WhatsApp group calls are about to behave more like Zoom calls and other more free-form chats. The company has started rolling out the ability to join group calls in progress, rather than having to be there (and stay) when the call starts. You can drop in and out at will as long as you were invited at the beginning.

There's also a call information screen to show who's participating in and invited to a chat. Also, don't worry if you have to hit "ignore" for a call — the door will still be open if you want to join later.

The addition is a recognition that Zoom and other more flexible video chat services are still popular even as the pandemic (hopefully) winds down. WhatsApp is also acknowledging that some people have always had different video chat habits — this could make the service more appealing if you've always left a video chat running so that friends could pop in when they have a moment.

The rumors of a CNN streaming service were true. The network has unveiled a CNN+ service that will offer a blend of live and on-demand shows that are "separate and distinct" from existing TV coverage. It will debut sometime in the first quarter of 2022. CNN hasn't narrowed down the price, but lead executive Andrew Morse told Variety in an interview that there wouldn't be an ad-supported tier at launch.

The centerpiece, as you'd expect, will be the live material. CNN+ plans to offer eight to 12 hours of in-depth topical coverage and "lifestyle" material every day, with both veterans and newcomers at the helm. You'll also have chances to interact with anchors and experts in real-time discussions. This won't be a digital replica of CNN's usual news, then, but you may have reasons to tune in every day.

The on-demand catalog unsurprisingly taps into CNN's existing collection, including shows like Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown and United Shades of America. There will be original shows and movies for the internet service, although CNN+ won't reveal those until later in 2021.

Officially, Morse said CNN+ wouldn't be bundled or otherwise tie into HBO Max despite the WarnerMedia connection. Variety sources, however, claimed there was a "strong probability" the service would be bundled with HBO Max and Discovery+ after WarnerMedia and Discovery finalize their merger.

Morse considered the CNN+ launch the largest the network has had since it started TV service in June 1980. It was also a chance to experiment with formats that blur distinctions between entertainment and news, the executive added.

The question, of course, is whether or not viewers will bite. CNN has had success with long-form content like the late Anthony Bourdain's shows, but it's not clear if people are ready to pay a monthly fee to see them. There's also the matter of streaming service overload — you might not be thrilled to subscribe to yet another offering just to be sure you catch everything CNN has to offer.

You might not have to visit an optometrist just to get a basic prescription update for your glasses. Warby Parker is trotting out Virtual Vision Test, a revamp of its Prescription Check app that lets you renew your glasses or contact lens prescription using only an iPhone and your existing eyewear. Prop up your phone, stand 10 feet away and you can walk through a familiar "can you read this" test that will gauge whether or not your glasses or contacts need updating.

The update isn't automatic. An eye doctor will review the results and give you a verdict within two days. If you're seeing well enough, you'll just need to pay $15 to renew your prescription. If you're either struggling or just aren't eligible to use the app (see below), Warby Parker will recommend that you get a thorough eye exam.

The company is clear that this isn't a replacement for your eye doctor, and that you'll have to meet certain criteria beyond what we just mentioned. You have to be between 18 and 65 years old, with no existing eye health concerns and a single-vision distance prescription.

The approach relies on iOS' Vision Framework to measure your distance from your iPhone and ensure that you're far enough away from a proper test. We've asked Warby Parker about an Android version, although that might take a while given that it would need a rough equivalent to Vision Framework.

The motivations behind Virtual Vision Test are clear — on top of the renewal fee, this could lead to more people buying Warby Parker glasses and visiting the company's stores. Regardless, it could be very useful if you either can't make time to update your prescription or are still skittish about a visit while COVID-19 remains a concern.

The Biden administration isn't hesitating to blame China for a string of Microsoft Exchange cyberattacks. The White House has declared "with a high degree of confidence" that hackers linked to China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) were responsible for a digital espionage campaign using the Exchange vulnerabilities. Officials have confronted senior Chinese leadership with this and "broader" hostile online activity, the White House said.

The US further accused China of running an intelligence operation that relied on "contract hackers" who frequently launched attacks meant solely for profit, such as ransomware schemes and crypto jacking. The Chinese government's reported unwillingness to tackle these abuses is believed to hurt businesses, governments and infrastructure with "billions of dollars" in damage, the White House said.

