You no longer need to be at a fixed address if you're craving pizza. Domino's is introducing a Pinpoint Delivery feature in the US that, as the name implies, will send pies to a GPS pin you drop on the map. You can get pizza at the beach, or feed the soccer team without leaving the field. The company tells Engadget that deliveries are available anywhere a restaurant serves, so long as the driver can safely pull over. You won't get a pie while you're at the top of a mountain during a hike, then, but you could have Domino's bring the pie to the trailhead when you've returned to your car.

You'll have to pre-pay for your order online and agree to text updates on your driver's status. You can track the delivery person's GPS location as you would with regular deliveries. Sorry, you can’t pay cash once the driver arrives. Once they do, you can turn on a "visual signal" on your phone (like you do with some ride-hailing services) to flag them and complete the pickup.

The company claims it's the first "quick-service" restaurant chain in the US to offer GPS pin-based deliveries. That's a narrow category, and some delivery apps like Instacart at least offer the option to modify your location once you pick an address. Still, it's clear the company is betting that a rideshare-style approach to delivery could help it win business. You're theoretically more likely to pick Domino's if you know you can get it virtually anywhere, not just at your home or office.

Domino's frequently uses technology as a marketing hook. You can already order pizza from your car, or fetch your food from a self-driving delivery vehicle. In that sense, Pinpoint Delivery is just a logical extension of the company's strategy — it's a way to reel in tech enthusiasts who may order from whichever restaurant is the most convenient or novel.

In February, Reddit revealed it had been the victim of a targeted phishing scheme that exposed internal docs, dashboards, code and contracts, along with some advertisers' and current and former employees' information. None of the data appears to have found its way to the public, but that could soon change. Ransomware gang BlackCat, also known as ALPHV, has just taken responsibility for the hack and claims to have 80GB of compressed data. In a post called "The Reddit Files," BlackCat announced it would delete the information if Reddit gives it $4.5 million and reverses API price increases.

BlackCat captured the information through a scheme that saw employees receive "plausible sounding prompts" to visit a website designed just like Reddit's intranet gateway. One individual fell for the trick, allowing hackers to steal their login details and second-factor tokens. The person then self-reported their mistake, and it's believed the security breach didn't compromise Reddit users' personal information.

Now, months later, the hackers have publicly revealed themselves in the midst of site-wide protests against API price hikes (yes, the same ones BlackCat is so admirably demanding be undone). The increased cost is forcing popular third-party apps like Narwhal and Apollo to shut down, with Apollo creator Christian Selig claiming he would need to spend $20 million per year to stay in business. Developers also fear losing third-party apps will lead to more censoring and less opportunity for growing ad revenue.

A massive protest saw up to 8,000 subreddits go dark at one time, but the results are mixed, with Reddit doubling down on its plans. "These people who are mad, they're mad because they used to get something for free, and now it's going to be not free," Reddit CEO Steve Hoffman said in an interview with The Verge. He has also suggested making it easier to remove moderators who aren't making "popular" decisions. Though Reddit shows no signs of reversing its decision, some advertisers have paused on the site while blackouts continue.

It's uncertain how, if at all, this new development will impact API prices, with Reddit yet to comment on whether it will meet the demands. BlackCat claims Reddit ignored its past two contact attempts, in April and June, and doesn't have much hope a public ultimatum will make a difference. "We are very confident that Reddit will not pay any money for their data," BlackCat stated in its post. "We expect to leak the data."

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairperson Jessica Rosenworcel wants to open a formal Notice of Inquiry into the impact of internet data caps on consumers, according to an FCC document spotted by Ars Technica. The regulator will also consider "taking action" to ensure that data caps don't harm competition or impact access to broadband services, according to the letter. 

"Internet access is no longer nice-to-have, but need-to-have for everyone, everywhere," Rosenworcel said in a statement. "When we need access to the internet, we aren’t thinking about how much data it takes to complete a task, we just know it needs to get done. It’s time the FCC take a fresh look at how data caps impact consumers and competition."

