'Hogwarts Legacy' is delayed until February 10th, 2023PlayStation’s game-streaming scheme, at its top tier, is now competing directly with Xbox Game Pass, the service that proved the concept by earning 25 million-plus subscribers over the past five years. It’s now been over a month since PlayStation Plus Premium went live, offering similar cloud gaming services to Microsoft's console.

Engadget

However, there are some major differences in strategy, however. Sony doesn’t plan on adding big PlayStation-exclusive games like Forspoken or God of War Ragnarök to Plus on day one, meaning subscribers will have to buy these titles separately, at least at launch. On the Xbox side of things, Game Pass Ultimate includes big first-party games like Halo Infinite on release day. But as Engadget’s Jessica Conditt put it, this isn’t about one service being better than the others, but about adjusting to the new normal for video games.

For your monthly subscription dues, do you value Game Pass Ultimate over Netflix?

— Mat Smith

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Peloton is jacking up prices of its Bike+ and Tread fitness gear again

The company is also cutting another 784 jobs.

Another service with a monthly tithe is adjusting its business. It's been a brutal year for Peloton, and the company is enacting more major changes to get back on track. On the consumer front, Peloton is reversing price cuts to two pieces of fitness equipment. The Bike+ is going back up from $1,995 to $2,495 in the US. Peloton announced a huge loss of $757.1 million for the first three months of 2022 due to a decline in revenue and soaring costs.

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Formula E’s 100th E-Prix: Eight years of all-electric racing

We take a look back.

Formula E's first race, the 2014 Beijing E-Prix Sam Bloxham

When the checkered flag dropped yesterday in Seoul, Formula E finished its 100th race. Starting on the back of a napkin in 2011, the world’s first all-electric single-seater championship launched after three years of planning. Engadget’s Billy Steele talked to cofounder Alberto Longo and former champ Lucas di Grassi.

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Apple reportedly tried to partner with Facebook to get a cut of its revenue

It would have gotten a cut from an ad-free, paid Facebook subscription service.

Apple announced back at WWDC 2020 that iOS would require apps to ask users to opt-in to cross-app advertising tracking. Facebook then spent much of the next few months speaking out against Apple and predicting revenue instability due to the upcoming changes. The feature was released in April 2021, and Meta, as it’s now called, did survive. Surprisingly, though, a new report from The Wall Street Journal claims that before this all went down, Facebook and Apple were working on a partnership and revenue-sharing agreement.

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'Hogwarts Legacy' is delayed until February 10th, 2023

It's coming to PC, PlayStation and Xbox.

Avalanche Software/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has once again delayed Harry Potter game Hogwarts Legacy, which at least now has a firm release date. It will hit PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on February 10th. The Switch release date will be announced sometime soon, indicating the version faces a further delay.

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Facebook and Apple have been at odds for several years now; Apple announced back at WWDC 2020 that iOS would require apps to ask users to opt-in to cross-app advertising tracking. Facebook spent much of the next months speaking out against Apple's plans and predicting revenue instability due to the upcoming changes, but the feature was released in iOS 14.5 back in April of 2021. Somewhat surprisingly, though, a new report from The Wall Street Journal claims that before this all went down, Facebook and Apple were working on a partnership and revenue-sharing agreement.

According to the Journal, Apple and Facebook were considering a a subscription service that would offer an ad-free version of the platform. And since Apple takes a cut of in-app purchases, including subscriptions, it could have been a very lucrative arrangement indeed. 

Another arrangement that was discussed and ended up being a point of contention was Apple taking a cut of "boosted posts," which essentially amounts to paying to put a post in front of a larger audience. Facebook has long considered boosted posts part of its advertising portfolio; as the Journal notes, small businesses often use boosted posts to reach more people. The issue came down to Apple saying boosts should be considered in-app purchases, which would be subject to the 30 percent revenue cut that the company takes. Facebook, on the other hand, maintained that those were advertising products which aren't subject to Apple's cut.

Since rolling out its user-tracking changes in 2021, research firm Insider Intelligence claims that 37 percent of iPhone users have opted in to letting companies track their activity across apps. Since the change went into effect, Facebook (now Meta) has seen its revenue growth shrink significantly — and last quarter, Meta reported the first revenue decline in the company's history. 

As these discussions reportedly took place between 2016 and 2018, we're a long way off from these talks. Apple is doing its best to position itself as a defender of privacy, and Meta... well, Meta is busy trying to make the Metaverse a thing. But for now at least, advertising is the only notable way Meta makes revenue, so the company will have to continue to adjust to a world in which iOS app tracking protection is a thing that most users take advantage of.

