If you’ve been eyeing Apple’s 5th-generation iPad Air for a while, now is a great time to purchase one. On Amazon, a handful of the 64GB WiFi models are $99 off at the moment. Specifically, you can get the Space Gray, Blue and Starlight colorways for $500. That’s a record-low price for the iPad Air.

Of all the different tablet models Apple currently offers, the iPad Air is the one that’s the best for most people. Engadget Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham awarded the tablet a score of 90 when he reviewed it last spring. The iPad Air features the same elegant design language as the iPad Pro while costing significantly less. It’s also no slouch, with Apple adding its M1 system-on-a-chip to the 2022 model. That’s the same processor you’ll find on some of the company’s older Mac laptops, making it more than powerful enough to handle any task you could throw at it. The iPad Air also comes with a bright and vivid 10.9-inch display, a USB-C port for charging and a battery that can power the device for about 12 hours before it needs time at the outlet. About the only issue with the iPad Air is that the base model only comes with 64GB of storage. Keep that in mind if you decide to take advantage of Amazon’s sale.

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Canadians will no longer have access to the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Binance has announced that it's withdrawing from the Canadian marketplace due to new stablecoin and investor limits in the country. Back in February, the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) released new guidance that gives crypto trading platforms operating in the region 30 days to register or to leave. The crypto firms that decide to register and stay will have to adhere to stricter rules, such as seeking the CSA's approval before allowing users to buy or deposit stablecoins. 

According to CoinDesk, Binance will have to pass authorities' due diligence checks before it gets approval. The crypto exchange has been under intense scrutiny in North America over the past years. In the US, the DOJ and the Internal Revenue Service have been looking into reports that Binance is being used for money laundering schemes since 2021. It's also reportedly under investigation for allowing users to bypass sanctions against Russian financial institutions. In March this year, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged Binance for allegedly offering unregistered crypto derivatives, among other things. 

In its announcement, Binance said it put off the decision as long as it could "to explore other reasonable avenues to protect [its] Canadian users." Indeed, Bloomberg says its Canadian affiliate filed paperwork to begin its registration process in March. But in the end, it had decided that continuing its operations in the country is "no longer tenable."

Binance ended its announcement with a note saying it's confident it will return to Canada, it's CEO Changpeng Zhao's home country, someday. It also said it hopes to continue engaging with Canadian authorities when it comes to forming a "thoughtful, comprehensive regulatory framework."

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is calling for a recall of 67 million airbag inflators after a lengthy investigation over allegations that they could rupture and injure drivers and passengers. These inflators were designed by ARC Automotive, Inc. and were manufactured for the US market during the 18-year period before January 2018. They were supplied to six airbag manufacturers, which then incorporated them into the airbag modules used in vehicles by at least 12 automakers. 

In the NHTSA's letter (PDF) to ARC urging the company to issue a recall, it listed nine incidents wherein a driver (and, in some cases, a passenger) had been injured because an inflator had ruptured. Seven of those incidents happened in the US, and one had resulted in death. There was one other incident outside the US wherein the driver had sustained fatal injuries. The agency wrote in its letter: "Air bag inflators that project metal fragments into vehicle occupants, rather than properly inflating the attached air bag, create an unreasonable risk of death and injury."

ARC, however, disagrees with the agency's tentative conclusion that certain inflators manufactured by the company have a safety defect. "After nearly eight years of intensive scrutiny, none of [the manufacturers using its products] has identified a systemic or prevalent defect across this inflator population," the company wrote in a response letter (PDF) addressed to the NHTSA. It also mentioned a test on 918 inflators taken from vehicles in salvage yards. Apparently, none of them exploded when they were subjected to various testing in the lab. 

ARC said it believes the incidents wherein the inflators had ruptured resulted from "one-off" manufacturing anomalies that had already been properly addressed by automakers though lot-specific recalls. GM, for one, issued a recall (PDF) on May 10th for 1 million vehicles that "may have received a suspect airbag inflator." The NHTSA warned the company, though, that it will have to write a full explanation with "additional analysis of the problem beyond ARC's past presentations" it it decides not to issue a recall. Further, it might still decide that ARC's inflators have a safety defect, and it "may take other appropriate action."

The NHTSA has been investigating airbag rupture-related incidents over the past 15 years. Over 67 million airbags by the now defunct Japanese manufacturer Takata have already been recalled in the United States, with 100 million more recalled around the world. Like the ARC-made inflators, Takata's could also explode and unleash metal fragments inside the vehicle. Takata's airbags were involved in at least 18 deaths and more than 400 injuries, which led to numerous lawsuits, a massive settlement and, ultimately, the company's closure. 