With the Notice of Inquiry, the FCC would "seek comment to better understand why the use of data caps continues to persist despite increased broadband needs of consumers and providers' demonstrated technical ability to offer unlimited data plans," according to the letter. 

Rosenworcel would be unable to take any action on data caps at the moment, though. The FCC currently has just four members (two Democrats and two Republicans), as the Senate refused to confirm President Biden's first nominee, Gigi Sohn, and she subsequently withdrew her name for consideration. The White House has since nominated telecom attorney Anna Gomez, who appears to have the support of the telecom industry. A nomination hearing for Gomez is scheduled for this Thursday, June 22nd. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, broadband provider Comcast temporarily removed data caps, but it continues to impose a 1.2TB data cap on certain contracts in some US regions. Charter's deal with the FCC to not impose data caps on its Spectrum service (struck when it acquired Time Warner) ended this year, but the company recently said it has "no plans to [restart data caps] when the condition sunsets." 

Along with the proposed Notice of Inquiry, the FCC has opened a new portal to allow consumers to share how data caps have affected them (on fixed or wireless broadband networks) at fcc.gov/datacapstories. That will help the FCC determine how data caps impact access for everyone "including those with disabilities, low-income consumers, and historically disadvantaged communities, and access to online education, telehealth and remote work," the Commission wrote.

When more than 8,000 subreddits went dark for 48 hours earlier this week to protest Reddit’s forthcoming API changes, there were signs the action had an immediate effect on the platform. On the morning of the first day of the protest, Reddit suffered a “major outage” affecting its desktop and mobile websites, as well as mobile apps. Days later, company CEO Steve Huffman went on a media offensive where he attempted to cast aggrieved users and moderators, many of whom give countless hours of their free time to make Reddit the vibrant platform it is today, as unreasonable. “These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free,” he said in an interview with The Verge.

But beyond those signs, it was hard to tell how much of a practical effect the protest had on the website’s traffic. Now we have a better idea. According to data provided to Engadget by internet analytics firm Similarweb, the impact was small but noticeable. On the day before the blackout began on June 12th, Similarweb logged more than 57 million daily visits to Reddit across desktop and mobile web clients. By the end of the first day of the protest, daily visits were below 55 million. Then, at the end of June 13th, Similarweb recorded fewer than 52 million daily visits to Reddit. Compared to the website’s average daily volume over the past month, the 52,121,649 visits Reddit saw on June 13th represented a 6.6 percent drop.

Over that same time period, Similarweb recorded a more dramatic decrease in the amount of time Reddit users were spending on the platform. The day before the protest began, an average session on the website was about eight minutes and 31 seconds long. A day later, that metric fell to seven minutes and 17 seconds, or the lowest that stat has been in the past three years. Reddit did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.

Looking forward, a temporary drop in daily traffic is unlikely to affect Reddit’s near-term prospects. But as many subreddits continue to protest the company’s plans and its leadership contemplates policy changes that could change its relationship with moderators, the platform could see a slow but gradual decline in daily active users. That’s unlikely to bode well for Reddit ahead of its planned IPO and beyond.

Bonnaroo takes place this weekend and, as with the last two years, you can watch the festival from the comfort of your home on Hulu. Through Sunday, the streaming service is offering two channels of live music coming to you from Manchester, Tennessee. You'll find the streams on the Hulu homepage or by searching for "Bonnaroo."

This year's headliners are Kendrick Lamar, Odesza and Foo Fighters. There are many other notable names on the bill, including Three 6 Mafia, Jenny Lewis, Tyler Childers, Sheryl Crow, My Morning Jacket, Franz Ferdinand, Paramore and Pixies. As things stand, Hulu will show all of those artists' sets except for Lamar's. You can check the platform's website for the up-to-date schedule. Unfortunately, you won't be able to stream the sets on Hulu after the fact — you'll have to tune in live to catch them.

