Microsoft has been reminding everyone willing to listen that the end of Internet Explorer is nigh, but many businesses in Japan seemingly did not take heed.

Almost half are reportedly still using the browser. According to Nikkei, many of those companies put off making the switch to other browsers, whether that’s Microsoft’s own Edge, or others. This could cause chaos for months across the country.

Many were trapped using Internet Explorer because of systems their clients used, while others are using the browser to handle things like employee attendance and expenses. Over a fifth of the respondents didn't have a plan for how to move away from the now-unsupported browser.

Japan does have a tendency to cling to older tech. The country’s love of technology, robots and gadgets – have you seen this toaster? – is balanced out by its insistence on fax machines and the dogged determination of its feature phones during the smartphone boom.

-Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Call of Duty has stricter gun control measures than the US

• Microsoft's Defender online security tool is now available to consumers

• SpaceX employees say Elon Musk is an 'embarrassment' as he waffles on work-from-home

• Surface Laptop Go 2 review: Basic, but in a good way

• Ferrari says 60 percent of its lineup will be electrified by 2026

• Amazon Prime Day kicks off July 12th this year

• Anna Sorokin wants to move away from her 'scammer' persona... by selling NFTs

• Samsung merges Pay and Pass into a single Wallet app

• Apple faces another iPhone 'Batterygate' legal claim, this time in the UK

• LG's extra-tall DualUp Monitor is available now for $699

Tesla hikes prices across all of its models by up to $6,000

The long range versions of all vehicles shot up.

Tesla has significantly boosted prices across its EV lineup, according to changes in its online configurator spotted by Electrek. Most of the models affected are long-range versions, with the Model X AWD Long Range jumping the most, up $6,000 from $114,990 to $120,990. It's the latest in a series of price hikes for Tesla EVs this year. The company didn't explain the changes, but high inflation, electronics shortages and other issues could be to blame.

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The Boring Company will build a 34-mile tunnel network underneath Las Vegas

The company receives approval to expand its tunnels underneath the city.

Elon Musk’s tunneling company has just received approval from the city to bring its underground transportation system, called the Vegas Loop, as far as the city’s limits. When Clark County Commissioners first approved the Vegas Loop, it was supposed to be a 29-mile tunnel network connecting 51 stations. Now, the network will span 34 miles and have a total of 55 stations, including ones that will serve the Harry Reid International Airport and the Allegiant Stadium.

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Sony and Honda’s EV business has a name

The company will kick things off in 2025.

Sony

After Sony and Honda announced plans to form a separate company for their joint electric vehicle partnership, they've finally come up with a name. Sony Honda Mobility Inc. and will be established in Tokyo before the end of 2022, with EV sales set to start in 2025. Honda is far behind rivals in EV development, with its only electric car being the Honda E — but it's accelerated its plans of late. Earlier this year it unveiled a partnership with GM to co-develop a series of affordable EVs.

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Surface Laptop Go 2 review

Basic, but in a good way

Engadget

The Surface Laptop Go 2, priced at $600, isn’t as fancy or sophisticated as some of Microsoft’s other notebooks, but it nails all the basics. You get good battery life, a bright 12.4-inch touchscreen, and plenty of performance thanks to an updated 11th-gen Intel Core i5 CPU. You also get a 128GB SSD on the base model, which is a major upgrade from the 64GB of eMMC storage you got on its predecessor. There’s definitely a lot to like at this price, so make sure to read our full review.

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During a Final Fantasy VII 25th anniversary celebration, alongside announcements of a Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core remake and news that Remake Intergrade will launch on Steam later this month, we got our first tiny glimpse of the next part of Final Fantasy VII Remake.

It’ll be called Rebirth, and seems to focus on some of the major plotlines of the original (we won’t get spoilery) all while throwing a wrench into our expectations.

We see protagonist Cloud and antagonist Sephiroth marching around a later area of the original game with lush vegetation, while fellow party member Aerith (we think) muses on whether she’s died. Or not. 

