Reverb, the Etsy-owned online used musical instrument site, has added a feature called Collections that lets you track the value of your musical gear. It can show you at a glance exactly what you own and how much it's worth for "fun, insurance or tax purposes," the company said. It also makes it faster to list an item you want to sell by simply pulling it from your collection. 

To use Collections, you go to your Reverb profile picture and hit "My Collection," which will show everything you own and prompt you to add another item, either something you've purchased from the site or a new item. Doing so brings up a search menu, which draws from a comprehensive database of musical gear to narrow it down to your exact item. 

Once you add an item, Reverb will show an estimate of its value, and if that's off (due to condition or whatever) you can enter your own estimate. Values are constantly updated with dynamic pricing, so you can follow how it's changed over time. 

It's a particularly useful feature for the many musicians who own a lot of gear and often shuffle their collections. It looks like the company has built up a very comprehensive database of guitars, synths, pedals and other gear, which could be a big help if you're trying to value your collection. 

Lucid has revealed the EPA range of its first, limited edition Air EV and it's mighty impressive. The Air Dream Edition Range will go 520 miles on a charge, "delivering at least 100-plus miles of additional range of its closest competitor," the company announced. The models tested "now occupy the top six positions for overall EPA range ratings among EVs," according to Lucid.

The Air Dream Edition models (Range and Performance) both offer 113kWh battery packs — significantly larger than the 100 kWh used in Tesla’s Model S Long Range Plus — but the company said the prodigious range is not just due to that. 

"This landmark has been achieved... not by simply installing an oversize battery pack,” said Lucid CEO/CTO Peter Rawlinson. “Our race-proven 900V battery and BMS [battery management system] technology, our miniaturized drive units, coupled with our Wunderbox [drivetrain] technology endow Lucid Air with ultra-high efficiency, enabling it to travel more miles from less battery energy." 

Lucid Motors

The Air's very low 0.21 drag coefficient likely helps too, particularly on the highway. When considering EPA range versus battery size, the range model delivers 4.6 miles per kWh, compared to 4.01 miles per kWh for the Tesla Model S long range. 

Performance isn't sacrificed in the range model either, despite the name. It still delivers 933 horsepower, enough to kick it from 0 to 60 MPH in 2.7 seconds and hit a top speed of 168 MPH. The 1,111 horsepower performance version, meanwhile, will travel 471 miles on a charge and the 800 horsepower Lucid Air Grand Touring will go 516 miles. Tests were done with 19-inch wheels, and all models will travel significantly less far (though probably look cooler) with 21-inch wheels. 

You'll certainly pay for that range and performance, however. The Air Dream Edition models, released in limited run of 500 and arriving first to market, will start at $169,000. The Air Grand Touring model will show up later for $139,000, followed by the $95,000 Air Touring and finally the base, sub-$80,000 Air. When they'll go on sale is still an open question, though. Lucid most recently promised the second half of 2021 for the first limited edition models, but it has already missed a number of previous deadlines. 

Since 2009, companies handling health records have been required to notify consumers if their data is breeched. Now, the rule has been extended to health apps that track fitness, vital statistics, sleep and more. The FTC ruled 3-2 that companies producing such apps must inform users impacted by data breaches, lest they face a financial penalty of over $43,000 per day, The Hill has reported. 

"As many Americans turn to apps and other technologies to track diseases, diagnoses, treatment, medications, fitness, fertility, sleep, mental health, diet, and other vital areas, this Rule is more important than ever," the FTC wrote in the ruling. "Firms offering these services should take appropriate care to secure and protect consumer data."

A more fundamental problem is the commodification of sensitive health information, where companies can use this data to feed behavioral ads or power user analytics.

Recent high-profile breaches include UnderArmour's MyFitnessPal breach that affected 150 million users in 2018. A more recent data leak came about due to an exposed server that contained 61 million records related to fitness trackers and wearables that exposed Apple and Fitbit users' data online.  