You'll need to be a Hulu subscriber to watch the livestreams, but the service is offering a seven-day trial for new and eligible returning users. Hulu has been the streaming home of Bonnaroo since 2021, when it took over the rights from YouTube. Later this year, you'll be able to watch Lollapalooza and the Austin City Limits Music Festival on the platform as well.

After years of development, Virgin Galactic is finally ready to take paying customers. The company has confirmed that its first commercial spaceflight, Galactic 01, will launch between June 27th and June 30th. This inaugural mission will carry three people from Italy's Air Force and National Research Council as they conduct microgravity research. Virgin had anticipated a late June start, but hadn't committed to that window until now.

The company already has follow-up flights scheduled. Galactic 02 is expected to launch in early August and will carry a private crew. Virgin will fly on a monthly basis afterward, although details of future missions aren't yet available. At least the first two flights will stream live through the company's website.

Virgin conducted its last pre-commercial flight test, its fifth spaceflight of any kind, in late May. The company faced numerous delays and incidents getting to that point, however. The company completed its first SpaceShipTwo test flights in 2013, but paused its efforts after the deadly 2014 crash of VSS Enterprise. Flight testing didn't resume until VSS Unity's glide test at the end of 2016. The firm finally reached space in 2018, but had to wait until 2021 to complete its first fully crewed spaceflight with founder Richard Branson aboard. It pushed back commercial service multiple times due to varying factors, most recently delays in upgrading the VMS Eve "mothership" that carries SpaceShipTwo vehicles to their launch altitude.

The debut is important for Virgin's business. Virgin has operated at a loss for years, losing more than $500 million just in 2022. Commercial service won't recoup those investments quickly even at $450,000 per ticket, but it will give the company a significant source of revenue.

This isn't the start of space tourism for Virgin. In that sense, it's still trailing Blue Origin. Galactic 01 will put Virgin ahead of SpaceX, though, as that company's Starship rocket has yet to reach space and isn't expected to launch its first lunar tourist flights until late 2024 at the earliest. While Virgin is less ambitious than Elon Musk's operation, it's also achieving its goals sooner.

Instagram's broadcast channels, a Telegram-style one-way messaging feature, will soon be available more broadly. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his own channel that the company is rolling out the feature globally today. Until now, it had been limited to select creators.

Broadcast channels allow users to send messages to their followers, who can react to them and vote in polls, but aren't able to respond directly. Zuckerberg has been using his channel to share announcements and updates on Meta's products.

Along with text updates, creators can post images, videos and audio clips. They can also invite others to join their channel as a collaborator. Zuckerberg previously had a public chat with Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, on his channel.

Meta brought channels to WhatsApp for the first time last week. A few organizations have access for now, but WhatsApp will offer the feature more broadly in the coming months. Meta plans to bring channels to Facebook and Messenger as well.

Meanwhile, Meta is developing a text-based "decentralized social network" to rival Twitter. Reports suggest that while this will be a standalone service that will connect to the networking protocol that powers Mastodon, you'll be able to log in with your Instagram account to populate your profile.

Amazon and Disney have partnered to create an interactive experience that combines Alexa’s voice assistant features with Disney’s robust stable of characters. The appropriately-named “Hey Disney!” is now available on any Echo device and represents the very first time Amazon has allowed an assistant other than Alexa on its various speakers and tablets.

Once you purchase an annual subscription to the new voice assistant via the Alexa Skills Store, you’ll have some brand new ways to interact with your Echo gadgets. The wake word changes to “Hey Disney!” which gives you access to something called the “Disney Magical Companion.” This opens up 20 new personalities and voices to interact with across Disney’s entire corporate roster, including Pixar movies and the Star Wars franchise. Additionally, the service is being included as a perk to Amazon Kids+ at no added cost.