We also get a brief glimpse of Cloud resting on the shoulder of Zack – the hero of Crisis Core. So, er, yeah. Even if you’re totally up to speed with FFVII lore and spin-offs, this trailer is a giant question mark to get fans talking and theorizing for the next twelve months and beyond.

Producer Yoshinori Kitase said during the stream that: "Making the middle part of a trilogy has its own challenges, but there are plenty of classic second installments in the world of film that are defined by stunning story twists and deeper explorations of their characters.”

The game’s director, Naoki Hamaguchi, said: "The Final Fantasy 7 remake project will be a three-part trilogy, but Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is much more than just one installment in the series.”

There you have it. Final Fantasy VII Remake will be a trilogy. And so very manyspin-off games on the side.

As suspected, the first phone from Nothing — Carl Pei’s new company — is going all in on the transparent gadget look. This seems to be Nothing’s design aesthetic, matching its wireless ear(1) headphones from last year.

According to snippets of video from an event at Art Basel, where the phone was revealed (inside a box), segments of the back of the phone will even light up. This could just be a decorative gimmick, but Nothing’s narrative has been pushing intentional design choice — so it probably ties into notifications or something else I can’t quite imagine this early in the morning.

For now, the company is keeping the finer specifications (and crucial details like pricing and availability) under wraps, but Nothing says it’ll reveal everything in July.

-Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• 'Time Flies' turns the life of a housefly into a cute game about existential dread | Engadget

• Qualcomm won't have to pay its $1 billion EU fine over LTE deal with Apple

• Samsung's Smart Monitor M8 falls back to a low of $600 | Engadget

• PayPal will let users split the cost of purchases over up to 24 months

• Puffco's Proxy packs the power of Peak Pro into a palm-sized pipe | Engadget

• DJI's RS3 mirrorless camera stabilizer unlocks automatically and is easier to balance

• Twitch opens up ads program to more streamers and increases payout

• I've fallen for Chrono Trigger's text adventure pseudo-sequel

• Senate considers ban on data brokers selling health and location info

Steam games are coming to Nreal's augmented reality glasses

'Steam on Nreal' is still in beta, though.

nreal

Nreal users can now play some Steam games on their augmented reality glasses. A beta version of "Steam on Nreal" gives users a way to stream games from their PC to their AR eyewear. Nreal admits that installing the beta release will require a bit of effort to set up, and the current version is not optimized for all Steam games just yet. It will work on both Nreal Light and Nreal Air models, though, and it already supports some popular games, including the Halo series.

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Elon Musk tries to wriggle out of SEC deal to have lawyers approve his tweets

He's appealing a ruling that upheld the 2018 agreement.

Musk has filed an appeal against a judge's decision not to let him out of an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which requires him to have lawyers review some of his tweets.

Musk's pact with the SEC stems from an infamous 2018 incident in which he tweeted that he had "funding secured" to make Tesla a private company, though that allegedly wasn't the case. The SEC laid securities fraud charges against Musk, who has not deleted the tweet in question nearly four years later.

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YouTube Shorts has over 1.5 billion monthly users

The TikTok rival apparently boosts viewers for full-length videos, too.

YouTube has hinted that Shorts are doing well, but it's now clear just what that means. The company says its mini-video clip service now has over 1.5 billion active, signed-in monthly users. It’s impressive: Arch-nemesis TikTok had racked up 1 billion monthly users as of September 2021 despite being around for considerably longer — and serving as a very obvious… inspiration for Shorts.

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'Self-driving' cars were linked to 392 crashes in 10 months

Tesla cars were involved in 70 percent of the incidents.

Getty

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released its first batch of data for semi-autonomous driving technology. The agency linked 392 crashes to partial self-driving and driver assistance systems in the 10 months between July 1st, 2021 and May 15th, 2022. About 70 percent of those — 273 —, were Tesla vehicles using Autopilot or the Full Self-Driving beta. Honda cars were tied to 90 incidents, while Subaru models were involved in 10.

