At its annual product showcase, Uber announced a raft of updates, including the introduction of teen accounts. Starting on May 22nd, the company will start rolling out teen accounts in select cities in the US and Canada with the aim of helping younger folks travel more safely by themselves.

Uber says that only screened drivers who are experienced and highly rated will be able to carry out trips with teens. Drivers will be able to opt out of such rides. Teen accounts have a series of built-in safety features, including audio recordings, RideCheck (which proactively checks in with riders if the vehicle has stopped for a while) and the option to use a PIN to ensure young users are getting in the right car.

Parents and guardians will be able to track the progress of the trip. They can contact the driver or Uber support directly, and report any problems on their teen's behalf.

Teen accounts will also be available for Uber Eats. Using family profiles, parents will be able to keep an eye on what their kids are ordering and to pay for food and rides from a centralized account.

Uber had another update to share on the family front — the company is starting to offer rides with car seats for younger kids. It's using Nuna's Rava car seat, which can support kids from birth up to 65 lbs (29.5 kg). These rides will be available in New York City and Los Angeles to start with, and Uber will roll them out to more cities later.

Sony is set to kick off a busy spell of gaming events as it will host a PlayStation Showcase next week. You'll be able to watch the stream at 4PM ET on May 24th on YouTube and Twitch. The company says the showcase will run for just over an hour and it will focus on PS5 and PS VR2 games. Expect to see first-party titles as well as games from third-party partners and indie studios.

As for the specific games Sony plans to spotlight, it's a pretty safe bet that we'll get more details on Marvel's Spider-Man 2, the biggest PlayStation Studios game that's currently on the docket for the rest of this year. It's scheduled to arrive this fall, but perhaps Sony will reveal a firm release date next week. (Sidenote: check out the prequel comic if you haven't done so. It's a good read.)

We may also learn more about the standalone The Last of Us multiplayer game, while rumors have been swirling for a while that the showcase will include Mortal Kombat and Metal Gear Solid announcements. In any case, the showcase is likely to be a bigger deal than a typical State of Play stream. With over an hour to fill, here's hoping for a lot of exciting news on the PS5 and PS VR2 fronts.

Blizzard has revealed the Overwatch 2 roadmap for the rest of 2023, including details on when the first story missions are coming to the game. They'll be available in season six, which should start in mid-August.

Story missions are part of the long-awaited co-op side of the game. When Blizzard released Overwatch 2 last October, the player vs. environment (PvE) aspects of the game that it first showed off at BlizzCon in 2019 were not available. That's because the team needed more time to work on the PvE modes. 

The studio didn't want to keep fans waiting much longer for an overhaul of the traditional, competitive (or PvP) side of Overwatch 2 after what was effectively a two-year content drought. So, Blizzard split development of the two halves so it could get the sequel out faster. There have been PvE experiences in Overwatch 2, but so far they've been constrained to limited-time events.

It's worth noting that this won't be the full PvE vision that Blizzard laid out almost four years ago. "Development on the PvE experience really hasn't made the progress that we would have hoped," Overwatch 2 executive producer Jared Neuss said. The team had created "a bunch of amazing content," including "ridiculous" gameplay augmentations for heroes. "Unfortunately, the effort required to pull all of that together into a Blizzard-quality experience that we can ship to you is huge," Neuss said. "With everything we've learned about what it takes to operate this game at the level you deserve, it's clear that we can't deliver on that original vision for PvE."

Hero missions have been cut in order to not pull too many resources away from the live game, which is the priority for Blizzard. As such, talent trees, an RPG-style feature of hero missions that would have enabled players to customize hero abilities, have been scrapped. 

That's not to say there aren't intriguing PvE features coming. A single-player version of a PvE experience with a leaderboard is in the works. A ton of co-op features are planned and Blizzard will continue to add content on a frequent basis, including more story missions.

Before the story missions debut in a few months, there's a whole new season in between. Season five will arrive in June with what appears to be a fantasy theme. Fans can expect a new limited-time event called Questwatch, a new cinematic, the Summer Games event and updates for the Workshop mode, in which players can create custom games. The On Fire system, which lets everyone in a match see when certain players are performing especially well, will return in season five too.

Story missions aren't the only big change on the docket for season six. The developers say this season will mark the biggest update since launch. Blizzard will add another support hero, a firing range and an overhauled player progression system. The Anniversary event will return as well. Perhaps most intriguingly, there will be a new map type for the PvP modes called Flashpoint, which will debut with two new maps.