The rule passed along party lines, with the majority Democratic commissioners voting 3-2 in favor. However, the Republican commissioners dissented because the FTC was already working on revamping health breach notification rules. "The right way to go about it is to conclude the ongoing rulemaking process, especially when the statutory and regulatory interpretation on which the majority rely is far from clear," said commissioner Noah Phillips. 

FTC Chair Lina Khan said the ruling is just the start of what's needed. "A more fundamental problem is the commodification of sensitive health information, where companies can use this data to feed behavioral ads or power user analytics," Khan said. "The Commission should be scrutinizing what data is being collected in the first place and whether particular types of business models create incentives that necessarily place users at risk."

Samsung has started manufacturing 90Hz OLED displays that will be used in the latest ASUS laptops, it announced. The 14-inch, 2,880 x 1,800 16:10 panels were significantly delayed, as Samsung said they'd arrive in March this year when it first unveiled the technology. 

The extra speed compared to 60Hz OLED panels makes these interesting for gaming in particular. Samsung notes that the OLED tech creates less blurring on motion than LCD panels and claims you'll see clearer movement on a 90Hz OLED display than you would on a 120Hz LCD model. In theory, that could mean relatively sharp gaming on a display that's not as taxing for your computer's GPU.

The OLED screens deliver better color too, with 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage that beats most LCD models. They also offer deeper blacks, faster response times and better viewing angles. The drawback compared to LCDs is a lack of brightness and lower energy efficiency when viewing bright content. The screens are set to arrive on ASUS's Zenbook 14X Pro and Vivobook Pro 14X models announced earlier this month. Samsung is also supplying the 16-inch 4K 60Hz panels used in the ASUS ProArt Studio OLED and other models. 

Razer is known mostly for its high-end gaming devices, but it also has a diverse collection of accessories. It just launched a very weird one for mobile, the Gaming Finger Sleeve. It's designed to absorb sweat and thus reduce friction on the screen to help you max out performance when playing Fortnite and other mobile games.

The sleeves, which can go on your thumbs or forefingers, are woven from nylon, spandex and conductive silver fibers — meaning they'll work with most mobile devices. It also helps them to absorb sweat while allowing your fingers to breathe, keeping keeping them relatively cool and dry. They're pretty thin at 0.8mm (and hand washable), so they should still give you some sense of touch.

In the words of one of my colleagues, "thumb hyperhidrosis is real, fam," so the Gaming Finger Sleeve could be genuinely useful for some folks, silly as it seems. It could also be a big help in particularly hot or humid environments. In any case, it will certainly mark you as a very, very serious mobile gamer. It's now available for $10.

Xiaomi has released its latest high-end smartphones aimed at creators with a list of features that puts many brands to shame. The marquee device is the Xiaomi 11T Pro, the first smartphone to use the company's proprietary 120W HyperCharge technology. That lets you charge the 11T Pro's 5,000 mAh battery in just 17 minutes with 34 safety features including real-time temperature monitoring. It also uses technologies like dual charge pumps, a dual-cell battery structure and graphene tech.

That's just the start of the impressive laundry list of features, though. It comes with a triple-camera setup including a 108-megapixel wide angle, 2x tele-macro and 120 degree ultra-wide angle lens. Around the front, there's a 16-megapixel, f/2.45 in-display (pinhole) selfie camera. For video, it can record 8K using Samsung's HDR10+ system with AI cinema modes that allow for one-click recording. 

Xiaomi

The 6.67-inch, FHD+ (2,400 x 1,080) AMOLED flat display is a technological tour de force, with features like a 120Hz refresh rate, TrueColor, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, 1,000 nits of peak brightness and Corning's tough Gorilla Glass Victus. Sound-wise, you get Dolby Atmos audio with dual Harman Kardon speakers. Watching movies at those settings might eat the battery pretty quickly, but again, you can fully recharge the thing in just 17 minutes. 

