Microsoft finally announced the Surface Pro 10 and Laptop 6 this week, but you won’t find them in any retail stores. You can only buy them on Microsoft’s website and through enterprise resellers. This week, Cherlynn and Devindra discuss why Microsoft is positioning these computers for businesses, and what it could mean for the future of the Surface lineup. The company is hinting that it’ll have consumer devices soon – likely the Pro 10 and Laptop 6 without as much corporate baggage. But there may also be room for an entirely new form of Surface. Perhaps it’s time for a true Surface foldable? (Or maybe not, after seeing how the Duo performed.)

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!

Topics

• Microsoft announces Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6, but you won’t find them in stores – 0:34

• U.S. Justice Department files antitrust suit aimed at Apple’s “walled garden” ecosystem – 14:13

• Report: Apple may tap Google for Gemini AI on iPhones – 25:01

• NVIDIA claims its new Blackwell chip will power through AI workloads 30x faster using 25x less power – 33:07

• Microsoft hires Deepmind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman to lead AI division – 38:00

• YouTube reveals new rules for realistic AI video – 43:16

• Check your Glassdoor account – real names accidentally tied to some anonymous company reviews – 44:31

• Cherlynn finds the tech angle on the Kate Middleton photo debacle. Look at the metadata! – 47:03

• Around Engadget – 56:05

• Pop culture picks – 59:52

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Credits 

Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien

Fans of Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, make sure to mark June 18 on your calendar. On that day, you'll be able to buy a copy of Still Wakes the Deep for the PC (via Steam and Epic Games Store), the Xbox Series X|S and the PS5, though you can also play it with Game Pass for Xbox and PC. It's the latest first-person narrative horror game from The Chinese Room, the developer behind the aforementioned titles in the same genre. 

Just a warning if the title itself isn't clear enough: Still Wakes the Deep probably isn't for you if you have thalassophobia. It's set in 1975 and puts you in the shoes of an offshore oil rig worker stationed in North Sea waters. A "terrifying, unrelenting foe" has come onboard, and you'll have to fight for your life while helping what remains of your crew survive in the midst of storms and freezing temperatures. "All lines of communication have been severed. All exits are gone," the game's description says, because horror stories are no fun if you can easily call for help. You'll have no access to weapons, as well — you'll have to use your wits and what you find from your environment to face the "unknowable horror" and escape the rig altogether. 

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is concerned that the merger Three and Vodafone announced last year could lead to "substantial lessening of competition" and might conduct an in-depth investigation into the deal. Three years after Virgin Media's merger with O2, Three and Vodafone revealed their intention to enter a joint venture agreement that would knock off a standalone mobile network from consumers' choices in the region. go

Apparently, CMA regulators launched a preliminary investigation into their proposed deal back in January and had identified potential issues that could come with combining two of the four remaining mobile network operators in the UK. Those issues include the possibility of the merger leading to higher prices and lower quality of service, since competition typically helps keep prices low and compels operators to make investments meant to improve their network quality. In addition, the CMA is worried that having fewer networks could affect mobile virtual network operators' ability to negotiate for the best deals possible for their customers.

When the two companies announced the merger in 2023, they said that together, they will "have the scale needed to deliver a best-in-class 5G network" and open up "new opportunities for businesses across the length and breadth of the UK." But CMA regulators say their claims "need more detailed assessment." They've now given the companies five working days to respond to their concerns with "meaningful solutions," otherwise they'll proceed towards conducting a more in-depth investigation. 

In 2015, Three also made an attempt to purchase O2 for £10.25 billion ($12.9 billion), but the CMA and the European Commission blocked the purchase after concluding that it would reduce competition and lead to higher prices. The CMA approved the joint agreement between O2 and Virgin Media, a landline, cable and broadband operator, however, after it found those very same concerns to be unfounded. 

The Department of Justice and more than a dozen states have filed a lawsuit against Apple in the US federal court, accusing the company of violating antitrust laws. It says Apple’s hardware and software products are largely inaccessible to competitors, making it difficult for rivals to compete and for customers to switch to other companies’ products.

