Back in 2020, Lenovo released the first laptop with a flexible display. And then last year, ASUS added its touch to the category with the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED. Now HP is giving things a go with the Spectre Fold and, after checking out one of just three pre-production samples sent out to the media, it feels like this is easily the best use of the technology yet.

The most striking thing about the Spectre Fold is its design. HP has managed to slim down its bezels and remove nearly all of the chunkiness we saw on the foldable ZenBook. With its 17-inch 2560 x 1920 OLED display opened all the way, the whole thing looks just like any other premium tablet (except for it being really big), which is a pleasant surprise. At 8.5mm thick, it’s deliciously thin and by opting for a lightweight magnesium body, the Spectre Fold tips the scales at just 2.86 pounds (1.3 kg) – a full pound less than ASUS’ creation from 2022.

The Spectre Fold’s display looks great too. The panel is made by LG and basically crease-free (unless you look real hard from an angle), while boasting a listed brightness of up to 500 nits, along with VESA True Black HDR 500 certification. And for all your videoconference needs, HP crammed in a sharp 5-MP IR webcam that supports some clever security features like privacy alerts and automatic walkaway detection.

There’s also a slick kickstand that sits flush against the bottom of the system when not in use. In fact, it looks more like a simple design accent than something functional. Pretty much everywhere you look, the Spectre Fold feels just as sleek and polished as any high-end laptop. Now, that might not sound like a major accomplishment, but given the awkwardness that we’ve seen on previous competitors, that’s no mean feat. I also appreciate how HP included handy features like a switch for a physical webcam shutter and two Thunderbolt 4 ports. And then there are all of the Spectre Fold’s bundled accessories, which include a magnetic Bluetooth keyboard, a stylus (with a spare nib) and even a USB-C docking hub.

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

This brings me to the next best thing about the Spectre Fold, which is how well it works with all of its accessories right out of the box – I didn’t need to mess around with Bluetooth settings or anything. I just fired up the laptop, flipped the toggle on the side of the keyboard and they instantly connected. That is a big improvement compared to what I experienced on the Zenbook 17 Fold and its flaky Bluetooth that forced me to manually repair its keyboard on a semi-regular basis. HP also designed the system to have a 5mm fold radius, which allows the keyboard to nest neatly inside the laptop during travel.

But the perhaps coolest thing about the Spectre Fold (aside from its display, of course) is what you don’t see: a series of charging coils that are hidden inside one edge of the system. This allows both the keyboard and the stylus (which also attaches magnetically) to trickle charge from the laptop’s battery while not in use, so you never have to worry about topping them up yourself. Though, if the keyboard does for some reason run out of juice, HP does include a special USB power dongle that you can whip out in a pinch.

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Of course though, the display is the coolest part. The bendability makes the Spectre Fold what HP says is its first 3-in-1 as it can transform into a tablet, a portable all-in-one desktop and a few different laptop setups. Tablet mode is pretty straightforward, while AIO mode allows you to prop up the display so you can get the most out of that big 17-inch display (I would have loved to have this while traveling recently).

As a laptop, you can choose a somewhat traditional clamshell configuration where you put the keyboard on the bottom half of the display while the top half provides what is essentially a 12.5-inch screen–which is great for tight spaces. Alternatively, you can slide the keyboard towards you to create what HP calls expanded mode, which might be my favorite laptop position. In this setup, the touchpad section of the keyboard drops down and provides a more ergonomic wrist rest. Doing that also reveals more of the folded display (around 14 inches in total) or what HP calls “1.5 screens.” This gives you just enough room to keep things like email or chat apps down below while you have a more important project open up top.

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Finally, there’s extended mode in which you simply place the keyboard on a table in front of the Spectre Fold, giving you full access to that 17-inch screen, but in a bent portrait orientation. Regardless of which setup you prefer, the laptop tries to give you the largest display possible based on your current environment. And thanks to even more magnets inside the system, the keyboard naturally snaps to these various positions resulting in a surprisingly seamless experience.

