DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused alternative to Google, has been working on its own browser. First available on the Mac in open beta late last year, the DuckDuckGo browser is rolling out in beta for Windows starting today. DuckDuckGo says this is “our most requested product for years.”

Naturally, DuckDuckGo is the default search engine here. But the browser has some additional features such as the Duck Player, which will prevent YouTube from serving targeted ads and prevent user-tracked recommendations. YouTube will still see this as a new view, but the browser will prevent any sort of tracking or information that would contribute to your advertising profile.

DuckDuckGo also claims a superior ad-blocking experience. It says that in addition to blocking ads and cookies, the browser will also clean up the white space that’s typically still there with traditional ad blockers. Users familiar with the Mac beta will be familiar with other features including password management, automatic cookie pop-up handling and email protection.

DuckDuckGo first previewed its desktop web browser in late 2021 and released an initial Mac beta in late 2022. Windows is the latest platform to get an official app. But if you don’t use Mac or Windows, DuckDuckGo is available in search engine support on Google Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox. It’s also available as an app for iOS and Android.

The battle over Reddit’s API changes continues, even after coming into effect. Reddit's decision to charge for access to its API was supposedly aimed at companies scraping the website to train Large Language Models for generative AI, but the decision also affects thousands of third-party clients and apps that tie into the platform, including ones with powerful moderation tools not available on the main site and app. Thousands of communities protested the move by setting their subreddits private and making them inaccessible.

Following the API changes, several popular subreddits that historically prohibited porn have started allowing users to post NSFW – Not Safe For Work – content. These communities include r/mildlyinteresting and r/videos. In r/TIHI’s (Thanks, I Hate It) case, a stickied post says the subreddit is removing a rule that forbids extreme NSFW content and will now welcome it, as long as it’s legal under US law. By allowing their subreddits to be filled with posts deemed not safe for work, the moderators have made sure Reddit can't monetize them. The site’s response to the situation has been swift – administrators have reportedly removed whole moderating teams for communities that labeled themselves NSFW.

So far, these protests have had little effect on Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. He told NPR: "It's a small group that's very upset, and there's no way around that. We made a business decision that upset them."

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

Otter’s AI chatbot pays attention during meetings, so you don’t have to

‘EVE Online’s spreadsheets in space now integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Excel

Everything you need to know about Amazon Prime Day 2023

Texas says state-funded EV charging stations need to include Tesla connector

Play as Elephant Mario in 'Super Mario Bros. Wonder' on October 20th

Apple's union-busting practices violated employee rights at NYC store, judge rules

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

‘Final Fantasy XV’ review

A welcome dramatic turn for the series.

Square Enix

It’s back again. This time, it’s real-time. With Final Fantasy XVI, the series’ creators have decided the franchise's future is action-centric and storyline driven. And it’s heavily inspired by epic TV fantasy series. Until now, the Final Fantasy games have never quite had their angry, moody dark moment. With nuanced, occasionally horny characters and often a lot of violence, is this the series’ moody teenager era? The tale of FFXVI is achingly Game of Thrones-y, but sometimes the inspiration is a little on the nose: Dad dies early on? Check. Mysterious wolves? Check. Creepy mother-son relations? Check. While this is a very different kind of game for the series, for those looking for a fantasy adventure with a plot that’s kept me hooked, the 16th Final Fantasy delivers.

Continue reading.

Google Nest WiFi Pro review

This mesh network is more approachable than the rest.

Engadget

Google’s WiFi products have always offered an acceptable blend of power, price and performance. The Nest WiFi Pro, the company’s latest flagship, builds on that existing formula by adding WiFi 6E. Part of its appeal is the Google brand, plus the promise of regular free software updates and tight integrations with most of the world’s smart home players. You won’t get into the fundamentals of running a network, but it should appeal to people who want to set up a guest network quickly. Something like the TP-Link XE75 might run faster and offer more features, but for this price, Google’s made the right compromises.

