Add more brands to the list of those hopping aboard the "+" service bandwagon. To begin, MGM is relaunching its movie-oriented Epix streaming service and TV channel as MGM+ on January 15th, 2023. It will continue Epix's blend of originals and "curated" movies from various studios. You'll also find it in the familiar places, including through Prime Video (Amazon owns MGM, after all), other digital services and conventional TV providers.
Simultaneously, Starz has just rebranded its international streaming service Starzplay as Lionsgate+ for 35 of the 63 countries where it operates. North Americans will still see the usual Starz name, while Lionsgate Play (in parts of Asia) and Starzplay Arabia will also remain unchanged. As with MGM+, the actual service will remain intact. This is more about capitalizing on the "valuable" nature of the Lionsgate name and trying to stand out (by tacking on the same "+" as everyone else), according to Starz chief Jeffrey Hirsch.
TechCrunchnotes Lionsgate plans to separate Starz from its studio business, and hoped for the spinoff to complete the move this summer. That clearly didn't happen, but the rebrand is a step in that direction.
In either case, the strategy is familiar. As with CBS All Access' revival as Paramount+, it's a bid to make the most of a well-known brand while nodding to a streaming-first reality. Whether or not this helps is another story. Their streaming businesses are relatively small (Starz has 35.8 million subscribers, for example) compared to heavyweights like Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Netflix. They're not in trouble, but name changes by themselves aren't likely to boost demand.
Ahead of its annual MAX event next month, Adobe has unveiled the 2023 version of its non-subscription Elements products. As with yearspast, the highlights are new AI features like animation for Photoshop Elements images and AI-applied art styles for Premiere.
For Photoshop Elements 2023, the most dramatic update is the ability to add motion to still photos. To do so, you just need to select the part of the image you want to move and indicate the direction of movement using the arrow tool. The AI will then do the rest, adding appropriate movement to water, fabrics, sand and so on. A bit cheesy, sure, but it could work in some situations.
Adobe
Another key tool for Photoshop Elements is guided edits. That lets you do things like "peek-throughs" or putting foreground objects in a photo, along with "perfect portrait" that lets you smooth blemishes, whiten teeth, adjust face tilt or make the subjects smile wider (or even change a blink to open their eyes). Another guided lets you replace an ugly background with, say, a sunset.
The perfect portrait feature adds a touch of uncanny valley to subjects if overused, and the background replacement work can be a bit wonky, depending on how well the AI isolates your subject. Still, it could be fun for certain uses. Other features include new collage and slideshow templates, faster performance, Apple M1 chip support and a new Android companion app to upload mobile photos and videos to Elements on desktop (English-only beta).
Adobe
The key feature for Premiere Elements also revolves around Adobe's Sensei AI. The "artistic effects" tool lets you add painterly styles to video including Van Gogh, DaVinci, Monet and so on. The effect takes motion into account for a consistent look, though again, this can get very tacky if overused.
Adobe also added over 100 new audio tracks to give you some free music for videos, while boosting performance and stability and adding Apple M1 chips support. The Android companion app can also be used with Premiere Elements to make it easier to upload videos from your phone (again, only for the English-only beta). Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements are now available for $100 new or $80 as upgrades, or $150 for both products ($120 as an upgrade).
Meta unveiled its Make-a-Scene text-to-image generation AI in July, which like Dall-E and Midjourney, utilizes machine learning algorithms (and massive databases of scraped online artwork) to create fantastical depictions of written prompts. On Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed Make-a-Scene's more animated contemporary, Make-a-Video.
As its name implies, Make-a-Video is, "a new AI system that lets people turn text prompts into brief, high-quality video clips," Zuckerberg wrote in a Meta blog Thursday. Functionally, Video works the same way that Scene does — relying on a mix of natural language processing and generative neural networks to convert non-visual prompts into images — it's just pulling content in a different format.
