Like the PlayStation 5 before it, Sony has eked out specifications and teasers for its next-generation virtual reality hardware. We saw the controllers a while back (which have now been further refined, and color-swapped to white), but finally the headset itself is breaking cover.
It suitably matches the aesthetic of the latest PlayStation: all whites, curves and soft lines. It still carries the DNA of Sony’s first VR headset, but looks even more slender. The spherical profile apparently represents the users’ 360-degree view they’ll experience.
PlayStation SVP Hidekai Nishino noted that ergonomics were a major focus, with a new lens adjustment dial to help users ensure good eye comfort and a design that will offer improved airflow when you’re strapped in. The bad news is the lack of news on launch dates and prices. Rumors have pointed to a late 2022 reveal. At least that’s this year.
Virgin Hyperloop will exclusively focus on moving cargo, and has slashed almost half of its total workforce. A spokesperson confirmed to the Financial Times that the shift away from passengers was taking place, with supply chain issues and COVID contributing to the change.
Since its inception, the company has been developing its vacuum-tube system to carry both passengers and freight. One of the earliest concepts VH floated was an “inland port,” in which cargo vessels would put containers onto capsules that are shot inland before they’re processed.
We don’t review many cinema cameras, but DJI’s latest, with LiDAR autofocus, a Z-arm stabilizer and much, much more, deserved some attention. Associate Editor Steve Dent put it to work. The Ronin 4D isn’t entirely perfect. It weighs a lot and there’s a rolling shutter effect at play too, but there’s nothing else out there that can rival its tech and design. It’s surprisingly easy to operate, offers good image quality and is seemingly designed to make cinematic recording easier for you. Take a closer look.
You'll need $90 and a Premium subscription to use it.
Spotify's Car Thing first debuted last April after breaking from cover nearly two years prior. Back then, you needed to be part of a select few to get one. In October, the company expanded its invite list for all users in the US. Yesterday, Spotify announced that the Car Thing is available for anyone in the States to purchase directly from the company. The device is $89.99 and requires a Premium subscription for you to be able to use it in your car. Car Thing is essentially a Spotify box for most cars — so long as you have an aux jack or Bluetooth connectivity. Oh and a power source. Intrigued? We put one to the test here.
Dominique Potvin, an Animal Ecology professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, said he and his team recently witnessed a mischief of magpies display a rare cooperative “rescue” behavior when they attempted to track the birds. The researchers made a lightweight but tough tracking harness the birds could wear like backpacks. They also created a feeding station that would wirelessly charge and download data from the trackers. It even had a magnet for freeing the birds of the harness. Within 10 minutes of Potvin’s team fitting the final tracker, they saw a female magpie use her bill to remove a harness off of one of the younger birds. Hours later, most of the other test subjects had been freed of their trackers too. Better luck next time, scientists.
An owner claims it knew about a bug that allowed ape purchases far below market value.
A man who unknowingly sold his Bored Ape NFT for a pittance is suing OpenSea, claiming it knew about a flaw in its platform that allowed hackers to buy unlisted NFTs at a fraction of the market price, decrypt has reported. Timothy McKimmy alleged in a complaint that he didn't even list his Bored Ape #3475 for sale, but a hacker managed to buy it for just .01 ETH ($26) before turning around and selling it for 99 ETH ($250,000 at current prices). He claims that despite the bug being widely reported in the media, OpenSea refused to halt trading.
Welcome back! The US Copyright Office (USCO) is again refusing to grant copyright for a work of art that was created by an artificial intelligence system. Dr. Stephen Thaler attempted to copyright a piece of art titled A Recent Entrance to Paradise, claiming in a second request for reconsideration of a 2019 ruling that the USCO's “human authorship” requirement was unconstitutional.
Current copyright law only offers protections to "the fruits of intellectual labor” that “are founded in the creative powers of the [human] mind,’ according to the USCO. For now, AI has the same access to copyrighting as monkeys – that’s to say, none at all.
Capcom has announced the development of Street Fighter 6, revealing a teaser trailer featuring Ryu and Luke, a key DLC character appearing at the end of Street Fighter V. The game was announced following Capcom's Pro Tour fighting game exhibition , but there’s not much more to report at this moment. Check out the teaser – all forty seconds of it.
Donald Trump’s Twitter-like social media platform has launched on the Apple App Store. The launch will mark the former president’s return to social media. Twitter and Facebook banned Trump following the January 6th attack on the US Capitol.
