Even though the Nothing Phone 1's launch is still about a month away, the company has already begun showing what the device will look like to help generate hype. From afar, the device appears to be a blend of the iPhone X's back (with its pill-shaped dual-camera island) and the iPhone 12's flat edges. However, the back cover here is transparent, revealing a big wireless charging coil, several screws (something you don't really see on phones these days) and a mysterious pattern teased earlier by founder Carl Pei.

Nothing didn't provide any further detail in these teaser posts, but we imagine the company still has a few tricks up its sleeve — particularly, how Pei will enable "an open and diverse product ecosystem" with this device. So far, we know that the Phone 1 will feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset — Engadget understands that it'll be a mid-tier processor — and the pure Android-like Nothing OS with some design flair. Nothing's design team is led by former Dyson lead designer, Adam Bates, who joined the company in early 2022.

The Nothing Phone 1 will be launched in London at 4PM BST/11AM EST on July 12th. There will be a livestream available, but you'll have to RSVP in advance.

More Twitch streamers will find invites to join the platform's Ads Incentive Program now that the company is opening up the opportunity to welcome "more... Partners than ever." In addition, Twitch will stop paying streamers in the program using a fixed CPM structure — instead, it will use a percentage-based revenue share model to increase ad payouts. When the streaming service launched the program in February, it promised creators a flat payout every month based on the hours they stream and the ads they serve per hour. A user who agrees to stream 40 hours per month, for instance, will earn $300 if they run 3 minutes of ads per hour.

The idea behind the flat payout is to eliminate the guesswork for creators who'd rather know how much they'll earn for the month. With this new model, though, creators will get 55 percent of the revenue from every ad that runs on their stream. Twitch says that represents a 50 to 150 percent increase in ad pay rate for the vast majority of creators on the platform.

While this rollout is meant to bring more Partners, who need to meet a pretty demanding set of requirements, into the fold, smaller streamers will also be able to benefit from the higher revenue structure soon. Starting in August, qualifying affiliates can also earn more money from the 55/45 split by agreeing to run 3 minutes of ads per hour and activating the setting in their Ads Manager. Further, an affiliate who opts in will be able to stream free of pre-roll ads, or those ads that play as soon as a stream begins for a user. 

Mobility startup Lime is looking to add electric motorbikes to its existing fleet of e-bikes and e-scooters. The company today launched a pilot program in Long Beach, California for its custom motorbike, which it is calling the Citra. Lime spokesperson Russell Murphy toldThe Verge that the company plans to release several hundred Citra bikes in the California city this summer, potentially topping up to 500 motorbikes if ridership is strong enough.

According to Lime’s description of the Citra, it’s built for longer distances and combines “the seated comfort of an e-bike with the effortlessness of an e-scooter." At least aesthetically speaking, the Citra definitely resembles both. Similar to other Lime vehicles, the Citra also contains a swappable battery that gets charged by its local operation team. The motorbike is equipped with a few useful features such as storage space for groceries, a horn, front and rear turn signals and a phone mount.

Lime is hoping that customers will seek alternative methods of transportation like the Citra in light of this summer’s record-high gas prices. “Citra is the perfect way to save money on gas, avoid time wasted in traffic, and alleviate the headaches of hunting for parking this summer and we’re excited about its potential,” said Lime president Joe Kraus in a statement.

Mobility startups have struggled to prosper due to opposition from local legislatures, safety failures and a decline in ridership during the pandemic. Some have resorted to terminating staff or winding down operations in order to stay afloat. Back in 2020, Lime laid off a small chunk of its workforce and pulled out of Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego, San Antonio and eight other cities outside the US. The company has made some strides since then — it raised a $523 million funding round last year and recently unveiled a Gen4 ebike.

But Lime and other mobility startups aren’t out of the woods yet. As Bloombergnoted, e-scooter ridership still hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Early buyers of Rivian’s latest electric SUV are facing another delivery delay. A number of customers who pre-ordered Rivian’s R1S SUV received an email this week informing them that an expected June or July delivery window has been pushed back several months. According to Auto Evolution, customers posted on Rivian’s forum that their delivery window had been updated to August or September 2022, or as late as October through December 2022. The EV maker first debuted the seven-passenger vehicle — which has a starting price of $72,500 — back in November 2018, and has pushed back deliveries multiple times, citing production delays and supply chain issues. Deliveries of the first batch of R1S SUVs were originally slated for August 2021.