"Our intuition is simple: learn what the world looks like and how it is described from paired text-image data, and learn how the world moves from unsupervised video footage," a team of Meta researchers wrote in a research paper published Thursday morning. Doing so enabled the team to reduce the amount of time needed to train the Video model and eliminate the need for paired text-video data, while preserving "the vastness (diversity in aesthetic, fantastical depictions, etc.) of today’s image generation models."
As with most all of Meta's AI research, Make-a-Video is being released as an open-source project. "We want to be thoughtful about how we build new generative AI systems like this," Zuckerberg noted. "We are openly sharing this generative AI research and results with the community for their feedback, and will continue to use our responsible AI framework to refine and evolve our approach to this emerging technology."
As with seemingly every generative AI that is released, the opportunity for misuse of Make-a-Video is not a small one. To get ahead of any potential nefarious shenanigans, the research team preemptively scrubbed the Make-a-Video training dataset of any NSFW imagery as well as toxic phrasing.
Finally, Sonos has a subwoofer that's more affordable and practical for smaller spaces, the Sub Mini. It only took 10 years to get here. Sonos' original wireless Sub, which debuted in 2012, has always been targeted at its most hardcore users. With a launch price of $699, it was just as expensive as the company's flagship Playbar, and its enormous size made it overkill for apartments. (It's now $50 more after Sonos' recent price hikes.)
Casual Sonos fans were basically out of luck, especially as the company released more affordable soundbars, like the Beam and Ray. You probably wouldn't want to pair a $699 subwoofer with a speaker that costs $400 or less. Simply put, the $429 Sub Mini fills a huge gap in Sonos's lineup. But is it actually any good?
If I could, I'd show you my cat's shocked reaction as I blasted Baby Driver's opening car chase on the Sonos Arc in my family room. Sonos may not be the most price-conscious company around, but it's always made reliably great speakers. The Sub Mini is no exception.
Now I know, if you own an Arc, you'd most likely opt for the beefier Sonos Sub. But I was still impressed by how much the smaller subwoofer helped, especially for a soundbar that already delivered some fabulous low-end sound on its own. Muffled shotgun firing at the beginning of Baby Driver shook my walls (and made one cat leap into the air). I could viscerally feel the rumble of engines, the impact of car crashes and the weight shift every time Baby used the emergency brake for a sharp turn. The Sub Mini transformed the movie from something I was just watching to something I was experiencing.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
I was genuinely surprised by how big the Sub Mini sounded, especially since it's a relatively small cylinder. It weighs 14 pounds — 22 pounds lighter than the big Sonos Sub — and features dual six-inch woofers that face inward. Its sealed design means it doesn't push out a ton of air like ported subs, but that also ensures a tighter bass response. The Sub Mini can reach down to 25Hz – more than enough to make the opening of Blade Runner 2049 hit me right in the gut.
While I wouldn't call it portable, I appreciated how easy it was to move the Sub Mini around my home to test in different rooms. (Trust me, that was a lot less fun with the massive Sonos Sub.) You can pair the new sub with Sonos’ powered speakers, like the Beam, Ray and Play:5. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Sonos's portable offerings.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
That makes sense for the tiny Roam speaker, but I was genuinely disappointed to learn the Sub Mini doesn't support the larger Move. That's a speaker I've grown to love recently, since it lets me easily bring music into my backyard. It's a shame Sonos couldn't make the Sub Mini work while the Move was sitting on its charging base. (At that point, how is it different from a speaker with a plug?)
Despite that annoyance, the Sub Mini seems well-suited to homes with plenty of Sonos speakers. Moving it over to a Play:5 in my living room took around 30 seconds. And once it got going, it instantly added an impressive amount of depth to some of my usual test tracks. Tan Dun's "Night Fight" from the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon soundtrack sounded like I was hosting a traditional drumming concert in my home. Flying Lotus's "Zodiac Shit," a go-to track for low-end testing, sent another one of my cats cowering into another room.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
As great as it is for music, I'd best most Sub Mini buyers would end up pairing it with one of Sonos's soundbar for better movie and TV sound. It certainly made a huge difference on the first-gen Beam in my bedroom, which sounded twice as large during that Baby Driver chase sequence. Obviously, that's not a room where I would want to have thumping bass all the time, but it sure is nice to have the option.