The lawsuit comes after the European Commission fined Apple €1.8 billion ($1.95 billion) for stopping music-streaming developers from “informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available” outside the App Store. And all this while US lawmakers chase another tech company, TikTok, with a lot of enthusiasm.

The DOJ suggests Apple used its control over iOS to block innovative apps and cloud streaming services from the public. (Look at cloud gaming services, like Google’s now-gone Stadia and Microsoft’s xCloud). The suit also suggests Apple has obstructed rival payment platforms, made it harder for Android messages to appear on iPhones and restricted how competing smartphones integrated with iOS devices.

You could compare Apple’s antitrust suit to Microsoft’s antitrust suit brought against Windows in the late ’90s — even Attorney General Merrick Garland noted those in the suit. But Microsoft truly dominated PC software back then, with over 90 percent of all PCs running some flavor of Windows.

The DOJ says Apple claims 70 percent of all smartphones, which is already less. Step outside the US, which is a bit academic here, and Apple has the same market share as Samsung, with many other phone makers jostling for a percentage point or two. It’s not quite the same grip as Microsoft had on PCs.

— Mat Smith

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Microsoft’s Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 are not for you

They’re for serious business people and professionals.

Microsoft

Two devices conspicuously missing from Microsoft’s Surface and AI event last fall are finally here — and they’re what we expected and a bit surprising. Today, Microsoft unveiled the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6, sporting the same designs as the previous models but now with the AI smarts of Intel’s new Core Ultra CPU. Alas, both have the foreboding words “for business” attached to their names, so you’ll only be able to buy them from Microsoft’s website or commercial resellers. But why? We don’t really know.

Continue reading.

DoorDash is testing a drone delivery feature in Virginia

It’s in partnership with Alphabet’s Wing.

DoorDash just announced the launch of a new drone delivery pilot program in Christiansburg, Virginia, with an approximate population of 22,000. The company says orders should arrive in 30 minutes or less, making high-flying drones about as fast as a standard pizza delivery. However, it’s limited to only “eligible items.” And, alas, only items from fast-food chain Wendy’s.

Wendy’s? Wendy’s.

Continue reading.

Reddit is now a publicly traded company

The social media stalwart wants to raise around $631 million in its IPO.

Nearly two decades after its debut, Reddit is now a publicly traded company. It was listed on the New York Stock Exchange as RDDT on Thursday, with mascot Snoo on hand to ring the opening bell. One interesting aspect of Reddit going public is it offered shares at the IPO pricing to long-term users of good standing over the last few weeks. It’s not all good news for Reddit, though. It recently signed a deal with Google, reportedly worth $60 million a year, to train the latter’s AI models on user-generated content. The Federal Trade Commission is looking into that arrangement.

Continue reading.

WhatsApp has just made it easier to take note of more important messages from within a conversation. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and WhatsApp head Will Cathcart have both announced on their respective WhatsApp channels that you'll now be able to pin up to three messages to the top of a chat, allowing you quick access to any information you want. As TechCrunch notes, you could only pin one message from the time the feature launched in December up until now. But with this update, you may no longer have to save, say, addresses or recipes you get from friends in separate note files. 

The Meta-owned messaging app has also updated its Help Center to reflect the new three-message rule. You can pin not just text messages, but also images and polls, and they'll stay at the top of the chat for 24 hours, 7 days or a whole month. If you pin just one message, it'll show up as the chat banner. But if you pin more, the banner shows how many messages are pinned, with the most recent one appearing first when you tap on it. 

To pin a message, you only have to press on it, select "pin" and choose the duration you want. You can unpin messages the same way if you don't want to see it at the top of your chat anymore before the deadline you set comes up. Back in December WhatsApp also introduced voice messages that self-destruct for those that want an extra layer of security and privacy. And if an unconfirmed report that went out earlier this year is true, then we could expect the service to launch an AirDrop-like file sharing capability in the future. 

