Coco, a company that offers food deliveries by remote-controlled robot, has expanded beyond its home base of Los Angeles for the first time. The service is now available in Austin as it commences a nationwide rollout. Coco plans to bring its robots to Dallas, Houston and Miami in the next few months.

The company says its service, which debuted in 2020, now has hundreds of delivery robots on the streets of LA, covering all of the city's major neighborhoods. Coco claims to reduce costs and deliver food to customers 30 percent faster than traditional methods with an on-time delivery rate of 97 percent. It partnered with 10 Austin restaurants and chains at the outset, and will offer deliveries in the South Lamar, South Congress, South Austin, Downtown, Northside, North Loop and Domain neighborhoods from the jump.

Other robot delivery services — such as Yandex, Serve Robotics (a former division of Postmates) and Nuro — have adopted the self-driving approach. Coco's robots, on the other hand, are controlled by employees who work from home.

Disney+ dipped its toes into the world of livestreaming for the first time in the US with a broadcast of this year's Oscar nominations, offering a glimpse of a possible direction for the platform. "We performed a test for livestreaming capabilities on Disney+ in the US with this morning’s Academy Award nominations," a Disney+ spokesperson told Engadget in a statement. "We are pleased with the results and will continue to test as part of our ongoing and iterative approach to deliver the best user experiences to consumers.”

The nominations were broadcast on multiple platforms, including Hulu, Good Morning America, ABC News Live and the Oscars website. Given Disney+ was not the only option for awards aficionados to watch the nominations, it was a smart way for Disney to test the platform's livestreaming capacity without placing too much strain on the infrastructure. Notably, Disney owns ABC, the network that broadcasts the Academy Awards ceremony each year.

Disney+ does offer some livestreaming options in other countries, including sports in India and WWE events in Indonesia. Of course, Disney has other platforms with livestreaming options in the US, including Hulu + Live TV and ESPN+. So, it's not impossible to imagine Disney+ streaming live sports, the Oscars ceremony or other events in the future — something that could help it stand out from rivals like Netflix, which has largely steered clear of livestreaming.

The pandemic pushed US lawmakers to provide provisions to expand medical coverage for telehealth in 2020, speeding up a process that would otherwise have taken years. Since then, there have been efforts to make the change permanent, through things like the Telehealth Expansion Act of 2021. But there is an interim period that could present some uncertainty over whether people can get crucial telehealth services while permanent legislation is drawn up. Today, a bipartisan group of 45 lawmakers, led by Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), said they're "calling for the extension of expanded coverage of telehealth services to be included in must-pass legislation in February."

The group published a letter addressing Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as their minority counterparts and notable signees include Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). 

The letter states "While Congress prepares to enact permanent telehealth legislation, we urge you to include an extension of the pandemic telehealth authorities in must-pass government funding legislation in February." 

Currently, pandemic telehealth decision-makers have temporary authority, and that's tied to the COVID-19 public health emergency declaration. As stated in today's letter, the emergency declaration is renewed in three-month increments. "Without more definitive knowledge about the duration of the pandemic and Medicare’s long-term coverage of telehealth, many organizations have been hesitant to fully invest in telehealth."

In addition to providing more confidence to providers that investing in telehealth will be a sound long-term investment, adding an extension to telehealth coverage while making it permanent will also "reassure patients that their care will not end abruptly."

The lawmakers called for "An extension to maintain expanded coverage of Medicare telehealth services for a set period of time," which the letter said "would provide much-needed certainty to health care providers and patients." They believe an extension would also allow additional time for studies to be conducted on the impact of telehealth, which "could help inform Congress's next steps on permanent telehealth legislation and appropriate program integrity and beneficiary protections."

Therefore, the group is also asking to ensure that "an extension not include unnecessary statutory barriers in accessing telehealth services during this data collection and analysis period," which could prevent people from getting essential care.

Warner Bros. and New Line are creating a sequel to the Mortal Kombat film with Moon Knight writer Jeremy Slater onboard, Deadline has reported. It will follow up the original R-rated film that did decent box office numbers ($83 million world wide) considering the pandemic, and was HBO Max's most successful film to date when it launched last April. 

On top of creating Moon Knight (with Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke), Slater is working on Stephen King's The Tommyknockers adaptation for Universal and an upcoming Netflix movie directed by Travis Knight. He also developed The Umbrella Academy for Netflix. 

The original film was as gory as you'd expect considering the violence of the game, but screenwriter Greg Russo also tried to inject some humor. It's not known if Mortal Kombat director Simon McQuoid will be involved again, but last year he said a sequel could happen "if the fans want another one." 

The original did seem designed to set up another sequel, though, with one one critic describing it as "the homework you have to do before the fun." It received a middling 54 percent Rotten Tomato critic rating, but was appreciated more by audiences that gave it an 86 percent score. 

Disney+ will come to more parts of the world this summer. On Wednesday, Disney announced the streaming service will expand to 42 additional countries and 11 new territories in the second half of the year. The full list is below, but some of the more notable places where the platform will arrive include South Africa and Poland. Disney didn’t say exactly when it plans to launch the service in each country and territory, nor did it share details on regional pricing. Expect those to come at a later date. 

Disney+ is currently available in 64 countries globally, including the US, UK and Canada. The announcement of an imminent expansion comes after Disney added fewer than expected subscribers during its final fiscal quarter of 2021. Some analysts had predicted the company would add as many as 9.4 million new paying users before the end of the year, but the company instead managed to attract a more modest 2.1 million subscribers. Despite missing Wall Street estimates, Disney said at the time it was still confident it could secure 230 million users before the end of 2024. At the end of 2021, the service had 118 million subscribers globally. 