People can use the network to post “Truths,” the platform’s equivalent to tweets, and it's possible to reshare posts on one's timeline to expand their reach. The executive who answered questions from beta users said the company was working on a verification policy that it would publish “in the coming weeks.”
Don't panic if you couldn’t play The Joe Rogan Experience over the last few days on Spotify. The streaming service has confirmed to Engadget that a "technical issue" prevented users from playing a number of Spotify podcasts, including Joe Rogan's and The Ringer shows like The Bill Simmons Podcast. It’s bad timing, following controversy over misinformation in Spotify's podcasts like Rogan’s, which has been accused of spreading and tolerating false claims about COVID-19 vaccines. The company has now addressed the technical problem and the episodes are back online.
With less than a week before Elden Ring’s February 25th release date, publisher Bandai Namco has shared a new “Overview” trailer detailing the many systems of FromSoftware’s latest action RPG. The clip features nearly six minutes of edited gameplay footage that appears thankfully spoiler-free. In case you haven’t been paying attention, George R. R. Martin (author of Game of Thrones) helped Dark Souls and Bloodborne mastermind Hidetaka Miyazaki create the world of the game.
The Galaxy S22 Ultra is Samsung’s new Note. That’s the simplest way to put it. With a different design to the rest of the S22 family — which admittedly looks a little dated in comparison — and the return of the S Pen, this is the power-user flagship many Samsung fans have been waiting for.
Reviews Editor Cherlynn Low spent a week testing the S22 Ultra, and its familiarity means many users will feel totally at home with Samsung’s biggest new phone. The S22 Ultra is the best premium Android flagship around, with an excellent display, solid cameras and useful software. Nothing here is revolutionary, but with the onboard S Pen, the spirit of the Galaxy Note lives on. We scored it 89 — read on for why.
Apple commissioned famous Korean director Park Chan-wook to create a short film as part of its Shot on iPhone campaign. Park, perhaps best known for the action thriller flick Oldboy, used an iPhone 13 Pro to shoot a 20-minute fantasy martial arts movie entitled Life is But a Dream, which the tech giant has released on YouTube. Take a look for yourself.
The company’s cloud GPUs will come later this year.
As previously announced, Intel’s Arc gaming GPUs will debut in laptops from partner companies this quarter, presumably alongside 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs. However, desktop gamers will need to wait a little longer before they can plug Arc GPUs into their rigs. Intel says those graphics cards will ship in Q2. At an investor meeting, Intel also revealed plans for a service that will enable access to Arc GPUs via the cloud. It says Project Endgame, which will be available later this year, is "an always-accessible, low-latency computing experience."
Horizon Forbidden West developer Guerrilla was well aware of the PS5 and much of its capabilities when it started working on Forbidden West in 2018. But, the company also planned to make the game work on the PS4, a console that turns nine this fall. In an interview with the creators, we learn exactly how they were able to make a game that works well on both platforms. Two factors that helped? COVID-19 and game streaming.
Reliability and ease of use gave Ford's EV the edge.
Tesla's Model 3 has been Consumer Reports' top EV choice for the past two years, but the publication is ready to declare a new champion. CR has revealed that Ford's Mustang Mach-E has ousted the Model 3 as its EV Top Pick.
The Mustang crossover is not only "more practical," according to editors, but has better first-year reliability and a "far easier" infotainment system, which doesn't require multiple steps for basic tasks.
According to Deadline, Forbes Entertainment and EOne are teaming up to produce two projects — a scripted series and a documentary — around bitcoin money launderers Heather "Razzlekhan" Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein. Both projects will lean on Forbes' reporting, but the twist is that Morgan was also a Forbes contributor for several years. It won’t be the only studio working on the story, either. Netflix is already making its documentary on the billion-dollar bitcoin launderers. I look forward to the rap segments.
Sony has launched a contest for the chance to finally get your hands on a PS5. Over the next few weeks, Sony will release 14 unique codes resembling the PlayStation controller across its sites, social media channels and even at high-profile events in sports, gaming, film and music. Finding them doesn't automatically mean you win a console: Each code will only give you the opportunity to enter a draw to win a PS5, but if you’ve been unable to get the new console, perhaps you're willing to jump through all these hoops.
