Amazon's Ring is raising the price of its cheapest Basic subscription, following similar bumps by Google and others, the company said in a FAQ seen by The Verge. As of March 11, it's going from $4 to $5 per month (or $40 to $50 dollars a year), an increase of 25 percent. 

The last time Ring raised its Basic plan rate in June of 2022 (from $3 to $4 per month), it also added a few features like additional cloud storage, larger bulk videos downloads and the ability to receive exclusive discounts on future Ring product. This time, though the price is increasing with no additional benefits added. 

While just a couple of Starbucks Flat White coffees per year more, the bump could be more significant for some users. The Basic plan only covers one camera and each requires a sub to save and record videos. That means users with two or more cameras may be better off with the Ring Protect Plus plan (which covers all Ring doorbells and home cameras at one location), since it's now exactly twice as much at $10 per month or $100 per year. (Without a plan, you can only view a livestream and receive motion alerts.)

Ring's move follows Google, which raised its cheapest Nest Aware plan from $6 to $8 per month ($60 to $80 per year) in September last year, though that option covers every camera on your account. That now makes Google's option better for new users who haven't bought any hardware. 

If you're looking to spend even less, Blink and Wyze both offer single camera cloud plans for $3 per month, and both companies support local storage as well. Another option is buying devices that support Apple HomeKit Secure Video, provided you have an iCloud+ subscription.

Homeworld 3, the much-anticipated sequel to 20-year-old real-time strategy game Homeworld 2, has been delayed once again, Gearbox Publishing and Blackbird Interactive announced. It's now set to come out on May 13, 2024, a couple of months after the previously announced March 8 debut.

The decision to delay was made following a playthrough by users from outside the company. "This resulted in additional insights and perspective the will be incorporated to make Homeworld 3 the best experience possible," the team wrote. A public demo also likely weighed on the decision, showing some issues like balky camera and other controls.

Gearbox Publishing/Blackbird Interactive

Homeworld 3 was originally pegged for a 2022 release, but it was postponed until 2023 and later February 2024, then again slightly until March 8. Though public beta users found some elements balky, the game generated positive comments as well, so the new May 13 date may be realistic. 

Homeworld 3 is an ambitious sequel to its popular predecessor, attempting to capture the vibe that people loved while introducing new modes including PvP and co-op. The latter (War Games) has a roguelike aspect emphasizing coordination with fellow players and may be the new title's ace in the hole. In any case, May is a generally a quiet month for game releases, so if the latest date works out, it would be a fine time to get into a complex RTS. 

A key feature of Apple's Vision Pro VR, er, spatial computing headset is Personas that that lets people see a digital version of themselves during calls, Zoom meetings, etc. At launch, they looked a bit creepy, but Apple has improved them considerably in the latest release, according to posts on X spotted by MacRumors. They're now more realistic, so users look less like impressionist paintings and more like humans. 

Once the visionOS 1.1 update is installed, you'll be prompted to recapture your Persona to get the "latest appearance updates" — this is apparently done in part with the headset off and pointing at your face. Most users feel the updated Personas are better, and visually, they look less blurry and a touch more realistic, plus the proportions seem better.

As a reminder, Personas are a digital representing of the users created by data from the headset's sensors and a new machine learning algorithm. They're designed to be an "authentic spatial representation" of someone that shows their facial expressions and hand movements — so you won't be a dork in a mask on group calls.

If you need to do that, though, a similar feature called EyeSight shows other people a digital version of your eyes when you're wearing the Vision Pro. Apple still calls Personas a beta feature and provides detailed instructions to get the best results.

Anker makes some of the most-recommended charging products out there, but the extra quality comes at a price. If you've been waiting for a sale, you can now grab a number of Anker chargers and other smartphone accessories at Amazon with discounts of up to 52 percent. Standout products include the Anker Prime Power Bank ($90, the lowest price we've seen by far), iPhone 15 portable charger ($20 instead of $30), Nano II 30W fast charger ($16, 33 percent off) and a USB-C Cable 3-pack for $18, saving you 40 percent. 

To start with, the Anker Prime 20,000mAh 200W power bank is our pick for the best premium power bank. It has two USB-C ports and one USB-A port capable of delivering a total charging output of 200W. That means you can charge two laptops at 100W each simultaneously. That 100W charging goes the other way too, so you can fully recharge the power bank in just 75 minutes.

Another great deal is on the iPhone 15 portable charger (Nano Power Bank), so called because of the USB-C connector. It attaches to the bottom and offers 5,000mAh hours of charging at a relatively quick 22.5W and of course works with other USB-C devices including iPad Pro/Air, AirPods, Android smartphones and more.  

