WiZ has unveiled a new home monitoring system that uses its existing motion-sensing WiFi smart bulbs in combination with Wiz's new $70 (€90) Indoor Camera. It takes of advantage of WiZ's "SpaceSensing" feature to detect changes in WiFi signals caused by movement, then sends an alert to the app warning you of any potential home intruders. You can then check the camera to see what's happening, while the smart bulbs can flash at intruders to scare them off. 

Similar tech has been employed by Linksys' Velop mesh routers, which send motion detection alerts to the app. While not as powerful as a full security system with dedicated sensors, WiFi sensing is a decent, and much cheaper and simpler alternative. The Indoor Camera records in 1080p and has a 120-degree field of view, along with infrared night vision, image-based motion detection and two-way audio thanks to a built-in microphone.

isma yunta/Wiz

To install it, all you need to do is find a spot for the camera and screw Wiz's A19 full-color smart lightbulbs into you existing lamps or outlets. From there, if the alarm is triggered by motion, the lights can be set to flash to let intruders know they've been flushed out. At the same time, the system sends alerts to the new WiZ V2 app, and you can even set it to only monitor certain areas of your home. 

It even lets you program routines that control the lights and monitoring, which can be set on a schedule or enabled on the app. And of course, you can use your smart bulbs as you normally might in a smart home, activating them with voice commands, the app and more. For instance, you can set them to turn on and off at random to give the impression that someone's home. 

It comes in a €160 bundle called the WiZ Home Monitoring Starter kit, which gives you three WiZ A19 full-color smart bulbs and the Indoor Camera. You can record footage locally via an onboard microSD card, or subscribe to cloud storage and get up to 30 days of recordings (all footage is end-to-end encrypted, WiZ promises). The company has promised that 80-90 percent of its current smart lights and home products will be compatible. The kit launches in Europe on June 15th, but there's no US release date or pricing yet.

Twitch has a new clip editor that will make it much, much easier for streamers to promote their content across platforms that put a focus on mobile users. Streamers will find the new editor under the clip manager in their creator dashboard. As TechCrunch notes, clicking "edit and share clip" will open a tool that'll give them an easy way to create vertical video clips. They can choose to create a video that shows one portion of their stream in full or to create a clip that splits the view between their stream and their camera. Either way, they're getting a vertical video they can share. 

There's also a toggle at the bottom of the editor they can switch on to add their channel name to the clip. After they decide on what their video snippet will look like, they can then either download it or share it straight to YouTube Shorts with a title and a description that they'd written. While the feature only comes with YouTube integration right now, Twitch seems to have plans to add quick sharing for other platforms in the future. For now, creators will have to manually upload their videos if they want to promote their streams through Instagram Reels, Snapchat and TikTok. The still entails a bit more work than sharing on YouTube Shorts, but by doing so, they're putting themselves in front of more potential viewers who could end up being loyal subscribers. 

The new vertical clip editor is making its way to all users' clip manager this week. 

Abbey Games has officially revealed that a sequel to its indie god sim Reus is "on the way," almost a full decade after the original came out for Windows PCs. The original game received mostly favorable reviews after it shipped, and the developer sold over one million copies worldwide. Abbey Games founders Maarten Wiedenhof, Manuel Kerssemakers and Adriaan Jansen said: "The original Reus is a decade old, and much has changed in the gaming world. We're excited to bring Reus 2 to this new era, and show what it can bring to all those who want to create their own perfect world!" 

In Reus 2, players will have the ability to create multiple planets as their elemental giant god characters. They can shape those planets however they want to see how the people that live there would react to the unique landscapes that surround them and the challenges they encounter. And by "challenges they encounter," we mean whatever the player decides to put them through. Hey, it's a god sim — players can choose to make it easy for the people living on one planet and then put another planet's population through the wringer. They can even stage an apocalypse and start anew. Aren't you glad we're not living in a simulation? (...Or are we?)

The developer says Reus 2 is still currently in development. It doesn't have a release date yet, but those interested can now add it to their Steam wishlist. 

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today ordered voice service providers to block the global gateway provider One Eye. The FCC says the company, which serves as an “on-ramp” to US phone networks from outside the country, enabled robocall scams like impersonating a major financial institution and calls about bogus “preauthorized orders” placed in consumers’ names. The Biden administration’s FCC has focused on increasing its ability to enforce robocalls. “This company — what’s left of it — will now have a place in robocall history,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “We can and will continue to shut off providers that help scammers.”

Today’s order is the culmination of an escalating series of actions by the FCC to stop One Eye from facilitating shady robocall campaigns. First, the agency cited the company’s predecessor, PZ/Illum Telecommunication, for transmitting illegal robocalls. Then, in a cease-and-desist letter sent in February, the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau warned the newly minted One Eye that its rebranding wouldn’t help it avoid consequences while alerting it that a failure to comply would lead to a permanent block. (On the same day, it cautioned US voice providers about One Eye’s activity.) Finally, it sent an “initial determination order” in April, another step toward the block it ultimately issued today.

