The 20th century’s best-selling game is heading back to iOS. Just in time for Myst’s 30th anniversary this fall, developer Cyan Worlds announced this week that it’s bringing the recent 2021 remake of the classic point-and-click adventure game to iPhones and iPads. The port will support devices with Apple’s A12 Bionic chipset or newer, meaning you can play the game with something as old as an iPhone XR or third-generation iPad Air.
From @cyanworlds, Myst Mobile, the mobile port of their legendary game Myst, is coming to iOS 📱
Visit the intriguing Myst Island, stunning and mysterious in equal measure, where a story of ruthless betrayal awaits 🏝️
As The Verge notes, this won’t be Myst’s first appearance on mobile devices. In fact, you can buy the Legacy edition right now for $5. That said, the 2021 rerelease represents a significant upgrade over what was available previously on phones and tablets. In addition to greatly enhanced visuals, the remake features updated audio assets and an optional puzzle randomization feature that can help make the title feel fresh for Myst veterans. The new version will be free to download, allowing you to explore the game’s first location. If you want to play through the entire experience, you’ll need to pay for the full $15 version. Cyan hasn’t announced a release date just yet, but we imagine the studio will share that information before too long.
NVIDIA has begun rolling out a fix for a bug that had caused some of its GPUs to perform worse while people had Discord open. In a tweet spotted by The Verge, the company said Windows will now automatically download an app profile update the next time users log into their PC. The update resolves an issue that prevented some NVIDIA GPUs, including RTX 30 series models like the 3080 and 3060 Ti, from pushing their memory as fast as possible when Discord was open in the background. In some instances, NVIDIA users reported their video cards being throttled by as much as 200Mhz, translating to a modest performance decrease in most games.
GeForce users can now download an app profile update for Discord. This resolves a recent issue where some GeForce GPUs memory clocks did not reach full speed w/ Discord running in the background. The update automatically downloads to your PC the next time you log into Windows. pic.twitter.com/89nwugWQFF
Reddit and Linus Tech Tips forum users were among the first to spot and document the issue. The bug was introduced in a recent Discord update that added AV1 codec support. With the new codec, RTX 40 series users can stream their gameplay at up to 4K and 60 frames per second over Discord Nitro. The bug did not appear to affect RTX 40 series cards. That said, NVIDIA quickly acknowledged the issue and offered a temporary workaround.
Scientists and roboticists have long looked at nature for inspiration to develop new features for machines. In this case, researchers from the University of Toronto were inspired by bats and other animals that rely on echolocation to design a method that would give small robots that ability to navigate themselves — one that doesn't need expensive hardware or components too large or too heavy for tiny machines. In fact, according to PopSci, the team only used the integrated audio hardware of an interactive puck robot and built an audio extension deck using cheap mic and speakers for a tiny flying drone that can fit in the palm of your hand.
The system works just like bat echolocation. It was designed to emit sounds across frequencies, which a robot's microphone then picks up as they bounce off walls. An algorithm that team created then goes to work to analyze sound waves and create a map with the room's dimensions.
In the researchers' paper published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, they said existing "algorithms for active echolocation are less developed and often rely on hardware requirements that are out of reach for small robots." The researchers also said their "method is model-based, runs in real time and requires no prior calibration or training." Their solution could give small machines the capability to be sent on search-and-rescue missions or to previously uncharted locations that bigger robots wouldn't be able to reach. And since the system only needs onboard audio equipment or cheap additional hardware, it has a wide range of potential applications.
The researchers found during their tests that their technique is still not quite as accurate as systems that use bigger and more expensive hardware, such as GPS sensors or cameras. They're hoping to improve its accuracy in future versions, though, and to eliminate the need for the system to generate sounds. Instead, they want their system to be able to echolocate using the sounds the drone itself produces, such as the whirl of its own propellers.
For a product that its own creators, in a marketing pique, once declared “too dangerous” to release to the general public, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is seemingly everywhere these days. The versatile automated text generation (ATG) system, which is capable of outputting copy that is nearly indistinguishable from a human writer’s work, is officially still in beta but has already been utilized in dozens of novel applications, some of which extend far beyond the roles ChatGPT was originally intended for — like that time it simulated an operational Linux shell or that other time when it passed the entrance exam to Wharton Business School.