The Anker Power Bank 10,000mAh portable charger can charge an iPhone 14 twice and an iPad Mini up to 1.3 times, according to the company. It also has the benefit of two ports, so it can charge two devices at once. Meanwhile, the Anker Nano II 30W GaN II compact fast charger has enough juice to charge a 2020 MacBook Air at full speed and apply a relatively quick charge to smartphones, tablets and more. 

Finally, if it's cables you're after, Anker has those, too. You can grab the Anker 333 USB-C to USB-C 3-pack (3.3-, 6-, and 10-feet lengths, 100W limit) for just $18, for a savings of 40 percent. This is one of the better off-season Anker sales we've seen, but it's always best to act soon if you're looking to buy. 

Apple's latest Pencil with a USB-C charging port, which has only been available since November, is currently on sale for the lowest price we've seen yet. You can grab it at Amazon for $69, saving you $10 (13 percent) off the regular $79 price. 

The USB-C model is Apple's most budget-friendly pencil to date, priced at $20 less than the original model and $40 cheaper than the second-gen Apple pencil. Despite the lower price, it offers the same accuracy as those models, along with low latency and tilt sensitivity. It even includes support for a hover feature for M2 iPads, letting you preview any lines before applying them to your sketch or notes. You can also magnetically attach the USB-C Apple Pencil to the side of supported iPads. 

It doesn't have pressure sensitivity, so serious artists may want to stick with the 2nd-generation model. It also lacks wireless charging and you can't double tap it to change drawing tools. Still, it's Apple's first all-USB-C Pencil and has plenty on offer for most users — particularly at the $69 price. 

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Microsoft is teaming up with media website Semafor on a new project that uses ChatGPT to aid in the creation of news stories, The Financial Times has reported. It's one of several journalistic collaborations Microsoft is set to announce today, and follows a New York Times lawsuit filed against the software giant and its partner, OpenAI, for copyright infringement.

Semafor, co-founded by former Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith, will create a feed called "Signals" that will be sponsored by Microsoft for an undisclosed but "substantial" sum, the report states. It will highlight breaking news and analysis, offering a dozen or so posts per day. All stories will be written entirely by journalists, with the AI effectively acting as a research tool.

Signals responds to the deep and continuing shifts in the digital media landscape and the post-social news moment, and to the risks and opportunities posed by artificial intelligence, Semafor wrote.

Specifically, Semafor's team will use AI tools to rapidly find breaking event reporting from other news sources around the world in multiple languages, while providing translation tools. An article might therefore include Chinese, Indian or other sources, with reporters adding context and summarizing the different viewpoints. "Journalists need to adopt these tools in order to survive and thrive for another generation," former AP journalist Noreen Gillespie, now with Microsoft, told The Financial Times. 

The use of ChatGPT and other AI chatbots has been controversial in newsrooms, with sites like CNET recently using them to generate entire feature-length articles (albeit with the help of human editors). This despite the fact that AI can "hallucinate" (make up untrue content) and exhibit other kinds of bizarre behavior. Newsrooms are trying to figure out how to use them to improve reporting and potentially compete against chatbots churning out reams of SEO-friendly content.

Late last year, The New York Times announced that it was suing OpenAI and Microsoft for using published news articles to train its chatbots without providing compensation. The lawsuit, which potentially seeks billions in statutory and actual damages, marks the first time a major news organization has pursued ChatGPT's developers for copyright infringement.

Microsoft also announced collaborations today with the Craig Newmark School of Journalism, the GroundTruth Project, the Online News Association and other journalism organizations. 

Samsung chairman Jay Y. Lee's legal troubles may be in the rearview mirror as a Korean court acquitted him of stock manipulation and accounting fraud charges over a 2015 merger, The Financial Times has reported. The ruling allows Lee to continue leading Samsung, which saw a sharp decline in revenue last year. 

Seeking a five year jail term, prosecutors accused Lee of manipulating the share price of two Samsung subsidiaries to smooth the way for a merger that allowed him to consolidate his power. However, the Seoul Central District Court ruled that the prosecutors failed to prove that. "It is hard to say that Lee Jae-yong [aka Jay Y. Lee] . . . spearheaded the merger, and that the merger was done just for the sake of Lee’s succession," the judge stated in the ruling.

The verdict will allow Lee and Samsung to focus on its declining smartphone and memory chip businesses. Samsung recently lost its smartphone sales crown to Apple, and is now behind SK Hynix in the new and hot market of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used by NVIDIA and others to create artificial intelligence (AI) models. 

The decision was heralded by business groups including the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, but not everyone in the country agreed. "The ruling will free Lee of legal risks, but I am at a loss for words in terms of the country’s economic justice," Park Ju-geun, head of corporate thinktank Leaders Index, told the FT. "This goes totally against all previous court rulings on the merger."

Lee was originally sentenced to five years in prison in 2017 after being found guilty of bribing public officials over the same merger. He walked free after a year in detention, but the South Korean Supreme Court overturned that decision and ordered the case to be retried.