While Alienware’s newest x14 isn’t quite as powerful or configurable as its larger siblings, it offers strong performance and a vibrant 144Hz screen in a deliciously sleek chassis. And if you really like traveling light, the x14 even supports charging over USB-C by default. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, expect short battery life during gameplay. However, the smart move would be to wait a month or two for competitors to release their latest 14-inch laptops. Both Razer and ASUS are coming out with refreshed versions later this spring. We gave it an 85.
It’s admitted to finding purchases for transport routes in Iraq controlled by the terrorist group.
Ericsson's CEO told Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri the company may have made payments to the Islamic State (ISIL/ISIS/Daesh) terrorist group for its operations in Iraq. According to Bloomberg, CEO Boörje Ekholm said the telecoms giant has identified "unusual expenses dating back to 2018."
The first major No Man's Sky patch of the year has arrived. Among other things, Hello Games says the Sentinel update improves the space exploration sim's AI and introduces a buildable AI mech. You can put an AI pilot in your Exomech and have it follow you and help out in battles. Players can build a drone companion, too.
New York City has the lowest average rider rating.
Uber riders can now see how many one-star and five-star ratings they're getting. The platform's Privacy Center, which debuted last month, shows riders and drivers a breakdown of their ratings. The company also revealed which major US cities have the highest and lowest average rider ratings. Drivers typically dish out higher ratings in San Antonio, St Louis and Nashville. Riders tend to get the lowest ratings in New York City, followed by Seattle and Washington, DC. If you’ve got a dire rating, Uber offers up a handful of tips, encompassing safety and common decency, to help you bump up your average.
As Apple pushes on with its anti-tracking features on iOS, and Google continues to refine its Privacy Sandbox for serving targeted web ads without third-party cookies, it's time for Android. Google announced today it's starting a "multi-year initiative to build the Privacy Sandbox on Android.” It’s early days, and the company is in the design and testing stage, but it said developers can "review our initial design proposals and share feedback on the Android developer site."
The explosion of true wireless earbuds has finally settled down in recent years. However, this has also meant they’re all starting to look and behave pretty similarly.
Sony’s latest experiment — its new Linkbuds — shakes that up with an open-ear design made for ambient sound. The company has attempted to nail open-design buds since 2017, and rival Samsung, to its credit, also tried something similar with its beanish Buds Live.
The LinkBuds, according to Engadget’s Billy Steele, almost nail the concept. There are a lot of cool features built into these tiny things. The Linkbuds will mute audio when they detect you’re talking, and motion sensors mean you don’t have to tap the device to manually pause or skip tracks, which is nice to see – I hate whacking something inside my ear to adjust other in-ear buds. “Wide-area tap” covers the area in front of your ear. Sadly, there’s no noise cancellation (and even if there was, this open design would inevitably let noises through), but Sony’s design seems built for background listening. Check out our full verdict here.
Netflix says it's teaming up with 2K and Take-Two Interactive for a film adaptation of the BioShock series. No other details are available as yet, but based on the image Netflix shared in its announcement, it wouldn't be a surprise to see it tackling the first game.
2007’s BioShock may translate well to the big screen. The original game has a striking Art Deco/underwater setting and an unforgettable story. No spoilers, promise.
A multi-camera miracle that falls short of greatness.
I’ve been playing with Logitech’s multi-camera Mevo Start pack. It consists of three wireless cameras you can network together to create a livestream studio. You can transition between cameras or get the companion app to do it for you. For streamers looking to elevate their broadcasts, there’s a lot of potential here. The learning curve is steep, however, and connectivity can be a little temperamental.
Last summer, Microsoft teased Clippy would return to Office and a handful of other apps as part of a broader update to more than 1,800 emoji. The new characters reflect the company’s Fluent design language, and you can now check them out in Microsoft Teams.
To enable the emoji, navigate to the app’s settings menu, then head over to the About section and click Public Preview. Microsoft’s goal, it said, was to design characters that better reflect how people work in the 21st century. That means dinosaur emoji.
It can output 4K 10-bit or external ProRes RAW video at up to 60 fps.
OM Digital Solutions has unveiled the Micro Four Thirds OM-1, its first mirrorless camera since purchasing Olympus. It packs a new sensor and technology that gives it a big leap in performance over the last flagship Olympus models. This could, however, be the last Olympus-branded model.
The vehicle body and battery platform are assembled as one.