But with these technical advancements come with a slew of opportunities for misuse and outright harm. And if our previous hamfisted attempts at handling the spread of deepfake video and audio technologies were any indication, we’re dangerously underprepared for the havoc that at-scale, automated disinformation production will wreak upon our society.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
OpenAI’s billion dollar origin story
OpenAI has been busy since its founding in 2015 as a non-profit by Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk and a host of other VC luminaries, who all collectively chipped in a cool billion dollars to get the organization up and running. The “altruistic” venture argues that AI “should be an extension of individual human wills and, in the spirit of liberty, as broadly and evenly distributed as possible.”
The following year, the company released its first public beta of the OpenAI Gym reinforcement learning platform. Musk resigned from the board in 2018, citing a potential conflict of interest with his ownership of Tesla. 2019 was especially eventful for OpenAI. That year, the company established a “capped” for-profit subsidiary (OpenAI LP) to the original non-profit (OpenAI Inc) organization, received an additional billion-dollar funding infusion from Microsoft and announced plans to begin licensing its products commercially.
In 2020, OpenAI officially launched GPT-3, a text generator able to “summarize legal documents, suggest answers to customer-service enquiries, propose computer code [and] run text-based role-playing games,” The company released its commercial API that year as well.
“I have to say I’m blown away,” startup founder Arram Sabeti wrote at the time, after interacting with the system. “It’s far more coherent than any AI language system I’ve ever tried. All you have to do is write a prompt and it’ll add text it thinks would plausibly follow. I’ve gotten it to write songs, stories, press releases, guitar tabs, interviews, essays, technical manuals. It’s hilarious and frightening. I feel like I’ve seen the future.”
2021 saw the release of DALL-E, a text-to-image generator; and the company made headlines again last year with the release of ChatGPT, a chat client based on GPT-3.5, the latest and current GPT iteration. In January 2023, Microsoft and OpenAI announced a deepening of their research cooperative with a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar ongoing investment.
“I think it does an excellent job at spitting out text that's plausible,” Dr. Brandie Nonnecke, Director of the CITRIS Policy Lab and Associate Professor of Technology Policy Research at UC Berkeley, told Engadget. “It feels like somebody really wrote it. I've used it myself actually to kind of get over a writer's block, to just think through how I flow in the argument that I'm trying to make, so I found it helpful.”
That said, Nonnecke cannot look past the system’s stubborn habit of producing false claims. “It will cite articles that don't exist,” she added. “Right now, at this stage, it's realistic but there's still a long way to go.”
What is generative AI?
OpenAI is far from the only player in the ATG game. Generative AI (or, more succinctly, gen-AI) is the practice of using machine learning algorithms to produce novel content — whether that’s text, images, audio, or video — based on a training corpus of labeled example databases. It’s your standard unsupervised reinforcement learning regimen, the likes of which have trained Google’s AlphaGo, song and video recommendation engines across the internet, as well as vehicle driver assist systems. Of course while models like Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion or Google’s Imagen are trained to convert progressively higher resolution patterns of random dots into images, ATGs like ChatGPT remix text passages plucked from their training data to output suspiciously realistic, albeit frequently pedestrian, prose.
“They're trained on a very large amount of input,” Dr. Peter Krapp, Professor of Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, told Engadget. “What results is more or less… an average of that input. It's never going to impress us with being exceptional or particularly apt or beautiful or skilled. It's always going to be kind of competent — to the extent that we all collectively are somewhat competent in using language to express ourselves.”
Generative AI is already big business. While flashy events like Stable Diffusion’s maker getting sued for scraping training data from Meta or ChatGPT managing to schmooze its way into medical school (yes, in addition to Wharton) grab headlines, Fortune 500 companies like NVIDIA, Facebook, Amazon Web Services, IBM and Google are all quietly leveraging gen-AI for their own business benefit. They’re using it in a host of applications, from improving search engine results and proposing computer code to writing marketing and advertising content.
Wikipedia / Public Domain
The secret to ChatGPT’s success
Efforts to get machines to communicate with us as we do with other people, as Dr. Krapp notes, began in the 1960s and ‘70s with linguists being among the earliest adopters. “They realized that certain conversations can be modeled in such a way that they're more or less self-contained,” he explained. “If I can have a conversation with, you know, a stereotypical average therapist, that means I can also program the computer to serve as the therapist.” Which is how Eliza became an NLP easter egg hidden in Emacs, the popular Linux text editor.
Today, we use the technological descendents of those early efforts to translate the menus at fancy restaurants for us, serve as digital assistants on our phones, and chat with us as customer service reps. The problem, however, is that to get an AI to perform any of these functions, it has to be specially trained to do that one specific thing. We’re still years away from functional general AIs but part of ChatGPT’s impressive capability stems from its ability to write middling poetry as easily as it can generate a fake set of Terms of Service for the Truth Social website in the voice of Donald Trump without the need for specialized training between the two.