Granted, even this early I’ve noticed a couple tiny issues, like how the display looks dimmer when viewed from more acute angles, which is what you’ll see in some of its laptop modes. But that’s sort of par for the course even among today’s best flexible screens. Also, while its Intel Core i7-1250U, 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD delivered relatively snappy performance thus far, I’m not expecting a ton of oomph for stuff like editing videos or even light gaming.

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

However, the Spectre Fold’s biggest hurdle is its price: $5,000. That’s even more than the $3,500 ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold, which was already an extremely expensive machine. This is enough to put it out of reach of pretty much everyone, which is definitely a bummer. But at the same time, HP says it created this thing in large part just to show what the company can do with today’s cutting-edge tech. And when viewed more as a forward-thinking demo unit than something people are actually going to buy, I’m a bit less upset about its cost (if only just a bit). I should also point out that despite showing it off more than a year ago, Lenovo’s second flexible-screen laptop–the 17-inch ThinkPad X1 Fold–still doesn’t have a concrete release date. This just shows how difficult systems like this are to make even for companies of this size (Lenovo and HP are the two biggest PC vendors in the world).

That said, if you’re willing to throw a couple of rent payments (or more) at this thing, pre-orders for the Spectre Fold go live today from Best Buy, with official sales on HP.com and Best Buy expected to happen sometime in October.

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 6 received a mostly modest upgrade from its predecessor, the Galaxy Watch 5. Sure, it may have worked to improve some health tracking features. And it even managed to give the wearable a sleeker design while extending battery life. But it is clear that Samsung was not aiming to reinvent the wheel here (and they usually don’t). It's easy to understand why too, when the last generation was already pretty good.

In this year's update, Samsung focused its efforts on expanding its wellness-centric features. These include enhanced personalized sleep coaching and insights, the ability to personalize heart rate zone training during running sessions, improved GPS tracking tailored for track runners, further customization in the workout app and the inclusion of irregular heart rate rhythm notifications, just to name a few. The caveat, of course, is that the Watch 6’s predecessors will have access to all these updates, dating back to the Watch 4. So, if you have one of the previous two models, it might not be necessary to upgrade.

Still, the Galaxy Watch 6’s modest improvements allow it to keep up with frontrunners in the field. For example, it can now stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Fitbit's advanced sleep analysis features. The new heart health tools also give the watch the EKG monitoring prowess of Apple and Pixel smartwatches. Meanwhile, the improved run coaching brings it closer to watches offered by Garmin.

Design and battery life

The mechanical bezel-free edition of the Watch 6 is priced at $299 for the 40mm model, which comes in graphite and gold; the 43mm version, which also comes in silver, commands a slightly higher price of $329. It may lack the rotating bezel of the Classic, but it does have a digital bezel which allows you to scroll through your most-used widgets like Sleep, Workouts, and Weather without needing to poke around a menu. 

With the Watch 6, Samsung also introduced a new design feature called One-Click, which makes it easier to swap bands with the literal click of a button for your ever-changing style needs. I personally am a huge fan of the graphite sports band and the flush circular face which gives the watch a sleeker feel.

The Watch 6 also boasts a more vibrant, higher-resolution display with peak brightness reaching 2,000 nits, up from the last model's max of 1,000 nits. The screen is also 20 percent larger, making it easier to read text. The always on display (AOD) drained battery life of the Watch 5 pretty quickly when our Deputy Reviews Editor Cherlynn Low reviewed it, but I didn't have similar issues wearing the Watch 6 all day.

Malak Saleh

The Galaxy Watch 6 comes equipped with a larger battery to support this year’s bigger and brighter display. Samsung claims the watch should run for up to 30 hours with the AOD on and up to 40 hours with it off. This is ideal for busy people who want the guarantee that the watch will work after an eight-hour workday before heading to the gym and again later, for sleep tracking. After using the watch for a day or two (mainly for workout tracking), I have been able to charge the watch to about 80 percent, or almost full, in under 30 minutes using the quick charge feature, adding at least another eight hours of battery life each time. However, battery life for any wearable tends to fluctuate depending on the extent of usage.