Accordingly, the Justice Department has revealed indictments of four MSS-affiliated Chinese men for allegedly conducting an extended hacking campaign meant to steal intellectual property and trade secrets, including health research. The initiative, which ran between 2011 and 2018, reportedly saw Ding Xiaoyang, Cheng Qingmin, Zhu Yunmin and Wu Shurong compromise comptuers worldwide to grab information ranging from autonomous vehicle technology and chemical formulas through to research on Ebola, AIDS and other diseases.

Biden's administration has already taken multiple actions in response to attacks, including "proactive network defense actions" like deleting backdoors on compromised Exchange servers. It added private companies to its Unified Coordination Group to bolster its security incident response. CISA, the FBI and the NSA also released an advisory outlining China's strategy for compromising US and ally networks using the Exchange holes and other methods.

This comes on top of stricter security rules for pipeline companies as well as a pilot to tackle vulnerabilities in sectors like electricity and water supply.

China has historically denied involvement in attacks like these, and it's doubtful the country will have a change of heart after this. The White House effort is more of a warning — the US will not only pin attacks on China, but respond to them in kind.

Klipsch has a reputation for futureproof soundbars, and that's certainly true of its latest models. The audio veteran has launched four new soundbars headlined by the tech-friendly Cinema 1200 (above) and Cinema 800 (below). The 54- and 48-inch bars respectively offer 8K HDR passthrough and decoding for 7.1.4-channel Dolby Atmos, not to mention a WiFi connection that supports Alexa, Google Assistant, and Spotify Connect. You'll get a pair of extra HDMI inputs on each bar to help your home theater expand, too.

The differences, as you might expect, come down to raw power. The Cinema 1200 spreads its namesake 1,200W of power across a 5.1.4-channel system with a 12-inch wireless subwoofer, while the Cinema 800 is a simpler 3.1-channel rig with a 10-inch wireless sub.

Klipsch

Both sound bars are available now, with the Cinema 1200 selling for $1,699 and the 800 going for a more modest $879 price.

There are a pair of options for modest setups and smaller TVs. The 45-inch Cinema 600 delivers 3.1-channel audio with a 10-inch wireless sub and supports modern basics like Dolby Audio, Bluetooth and HDMI-ARC for $499. If you need just the essentials, the 40-inch Cinema 400 provides 2.1-channel sound with an eight-inch wireless sub, Dolby Audio, Bluetooth, and HDMI-ARC. It sells for $299.

Are you more comfortable singing behind a virtual persona than you are on a real stage? Your reality TV show has arrived. Pitchfork and AV Club report that Fox is launching a "world's first" avatar singing competition series, Alter Ego, that will have celebrity judges gather in real life to gauge the performances of amateur singers who use avatars to "reinvent themselves."

You'll likely recognize the judge panel. Canadian artists Grimes (pictured above) and Alanis Morrissette will join Will.i.am and Nick Lachey in critiquing the music, while Emmy winner Rocsi Diaz will host the affair. Alter Ego debuts sometime in the fall.

It's an unusual concept, but not necessarily a bad one. In theory, this could help budding talent overcome stage fright or self-esteem issues by using an avatar as a stand-in. It's certainly a fitting show for a tech-savvy artist like Grimes. It's just a question of whether or not audiences enjoy the concept. Anonymizing music shows like The Masked Singer have been hits, but they still involve a physical presence for the participants — there's a chance viewers might not be so thrilled about digital concerts.

Ubisoft is facing new legal action over alleged sexual harassment throughout the company. Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun report that French workers union Solidaires Informatiques and two former Ubisoft staffers have sued the game developer for allegedly enabling a culture of "institutional sexual harassment." It was supposedly easier for Ubisoft to tolerate misconduct than to address problems, according to the union.

The lawsuit targets several existing and former Ubisoft workers, including former managers Cecile Cornet (head of human resources), Tommy Francois (editorial VP) and Serge Hascoët (global creative director). Company chief Yves Guillemot is also under scrutiny not for direct involvement, but because he's inherently "responsible" for what happens at Ubisoft.

Ubisoft told Kotaku it had "no further details to share" in response to the claim against the gaming giant. It previously said that it had investigated all claims and taken an appropriate response.

There were already complaints that Ubisoft hadn't fully tackled allegations like these. Bloomberg sources said that accused managers remained in senior positions, and that staff were reporting sexist and racist activity that went unaddressed.