Inside, there's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor, up to 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and max 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage, along with 5G, Bluetooth 5.2, WiFi 6 and dual SIM slots. It will launch soon in gray, white and blue, with prices in Europe starting at €649 and going up to €749 for the 12GB/256GB model — but don't expect to see it in the US.

Xiaomi

Next up, the 11T model shares many of the 11T Pro's features, including the camera setup and 6.67-inch 120 Hz flat AMOLED display with HDR10+. However, it lacks Dolby Vision and a few other display features. The biggest difference is the processor: It uses a MediaTek Dimensity 1200-Ultra 6-nanometer chip rather than the 5-nanometer Snapdragon 888. It also "only" offers Xiaomi's 67W wired turbo charging, rather than the 120W HyperCharge system and is limited to 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of storage. The 11T will also come in gray, white and blue and start at €599 when it arrives in Europe from "official Xiaomi channels." 

The last device is the Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE, a smaller but still well-spec'd phone. It achieves a relatively tiny size with a thickness of 6.81mm and weight of 158 grams, or 5.57 ounces. At the same time, it still comes with a 6.55-inch AMOLED display with 10-bit TrueColor and Dolby Vision support. You get a triple-camera 64-megapixel main camera, 8-megapixel ultra-wide angle camera and a 5-megapixel tele-macro camera. Inside, there's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G mobile platform and 4,250mAh battery with 33W fast charging. The Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G comes with up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage and starts at €369. 

Ford, Walmart and Argo AI plan to launch autonomous vehicle delivery services in Miami, Austin, Texas and Washington DC later this year, Ford has announced. The service will focus on last mile deliveries and use Ford vehicles equipped with Argo's AI self-driving system to deliver Walmart orders. Don't count on driverless ghost cars pulling up to your house with groceries, however, as Argo emphasized that the new venture is all about "testing" and "potential." 

"Our focus on the testing and development of self-driving technology that operates in urban areas where customer demand is high really comes to life with this collaboration," said Argo AI founder and CEO Bryan Salesky. "Working together with Walmart and Ford across three markets, we’re showing the potential for autonomous vehicle delivery services at scale."

Jared Wickerham/Argo A

Deliveries will be available in those cities "within defined service areas" and expand over time, Ford said. It will focus on next day or same day deliveries in urban cores, helping the players learn about autonomous technology as it relates to deliveries, particularly for logistics and operations. 

Ford and Walmart previously announced a collaboration with Uber's PostMates to deliver goods in Miami, and it has been operating with Argo AI in Miami and Washington DC since 2018. All current testing is done with safety drivers at the wheel. 

The Walmart delivery effort "marks a significant step toward scaling a commercial goods delivery service," according to Ford. Left unsaid, however, is that level 4 and higher autonomous driving is still a distant dream, even after many years of development. As such, vehicles are nowhere near ready to ply city streets without a safety driver at the wheel.

There are a number of autonomous boats under development, but we've seen few commercial self-driving ships plying waterways. Now, a company called Sea Machines has announced that it will send an autonomous, remotely commanded tugboat on a 1,000 nautical mile (1,150 mile) "Machine Odyssey" voyage around Denmark. 

The tug ("Nellie Bly") will have "full onboard vessel control managed by autonomous technology," but be operated under the authority of officers located in the US. The aim is to show "global companies that operate the fleets of cargo ships, tugs, ferries, and the many other types of commercial workboats that they can integrate autonomous technology into their vessel operations for a host of technology-driven benefits."

Sea Machines

The tug will be steered by Sea Machines' SM300 autonomous system equipped with long-range computer vision. It's a "sensor-to-propeller" system that employs "path-planning, obstacle avoidance replanning, vectored nautical chart data and dynamic domain perception" to control a voyage from start to finish. At the same time, it shows the remote human commanders information like live augmented overlays of the mission, vessel state, situational awareness, environmental data and "real-time vessel-born audio and video from the many streaming cameras."