Health monitoring and tracking

Malak Saleh

The Watch 6 features an Irregular Heart Rhythm Notification (IHRN) feature, which is new for Samsung but has been around for years on competing devices. The FDA-backed IHRN tool detects EKG activity that is suggestive of atrial fibrillation (AFib), a condition that usually preempts stroke or heart failure. The feature, approved by the FDA, monitors a user's heart activity continuously in the background. Because I don't have AFib, there was no way to test this feature to see if it could accurately detect irregular heart activity. This, coupled with the traditional blood pressure monitoring, blood oxygen monitoring, body composition measuring tool, and EKG readings, add to Samsung's overall pool of individualized health data tracking that can easily be accessed in reports on a paired Android phone and shared with a healthcare provider or family member.

I do wish that after running a standard EKG reading, the language around heart health was less jargony. The "sinus rhythm detected" pop-up could easily be misunderstood, but in reality just means your heart activity is normal. That aside, Samsung did cover its own back. With each EKG cycle you run, a pop up disclosure repeats: “this wearable does not detect heart attacks.” The addition of the IHRN feature on the Watch 6 is in line with the company’s attempt to offer more useful cardiovascular insights to users.

Expanding its range of tracking features, Samsung built upon its existing menstrual cycle predictions tool introduced in the Watch 5. This includes the skin temperature reading and sensor technology from the last-gen model, which records measurements during sleep. This addition aids in monitoring your monthly period, ovulation cycle and fertility windows. For it to be useful, though, the tool needs consistent data input by a user so that its predictions get smarter.

Malak Saleh

Powered by Natural Cycles, a period tracking app, the new dedicated watch face makes it easy to input daily symptoms, which are not all necessarily tethered to a menstrual cycle. It can track everything from mood changes to physical conditions like cramping and bloating to logging sexual activity. All that data, in aggregate, can help Samsung’s app predict when a period will start and end, fertility windows, and when ovulation is expected to kick in. This is all great in theory, but if you're not great at logging daily, you might end up like me, with outdated predictions that your period was supposed to start but never did.

The new watch also comes with a fall detection feature that has a built-in SOS tool that shares a user's location with an emergency service line or emergency contact of your choosing when a hard fall is detected. You have to manually set up this feature and select when the watch should detect falls – it can be on all the time, during workouts, or quote, “during any activity, or movements not registered as exercise.” Once a fall is detected, Samsung says the device can take up to 30 seconds to recognize a fall, but the waiting period can be customized to as little as 10 seconds.

Medical information and conditions unique to a user’s health history can be plugged into the interface on the paired device. This might be especially useful for elderly populations or people who are medically at a fall risk (think post-surgical or highly medicated patients). However, during testing, after falling on different surfaces, and staying stationary for at least 30 seconds each time, I was never able to trigger the alert system. Samsung claims that after a fall, a watch should alert a user for 30 seconds with a popup, sound, and vibration. This delay is supposed to give a user time to get up or cancel the action of alerting emergency services. To be fair, this was also difficult to trigger on the competing Apple Watch Series 8.

Customizable fitness regimens

Malak Saleh

Making a unique workout plan with key metrics and goals in mind is nothing new for an avid fitness junkie. Since the launch of the Galaxy Watch 4, Samsung has made it a point to expand its workout trackers, with over 95 unique exercises and sports to track on the watch face, users can also create their own custom workouts. I regularly start my lift sessions with 45-pound dumbbells. I was able to name this workout in the watch as my deadlift warmup and keep track of the amount of calories burned per session. This focus on customization is not new, though, with competitors like Fitbit and Apple offering similar interfaces in their fitness tracking tools. The ability to create a program to burn a set amount of calories or reach a certain number of steps can be helpful for people like me who like to prefer to count down rather than up.

Continuing with the theme of customization, Samsung’s new personalized HR zones are meant to help runners better determine how fast to go. The tool is meant to allow users to keep tabs on heart rate zone data and gain insights into personal exertion levels. By staying within specific zones, I can tailor my workout to match my fitness goals, whether it's fat-burning, endurance improvement, or cardiovascular conditioning. Also, tracking heart rate can help a runner avoid overexertion, which can lead to burnout, or injury. Staying within an appropriate heart rate range ensures a runner is working out safely and sustainably. That all said, again, like most health and fitness features, the benefit of monitoring will come down to discipline. 