The Polestar 5 will be cut from a different cloth than its predecessors when it launches at the end of 2024. Polestar announced on Tuesday its upcoming electric performance sedan will ride atop an entirely new, lightweight bonded aluminum platform. This time-saving design has already borne results, enabling the company to produce and deliver an early series of prototypes, just 18 months after the start of development.
White Castle has announced it’ll be bringing Flippy 2, a robot chef that can essentially perform the same tasks as a team of fry cooks, to 100 more locations this year. This amounts to roughly a third of White Castle restaurants nationwide. It’s unlikely the average White Castle patron will notice the new robots. Since Flippy 2 is designed to perform “back-of-the-house” kitchen functions, that’s where you’ll find it. This might just be the start: Miso Robotics has come out with a wing-making version of Flippy. Buffalo Wild Wings is currently testing it out.
Logitech’s Mevo Start cameras were built for live streaming. I don’t mean webcam conference calls or video that you can record and edit (though you can do both of those things with the Start). These are live streaming cameras, first and foremost, aimed at the growing number of creators on YouTube, Twitch and elsewhere.
The Mevo Start 3-pack kit ($1,000) consists of three streaming cameras that connect together wirelessly through the companion Multicam app. With the ability to instantly switch and stream between three different camera angles, it has the potential to overhaul how streamers broadcast. Until now, that has usually demanded thousands of dollars of equipment, along with significant expertise.
If you have a strong internet connection, some practice live streaming and, to be honest, a lot of patience during the setup, this could change how you stream. It could also lower the barrier to entry – so I thought I would test it out. Am I willing to make the leap from my camera, PC and OBS setup to three tiny wireless cameras?
Mat Smith/ Engadget
Let’s start with the Mevo Start itself. It’s a solid camera small enough to slip into a trouser or jacket pocket. On the back, it has inputs for mics, USB-C for both charging devices and being charged itself, and a microSD slot too. The unit has a nice matte finish (sadly, yes it’s a fingerprint magnet), and a rubberized power button at the back that’s easy to find without having to look. The 3-pack consists of, yes, three of them, with USB-C charging cables. From there, it’s all down to you to figure things out, which for many, will mean tripods, plural, and microSD cards if you want to record footage of each individual camera. Oh and also a standalone mic if you want to improve the audio quality.
I’m not going to dig too deep into the minutiae of sound and image quality, but the camera mics will pick up everything around you, so most users will need a mic for decent audio talking to the camera – especially in busy environments.
Unless you’re stepping up from a webcam to the Mevo Start, you’ll probably notice a dip in image quality compared to streaming from a flagship phone or digital camera. Streaming resolution on the Start tops out at 1080p at 30 frames per second, which is a little disappointing when we’re starting to get comfortable with 4K content, but also because that means any digital zooming (well, cropping – more on that later), is going to lead to even grainier video. Conversely, this means less heavy lifting for your internet connection, which is a good thing.
While it is not the most high-fidelity streaming option, the Start aims for versatility over specialization. And let’s not forget: the eye-catching feature is this multi-camera setup. There’s nothing quite at this price (and level of accessibility) for a multi-camera streaming setup. Normally it would cost far more than $1,000 to offer a comparable camera ‘studio’ capable of live broadcasting online.
Logitech has made some sensible choices with the Start specifications, too. Each camera can record and stream for up to six hours without the need to be plugged into a power source. This means less cable calculus when packing the cameras and also offers you greater freedom when you’re rigging up the cameras. I balanced one on top of my kitchen cabinet, pointing down as I prepared vegetables for a meal.
The Start also has a very slight light hood around the camera lens to help reduce light flare, while the thread for tripods fits two different types of stands. Logitech has thought about these cameras from the perspective of a stream.
But maybe it should have thought a little more: My first afternoons with these cameras were so frustrating, I wanted to give up.
Once you’ve downloaded the Mevo MultiCam app, you’ll then need to individually download firmware updates to each camera… if your phone or tablet deigns to register the existence of each camera. For me, it led to a frustrating loop of a camera being detected and trying to corral it into a firmware update before it suddenly disappeared from the Bluetooth ether. This part ended up taking hours, turning into days. (Well, a couple of afternoons.)