The company in its email chalked up the latest delay to ongoing supply chain issues and its limited service infrastructure. It said that it would prioritize deliveries to areas that are close to Rivian service centers. Rivan currently operates service centers in only 14 states, so customers in other areas will likely have an even longer wait.

“As we continue to assess our supply chain and build plans, we want to provide an update on your estimated delivery window,” wrote Rivian in its email to customers. It stated that the customer’s updated delivery window was based on three factors: their preorder date, delivery location and current configuration. But a number of early customers seemed puzzled at how Rivian calculated the new delivery window. One customer noted that they pre-ordered the R1S SUV back in November 2019, yet was assigned to the later delivery window of the fourth quarter of 2022. Many customers who lived in especially remote areas or in a state without a Rivian service center also reported later delivery windows. “The irony of an off-road adventure vehicle delivered only to major cities,” wrote one Rivian customer on the company's forum.

Rivian has struggled to scale up production of its vehicles amidst a global parts shortage, including semiconductors. The Tesla competitor isn’t able to rely on existing relationships with parts suppliers, which traditionally prioritize the larger, more established car companies, the Wall Street Journal noted.

Once it completes work on Starfield sometime next year and then transitions to full-scale production on The Elder Scrolls 6, Bethesda says its next project will be Fallout 5. That tidbit of information was shared by Todd Howard, the studio’s creative director, in an interview with IGN.

“Yes, Elder Scrolls 6 is in pre-production and, you know, we’re going to be doing Fallout 5 after that, so our slate’s pretty full going forward for a while,” Howard told the outlet. “We have some other projects that we look at from time to time as well, but they do take a while. I wish they came out faster, I really do. We’re trying as hard as we can, but we want them to be as best as they can be for everybody.”

Bethesda announced it was working on both Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6 at E3 2018. Based on the studio’s current development cadence, it won’t release the latter until sometime in 2027. And if spends another five years working on Fallout 5 after that, the sequel won’t arrive until sometime in the next decade. By that point, both Microsoft and Sony could announce and release new console hardware. Catastrophic climate change could also become so bad that a game about a post-apoclypse would become redundant. Either way, Fallout fans have a long wait ahead of them before the next mainline entry in the series arrives.

Apple may finally give its starter iPad a much-needed technology upgrade. 9to5Macsources claim Apple's next base tablet will switch from a Lightning port to USB-C upon launch sometime in the fall. Like most recent iPads, you could plug directly into monitors and other peripherals while improving the speed of wired data transfers.

There are also hints of a broader performance upgrade. The new entry iPad will supposedly include a larger screen with the same resolution found in the iPad Air. You wouldn't get the same image quality as the Air, but you wouldn't have to settle for a significantly smaller display just to save some money. Apple will also equip the iPad with the fourth-gen Air's A14 Bionic chip and introduce 5G support to cellular variants, according to the tipsters.

There's no mention of whether or not Apple will freshen the design of the iPad, including support for the Magic Keyboard or second-generation Pencil. It wouldn't be surprising if the slate received a makeover, however. The base iPad is the last model to stick to Lightning, a home button and other features that have been around for a decade or more. If the rumor is accurate, the new version would jump into the modern era while still giving buyers a reason to spend extra for the Air.

GSC Game World hopes to release Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl next year. The studio shared the updated release window in a trailer it premiered Tuesday during Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase Extended livestream. GSC had previously planned to release the game by the end of this year, but the likelihood of that happening diminished after the company was forced to pause development due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Some fans spotted Stalker 2’s new release window when Microsoft shared an update on Xbox Game Pass during its Xbox and Bethesda showcase on Sunday. "It happened a little bit earlier than expected, we were actually planning to reveal it in the upcoming days," a GSC Game World spokesperson told PC Gamer on Monday. "But yes, the game now releases in 2023."

