When Rode unveiled the original Rodecaster Pro it was something unusual: a capable mixing desk with a singular focus on podcasting. It made it easy to record multiple guests in person or over the internet/phone, while adding background music and audio enhancements in real time or with minimal processing in post. A mini radio station in a box if you will.

Today, Rode is announcing its successor, the Rodecaster Pro II, and the messaging this time is that it’s for all creators, be that podcasting, streaming or music production. The new hardware looks familiar, but brings with it several changes that should improve your audio wherever and whatever you publish.

The most obvious difference you’ll see here is the smaller footprint. The Rodecaster Pro II loses two physical fader strips in favor of occupying less desk space. You still have as many channels available, but some are assigned to virtual controls and it feels like the right move to save desk space.

Other external hardware tweaks include an all new contextual rotary control and the move to combo ports around the back rather than just straight XLR connections like the original. This opens the Rodecaster Pro II to things like guitars and synthesizers without occupying other inputs or needing adapters.

James Trew / Engadget

Whatever you plug into the new Rodecaster it should sound better as it comes equipped with new preamps that can drive even the most hungry of microphones (looking at you SM7B). Rode claims the new preamps are so powerful and quiet that using an in-line signal booster like a FetHed or Cloudlifter would technically be detrimental, not beneficial, to your audio quality. This remains to be tested, of course, but it’s good news either way if you have a microphone that needs a lot of gain.

On the listening side of things, Bluetooth on the Rodecaster Pro II supports audio out as well as in, which means you can get funky and monitor your show wirelessly on speakers or headphones. Rode also claims if you record call-in guests over Bluetooth there should be improved sound quality also (at least between the phone and the mixer – obviously not the cellular network).

Semi relatedly, there’s no longer a 3.5mm headphone jack on the front edge. On the original, the show’s host/producer could connect their headphones either around the back (with the other headphone jacks) or via the dedicated jack on the front, if that was more convenient. Alas that option has now gone and headphone 1 is only accessible via the 1/4 inch ports on the rear. A mild pain if you have a shorter/non-coiled cable.

On a more practical front, the new hardware has WiFi built-in and ethernet connectivity which allows for easy updating (without having to leave your computer on). You can also connect it to two PCs at the same time, or even your phone which makes it perfect for podcasters on the go or game streamers who have a separate gaming rig. You’ll also be able to record directly to SSDs as well as memory cards. And with that dual-PC connectivity your options for routing where your audio goes are myriad.

James Trew / Engadget

Perhaps the secret sauce here is how customizable the workflow is. This starts with simple things like the eight pads on the Rodecaster Pro II can trigger audio or send MIDI as before but also be assigned to “mixer actions” like a fade out or be used to switch cameras in your stream. You can also reassign mixer channels however you like, including mapping two inputs to one fader and saving them as profiles if you don’t like how things are out of the box.

There are also a number of new audio effects including stereo panning, echo and reverb. But perhaps the most unexpected addition here are some funny voice effects. This might make podcasters recoil, but Voicemod has proven popular… so somebody somewhere is all about the squeaky voices.

Overall, there’s quite a lot new here. The new audio internals and connectivity should make this a more viable option for all types of creators, and the ways to connect, configure and process the audio will likely make this much more flexible. Details important to streamers such as OBS control, dual PC connectivity and the ability to sync/delay audio to match video suggest it’s a genuine attempt at being more capable rather than just a few buzzy marketing terms.

Whatever your use case, the Rodecaster Pro II is available for pre-order starting today for $699. Rode expects to start shipping "early to mid-June."

Former PlayStation employee Emma Majo has filed a new lawsuit against the company after her previous complaint was dismissed by a federal judge in April. According to Axios, Majo’s new filing includes many of the same gender discrimination allegations found in her original one, but the scope of the lawsuit is more limited.

Rather than seeking to represent all women employed by Sony’s PlayStation unit in the US as was previously her intent, the complaint instead seeks damages for those women who worked for the company in California. When judge Laurel Beeler dismissed the original case, she said Majo could file again with additional details. The new complaint incorporates allegations from the nine women who came forward to support the first suit.

“Sony tolerates and cultivates a work environment that discriminates against female employees, including female employees and those who identify as female,” the complaint reads. We’ve reached out to Sony for comment. In the meantime, we'll note the company previously asserted Majo’s claims were based on “unactionable allegations.”

Airbnb is shutting down its business in mainland China this summer due to mounting costs and domestic competition, reported CNBC. The online vacation rental platform first launched operations in China in 2016, spurred by enthusiasm from Chinese tourists who frequently use it while traveling abroad. But according to sources who spoke to CNBC, Airbnb’s China segment became too complex and expensive to operate, particularly in light of the pandemic. Similar to what happened with Uber in China, a bevy of local competitors made it tough for the American company to gain an edge. Stays in China only accounted for one percent of the platform’s revenue for the past few years.

