At least year's CES, Shure presented its first true wireless earbuds called Aonic 215 — it even released the model's second-gen version this September. Both pairs, however, comes with earhooks. Now, the company has launched a new true wireless earbud model with a more "traditional" design you'd now associate with the product category. It's called the Aionic Free, and while it may be larger than its rivals on the market, it is indeed hook-free. 

The Aionic Free blocks noise from entering your ears with its foam buds and its angled design. It can last for up to seven hours of listening, while its carrying case can provide up to two full charges for a total of 21 hours of battery life. The earbuds also have a fast charge feature that enables an hour of playback within 15 minutes in the case.

You can control volume and playback, as well as take calls with a single press on either earbud. If you want to customize button functions, you can do so using the company's app. The app will also let you personalize how much noise you want to let in when Environment Mode is switched on, customize notifications and let you play standard and hires music files. Shure's Aionic Free is now available from retailers and the company's website for $199.

Twitter wants to expand Spaces' potential audiences, so it's making audio conversations available to anyone — even those who'd rather not sign up for an account. Now, hosts and listeners can send anybody a direct link to a Spaces audio broadcast, and those with no Twitter accounts can listen to it on the web without having to log in. They won't be able to participate, but it could still lead to more listeners and a wider reach.

The website has been adding more and more features to make Spaces easier to share and discover ever since it launched live audio conversations. In July, it allowed users to compose new tweets directly from the Space, which will link to the audio chat and any accompanying hashtags. It introduced a Spaces tab on iOS in October, giving users a way to find audio shows in one place. Then, it opened up hosting duties to everyone, which potentially means more audio shows people can listen to.

Since not everyone can tune it to live broadcasts, Twitter also rolled out the ability to record Spaces audio to a limited number of iOS hosts. By recording their sessions, hosts will be able to link to it and share it for 30 days, and listeners on the platform can watch it right on their timeline. 

Scammers used a new type of phishing campaign, which doesn't use emails, to steal around $500,000 worth of cryptocurrency from wallets this past weekend alone. According to Check Point Research, those bad actors purchased Google Ads placements for their fraudulent websites that imitate popular wallets, such as Phantom App and MetaMask. The malicious websites have URLs close to the original's, such as "phantonn.app" — the real service's URL is "phantom.app" — with designs also copied from the real deal. 

Check Point Research

The scammers will then steal the victim's passphrase if they visit the fake website and type it in. If the victim uses the fake website to create a new wallet, they will be given the attacker's secret recovery phrase. In the event that they use the recovery phrase to log in, they'll actually be logging into the bad actor's account, and any fund transferred to it will go to the scammer. For MetaMask, in particular, the fake website has the option to import an existing wallet. Since doing so requires a seed phrase, the scammers will also get access to it. 

As Check Point Research explains, the Phantom App and MetaMask are some of the most popular wallets for Solana and Ethereum. It cross-referenced Reddit forums to come to the conclusion that around half a million dollars were stolen last weekend alone, and it found 11 compromised wallet accounts containing crypto worth between $1,000 and $10,000. The scammers had already withdrawn funds from those wallets before CPR found them. 

CPR says scamming groups are now bidding on keywords on Google Ads, which is a testament to how effective the method is. It's now advising users to examine the wallet's URL closely and to skip Google Ads results altogether so as not to unknowingly fall for the scam.

Nintendo has released its last free major content update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons over a day earlier than planned. During its Direct presentation in October, the gaming giant announced that it's rolling out New Horizons version 2.0 on November 5th. As TechCrunch and IGN have confirmed, though, the update is now live and can be downloaded to your Switch. Version 2.0 adds quite a number of new features to the game, including characters from old Animal Crossing titles. 

One of those characters is Brewster, the quiet pigeon proprietor who'll open up the Roost café at the museum after you do a certain favor for museum director Blathers. Kapp'n, the singing sailor kappa, is also back and will take you to remote islands on his boat. You can only purchase boat rides once a day with Nook Miles, though, so you can't endlessly sail around all day. If you want to shop from new stores owned by familiar characters, you can head over to Harv's Island, which now has an open market. Reese & Cyrus' shop, for instance, will offer new types of furniture customization, while Katrina will read your fortune.