One thing that will help bolster adoption of cloud gaming is by making it as easy as possible to fire up a game. To that end, Google is testing a way to start playing something with a single click from search results, even if it's not on the company's own Stadia platform.

The test, which was spotted by Bryant Chappel of The Nerf Report, not only enables folks to directly launch a game on Stadia, but it works with Xbox Cloud Gaming, NVIDIA GeForce Now and Amazon Luna as well. If you’re enrolled in the test and search for a game on one of those platforms (such as Destiny 2 or Halo Infinite), you may see a Play button in the information panel. Clicking that will either start up the game or take you to a landing page on the respective streaming platform.

The Verge and 9to5 Google saw the feature in action too. The latter noted the search results can show if a game has a timed trial on Stadia or if it’s available for free or as part of a premium subscription.

It's not incredibly surprising to see Google testing out such functionality. For several years, it has shown folks where they can stream movies and TV shows in search results. For instance, if you have a Netflix subscription and search for Stranger Things on Google, you'll be able to start watching the show with a single click. 

In hindsight, it's a little odd that Google hasn't offered this feature for Stadia from the jump in order to promote its cloud gaming service. On the other hand, Stadia's store didn't have a search function for a year and a half, which offered further evidence that the platform isn't exactly one of Google's highest priorities. However, Stadia is not shutting down and Google is slowly adding more features to it.

It took several months, but you now have access to 1Password's major updates on your phone. The company has released 1Password 8 for Android and iOS, and many of the desktop version's features have carried over to mobile. For starters, there's a new home screen that provides quicker, customized access to frequently-used passwords. There's also a new navigation bar to help you find info across every account you use.

The updated 1Password is also better at dealing with an era when data breaches are all too common. The Watchtower dashboard has reached mobile devices, providing alerts when a breach compromises your login. The tool also helps you randomly generate answers to security questions, and even encourages you to strengthen your sign-ins by generating an overall security score. More advanced passwords, two-factor authentication and other changes can boost your rating.

The additions won't necessarily persuade you to switch from LastPass and similar password managers. However, they might make a good case for trying 1Password f you routinely search for passwords or want a broader picture of your digital security.

Apple and Google are already facing scrutiny in the wake of a South Korean law requiring that they allow third-party payments. Reutersreports the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) will investigate Apple, Google and SK Group's One Store over potential violations of the in-app payment law. Regulators said they started inspecting the digital shops on May 17th, and found enough to be concerned all three might have broken the rules.

It's not certain just how the firms might have violated the law. MacRumorsnoted that a delay in communicating changes might have played a role in Apple's case. While the law (a revision of the Telecommunications Business Act) took effect in March, Apple didn't notify developers until late June. Google alerted Android developers in November of last year.

Both companies still take cuts from purchases made using alternative billing systems — they just take smaller portions. When Google announced its policy change, it maintained that it needed fees to "continue to invest" in Android and the Play Store. It's not clear if these policies play any role in the investigation, however.

We've asked Apple and Google for comment. In a statement to Reuters, Google said it would continue cooperating with the KCC and that it had "worked closely" with both the government and developers to comply with the law.

The law allows for fines as high as two percent of the average yearly revenue for related business. Officials didn't set expectations for possible fines, but the stores are major money generators. Apple, for example, paid developers $60 billion worldwide in 2021 and made a tidy profit for itself through fees on those sales. Even if South Korea only considered revenue earned within its borders to be actionable for fines, this could still lead to steep penalties if the KCC finds any violations.

When Intel introduced the Arc branding last year for its high-performance consumer graphics products, it demonstrated what the line's GPUs can do using video games. The company's latest Arc GPUs, however, aren't for gaming at all: They were designed for desktop and mobile workstations running apps like Adobe Premiere Pro, Handbrake and DaVinci Resolve Studio. Intel has launched its Arc Pro lineup with three models, starting with the Arc Pro A40 that has a "tiny, single-slot form factor." The Arc Pro A50 is a step up and has a larger dual-slot form, while the A30M was made specifically for laptops. 

All three models offer built-in ray tracing and machine learning capabilities, but their key specs differ a bit from each other. The A40 and the A30M, for instance, have 3.50 teraflops of graphical power, while the A50 has 4.80 teraflops. Both desktop models come with 6GB of memory, wheres the one for laptops comes with 4GB. Plus, all models support AV1 hardware encoding acceleration in what Intel says is an industry first. The new GPUs also have four mini-display ports for multiple screen setups and can support two 8K displays with a refresh rate of 60Hz, one 5K 240Hz display, two 5K 120 Hz displays or four 60 Hz 4K displays.

Intel has yet to reveal how much these new discrete GPUs for workstations will cost, but it said they will be available starting later this year "from leading mobile and desktop ecosystem partners."