There will be a bigger focus on building out the story of Overwatch 2 as well. For one thing, seasons will be named and, with the help of in-game cinematics, season six will "push the narrative arc of Overwatch forward for the first time since the original game release."

Looking ahead to season seven and beyond, Blizzard is promising reworks for Sombra (yes, another one) and Roadhog. Also in the pipeline are another collaboration following the One-Punch Man crossover, a fresh tank hero, a control map, a winter event, a lore database and, most excitingly for me, the return of competitive Mystery Heroes.

For many years, rumors have been flying around that Apple has been working on a self-driving car, or at least an electric vehicle with some autonomous functionality. Now, a third former employee has been accused of stealing some of that technology for a Chinese self-driving car company.

A federal court in the Northern District of California has unsealed charges against Weibao Wang, a former Apple software engineer. Wang started working at the company in 2016 as part of a team that developed hardware and software for autonomous systems — technology that could conceivably wind up in self-driving cars.

According to the indictment, in November 2017, Wang accepted a job with a US subsidiary of a Chinese company that was developing self-driving cars but waited more than four months to tell Apple that he was quitting. After Wang left Apple in April 2018, the company found that he "accessed large amounts of sensitive proprietary and confidential information" in the lead up to his departure, the Department of Justice said.

"Large quantities of data taken from Apple" were found during a law enforcement search of Wang's Mountain View residence that June. Wang told agents that he wasn't planning to travel, but he flew back to China that night, according to the indictment.

Wang has been charged with six counts of stealing or attempting to steal trade secrets. He faces a maximum prison sentence of 10 years and a fine of $250,000 for each count. However, that depends on officials being able to extradite Wang, who remains in China, as CNBC reports.

This marks the third instance of a former Apple employee being accused of stealing autonomous trade secrets for Chinese entities. Xiaolang Zhang, who worked at Apple at the same time as Wang, pleaded guilty last year to stealing technology from Apple's car division. Zhang was apprehended at San Jose International Airport in 2018 while trying to board a flight to China.

In 2019, another former employee was arrested before they could flee to China. Jizhong Chen allegedly stole self-driving car tech for a Chinese company. Chen pleaded not guilty and the case is proceeding in federal court.

TikTok creators who whip up popular effects will soon be rewarded as the platform has set up a new fund for them. Through the Effect Creator Rewards fund, the platform will pay those who create widely-used augmented reality effects using TikTok's Effect House tool.

At the outset, the fund will only be available in a few countries. TikTok confirmed to TechCrunch that the eligible territories are the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Payouts from the $6 million fund are based on engagement, but at the outset effects will need to meet quite a high threshold before creators are eligible to make money from them. For the time being, creators will earn $700 for each effect that's used in 500,000 unique videos within 90 days of being published. For every 100,000 videos posted with the effect within the same period, the creator will earn $140. That's a high bar to meet for a relatively small payment.

Although TikTok has other programs designed to reward creators, such as the $1 billion creator fund, those who are making content for the platform have complained about low payouts. Early last year, Hank Green estimated that he was making around 2.5 cents for every 1,000 views on TikTok. Other prominent creators, including YouTube megastar Mr. Beast, posted evidence of their paltry TikTok earnings.

Seemingly to address those complaints, TikTok recently overhauled the creator fund with an initiative called the Creativity Program. The aim, TikTok said, is to offer creators "higher average gross revenue for qualified video views." The program is available in the US, France and Brazil for now.

Read-it-later service Pocket has unveiled some new features, including the option to create private lists of saved articles, videos and websites. Pocket Lists are only available in the US on the web for now, but the feature will be available globally starting next month and on mobile later this year.

You'll be able to create multiple lists with titles and descriptions. In the near future, you'll have the option to add several items to a list at once and attach notes to help you remember why an item is there. Later this year, Pocket will roll out the option to publish lists and share them with other users.

The Pocket team suggests that you might set up lists for things like recipes, trip planning or simply stuff that puts a smile on your face for whenever you need it. This is a handy update from Pocket, particularly for those who like to keep things organized. You might think of it as a bit like having bookmark folders in Pocket or a different place to save Pinterest-style collections.

Elsewhere, Pocket has built a new version of its iOS app with the aim of rolling out features more rapidly — the plan is to release updates every two weeks. You'll need to be on at least iOS 16 to use the latest app, which offers personalized recommendations and a more streamlined user interface, Pocket says. The My List tab is now called Saves, and it will offer access to features such as search, tagged items, favorites and a way to listen to audio versions of articles all in one place. One other handy update means that you'll be able to swiftly archive items with a swipe.

