazon Music subscribers, but given the breadth of platforms on which the shows will be available, that seems unlikely. Engadget has contacted Amazon for more details.

It’s not the first time we’ve heard about Amazon working on such an app. Axiosreported on its existence this summer, but this latest report provides more details about what Project Mic entails.

Twitter, Facebook, Spotify and Discord have all joined the live audio space over the last year after Clubhouse exploded in popularity. Those apps tend to focus on live conversations, though, rather than songs. 

Spotify does have a morning show called The Get Up that blends chat and personalized music, and it seems the most likely contender to offer a similar feature to what Amazon has in mind. Elsewhere, Clubhouse recently started offering musicians a high-quality audio option for better livestreamed concerts.

Three years after releasing a teensy phone designed to act as a companion for your primary device, the latest incarnation of Palm is back with a new product: a set of true wireless earbuds. Former designers from Beats by Dre and Samsung created the Palm Buds Pro.

Palm says it researched which features consumers want most from wireless earbuds, and it seems to have checked off a lot of the right boxes here. Buds Pro has active noise cancellation, bass-heavy audio with 10mm dynamic drivers and an array of six microphones that can tamp down background noise on calls. When the passthrough Ambient Mode is enabled, you'll be able to hear both audio playback and sounds from the world around you.

Palm

The battery will run for up to 5.5 hours or, if ANC is enabled, 4.5 hours, Palm says. The earbuds should be good for three hours of talk time. The charging case has a 400 mAh battery, which should provide the earbuds with over 24 hours of playback time before you have to recharge the case, according to Palm. 

There's also fast pairing and syncing with devices, IPX4 sweat and water resistance and support for Siri and Google Assistant. In addition, the earbuds come with three sets of tips to help you find the best fit.

Palm

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Palm Buds Pro at the outset is how much they cost. The earbuds will be $129 at retail, which is a solid price for a set of ANC earbuds. If you pre-order by November 9th (when general availability starts), you can get a $30 discount. 

Pre-orders are now open in the US, Canada and Mexico on Palm's website. Palm will ship the earbuds internationally to select markets. There's also a silicone case accessory in Shadow Black, Rose Pink and Navy Blue. The case is $15 during the pre-order period. It'll typically cost $25.

It remains to be seen how good Palm Buds Pro are in practice. Even though we weren't huge fans of the Palm Phone, there's a strong design pedigree behind the earbuds, so they might very well be worth checking out.

Apple TV+ will expand into a new territory when it launches in South Korea on November 4th. In a case of perfect timing, the streaming service's first series from the country will debut worldwide on the same day (or a day earlier if you're in the US).

The brilliantly titled Dr. Brain is a sci-fi drama based on a webtoon of the same name. Lee Sun-kyun of Parasite fame (he played Park Dong-ik, the father of the well-off family) stars as brain scientist Sewon. After Sewon's family suffers a mysterious accident, he hacks the brains of the deceased to access their memories and learn clues about what happened.

The six-episode series is co-written, directed and executive produced by the highly regarded filmmaker Kim Jee-woon, who's perhaps best known for The Good, The Bad and The Weird and I Saw the Devil. A new episode of Dr. Brain will hit Apple TV+ each week until the finale on December 10th. 

It's a busy fall for sci-fi projects on Apple TV+. Foundation, based on Isaac Asimov's books of the same name, debuted in September, while alien invasion series Invasion premiered last Friday. A movie called Finch, in which Tom Hanks plays a man who takes a road trip across post-apocalyptic America with his dog and robot, will hit Apple TV+ on November 5th.