That's my biggest takeaway. After a decade of waiting, Sonos fans finally have a viable option for beefing up their sound that isn’t obscenely expensive. And if you're lucky enough to have multiple Sonos devices, you can easily move that bass magic all over your home. It may be called the Sub Mini, but really it’s all about maximizing sound where it matters.
Square has publicly launched its Tap to Pay solution for the iPhone after running an early access program these past few months. That means sellers across the US can now use the company's Point of Sale app to receive payments from customers using just their iPhones anywhere they are. Sure, they need to have a newer iPhone — the oldest model that can run the feature is the iPhone 11 — but they don't need to buy additional hardware to access the feature.
Like with any other point-of-sale system, sellers only have to ring up the sale on Square's app and then have the customer pay using contactless credit and debit cards or Apple Pay and other digital wallets. Square is hoping that the solution could provide even small merchants an easy way to conduct in-person business. In its announcement, the company also addressed a potential security concern and said that Apple doesn't store card numbers on the sellers' device or on its servers.
Square first announced that it was going to support Apple's Tap to Pay on iPhones, which the tech giant was seen testing at its visitor center in May, back in June. It opened its early access program at the same time to give select sellers and retailers the chance to try it out. One of the participants said it allowed their business to better accommodate younger customers who preferred paying with their digital wallets and contactless cards.
The case for heating homes with hydrogen rather than natural gas appears to be dead. In the UK, hydrogen has become an important part of the debate around decarbonizing home heating. 85 percent of all homes use natural gas to heat space and water, with the oil and gas industry pushing hydrogen as something that can leverage the existing gas pipelines. And lawmakers with close ties to the industry have claimed that hydrogen is a “silver bullet” to help the UK reach its climate targets.
According to a new study from the Regulatory Assistance Project, an NGO, such claims are a big pile of old nonsense. The project ran an extensive meta-analysis of research into hydrogen technology overall, finding that the promises of easy retrofit don’t add up. It said that it wasn’t clear if the existing infrastructure was actually suitable to take hydrogen without major adaptation. That was, after all, one of the major selling points of using hydrogen over switching to heat pumps and other low-carbon methods.
It’s something that Engadget already covered in its extensive report on the UK’s home heating situation back in 2021. The suitability of infrastructure is only one part of the problem, however, since many experts also asked where all of this hydrogen was coming from. Supplying the UK with enough hydrogen to heat 85 percent of its homes, without any work to reduce demand, would require around 10 million tons of hydrogen.
In that report, Tim Lord, who was previously responsible for the UK’s decarbonization strategy, said that to generate that much hydrogen cleanly, you would need around 75 gigawatts of offshore wind. The UK Government’s most recent figures say that the country’s total installed offshore wind capacity is just 10 gigawatts. It’s hard to see the economic case for installing seven-and-a-half times the total offshore wind capacity just to generate hydrogen.
The Regulatory Assistance Project’s report also found that trying to use hydrogen for space and hot water heating is a waste of a vital material. Green hydrogen could be put to better use in agricultural processes, like making fertilizer or in heavy industry. And we’ve already seen that green hydrogen has a part to play in decarbonizing industrial transport, like shipping, and in the railways where mass-electrification isn’t viable.
In its conclusions, the report adds that greater emphasis on hydrogen will only serve to delay the take up of better technologies, like heat pumps. There’s a political dimension to this, too, with The Guardian reporting that hydrogen lobbyists were out in force at the recent Labour Party conference, and are expected to attend next week’s Conservative Party conference as well.
Another study, from the MCS Charitable Foundation in partnership with energy analysts Cornwall Insight, found that hydrogen’s cost to consumers would be nightmarish. It found that switching from natural gas to hydrogen would likely see the cost increase by between 70 to 90 percent on average. It also warned that, unlike electricity, hydrogen would be subject to the same market volatility as other fossil fuels.