The update adds gyroid hunting and cooking activities, as well. For the latter, which will be part of DIY recipes, you can combine anything you harvest and other ingredients to create new dishes. Finally, New Horizons 2.0 introduces several quality-of-life improvements, including the ability to establish ordinances. You can make the residents get up at the time of the day you're active in the game, for example, or reduce weeds' growing rate. The update also allows you to keep more items by giving you a bigger home storage and storage sheds you can place around your island. 

In addition to the free update, Nintendo announced last month that it's releasing a Happy Home Paradise paid DLC that'll let you design vacation homes for characters on November 5th. That one isn't available yet, but it'll set you back $25 when it comes out tomorrow. 

Back in May, AT&T spun off its WarnerMedia division and merged it with Discovery in a $43 billion agreement. The deal is on track to close by mid-2022, after which we may see its streaming services become a combined offering to subscribers. According to Gizmodo, president and CEO of Discovery Streaming and International JB Perrette has discussed the steps the company may take to reach that goal. Initially, Warner Bros. Discovery (as the merged company will be called) may offer HBO Max and Discovery+ as a bundle. In the next phase of the plan, the company may merge the two streaming services into one platform.

FierceVideo said Perette described both streaming services as an "incredibly attractive tech buffet." He expects the new company to take the best parts from both to create a new platform, as there will be "meaningful cost savings" and "meaningful consumer benefits" from combining the two services,

Discovery president and CEO David Zaslav also revealed during the earnings call that less than half of Discovery+ subscribers in the US are also subscribed to HBO Max. He said that with the right packaging, the fact that the overlap in subscribers isn't too big "provides a real opportunity to broaden the base of [the] combined offering."

When and where the joint HBO Max and Discovery+ service will initially be available remains to be seen. Discovery said it might be easier for the company to combine its streaming service with HBO Max in regions where Discovery+ isn't available yet. At the moment, it's being very selective when it comes to rolling out Discovery+ to new markets to minimize the need to re-platform two streaming services in the future. 

ZipCharge has launched a new type of charging product for EVs that might be able to convince people worried about range anxiety to switch from gas vehicles. The British startup has introduced a powerbank for EVs called ZipCharge Go at the Cop26 climate summit. It's about the size of a suitcase and weighs around 50 pounds — plus, it has wheels and a retractable handle, so users can put it in their trunk and easily take it out when they need to charge. 

According to the company, the Go can provide up 20 miles of range after being plugged into the car for 30 minutes. A higher capacity version will be able to provide an EV up to 40 miles of range. The device works with any plug-in hybrid or EV with a Type 2 socket, and it can charge that vehicle to its full capacity between 30 minutes to an hour. Charging up the device itself is as easy as plugging it into any socket, and users will be able to control and monitor it through an app, where they can schedule future charges during off-peak hours for cheaper costs. 

While range anxiety is becoming less of an issue these days, it's still keeping those on the fence from making the leap. A company called Gogoro developed hot-swappable battery technology for scooters to address the problem, but batteries in electric cars typically can't be swapped out. SparkCharge has a portable EV charging system called the Roadie, but it's not nearly as easy to carry around as the Go. 

That said, the ZipCharge Go isn't available yet. According to InsideEVs, the startup plans to release a 4 kWh and an 8 kWh version, as well as to start deliveries in the fourth quarter of 2022. It can be leased for at least £49 (US$67) per month, though it will also be available for purchase to EV owners who don't mind paying for one and to businesses like hotels that don't have installed charging facilities. While ZipCharge has yet to reveal a price for it, The Sunday Times Driving section says the company aims to sell it for around the same cost as a 7.2kW home charging port installation.

Back in October, Google Stadia introduced free trials with its Hello Engineer game. While the service lets users try any game they want with a $10-per-month Pro subscription, it was the first time free users were given the chance to test a game before purchase. Now, according to 9to5Google, Stadia is giving free users the opportunity to take two more games for a spin before they have to buy them. One of those games is Control: Ultimate Edition, which recently just came out for the platform.

Ultimate Edition contains the core Control game, along with the expansions that were released for it. Like Hello Engineer, players will be able to test it out for 30 minutes before they have to decide whether to pay $40 for a copy. The other game is Ubisoft's recently released Riders Republic, a massively multiplayer extreme sports game, where teams can battle each other on bikes, skis, snowboards and in flying wingsuits. Players will get the chance to try it out for two hours instead of just 30 minutes, perhaps because half an hour might barely be enough to cover tutorials when there are several extreme sports to choose from. Besides, Riders Republic isn't cheap and costs $60 to purchase.