Here's the full list of countries where the service is expanding to this summer: Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Oman, Palestine, Poland, Qatar, Romania, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Vatican City and Yemen.

As for territories, the list is as follows: Faroe Islands, French Polynesia, French Southern Territories, St. Pierre and Miquelon Overseas Collective, Åland Islands, Sint Maarten, Svalbard & Jan Mayen, British Indian Ocean Territory, Gibraltar, Pitcairn Islands and St. Helena.

Following a two-month delay, Valve's Steam Deck will launch on February 25th. In a blog post the company published on Monday, Valve said it would open orders to the first batch of reservation holders that day. Those customers will have 72 hours to purchase the handheld. If they don't use the opportunity, Valve will release their spot to the next person in the reservation queue. The first orders will then ship on February 28th. Moving forward, Valve says it plans open orders to more customers on a weekly basis.    

Valve had planned to release the Steam Deck at the end of 2021, but due to parts shortages, the company pushed that date back. "We’re sorry about this — we did our best to work around the global supply chain issues," Valve said at the time. "Components aren’t reaching our manufacturing facilities in time for us to meet our initial launch dates."

Pricing for the Steam Deck starts at $399. That gets you a device with 64GB of eMMC internal storage and a carrying case. Valve will also offer models with 256GB and 512GB of NVMe storage. Those cost $529 and $649, respectively. The most expensive version also comes with a premium anti-glare screen. The Steam Deck's custom chipset features a 2.4GHz processor and a GPU with eight RDNA 2 computer units. It also comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. All of that creates a handheld PC Valve claims can run the latest games at a "very efficient" power envelope. Look to Engadget for a review of the Steam Deck come February 25th.  

You might not have to venture downtown (or to a grocery chain) to visit an Amazon Go store. USA Todayreports Amazon plans to open a new version of the cashierless store designed for suburban areas. The locations will still focus on essentials, ready-to-eat food, drinks and snacks, just with layouts more suited to these outlying regions.

The shops will still rely on computer vision to detect what you buy. Once you've scanned your phone at the entrance, camera systems detect what you grab from the shelves. Amazon charges you for the items once you leave the Go store.

Amazon will open the first of these suburban Go stores in Mill Creek, Washington sometime in the months ahead. A second store will debut later in the Los Angeles area. The move still leaves large parts of the US (not to mention the planet) without access, but we suspect Amazon isn't too concerned when third-party chains like Starbucks are beginning to adopt its AI-based shopping tech.

A module that hosts a film studio and sports arena could be connected to the International Space Station by December 2024. Space Entertainment Enterprise (SEE), which is co-producing a Tom Cruise movie that will partly be shot in space, is behind the project. If and when SEE-1 is up and running, it plans to host TV and film productions, as well as music events and some kind of sports, which can be filmed or livestreamed, according to Variety.

Axiom Space, which two years ago won a NASA contract to construct the first commercial ISS module, will build the station. All going well, SEE-1 will be connected to Axiom's arm of the ISS. Axiom Station is scheduled to split from the ISS in 2028 with SEE-1 still attached.

Whether SEE and Axiom can make good on their plan remains to be seen. SEE hasn't said how much the facility will cost, for one thing. It's currently planning a fundraising round.

Last year, a Russian crew shot a feature-length fiction film in space for the first time, beating Cruise and his director Doug Liman to the punch. That film, The Challenge, is expected to be released this year. Cruise and Liman, meanwhile, are expected to shoot their movie on the ISS later in 2022.

NBCUniversal's Peacock isn't going to let the live news from rivals like CBS go unanswered. The streaming service has added free, around-the-clock local news from NBC stations for all users. The broadcasts are initially available from stations in Boston (including the New England Cable Network), Chicago, Miami and Philadelphia. New York City and Los Angeles channels will be available in the "months ahead."

The platform already has live and on-demand news from NBC's self-branded services as well as Sky and Telemundo. You can also watch live entertainment TV from 11 local NBC stations, including those from cities in the news rollout.

The decision may have been an easy one to make. Airing existing news channels won't cost much more, and could help Peacock serve cord-cutters who may still want local events in between The Office marathons. There's also increasing competition. Live news is quickly becoming a selling point, including through Amazon's free app on Fire TV devices. The NBC stations could reduce the temptation to switch to other channels and services.

If you've been waiting for a decent deal on an Apple Watch Series 7, now might be the time to take the leap. You can get up to $60 (as much as 15 percent) off the smartwatch at Amazon at the minute. The biggest discounts are on the green versions of both the GPS and cellular models. The 41mm GPS Apple Watch Series 7 has dropped from $399 to $339, while the cellular variant is down from $499 to $439 — an all-time low price for that model.

We've seen the GPS version of the Apple Watch Series 7 drop to this price before. It dipped to $339 in late December, the lowest price we'd seen to date. Still, it's a good deal on a smartwatch to which we gave a score of 90 in our review. While sleep tracking might not be as robust as in say, a Fitibit, it's still arguably the best all-around smartwatch on the market, thanks to features like workout tracking, fast charging and deep integration with iOS.

Some variants of the GPS Apple Watch Series 7 are on sale, though with a slightly smaller reduction. The (Product) RED, black and blue versions are down to $349. Other cellular models are $50 off too. You can snag it in blue, white or black for $449.

Meanwhile, as was the case in a one-day sale on Woot last week and on Amazon earlier this month, you can snag a four-pack of AirTags for $94, which is five percent off the regular price. As with Tile trackers, the idea is to help you keep track of your things. Although Android users can see if an AirTag is nearby through a dedicated app, you'll need an iPhone to get the most out of the trackers.

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