This prosaic flexibility is possible because, at its core, ChatGPT is a chatbot. It’s designed first and foremost to accurately mimic a human conversationalist, which it actually did on Reddit for a week in 2020 before being outed. It was trained using supervised learning methods wherein the human trainers initially fed the model both sides of a given conversation — both what the human user and AI agent were supposed to say. With the basics in it robomind, ChatGPT was then allowed to converse with humans with its responses being ranked after each session. Subjectively better responses scored higher in the model’s internal rewards system and were subsequently optimized for. This has resulted in an AI with a silver tongue but a “just sorta skimmed the Wiki before chiming in” aptitude of fact checking.
Part of ChatGPT’s boisterous success — having garnered a record 100 million monthly active users just two months after its launch — can certainly be marked up to solid marketing strategies such as the “too dangerous” neg of 2020, Natasha Allen, a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP, told Engadget. “I think the other part is just how easy it is to use it. You know, the average person can just plug in some words and there you go.”
“People who previously hadn’t been interested in AI, didn't really care what it was,” are now beginning to take notice. Its ease of use is an asset, Allen argues, making ChatGPT “something that's enticing and interesting to people who may not be into AI technologies.”
“It's a very powerful tool,” she conceded. “I don't think it's perfect. I think that obviously there are some errors but… it'll get you 70 to 80 percent of the way.”
Leon Neal via Getty Images
Will Microsoft’s ChatGPT be Microsoft’s Taye for a new generation?
But a lot can go wrong in those last 20 to 30 percent, because ChatGPT doesn’t actually know what the words it’s remixing into new sentences mean, it just understands the statistical relationships between them. “The GPT-3 hype is way too much,” Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, warned in a July, 2020 tweet. “It’s impressive but it still has serious weaknesses and sometimes makes very silly mistakes.”
Those “silly” mistakes range from making nonsensical comparisons like “A pencil is heavier than a toaster” to the racist bigotry we’ve seen with past chatbots like Taye — well, really, all of them to date if we’re being honest. Some of ChatGPT’s replies have even encouraged self-harm in its users, raising a host of ethical quandaries (not limited to, should AI byline scientific research?) for both the company and field as a whole.
“I'm worried because if we have deep fake video and voice, tying that with ChatGPT, where it can actually write something mimicking the style of how somebody speaks,” Nonnecke said. “Those two things combined together are just a powder keg for convincing disinformation.”
“I think it's gasoline on the fire, because people write and speak in particular styles,” she continued. “And that can sometimes be the tell — if you see a deepfake and it just doesn't sound right, the way that they're talking about something. Now, GPT very much sounds like the individual, both how they would write and speak. I think it's actually amplifying the harm.”
The current generation of celebrity impersonating chatbots aren’t what would be considered historically accurate (Henry Ford’s avatar isn’t antisemitic, for example) but future improvements could nearly erase the lines between reality and created content. “The first way it's going to be used is very likely to commit fraud,“ Nonnecke said, noting that scammers have already leveraged voice cloning software to pose as a mark’s relative and swindle money from them.
“The biggest challenge is going to be how do we appropriately address it, because those deep fakes are out. You already have the confusion,” Nonnecke said. “Sometimes it's referred to as the liars dividend: nobody knows if it's true, then sort of everything's a lie, and nothing can be trusted.”
Donato Fasano via Getty Images
ChatGPT goes to college
ChatGPT is raising hackles across academia as well. The text generator has notably passed the written portion of Wharton Business School’s entrance exam, along with all three parts of the US Medical Licensing exam. The response has been swift (as most panicked scramblings in response to new technologies tend to be) but widely varied. The New York City public school system took the traditional approach, ineffectually “banning” the app’s use by students, while educators like Dr. Ethan Mollick, associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton School, have embraced it in their lesson plans.
"This was a sudden change, right? There is a lot of good stuff that we are going to have to do differently, but I think we could solve the problems of how we teach people to write in a world with ChatGPT," Mollick told NPR in January.
"The truth is, I probably couldn't have stopped them even if I didn't require it," he added. Instead, Mollick has his students use ChatGPT as a prompt and idea generator for their essay assignments.
UCI’s Dr. Krapp has taken a similar approach. “I'm currently teaching a couple of classes where it was easy for me to say, ‘okay, here's our writing assignment, let's see what ChadGPT comes up with,’’ he explained. “I did the five different ways with different prompts or partial prompts, and then had the students work on, ‘how do we recognize that this is not written by a human and what could we learn from this?’.”