There's no certainty the lawsuit will succeed, let alone force institutional changes at Ubisoft. However, it's evident the company's initial efforts weren't enough to satisfy employees. If the allegations are accurate, Ubi might need to take more drastic steps if it's going to prevent misconduct and the ensuing fallout.

Soft robots still tend to rely on hard electronics to function, but a new invention might reduce that need for unyielding chips. UC Riverside researchers have developed pneumatic computer memory that they used to help a soft robot play the piano.

Instead of conventional transistors and electric circuits, the "air-powered" memory relies on microfluidic valves that control airflow. Atmospheric pressure in a given valve represents a binary "0," while a vacuum indicates a "1." The researchers' memory has a complex-enough array of these valves to function like an 8-bit RAM chip — not exactly powerful, but good enough that a pair of soft robot hands can play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" at a slow but steady pace.

The absence of positive pressure makes this particularly safe — there's no danger of the memory exploding in mid-use.

The technology is far from ready for everyday use. Besides needed improvements to complexity and speed, a robot would need soft versions of processors and other components to completely eliminate the need for rigid electronics. The goal is clear, however. Pneumatic memory could at least reduce the need for chips in soft robots, and points to a future of completely flexible robotics that shouldn't hurt you if there's a collision.

Critics have previously claimed that NSO Group spyware was misued to target the media and other innocent people, but new findings might have revealed the extent of that misuse. The Washington Post has shared a multi-partner investigation claiming that NSO's Pegasus software was used to successfully hack 37 phones, including journalists, activists and the two women closest to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The victims were on a 2016-era list of 50,000 phone numbers from countries believed to conduct both extensive surveillance and use of NSO tools, such as Hungary and Saudi Arabia. The list included 1,000 people who didn't obviously fit the software's intended criminal targets, including over 600 politicians, 189 journalists, 85 humans rights activists and 65 business executives.

Roughly a dozen Americans working overseas were on the list, but the investigation partners couldn't conduct forensic studies on most of their phones or find evidence of successful hacks. NSO previously said Pegasus couldn't be used to snoop on American devices.

NSO flatly denied the claims stemming from the investigation. It maintained that the information had "no factual basis," and rejected the notion that Pegasus was used to target Khashoggi or his associates. It maintained that it shut down access "multiple times" over past abuses, and that the list was too large to be focused solely on numbers its client countries would have targeted. The company went so far as to hire a libel attorney, Thomas Clare, that accused the investigation partners of having "misinterpreted and mischaracterized" data while making "speculative and baseless assumptions."

NSO has historically pinned abuse claims on the countries themselves, and has said it reviewed the human rights records of a given nation before doing business.

The report comes a year and a half after Facebook sued NSO for allegedly enabling call exploit attacks against WhatsApp, and mere months after Citizen Lab claimed that NSO software was used to hack Al Jazeera journalists' iPhones using an iMessage flaw. However true the accusations might be, they'll at least affect NSO's reputation — they cast doubt on the company's assertion that it only serves customers pursuing obvious targets like terrorists.

Add another major voice to the chorus of those claiming the next iPhone could have an always-on display. As 9to5Macnotes, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman used his weekly "Power On" newsletter to say the 2021 iPhone will potentially have an "Apple Watch-like" always-on display with better battery life in addition to a 120Hz refresh rate, a smaller screen notch, an A15 chip and video recording upgrades.

Gurman didn't outline the always-on screen functionality. However, a past leak from Max Weinbach suggested Apple would use an LTPO (low-temperature polycrystalline oxide) panel that, like on the Apple Watch and a few Android phones, could drop to extremely low refresh rates to offer persistent information without a large hit to battery life. You might see some notifications, battery life and the clock without having to wake up your phone.

The writer also used his newsletter to narrow the time frame for a long-rumored MacBook Pro redesign. He now expects Apple to start mass production of the mini LED-equipped laptops in the third quarter of 2021 (aka this summer) with a launch between September and November. That's still somewhat vague, but it does suggest you won't have to wait until next year (or watch for a surprise early announcement).

The new MacBook Pros are rumored to have a 'flat' design like the new iMac (minus the colors) while using a more powerful take on Apple's M1 chip that could support up to 64GB of RAM and more ports. Mini LEDs could deliver a screen that offers high contrast ratios and brightness while keeping battery life in check.