Malak Saleh

I put the feature to the test by setting up my personalized HR zone to a custom bracket that mimics a high-intensity performance, between 165 to 175. When I went on a run, it kept urging me to speed up and buzzed my wrist with the notification that I was below target. And these notifications are no joke. I struggled to reach my target and even when I did, it was mostly luck.

Running with that much effort, I barely had time to process how to adjust my run according to the alert. So I took a stab at the easiest HR zone target for low-intensity workouts instead at 95 to 105 bpm and found myself struggling with a similar issue-not being able to consistently stay in my target zone. This time, the HR zone alerts were constantly showering me with reminders that I was overexerting and above my HR zone. 

Malak Saleh

This is all to say that although it is a nice feature to have if you're a seasoned athlete and can comprehend and adjust your exertion accordingly. But it's almost not nearly as beneficial to just get a snapshot overview of where my HR zone naturally is with a given run tracker instead of feeling the constant distracting buzz alerting me to something I'm not sure quite sure what to do with

Overall, the notification feature is overstimulating. Even when I paused a workout and tried to have a conversation with Cherlynn, the watch kept pinging me to speed up my run, as it continued to monitor my heart rate zone activity and suggest changes even at rest. Despite this one-off, the watch’s sensitivity in terms of auto detection for movement is pretty accurate. It was noticeably faster at recognizing pauses and restarting based on my movement than my Apple Watch, which was often at least a few seconds behind.

Sleep tracking and analysis

Malak Saleh

Samsung has said it wants to enhance the sleep experience for users by expanding its comprehensive but individualized sleep pattern analysis tools since the last generation. Samsung’s previously announced Sleep Mode features, which automatically disables notifications, dims the watch's screen, and switches to an invisible infrared LED to minimize distractions. I had no trouble setting up sleep goals and (to my surprise) sleeping with the watch on. It doesn't suffocate my wrist at night and if anything, is easy to forget it's on after a while. You can also set up the Smart Things feature, which will detect when a user is sleeping and create the “ideal sleep environment” by turning off or adjusting home electronics like TVs and lights if you're connected to Samsung home devices. However, I was not able to see how the Watch 6 would interact with smart home gadgets because I don't personally own any Samsung home devices.

What I liked about the sleep analysis feature is that after each night of sleep with it on, I got a pretty comprehensive breakdown of how I slept, REM graphic and all, on the Watch 6's dedicated sleep watch face. I was able to get an even more detailed view of my sleep quality on the phone, which showed me how my nights compared on a day to day, telling me which parts of my REM graphic meant what and why it matters. For example, it broke down how much deep sleep I got and it told me how much more I needed. After sleeping with it for seven nights, you're supposed to trigger the sleep coach program that also pairs you with your “sleep animal,” a little 2D avatar that is representative of your nighttime habits. And while it was more comfortable than an Apple Watch, I just don't like the feeling of having something on my wrist at night.

The competition

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 has emerged as a top choice among Android users, especially at this price point. However, the Apple Watch Series 8, which starts at $399, is the obvious alternative for iPhone users. The features are similar, with both models providing GPS tracking, heart-rate sensing, fall detection, sleep tracking and automatic workout recognition.

In terms of fitness-centric offerings, the Garmin Forerunner 745, which is on sale for $299, might be better suited for athletes seeking comprehensive insights into performance metrics and running-focused training regimens. While it may not be as all-encompassing in terms of health guidance tools, it still includes fundamental features like heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, stress monitoring, and fall detection.

But if you want pretty similar offerings in terms of fitness tracking and sleep coaching, the Fitbit Versa 4, which starts at $199, is a pretty cheap alternative. However, with the Versa 4, you get a less integrated smartwatch that feels pretty barebones. For instance, you can’t make or take phone calls or control music through the watch.

Wrap-up

Samsung has a vision for the Galaxy Watch 6 to be perceived as a health buddy, with all of its dedicated wellness-centric updates in heart health, women's health, fitness and sleep domains. But the actual benefits come down to the user. Without discipline, there are no insights to be gained, no tracking worthwhile, or coaching that will be accurate.

But this doesn't take away from the device's well-deserved shine in some areas, namely design, comfort and fitness. It's nothing we have not seen before, and if you already own a wearable of recent vintage, or are an iOS user it's probably not meant for you. If you have the last-gen Galaxy Watch, then hold on to your money because the updates are already in your pocket.