It was the first sign that consistency is the biggest issue with the Mevo camera setup. And while I could give the product the benefit of the doubt, live streams are fraught at the best of times. I’ve done countless streams for Engadget, flanked by professionals who make sure I’m not screwing things up. I’ve never disappeared from an Engadget livestream, but I can’t say the same of my week of stream attempts with Mevo Start. But before I relive that horror, what is the Mevo Start capable of? I was pleasantly surprised to discover: a lot.
The Mevo app has an auto-director mode that will switch between the cameras without you having to tap on your phone. Better still, you can choose to prioritize one camera and adjust how long the robo-director holds a shot before switching. You can even pick the kind of transition used, from immediate cuts through to slide swipes and other gentler changes. Alas, no star swipe.
It’s these elegant touches that elevate a plain stream into something a little slicker. You can also crop the video on each camera, helping to cut out, say, a messy corner of your apartment, or just offer up a closer look at whatever you’re cooking or crafting.
As the camera maxes out at 1080p, the more you crop, the more fidelity you will lose on your stream, which really limits the usefulness of the feature. While no one streams in 4K, if these cameras had 4K you’d at least be able to crop in without losing too much quality. In the same settings menu, you can adjust the degree of latency you want to use. High latency means that your feed will be held up a little longer before it’s streamed to viewers, ensuring a more consistent connection and – hopefully – video feed. There’s also a low-latency option if you’re extremely confident in your web connection, and this will ensure the video stays closer to real-time.
You can fine-tune the cameras further, with profiles for outdoor lighting and even an HDR toggle. There are also some stylistic profiles for vivid high-contrast, grayscale and more, adding more flexibility depending on your own lighting setup, location or simply artistic tastes.
There’s even a degree of editing available through overlays, where you can add lower third text (like you’ll see most TV news shows, and a lot of YouTube streams) or even introductory full-screen text to your video stream. It’s simplistic but it’s built into the app – it’s easy.
So there is a lot to praise in the Start kit, but then you, well, start using it. The main test for me was to see how easy it was to stream directly to YouTube. The first issue I encountered is one every new streamer will struggle with: you need over 1,000 subscribers to your YouTube channel in order to enable a simple connection. As I didn’t want to mess up Engadget’s official channel cooking up a storm with tempeh (with hindsight, I could have made an unlisted stream), instead I had to use the Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP). And go a little mad.
Once your camera angles are in place and your connection looks stable, you can tap the live button on the app. This will take you through to all the livestream options, including platforms YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo. The RTMP option is all the way to the right of these options, which is tough to find on a phone.
Mat Smith/ Engadget
While you can set up everything on a single device, but I’d suggest having a laptop or something else internet-connected nearby for setting up your streams on YouTube, as you may find yourself flitting between a web browser (needed to tinker with YouTube Studio settings not available on the app) and Mevo multicam app a little too much.
Tap on RTMP, and you can set up the hooks for YouTube to pick up at its end. Other notes that might help you: Server URL and Stream URL are different things, don’t mix them up. Also don’t expect your stream to go instantly live. My Start camera stream typically took a minute to buffer or settle into a feed that the public could watch. What’s frustrating is that YouTube Studio’s interface shows a buffering window, regardless of whether your stream is live or not. I would have to check the shareable link to the stream to check if I was even live. The “live” labels on the Mevo app itself are not accurate.
The multicam app was mostly responsive and did what I expected it to do, but it was also fussy. Swap between one too many apps (remember how I initially tried to adjust my Youtube settings on Safari on the same phone?), and the connection will cut out. Absent-mindedly lock your screen, and again, the stream is lost. I think it’s common sense that you probably didn’t want to cut a livestream connection if you locked your phone. Or maybe I’m making excuses for myself. It’s probably a little of both.
Despite having a healthy internet connection and keeping in close proximity to the cameras, I lost my stream a few times for reasons I’ll never know. And that’s a shame, as there’s so much potential in this Mevo camera trio.
While I’ve touched on some of the settings you can access on the cameras, there’s further flexibility inside the app. You can tweak frame rate, suppress echo and even choose the bitrate and recording format for your backup recording, all of which will be stored on your iOS or Android device. I like that these backup files are neatly stored in one place.
Mat Smith/ Engadget
For beginners or streamers looking to upgrade their streaming style, there are a few bumps on the road to a flawless multicam setup. Mevo does offer a glimpse at an effortless solution – it’s definitely streamlined many of the processes, and the jack-of-all-trades specs mean that this could be the ideal setup for upgraded live music streams, community projects or simply to add polish to existing livestreams. You will have to consider consistency though. My experience has been mixed, but others have fared better. There’s also a vibrant user community across both Facebook and Reddit that was able to help me when things went wrong. Hopefully, there’s a future Mevo camera in the works that’s a little more stable and polished. And maybe 4K capable.