While Lee was sentenced with two-and-a-half years of prison time in early 2021 in that retrial, he was paroled half a year later in a development that civic groups had described as another example of the justice system being lenient towards the country's elite. (Korea's former president Park Geun-hye also went to jail for her role in the same affair.) 

In 2022, Lee was given a pardon by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, ostensibly so he could help the country overcome its economic crisis. Ironically, Yoon is the country's former chief prosecutor and oversaw the original convictions of Lee and Park. 

One of Google Search's oldest and best-known features, cache links, are being retired, Google's search liaison said in an X post seen by The Verge. Best known by the "Cached" button, those are a snapshot of a web page the last time Google indexed it. However, according to Google, they're no longer required. 

"It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading,” Google's Danny Sullivan wrote in the post. “These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.

Nowadays, however, the feature is used for more than just a web page backup. Many people rely on it to check to validity of a site, and SEO managers can employ the feature to check their pages for errors. Many users, particularly news professionals, use the cache to see if a website has recently been updated, with information added or removed. And sometimes, a cache can let you check a site that's geoblocked in your region. 

Previously, clicking on the three-dot menu next to a result would open an "about this result" dialog with the Cached button at bottom right. Now, however, it opens a much larger menu showing a website's "about" page, a Wikipedia descrtipoin, privacy settings and more. The cached button is now nowhere to be seen.

None of the comments in Sullivan's replies were positive, with one SEO user saying "come on, why delete the function? It's really helpful for all SEO." Sullivan did say that Google may one day add links to the Internet Archive where the cache link button used to be, within About This Result. 

However, that sounds like it's far from a done deal, and would shift a massive amount of traffic over to the Internet Archive. "No promises. We have to talk to them, see how it all might go — involves people well beyond me. But I think it would be nice all around," he wrote. 

If you're in the market for a Fire TV device it's a good time to buy, as Amazon is having an early Valentine's Day event. The Fire TV Stick 4K is on sale for $35, for a savings of $15 (30 percent) off the regular price. You can also grab the Fire TV Stick 4K Max for $40, netting you 33 percent ($20 off). And finally, the Fire TV Cube is priced at $115, near its lowest price ever. 

The Fire TV Stick 4K Max is Amazon’s most powerful streaming stick, thanks to a faster processor that delivers 40 percent more power than the one in the Fire TV Stick 4K. That translates to faster app start times and more fluid menu navigation, for a better overall experience. The Fire TV Sitck 4K Max also comes with WiFi 6 connectivity, as well as support for Dolby Vision, HDR, HDR10+ and Dolby Atmos audio, along with Alexa commands via the Alexa Voice Remote.

While not quite as zippy, the Fire TV Stick 4K is slightly cheaper at $35. It's a great option if you want a low-profile streaming device that can handle 4K content. It also supports Dolby Vision and HDR, and comes with the Alexa Voice Remote, which lets you search for and launch content with voice commands. Frankly though, for the extra $2, I'd grab the Fire TV Stick 4K Max.

The Fire TV Cube is Amazon's most powerful streaming device with a hexa-core processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. It supports 4K, HDR content with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, and it has picture-in-picture live view as well. You're also getting hands-free Alexa controls, too, letting you turn off your lights or check the weather, even with your TV off.

Finally, don't forget about Amazon's Fire TV soundbar that's back on sale for $100, for a savings of nearly 20 percent. It can enhance your TV audio via dual speakers, with access to 3D surround sound, while offering DTS Virtual X and Dolby Audio support.

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After threatening to do so earlier this week, Universal Music Group (UMG) has started pulling the catalogs of performers it represents including Taylor Swift, Drake, Billie Eilish, The Weeknd and others. There are no longer tracks listed in profiles of some of the world's most notable artists.

Moreover, UMG music featured in TikTok videos will be muted going forward, forcing creators to replace the tracks with options from other music labels. That won’t be easy for many of them, considering the huge number of lip-sync videos that litter the social network.

It’s a drastic move on Universal’s part, given that TikTok is a valuable marketing platform for its artists. However, UMG also has a fair amount of leverage, given that it’s the largest record label in the world with some of the most popular artists. Either way, it’s a blow for both creators and users of the platform.

Universal had previously stated that TikTok wanted to pay a "fraction" of the rate paid by other social media sites: "As our negotiations continued, TikTok attempted to bully us into accepting a deal worth less than the previous deal, far less than fair market value and not reflective of their exponential growth."

In response, TikTok said that it serves as a valuable marketing tool for artists and publishers. "Despite Universal's false narrative and rhetoric, the fact is they have chosen to walk away from the powerful support of a platform with well over a billion users that serves as a free promotional and discovery vehicle for their talent."