As before, this study raises the question about how much we can rely upon hydrogen given that many of its key needs are still untested. For instance, steam reformation of methane would still require carbon capture and storage at a vastly larger scale than present. (Not to mention the fact that methane is a far deadlier climate gas than carbon dioxide, so any leaks or accidents would be significantly more damaging for the planet.)
Fundamentally, on this and all of the other evidence, it would seem like legislators should avoid the expensive distraction of hydrogen in favor of full-scale electrification. That, as we’ve already covered, would provide a significant, and swift, reduction in emissions (and a timely boost to the economy).
Amazon’s barrage of new hardware included something many of you might have been waiting for: a Kindle e-reader with stylus support. Yes, the Kindle Scribe comes with a magnetic stylus and a 10.2-inch, 300ppi display. You won’t need to charge or sync the Scribe's stylus, and you can use it for jotting notes, journaling and annotating any books you're reading. Starting next year, you’ll also be able to send Microsoft Word documents to Kindle Scribe. Kindle Scribe will start at $340 and arrives November 30th.
Yesterday, Amazon also revealed an expanded Fire TV Omni line. It’s added two premium 65- and 75-inch QLED models, along with a redesigned Fire TV Cube. There’s a new sleep tracking gadget, more Echo speaker updates and refreshed Ring cameras, too. There was… a lot.
Sony says its loyalty program will debut in the Americas on October 5th, while Australians and Europeans will have access on October 13th. The program is free, but you’ll get some benefits if you're a PlayStation Plus member. You’ll be able to earn rewards by completing activities and campaigns ranging from the very basic (playing any game once a month) to the challenging (being one of the first to score a game's platinum trophy in your region). Those loyalty points can be put toward your PlayStation Network wallet, digital collectibles and, hopefully, real-world products.
Polestar's first electric SUV will get its official unveiling on October 12th. The company teased several premium features you can expect to see, including air suspension, active dampers and torque vectoring, putting it up against other SUV EVs, like the Mercedes-Benz EQS and Tesla’s Model X. The company said it's shooting for a 372-mile range on the European WLTP cycle (considerably less in EPA terms). It'll also include a semi-autonomous driving system for highway driving.
OpenAI's well-known image generator is now available to everyone. If you want to create art, you just have to sign up and describe the pieces you'd like to produce. You’ll get a finite number of credits that will get topped up monthly. It's still not clear if AI-generated art is fair use or stolen. Getty Images recently banned the material out of concern it might violate copyright.
After many years of trying, Oura has finally managed to sand out the flat edge from its smart ring. The company is updating the third generation of its ring, originally released at the end of 2021, with a perfectly round body. The Oura (Gen3) Horizon keeps the same suite of advanced sensors as the existing model. The new Horizon is available to order right now for $349, while the existing ring is still $299.
It was due to UK sanctions against Ukraine's sham referendums.
Russia has removed all iOS apps from VK, the second largest tech company in Russia. That included its social media app, which is the fifth most popular in Russia, and others like Mail.ru and VK Music. The move was made in response to UK sanctions against the Russian government. Apple confirmed it removed the apps and shut down VK's developer accounts. "These apps are being distributed by developers majority-owned or majority-controlled by one or more parties sanctioned by the UK government," a spokesperson told The Verge.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Adobe Chief Product Officer Scott Belsky has reassured worried Figma users that the online collaborative design platform's acquisition will not change its pricing model and ease of use. If you'll recall, Adobe announced in mid-September that it's purchasing Figma for roughly $20 billion in cash and shares. Users understandably raised concerns about the merger, seeing as Adobe's programs are quite expensive.
Belsky said in the interview that Figma will remain a "freemium" offering with a basic tier that's available at no cost. Figma co-founder Dylan Field added that Adobe isn't planning any price increase and that the platform will remain free for education. Adobe does have changes planned for the platform, of course, including integrating features from its software portfolio, as well as its library of fonts and stock images.
