Google's latest accessibility features include a potentially clever use of AI. The company is updating its Lookout app for Android with an "image question and answer" feature that uses DeepMind-developed AI to elaborate on descriptions of images with no captions or alt text. If the app sees a dog, for example, you can ask (via typing or voice) if that pup is playful. Google is inviting a handful of people with blindness and low vision to test the feature, with plans to expand the audience "soon."

It will also be easier to get around town if you use a wheelchair — or a stroller, for that matter. Google Maps is expanding wheelchair-accessible labels to everyone, so you'll know if there's a step-free entrance before you show up. If a location doesn't have a friendly entrance, you'll see an alert as well as details for other accommodations (such as wheelchair-ready seating) to help you decide whether or not a place is worth the journey.

Google

A handful of minor updates could still be helpful. Live Caption for calls lets you type back responses that are read aloud to recipients. Chrome on desktop (soon for mobile) now spots URL typos and suggests alternatives. As announced, Wear OS 4 will include faster and more consistent text-to-speech when it arrives later in the year.

Google has been pushing hard on AI in recent months, and launched a deluge of features at I/O 2023. The Lookout upgrade might be one of the most useful, though. While AI descriptions are helpful, the Q&A feature can provide details that would normally require another human's input. That could boost independence for people with vision issues.

Razer is today announcing an update to its Nommo gaming desktop speakers. As is the case with most of the company's other products, these speakers are equipped with RGB lighting to fully match your other Razer gear.

The Nommo V2 Pro starts at $450 and delivers a wireless 2.1 sound system with one new trick up its sleeve: THX's Spatial Audio surround sound experience. Razer claims that the inclusion of THX spatial audio is a first for any set of 2.1 desktop speakers. Several titles, including Grand Theft Auto V, Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Genshin Impact already support the spatial audio experience, with more titles to come in the future.

The speakers also include a downward-firing subwoofer, which could make it easier to hear enemy footsteps or roaring lightning. The updated RGB array now shines through the top of the speakers, making it easier for the lights to reflect off of a wall.

Razer is also announcing a new Wireless Control Pod, which comes included with the Nommo V2 Pro (but can be bought separately for $50). It's highly customizable and supports rotation, single click and double click. For example, you could rotate the dial to adjust the brightness of your RGB rig, single-click to crank your mouse's DPI for Call of Duty or double-click to lower your DPI when surfing the web.

If this all sounds enticing to you but you'd prefer a cheaper setup, Razer has another option. The Nommo V2 offers the same exact listening experience, just wired. It also excludes the Wireless Control Pod, and costs $300. For those of you who are math ninjas, that's a savings of $150. Of course, without the Pod, you're looking at physical volume and power buttons on the speakers.

Both the Nommo V2 and V2 Pro will be available in the US starting in June, and the Wireless Control Pod will be available worldwide starting in August.

Apple makes some of the best earbuds around for iOS users and now you can pick up a pair of AirPods for less than they'd usually set you back. The second-generation AirPods Pro have dropped back down to their lowest price to date. You can currently snap up a pair for $200, which is $50 off the usual price.

We found that the latest AirPods Pro, which Apple released last year, boast better audio quality than the original model. Thanks to the more powerful H2 chip, they have an excellent transparency mode and good active noise cancellation (ANC). Being able to move between Apple devices seamlessly is a plus point as well. On the downside, we found that the new touch controls took a bit of getting used to, while the so-so battery life didn't blow us away. Overall, we gave the second-gen AirPods Pro a score of 88 in our review.

Meanwhile, you can pick up standard AirPods for less cash than usual. The second-gen AirPods are $99 ($30 off), while the third-gen model is $159 ($10 off). We feel that the third-gen AirPods are better than the previous model in almost every respect thanks to features such as improved fit and audio quality, as well as a longer battery life. Water resistance is definitely welcome too. As a result, we gave the third-gen AirPods a score of 88.

Although they're four years old, the second-gen earbuds shouldn't be dismissed entirely, especially if you're budget conscious. These AirPods can still pair with your iPhone in a snap and switch to other Apple devices with ease when you need them to. As with the third-gen AirPods, there's support for hands-free Siri.

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Never mind crafting custom sodas at the restaurant — technology will soon help you customize your dips, too. Kraft Heinz has unveiled a Heinz Remix dispenser that lets you customize sauces through a touchscreen interface. You choose from base sauces and then add one or more "enhancers" at your choice of intensity. If you want 57 Sauce with a strong jalapeño accent and a hint of mango, you can make it happen.

The company plans to test Heinz Remix at unspecified restaurants in late 2023 to early 2024. There's no mention of pricing, although it's safe to presume this isn't intended for home use. Like it or not, you'll have to settle for off-the-shelf bottles at home.