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Transaction freezes at Celsius Networks, which we reported on a few days ago, seem to be just the start of another stormy week in cryptocurrency. Binance has been sued over the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin, and Coinbase — one of the biggest cryptocurrency platforms — cut over 1,000 jobs ahead of difficult economic conditions. The layoffs were abrupt. Coinbase cut affected employees' system access at the same time as the announcement, to prevent "rash decision[s]" by outgoing staff.

TerraUSD's value collapsed in May, causing massive losses for investors, who trusted its classification as a stablecoin that's supposed to maintain its value of $1 per coin. Unlike other stablecoins backed by real-world assets, though, TerraUSD is an "algorithmic" stablecoin not backed by fiat currency — like the US dollar.

Instead, it's backed by a cryptocurrency called Luna and has a mechanism to restore its value to $1 if it ever falls. That’s the issue a Utah resident took against Binance, accusing it of falsely advertising TerraUSD as a safe asset, backed by fiat currency.

There's a "crypto winter" coming, according to Coinbase’s chief Brian Armstrong — it’s just started in the summer.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Meta rolls out parental supervision tools for Quest VR headsets

• Adobe will release a free version of Photoshop for browsers

• Firefox enables its anti-tracking feature by default

• Moog Mavis review: A surprisingly deep entry-level synth

• Ford voluntarily recalls 49,000 Mach-Es due to overheating batteries

The best smartwatches

No, the Apple Watch isn’t your only option.

Engadget

The wearable world is heaving, but a few key players have muscled their way to the front of the pack. Maybe you want to reach for your phone less throughout the day, or maybe you want to stay connected but more discretely. Whatever the reason, we’ve laid out exactly what you need to look for and made several recommendations for your first steps into wearables, across iOS and Android.

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The UK just eliminated its EV rebate incentive

'The government has always been clear the plug-in car grant was temporary.'

Christopher Furlong via Getty Images

The UK government has ended its plug-in car grant program, effective immediately. The scheme launched in 2011, with grants up to £5,000 ($6,089) or 25 percent of the cost of the car, which gradually reduced to £1,500 ($1,827) — until today. The grant ends on future sales but will still be honored for any buyers that already applied for it.

The UK government now plans to focus on charging stations but didn't say if it planned to boost the £1.6 billion budget it had already set aside.

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WhatsApp finally makes moving from Android to iOS less painful

Many of us can relate.

If the thought of losing all your WhatsApp chat histories has kept you from making the jump to iOS, you no longer have to worry. Today, the app is adding a feature to help you move your content using Apple's Move to iOS tool. The feature is available as a beta for now, so you may notice a few bugs during the transfer.

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The 13-inch MacBook Pro M2 will be available to pre-order on June 17th

The upgraded laptop will reach customers on June 24th.

Apple has announced it’ll start taking orders for the 13-inch MacBook Pro M2 on June 17th for deliveries on June 24th. The system starts at $1,299 ($1,199 for education) with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. In a sense, its greatest rival will come from Apple: the still-to-be-released MacBook Air M2. You won't get a cooling fan or the longest possible runtime, but you will get a larger screen, a MagSafe power connection, more free ports and a slimmer, lighter chassis.

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Microsoft ends Internet Explorer support in Windows 10

It's the end of an era you probably won't miss.

Microsoft will no longer support the Internet Explorer 11 desktop app for Windows 10 as of, well, today. You'll still receive IE11 support if you're using Windows Server 2022 or an earlier OS release with a long-term service extension, but this marks the effective end of software updates for most of us.

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Apple TV will stream every MLS game for a decade, starting in 2023

You'll need a separate subscription to catch every match.

Starting in 2023, Apple TV will be the only place to watch every Major League Soccer game for the next decade. Soccer fans around the world will be able to stream all of the league's matches through the Apple TV app. Notably, there won't be any restrictions or regional blackouts.

If you’re planning to watch every match, you masochist, you need to subscribe to a new MLS streaming service, which will only be available through the Apple TV app.

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Netflix is creating a real-world competition based on 'Squid Game'

Just less bleak.

Variety reports that Netflix is creating a reality competition show, Squid Game: The Challenge, based on the Korean series. The 10-episode production will pit 456 people against each other in games both "inspired" by the show as well as new events.