On Android, there's a very welcome update rolling out today. Pocket will now save log-in credentials for websites you've saved stuff from, so you'll no longer need to sign in every time you visit them. While in article view, you'll be able to move between saved items using Previous and Next buttons.

Pocket, which Mozilla bought back in 2017, added that it has removed some features. The team plans to bring back some of those within a few months, such as the option to highlight articles. Other features are gone for good, however, including the ability to recommend items to other users, which has been removed in favor of lists. To that end, here's hoping Pocket rolls out the option to share lists fairly swiftly.

Lucifer ought to take the temperature of the underworld, because it seems like hell has just frozen over. According to Reuters, Samsung has inked a deal with LG to buy high-end white OLED (WOLED) TV panels from its long-standing rival. LG may start supplying the panels as soon as this quarter.

The plan, according to the report, is for LG Display to supply 2 million panels next year, then 3 million and 5 million respectively in 2025 and 2026. At least at the outset, the company will reportedly be making 77-inch and 83-inch WOLED panels for Samsung.

It's an unexpected partnership that may actually make a lot of sense for both sides. Samsung could use the panels to help it make up ground in the OLED TV market. The company has taken the approach that OLED displays are a better fit for smartphones and tablets than TVs. One reason for that perspective is that OLED panels are expensive — they tend to cost nearly five times more than LCD panels. On the TV front, Samsung has focused on making QLED models, which are cheaper than OLEDs.

Samsung has 6.1 percent of the OLED TV market, according to market research firm Omdia. LG Display's sibling LG Electronics is said to be out in front with a 54.6 percent market share while Sony has 26.1 percent. An LG Display deal could help Samsung overtake Sony in that realm or at least to better compete with Chinese manufacturers that are selling lower-cost LCD televisions. 

The reported deal could help LG Display to turn its business around after four straight quarters of losses. LG Display also makes smartphone screens for Apple, as well as OLED panels for Sony and LG Electronics. However, its OLED manufacturing facility hasn't been running at full capacity. That, according to Reuters, is due to a drop in demand for new TVs and a "limited customer base." Analysts suggest that the Samsung pact could help LG Display max out its manufacturing capacity and account for between 20 and 30 percent of production in the first year. The agreement could add north of $1.5 billion to LG's bottom line next year.

Vincent Teoh of HDTVTest suggested to Engadget that Samsung might have taken this path to resolve volume and screen size availability issues. “QD-OLED panel production from Samsung Display is still limited in quantity at the moment, and the motherglass has to be cut to cater for both monitors (e.g. 34-inch 240Hz QD-OLED gaming monitors which are greater in demand) and TVs (e.g. 55-inch QD-OLED TV).

"QD-OLED is also only available in 55-, 65- and 77-inch screen sizes at the moment, while the WOLED panels supplied by LG Display can go up to 83 and even 97 inches, or as small as 42 and 48 inches," Teoh said.

Sonos will soon end support for a feature that allows users to stream files stored locally on their Android devices directly to its speakers. "As newer versions of mobile operating systems are released, it can sometimes change the way information is shared between devices, and this feature will no longer be compatible with newer versions of the Android operating system," a Sonos community post reads. The change comes into effect starting on May 23rd. The company ended support for a similar feature on iOS in 2019.

There are other options for you to play files stored on your Android devices to Sonos speakers, with Bluetooth perhaps being the easiest one. Alternatively, you can upload the files to a NAS drive on your network or a supported streaming service. Sonos supports user-uploaded file playback from Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer and Plex. On the other hand, if you don't mind going old school, Sonos' new Era 100 and Era 300 speakers have line-in support.

While several of these methods are straightforward enough, nixing On this Device support on Android removes one of the many listening options from the Sonos app, making it less of a one-stop shop for all your audio needs. However, given the popularity of streaming services, it may be the case that this feature wasn't seeing much use anyway.

It seems plausible enough that Sonos is ending support for the feature due to compatibility reasons but, as The Verge notes, Google and Sonos are involved in a legal battle against each other over patent infringement. Still, the timing of Sonos' move is likely just a coincidence given that the tussle between the two sides has been lumbering on for severalyears.

Avatar: The Way of Water will be available to stream on both Disney+ and Max (the new name for HBO Max) on June 7th. It's a bit unusual to see a major, recent movie land on two platforms at the same time, but there was a deal in place between 20th Century Studios, which Disney has owned since 2019, and HBO for streaming rights to certain theatrical releases.