The machine's existence isn't surprising. Custom drink dispensers like Coca-Cola's Freestyle have led to increased business at restaurants. Kraft Heinz could boost its profits by selling more expensive hardware to eateries on top of the usual sauces. That, in turn, could squeeze out competitors that still use one-sauce-at-a-time systems.

This could also influence the sauces you buy at the grocery store. Kraft Heinz sees the Remix as an "insights engine" that will help the firm understand customers' flavor preferences. You might see combinations that are the direct result of data from restaurant guests. This won't necessarily replace in-house inventions, but it might help the brand keep up with (or set) trends.

Human-computer interaction company Sightful is releasing its first product, Spacetop, a screen-less “augmented reality laptop” projecting tabs across a 100-inch virtual screen. The laptop — if you can call it that — is a hardware deck and full-size keyboard with a pair of tailored NReal glasses. The glasses project tabs directly in front of whatever the user is looking at while remaining invisible to anyone else.

Specs-wise, Spacetop is running a Snapdragon 865 paired with an Adreno 650 GPU, 8GB RAM and 256GB storage, putting it in the same class as some of the smartphones that are already capable of driving AR glasses. It’s not smartphone-sized, however, measuring 1.57-inches high, 10.47-inches wide and 8.8-inches deep, and it weighs in at 3.3 pounds, the same as plenty of laptops we could choose to mention here.

Sightful is clearly gunning for a crossover hit in the the work-from-home-or-anywhere market. “Laptops are the centerpiece of our daily working lives, but the technology has not evolved with the modern, work from anywhere, privacy matters, ‘road warrior’ mentality. Meanwhile, augmented reality is full of potential and promise but is yet to find its daily use case,” said Tamir Berliner, Sightful co-founder who previously worked at both Leap Motion and Primesense. “We are at the perfect moment for a significant paradigm shift in a device we all know and love.”

For now, Spacetop is only available to buy for 1,000 early adopters through an application-based program. Right now, we don’t have word on how much this will cost you, or when you’ll be able to pick it up, but we’ll watch this project with interest to see if it’ll succeed where so many others have failed. 

For the neutral NBA fan, game one of the Eastern Conference Finals last night was highly entertaining. If you were watching on YouTube TV though, the experience at the end of the game was highly frustrating. With just under five minutes left in the 4th quarter of a back-and-forth battle between the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics, the streaming service had a major issue that kept viewers in a sputtering commercial loop for several minutes. Restarting the app didn't help as users were greeted with the stuttering trailer for the upcoming reboot of The Little Mermaid.

When YouTube TV finally started to chug along again, it skipped ahead every few seconds (this was captured on DVR recordings too). Users were unable to just swipe to live television either, so they just had to contend with broken up bits of action for the rest of the game. The service quickly admitted on Twitter that it was having problems, specifically referencing users trying to watch the NBA playoff game. However, the issue impacted other channels on the service too, including Bravo where Watch What Happens Live was airing after the highly anticipated Vanderpump Rules finale.

Several hours later the service's support account tweeted that everything was back to normal. The same info was posted to a support thread about the issue, but no details about a specific cause were mentioned. We've reached out to YouTube TV for more information on the problem.

Live TV streaming wasn't the only headache for YouTube last night. While that issue was unfolding, creators were having trouble uploading videos to YouTube proper, including clips for Shorts. Some experienced unusually slow processing times while others were unable to upload at all. This issue was also resolved a few hours later.

For YouTube TV, being completely unwatchable during high-profile live events is sure to leave a sour taste in subscribers' mouths. The service just increased its price by $8 a month to a whopping $73 in March. That's a little more than double the $35 monthly fee the service commanded at its 2017 launch. Streaming services as a whole have been regularly raising rates, so this isn't unique to YouTube TV. But combined with the occasional contract disputes with networks that can leave some channels unavailable — either temporarily or permanently — any issues with streaming reliability could be a major problem for the service. There's no rest for YouTube TV either as the Lakers/Nuggets series resumes tonight and there's one NBA playoff game scheduled each day until both series wrap up.

The next Mortal Kombat game might not be what you expect. NetherRealm and WB Games have unveiledMortal Kombat 1, a "reborn" take on the series that promises new fighting mechanics and game modes. While most details are under wraps, you'll see many well-known characters as well as "Kameo Fighters" to help you mid-battle. And yes, the gore remains intact — as the teaser trailer below indicates, you can expect plenty of fatalities.

Mortal Kombat 1 arrives September 19th for PC (via Epic and Steam), PS5, Switch and Xbox Series X/S. Pre-order customers get access to a beta in August. A $110 digital Premium Edition will offer early access to the game (September 14th), a Johnny Cage skin made to resemble actor Jean-Claude Van Damme and early access to playable characters and Kameo Fighters when they arrive post-launch. If you're truly devoted, a $250 physical Kollector's Edition will include a 16.5-inch Liu Kang sculpture as well as a matching in-game skin, art prints and a special case.