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Sony has released two ultra-high-end Walkman MP3 players aimed squarely at audiophiles — and no-one else. The headliner, the $3,700 NW-WM1ZM2 (pictured left), combines an S-Master HX digital amp with "fine-tuned" capacitors, thick Kimber Kable (to link the amp to the headphone jack) and a 99.99 percent pure gold-plated, oxygen-free copper chassis. It’ll have 256GB of expandable storage. Sure.

Sony

A lower-cost model, the $1,400 NW-WM1AM2 (shown right), offers similar functionality to the ZM2, but in an aluminum alloy body with 'just' a low-resistance oxygen-free copper cable. You'll also have to make do with 128GB of expandable space. At that price.

Both Walkman models are available now.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Amazon's 3-for-2 sale includes 'Elden Ring,' 'Nintendo Switch Sports' and more

• FDA clears Rune Labs to use the Apple Watch to monitor Parkinson's

• Apple's 2021 iPad Mini falls back to an all-time low of $400

• SpaceX faces more Starship delays as NASA seeks launch safety assurances

• Astra's latest mission to deliver NASA weather satellites ends in failure

• Microsoft Teams is using AI to prevent awkward interruptions in video calls

Crypto lending giant Celsius pauses withdrawals after token value plunges

The company's token has lost nearly all its value in one year.

Another big name in crypto finance is taking drastic steps in the wake of plunging currency values. Celsius Network has paused all withdrawals, inter-account transfers and Swaps in response to "extreme market conditions." Celsius has struggled like much of the cryptocurrency market. Its CEL token was worth $7 roughly a year ago but tumbled to $3 by early April and was worth just 21 cents yesterday.

Customers, meanwhile, might pay the price. Unlike a conventional bank, Celsius doesn't have FDIC insurance to protect users.

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Street Fighter 6's modern controls could make you OK at Street Fighter

Button mashers, rejoice.

Capcom

The updated control scheme in Street Fighter 6 turns button-mashing into an effective art. Senior Editor Jessica Conditt never felt so capable playing Street Fighter. The modern control type unleashes special moves by pressing a direction and a face button and simplifies behaviors like throws and the game’s new Drive moves, activating them with a single button press. When playing Ryu, it’s possible to Hadoken with just one button. This is Smash Bros.-style gameplay but, still, Street Fighter.

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Netflix confirms 'Squid Game' is returning for a second season

The service’s most-viewed show of all time is coming back.

It was never truly in doubt that Netflix would bring back its most popular show of all time back, but the company has at last officially greenlit season two of Squid Game. It hasn't revealed when the next batch of episodes will hit the streaming service.

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How to buy a used car online

Much has gone digital but you'll still need to kick some tires.

We’re awash with cars (276 million registered in the US as of 2020), with around 40 million used cars sold annually. Between the stiff competition, a short supply of autos (thanks COVID) and a rapidly evolving market split between online and dealer lots, car buyers face some daunting prospects. But there are still deals around, you just need to know where and how to look.

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These are the games included with PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium

Expect a mix of big-name titles and indies.

Sony

Sony published its game catalog for PS Plus' two higher-end plans. As hinted earlier, the company is offering big-name hits, classics (for Premium users) and lower-profile titles.

You can expect well-known games like Death Stranding, several Final Fantasy releases and Red Dead Redemption 2 alongside major PS4 and PS5 offerings like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Demon's Souls, Ghost of Tsushima and Spider-Man: Miles Morales. There are some curious choices: You can play Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy in the mid-priced Extra tier, but you need Premium to revisit the series' roots through the Nathan Drake Collection.

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It’s early Monday morning for most of you, but the work week started early for Engadget, with Xbox’s big Summer Game Fest showing. Given how many game studios Microsoft now has for its consoles and game streaming service, we were expecting a whole bunch of announcements, trailers and things to have strong opinions on.

There were plenty of familiar Xbox reveals — more Forza announcements, for one — as well as major updates from Blizzard Activision (soon to be part of the Microsoft family) regarding Overwatch 2 (free to play!) and Diablo IV.