In a bid to sidestep the issues of power, size and other technical hurdles of wearable displays, Verizon and Motorola have teamed to create the 5G Neckband. Putting connectivity, processing and battery in a collar could lead to lighter and more comfortable heads-up displays (and high-tech glasses).
Inside the pendant, there’s a Snapdragon processor, battery and touchpad, as well as sensors like a gyroscope, accelerometer, barometer and GPS. "We took a smartphone and exploded it around your neck," said Vice President of Technology at Verizon, Brian Mecum. No details yet on pricing and availability.
Dell's Alienware monitor that uses Samsung's quantum dot OLED (QD-OLED) tech will arrive this spring for a surprisingly reasonable $1,299. Dell first unveiled the curved, 34-inch gaming display at CES, and while that might seem expensive for a monitor (and well, it is), it’s cheaper than comparable OLED screens out there. (LG's 32-inch UltraFine OLED model costs $3,999.)
The EV maker hopes to steal the spotlight from heavyweight rivals.
Volvo's sibling brand aired a 30-second spot for the Polestar 2 during Super Bowl 2022 that took some not-so-subtle potshots at competitors and industry hypocrisy at large. The commercial was dominated by "nos:" "no dieselgate," "no conquering Mars" and "no greenwashing." In short, it’s kept the tradition of aggressive Super Bowl ads going for another year.
The stalls are already available at 49 stores, and they'll soon be at more than 500.
Polestar will be happy. EV charging network Volta is bringing another 1,000 DC fast-charging stalls to 500 Walgreens locations. It’s a major expansion. The pair started working together in 2019, and there are currently Volta stations at 49 Walgreens stores. It’s also just the start: The Biden administration recently announced a $5 billion plan to improve EV charging infrastructure across the US.
The Polaris Program will end with the first crewed Starship flight.
Shift4 founder and Inspiration4 leader, Jared Isaacman has unveiled a Polaris Program initiative of "up to" three crewed SpaceX flights. The first, Polaris Dawn, is planned for the fourth quarter of 2022 and should include the first commercial spacewalk. The effort will ideally end with the first human-occupied Starship flight. The program hinges on SpaceX and partners solving a number of problems. SpaceX is developing spacesuits necessary for the spacewalk, and Isaacman's group hasn't yet decided how many crew members will step outside. Then, there’s the Starship’s own issues…
Musing on a convertible PC? HP’s x360 16 has everything you’d want in a big-screen convertible notebook. It’s fast, with a gorgeous screen and one of the best keyboards on the market. Just give up on the dream of using it as a tablet, though. While it’s gorgeous, it’s also... big.
Finally, the two newest consoles are hitting their exclusive-game groove. Microsoft finally has its Halo, and while Forbidden West is available on PlayStation 4, it was made to sing on the more powerful PS5. Senior Editor Jessica Conditt has spent some time with the game, ahead of its launch later this week — read her full review right here — and, well, she likes it. (What’s not to like about an underwater Vegas?)
It’s going to be a busy few weeks for gamers. Destiny 2’s latest expansion, the Witch Queen, lands, alongside the hugely anticipated Elden Ring, which is coming to both Xbox and PlayStation. Meanwhile, I’m going low-fi and playing through Earthbound— a game from 1994 — on my Switch.
Amazon’s epic is almost here. The series is set in the Second Age of Middle Earth, thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. It will be drawing material from J.R.R.Tolkien's The Silmarillion, which details key events like Sauron's story and the forging of the rings of power. To whet your appetite, check out the minute-long teaser from this weekend’s Super Bowl.
Insurance companies are seeing a lot of claims for cracked TVs.
UK insurer Aviva said last year it saw a 31 percent increase in home contents claims involving VR headsets and a 68 percent overall increase since 2016. In 2021, the average claim for VR-related accidental damages was about £650 or $880, and most incidents involved cracked TVs screens. It’s reflecting a boom in VR: On Christmas Day 2021, the Oculus app hit the top of Apple’s App Store charts for the first time. Please remember where you are, folks.
Many of the pages were scams from Vietnam and Romania.