Alongside a fresh trailer, the studio released a new vlog detailing some of the hardships its staff has had to endure since the conflict in Ukraine began. GSC recently resumed work on Stalker 2 after relocating some of its team members to Prague. The studio also changed the game’s subtitle from “Heart of Chernobyl” to “Chornobyl” to reflect the local Ukrainian spelling of the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster.

The New York Timesreports Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court has rejected a proposed ballot measure that would have enshrined Uber and Lyft's business model in law. The court said the measure violated the Massachusetts constitution by including two unrelated policy decisions, including one hidden by "obscure language."

The bulk of the proposed ballot measure outlined limited benefits for rideshare drivers. However, the offending provision would have said that drivers couldn't be treated as an "employee or agent" of gig-based companies. If voted into law, this might have shielded outfits like Uber or Lyft from liability in the event of a crash or crime — not to mention kneecapping any attempts to reclassify drivers as employees in the state. The unrelated provisions raised concerns that voters might be "confused, misled and deprived" of a real choice, the court wrote in its decision.

Uber, Lyft and their supporters contended that formalizing the gig worker model would have protected flexibility for drivers seeking their own hours. Groups supporting the companies, such as Chamber of Progress, have claimed employee status could cost jobs and income. Critics like AFL-CIO union federation, however, have argued that measures like this create a false dichotomy between flexibility and benefits — they see ballot options like this as attempts to cut employment costs at the expense of laborers.

Uber and Lyft declined to comment. The two spent a total of $17.8 million endorsing the ballot measure, and have had mixed success promoting similar efforts in other states. They got Californians to vote for Proposition 22, a bid to reverse a state law protecting drivers as employees, only to watch as a judge ruled the measure unconstitutional. The companies struck an agreement with Washington State legislators in early 2022, but failed to get much traction in New York State.

Adobe plans to debut a pared down, web-only version of its popular photo-editing tool Photoshop, The Vergereported today. The company is currently testing this new freemium version with users in Canada, but will eventually make it available to a wider audience. For now, anyone in Canada who creates an Adobe account can access the free, browser-only version of Photoshop. Engadget has reached out to Adobe to find out when it plans to make the tool available to users worldwide, and will update when we hear back.

Photoshop has long been the industry standard for image editing, but its monthly license fee likely dissuades most from using it. Meanwhile, free or freemium photo-editing software like Pixlr, Canva and Photopea have embraced casual users and also grown more sophisticated in their offerings. As The Verge notes, Adobe is making its basic photo editing tools available for free in order to reach users that don’t belong to its usual audience. Adobe’s hope is that some freemium Photoshop users will become paying subscribers, especially since the company plans to offer more advanced features on the web-only version that can only be unlocked with a subscription.

If this sounds somewhat familiar, it's because Adobe launched its web-only version of Photoshop and Illustrator for subscribers last fall; though their functionality was limited to basic editing and sharing comments among collaborators on projects. This new, free web version of Photoshop significantly expands the available tools, and allows users to start new projects, as well as access more advanced color correction and editing tools.

Netflix isn't just milking Squid Game's success with a second season. Varietynotes the streamer is creating a reality competition show, Squid Game: The Challenge, based on the Korean series. The 10-episode production will pit 456 people against each other in games both "inspired" by the show as well as new events. No one is dying here, thankfully, but there's still a good reason for entrants to persevere to the end — the winner receives a whopping $4.56 million prize.

The company is casting for English-speaking participants worldwide ahead of filming in the UK. While Netflix didn't say when Squid Game: The Challenge would premiere, the US casting page notes that candidates may have to commit to as many as four weeks in early 2023. The Circle production house Studio Lambert and ITV's The Garden are heading up the project.

A reality TV spinoff isn't exactly shocking. Squid Game remains Netflix's most popular show of all time, and earned Golden Globe and SAG awards. The company is also eager to turn its fortunes around — it posted its first subscriber loss in a decade last quarter in the wake of fiercer rivalries, limited growth potential and account sharing. The competition could help Netflix reel in subscribers beyond those eager to watch season two.