The idea of an acoustic synthesizer might sound like an oxymoron, but it's exactly the sort of unexpected concepts that Korg Berlin was created to pursue. This independent, R&D-focused division was cofounded in 2020 by Maximilian Rest and Tatsuya Takahashi, the man behind the Volcas, Minilogue and countless other modern classics. But it has remained pretty quiet since its inception. That changed this week at Superbooth where the team showed off its first prototype the Acoustic Synthesis_phase5. 

Unlike a traditional synth that uses oscillators, the phase5 uses tuned metal forks. Those forks are specially designed to produce specific fundamental notes and overtones. And since the core sound generation here is an acoustic resonator, it has certain qualities a normal synth does not. For instance it will feedback like a guitar when held near an amp and ring when struck on its side. Takahashi told Fess Grandiose of Reverb, "we're trying to kind of capture this rawness of instruments, while being at the same time, controllable like a synthesizer."

So that's the "acoustic" part: metal tines that ring, resonate and decay, almost like a Fender Rhodes. The synth part comes from the magnets inside the phase5 that allow it to sustain just the fundamental note, or the fundamental and the overtones, or just the overtones. The overtones can also be modulated with an LFO creating a sound that can only be described as a sea sick bell. 

In general the sound it generates in the short demo video above is quite unique. It does have a ringing, vaguely Rhodes-like quality to it. But it also kind of sounds like what you might expect of a singing bowl patch on a '90s sample-based synth. It's a touch otherworldly. 

Right now the phase5 is just a prototype and it's likely to stay that way. Right now Korg Berlin is simply gauging interest in the technology. And if it seems like there's a market for this sort of strange hybrid acoustic synth, then it will explore ways to develop it further into a finished product. 

TikTok is still fighting to remain operational in the United States, but a new lawsuit could complicate things even further for the company. A former ByteDance executive has alleged TikTok’s owner used bots and stolen content to inflate the app’s engagement.

The lawsuit, filed by former head of engineering Yintao Yu and reported byThe New York Times, claims that ByteDance wrongly fired Yu after he pushed back on company practices like stealing other apps’ material. It also claims that ByteDance acted as a “useful propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party,” and that China-based employees could access US users’ data.

As The New York Times points out, Yu’s allegations “describe how ByteDance operated five years ago” and come after “several years of mediation.” Still, the claims are still likely to fuel even more scrutiny for TikTok, which is facing the prospect of a nationwide ban in the United States. Lawmakers and other officials have claimed that TikTok is a national security threat and that the app can’t be trusted to protect the data of US users.

Yu’s allegations could intensify those concerns. The lawsuit details “a special unit of Chinese Communist Party members” at ByteDance offices in Beijing who “guided how the company advanced core Communist values.” He also alleges that ByteDance employees manipulated Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to suppress content about protests in Hong Kong and “elevate content that expressed hatred for Japan.”

Some of Yu’s claims also relate directly to TikTok. Notably, he claims that ByteDance engineers stole popular content from apps like Instagram and Snapchat and put the videos onto TikTok. He also alleges that the company used bot accounts to juice the app’s engagement metrics when it was just starting out and trying to gain a foothold in the US. (Yu left the company in November 2018, shortly after ByteDance rebranded Musical.ly as TikTok.)

Spokespeople for ByteDance and TikTok didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But TikTok has repeatedly tried to downplay its ties to ByteDance and China, including in CEO Shou Zi Chew’s congressional testimony in March. The company has also dedicated more than a billion dollars into Project Texas, which aims to wall off TikTok’s US user data from the rest of ByteDance in an effort to allay the concerns of US regulators.

Autonomous delivery startup Nuro announced this week that it’s laying off 30 percent of its workforce, or around 340 employees, as reported by TechCrunch. It will now shift its focus away from commercial operations and toward R&D. It’s the company’s second round of layoffs in the last year; it let go of about 300 people in November.

As part of the restructuring, Nuro says it’s delaying the previously planned production of its third-generation Nuro bot (R3) vehicle. In addition, it will reduce the scale of its commercial pilots and “explore more efficient deployment models with partners.” The company says the changes will let it operate twice as long without raising more money.

Nuro was founded in 2016 by former Google Waymo engineers Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson. Since then, the startup has raised over $2 billion while gaining regulatory approval for testing on public roads in Arizona, California and Texas. Last year, it announced the kickoff of an Uber Eats delivery program as part of a 10-year partnership.

“While in the past we developed autonomy systems, designed and built custom vehicles, and deployed commercial pilots with partners in parallel, we will now pursue a more sequential development model,” the company wrote in a blog post. “With our new approach, Nuro will not only get through this economic downturn, but we hope to emerge stronger on the other side.”

