Amazon has announced it's making over 100 Prime Video original series and movies available on Freevee, its free streaming service. It seems to be a natural part of the lifespan for exclusive video content these days: In April, HBO and Warner Brothers made a bunch of their shows available for free on Roku, some of which originally aired on TV.

The full list of Prime original content expanding to Freevee isn't available yet, but titles will include The Summer I Turned Pretty, The Wheel of Time, Late Night, Troop Zero and Reacher. The 100-plus titles won't all arrive at once, as Amazon reports that new series and movies will become available on Freevee throughout the year.

It appears that Amazon is dedicated to using Freevee to capture the free-streaming market. Last year, it rebranded IMDB TV into Freevee in a move it said reflected the streaming service's free access — other names reportedly in consideration included "Zon" and "Free TV." Ads are likely a small inconvenience for many people when Amazon Prime starts at $14.99 a month or $139 a year for individuals. You can access Freevee through Amazon and its Fire TV stick or as an independent app on iOS, Android, Xbox, most smart TVs and other systems. 

Freevee already produces a range of original content, like America’s Test Kitchen: The Next Generation and Judy Justice. The streamer also offers titles outside the Amazon production family, including Schitt's Creek, John Wick and Bones. 

In a Twitter audio chat on Saturday, SpaceX's founder, Elon Musk, shared more details about what went awry during the first fully integrated Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster launch in April. One of the biggest revelations: The self-destruct setting took 40 seconds to work — a seemingly short time, except when you're uncertain if the massive rocket you just launched will blow up before hitting land. To recap the day's events, the rocket and booster cleared the launch pad before being unable to separate from each other, flipping and, finally, blowing up. The automated command should have immediately caused an explosion, but tumbled around for a bit first, The New York Times reported. 

In one of many spins on the day's failures, Musk claimed it was because "the vehicle’s structural margins appear to be better than we expected." While SpaceX previously said the only goal was that initial takeoff, a lot clearly went wrong. 

The delayed self-destruction wasn't the only issue following the launch from SpaceX's facility in Boca Chica, Texas. After the eventual explosion, debris fell across about 385 acres of land made up of the SpaceX facility and Boca Chica State Park. The latter resulted in a 3.5-acre fire. Musk's response? "To the best of our knowledge there has not been any meaningful damage to the environment that we’re aware of." 

The FAA has already announced it's investigating the events and will ground Starship until "determining that any system, process or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety." Even with all of that, Musk went so far as to call the launch "successful" and "maybe slightly exceeding my expectations." 

In this case, success was clearing the launch pad and, apparently, learning lessons along the way. "The goal of these missions is just information," Musk said. "Like, we don’t have any payload or anything — it’s just to learn as much as possible." 

Over nine million people watched The Super Mario Bros. Movie over the weekend — on Twitter, The Verge reported. On Friday, a Twitter user uploaded the entire movie to the platform, and it remained there, openly violating copyright laws, until Sunday. The movie was removed and the user suspended from Twitter — again, shy of ten million people already seeing it. 

Sure, copyrighted movies have repeatedly spent a few days on Twitter since Elon Musk took over (firing most your safety and compliance staff will do that for you). But, previous posts, like The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift or Avatar, were shared in two minute increments across lengthy threads. The Super Mario Bros. Movie required only two posts, one with the first hour of the movie and another with the final 32 minutes. 

Why hasn’t this happened before now? Well, Twitter Blue subscribers can upload videos up to 60 minutes long. It's only available on Twitter’s website though, with app users limited to 10-minute videos.

Regardless of mainstream illegal streaming, The Super Mario Bros. Movie has crushed at the box office, making over $1 billion globally, and holding the number one spot four weekends in a row across the US and Canada. If it has come and gone in your area, don't worry, it will probably be back on Twitter soon. 

Over nine million people watched The Super Mario Bros. Movie over the weekend — on Twitter, The Verge reported. On Friday, a Twitter user uploaded the entire movie to the platform, and it remained there, openly violating copyright laws, until Sunday. The movie was removed and the user suspended from Twitter — again, shy of ten million people already seeing it. 

Sure, copyrighted movies have repeatedly spent a few days on Twitter since Elon Musk took over (firing most your safety and compliance staff will do that for you). But, previous posts, like The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift or Avatar, were shared in two minute increments across lengthy threads. The Super Mario Bros. Movie required only two posts, one with the first hour of the movie and another with the final 32 minutes. 