Is ChatGPT coming for your writing job?
At the start of the year, tech news site CNET was outed for having used an ATG of its own design to generate entire feature-length financial explainer articles — 75 in all since November 2022. The posts were supposedly “rigorously” fact checked by human editors to ensure their output was accurate, though cursory examinations uncovered rampant factual errors requiring CNET and its parent company, Red Ventures, to issue corrections and updates for more than half of the articles.
BuzzFeed’s chief, Jonah Peretti, upon seeing the disastrous fallout CNET was experiencing from this computer generated dalliance, immediately decided to stick his tongue in the outlet too, announcing that his publication plans to employ gen-AI to create low-stakes content like personality quizzes.
This news came mere weeks after BuzzFeed laid off a sizable portion of its editorial staff on account of “challenging market conditions.” The coincidence is hard to ignore, especially given the waves of layoffs currently rocking the tech and media sectors for that specific reason, even as the conglomerates themselves bathe in record revenue and earnings.
This is not the first time that new technology has displaced existing workers. NYT columnist Paul Krugman points to coal mining as an example. The industry saw massive workforce reductions throughout the 20th century, not because our use of coal decreased, but because mining technologies advanced enough that fewer humans were needed to do the same amount of work. The same effect is seen in the automotive industry with robots replacing people on assembly lines.
“It is difficult to predict exactly how AI will impact the demand for knowledge workers, as it will likely vary, depending on the industry and specific job tasks,” Krugman opined. “However, it is possible that in some cases, AI and automation may be able to perform certain knowledge-based tasks more efficiently than humans, potentially reducing the need for some knowledge workers.”
However, Dr. Krapp is not worried. “I see that some journalists have said, ‘I'm worried. My job has already been impacted by digital media and digital distribution. Now the type of writing that I do well, could be done by computer for cheap much more quickly,’ he said. “I don't see that happening. I don't think that's the case. I think we still as humans, have a need — a desire — for recognizing in others what's human about them.”
“[ChatGPT is] impressive. It's fun to play with, [but] we're still here,” he added, “We're still reading, it's still meant to be a human size interface for human consumption, for human enjoyment.”
Fear not for someone is sure to save us, probably
ChatGPT’s shared-reality shredding fangs will eventually be capped, Nonnecke is confident, whether by congress or the industry itself in response to public pressure. “I actually think that there's bipartisan support for this, which is interesting in the AI space,” she told Engadget. “And in data privacy, data protection, we tend to have bipartisan support.”
She points to efforts in 2022 spearheaded by OpenAI Safety and Alignment researcher Scott Aaronson to develop a cryptographic watermark so that the end user could easily spot computer generated material, as one example of the industry’s attempts to self-regulate.
“Basically, whenever GPT generates some long text, we want there to be an otherwise unnoticeable secret signal in its choices of words, which you can use to prove later that, yes, this came from GPT,” Aaronson wrote on his blog. “We want it to be much harder to take a GPT output and pass it off as if it came from a human. This could be helpful for preventing academic plagiarism, obviously, but also, for example, mass generation of propaganda.”
The efficacy of such a safeguard remains to be seen. “It's very much whack-a-mole, right now,” Nonnecke exclaimed. “It's the company themselves making that [moderation] decision. There's no transparency in how they're deciding what types of prompts to block or not block, which is very concerning to me.”
“Somebody's going to use this to do terrible things,” she said.
Even if you won't be watching the Super Bowl, you can still take advantage of the sales brands are running on home theater equipment ahead of the game. Sonos, which rarely offers discounts, just announced deals on some of their soundbars and smart speakers. TVs from Samsung are on sale too. This week, Samsung unveiled three new Galaxy S23 smartphones during Wednesday's Unpacked event. You can pre-order the phones now, and Amazon and Samsung are both offering a free storage upgrade plus a gift card when you do. We've got a discount code for $55 off Pixel Buds Pro and the price on the 2022 iPad Air dropped by $100. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.
Sonos Arc Soundbar
Sonos keeps a short leash on their products, generally only selling through their own site and carefully regulating when things go on sale. Turns out the Super Bowl is one such occasion and a few of our favorite Sonos speakers are seeing decent discounts this week. One of the top speakers from our soundbar guide is the Sonos Arc. It's usually $899, but is $100 off as of today. We like it for the modern design and stellar sound. Thanks to internal smarts, it can also automatically calibrate to your living room and happily integrates with additional speakers.
