Fresh off a blockbuster deal with Amazon, the celebrity hosts of the podcast SmartLess are taking their show to Discovery+. Actors Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes are going on the road with their hit podcast. Two 75-minute specials featuring highlights of interviews with stars from their North American tour will hit Discovery+ next year.

Bateman, Arnett and Hayes are the creators and hosts of the show. During each episode, one of the trio brings on a mystery guest and their conversation flows from there. Guests so far include Vice President Kamala Harris, George Clooney, Jennifer Aniston, Paul McCartney, Awkwafina, W. Kamau Bell, Stacey Abrams, Billie Eilish and Megan Rapinoe.

Amazon picked up exclusive rights to SmartLess in June in a three-year deal worth a reported $80 million. As of the beginning of this month, new episodes premiere on Amazon Music and Wondery+, where they remain exclusive for a week before hitting other podcast platforms.

SmartLess is far fromthe first podcast to get adaptedfor TV. Still, the deal speaks to networks' and streaming services' push to tap into existingfan bases as they search for their next big hit.

Adobe has added more welcome features to Photoshop on iPad, including some that debuted on the desktop version. The tablet app now includes the Magic Wand object-selection and Healing Brush imperfection-fixing tools. With the Canvas Projection you can share your screen to a larger display over HDMI or USB-C, which should be helpful when collaborating with other people in the same room.

The Photoshop iPad app was released in November 2019. It had limited features at the outset, but Adobe has expanded the toolset significantly since then. Meanwhile, Fresco on iPad, which is bundled with a Photoshop iPad subscription, now offers more color-based Adjustment Layers, which enable users to adjust and change colors without committing to them permanently.

Adobe has upgraded the desktop version of Photoshop as well. The Sky Replacement tool now has many more options to draw from, and you can import up to 5,000 skies simultaneously.

Adobe

The Transform Warp tool with independent Bezier handles will allow for previously-impossible transformations, according to Adobe. It could be prove to be a boon for designers who have to shape images on and around boxes, bottles and other 3D surfaces.

There's a new Discover panel, which you can use to search for tools, menu items and workflows. It includes hands-on tutorials for workflows as well. You can access the panel by clicking the search icon, or using the Command+F or Ctrl+F shortcuts.

In addition, the Photoshop Beta program is getting underway this month. Creative Cloud users can test new versions of Photoshop for stability, performance and, from time to time, new features. They can provide feedback to the Photoshop team too. You'll find Photoshop Beta in the beta section of the Creative Cloud app.

Wikipedia vandalism is hardly a new phenomenon, but one user was able to add swastikas to tens of thousands of articles. Among the pages that were defaced included ones for leaders such as President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister. Articles for celebrities including Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck and Madonna were also affected.

The person responsible edited a template that's used on around 53,000 pages, Gizmodo reported. As such, the vandal defaced pages that are locked and supposed to have greater protection from such attacks. Wikipedia administrators fixed the problem soon after it emerged on Monday morning. The user has been banned indefinitely.

One admin noted that most widely used templates are locked, but it seems that some of them remain editable by anyone, or as in this case, a newish user who makes some good-faith edits first. Admins protected some more common templates in the wake of the vandalism.

The "unacceptable" attack "violates a number of Wikipedia’s policies," a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson told Gizmodo. "Most vandalism on Wikipedia is corrected within five minutes, as we saw today." Even though the site is enormous and ever-evolving, it's encouraging that administrators are able to detect and resolve major defacement incidents swiftly.

Anonymous messaging apps were all the rage back in the mid-2010s. Yik Yak, one of the most popular of those back in the day, shut down in 2017, but now it's back from the dead. A new version has hit the iOS App Store.

Yik Yak is only available in the US and on iPhone for now, as Mashable notes, but it will expand to other regions and devices soon. As before, it's a message board app that connects you to other people in a five-mile radius. However, that localized aspect, plus the fact that users can post anonymously, led to reports of widespread bullying and harassment (and even bomb threats) on Yik Yak at colleges, high schools and elsewhere.