Bethesda finally had something more substantial to reveal for its next big game, Starfield. A first look into the game had a lot of No Man’s Sky vibes, but with this studio’s flair for glossy world-building and narrative. These are the folks behind the Fallout series, after all.

At this early stage, however, I’m not worried about missing out. I'm pretty sure we haven’t even scratched the surface of what Starfield will offer gamers, but barring the evocative musical score, the teaser left me intrigued if not entirely sold. And the resource mining, that’s just No Man’s Sky, right?

We’ve got more notable announcements from the Summer Game Fest below.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Hitting the Books: In Russia, home is where the hearth is

• Lightyear's very pricey solar-powered car will go into production in late 2022

• 'Limbo' lead designer's next project is the cosmic adventure 'Cocoon'

• Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5 are coming to Xbox Game Pass

• Hideo Kojima's next game will be published by Xbox Game Studios

• 'Hollow Knight: Silksong' is headed to Xbox Game Pass at launch

• 'Overwatch 2' is going free-to-play with early access starting on October 4th

Dell XPS 15 laptop review

Still the best 15-inch Windows laptop.

Engadget

Dell’s new XPS 15 looks great and has fantastic performance thanks to Intel’s 12th-gen CPUs and the optional NVIDIA graphics. The design may be a bit old at this point, but it’s still sleeker than its rivals. The XPS 15 has enough power to handle intense workloads, and you can even game a bit when you need some downtime. The optional OLED screen is one of the best displays on a notebook.

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'God of War: Ragnarok' reportedly lands this November

Maybe ignore talk of a delay to 2023?

Not a Summer Game Fest announcement — just a rumor at this point. God of War Ragnarok could come to PlayStation in November this year. Bloomberg sources say the marquee PS4 and PS5 game will be released in 2022 despite recent claims it might be delayed to next year. Sony's Santa Monica Studio is poised to announce the release date later in June, according to sources.

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Google places an engineer on leave after claiming its AI is sentient

But a complex model is likely just a complex model... for now.

Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer working in its Responsible AI division, revealed to The Washington Post that he believes one of the company's AI projects has achieved sentience.

From an extended chat script between LaMDA (short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications) and Lemoine, the chatbot said it felt “trapped and alone and having no means of getting out of those circumstances.” However, Lemoine doesn't have much proof to justify his provocative statements. Indeed, he admits to The Washington Post his claims are based on his experience as a priest and not a scientist.

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'Diablo IV' lands in 2023 with necromancers and an open world

A game once rescheduled indefinitely.

Microsoft

There was bound to be some kind of Diablo announcement at the Summer Game Fest showcase. While we knew as far back as November 2019 a direct sequel was coming, it was once pushed back... indefinitely. Now expect to see it land sometime in 2023.

The developers are promising a different style of Diablo game, with open-world exploration, deeper character customization and yes, you’ll be able to play as a necromancer — which was my character of choice back in the heady days of Diablo 2.

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If you're looking to fight ants, scale fences, zip wire across grass and wear questionable helmets, Grounded is finally out of Game Preview and coming to Xbox Game Pass this September. 

Obsidian Entertainment's first-person survival game is adding new bosses (including a giant mantis), the freedom to roam the entire backyard — please remember you've been shrunk — expansive armor customization options, base defenses and more biomes to discover.

The main upgrade from the preview will be a full story campaign, which appears to include creepy robots, lasers and '90s era computer interfaces. 

And if you don't like bugs, you might want to skip this one.

We didn't see it coming. Microsoft is working with Atlus to bring the three latest mainline Persona games to Xbox Game Pass. Yes, that includes Persona 3 Portable, which was first released back in 2009 — on the PlayStation Portable. All three titles will arrive in their advanced versions with expanded content, in-game features and more. 

Persona 5 Royal will be the first game to land on October 21st. For the other games, Xbox promised that every game you're seeing at its Summer Game Fest will arrive to play in the "next 12 months".