Why hasn’t this happened before now? Well, Twitter Blue subscribers can upload videos up to 60 minutes long. It's only available on Twitter’s website though, with app users limited to 10-minute videos.

Regardless of mainstream illegal streaming, The Super Mario Bros. Movie has crushed at the box office, making over $1 billion globally, and holding the number one spot four weekends in a row across the US and Canada. If it has come and gone in your area, don't worry, it will probably be back on Twitter soon. 

Reddit has announced a new feature for subreddits: chat channels. The launch comes with a disclaimer from the company that previous Chat launches were not done "in the best ways" and that this approach focuses on small communities and mod tools to, ideally, be better. 

Chat channels do differ in a few ways from the Live Chat feature, for example, existing as a permanent space in the subreddit, rather than a fleeting post. They're also operated by the mods, who can choose to block responses, pin messages and to chat in a private channel. Mods also control who's allowed in the channel, ranging from open participation all the way to only trusted members. 

Reddit

Reddit claims to be building chat channels with space for additional updates, depending on testing results. The company specifically calls out features like automod rules, slow mode and the ability to build custom channel roles as potential developments. 

The chat channels announcement came alongside two other small Reddit updates. The company has rolled out an new subreddit header that shrinks the space between the header and posts, makes the search bar into one button and shows tabs like "menu" and "about" by clicking anywhere across the header. Reddit claims these updates increased community subscriptions and actions in tests. It also announced May 9th as an official shutdown date for its Predictions polling game. Users will no longer be able to create or join an active tournament and old tournaments will become inaccessible. 

For now, chat channels are still at the pilot program stage with only 25 subreddits testing them out at the moment — totalling less than 100,000 users. Mods interested in trying it out can add their subreddit to a participation waiting list.

Everyone loves a good to-do list, and now they're spreading into PC games. Along with a slew of other new features, Steam's latest update includes an integrated Notes app as part of a re-vamped in-game overlay tool. It lets you write thoughts and tasks down about the game you're playing then runs on top of the game while you play, which you can access across any PC you log into and when playing offline.

Valve

At any time you can pin the to-do list right to your gaming screen, adjusting its opacity based on your preferences. Guides, discussions and whatever is on your browser (even the show you're watching) can also be clipped to the game. 

Steam's other updates to the in-game overlay include a revamped toolbar and overview. The new toolbar has everything from chat to guides, customizable depending on fields you want to see and in either icon or list mode. The game overview will fill you in on information like accomplishment progress, friends' game play and news about that title.  

Notifications have also cleaned up a bit with less interruptions of things unrelated to you. The tray will only display newest notifications, but you can still view all if you want. The last in-game Steam update is for screenshots, allowing you to choose between large and small thumbnails, while also sorting screenshots by most recent, instead of per game. 

These features are only available through the Steam Client Beta at the moment, but if you’ve never opted into the Beta version before, it’s pretty simple. All you need to do is go to settings (it will be called preferences if you're on a Mac), click the change button where it says Beta Participation in the Accounts tab and choose Steam Beta Update. Once you restart Steam, the Beta features will become visible.

Valve asserts that a lot of its recent work has gone towards improving code sharing between Steam Desktop Client, Deck and Big Picture mode. The company claims this should allow future features to roll out quicker across the different platforms. 

If you hate breathing in pollutants and don't mind being stared at, then your time might have come: The Dyson Zone headphones are finally available to buy in the US. They mark the company's first foray into wearable technology and it's certainly making a statement with them. The headphones include a sizeable (but detachable) visor that stretches across your mouth to provide cleaner air. 

The visor's ectrostatic filter is designed to remove up to 99 percent of pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and ozone. It works in tandem with the ear cups — as they draw in air, it gets filtered. Then two purified streams of air flow into your mouth and nose — so, be prepared to feel that air if you use it. You can change the speed with a button on the left ear cup. The filter lasts for up to 12 months and, notably, it doesn't protect against COVID-19. A mask can be worn with it, but the product alone is not designed to block the virus.

The Dyson Zone headphones last up to 50 hours with "isolation" or "transparency" noise cancelling options. You can control this and the airflow speed through the MyDyson app. It will also let you know how much nitrogen dioxide is in the air. 

When we tested the Dyson Zone headphones, they were surprisingly comfortable — though it did take some time to figure out how to snap the visor in properly. The breeze of the air felt nice, almost like a personal air conditioning. The visor merited some stares when on a quick walk outside, so it could be more lowkey to use on an airplane. 