The developers of the revived Yik Yak seem aware of the problem. Along with mental health resources and guidance on staying safe, the app's website lays out extensive "community guardrails."

Yik Yak doesn't allow users to post personal information or engage in any kind of bullying, harassment, bigotry or threats. Nor are users allowed to promote or encourage suicide or self-harm. "Overly graphic violent depictions," spam, fake news, dissuading others from voting in elections and trolling are also off-limits. Although community management is a tough nut to crack and anonymity adds an extra hurdle to enforcing rules, outlawing a broad range of harmful content at the outset is a positive move.

After Yik Yak shut down in 2017, partly because many of its users moved to other apps like Snapchat, Square bought some of the app's intellectual property and hired several engineers. It's not yet clear who's behind the new version.

Although Yik Yak and fellow anonymous messaging app Secret closed shop, image-based Whisper has stuck around since 2012. That's despite Whisper having its own troubles to deal with, such as exposing user info (including identifiable location data) in a database that was open to all for years.

Intel has chosen a name for its high-performance consumer graphics products: Intel Arc. The branding will cover the hardware and software sides of its high-end graphics cards, as well as services.

The first Arc GPUs, code-named Alchemist, will arrive in the first quarter of 2022 for desktops and laptops as Intel looks to take on NVIDIA and AMD. Intel also revealed the codenames for later generations of the hardware: Battlemage, Celestial and Druid.

Alchemist GPUs will support hardware-based ray tracing, mesh shading, variable rate shading and Direct12 X Ultimate. Intel claims they'll be capable of "artificial intelligence-driven super sampling" as well. That certainly seems to be the company's spin on NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling upscaling tech, which boosts resolution while lessening strain on GPUs.

The Alchemist cards are based on the Xe-HPG microarchitecture, a blend of Xe LP, HP and HPC microarchitectures. Intel says Xe-HPG will "deliver scalability and compute efficiency with advanced graphics features." Intel's Iris Xe dedicated graphics cards, which were primarily geared toward laptops and pre-built desktops, are based on Xe LP architecture. Intel says it will share more details about the first Arc products later this year.

Intel also gave a quick peek at Arc graphics in action. In a video, it showed games including Forza Horizon 4, Psychonauts 2, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (or PUBG: Battlegrounds, to be precise) and Metro Exodus running on the tech. And yes, it looks like the GPUs can run the Crysis Remastered Trilogy.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has initiated an investigation of Tesla's Autopilot system. The probe follows 11 crashes with parked first responder vehicles since 2018, which resulted in 17 injuries and one death.

“Most incidents took place after dark and the crash scenes encountered included scene control measures such as first responder vehicle lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board, and road cones,” the NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) wrote in a document detailing the investigation. “The involved subject vehicles were all confirmed to have been engaged in either Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control during the approach to the crashes.”

The ODI's preliminary evaluation centers on Autopilot in Models Y, X, S and 3 from model years 2014 to 2021. That covers around 765,000 Tesla electric vehicles, as Bloomberg notes. The incidents in question took place between January 2018 and July of this year, including in Massachusetts, Michigan and Arizona. The ODI also cited three crashes in California.

The Autopilot system keeps the vehicle centered in the lane and maintains speed when it's active in its Operational Design Domain (ODD). It's not yet a full self-driving system, however. Drivers still have principal responsibility for Object and Event Detection and Response (OEDR) — identifying and responding to obstacles, vehicles and "adverse maneuvers" by other drivers.

"The investigation will additionally assess the OEDR by vehicles when engaged in Autopilot mode, and ODD in which the Autopilot mode is functional. The investigation will also include examination of the contributing circumstances for the confirmed crashes" mentioned in the document as well as similar crashes, the ODI wrote.

The NHTSA investigated and cleared Tesla over the first Autopilot-related death in 2016. Since then, the agency has opened dozens of other probes into incidents in which it believes Autopilot was involved. In June, the NHTSA ordered automakers to report incidents involving semi- and fully autonomous driving systems within 24 hours of learning about them.