The Beam Soundbar is $50 off right now, bringing that one down to $399. It's our top pick for a midrange soundbar, thanks to its solid sound quality, compact design and easy set-up. This newer model improves on the previous Beam — which we thought was already pretty great — with the addition of Dolby Atmos. The deals on both Sonos speakers will run through February 12th.
Sonos One
When we gathered up our favorite smart home gadgets, the Sonos One topped the list for the best smart speaker. We like that it's compact enough to fit most places in your home.
It’s compact enough to fit in most areas in your home, but more importantly, it delivers excellent audio quality that’s superior to a lot of other smart speakers out there. When tuned properly to the acoustics of your room — which requires the iOS app — the sound is fantastic, with punchy bass and clear highs. Unfortunately, the Android app doesn’t have TruePlay tuning (Sonos has not said whether it’s in the works), but the speakers should still sound admirable. It’s also compatible with a slew of streaming services, including major ones like Spotify and Pandora.
The main benefit that a Sonos speaker brings over the competition is that it’s a gateway to a multi-room audio setup that you can build out over time. It’s also convenient if you plan on building a home theater setup later on, as the One integrates well with Sonos soundbars, including the Arc and Beam.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra
Samsung's Galaxy S22 Ultra starts at $1,200 for the smaller 256GB storage capacity. Right now Amazon, Best Buy and Samsung are all offering a free bump up to the 512GB size (which has a suggested price increase of $180). Both Amazon and Best Buy are throwing in $100 gift cards when you pre order through them, which will ship once the phones are released February 17th. At Samsung's site, you'll also get the free storage upgrade, plus $100 bonus in the form of a Samsung credit. The Ultra is the flagship phone, with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, a 200 MP camera and of course that built-in S Pen. Here are our initial impressions.
The standard Galaxy S23 will also come with a free storage upgrade from all three outlets, bumping its base 128GB storage up to 256GB with no upcharge. That phone goes for $800 and comes with a $50 gift card at Amazon or a credit at Samsung. If you want the S23+ you can get 512GB of storage for the same $1,000 price tag as the 256GB size. The plus also comes with a $100 gift card at Amazon, and a credit at Samsung. Here's what we thought after seeing the S23 and S23+.
Beats Fit Pro
We named Beats Fit Pro the best wireless earbuds for working out and they just dropped to $150 on Amazon. That's 25 percent off and just $5 more than their lowest price ever. We gave them a score of 87 in our review, admiring the great noise cancelling performance and the fact that they offer all of Apple's earbud features, without being AirPods. Big bass and a wing tip that makes sure they stay put when you move make them particularly suited to working out — as does the IPX4-rating for sweat and water resistance.
The Beats Studio Buds are also on sale. They're $50 off, making them $100 at Amazon — that's also very close to a record low. We liked the comfortable fit and balanced sound when we reviewed them. They'll give you all the same sweat resistance and Apple integrations as the Fit Pros and AirPods. And while they are impressively small, they do lack on-board controls.
Samsung S95B OLED TV
While we haven't done a full review on Samsung's S95B just yet, many who have reviewed it agree it's one of the best options out there for a top-end TV from 2022. Right now the 55-inch model is $1,448, or 34 percent off. That matches the low we saw during Black Friday sales. The bigger 65-inch model is seeing an even deeper discount of 41 percent off. Bringing that one down to $1,798. That's not its all-time low, but it's just $20 more than its cheapest price.
The QD-OLED panel on both sizes has earned props for delivering high contrast and deep blacks and puts out a higher level of brightness than some other OLEDs. It comes with four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports, and can deliver 4K video at a 120Hz refresh rate so when the big game is over, you'll get immersive and smooth graphics on the latest gaming titles.
When we gathered up our favorite smart home gadgets, the Sonos One topped the list for the best smart speaker. We like that it's compact enough to fit most places in your home.
It’s compact enough to fit in most areas in your home, but more importantly, it delivers excellent audio quality that’s superior to a lot of other smart speakers out there. When tuned properly to the acoustics of your room — which requires the iOS app — the sound is fantastic, with punchy bass and clear highs. Unfortunately, the Android app doesn’t have TruePlay tuning (Sonos has not said whether it’s in the works), but the speakers should still sound admirable. It’s also compatible with a slew of streaming services, including major ones like Spotify and Pandora.
The main benefit that a Sonos speaker brings over the competition is that it’s a gateway to a multi-room audio setup that you can build out over time. It’s also convenient if you plan on building a home theater setup later on, as the One integrates well with Sonos soundbars, including the Arc and Beam.
