In a nutshell, ASUS’ new powerful gaming phone is all about bigger specs and faster performance. It has a 165Hz 6.78-inch display, with 720Hz touch sampling rate, up to 18GB of RAM and a bigger 6,000mAh battery.

Engadget

The most notable change is the revamped clip-on cooler that's arriving alongside the ROG Phone 6. You can toggle between four cooling settings in the updated Armoury Crate app's console, with a "Frozen" mode that pushes its Peltier chip to the max. This is only available when there's external power plugged into the device but ASUS claims the AeroActive Cooler 6 can lower the ROG Phone 6's surface temperature by up to a staggering 25 degrees Celsius (that’s 77 Fahrenheit), which sounds more like a portable air cooler than a smartphone accessory. As far as availability goes, ASUS says the ROG Phone 6 series will start from €999 (around $1,000) in Europe. US availability remains TBC.

-Mat Smith

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NASA's CAPSTONE satellite has gone dark

This wasn't part of the plan.

NASA

Well, that’s taken a turn. Just yesterday we reported on NASA’s latest steps towards getting a human back on the Moon, but the agency has lost contact with CAPSTONE, a tiny satellite that left Earth's orbit on July 4th. The small satellite stopped communicating with engineers shortly after deploying from an Electron rocket bus and exiting Earth's orbit. Handlers are attempting to re-establish contact with the cubesat.

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European Union passes landmark laws to rein in big tech

The Digital Markets and Services Acts are designed to level the playing field.

The European Union has passed a pair of landmark bills designed to rein in Big Tech’s power. The Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act are intended to promote fairer competition, improve privacy protection, as well as banning many forms of targeted advertising. The EU has given both bills plenty of teeth, and can dole out a maximum penalty of 10 percent of its total worldwide turnover from the previous year, should regulators find non-compliance. This figure will, however, jump to 20 percent of worldwide turnover if officials find “repeated non-compliance.”

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Meta sues a site cloner who allegedly scraped over 350,000 Instagram profiles

The company also filed a complaint against a scraping-for-hire firm.

On Tuesday, Meta filed separate federal lawsuits against a company called Octopus and an individual named Ekrem Ateş. According to Meta, the former is the US subsidiary of a Chinese multinational tech firm that offers data scraping-for-hire services to individuals and companies.

Octopus also sells software that allows people to carry out their own data collection campaigns. According to Meta, this program first compromises the Facebook and Instagram accounts of the user by providing their authentication information to Octopus before proceeding to scrape all the data accessible to that individual’s accounts.

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Ubisoft will drop details on Assassin's Creed and more games on September 10th

‘Beyond Good and Evil 2’, please?

Ubisoft

Back in June, Ubisoft confirmed it would share information about the future of Assassin's Creed during a special event in September, and this appears to be that. The company is currently working on two Assassin's Creed projects: one is a live multiplayer experience spanning multiple time periods code-named Infinity, and the other is a standalone series installment code-named Rift.

Continue reading.

Amazon has already started selling a bunch of its smart home devices at a discount, almost a week before Prime Day even begins. One of the most notable deals that's already available is Amazon's smart thermostat, which you can get for $42 — as long as you're a Prime member. That's 30 percent off its regular retail price of $60 and a new all-time low for the device. Amazon's smart thermostat debuted in September 2021, giving you an affordable option to control your home temperature. 

It's not quite as feature-rich as its more expensive counterparts, like the Google Nest thermostat. But it's Energy Star-certified and can save you an average of $50 on your electric bills every year. Plus, it's Alexa-compatible and allows you to use the voice assistant to set custom routines for heating and cooling. The thermostat itself doesn't have a speaker or a microphone, though, so you'll need to use the Alexa app or another Alexa-enabled device like an Echo speaker to do so. 

That brings us to another deal you can get right now: Amazon's smart thermostat bundled with an Echo Dot speaker. The bundle with a fourth-gen Echo Dot speaker will set you back $62, or $48 off its usual price, which is the lowest we've seen for it on the website. Meanwhile, the smart thermostat bundle with a second-gen Echo Show 5 smart display is also on sale for $77, or $68 lower than its retail price. That's also a new all-time low for the duo.

In case you're mainly looking to buy Amazon's Alexa-powered speakers, you can get a fourth-gen Echo Dot with an Amazon smart plug for $25. You'll save $50 if you get the bundle, which typically sells for $75 and has never been discounted this deeply before. Amazon's smart plug adds Alexa voice control to any outlet, allowing you to control any non-smart device plugged to it, such as lights, fans and other appliances. 

Finally, you can get the fourth-gen Echo Dot for Kids bundled with an Echo Glow multicolor smart lamp with Prime for $36. That's 60 percent or $54 off its retail price and also includes a year-long Amazon Kids+ subscription. 

Get the latest Amazon Prime Day offers by following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribing to the Engadget Deals newsletter.

Amazon has announced a handful of new perks for Prime members ahead of Prime Day this month, including free deliveries from nearby restaurants. All Prime members in the US will now get access to a one-year Grubhub+ membership, which typically costs $10 a month, for free. Amazon used to have a restaurant delivery service of its own in an attempt to create a homegrown UberEats rival, but the company ultimately shut it down in the UK and the US. This time, it's teaming up with an established delivery service.