The FCC’s statement doesn’t specify where One Eye’s headquarters are. The February cease-and-desist letter was addressed to a registered LLC in Delaware, but that could merely be a US branch of a global operation based elsewhere.

The block has teeth thanks to the FCC’s Gateway Provider Order issued in May 2022. It laid out a new list of requirements for companies routing foreign calls to the US, including (among others) caller ID authentication using the STIR / SHAKEN framework, submitting certification plans, responding to traceback requests within 24 hours and blocking illegal traffic when notified by the FCC. 

“The Enforcement Bureau team has built a fair, transparent, but tough process by which we can essentially shut down access to U.S. communications networks by companies such as One Eye that are targeting consumers with illegal robocalls,” said Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal. “Today’s action demonstrates another cutting-edge tool in our robocall enforcement options and represents a landmark date in our efforts to protect consumers from scam calls.”

Electric vehicle brand Polestar plans to reduce its headcount by 10 percent as part of an effort to cut costs. It will also institute a global hiring freeze and it has trimmed production guidance for 2023. Polestar now expects to produce between 60,000 and 70,000 vehicles this year, down from the previous figure of 80,000.

The brand cited a delayed start to production of the Polestar 3 and "the economic environment affecting the automotive industry" as key reasons for the changes. The electric SUV is now expected to enter production in early 2024.

Polestar says Volvo (which, as Autoblog notes, is Polestar's vehicle producer and largest shareholder) needs more time for software development and testing of the new electric platform. Volvo has delayed the start of production of the EX90 for the same reason. Production is slated to start in the first half of next year.

There are no changes to the Polestar 4 schedule as things stand. Polestar expects to start production of that EV for China in the fourth quarter of this year and in early 2024 for other markets.

Polestar said in its latest earnings report that it delivered 12,076 cars in the first three months of 2023, an increase of 26 percent from a year earlier. More than 100,000 of the brand's cars are now out in the wild. Polestar's revenue rose to $546 million, up from $452.2 million a year earlier, while the net loss for the quarter was $9 million, compared with $274.5 million in Q1 2022.

There's enough cash in the kitty for Polestar to make it through this year, the company previously said. It received a $1.6 billion injection from Volvo and fellow major shareholder PSD Investment in November. Polestar had $884.3 million cash on hand as of March 31st, though it expects to need more funding over the next few years.

Other nascent EV players have also been struggling to manage their expenses. Last month, Lucid said it would lay off 1,300 workers to cut costs, accounting for 18 percent of the total workforce. Rivian has also laid off more than 1,000 workers since last summer.

Elon Musk is making good on his promise to step down as Twitter CEO following a poll. The entrepreneur has announced that a replacement chief executive will start in roughly six weeks. While he hasn't identified the new leader by name, it will be a woman. Musk will stay on as executive chairman and chief technical officer covering "product, software and sysops."

Developing...

Elektron’s Analog Heat audio processor was already a fantastic tool for adding saturation and warmth to digital instruments, but now the company’s upping the ante with a hardware refresh. Announced at the SuperBooth synthesizer expo in Berlin, Analog Heat +FX picks up where the MK2 left off, with the addition of new digital effects to complement the pre-existing saturation options.

The titular effects are the standout feature here, as the unit allows for tape emulation, reverb, bit crushing, delay, chorus and more. This is in addition to eight stereo analog distortion units, seven filter types, a two-band EQ and a noise gate. In other words, this little module can do a lot with your sound whether it's a simple keyboard riff or an entire master bus.

Another huge new feature is called flow, which lets users easily reshuffle the signal path to create unique sounds. You can insert effects at any point in the signal path, before or after the audio source, and save the results in one of 512 preset slots. The device also encourages users to experiment with the modulation source and the three LFOs for even more adjustment capabilities. There’s also a mode called bass focus that automatically goes from stereo to mono at a preset cross-over point, helping to ensure a fat and focused low end.

The hardware itself got a bit of an update here, with a new pixel-based OLED screen that is larger and brighter than the displays found on previous models. As for inputs and outputs, you get a MIDI in/out, two control inputs for foot switches and the like, multiple stereo ins and outs and a USB port. The USB port lets you plug straight into a computer, via a built-in sound card, to let you warm up (or mangle) audio from your DAW.

The Analog Heat +FX ships with a PSU-3c power supply and a USB cable. It’s available to order right now and costs $1,000.