According to Belsky, though, any update Adobe rolls out won't be obstructive and won't make it difficult to navigate the platform's interface. Perhaps most importantly for those who use Figma for collaborations, it will continue allowing file sharing without additional fees — users won't have to get a Creative Cloud subscription to work on the same document.
Adobe's suite of programs will undergo changes due to the acquisition, as well. The company plans to adopt Figma's collaborative features and may build multi-user web platforms for its programs. Adobe Express and Acrobat might also get their own versions of Figma's whiteboard and presentation functions. "We would only want to amplify and continue and learn from the things that Figma has done to become a viral product in the enterprise and throughout the world," Belsky said.
There is one Adobe program that might not survive the acquisition: Figma's direct competitor Adobe XD. The company has no immediate plans to kill the software, but it will "reevaluate where [it] want[s] to shift [its] resources and focus" once Figma comes in. Both parties expect the deal to close sometime in 2023, so long as it gets approval from both regulators and shareholders.
Amazon has announced that it's spending nearly $1 billion boosting wages for hourly workers in the US amid criticism of its labor practices and a pitched union battle. The increase will take the starting wage for most front-line warehouse and transportation employees to over $19 per hour, while pay in fulfilment and elsewhere will rise to $16 an hour. The company's minimum wage will remain at $15 per hour.
Amazon is also expanding its "Anytime Pay" program to all employees, allowing them to access up to 70 percent of their eligible pay at any time with no fee, rather than the usual once or twice a month. It also added a new development program that allows employees to advance to engineering roles after 12-14 months of training.
Amazon is the second largest employer in the US after Walmart, with a total workforce of over 1.5 million. Most of those are hourly workers in warehouses or delivery, or retailer workers at Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. The average hourly pay in the US is $32.36, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and $28.10 in the "transportation and warehousing" category.
In April this year, 8,000-plus workers at a Staten Island facility voted to unionize, and Amazon lost its initial appeal for a re-vote. It's also facing a House committee probe into a deadly warehouse collapse that killed six workers during a tornado. Last June, the panel accused Amazon of "obstructing" the probe by refusing to hand over key documents related to an internal review.
On October 5th, Lululemon will launch a new membership service that requires a Mirror at-home fitness device. Lululemon Studio builds upon the 10,000 on-demand and livestream classes already accessible with a Mirror subscription. Members will get access to old online content from studio partners, can stream the new classes they release per week and can sign up for in-person classes at their brick-and-mortar locations at a discount. At the moment, the program lists eight partner studios, namely AARMY, Y7 Studio, DOGPOUND, FORWARD__Space, Pure Barre, Rumble, AKT and YogaSix. Members will also get discounts on Lululemon products and get early access to its events.
As The New York Times notes, the new program is part of the company's efforts to expand Mirror's reach. Lululemon purchased interactive home gym startup Mirror for $500 million back in 2020 during the height of COVID-related lockdowns, when people had no choice but to work out at home. As restrictions eased, people started flocking to gyms again. At-home fitness companies the found their sales dwindling and the demand for their products to be much, much smaller than before. Peloton, for instance, suffered a massive loss worth $757.1 million in the first three months of 2022. Lululemon itself slashed its Mirror sales outlook for 2021 to between $125 and $130 million from $250 million and $275 million.
In an interview with The Times, Lululemon chief executive Calvin McDonald, said: "What we saw in terms of connected fitness was a shift in change coming out of the pandemic where guests were really asking and looking for the convenience and the ability to not just have a solution to work out at home. Profitability is within our control. We’re choosing to invest to grow the business." McDonald didn't say how many users Mirror has, but it has apparently brought in new customers to the brand. He also said that the company expects Mirror to account for 5 percent of its sales in the next five years.
A Lululemon Studio membership will cost $39 a month, and all current Mirror subscription members will automatically become Studio members. Those who don't have a Mirror yet will have to get one first. To lower the barrier of entry, Lululemon will cut Mirror's price by almost 50 percent and will sell it for $795 (original price is $1,495) for a limited time starting on October 5th.