Grubhub+ members enjoy $0 food delivery fees, so long as their orders go over $12. They also get rewards that include free food and discounts on their orders. Prime subscribers can redeem their free Grubhub+ membership by going to the official perk page on Amazon, activating the offer and then sharing their Prime status with the delivery service. Even existing Grubhub+ users can claim the freebie, with their free year kicking in after their current billing cycle ends. People who cancel their Prime membership will also lose access to their free year of Grubhub+, while those who stick around will be charged $10 a month for the delivery service after 12 months.

This partnership is part of the commercial agreement Amazon has entered with Just Eat Takeaway.com, the Dutch parent company of Grubhub. Under the agreement, Amazon will receive stock warrants worth 2 percent of Grubhub’s fully-diluted common equity. Grubhub says it "continues to actively explore the partial or full sale" of the company, but whether Amazon will swoop in with an offer remains to be seen. For now, Grubhub expects this partnership to add more members to its subscription service.

Adam DeWitt, CEO of Grubhub, said in a statement:

"I am incredibly excited to announce this collaboration with Amazon that will help Grubhub continue to deliver on our long-standing mission to connect more diners with local restaurants. Amazon has redefined convenience with Prime and we’re confident this offering will expose many new diners to the value of Grubhub+ while driving more business to our restaurant partners and drivers."

Stranger Things 4 has become the most popular English-language series on Netflix with the premiere of its last two episodes. The streaming giant has revealed that the show has racked up 1.15 billion hours of viewing time within the first 28 days of each part's release. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the first seven episodes had a viewing time of 930.32 million hours within 28 days of the show's debut. Meanwhile, episodes 8 and 9 reached 221 million hours viewed in the week of June 27th to July 3rd. 

That makes the series second only to Squid Game, which crossed 1.65 billion hours viewed within its first 28 days of release and which currently holds the title for the most-viewed show in Netflix history. It even has the potential to overtake the Korean hit, seeing as it has only been a few days since the last two episodes came out. 

Netflix, however, has yet to reveal whether Stranger Things 4's popularity has had a significant impact on its subscriber numbers. In 2021, the company said it posted its best subscriber growth of the year during the third quarter, thanks in part to Squid Game. But in April this year, Netflix admitted that it lost about 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022 due to several issues, such as stiffer competition and account sharing. The company said back then that it's taking steps to turn things around, but we'll have to wait for its next earnings report to find out whether Eleven and the rest of the Hawkins crew were of any help. 

Meta is taking legal action against two prolific data scrapers. On Tuesday, the company filed separate federal lawsuits against a company called Octopus and an individual named Ekrem Ateş. According to Meta, the former is the US subsidiary of a Chinese multinational tech firm that offers data scraping-for-hire services to individuals and companies.

Octopus also sells software people can use to carry out their own data collection campaigns. According to Meta, this program first compromises the Facebook and Instagram accounts of the user by providing their authentication information to Octopus before proceeding to scrape all the data accessible to that individual’s accounts. The software can then obtain phone numbers, dates of birth and other personal information about every Facebook and Instagram friend connected to a particular Octopus customer. Meta alleges Octopus violated its terms of service and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by offering an automated scraping service and attempting to avoid detection by the company.

“Companies like Octopus are part of an emerging scraping industry that provides automation services to any customer — regardless of who they target and for what purpose they scrape,” Meta said. “This industry makes scraping available to individuals and companies that otherwise would not have the capabilities.”

As for Ekrem Ateş, the individual Meta sued, the company says he used automated Instagram accounts to collect information on more than 350,000 Instagram users and later published that data on a series of clone sites where one could view the data of those individuals without their consent. Since the start of 2021, Meta says it has taken multiple enforcement actions against Ateş, including sending him a cease and desist letter and revoking his access to its services. This isn’t the first time Meta has used legal action to try and stop data scraping. In 2020, for instance, the company sued a Turkish national who scraped more than 100,000 Instagram profiles. 

After more than a year of rising tensions over the country’s sweeping 2021 IT law, Twitter is suing India’s government. The New York Times reports the company filed a complaint on Tuesday with the Karnataka High Court in Bangalore to challenge a recent order to censor content within the country. According to Twitter, it had until Monday to block about a dozen accounts and posts or face possible criminal action. While the company complied with the order, it’s now also seeking legal relief.

Twitter declined to comment. The challenge comes after the company reportedly told the Indian government last summer it was compliant with the country’s IT rules. As part of the law, Twitter was required to hire a domestic compliance officer and a point of contact for local authorities.

Before that point, Twitter’s relationship with India had been strained for much of 2021. In February, the government threatened to jail Twitter employees unless the company removed content related to the farmer protests held that year. Two months later, India ordered Twitter to pull tweets that criticized the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

More recently, the government ordered Twitter to block tweets from Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that said India was an example of a country where freedom of the press is on the decline. “Freedom House is concerned that the Indian government ordered Twitter to restrict our tweets last year,” the group said. “We think that both governments and tech companies should uphold free expression, privacy and other fundamental freedoms.”