The reboot is in line with the ending of Mortal Kombat 11 and its Aftermath add-on. However, it's also clearly positioned as an opportunity to rethink the gameplay and story. It's just a question of how much has changed. Not that this reinvention comes as much of a shock given what rivals are doing — Capcom is also shaking up its formula with the World Tour mode in Street Fighter 6.

Earlier this year, Microsoft signed deals with a number of game streaming services to bring Xbox-exclusive titles to its rivals. Today we see the first fruits from the relationship ‘twixt Microsoft and NVIDIA as Gears 5 makes its bow on GeForce Now. The PC version of the title is available to play right now, with NVIDIA reminding users that it’s offering discounted signups between now and May 21st. And that higher-paying GeForce Now users can play the title in 1080p at 60fps, or in 4K 120fps if they’ve signed up to Ultimate. NVIDIA added that we should expect to see Deathloop, Grounded and Pentiment — three more Microsoft-owned titles — added to the service on May 25th.

All of this is part of Microsoft’s work to convince regulators to approve its mega-bucks purchase of Activision Blizzard. In order to convince officials that the vast trove of titles it’ll control should it be permitted to control the Call of Duty maker, it’s signed 10-year deals with rival platforms. That includes Nware, Boosteroid and NVIDIA, as well as a pledge to put Call of Duty on Nintendo’s consoles for a decade with a guarantee of full feature and content parity. That’s satisfied some bodies, like the EU, but not the UK, which feels that Microsoft’s potential control of the cloud gaming market could kill it before it flourishes.

Google’s attempt to snuff out third-party web tracking cookies is moving along. The company announced today that its Privacy Sandbox APIs will be available to all Chrome users in July. In addition, it laid out the next steps for web developers to start testing and integrating the new system later this year.

Anthony Chavez, Google’s VP of Product Management, recommends developers begin preparing for the new system soon after the July API release. Next, the company will let devs simulate Chrome third-party cookie deprecation “for a configurable percentage of their users” starting in Q4 2023, followed by one percent of Chrome users shifting to Privacy Sandbox in Q1 2024. Google is still targeting the second half of next year for the broader deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome.

“With this milestone, developers can utilize these APIs to conduct scaled, live-traffic testing, as they prepare to operate without third-party cookies,” said Chavez.

Privacy Sandbox tries to strike a balance between user privacy and advertising revenue. When platforms block third-party cookies — in what Google has called “a blunt approach” — advertisers can resort to fingerprinting. This system gathers info like IP address, browser fingerprint and other details to profile users for targeted ads. It’s a highly intrusive workaround the ad biz uses when their old money-making avenues are blocked. But, of course, ads — despised as they are — are still the financial backbone of online media publications and other websites. Without pesky online ads, we’d likely see even more paywalls and an increased nosedive in the quality and availability of independent journalism.

The new system is built around the Topics API, which assigns users a list of a person’s interests based on recent activity. It then compares it to a database sourced from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Google’s own data. Publishers can use the API to match their interests with relevant ads — without the more invasive tracking tied to cookies and fingerprinting. Google promises that stored user interests will only be kept for three weeks, and it will delete old topics. The company also says the data and processing all occur on-device without external servers (including Google’s). It developed the plan “in consultation with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).”

Technics is updating its range of true wireless earbuds with two new models, one of which bears the weighty promise of carrying the company’s “greatest sound quality ever.” That’s the slogan tied to the flagship EAH-AZ80, which packs new 10mm, free-edge aluminum diaphragms. That kit, so we’re told, will extend its high and low-frequency response while, at the same time, cutting out unwanted resonance and distortion.

The new diaphragm is the one major difference between the new flagship AZ80 and its junior sibling, the romantically-named EAH-AZ60M2. Technics says that both units come with a unique “acoustic box design” optimizing airflow for more natural-sounding vocals, better bass and smoother trebles. You’ll also get three-point Bluetooth connectivity to save you the effort of unpairing your phone to listen to your laptop. Oh, and as usual for Technics' earbuds, you'll find support for both Bluetooth and LDAC to get your hi-res audio fill.

Both new models ship with ANC, ambient sound mode and a new, improved version of Technics’ JustMyVoice technology, which reduces background noise during calls. The Panasonic-owned company says the new version deals better with wind noise and the variable sound you get in, for instance, a busy coffee shop. In addition, the system will now adjust the volume levels of your voice to make sure you’re understandable by whoever you’re speaking to.

Naturally, all of those features will impact the buds’ battery life, with Technics saying there’s a maximum capacity of around 25 hours’ worth of playback in the buds and cradle. Expect to lose an hour from that time if you have ANC activated, and for that figure to slice in half if you’re using both ANC and JustMyVoice at the same time. Thankfully, both units now have Qi support for wireless charging, and you’ll get battery information inside the companion app, too.

Both units are available to buy today from Technics’ own website and Amazon, with the AZ80 costing you $299, and the AZ60M2 $250.