While a growing number of cities have banned or passed restrictive laws on short-term rentals, Airbnb's fallout in China was due to entrenched competition and regulatory issues. Airbnb China operated differently than other Airbnb operations in other countries due to constraints by the Chinese government. The company was forced to sign agreements with local city governments and store its data on government servers.

Another more recent obstacle for Airbnb was an inconsistent flow of international and domestic visitors due to the pandemic, given China's significant restrictions on travel. While global tourism is on the mend, the number of international tourist arrivals still hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels according to figures by the UN World Tourism Organization. The Chinese government has also limited “unnecessary travel” for its citizens in light of a recent surge in COVID-19 numbers, scaling back the number of potential domestic users for Airbnb.

Meta is finally peeling back the curtain on how political and election ads are targeted on Facebook. The company is making information about how political and “social issue” ads are targeted available to researchers and the public, Meta said in an update.

Researchers who are part of the company’s Facebook Open Research and Transparency (FORT) program will get access to the most detailed information. “This data will be provided for each individual ad and will include information like the interest categories chosen by advertisers,” Facebook writes.

The company had previously experimented with making some targeting data available to researchers via FORT last year, but the information was only available for political ads during a three-month period before the 2020 election. Now, researchers will also be able access “all social issue, electoral and political ads run globally since August 2020.”

Meta is also making a more limited amount of political ad-targeting data available to the public via its Ad Library. That update, expected in July, will allow anyone to see more general information about how specific Facebook Pages are targeting their ads. “This update will include data on the total number of social issue, electoral and political ads a Page ran using each type of targeting (such as location, demographics and interests) and the percentage of social issue, electoral and political ad spend used to target those options,” the company writes. “For example, the Ad Library could show that over the last 30 days, a Page ran 2,000 ads about social issues, elections or politics, and that 40% of their spend on these ads was targeted to ‘people who live in Pennsylvania’ or ‘people who are interested in politics.’”

Facebook

Questions about how political ads are targeted on Facebook have been a thorny topic for the company. Researchers have long argued that understanding how election and political ads are targeted is just as important as having a record of the people and organizations behind each ad. But Meta has resisted making detailed targeting data available, citing privacy concerns.

But that hasn’t stopped groups from trying to study the issue on their own. A team at New York University created a browser extension to help them understand how political ads are targeted on Facebook. Using the data, they uncovered multiple flaws in Facebook’s Ad Library. Meta accused the team of scraping and disabled their accounts, which also cut off their ability to use the company’s CrowdTangle tool to study misinformation.

Making more detailed targeting information available through FORT may still not go as far as some researchers would like — researchers still need to be vetted and approved by Facebook to access FORT — but it at least offers one avenue where the data is available. And, with the 2022 midterms coming up later this year, there’s likely to be significant interest in learning more about how political ads spread through Facebook.

Former Activision Blizzard employee Jessica Gonzalez is appealing the publisher’s recent $18 million settlement with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). On Monday, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) announced Gonzalez is challenging the settlement on the grounds that it prevents workers who apply as claimants from suing Activision Blizzard in the future.

When the settlement was first approved by a federal judge in late March, many Activision Blizzard employees criticized it for not going nearly far enough to hold the company accountable. The fact the settlement prevents claimants from taking part in future litigation against Activision Blizzard was seen as particularly problematic as it would make those individuals ineligible to participate in California’s sexual harassment lawsuit against the publisher.

Employees have also argued $18 million is far too little to compensate everyone who could come forward with a claim against the company. The sum means there’s only enough money for the EEOC to award 60 employees with the maximum settlement allowed.

“The court allowed Activision and the EEOC to keep the affected workers and others who had an interest in holding the company accountable out of the process. Eligible employees should not have to give up their right to pursue other legal remedies if they accept the settlement,” Gonzalez said.

There is a precedent for workers winning a better settlement in these types of situations. Following a 2018 class-action lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and discrimination at the studio, Riot Games was ordered to pay $10 million to eligible employees. California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing later blocked that settlement, and the amount was eventually increased to $100 million.

Quality assurance workers at Activision Blizzard studio Raven Software have voted to unionize, becoming the first such group to do so at a major gaming publisher in North America. The National Labor Relations board counted the ballots on Monday — 19 workers voted in favor of the union and three voted against. Two ballots were challenged, though they weren't sufficient enough to affect the result. There were 28 eligible voters and no void ballots.

In December, 60 workers (including contractors and full-time employees) at the Call of Duty support studio went on strike after it laid off 12 QA testers. They demanded that the company hire those workers back. The strike ended the following month, but not before the QA workers announced plans to unionize with the Communication Workers of America (CWA). Once they were back at work, Raven split them up among various departments, in an apparent attempt to make their unionization efforts more difficult.