Continue reading.

A 'Super Mario RPG' remake is coming to Nintendo Switch on November 17th

And Nintendo’s remastering 'Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon' for the Switch.

An unusual SNES classic is getting the remake treatment. Super Mario RPG is back with "brand-new graphics" and it's coming to Nintendo Switch on November 17th. The 1996 original was the very first Mario RPG, made in collaboration with Squaresoft (now Square Enix). It tasks Mario, Bowser, Peach and friends with taking down a mechanical enemy named Smithy and recovering stolen pieces of the Star Road. The remake uses the same art style as modern Mario games. Nintendo is also working on an updated version of Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon – perhaps not a huge surprise given the success of Luigi's Mansion 3.

Continue reading.

The best wireless headphones for 2023

And not all of these over-ear models will break the bank.

For Engadget’s best wireless headphones guide, we tested several models with a variety of features, including noise cancellation and sound quality. Plus, our favorites span a range of prices, so you can decide how much you’re comfortable spending and, ultimately, get the best buy for you. That includes a set for a mere $79.

Continue reading.

Twitch replaces its mature content mode with more granular 'labels'

Categories include sexual themes, gambling and significant profanity or vulgarity.

Twitch has overhauled its mature content policies, switching from a general toggle to specific categories describing what viewers can expect. The new Content Classification Labels are myriad, including mature-rated games, sexual themes, significant profanity or vulgarity, gambling, violent and graphic depictions and, lastly, drugs, intoxication or excessive tobacco use. The ratings apply to both the game and you. For example, if you're playing a mature-rated game, Twitch will automatically label it as such. But, if you're playing an E-rated game and you’re excessively swearing, you must mark your stream as having significant profanity or vulgarity.

Continue reading.

Cellular satellite test successfully beams 4G data from space to a regular phone

AST SpaceMobile recently completed a two-way voice call.

Earlier this year, AST SpaceMobile, with the help of AT&T, connected an off-the-shelf Samsung Galaxy S22 to a satellite in low-Earth orbit to complete a two-way voice call. Now the company says it’s one step closer to bringing the technology to consumers. AST recently completed multiple tests in Hawaii where its engineers saw download speeds of 10Mbps from the company’s BlueWalker 3 satellite to unmodified phones on the ground.

Continue reading.

Instead of pen and paper, many students are now carrying a laptop with them, using it for everything from taking notes to doing research. Companies are responding with programs designed for tech-centric learning, including Figma, a cloud-based design tool. The company has announced that Figma is now free for all US students in K-12, in partnership with Google for Education. The initiative started in beta last year, with 50 high schools across the country getting free access to Figma and FigJam, a collaborative whiteboard.

While Figma offers a free version, it only allows users to have three files for each program. Instead, schools can access the company's most advanced tier, Figma Enterprise, for free (typically $75 per person monthly). It includes unlimited files, individual and shared project options, dedicated workspaces and more sophisticated design features, among other perks. Schools will need Chromebooks to utilize the program, but they can apply for access if they have non-Google systems. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 94 percent of schools provided devices like laptops and tablets to students who needed them for the 2022 to 2023 school year.

Figma's fate is a bit up in the air after Adobe entered into an agreement to buy the competitor in September 2022 for $20 billion in cash and shares. Regulators across the US, UK and EU are investigating whether the deal violates antitrust policies, with the first barrier emerging in February with reports that the US Justice Department was preparing an antitrust lawsuit to block the deal. The UK followed in May with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announcing it was launching an inquiry into the agreement. Most recently came reports that European antitrust regulators plan to initiate an investigation into the merger later this year.

As for free Figma access for students, the initiative holds promise, with the company sharing positive reviews from educators involved in the beta program. Educators can now sign up to bring Figma to their schools in the US — plus, the company is taking its Chromebook partnership global, starting with Google schools in Japan.