The sequel to 2009's Avatar hit theaters in December and it went on to become the third highest-grossing movie of all time (as long as you don't factor inflation in). Director James Cameron made intriguing use of high frame rates in The Way of Water, with action-filled scenes typically playing at 48 frames per second to make them look smoother. More tranquil scenes appeared to run at 24 fps. The frames were doubled in those parts of the movie to make it seem as though they played at the frame rate we're used to seeing in theaters.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely that there will be an option to stream the film at higher frame rates at home anytime soon. Still, those who've been waiting for Avatar: The Way of Water to pop up on Disney+ or Max only have a few weeks longer to wait.

Microsoft has overcome a significant hurdle in its attempt to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. As expected, the European Union has rubberstamped the acquisition. The European Commission (the EU's executive arm) said Microsoft will have to ensure full compliance with the commitments it has made to offer its games on other platforms, particularly cloud gaming services.

Activision does not yet offer its titles on cloud gaming services. EC regulators determined that the game streaming market is relatively small as things stand and having Activision games available on cloud platforms could help it to grow. Were Microsoft to offer Activision games exclusively on its own cloud service, that could have impaired competition, the EU said. 

Microsoft has signed 10-year deals with Nintendo and cloud gaming services such as NVIDIA GeForce Now and Boosteroid to make its own games and Activision's available on them. As such, regulators said Microsoft's commitments "fully address the competition concerns identified by the Commission and represent a significant improvement for cloud gaming as compared to the current situation." 

"Video games attract billions of users all over the world. In such a fast-growing and dynamic industry, it is crucial to protect competition and innovation. Our decision represents an important step in this direction, by bringing Activision’s popular games to many more devices and consumers than before thanks to cloud game streaming," the EC's competition chief Margrethe Vestager said. "The commitments offered by Microsoft will enable for the first time the streaming of such games in any cloud game streaming services, enhancing competition and opportunities for growth."

"The EC conducted an extremely thorough, deliberate process to gain a comprehensive understanding of gaming. As a result, they approved our merger with Microsoft, although they required stringent remedies to ensure robust competition in our rapidly growing industry," Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said in a statement. "We intend to meaningfully expand our investment and workforce throughout the EU, and we’re excited for the benefits our transaction brings to players in Europe and around the world."

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked the Activision acquisition last month over concerns that it would give Microsoft too much of a dominant position in the cloud gaming market, though it does not believe the takeover would pose a threat to competition in the console ecosystem. Microsoft is appealing the CMA's decision. That process is likely to take months to resolve.

In response to the EU's decision, the CMA stood by its claim that Microsoft would still have too much power in the cloud gaming space. "Microsoft’s proposals, accepted by the European Commission today, would allow Microsoft to set the terms and conditions for this market for the next 10 years," the CMA wrote on Twitter. "They would replace a free, open and competitive market with one subject to ongoing regulation of the games Microsoft sells, the platforms to which it sells them and the conditions of sale."

On the console side of the equation, the EU has determined that "Microsoft would have no incentive to refuse to distribute Activision's games to Sony." It noted that Sony is the world's biggest distributor of console games and that in the European Economic Area (EEA), there are four PlayStations for every Xbox sold. The EC suggests that would give Microsoft "strong incentives" to keep offering Activision games on PlayStation.

Even so, were Microsoft to pull Activision titles from Sony platforms, "this would not significantly harm competition in the consoles market," according to the EU. "Even if Call of Duty is largely played on console, it is less popular in the EEA than in other regions of the world, and is less popular in the EEA within its genre compared to other markets," the bloc said. "Therefore, even without being able to offer this specific game, Sony could leverage its size, extensive games catalog and market position to fend off any attempt to weaken its competitive position."

Much of the discourse related to the acquisition has centered on Call of Duty and how eager Sony was to stop Microsoft from making that series exclusive to its platforms (something Microsoft says doesn't make sense for it to do). Call of Duty games are said to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to Sony's bottom line every year, but cloud gaming has been the bigger sticking point for UK and EU regulators.

In December, the US Federal Trade Commission sued to block the deal over concerns it "would enable Microsoft to suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business." A hearing in that case is scheduled for August 2nd. Although Microsoft and Activision Blizzard face a tough battle to push the deal through in the UK and the US, the EU approval gives the companies some more momentum.