It appears that the Nellie Bly will set sail ahead of Yara's crewless electric cargo ship that's supposed to launch by the end of 2021. That vessel will use a 7MWh battery and 900kW propulsion system to steam at 13 knots from Herøya to Brevik, Norway — a distance of around 13km (8 miles). Sea Machines' tug is built by the Dutch shipyard Damen and appears to be powered by a pair of outboard motors.

When Sea Machines' tugboat launches, you'll be able to follow it yourself as the voyage will be streamed 24/7, the company said. It's set to launch on October 1st from Germany.

Canon has officially unveiled the EOS R3, its flagship mirrorless camera designed for sports, action and wildlife photography. With the release, it has now filled in the blanks for key specifications not yet revealed in earlier teases, like resolution, ISO range and video capabilities. 

The EOS R3 was never likely to be a high-resolution camera as some folks hoped, but the 24.1-megapixel, back-side illuminated (BSI), stacked sensor (a first for Canon) is a significant upgrade over the 1DX Mark III's 20-megapixel sensor. Canon says it "achieves resolution performance exceeding that of the 30.1-megapixel EOS 5D Mark IV," despite having a lower pixel count.

With the BSI/stacked sensor and latest DIGIC X image processor, the R3 can shoot at 30 fps in electronic shutter mode (down to 1/64,000th of a second) or 12 fps with the mechanical shutter, with full AF tracking and auto-exposure. Better still, it offers blackout-free shooting in electronic mode and the high readout speeds deliver minimal rolling shutter distortion — making it feasible to shoot sports or action with the electronic shutter. 

Canon

The EOS R3 is Canon's first EOS model to support flash photography in electronic shutter mode. That allows for blackout-free flash shooting at up to 15 fps (at 1/180th of a second), which would probably look pretty wild in person. It also offers a silent shutter mode that turns off the artificial shutter and AF acquisition sounds. 

The EOS R3 has a number of new autofocus features, too. The flashiest is Eye Control AF that locks onto focus wherever your eye is looking when you half-press the shutter button. It can be used in combination with flexible zone and subject AF tracking, so it's "possible to quickly shift the target between multiple subjects," Canon says. It notes that the feature can be calibrated differently if you have glasses or contacts, and that "some glasses/contacts may prevent calibration."

Faster calculation speeds give the EOS R3 some new autofocus powers, too. The Dual Pixel AF system can now track in spot, single-point and flexible zone AF, and in lower light (-7.5 EV) than any other model. It can also acquire a subject just by getting close to it, so it will track an animal or human's head, face or eye if you place the AF point near their body, for example. 

Canon

On top of body, face, head and eye detection for humans, the R3 offers a new "Vehicle Priority" tracking system for open cockpit, GT and rally cars, along with on-road and off-road motorcycles. If the AI detects a helmet (on a motorcycle or open cockpit car), it will automatically lock onto that.

The new sensor delivers improved low-light performance too, with the EOS R3 having a normal range of ISO 100-102,400 for stills (expandable to ISO 50-204,800). Canon also promises improved automatic and manual white balance via new AI skills.

The 5-axis in-body stabilizer is the the same as the excellent system on the EOS R5 and R6. As with those models, it delivers up to 8 stops of stabilization with compatible lenses, down to a minimum of 6 stops (still beating most other brands) with other lenses. It also comes with dual card slots, supporting SD and CFexpress type B cards.

The R3 comes with a new 5.76 million dot, 120 FPS OLED electronic viewfinder (EVF) developed by Canon. This is a key feature for the sports photographers who might buy it, as many haven't switched to mirrorless because they prefer an optical viewfinder. Canon said it provides a level of clarity and field of view similar to an optical viewfinder "thanks to the HDR technology and high brightness performance." Like the R6 and R5, it also offers a fully-articulating, 4.15 million dot flip-out touchscreen — ideal for video shooters. 

Canon

In fact, the R3 is also a highly competent video camera, too. While it can't shoot 8K video like the R5, it can capture RAW 12-bit 6K widescreen (6,000 x 3,164) video at up to 60 fps to a CFexpress B card, besting Panasonic's video-centric S1H. Canon has yet to say if 6K RAW over HDMI will be supported, however.