Samsung QN90B QLED TV
If a 43-inch TV is more your speed, here's a high-end option that hit a new low price this week. Samsung's 43-inch QN90B is down to a new low of $898, which is 25 percent off its MSRP. The 55-inch model is down to $1,298, which is an all time low. The QN90B is a more traditional LED LCD panel with a Mini LED backlighting to give it better contrast and HDR performance that most TVs of this type, and its great that its available in a 43-inch size. If you're going for the larger 55-inch size, however, we actually recommend Samsung's S95B, mentioned above, for its superior OLED panel.
Vitamix Explorian E310
Vitamix blenders are ideal for sauces, salsas, dips and icy drinks — all of which may come in handy at a Super Bowl party. The Vitamix series we recommend in our smart kitchen gadget guide is from the Explorian lineup, which isn't the most powerful of the Vitamixes, but instead balances price and performance. We think it's the best option for most people. The E310 usually goes for $350, but is $50 off right now. If you decide you do want all possible power in your blender, go for the Ascent series, most of which are also $50 off, which takes a little of the sting out of their starting price of $500.
iPad Air
Apple's 2022 iPad Air is $99 off right now, bringing the "almost future-proof" tablet down to $500 at Amazon. It dips down to this price fairly often, so it's wise to wait until you see the discount before hitting add to cart. This is the 64GB WiFi model of Apple's latest M1-equipped iPad Air. The larger-capacity 256GB model is also $99 off, bringing it down to $650. The M1 chip is fast enough for content creation, gaming and running other demanding apps. And you'll get an impressive 10 hours of battery life. The build is top-notch and overall, we think it's the best iPad for most people. Especially when it's nearly $100 cheaper.
Pixel Buds Pro
In our estimation, Google's Pixel Buds Pro are the best earbuds for anyone who carries an Android device in their pocket. Right now at Wellbots, you can save a healthy $55 off the usual $200 price tag when you use the code ENGTSOUND at checkout. We called them Google's best earbuds yet, praising their ability to deliver deep and punchy base notes along with active noise cancellation that effectively blocks out world around you. On-board tap controls let you easily adjust volume, control your playlist and toggle the ANC and you can easily recharge the buds and case wirelessly. One of our complaints was the price bump over the previous models, but hopefully this discount makes that less of an issue.
Kindle Paperwhite
Amazon just added two new colors to the backs of their Kindle Paperwhites and are offering a 27 percent discount to go with the new look. That brings the $150 e-reader down to $109, which doesn't beat the Black Friday sale price of $99, but is the best price the device has seen since then. The discount only applies to the 16GB capacity model in the new colors, green or blue. The 8GB capacity model isn't available in the new colors and the black version is still full price.
The new colors — and discount — apply to the Paperwhite Signature Edition as well. We called it the "best e-reader period" in our review and this is one of the few times outside of the holidays that the device has gone on sale. Both the blue and green versions are on sale for $140, which is a 26 percent discount off the usual $190 price tag.
Disney+
To make it easier for us to afford the growing list of streaming services out there, many providers are offering ad-supported versions of their services at reduced prices. Right now, the Disney Plus ad-supported variant is down to $6.99 a month for your first three months. It goes back up to $7.99 after that, but you're free to cancel at any time. You may remember a time when Disney plus without ads was only $7, but just like manyotherstreamingservices out there, they've raised prices recently. Still, for the amount of content available, including Marvel movies, Star Wars shows, Disney features and Pixar fare, it feels worth the cost.
Arlo Video Doorbell
Here's a chance to keep tabs on your front door — for half the price. Arlo's Essential Video Doorbell is on sale for 50 percent off right now at Amazon, bringing the $200 device down to $100. It's battery-powered, which is great for those without a wired already installed at their front door and gives you a 180-degree field of view. It'll send HD video with HDR to your smartphone or home hub and allows you to see, hear and speak to whomever is out there. The wired-only version is on sale for 47 percent off, bringing it down to $80. And Arlo's exterior security cameras are 38 percent off, or $80 each.
Meta Quest Pro
Meta's Quest Pro headset only arrived three months ago, but it saw its first discount this week. It's a pricey device to begin with and even with a 27 percent discount, it will still put you back $1,100. We tried out the VR headset, and had a lot to say. Meta hopes the Quest Pro will become the device that starts to truly enable the Metaverse. Whether or not we want to live and work in VR just yet is still up for debate, but for those that do, this is a powerful (and relatively comfortable) way to do it.