The European Union (EU) is providing €352 million ($378 million) in funding to support green transport infrastructure, and Tesla will get a large chunk of that money. The company's Polish and Italian divisions will receive a total of €148.72 million ($159.64 million) to install or upgrade 7,198 Superchargers across 22 countries, according to the EU's list of projects. 

"The project aims at deploying 6,458 recharging points (250 kW) for LDV in 613 locations in 16 countries (AT, BE, BG, DE, ES, FI, FR, IE, IT, LV, LT, LU, NL, RO, SK, SE) along the Core and Comprehensive Network. The project foresees both the deployment of new recharging stations and the replacement of existing outdated recharging points not satisfying the requirement of the call in terms of recharging capacity and open-accessibility," the Tesla Italy project description reads. It states the same for Poland's Tesla division, while adding an additional six nations (CZ, EL, HR, HU, PL, SI). 

Proposals for the project had an April 13, 2023 deadline, and the EU just announced the successful bids. It appears to cover a large chunk of Europe, but there are no details on a breakdown of new stations or upgrades yet. Much of the funding could go toward updates to Tesla's Supercharger V4, which offers a power output of 350 kW — up from the last model's 250 kW. 

Tesla recently celebrated its 10,000th individual Supercharger connector in the EU, and counts 875 stations in total. The following is a breakdown for the top countries: Germany (143), France (123), the UK (100), Norway (95), Sweden (65), Italy (59), Spain (50), the Netherlands (39), Austria (27) and Switzerland (27).

It's a large percentage of funding for one company, but the EU's decision seems logical. Other car companies including Ford, GM, Volvo and Mercedes have said they'll switch to Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) port, and struck deals with the company to use its Superchargers — meaning a lot of drivers will be able to access Tesla's network. Early in 2021, Tesla opened up its network to all EV users at select Superchargers in the Netherlands, France and Norway. 

The EU greenlit 26 projects in total, with most dedicated to EV charging points but several relating to hydrogen refueling stations for heavy duty and other types of vehicles. "Our investment of €352 million will translate into approximately 12,000 charging points, 18 hydrogen refueling stations, and the electrification of ports and airports, including the port of Rotterdam and 37 Spanish airports," said European Commissioner for Transport Adina Vălean.

The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group claimed responsibility for the MGM Resorts cyber outage on Tuesday, and it apparently took the group only 10 minutes on a phone call to glean the information needed to shut down systems and slot machines — not the slot machines! — at casinos owned by MGM Resorts.

“All ALPHV ransomware group did to compromise MGM Resorts was hop on LinkedIn, find an employee, then call the Help Desk,” the organization wrote in a post on X. Those details came from ALPHV but have not been independently confirmed by security researchers.

MGM Resorts didn’t respond to a request for comment but said on Tuesday that “Our resorts, including dining, entertainment and gaming, are currently operational.”

— Mat Smith

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Coca-Cola made an AI-generated soda

The only people who asked for this are the PR execs.

Coca Cola

Coca-Cola launched a new flavor co-created by artificial intelligence. The company’s calling it the soda “from the future,” and it’s available for a limited time in both regular and zero sugar. It’s called Y3000, with a flavor described as resembling a raspberry slushy. Coke also tasked AI to help design the artwork on the slim can, which looks like a Now That’s What I Call Music CD case from the early ’00s. Inspired.

Continue reading.

America’s largest independent video store is taking its DVD-by-mail service nationwide

Your application has to be manually approved, though.

Talking of blasts from the past, want to rent a DVD? Netflix is winding up that part of its business later this month, but if you’re one of its subscribers sad to see the service go, there’s now another rent-by-mail option. Scarecrow, the largest independent video store in the US, has launched its own rent-by-mail service, which will send DVDs and Blu-ray discs straight to your door. Scarecrow has 140,000 titles — comparably, Netflix has around 5,000 titles in its US catalog, according to CordCutting — most of which you can rent by mail. There are exceptions, however, including rare and out-of-print videos, which require a security deposit, newly released movies and adult titles.