The headphones come with one filter, a USB-C charging cable and a visor cleaning brush and sleeve. They can be bought in satin silver and ultra blue or prussian blue and ultra blue. These two colorways have a 'Quarter Turn' hard case to keep them safe.  

They're available on Dyson Direct in prussian blue and bright copper. This model comes with two filters, explorer case, in-flight adaptor kit and soft pouch. These unique headphones don't come cheap, though, starting at $949, they might merit trying them for yourself before going all in.

Google Meet is rolling out 1080p resolution to give users a crisper image on their next video call. The update brings the company in-line with its competitors, Zoom and Microsoft Teams, who already offer calls in full HD. Previously, the best quality you could get on a Google Meet video call was 720p. 

The update has limited reach, as it's web-only for now, requires a camera with 1080p capabilities and is limited to two-person meetings. It's also only available for paid Google Meet versions, such as Google Workspace Business Standard or Plus and Enterprise Starter, Standard, Plus and Essential. Google One subscribers can also access the higher resolution if they have at least 2TB of storage on their device.

Qualifying customers will have to upgrade their resolution on Google Meet manually, as it's off by default. The process is pretty simple: When you login to a new Google Meet video call, a popup will appear from the change button (labelled with three vertical dots) stating, "Let people see you in full HD" alongside information about the update. You can then choose to turn it on or dismiss the notification. Either way, you can change your resolution at any time by clicking that button, then settings, video and finally choosing from the resolution dropdown choices.

The option for higher resolution calls follows other recent Google Meet updates, like emoji reactions and automatic transcriptions. 

Google Meet will roll out 1080p resolution for customers with rapid release domains in the next two weeks and for those with scheduled release domains by May 19th. 

A young Harrison Ford will grace cinema screens for 25 minutes this summer — aided by some new Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) software. The news that LucasFilm's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny would feature a de-aged Ford came at the end of last year, but an interview with director James Mangold in Total Film just revealed it will be for almost a fifth of the film's running time. 

The fifth Indiana Jones iteration starts with an opening scene from 1944 — about eight years after Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark took place. "My hope is that, although it will be talked about in terms of technology, you just watch it and go, ‘Oh my God, they just found footage. This was a thing they shot 40 years ago," Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm and a producer, told Empire. The rest of the movie shoots forward to 1969, with Indy on a mission to prevent a comeback of Nazism.

The news of Ford's extended return to his thirties comes a few months after Disney, which produced the movie alongside LucasFilm, announced it had built an AI that could make an actor appear older or younger with relative ease at the end of last year. The researchers behind the AI, known as FRAN (face re-aging network), explained it would only work with real people if there were images available of the person in those poses and lighting at a younger age.

Footage of Ford's earlier roles was pulled from the Lucasfilm archives to accomplish this. Ford also acted with dots across his face to aid the system — and with the agility of a young man, according to Mangold. Then, the technology would quickly do its thing. Mangold would "shoot Harrison on a Monday as, you know, a 79-year-old playing a 35-year-old, and I could see dailies by Wednesday with his head already replaced." 

BMW has announced Android smartphone owners can now use hands-free technology that opens your car with your phone. The feature, known as the Digital Key Plus, will be available on the Samsung Galaxy S23+, Galaxy S23 Ultra, Google Pixel 7 Pro and a range of other newer Samsung devices. Prior to this, it was only available for anyone with an iPhone or Apple Watch.

The Digital Key Plus uses ultra wideband (UWB) digital radio technology to function the same way any traditional key fob would: When your phone goes near your car — from inside your pocket, bag or so on — it unlocks and then locks back up again when you leave. You can also access controls directly on the My BMW app to lock and unlock the car, open your trunk and control the temperature. The homepage lets you know the status of each feature, such as if your car is actually locked. 

BMW previously released its Digital Key for the Samsung Galaxy S21 and Google Pixel 6 phones, but that feature required drivers to hold their phone up to the door handle. The hands-free option is a small upgrade, but saves digging for your phone at least. BMW also claims the UWB technology's precision almost entirely removes the risk of anyone jamming or intercepting the radio signals. 

The expansion follows BMW's December announcement that you can share a Digital Key between Apple and Google devices. Basically, if you're nice enough to let a friend borrow your car for the weekend, they can use their phone to control it. 

At the moment, you need a pretty new car to make use of this new feature. Only BMW cars built since November 2022 with Digital Key Plus technology are compatible with Androids. The company plans to use remote software updates to eventually expand access to older models.