Twitter has confirmed a vulnerability in its code led to a data exposure late last year. In a blog post published on Friday, the company said a malicious actor took advantage of a zero-day flaw before it became aware of and patched the issue in January 2022. The vulnerability was discovered by a security researcher who contacted Twitter through the company’s bug bounty program.

When Twitter first learned of the flaw, it said it had “no evidence” to suggest it had been exploited. However, an individual told Bleeping Computer last month that they took advantage of the vulnerability to obtain data on more than 5.4 million accounts. Twitter said it could not confirm how many users were affected by the exposure. The vulnerability allowed the bad actor to determine whether an email address or phone number was tied to an existing Twitter account. In turn, they could use that information to determine the identity of an account’s owner.

“We are publishing this update because we aren’t able to confirm every account that was potentially impacted, and are particularly mindful of people with pseudonymous accounts who can be targeted by state or other actors,” Twitter said. “If you operate a pseudonymous Twitter account, we understand the risks an incident like this can introduce and deeply regret that this happened.”

Twitter said it would directly notify every account owner it could confirm was affected by the exposure. For users trying to keep their identity hidden, the company recommends not adding a publicly known phone number or email address to an account. It also suggests adding two-factor authentication.

More than half a decade after Microsoft's truly monumental Taye debacle, the incident still stands as stark reminder of how quickly an AI can be corrupted after exposure to the internet's potent toxicity and a warning against building bots without sufficiently robust behavioral tethers. On Wednesday, Meta's AI Research division will see if its latest iteration of Blenderbot AI can stand up to the horrors of the interwebs with the public demo release of its 175 billion-parameter Blenderbot 3.

A major obstacle currently facing chatbot technology (as well as the natural language processing algorithms that drive them) is one of sourcing. Traditionally, chatbots are trained in highly-curated environments — because otherwise you invariably get a Taye — but that winds up limiting the subjects that it can discuss to those specific ones available in the lab. Conversely, you can have the chatbot pull information from the internet to have access to a broad swath of subjects but could, and probably will, go full Nazi at some point. 

"Researchers can’t possibly predict or simulate every conversational scenario in research settings alone," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Wednesday blog post. "The AI field is still far from truly intelligent AI systems that can understand, engage, and chat with us like other humans can. In order to build models that are more adaptable to real-world environments, chatbots need to learn from a diverse, wide-ranging perspective with people 'in the wild.'" 

Meta has been working to address the issue since it first introduced the BlenderBot 1 chat app in 2020. Initially little more than an open-source NLP experiment, by the following year, BlenderBot 2 had learned both to remember information it had discussed in previous conversations and how to search the internet for additional details on a given subject. BlenderBot 3 takes those capabilities a step further by not just evaluating the data it pulls from the web but also the people it speaks with.  

When a user logs an unsatisfactory response from the system— currently hovering around 0.16 percent of all training responses — Meta works the feedback from the user back into the model to avoid it repeating the mistake. The system also employs the Director algorithm which first generates a response using training data, then runs the response through a classifier to check if it fits within a user feedback-defined scale of right and wrong. 

"To generate a sentence, the language modeling and classifier mechanisms must agree," Zuckerberg wrote. "Using data that indicates good and bad responses, we can train the classifier to penalize low-quality, toxic, contradictory, or repetitive statements, and statements that are generally unhelpful." The system also employs a separate user-weighting algorithm to detect unreliable or ill-intentioned responses from the human conversationalist — essentially teaching the system to not trust what that person has to say. 

"Our live, interactive, public demo enables BlenderBot 3 to learn from organic interactions with all kinds of people," Zuckerberg wrote. "We encourage adults in the United States to try the demo, conduct natural conversations about topics of interest, and share their responses to help advance research."

BB3 is expected to speak more naturally and conversationally than its predecessor, in part, thanks to its massively upgraded OPT-175B language model, which stands nearly 60 times larger than BB2's model. "We found that, compared with BlenderBot 2, BlenderBot 3 provides a 31 percent improvement in overall rating on conversational tasks, as evaluated by human judgments," Zuckerberg said. "It is also judged to be twice as knowledgeable, while being factually incorrect 47 percent less of the time. Compared with GPT3, on topical questions it is found to be more up-to-date 82 percent of the time and more specific 76 percent of the time."

The Financial Times has published a lengthy report saying that Apple has fostered a culture of apathy toward reports of employee misconduct, and has actively retaliated against staff members who complained about colleagues, including those who reported incidents of sexual assault. If accurate, the allegations are at odds with the image of inclusiveness that Apple projects, and cast a pall on the real progress it has made in boosting its workforce diversity. 