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Microsoft reveals its underwhelming Xbox Game Pass Core library

It’s a solid, if not especially exciting, blend of first- and third-party games.

Xbox Live Gold will be no more after today. Replacing it is a new tier of Game Pass called Xbox Game Pass Core. It’s a different offering to Games with Gold in that there will be a rotating library of a few dozen games. There are some solid, if cheap / old games, including Vampire Survivors, Celeste, Doom Eternal and Dishonored 2, but it’s not the most exciting selection assembled for this base version of Game Pass.

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You might see more sponsored recommendations when you fire up your Spotify app, now that the music streaming giant has started offering artists a new paid tool they can use to promote their music. "Showcase" gives artists a way to put their music in front of more people, whether their tunes are newly released or are something from deep in their catalog. They can create multiple campaigns for different content, and they can use Spotlight to promote not just singles, but also EPs and albums. 

These sponsored recommendations will appear under various headlines — succinct information about them designed to get your attention, really — provided by Spotify, depending on what the artist's team chooses. They can promote their stuff as "new music," for instance, or use the headline "on tour," if they're on the road and want to drum up more interest. In the image above, the single that's being promoted entitled White Winter Hymnal uses the headline "seasonal vibes." In addition, artists can choose the people they want to target and can go for both active listeners and previous ones. 

According to Spotify, Showcase ads will be shown in 30 markets. The streaming giant also claims that people who do see them are six times more likely to stream whatever it is being promoted. If you stream music you've seen through a particular Showcase ad, you won't see it again for 28 days. Musicians are charged per click, after all, with prices starting at 40 cents. Initially, though, Spotify will only offer Showcase to artists with at least 1,000 streams over the past 28 days and whose billing country is set to the US. It will roll out the tool within the Campaigns tab for eligible artists in the US over the coming weeks, but it says it will expand access to it worldwide over time. 

Caesars Entertainment reportedly paid "tens of millions of dollars" to hackers who threatened to release company data, Bloomberg has reported. The attack was reportedly perpetrated by a group called Scattered Spider (aka UNC 3944), a group skilled at using social engineering to bypass corporate network security. It's the second notable attack of a Las Vegas casino group, following a hack that caused a cyber outage at MGM Resorts. 

Members of the hacking group are reportedly located in the US and UK and are as young as 19 years old. They began targeting Caesars as early as August 27th, and obtained access to an outside vendor before entering the company's network, according to the report. Caesars is expected to disclose the attack "imminently" in a regulatory filing. 

Scattered Spider has reportedly been activate since May of 2022, and has largely attacked telecom and business outsourcing organizations, according to Trellix. The group is known to impersonate IT personnel and uses social engineering to persuade company officials to rum remote monitoring and other tools. From there, they exploit vulnerabilities and use tools like "Stonestop" to evade security software. Security Week describes them as a "financially-motivated threat actor." 

The group has been implicated in the MGM Resorts cyber outage as well, though another ransomware group called ALPHV/BlackCat also took credit. ALPHV also claims to have used social engineering to get inside, saying it took just a ten minute conversation to gain access. MGM has reportedly declined to pay the demanded ransom.

Mac users who want to play Baldur's Gate III on their computers only have to wait a few more days: Larian Studios has announced that the full version of the game will be available for Mac on September 21. It has been available for the OS for quite some time, but as a limited, early access version. Fans can only play the first act of the game and can't go any further than what the developer previously described as "approximately 25 hours of self-contained content." Soon, Mac gamers will be able to continue playing until they reach the Moonrise Towers and until secrets are revealed in the third act. 

Baldur's Gate III was initially released for Windows PCs on August 3 before it came out for the PlayStation 5 earlier this month. For consoles, it remains a PlayStation 5 exclusive, but not because the developer struck a deal with Sony Entertainment. What happened was Larian Studios couldn't cross a technical hurdle, preventing it from launching the game on Xbox at the same it came out for the PS5. 

Microsoft has rules requiring developers to ensure that games released for the Series S and Series X have the same features. In Larian Studios' case, it couldn't make the game's split-screen coop feature work on the less powerful Series S. After meeting with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, though, the developer was given permission to release the title for the Series S without the split-screen function but with cross-save progression between Steam and the two Xbox consoles. The Xbox version of Baldur's Gate III doesn't have an exact release date yet, but it's expected to come out before the year ends. 