Spigen Ultra Hybrid MagSafe case
We’ve got a whole list of the best iPhone cases we’ve tried, and a good all-purpose option is Spigen’s Ultra Hybrid MagFit case. It’s a clear cover that has anti-yellowing properties, which should keep it looking clean and new for longer than other cases. Raised edges help protect the screen and camera array from making too much contact with other surfaces, and you’ll be able to use it with any magnetic accessories you want.
WD_Black SSD Cards
It's another good week to add extra storage to your computers and gadgets. Right now Amazon is running discounts on a range of storage cards and drives. Discounts range from 20 to 50 percent on Western Digital Black gaming SSDs and SanDisk microSDs. WD_Black's 250GB Internal Gaming SSD is down to $35, which is 42 percent off the original $60. The 500GB version is fifty percent off, or $40.
Apple services have been available on LG's TVs for a while, but they've been no-shows on many of the third-party sets running the company's scaled-back webOS Hub. That won't be a problem for much longer. LG has made Apple's apps and services available on webOS Hub, including Apple TV, Apple Music, AirPlay and HomeKit. The rollout gives TVs from 200 brands a taste of the Apple ecosystem, including Aiwa, Hyundai and Konka.
The Apple TV and Apple Music apps are effectively the same as you'd find on LG's own sets. Apple TV lets you stream Apple's shows, some third-party services and titles you've purchased or rented. Apple Music, meanwhile, offers access to both the all-you-can listen subscription and your personal music library. AirPlay allows casting from iPads, iPhones and Macs, while HomeKit gives you control of your TV through Siri or Apple's Home app.
The features aren't universally available. You'll need an OLED or 4K TV using webOS Hub 2.0 (released late last year) if you expect to use AirPlay or HomeKit. You may have to settle for just the media apps with certain sets.
Even so, this is a big move for Apple. The launch puts its apps on webOS TVs in over 100 countries, and many of those devices are budget models. That brings Apple TV+, Apple Music and the company's smart home tech within reach of more people, particularly those who can't justify the prices of TVs from LG and other major brands.
Google’s latest and greatest earbuds, the Pixel Buds Pro, are the best we’ve come across for Android users. That’s for a number of reasons, but importantly, they integrate fairly seamlessly with Android phones, and even better if you have a Pixel handset. Normally priced at $200, the Pixel Buds Pro are down to the lowest price we’ve seen right now at Wellbots. You can grab them for $145, or $55 off, with the code ENGTSOUND at checkout.
The Android conveniences in the Pixel Buds Pro almost make them a foil to Apple’s AirPods. Their dedicated Android app provides a bunch of customization options, and Pixel phone users will be able to access some controls directly from their Bluetooth menu. The Pixel Buds Pro also support hands-free Google Assistant access, so you can ask it to read out notifications and help you in other ways. It even has Google Translate functionality that will help you speak in another language on the spot.
Otherwise, the Pixel Buds Pro are capable in every way that matters. They have a small, oval-shaped design that’s comfortable for long-term use, plus reliable touch controls that let you pause, play and skip tracks. While Transparency Mode left a little to be desired, active noise cancellation is solid and these buds have much better sound quality than the Pixel Buds that came before them.
As for battery life, you’ll get a decent seven hours with ANC turned on and up to 20 additional hours with the buds’ charging case. You can also wirelessly power up the buds, which will be convenient if you have a bunch of those accessories scattered throughout your home.
Our favorite earbuds for working out are down to one of their best prices yet. The Beats Fit Pro have dropped to $150 at Amazon, which is 25 percent off their usual price and close to an all-time low. We've only seen them cheaper during a limited-time sale at Woot in which they were $145, so if you missed that, now's a good time to pick up a pair for nearly the same cost.
The Fit Pros were cut from a similar cloth as the Beats Studio Buds, but they include an wing tip for a more secure fit. They are comfortable to wear for long stretches of time, and the wing tip keeps them even more stable than other buds during fast-paced workouts. Beats didn't skip on other hardware features either: the Fit Pros have solid onboard controls, an IPX4 rating and a wear-detection sensor that will pause audio when you remove a bud.
Sound quality is pretty good here, and users will appreciate the Fit Pro's punchy bass when they need a little extra motivation during a tough workout. They also have good active noise cancellation that blocks out most surrounding noises. But the kicker for many might be their integration with Apple devices, which make them a good alternative to AirPods. The Beats Fit Pro quickly pair and switch between Apple gadgets, plus they support hands-free Siri and Find My capabilities, the latter of which will help you locate your buds if you misplace them. Android users will get some of these perks as well since the Fit Pros have a dedicated Android app that gives them fast-pairing features and customizable controls.