The Mozilla Foundation and dozens of other research and advocacy groups are pushing back on Meta’s decisions to shut down its research tool, CrowdTangle, later this year. In an open letter, the group calls on Meta to keep CrowdTangle online until after 2024 elections, saying that it will harm their ability to track election misinformation in a year where “approximately half the world’s population” are slated to vote.

The letter, published by the Mozilla Foundation and signed by 90 groups as well as the former CEO of CrowdTangle, comes one week after Meta confirmed it would shut down the tool in August 2024. “Meta’s decision will effectively prohibit the outside world, including election integrity experts, from seeing what’s happening on Facebook and Instagram — during the biggest election year on record,” the letter writers say.

“This means almost all outside efforts to identify and prevent political disinformation, incitements to violence, and online harassment of women and minorities will be silenced. It’s a direct threat to our ability to safeguard the integrity of elections.” The group asks Meta to keep CrowdTangle online until January 2025, and to “rapidly onboard” election researchers onto its latest tools.

CrowdTangle has long been a source of frustration for Meta. It allows researchers, journalists and other groups to track how content is spreading across Facebook and Instagram. It’s also often cited by journalists in unflattering stories about Facebook and Instagram. For example, Engadget relied on CrowdTangle in an investigation into why Facebook Gaming was overrun with spam and pirated content in 2022. CrowdTangle was also the source for “Facebook’s Top 10,” a (now defunct) Twitter bot that posted daily updates on the most-interacted withFacebook posts containing links. The project, created by a New York Times reporter, regularly showed far-right and conservative pages over-performing, leading Facebook executives to argue the data wasn't an accurate representation of what was actually popular on the platform.

With CrowdTangle set to shut down, Meta is instead highlighting a new program called the Meta Content Library, which provides researchers with new tools to access publicly-accessible data in a streamlined way. The company has said it’s more powerful than what CrowdTangle enabled, but it’s also much more strictly controlled. Researchers from nonprofits and academic institutions must apply, and be approved, in order to access it. And since the vast majority of newsrooms are for-profit entities, most journalists will be automatically ineligible for access (it’s not clear if Meta would allow reporters at nonprofit newsrooms to use the Content Library.)

The other issue, according to Brandon Silverman, CrowdTangle’s former CEO who left Meta in 2021 is that the Meta Content Library isn’t currently powerful enough to be a full CrowdTangle replacement. “There are some areas where the MCL has way more data than CrowdTangle ever had, including reach and comments in particular,” Brandon Silverman, CrowdTangle’s former CEO who left Meta in 2021 wrote in a post on Substack last week. “But there are also some huge gaps in the tool, both for academics and civil society, and simply arguing that it has more data isn’t a claim that regulators or the press should take seriously.”

In a statement on X, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said that “academic and nonprofit institutions pursuing scientific or public interest research can apply for access” to the Meta Content Library, including nonprofit election experts. “The Meta Content Library is designed to contain more comprehensive data than CrowdTangle.”

Fediverse support in Meta Threads is up and running in beta. Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Thursday that adult Threads users in eligible countries can now turn on sharing to the fediverse — including Mastodon and other ActivityPub services. Before today’s wider beta rollout, Meta had been testing the cross-platform compatibility with a handful of accounts since late last year.

The fediverse is a collection of decentralized online communities (servers) that speak the common “language” of ActivityPub. This lets each hub maintain its own rules and members while still allowing posts, likes and other content to appear on others. Meta promised to support the fediverse when Threads launched last year.

In a post from December, Zuckerberg framed the integration as a way to let the young platform’s content reach more eyeballs. “Making Threads interoperable will give people more choice over how they interact and it will help content reach more people,” he wrote. “I’m pretty optimistic about this.”

The feature is opt-in. If you toggle fediverse sharing on, people on other ActivityPub servers can search for and follow your profile, see and interact with your posts and share them with users in their (or any other) compatible fediverse community. Their interactions will be shared with Threads.

There are some limitations while the cross-platform compatibility is in beta. Although likes from different platforms will appear on Threads, replies and follows from those communities won’t. In addition, polls and posts with reply controls can’t be shared with non-Threads communities. So, for now, the integration is doing little more than pushing Threads posts to Mastodon and other fediverse communities, along with a few extras.