Facebook has recently removed several “trucker convoy” groups and pages run by scammers in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Romania and other countries. The company said many of those groups had recently changed their names to adopt ones that use terms like “trucker,” “freedom” and “convoy” in hopes of taking advantage of the sudden interest in the rallies occurring in Canada. Many of those same pages included links to websites that sold pro-Trump and anti-vaccine merchandise. At the same time, most of the accounts that took part in those groups were tied to real people.
Lamborghini hopes to continue producing cars with internal combustion engines (ICE) into the next decade, CEO Stephan Winkelmann told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag this week. “After hybridization, we will wait to see whether it will be possible to offer vehicles with an internal combustion engine beyond 2030,” he said in the interview. Even if Lamborghini continues producing ICE cars into the 2030s, it may not be able to sell those vehicles in many places. In the US and other parts of the world, governments have moved to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars by mid-decade.
The Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor in the UK has generated the highest level of sustained energy ever from atom fusion. On December 21st, 2021, the "tokamak" reactor produced 59 megajoules of energy during a five-second fusion pulse. That’s double what it created back in 1997. (Yes, I know energy is not created or destroyed, but you get what I mean!)
The JET reactor is the flagship experimental device of the European Fusion Program, funded by the EU. It's mainly designed to prove scientists’ modeling efforts, with an eye on future, bigger experiments with a much larger ITER reactor in France, set to start fusion testing in 2025.
JET hit a Q value of 0.33, meaning it produced about a third of the energy put in. The highest Q value achieved so far is 0.7 by the US Department of Energy's National Ignition Facility, but it only hit that figure for 4 billionths of a second. The goal with ITER is to reach a Q factor of 10 or greater. Fun fact: ITER isn’t an acronym but means “the path” in Latin. And now you know.
Maybe you’ve got a glorious new 4K TV. But maybe you’re still using sub-par built-in speakers. Thankfully, it's never been easier to bring the surround sound experience home without investing thousands of dollars in Hi-Fi components. Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar guides you through your options.
The Boombox feature risked overpowering safety alerts.
Tesla is recalling hundreds of thousands of cars over a technical issue. It has recalled 578,607 Model 3, S, X and Y vehicles over concerns the Boombox feature can overpower Pedestrian Warning System sounds. The ability to play external audio while the car is in motion violates a federal safety rule requiring a clearly audible sound when EVs and hybrids are moving at speeds below 18.6MPH. As with some of its previous recalls, the company will address the issue with a free over-the-air update. The patch will disable Boombox while cars aren't parked, Tesla said.
Tesla called the lawsuit "unfair and unproductive."
More bad news for Tesla. A California civil rights agency has filed a lawsuit against the company for alleged racial discrimination and harassment at its Fremont factory, according to The Wall Street Journal. "After receiving hundreds of complaints from workers, DFEH found evidence that Tesla’s Fremont factory is a racially segregated workplace," said California Department of Fair Employment and Housing director Kevin Kish in a statement.
MoviePass is making a comeback. Co-founder Stacy Spikes, who is back at the helm, says MoviePass 2.0 is being built on a Web3 framework and will have a kind of virtual currency. It will have tiered plans, but he didn’t mention pricing. Spikes said there'll be ways for people to earn credits through the app via a "preshow experience." That’s watching ads. To make sure you're actually watching them, the app will employ facial recognition and eye-tracking. Wonderful.
Google is unveiling the first Android 13 developer preview today, and it's clear the company is not going to avoid the "unlucky" number. Developers (and risk takers) can test their apps using the Android emulator or flashing a system image to the Pixel 4 or newer Pixel phones. Based on today's announcement, it looks like we can expect finer privacy controls and more of Android 12's Material You design licks throughout.
States can apply for the funds to create an Alternative Fuel Corridor on US highways.
The Biden administration has announced a $5 billion plan to help states build half a million EV charging stations by 2030 — five times the current number. The goal is to allow EV owners to find a charging port anywhere within 50 miles of their location across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. A total of $615 million will be distributed this year alone.
While I was very distracted this morning by Nintendo’s barrage of game announcements, the big story remains Samsung’s new Galaxy S lineup. Encompassing no less than three new phones and three new tablets, it was a busy day for the biggest and most influential Android phone maker.