In the latest proof that satire is no match for today’s reality, The DOJ announced that a YouTuber pled guilty on Wednesday to obstructing a federal investigation by destroying the wreckage of an airplane he intentionally crashed for views and sponsorship money. Trevor Jacob, a 29-year-old former pro snowboarder turned YouTuber, recorded and uploaded his staged (yet very real) crash landing in Santa Barbara County, CA, in November 2021.

Jacob pled guilty to one count of destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison, as first reported by Gizmodo. He admitted in his plea agreement that his motive was profiting from a wallet promotion attached to the video.

Before taking flight, Jacob equipped the plane with video cameras while arming himself with a parachute, video camera and selfie stick. He ejected himself from the aircraft about 35 minutes into the flight, recording himself parachuting to the ground as the plane crashed into a dry brush area in Los Padres National Forest. (A dry brush area in wildfire country sounds like a terrific place to send an aircraft to its fiery demise.) He then hiked to the crash scene to recover his cameras and recordings.

YouTube

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of Jacob’s wallet-shilling shenanigans. He then waited two days to report the incident to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB); in the report, he incorrectly described it as an accident. Then, after the NTSB told him he was responsible for preserving the wreckage for examination, he returned to the crash scene by helicopter, which he used to airlift the wreckage to a local vineyard and winery. There, he loaded it onto a trailer attached to his pickup truck and hauled it to Lompoc City Airport, where he cut the plane’s remains into pieces, dumping them into nearby trash bins. Around this time, he lied to investigators, telling them he didn’t know where the wreckage was.

Still wanting to ensure the wallet sponsorship money made its way to his wallet, Jacob uploaded the YouTube video “I Crashed My Airplane” on December 23rd, 2021. The video is still up and has tallied 3.3 million views. During a clip of his long hike back to civilization after the landing, Jacob says, “I’m so past the point of even saying I’m exhausted… but I saw a cow.”

Horror collection ‘Layers of Fear’ is getting a Steam demo that launches on May 15th. Developer Bloober Team revealed the demo on Twitter and noted that it’ll be available from the 15th until May 22nd. The forthcoming collection includes the original Layers of Fear, Layers of Fear 2, various DLC content and a brand-new chapter that promises to provide a new perspective on the first game’s story.

The developer already teased this demo with an 11-minute gameplay video back in March, but now you can actually play it instead of watching a YouTube clip. Bloober Team reworked these titles in Unreal Engine 5, so the visuals look impressive and atmospheric, not to mention eerie as all get out. The refresh is packed with modern graphical touches like ray-tracing, HDR and volumetric lighting. 

The Layers of Fear collection officially releases in June on PC via Steam, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. This is not Bloober Team’s only foray into horror, as it’s also busy crafting a Silent Hill 2 remake. The original Layers of Fear came out back in 2016 and has been lauded for its unique take on psychological horror and emphasis on exploration. 

It’s no secret that the Nintendo Switch is showing its age, making it difficult to port games over from more powerful consoles. The latest hurdle for third-party publishers? Hogwarts Legacy developers just announced that the Nintendo Switch version of the open-world wizard simulator is getting another significant delay, all the way until November 14th.

This isn’t the first delay the port’s faced, as it was originally supposed to release in April after being pushed back to July 25th. At that time, all of the last-gen ports got hit with a delay, but the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions have since been released. The title originally launched for PS5, Xbox Series X and PC back in February.

Developers said the Switch delay is so it can provide the “best possible experience” for players. It’ll be interesting to see how the game performs when it eventually launches and what changes are made to accommodate the aging hardware. For those looking for a portable version of Hogwarts Legacy right now, instead of six months from now, the game is verified for the Steam Deck.

Despite some controversy,Hogwarts Legacy has become a bona-fide hit for Avalanche Software and Warner Bros. Games, selling over 15 million copies and generating over $1 billion in revenue.

The well-reviewed, yet pricey, PlayStation VR2 headset is now widely available after a two-month stint of exclusivity at Sony’s Direct consumer storefront. Last month, the company shared the news on Twitter, but did not set an official date, nor did they announce what lucky retailers would get their mitts on the PS5-adjacent headset. As of today, you can pick up the PSVR2 at Amazon, GameStop, Best Buy and other retailers.

Beyond making it easier to score a PSVR 2 headset, wider availability could very well lead to sales and discounts. At $550, the PS5 accessory is more expensive than the actual PS5. Sony has not disclosed any sales numbers for the headset but it did halve sales expectation numbers ahead of the February launch due to fewer-than-anticipated preorders. Having the headset locked behind an exclusive web portal for a while likely did it no favors.

The PSVR 2 has been praised for its fantastic visuals, updated controllers and haptic feedback abilities, though the games library is on the anemic side (right now). Here is to hoping increased availability will bring the headset into more homes, hastening mainstream adoption and giving the Meta Quest platform a true run for its money. This could only be a good thing for VR in general.