But if you prefer a more subtle design sans wing tip, you should consider the Beats Studio Buds, which are also on sale at the moment. Normally $150, these buds are down to $100 right now, which is nearly a record low. They do not have things like wireless charging, sound customizations or onboard volume controls, but they will give you all of the same Apple integrations along with a comfortable, IPX4-rated design, good sound quality and solid ANC.
After the last few years of nonstop growth, Apple reported revenue of $117.2 billion for its first fiscal quarter, which is five percent down year over year, marking the first time Apple's revenue has dipped since 2019.
That said, the company set a revenue record of $20.8 billion in its Services business and hit over two billion active devices globally. CEO Tim Cook said three things hit revenue: the "challenging macroeconomic environment," foreign exchange issues and COVID-related supply constraints that led to delays in the ship times of iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max models. Anecdotally, we’ve heard from several people that ended up canceling iPhone orders over lengthy delays.
It reflects a slowdown across most of the tech industry, with a mixture of lower revenues, decreased profits and general growth slowdown across Meta, Microsoft and Google owner Alphabet.
Razer announced its lightest gaming mouse, the Viper Mini Signature Edition. It only weighs 49g, making it 16 percent lighter than the company’s own Viper V2 Pro and one of the most lightweight mice we’ve seen. The mouse uses a magnesium alloy exoskeleton with a semi-hollow interior. It’s light, but it’s not cheap: The $280 mouse will be available on Razer’s website starting February 11th.
It may have averaged 13 million unique visitors a day last month.
According to a new study by analytics firm UBS (via Reuters and CBS), the OpenAI-developed chatbot was on pace to reach over 100 million monthly active users in January. For comparison, it took TikTok nine months after its global debut to reach 100 million monthly users despite its popularity, especially among younger generations. There isn't another public chatbot with comparable capabilities. It has reportedly rattled Google's execs to the point that they decided to declare "code red" and accelerate the company's AI development.
Instead of flat sheets, these grafts are shaped to fit better.
The primary shortcoming of bio-printed skin grafts is that they can only be produced in flat sheets with open edges. This method "disregard[s] the fully enclosed geometry of human skin," argues a team of researchers from Columbia University. Instead, they've devised a novel means of producing skin in virtually any complex 3D shape they need — from ears and elbows to entire hands. Scientists can make “fully enclosed” 3D skin tissue that not only fits better but also appears to work better. Initial lab tests with mouse models were encouraging. Dr. Hasan Erbil Abaci, the lead researcher, said: “It was like putting a pair of shorts on the mice.”
Amazon's drone delivery program doesn't seem to be off to a great start. The Prime Air division was said to be hit hard by recent, widespread layoffs. After nearly a decade of working on the program, Amazon said in December that it would start making deliveries by drone in Lockeford, California, and College Station, Texas. According to The Information, however, by the middle of January, as few as seven houses had received Amazon packages by drone. The report suggests that Amazon has been hamstrung by the Federal Aviation Administration, which is said to be blocking drones from flying over roads or people unless the company gets permission on a case-by-case basis.
TikTok is facing yet another call from a prominent lawmaker for the app’s ban, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to Apple and Google urging the companies to ban TikTok from their respective app stores.
In the letter, Bennet says that “TikTok, in its current form, [is] an unacceptable threat to the national security of the United States.” The letter, addressed to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, repeats many of the same points that have been raised by other lawmakers seeking to ban the app.
Specifically, Bennet raises the possibility that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, could be compelled to “use its influence to advance Chinese government interests,” via TikTok. “Like most social media platforms, TikTok collects vast and sophisticated data from its users, including faceprints and voiceprints,” Bennet writes. “Unlike most social media platforms, TikTok poses a unique concern because Chinese law obligates ByteDance, its Beijing-based parent company, to ‘support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work.’”
TikTok has long denied that such scenarios could play out, and has attempted to downplay its ties to China. In a statement to CNN the company said Bennet’s letter “relies almost exclusively on misleading reporting about TikTok, the data we collect, and our data security controls.”
Apple and Google didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
While it seems unlikely either company would take such a drastic step based on a letter from one senator, it highlights the mounting pressure and scrutiny on TkTok. The company has spent the last two years negotiating with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in order to secure its ability to continue to operate in the US. But that process is reportedly stalled, and the company has been waging a new charm offensive in an attempt to win over critics.
TikTok has also been sharing more details around its partnership with Oracle to safeguard US user data and comply with US regulators’ concerns. But lawmakers seem to be in no rush to let TikTok off the hook. The app has already been banned from federal devices, and numerous state governments have passed bans of their own. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to testify at his first Congressional hearing next month,