Multiple women described filing complaints with Apple's human resources department over sexual abuse, bullying and other incidents. Former employee Megan Mohr complained that a colleague removed her bra and clothes while she was asleep and took photos of her after a platonic night out. However, the HR representative called the experience "a minor traffic accident."

"Although what he did was reprehensible as a person and potentially criminal, as an Apple employee he hasn't violated any policy in the context of his Apple work," Apple's HR department said in an email seen by FT. "And because he hasn't violated any policy we will not prevent him seeking employment opportunities that are aligned with his goals and interests." 

An Apple Store Genius employee complained about two instances of serious sexual assault including being raped, and said HR treated her not as a victim, but as the problem. "I was told [the alleged rapist] went on a ‘career experience’ for six months and they said: ‘maybe you’ll be better by the time he’s back?" She requested a transfer but it was declined, and she still works at the same store. 

IP attorney Margaret Anderson complained of a "toxic work environment" and "gaslighting," and said a male vice-president wanted to fire her, citing false allegations that predated her arrival at Apple. HR reportedly ignored a document she created refuting the allegations.

Employees have also complained about Apple suppressing worker organizing and blocking Slack channels used by employees to complain about bad managers and pay inequity. Software engineer Cher Scarlett said Apple retaliated after she filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The company offered her a $213,000 severance package, but she refused to sign it because Apple demanded she hand over a letter sent to the NLRB that included the names of other employees. 

That's their playbook. Offer me enough money to pay off my lawyers and debt, and they wanted a list of people to retaliate against. How do I talk about how egregious that truly is?

She accepted the deal when Apple withdrew the demand, but was forced to pull the NLRB complaint. However, she intentionally broke the agreement when Apple sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) saying it "supports the rights of its employees and contractors to speak freely." Scarlett then showed her exit arrangement to the media, which led to eight US state treasurers asking the SEC to investigate "whether or not Apple misled the Commission and investors." 

The highest profile complaint was from Jayne Whitt, a director in Apple's legal department. She told HR that a colleague hacked her devices and threatened her life, with the expectation that the complaint would be handled seriously. Instead, the employee investigative division said Whitt "failed to act in a professional and work appropriate manner" during their meeting, at a time when Whitt "said she was begging for help and reliving trauma," the FT wrote. 

She subsequently posted a 2,800 word essay on the whistleblower platform The Lioness describing the situation, prompting an outpouring of support from Apple employees. However, Apple proceeded to fire her based on what she called an "irrelevant" six-year-old indiscretion. 

Whitt is now challenging Apple legally, and said the Slack channels on gender-pay disparity helped open her eyes. "I was disadvantaged — this is how women struggle," she said. "Had these stories [on Slack] not been coming out, I would not have been compelled to do the right thing, to blow up my career."

Apple told The Financial Times in a statement that it works hard to thoroughly investigate misconduct allegations and strives to create "an environment where employees feel comfortable reporting any issues." However, it acknowledged not having always met those ideals. "There are some accounts raised that do not reflect our intentions or our policies and we should have handled them differently, including certain exchanges reported in this story. As a result, we will make changes to our training and processes." It wouldn't comment on specific cases "out of respect for the privacy of the individuals involved." 

Apple tends to roll out its major software versions on a regular cadence, with iPhone and iPad updates usually dropping soon after its after its big annual hardware event in September. Things could be different this year, though. Bloomberg reports that Apple might delay iPadOS 16 by a month or so.

The main issue is said to be with the Stage Manager multitasking tool, which will only be available on M1-powered iPads. It allows users to resize windows and have them overlapping. However, those who tried the beta by and large found the feature buggy. 

"In its unfinished form, Stage Manager is a bit rough around the edges," Engadget's Nathan Ingraham wrote in his iPadOS 16 preview. "When I was using my iPad with an external display, the system crashed and threw me back to the home screen not infrequently, which obviously kills productivity gains. There are also quirks with apps behaving unpredictably when resizing their windows."

Previous reports indicated that Apple has new iPads lined up for later this year, including a souped-up base model with a USB-C port and an M2-powered iPad Pro. Delaying iPadOS 16 could mean it emerges closer to the arrival of new tablets as well. Pushing back the iPadOS 16 release will also allow Apple to prioritize and polish iOS 16, as Bloomberg notes.

For what it's worth, macOS Ventura also includes Stage Manager. In his preview of the operating system, Devindra Hardawar found that the feature was the standout addition. 

It's expected that Apple will release macOS Ventura in October. Given that Apple has long been trying to pivot away from the perception of the iPad as a big iPhone and make it more of an all-purpose productivity device, rolling out iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura at the same time could send another subtle message about how the company is positioning its tablets.