It also offers 4K recording at up to 120 fps, albeit in a cropped 1:1 pixel mode to a CFexpress card. Still, you can capture 4K 60p or 30p video using the full width of the sensor, which should make for some crisp video. Again, for the best quality, you'll need a fast SD UHS II or CFexpress card. 10-bit 4:2:2 video will be available for all 4K modes in either HDR PQ or Canon Log 3 modes, with both All-I and long-GOP file options. 

As usual with Canon cameras, the Dual Pixel autofocus should be a strong point for video, as it can lock in to a subject quickly without any hunting. As it stands now, however, the Eye Tracking feature only works for photography, not video. Still, the extra tracking features should make it extra powerful in terms of video autofocus, but we'll need to test the R3 to verify that. As you'd well expect, it has microphone, headphone and HDMI ports — though the latter is a micro and not a full-sized HDMI connector, unfortunately.

Canon

What about heating, the bugbear of the R5? Again, Canon has significantly improved the R3 here. It now offers two temperature options for auto power off: standard and high. The latter will let you shoot 6K RAW or 4K All-I at 60 fps for 60 minutes or more, though the camera might get a bit hot to the touch. 4K 120p All-I is limited to 12 minutes in either mode. Canon promises that you'll be ready to shoot again after just five minutes, though shooting times afterward will be limited in 6K 60p and 4K 120p modes. Normal 4K 30fps shooting (down-sampled or otherwise) has no heat limitations. 

Other features include network streaming functions and wired or wireless transfer to a 5G or LTE smartphone. It uses the 1DX Mark III's LP-E19 battery that delivers 440 shots with the electronic viewfinder and comes with a new electronic hot shoe that supports more accessories, including a smartphone link adapter. Finally, the EOS R1 offers dust and drip resistance equal to the EOS-1DX series DSLRs, and weighs in at 1015 grams (2.24 pounds) including a memory card and battery.

Canon

Along with the EOS R3, Canon unveiled two new lenses, the compact RF16mm F/2.8 STM ultra wide angle model priced at $300 (left) and the RF100-400mm f/5.6-8 IS USM model priced at $650. Both of those should be decent budget full-frame RF-mount options if you're looking for an ultra wide-angle or tele zoom lens. 

With the EOS R3, Canon has built a supercharged flagship that should appeal to both the serious photographers and videographers who have the bucks to afford one. It arrives at the end of November for $6,000 (body only). 

Nintendo has officially lowered the suggested retail price of the base Switch model in Europe, Nintendo Life has reported, hopefully telegraphing a similar drop in the US. It's now available for £260 in the UK or €270 elsewhere in Europe, rather than the previous £280 (€330), at Nintendo's official store.

"Nintendo of Europe is changing the European trade price of the Nintendo Switch console to retailers," a spokesperson said in a statement to Eurogamer. "More than four and a half years after its first release, Nintendo Switch continues to have strong sales momentum in Europe. After carefully weighing up a variety of factors, including currency exchange rates in Europe and the upcoming launch of Nintendo Switch - OLED Model, we decided that now was the appropriate time to change the European trade price of Nintendo Switch."

A US price drop for the base unit has been rumored with the OLED Switch set to arrive on October 8th. The new model has a larger 7-inch, 720p OLED display with smaller bezels, a new kickstand, an ethernet port and speaker improvements, though no other upgraded parts. With everything else unchanged, the lower pricing makes the base model a relatively good deal. 

"We made the price change before the launch of Nintendo Switch - OLED Model so that the price differences between each model in Nintendo's own retail channel, My Nintendo Store, would be what Nintendo judges to be appropriate for its own store," Nintendo said.

The Nintendo Switch base model is still showing at $300 in the US at Amazon and Nintendo's official store, so hopefully that will change in the near future. The Switch OLED will cost $350 in the US, £310 in the UK and €365 elsewhere in Europe. The price of the Switch Lite will remain the same, the company said.