NASA has lost contact with CAPSTONE, a tiny satellite that left Earth's orbit on July 4th. CAPSTONE is a cubesat weighing just 55 pounds, and it's headed for the Moon as part of NASA's plan to get humans back on the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years. 

The small satellite stopped communicating with engineers on July 4th shortly after deploying from an Electron rocket bus and exiting Earth's orbit. A NASA spokesperson told Space.com that the team has solid trajectory information for CAPSTONE and handlers are attempting to re-establish contact with the cubesat. 

"If needed, the mission has enough fuel to delay the initial post-separation trajectory correction maneuver for several days," the spokesperson told the site.

CAPSTONE spent six days building up speed in-orbit on a Rocket Lab Electron booster and finally deployed yesterday, on a path to the Moon. The plan is for CAPSTONE to enter a near rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon on November 13th, serving as a test for NASA's Artemis mission. With Artemis, NASA plans to install a space station called the Lunar Gateway in the Moon's orbit, serving as a permanent floating base for lunar visitors, complete with living quarters and a laboratory.

NASA plans to kick off its Artemis 1 mission between August 23rd and September 6th with the deployment of an unmanned Orion module, which will orbit the Moon and provide data about how the trip might affect the human body. After that, four astronauts will take off for the lunar satellite. Finally, some time after 2025, NASA plans to put humans on the Moon again.

Apex Legends players on Xbox Series X/S haven't been too impressed with the game over the last two weeks. Since Respawn Entertainment rolled out a large update on June 22nd, players on those consoles have been complaining about an input lag issue that seemingly made the battle royale very slow to register button presses. Thankfully, the developer may have finally resolved the matter.

"We just pushed a small update to [Apex Legends] to help address issues with input lag on Xbox Series X and S consoles," Respawn wrote on Twitter. "Thank you for your patience here, legends."

It's not clear why the issue only seemed to affect current Xbox consoles, but some folks claimed it made Apex Legends practically unplayable. A Twitch streamer named Reaiming shared a clip of them rapidly pressing the trigger but the game clearly wasn't registering all their inputs.

Members of the community found workarounds to mitigate the problem until Respawn issued a fix, such as rolling back the firmware on certain controllers. Here's hoping today's update resolves the issue so Xbox Series X/S players have a better chance of becoming champions. Failing that, fingers crossed they can at least enjoy the game again.

There's no need to wait for Prime Day for a decent deal on a Kindle, especially if you're looking to pick one up for a younger person in your life. Prime members can pick up the Kindle Kids edition for $50, which is $10 cheaper than the previous all-time-low price. The usual price of the e-reader is $85.

It's a 10th-gen Kindle that comes with a two-year worry-free guarantee. Amazon will replace the device if it breaks for any reason. It's a proper e-reader, not a rugged toy, so that guarantee might come in handy. Kindle Kids does, however, come with a kid-friendly cover.

You'll also get one year of access to Amazon Kids+, which includes access to thousands of kid-friendly books, including the Ramona Quimby and Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Parents can view their kids' reading progress and set educational goals. Amazon Kids+ usually costs $5 per month.

Meanwhile, you can also pick up the 2019 edition of the Fire 7 without breaking the bank, since that's also down to a record low. The tablet is currently $30, which is 40 percent off the regular price. It's another low-cost device that could be a solid option for a child, especially if you pick up a kid-friendly case for it.

This model comes with 16GB of storage, which you can expand with a microSD card. Amazon says it will run for up to seven hours on a single charge, which could make it useful for watching movies in the back seat during a road trip. There are parental controls you can use to make sure little ones aren't doing anything they're not supposed to.

Get the latest Amazon Prime Day offers by following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribing to the Engadget Deals newsletter.

Ubisoft will share updates and announcements about its roster of projects in a showcase on September 10th at 3PM ET. The event will be streamed on Ubisoft channels on YouTube, Twitch and the studio's official website, and it'll include news on "multiple games and projects from Ubisoft teams around the world," according to spokesperson Youssef Maguid.

Back in June, Ubisoft confirmed plans to share information about the future of Assassin's Creed during a special event in September, and this appears to be that. Ubisoft is currently working on two Assassin's Creed projects: one is a live multiplayer experience spanning multiple time periods codenamed Infinity, and the other is a standalone series installment codenamed Rift. Early reports indicate Rift started out as an expansion to Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and it stars Basim Ibn Ishaq from that title.

Alongside Assassin's Creed, Ubisoft is the caretaker of Far Cry, Rabbids, Beyond Good & Evil, Just Dance, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, Rayman and Prince of Persia. A remake of the original Prince of Persia has been bouncing around Ubisoft's studios for a few years and is now in development in Montreal, due out some time after April 2023.

Ubisoft is also hosting a broadcast for its open-world, online pirate simulator Skull and Bones on July 7th at 2PM ET. Skull and Bones has been kicking around since 2017 and it was even playable in 2018, but updates since then have been few and far between.