Wondering what you'll be playing on your PlayStation 5 this fall? Sony has some ideas. The company announced that its next State of Play stream will take place at 5PM ET on September 14, hosted on PlayStation's YouTube, Twitch and TikTok accounts. While the stream's announcement promises to have "something for everyone," including updates on major releases and PS VR2, don't expect a lot of big reveals: Sony says that the showcase will have a strong focus on indie and third party titles, and will primarily feature updates to previously announced games.

If you can't bear to wait until Thursday evening, however, you may be able to get some clues from the Nintendo Direct stream happening earlier that same day. While the Switch-focused stream won't give you any clues about PlayStation's flagship updates, there's a good chance some of the third party announcements featured on the Nintendo Direct will be at Sony's showcase, too. If nothing else, the State of Play should give us a good idea of what fans might be playing on the upcoming PlayStation Portal streaming device when it launches this fall.

Bethesda has updated Starfield with bug fixes while promising new features are on the way. The developer says features in the pipeline include native DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) support, an HDR calibration menu, a field of view slider and more.

Today’s update to version 1.7.29 is limited to stability fixes. Bethesda says it specifically targets Xbox Series X/S glitches and adds various performance improvements to reduce crashes and improve frame rates. In addition, it fixed several issues that could prevent players from finishing three quests (“All That Money Can Buy,” “Into the Unknown” and “Shadows in Neon”). “Our priority initially is making sure any top blocker bugs or stability issues are addressed and adding quality-of-life features that many are asking for,” the developer wrote in the update’s notes.

But the future Starfield additions Bethesda teased today are more likely to catch players’ attention. DLSS support on PCs will be a welcome addition, as the technology could boost resolution and improve stability for people with NVIDIA cards. (AMD’s gaming boss Frank Azor had already suggested last month that nothing is contractually stopping the developer from adding NVIDIA’s rival upscaling tool.) Various community mods can already implement unofficial DLSS support, but gamers will be pleased to know official support is coming.

Bethesda

Bethesda says other features in development include brightness and contrast controls, an HDR calibration menu, a FOV slider and 32:9 ultra-wide monitor support for more immersive exploration. It even says it’s working on an eat button for in-game meals, and it may add better maps. Finally, Bethesda says it’s working on adding built-in cross-platform mod support for early 2024.

The developer stresses that it’s “working closely with” NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel on driver support and that future Starfield updates will all include stability improvements for individual hardware. That statement could be viewed as a response to a recent technical report from Digital Foundry saying the game had “disproportionately poor NVIDIA and Intel performance.”

AI is just about everywhere lately, but nobody expected it to be used as a salvo in the ongoing cola wars. Coca-Cola, however, has other plans, as it just launched a new flavor co-created by artificial intelligence. The company’s calling it the soda “from the future” and it’s available for a limited time in both regular and zero sugar varieties, as reported by CNBC.

It’s called Y3000, which is certainly a futuristic-sounding name, though it calls to mind Skynet and its army of evil Terminators more than a refreshing beverage. Coke hasn’t released any information as to how it actually tastes, but testers describe it as resembling a raspberry slushy.

The company did release info on the creation process. It all started with researchers collecting flavor preferences from consumers, looking for trends to understand what the “future tastes like.” Next, this data was fed into a proprietary artificial intelligence system to help create the flavor profile. Before you know it, a new baby soda was born. What a mitzvah.

Doing its best Secret Invasion impression, Coke also tasked AI to help design the artwork on the slim can. The cans have a beachy, neon-purple vibe that absolutely calls to mind an image generation platform like Dall-E or Midjourney. There are also traditionally-sized bottles filled with the futuristic fluid.

Y3000 is described as a limited edition flavor, but Coke hasn’t said when the soda would head to the scrapheap to join other futuristic foods, like Dippin’ Dots freeze-dried ice cream and the transparent (and awful) Crystal Pepsi. It should stick around through the fall, though, as Coca-Cola also announced a partnership with luxury streetwear brand Ambush to release a Y3000-themed clothing collection later in the season.