I haven't watched a fight since Manny Pacquiao fought Floyd Mayweather Jr. way back in 2015, but I'd totally tune in if Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg duke it out in front of the camera. And I'm not the only one who would, based on the attention the idea of a fight between the two tech billionaires is getting on social media. 

It all started when Musk reacted to a report about Meta's Twitter rival. Apparently, Meta chief product officer Chris Cox said the company has "been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run." Someone told him to be careful, because Zuckerberg does jiu jiutsu now. "I’m up for a cage match if he is," Musk responded. As The Verge reports, Zuckerberg posted a screenshot of the exchange as a story on his Instagram account with the note: "Send Me Location."

Zuckerberg has been training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu for around a year now, and his efforts have been well-documented — he even competed in a tournament back in May and won gold and silver medals. As for Musk, he said he has a great move called "The Walrus" where he just lies on top of the opponent and does nothing. His proposed venue for the fight? The UFC Octagon in Las Vegas. 

Since Musk Vs. Zuckerberg will be the main event, Engadget editors have a few suggestions for undercard matches. Satya Nadella Vs. Sundar Pichai would be almost as interesting to see, especially now that Bing has finally become part of the conversation, thanks to its AI chatbot. And then there's Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who can take their mobile-first services' rivalry to the octagon. Since both Musk and Zuckerberg are looking for ways to monetize their platforms, the smart thing to do is to broadcast the event as pay-to-view live streams on Twitter Blue and Meta Verified. Of course, these are imaginary fights that will most likely not happen, but we're expecting a juicy check as thanks for our ideas if they do. 

A new report has revealed alarming statistics about Discord's issues with child safety. Over the past six years, NBC News identified 35 cases of adults being prosecuted on charges of "kidnapping, grooming or sexual assault" that allegedly involved Discord communication. At least 15 of those have resulted in guilty pleas or verdicts, with "many others" still pending. 

Reporters also discovered 165 more cases, including four crime rings, in which adults were prosecuted for sharing CSAM (child sexual exploitation material) via Discord or allegedly using the site to extort children into sending sexually graphic images of themselves, a practice known as sextortion. The illegal acts often take place in hidden communities and chat rooms, according to the report.

A simple Google search of "site:justice.gov Discord" yields a large number of hits, many of a disturbing nature. In one case identified by NBC News, "a teen was taken across state lines, raped and found locked in a backyard shed, according to police, after she was groomed on Discord for months."

"What we see is only the tip of the iceberg," the Canadian Center for Child Protection's Stephen Sauer told NBC News. And it's not the first time Discord has been under fire for its handling of child abuse complaints. Last year, CNN also identified numerous incidents of CSAM, with some parents claiming that Discord offered little help. 

Earlier this year, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) issued a statement titled "Discord Dishonestly Responds to How it Handles Child Sexual Abuse Material After Being Named to 2023 Dirty Dozen List." Among other things, it noted that CSAM links were identified and reported, but still available on Discord's servers "over two weeks later." It added that Discord's actions in responding to the issues are "far too passive, failing to proactively search for and remove exploitation." It recommended that the site, which currently has over 150 million users, ban minors "until it is radically transformed." 

In a recent transparency report, Discord said its "investment and prioritization in child safety has never been more robust," adding that it disabled 37,102 accounts and removed 17,425 servers for child safety violations. The company's VP of trust and safety, John Redgrave, told NBC News that he believes the platform's approach to the issue has improved since Discord bought the AI moderation company Sentropy in 2021. It uses several systems to proactively detect CSAM and analyze user behavior, and Redgrave said that he thinks the company now proactively detects most materials that already "identified, verified and indexed." 

However, the systems can't currently detect child sexual abuse materials or messages that have yet to be indexed. In a review of Discord servers created over the past month, NBC News found 242 that use thinly disguised terms to market CSAM. 