With the addition of these two games, we can probably expect Google to make more titles available for free trial in the future. It could be an effective way to get people who'd rather own the titles they play interested in purchasing from Stadia instead of from other gaming platforms. 

HBO Max has released the first teaser video and images for its adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel's post-apocalyptic novel, Station Eleven. In the short video, you'll get glimpses of Jeevan (Himesh Patel), Kirsten (Matilda Lawler as her younger version and Mackenzie Davis as her older version) and the other main characters of the story, as they face a pandemic that ravaged most of the planet. 

The teaser trailer starts off with Jeevan and young Kirsten purchasing carts upon carts of food from a nearly empty supermarket, as well as a a lone cashier who didn't know where to go. From there, we see a montage of bleak landscapes, a ferris wheel and a building on fire, a theater performance (which is a central element to the story), a mysterious figure, people panicking and then trying to rebuild what they lost.

Mandel's novel is set in the Great Lakes region before and after a fictional swine flu pandemic killed most of the world's population. According to Polygon, it started shooting in Chicago in January 2020, but because of the real-life pandemic still affecting us right now, production had to be moved to Mississauga, Ontario and concluded in July. The 10-episode limited series was directed by Hiro Murai (Atlanta), while Patrick Somerville (Made for Love) served as writer and showrunner. It will be available to stream on HBO Max, starting on December 16th.

Mozilla has rolled out Firefox 94 for Android and iOS, and with it comes a new homepage that makes it easier to go back to what you were doing before you had to close the app. In its announcement, the organization said it wanted to "lift that heavy mental burden of remembering to finish those halfway read articles or vacation research" until you're ready to finish them. The new homepage has an easy way to jump back into your last open tab, and it now contains your most recently saved bookmarks.

There's no need to go to the bookmarks menu or access your browsing history anymore, if you just want to access the last bookmarks you've saved or viewed. If you have a Firefox account and also use the browser on desktop, your most recently saved bookmarks on desktop will also be added to the mobile homepage. Further, you can quickly access all your bookmarks by clicking Show All. 

The new homepage for Android also has the ability to group search queries by topic. Say, you're looking up things for an upcoming vacation — the browser now groups and lists the results you access instead of opening them in separate tabs. To keep things clean, those groups of information will only be available within 14 days. Speaking of keeping things clutter-free, the new Firefox will now mark tabs as "inactive" if you haven't visited them within the last 14 days. You can still go back to them after that, but they'll no longer clutter your view. Similar to topics grouping, this particular feature is only available on Android at the moment and will arrive on iOS in the coming months.

Finally, Mozilla is making Firefox's Pocket feed customizable. If you're on Android, you'll now be able to choose the topics of the stories you want to populate your feed. You'll still get Pocket stories on iOS, but the ability to customize topics isn't available for the platform yet.

Back in 2020, Miso Robotics teamed up with White Castle to pilot a kitchen robot that can cook sliders called Flippy in select locations. Now, thanks to data and employee feedback gathered from the pilot, Miso was able to create a new version of the machine called Flippy 2, which works faster and doesn't need human intervention. Apparently, one of the main things Miso learned from the pilot was that human assistance was still needed on both sides during operation. Since basket management wasn't automated, human employees would still need to help load the uncooked product and unload the cooked food in the holding area. 

Miso has designed an "AutoBin" system for the Flippy 2 that solves that problem, specifically for lower volume and specialty foods like onion rings and chicken tenders. The machine's AI vision can automatically identify the ingredients it's working with, place them in the right fry basket and then place the cooked food in the holding area. The company says the closed-loop system it creates can increase the kitchen's throughput by around 60 baskets per hour. 

In addition to that upgrade, Flippy 2 also takes up less space than its predecessor. It doesn't take up as much of the kitchen aisle, is a bit shorter and has fewer overall surfaces that need to be cleaned. After its pilot with White Castle, Miso upgraded the original Flippy with more features, including the ability to adjust the queue to ensure that everything in an order finishes cooking at the same time. However, basket management hasn't been an automated process until now.

Mike Bell, CEO of Miso Robotics, said in a statement:

"Flippy 2 takes up less space in the kitchen and increases production exponentially with its new basket filling, emptying and returning capabilities. Since Flippy’s inception, our goal has always been to provide a customizable solution that can function harmoniously with any kitchen and without disruption. Flippy 2 has more than 120 configurations built into its technology and is the only robotic fry station currently being produced at scale"