Once you call up your favorite character, you’ll get some extra personality when asking for the weather or setting an alarm. Amazon gives examples of Olaf from Frozen reading the weather and a themed soundscape inspired by Return of the Jedi’s moon of Endor. There’s also an emphasis here on storytelling, with Amazon touting “interactive adventures with characters” and “immersive entertainment.” Finally, there’s a new multiplayer Disney trivia game. These modes exist as voice-only experiences for Echo speakers and with visuals for Echo Show tablets.

This is not the first we’ve heard of this unique branding. The voice assistant was first revealed last year, but it was an exclusive release to Disney Resort hotels. Now it’s available to everyone, so long as you pony up for a dedicated subscription or already have a Kids+ plan.

Amazon's Freevee is continuing to expand its lineup of cable-style streaming channels. The platform currently has more than 280 free, ad-supported TV (FAST) channels and it's adding more from MGM and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Twelve MGM channels are coming to the service over the next few months, including one called MGM Presents and others dedicated to action and sci-fi shows and movies. There will be channels focused on individual shows, including The Pink Panther, Stargate, Green Acres and The Outer Limits. There are already dedicated channels for the likes of Paternity Court, In the Heat of the Night, The Addams Family and Teen Wolf.

Amazon bought MGM last year, and spinning up FAST channels to monetize the studio's wealth of films and TV shows makes a lot of sense. Perhaps there'll be a James Bond one at some point too.

Meanwhile, Freevee is adding 11 FAST channels from Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) this month. They'll include reality and documentary shows such as Cake Boss, Extreme Couponing, Ghost Brothers, Paranormal Lockdown, Say Yes to the Dress and Long Lost Family.

WBD has made a push into FAST channels in recent months in an attempt to generate more revenue. It pulled shows such as Westworld and The Nevers from its own Max streaming service to offer those titles (and others) for free on FAST channels on the likes of Roku and Tubi.

You'll be able to access all of these channels through the Freevee app, Fire TV and Prime Video (you don't need an Amazon Prime subscription to watch them). Earlier this year, Amazon said it would make more than 100 Prime Video shows and movies available for free through Freevee's channels.

Last year's Mac Studio was the super-powered Mac mini many Apple fans were begging for. But, for the most demanding users, it was unclear if it was worth shelling out $3,999 for the high-end Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra chip, or if they should just wait for the inevitable Mac Pro refresh. Now that Apple has revamped the Mac Pro with an M2 Ultra chip, the company's desktop lineup finally has something for everyone.

At the most basic level, there's the $599 Mac Mini. If you need a bit more power, you can get that same slim machine with an M2 Pro chip for $1,299. Meanwhile, all-in-one fans have several iMacs to choose from, starting at $1,299 (though it's probably worth waiting for an M2 spec bump).

That leaves the $1,999 Mac Studio as the ideal machine for Apple power users. It'll be enough for video editing work, and it also comes standard with 32GB of RAM (it could use more than 512GB of storage, though). Step up to the $3,999 model with an M2 Ultra chip, and you've got a system that can destroy just about any task you put in front of it. The few professional users who need PCIe expansion can now opt for the M2 Ultra-equipped Mac Pro, which starts at an eye-watering $6,999.

All of sudden, the higher-end Mac Studio makes so much more sense. It has the same raw power as the Mac Pro, a ton of ports, and it won't take up much room on your desk. What seemed like a curiosity last year, now feels like a tremendous value for power users. Funny how that works, isn't it? (Apple reportedly shelved plans for an even more powerful M2 chip, which could have offered double the power of the M2 Ultra, according to Bloomberg.)

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

The base Mac Studio is now equipped with an M2 Max chip, featuring a 12-core CPU (with eight performance and four efficiency cores) and a 30-core GPU, as well as 32GB of RAM. Compared to last year's M1 Max, the new chip has two more efficiency cores and six additional GPU cores. What's most notable is the additional upgrade options: You can configure the M2 Max chip with a 38-core GPU and 96GB of RAM (previously you were capped at 32GB of memory).