Discord isn't the only social media company with CSAM problems. A recent report found that Instagram helped "connect and promote a vast network of accounts" devoted to underage-sex content. However, Discord has reportedly made it particularly difficult for law enforcement at times, in one case asking for payment after the Ontario Police asked it to preserve records, according to the report. Engadget as reached out to Discord for comment. 

YouTube TV has expanded its multiview feature's scope so that even non-sports fans can enjoy it. When the service launched multiview, it could show up to four sports streams on the screen at once. But now users will be able to choose from streams with news, business news and weather content, in addition to sports streams. Viewers will still have to pick from preselected videos and can't choose whatever stream they want to watch in multiview, but at least they now have more choices and don't have to stick to having all four screens tuned into sporting events. 

The service first rolled out multiview in March with a focus on sports, just in time for NCAA's March Madness. Multiview is supported on all smart TVs and media players that can run YouTube TV, because the processing is done on the service's servers. While viewers can keep an eye on all four streams at once, they can jump to a full-screen view for each one and switch the audio and the captioning to whatever event they want to focus on at the moment. 

In addition to expanding multiview's repertoire, YouTube TV is also adding Spanish-language sports channels to the preselected stream options for members with a Spanish or Spanish Plus plan. Some members might not have access to the expanded multiview options yet, but they will soon enough — YouTube TV says it gradually roll out these updates to all users over the summer. 

The human hand is a marvel of evolutionary development, offering 27 degrees of freedom and unrivaled touch sensitivity. But it's the same aspects that make our hands so, well, handy, that also make them an absolute nightmare to recreate robotically. That's why one team of researchers has abandoned human-derived gripper design in favor of woodlice.

Look, at least they're not the desiccated and re-inflated tarantula corpses that a team of Rice University researchers created in 2022. Those manipulators were a novel proof of concept in that they exploited the natural mechanisms spiders use for locomotion — specifically that their limbs move through a combination of fluid pressure and flexor muscles, rather than the antagonistic pairs that mammals have — though the system was really only good for as long as the corpses held together. 

Tohoku University via NewScientist

The new system designed by Dr. Josephine Galipon and her team at Japan's Tohoku University builds on the earlier work with "necrobotic" spiders but relies on bugs that are still alive. "To our knowledge, there is no prior example of whole living organisms being used as end effectors for robotic arms, which we propose here," Galipon points out in Biological Organisms as End Effectors. The team relies on both captured woodlice (aka rolly-pollies) and captive chitons (small marine mollusks) to temporarily serve as a robot's hands.

They first 3D printed tiny seats for the animals to sit on at the end of the robot's manipulator arm, then set the woodlice and chitons to task, picking up tufts of cotton and submerged cork, respectively. The results were about as promising as one could really hope for: the woodlice futzed around with the cotton for about two minutes before losing interest, while the chiton's grabbed hold of their prizes and had to be actively separated from them. Still, the fact that the chiton got a grip at all was promising, given existing difficulties in using suction cups and similar mechanical methods underwater. Granted, much more work needs to be completed before these early concepts can even potentially be adapted into functional and efficient robotics systems.

The team's work also raises ethical questions about the test animals' welfare, such as whether they are being forced to perform against their will and how such motivations are delivered. “Especially for sentient animals, we would like to establish a kind of mutual interaction with a cooperative relationship,” Galipon told New Scintist. “It’s a little bit different from domestication, but just a cooperation, where the animal can then go about its day." To be fair, it's certainly less invasive than your average cyborg cockroach research.

Twitter has resumed paying its Google Cloud contract, according to Bloomberg. If you missed the initial news of the impending showdown, Platformer reported on June 10th that Twitter had been refusing to pay Google for its cloud services ahead of their contract’s June 30th renewal date. The possibility of losing access to Google’s infrastructure led to a frantic rush at Twitter to migrate as many of its services off of Google’s servers. However, that effort was reportedly “running behind schedule,” opening the door for some of the company’s in-house tools to go offline come the end of the month.