Watching the Olympics in 2021 was a little complicated, requiring viewers to juggle NBC Broadcasts, the company's Peacock Streaming service and a dedicated NBCOlympics.com website. Today the company announced that watching the Paris games in 2024 will be a lot easier — declaring Peacock the "streaming home" of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

"In a Summer Games first, the service will stream every sport and event, including all 329 medal events." NBC says it will also broadcast at least nine hours of daytime coverage on the network, which will then be made available for streaming on Peacock. The streaming service will also host full-event replays, curated video clips, original commentary and more.

NBC is heralding the coverage as the Olympic Games return to its "true glory, with full stadiums and the world's greatest athletes" since 2018, but the expanded programming is almost certainly a response to backlash over the network's limited coverage of the last summer Olympics. Although the network did make every event available to watch 2021, most of it could only be accessed on NBCOlympics.com, with NBC television and Peacock playing host to limited key events.

With any luck, NBC's new plans will make watching the games easier than ever. You'll have to wait about a year to find out, though: NBC and Peacock will kick off Olympic Games coverage on Friday, July 26 2024.

Say goodbye to another high-profile Apple Watch app. As MacRumorsnotes, Meta is telling Facebook Messenger users that the Apple Watch version will be unavailable after May 31st. While you'll still get message notifications beyond that point, you won't have the option to respond. Meta didn't provide an explanation in a statement to Engadget. Instead, it pointed users to Messenger on "iPhone, desktop and the web."

Meta (then Facebook) introduced Messenger for the Apple Watch in 2015. The app couldn't offer text responses, but you could send audio clips, stickers and similar smartwatch-friendly responses from your wrist. That made it helpful for quickly acknowledging a message without reaching for your iPhone.

There are a few factors that may play a role. To start, the limited interaction hurt the app's appeal. That may have affected its potential audience. Meta is also laying off roughly 10,000 employees and refocusing its efforts in a bid to cut costs. That means cutting less essential projects, and it's safe to presume Messenger for Apple Watch wasn't a top priority.

Numerous well-known companies have dropped their Apple Watch apps over the years. Meta scrapped its wrist-worn Instagram app in 2018. Slack, Twitter, Uber and others have also ditched their wearable clients. In many cases, developers left due to either a lack of demand or a lack of necessity — there's not much point to a native smartwatch app if you'll likely pick up your phone regardless.

Apple may be aware of this. Rumors suggest watchOS 10 may be redesigned around widgets. Apps might stick around, but the emphasis could be on quick-glance information rather than navigating apps on a tiny screen. Even if you use Messenger for Apple Watch now, there might not be as much incentive to use it going forward.

In a potentially encouraging sign for reducing environmental waste, researchers have discovered microbes from the Alps and the Arctic that can break down plastic without requiring high temperatures. Although this is only a preliminary finding, a more efficient and effective breakdown of industrial plastic waste in landfills would give scientists a new tool for trying to reduce its ecological damage.

Scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute WSL published their findings this week in Frontiers in Microbiology, detailing how cold-adapted bacteria and fungus from polar regions and the Swiss Alps digested most of the plastics they tested — while only needing low to average temperatures. That last part is critical because plastic-eating microorganisms tend to need impractically high temperatures to work their magic. “Several microorganisms that can do this have already been found, but when their enzymes that make this possible are applied at an industrial scale, they typically only work at temperatures above [30 degrees Celsius / 86 degrees Fahrenheit],” the researchers explained. “The heating required means that industrial applications remain costly to date, and aren’t carbon-neutral.”

Unfortunately, none of the microorganisms tested succeeded at breaking down non-biodegradable polyethylene (PE), one of the most challenging plastics commonly found in consumer products and packaging. (They failed at degrading PE even after 126 days of incubation on the material.) But 56 percent of the strains tested decomposed biodegradable polyester-polyurethane (PUR) at 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit). Others digested commercially available biodegradable mixtures of polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT) and polylactic acid (PLA). The two most successful strains were fungi from the genera Neodevriesia and Lachnellula: They broke down every plastic tested other than the formidable PE.

Plastics are too recent an invention for the microorganisms to have evolved specifically to break them down. But the researchers highlight how natural selection equipping them to break down cutin, a protective layer in plants that shares much in common with plastics, played a part. “Microbes have been shown to produce a wide variety of polymer-degrading enzymes involved in the break-down of plant cell walls. In particular, plant-pathogenic fungi are often reported to biodegrade polyesters, because of their ability to produce cutinases which target plastic polymers due [to] their resemblance to the plant polymer cutin,” said co-author Dr. Beat Frey.

The researchers see promise in their findings but warn that hurdles remain. “The next big challenge will be to identify the plastic-degrading enzymes produced by the microbial strains and to optimize the process to obtain large amounts of proteins,” said Frey. “In addition, further modification of the enzymes might be needed to optimize properties such as protein stability.”