Earlier this year, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) urged the NHTSA to issue stricter regulations for autonomous driving, citing Tesla in its letter. "Tesla recently released a beta version of its Level 2 Autopilot system, described as having full self-driving capability," NTSB chair Robert Sumwalt wrote. "By releasing the system, Tesla is testing on public roads a highly automated AV technology but with limited oversight or reporting requirements.”

It could be months before Boeing takes another stab at a Starliner test flight. The company is detaching the capsule from an Atlas V rocket and taking it back to the factory to fix an issue with four propulsion system valves. The problem led to Boeing scrapping the planned second test flight on August 3rd.

Boeing will conduct "deeper-level troubleshooting" of the valves at its Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center. Engineers attempted to fix the problem while the Starliner was still on top of the rocket — they managed to repair the nine other valves. Boeing, NASA and Atlas V maker United Launch Alliance will need to find a new launch date when Starliner is ready.

However, as SpaceNews notes, the next opportunity for a test flight could be months away. Boeing may have to wait until after the October launches of NASA’s Lucy asteroid mission and SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission, as well as the return of the Crew-2 spacecraft. So, even if Boeing can fix the valves quickly, it could be November before Starliner can get back on the docking port.

A new(ish) Castlevania game is on the way to Apple Arcade. Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls is coming soon to iOS, tvOS and Mac via the subscription service. Konami announced Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls in 2018. It soft launched the game on iOS in Canada in 2019 before removing it from the App Store last year.

As noted by Gematsu, this outing features character designs and music from Castlevania veterans Ayami Kojima and Michiru Yamane. Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls features a bunch of familiar playable characters, including Alucard, Simon Belmont, Charlotte, Shanoa and Maria. You'll fight your way through Dracula's army with a range of weapons (including the whip) and special moves. Along with the story mode, there are co-op and bounty hunt modes.

Meanwhile, Apple announced the Apple Arcade library now includes more than 200 games.

Facebook is rolling out a host of features for Messenger users who switch on end-to-end encryption (E2EE). You can now call Messenger contacts using voice or video with E2EE enabled, just like in WhatsApp.

No one other than the person you're speaking with can see or listen to your E2EE chats or calls, so you can add an extra layer of protection to your voice and video conversations on Messenger. However, Facebook says you can still report messages if needed.

There are updates for disappearing messages as well. You'll see an option for them when you tap your profile photo in a chat, as well as in the message compose field (tap the timer icon there). You can now activate disappearing messages for everyone in a chat, not just yourself. On top of that, you'll have more control between how long messages are viewed and when they vanish — between five seconds and 24 hours.

Facebook has some other E2EE features in the works. It's planning to start public tests of E2EE group chats and calls in Messenger in the coming weeks. The company will also begin a limited test E2EE for Instagram direct messages. You'll need to have an existing chat with someone or to follow each other before you can enable E2EE on a DM exchange.

Airbnb will update its terms of service to drop arbitration provisions for sexual assault or harassment claims by guests or hosts. The company expects the updated terms to be ready this fall.

"We believe that survivors should be able to bring claims in whatever forum is best for them," Airbnb wrote in a blog post. "We encourage our industry peers within the travel and hospitality space to consider taking similar steps for their respective communities."

The move will formalize Airbnb's current approach to such cases, which it adopted in January 2019. The company hasn't asked a court to force sexual assault or harassment claims by hosts or guests into arbitration since then. Nor will it do so until the updated terms of service are in effect.

"Incidents of sexual assault are extremely rare on Airbnb, but in these rare cases, Airbnb’s highly-trained Safety team works with survivors to put their wellbeing first," the company said. According to the blog post, members of its safety team have "undergone training in trauma-informed methodology and they prioritize supporting and empowering survivors in their healing process."

Airbnb didn't say whether it plans to change its arbitration rules for other types of harassment. It ended forced arbitration for sexual harassment and assault claims by employees in late 2018. Other notable tech companies ditched forced arbitration for sexual assault and/or harassment claims around that time, including Uber, Lyft, Google and Square.