Now it appears Twitter has found a way to avoid that scenario. Bloomberg reports Linda Yaccarino, the company’s newly appointed CEO, “helped get the relationship back on track.” In fact, the two companies are reportedly negotiating a broader partnership that could include advertising and Google’s use of Twitter’s paid API. Twitter does not operate a public relations department Engadget could contact for comment.

Twitter’s Google Cloud contract dates back to 2018. According to Bloomberg, the contract has cost the company between $200 million and $300 million annually and was one of the early targets of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting. Google reportedly “struggled” to get in touch with the billionaire to talk about Twitter’s unpaid bills, and at one point attempted to reach him through SpaceX, which also does business with the tech giant.

Earlier this year, AST SpaceMobile, with the help of AT&T, managed to connect an off-the-shelf Samsung Galaxy S22 to a satellite in low-Earth orbit to complete a two-way voice call. The announcement marked a major milestone for satellite-based cellular communication. Now the company says it’s one step closer to bringing the technology to consumers.

On Wednesday, AST shared it recently completed multiple tests in Hawaii where its engineers saw download speeds of 10Mbps from the company’s BlueWalker 3 satellite to unmodified phones on the ground. “Successfully reaching double-digit download speeds during satellite-to-smartphone testing takes us one step closer to ensuring people across the United States will be able to stay connected no matter their location,” said Chris Sambar, AT&T network head.

As a next step, AST hopes to connect a phone to BW3 over a 5G signal. A SpaceX Falcon 9 carried the prototype satellite to low-Earth orbit in September. At 693 square feet in size, BW3 features the largest antenna of any commercial satellite to date and is easily one of the brightest objects in the night sky, making it difficult for astronomers to carry out their research.

AT&T is one of a few US carriers looking to use satellites to service underserved rural communities. In 2021, Verizon partnered with Amazon to use the company’s Project Kuiper satellite network for wireless access. More recently, T-Mobile said it would work with SpaceX to test Starlink-capable devices. Like AT&T, the carrier has said existing phones should work with its satellite offering.

EVE Online has finally embraced its destiny. The game, often jokingly called a “spreadsheet simulator” due to the competitive advantages its most dedicated players can gain by tracking in-game data, now has a Microsoft Excel add-in. “Gain a competitive edge by harnessing the power of data, as access to and the understanding of data can spell the difference between victory and defeat,” developer CCP Games wrote Tuesday in a blog post. The free extension, first announced last year at EVE Fanfest, is available now.

Besides serving as crossover marketing for CCP Games and Microsoft, the add-in could help level the playing field and make it easier for new players to enjoy the long-running MMO. “You can now quickly and efficiently arm yourself with the information and knowledge to reach your goals and aspirations,” the development team said. “Easy access to in-game data facilitates decision making and brings added fairness and accessibility to everyone, without requiring coding knowledge or dependence on player-developed third-party tools.” CCP Games collaborated with Microsoft’s Excel team to create the add-in.

Available data includes “your assets with location and item value, market orders, item market prices, wallet transactions, skills, as well as an overview of corporation finances (if you have required roles) to make informed decisions.” After importing your in-game information, you can generate custom reports or visualization tools like graphs and charts. The developer describes it as the “first and only” video game to offer official Excel-based data integration.

“CCP Games has extensive experience in the MMO space, so it’s only natural that we collaborate with them to launch the first-ever native Microsoft Excel add-in for a video game,” said Catherine Pidgeon, Microsoft’s Head of Product, Excel. “With the add-in, the EVE Online player base can seamlessly export and manage data without third-party tools. Through this collaboration, we’re excited to see how players of EVE Online of all skill levels can use Excel to streamline data management and take their in-game experience to new heights.”

To try out the tool, select the “Insert” tab in Excel (desktop or web) and then the “Get Add-ins” button, and look for EVE Online. Alternatively, you can find the add-in in the Microsoft Store. Finally, CCP Games launched a sample workbook to help you get started.