You can activate the feature in the Threads app. Head to Account Settings > Fediverse sharing and follow the instructions to opt in and check it out. Meta says the test is only available in the US, Canada and Japan to start.

Roborock robot vacuums are up to 49 percent off as part of the Amazon spring sale. All told, dozens of items are available for a discounted price, from standard robot vacuums to manual cleaners.

The most enticing offer here is likely the company’s flagship S8+ robot vacuum, which is 30 percent off. That drops the price down to $700, a record low for the device. This is a vacuum/mop hybrid that automatically deposits debris into an affiliated dock. Roborock says the dock is large enough, at 2.5 liters, to store up to seven weeks of dirt and dust before requiring a trip to the trash can.

It’s also powerful enough to clean hardwood, tiles, carpets and even thick rugs. It boasts the same kind of light and infrared imaging technology as rival robovacs, so it’ll automatically avoid floor-based hazards. The affiliated app gives access to a 3D map of the space, allowing people to adjust cleaning routes as they see fit. We have consistently enjoyed Roborock vacuums, though have found the app to be a bit on the wonky side.

The company’s Q5 robot vacuum is also on sale for $220, which is a 49 percent price drop. This is an entry-level product that lacks many of the premium features found with the S8+, but it’s still a great choice for simple cleaning tasks. The Q5 can easily handle pet hair, dust, dirt and all manner of debris, though there’s no mop feature. The battery does last for three hours before requiring a charge, which is a decent metric. It also integrates with voice assistants.

Other deals include the Roborock Q8 Max, which features a mop but lacks a self-emptying dock, for $400, and the Dyad Pro combo wet/dry manual vacuum. This cordless vac is $460 throughout the sale period, which is a discount of 30 percent.

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Amazon's Big Spring Sale is still rolling on. While the offers aren't as extensive as what we typically see during Black Friday or Prime Day, there's still more than a few discounts worth calling out. And if you're specifically looking to make an upgrade without spending too much, a few of the sale's best deals apply to budget tech we've recommended in our various buying guides. To help you cut through the noise, we've picked out the best Amazon Spring sale deals under $50 below. The highlights include our favorite affordable earbuds, a handful of good Bluetooth trackers and Amazon's own Fire TV Stick streaming players and Echo smart speakers. As a refresher, Amazon says the sale will run through March 25.

Your Spring Sales Shopping Guide: Spring sales are in the air, headlined by Amazon’s Big Spring sale event. Our expert editors are curating all the best spring sales right here. Follow Engadget to shop the best tech deals from Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, hear from Autoblog’s car experts on the best spring auto deals on Amazon, and find spring sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

Spotify has added a long-requested Miniplayer to its desktop app, giving you quick playback access while freeing you to focus on other things. The resizable floating window lets you control the audio, including changing tracks, picking playlists and tweaking the volume. The company says the feature has already started rolling out to Premium subscribers.

Once it becomes available in your app, you can launch the Spotify Desktop Miniplayer (its proper name) by clicking on a square on the far lower right side of the app, to the right of the standard playback controls. After clicking that, a floating window appears next to the full application.

The resizable Miniplayer can function in a square aspect ratio, ideal for videos; as a thinner bar, it's minimally intrusive and offers play / pause and skip track controls next to the current track’s info and album art.

The feature potentially voids the need for third-party apps (like Alfred Spotify Mini Player, Lofi Spotify Mini Player and SpotMenu) to fill what some users saw as a big oversight from the streaming service. (A Spotify community post requesting it in 2019 had over 3,000 upvotes.) Apple Music has had an equivalent MiniPlayer for macOS and Windows for ages. As it sometimes does, Spotify took its sweet time.

Spotify described the Miniplayer as rolling out to Premium subscribers first, which suggests it could eventually reach users on the free plan. If you’re a Premium subscriber, look for the little square toggle appearing to the lower right of the desktop app before long.