Step up to the M2 Ultra and you effectively get two M2 Max chips: It starts with a 24-core CPU, 60-core GPU and 64GB of memory. If you want to truly push your system (and wallet) to the limit, the M2 Ultra can also be configured with a 76-core GPU and 192GB of RAM. With all that power, who needs a full-sized PC tower?

And really, that's what I kept asking myself as I tested our review unit, which was equipped with an M2 Ultra and 192GB of RAM. The Mac Studio is so ridiculously overpowered, only the most demanding users would need the Mac Pro's PCIe expansion. Since the M2 chips feature unified memory integrated alongside the CPU and GPU, there's no way to add additional RAM down the line, which used to be another reason to get the Mac Pro. At least you can stuff the Mac Studio to the gills with RAM, if you need it.

Much like the M2 Max-powered 14-inch MacBook Pro, Apple's latest chips deliver noticeable performance increases over the M1 generation in just about every benchmark. But it's also not significant enough to run out and replace an M1 system. Instead, the new Mac Studio is an even more tempting machine for Mac users still trucking along with Intel processors, even for some Mac Pro owners.

In the Geekbench 5 CPU benchmark, the Mac Studio scored higher than any system we've tested this year. But really, that's not a surprise – even last year's M1 Ultra Mac Studio scored higher than the Razer Blade 16, which features Intel's fastest mobile 13th-gen chip. Apple doesn’t always come out ahead: that Blade 16 beat the Mac Studio in the Geekbench 5 Compute benchmark, which you can chalk up to the NVIDIA RTX 4090 under the hood. Still, the Mac Studio's multithreaded Cinebench R23 score (a test that mostly measures CPU performance) was more than double the Blade 16's.

The new Mac Studio transcoded a 4K video file to 1080p using Handbrake in 21 seconds, three seconds faster than last year's M1 Ultra model. That same job took the Razer Blade 16, the fastest PC we've seen this year, 26 seconds to complete. Scale that saved time up to a feature length project, or encoding jobs you'll need to run several times a day, and the Mac Studio seems like a no-brainer upgrade for some creatives.

Years ago, some professionals would buy the Mac Pro for its sheer performance, while the internal expansion possibilities were more of an afterthought. The Mac Studio is a system made for them. And now, thanks to Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4, external storage options are fast enough to deal with the demands of a video production shop.

The Mac Studio certainly won't leave you wanting when it comes to ports: On the rear, it features four USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB 3.2 Type A connections, 10Gbps Ethernet, full-sized HDMI and a headphone jack. There are also two USB-C ports on the front (USB 3 by default, Thunderbolt 4 on the M2 Ultra), alongside a full-sized SD card slot. Just like last year, video editors I've spoken with said they'd prefer a headphone jack on the front, but at least it's easy to get behind the Studio to plug things in. Given the user this machine is aimed at, it also would have been nice to get Thunderbolt 4 ports on the front for every configuration.

Physically, the Studio is no different than what we saw last year. It's a beautifully polished box that looks like two Mac minis stacked together. It’s far more prominent than that slim desktop, but for Apple devotees, that may be more of a feature than a bug. Now that it no longer seems like a stopgap solution for people eagerly waiting for an upgraded Mac Pro, the Mac Studio looks like the purest expression of what Apple wants a desktop to be in 2023. Why fiddle around with internal hardware when the package Apple delivers is so fully featured?

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

As I said in my review last year, the Mac Studio isn't meant for everyone: It's a system targeted at people who know their demands are lightyears beyond mainstream users. They won't balk at a $1,999 starting price, or even the $3,999 for the M2 Ultra model, if it means they'll be able to deliver projects faster. On the PC side, you've got alternatives like Intel's NUC Extreme small-form factor desktop, but that system has ballooned in size so much that you can't really compare it to the Mac Studio.

I've gone from being intrigued by the Mac Studio to truly impressed. It continues to blow PCs away when it comes to heavy-duty work, and it has so much connectivity I don't miss the lack of internal expansion. It's more than just the big Mac mini – it's a compact Mac Pro that many creatives can actually afford.