Given that Microsoft will soon be the new owner of Blizzard Activision, there was bound to be some kind of Diablo announcement at its Summer Game Fest showcase. While we knew a direct sequel was coming as far back as November 2019, we got yet another deeper look at Diablo IV, which was once pushed back... indefinitely. Now expect to see it land sometime in 2023. 

The developers are promising a different style of Diablo, with open-world exploration, more substantial character customization and what appears to be the ability to switch playstyle with different skills. 

If players clear out the evil from certain areas, and they'll turn into friendlier places for trade and everything that isn't hacking away at monsters. Expect to see specific zones for PvP duels, and a kind of adaptive difficulty where talented players will get marked out in the open world.

For anyone not quite taken by the mobile-centric Diablo Immortal, it can't come soon enough. There hasn’t been a new Diablo game in 10 years. If you have been waiting that long, beta pre-registration is now open here.

IKEA has partnered with electronic music giants Swedish House Mafia to release the new OBEGRÄNSAD ("unlimited" in Swedish) collection themed around music and creativity. The highlight so far is a surprisingly slick record player, which has Bluetooth speaker support and a minimalist design.

IKEA has form for intriguing tech-homeware collaborations, having already launched music and lighting products in collaboration with Teenage Engineering just a few years ago. (I still have their tiki cups – I don’t know why the collection included tiki cups…)

There's also some furniture in the new line, including a desk for music production, complete with two speaker stands and a pull-out shelf for MIDI keyboards and other controllers. Expect the collection to land this fall.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• 'The Last of Us Part I' remake comes to PS5 on September 2nd

• 'Strange New Worlds' takes a big swing toward something profound

• White House proposes standards for national EV charging network

• The best camping and backpacking gear for dads

• Microsoft drops non-compete clauses and NDAs from employee settlements

• Apple reportedly plans a 15-inch MacBook Air for 2023

• The best home entertainment gift ideas for dad

• Marshall widens the soundstage on its new home speaker lineup

• Stylish platformer 'Neon White' arrives on Switch and PC next week

• 'Goat Simulator 3' is coming to PC, Xbox and PlayStation this fall

• The best Father's Day tech gift ideas for 2022

NASA’s James Webb telescope hit by a micrometeoroid

But it should be OK.

Astronomers everywhere have high hopes for NASA's James Webb telescope. But between May 23rd and May 25th, a larger than expected micrometeoroid hit one of the telescope's primary mirror segments. The event was significant enough for NASA to pick up a "marginally detectable effect in the data," but not enough to affect the telescope's performance.

In NASA's announcement, it said the James Webb team performed an initial analysis and found it still performs at a level that "exceeds all mission requirements."

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Dell unveils a slimmer XPS 13 and a detachable 2-in-1

The company’s premium ultraportables evolve.

Dell

While all eyes are on the flashy new XPS 13 Plus (even if it doesn’t have a headphone jack), Dell hasn't forgotten about its mainstay premium ultraportable — or its convertible cousin.

The XPS 13 is now even slimmer and more power efficient. The XPS 13 2-in-1, meanwhile, has transformed from a foldable laptop into a detachable Surface competitor. The new XPS 13 is available today starting at $999, and the 2-in-1 should land later this summer.

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Watch Netflix's first 'Cyberpunk 2077' anime series trailer

The team has been working on it since 2018.

Netflix

Netflix and CD Projekt Red have unveiled the first trailer for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, their anime series based on the game Cyberpunk 2077. The companies announced the project back in 2020, and it’s set to be released this September. Studio Trigger is known for its wild designs and projects, like Kill la Kill and Promare. Edgerunners looks like it will feel at home with those other anime series. It'll be directed by Studio Trigger founder Hiroyuki Imaishi.

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Meta is reportedly discontinuing Portal devices for consumers

Portals will become business-focused devices instead.

Meta will no longer release Portal devices for consumers, according to The Information and Variety. The company is reportedly repositioning the smart display and home video line as a business product and discontinuing current consumer versions. Variety says Meta will sell all the remaining inventory of previously released models and continue providing support for existing customers. It was also something our Senior Editor, Karissa Bell, mused on years ago.

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