While the giant Tab S8 Ultra is literally the biggest announcement (a 14.6-inch OLED tablet built for creating and viewing), the most important might be the Galaxy S22 Ultra — despite the name, to most people, this is really the next-gen Galaxy Note.
My colleague Cherlynn Low has written about how the Note’s legacy will live on in any device that works with a Samsung stylus, but it’s a much-needed consolidation of the myriad flagship devices the company often launches at a speedy clip.
Last year, sidestepping Samsung’s cheaper phones, like the A series, it revealed the Galaxy S21, S21+ and S21 Ultra in January. Then, in August 2021, the company marched out its latest foldable devices, the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and the Galaxy Z Flip 3. (Not to mention the S21 Fan Edition that popped up just a few weeks ago…) Phew. There was no Galaxy Note that year, presumably because Samsung needed to figure out where it would belong.
The S22 Ultra, with lots of camera sensors, a huge beautiful screen and space to holster an S Pen stylus, now has enough unique features to differentiate itself from the more standard (and cheaper) S22 and S22+. Now I need to figure out how to stop calling it a Note.
The 6.1-inch Galaxy S22 and 6.6-inch S22+ look very similar to the S21 family they replace, but they include some notable camera upgrades, including a 50-megapixel main rear camera with a sensor 23 percent larger than in the 12MP shooter from their predecessors. There are some new software-based camera tricks, including Auto Framing to keep up to 10 people in focus. Portrait-mode photos should look more natural thanks to an AI-based stereo depth map. Prices start at $800 for a Galaxy S22 with 128GB of (non-expandable) storage and $999 for the bigger S22+. Still not sure? We’ve already written up some first impressions right here, and you can expect our full review soon.
Compared to its S22 siblings, the Ultra model has a flatter design and built-in storage for Samsung’s S Pen stylus, which itself features improved responsiveness. It also comes with a 108MP camera with an f/1.8 aperture lens. The phone includes a 12MP ultra-wide camera and two 10MP telephoto cameras. Pre-orders for the device open today, with prices beginning at $1,200 for the base model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. Check out our early thoughts here.
Samsung also unveiled the Galaxy Tab S8 series, which includes the Tab S8, S8+ and the Tab S8 Ultra. It’s the first time Samsung is making a tablet with the “Ultra” name; that branding is normally reserved for its S-series phones, but the S8 Ultra has some high-end specs to match. According to Samsung, it features the “world’s only 14.6-inch Super AMOLED display on an Android 2-in-1” as well as “our smoothest writing experience yet,” courtesy of an upgraded S Pen. Pricing across the family starts at $700 for the Tab S8, the S8+ at $900 and the Ultra at $1,100. They are all impressively slim.
I can’t explain what Samsung’s original idea was. There’s a vague dig at Apple (I think), as an old Mr. Mackintosh pitches a dowdy raincoat before a younger handsome man appears to reveal… oil paintings of Samsung’s newest phone.
The matriarch he’s trying to impress demands her servants carry the paintings around in a circle, by candlelight, creating (possibly) a sort of zoetrope effect. I’m not sure. You won’t be sure.
Almost all of the Starlink internet satellites a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried beyond the atmosphere on February 3rd won't reach their intended orbit. SpaceX has revealed a geomagnetic storm a day after liftoff had a severe impact on the satellites, and up to 40 of them will re-enter or have already entered Earth's atmosphere. The deorbiting satellites pose no collision risk, SpaceX said, and will completely burn up as they re-enter the atmosphere, leaving no orbital debris.
Garmin’s new Instinct 2 Solar watch will apparently be able to run continuously on smartwatch mode (i.e. with features like heart-rate monitoring, sleep tracking, activity tracking and 24/7 health monitoring turned on), with no need to recharge — so long as you get enough hours in the sun. Garmin says the device needs to be outside in 50,000 lux conditions for an average of three hours a day to maintain the "unlimited" battery life.
The headsets are reported to arrive in 2022 or 2023.
The operating system powering Apple's rumored virtual or augmented reality headset may be called realityOS, MacRumors has reported. The term was spotted by multiple sources in recent GitHub open source code and App Store upload logs. "What is Apple's realityOS doing in the App Store upload logs," tweeted iOS developer Rens Verhoeven. If the references are real, they could suggest that developers are getting or will be getting access to the OS. As another developer, Steve Troughton-Smith, warned, however, they "could just be a remnant of somebody's pull request from a fake account," too.