The workers asked Activision Blizzard to voluntarily recognize their union, which they called the Game Workers Alliance. However, the company declined to do so. Last month, the National Labor Relations Board gave the workers the go-ahead to hold a union election.

Activision Blizzard has been accused of union busting. Last July, it hired the law firm WilmerHale, which has reportedly engaged in efforts to stamp out union drives at Amazon and other companies, to review its human resources policies. It also shared anti-union messaging in company Slack channels.

In April, Activision Blizzard said it was hiring 1,100 QA workers on a full-time basis, increasing their pay in many cases and providing benefits. However, it claimed the Raven QA workers were not eligible “due to legal obligations under the National Labor Relations Act.”

Earlier on Monday, the NRLB determined that Activision Blizzard violated the National Labor Relations Act. It claimed the company threatened employees who sought to organize and imposed an 'overbroad social media policy.'

Activision Blizzard is being bought by Microsoft for $68.7 billion, pending regulatory approval. Microsoft has said it "will not stand in the way if Activision Blizzard recognizes a union." The company told Axios in March that it “respects Activision Blizzard employees’ right to choose whether to be represented by a labor organization and we will honor those decisions.”

While I wasn't all that impressed with its most recent pseudo flagship phone, it appears Motorola has much bigger ambitions for its next handset thanks to the addition of a super high resolution 200-MP camera.

In a post on Weibo (via 9to5Google), the general manager of Lenovo (Moto's parent company) teased an upcoming device by showing a picture of a massive lens alongside a message about entering a new era of mobile photography. While the post doesn't shed a lot of light on potential specs, it does mention a 200-MP sensor, suggesting the use of Samsung's ISOCELL HP1 which was initially announced last fall.

That said, while putting a huge sensor on a phone is certainly intriguing, it's important to remember that there's a lot more to snapping a nice photo than packing in as many megapixels as possible. Recently, I've noticed that a lot of Moto phones including the $1,000 Edge+ have struggled with low-light photography, routinely capturing blurrier or more underexposed images than rival handsets. And while the ISOCELL HP1 supports an impressive 16x pixel binning technique that allows a 200-MP sensor to capture a 12.5-MP image with improved light sensitivity, it will still fall upon Motorola's processing to produce a sharp and well-lit final pic.

Current rumors claim Moto's upcoming 200-MP phone could be the Frontier, which was spotted back in January by TechnikNews. The phone is expected to feature a triple rear camera module with a huge main lens, along with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip, 125-watt fast charging and a 6.67-inch OLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate. Sadly, while all of this is speculation for now, we should know more real soon as Moto teased an announcement date for the phone sometime in July. 

Speaking of phones with new Qualcomm chips, in a separate post on Weibo, Motorola teased another upcoming device — this time a foldable — that will feature a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip. While it's too early to say for sure, all signs point to this device being the long-awaited Razr 3, which is welcome news for flippy phone fans as the previous Razr has been somewhat neglected since its last refresh back in late 2020.

But for me, the biggest takeaway is that it finally looks like Motorola may be ready to take a break from pushing out the countless rehashes that have clogged up its device portfolio in recent years. And if all this results in a true new flagship phone and a proper update to the Razr, that's something worth paying attention to. 

A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board has determined there's "merit to the allegations" that Activision Blizzard violated the National Labor Relations Act. It says there are indications the company and its subsidiaries Blizzard Entertainment and Activision Publishing maintained an "overbroad social media policy" and that Blizzard threatened employees who were exercising their right to organize. The findings were first reported by Bloomberg and confirmed to Engadget.

“These allegations are false. Employees may and do talk freely about these workplace issues without retaliation, and our social media policy expressly incorporates employees’ NLRA rights," an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told Engadget in a statement. "Our social media policy explicitly says that it ‘does not restrict employees from engaging in the communication of information protected by law, including for example, rights of employees in the United States protected by the National Labor Relations Act.’”

If the company does not settle the case, the NLRB's Los Angeles office will file a complaint. That will lead to a hearing in front of an NLRB Administrative Law Judge (unless a settlement is reached in the meantime).

While the agency can't impose punitive measures against a defendant, it can require them to reverse punishments or policies; reinstate fired workers and provide backpay; or post notices containing promises not to break the law. An NLRB regional director can petition a district court for a temporary injunction if workers' rights have been violated. The agency can also file cases in federal court.

The allegations were made in September by the Communications Workers of America (CWA). It accused Activision Blizzard in an Unfair Labor Practice filing of telling employees they can't discuss wages, hours or working conditions; enforcing an "an overly broad social media policy" against workers who "engaged in protected concerted activity" (i.e. their right to organize or discuss unionization); and threatening or suveilling such employees.

The news comes on the same day that votes will be counted in a Raven Software union election. Quality assurance workers at the Activision Blizzard studio, who are organizing with the CWA as the Game Workers Alliance, got the go-ahead from the NLRB to hold a vote. If they're successful, the group of 21 or so workers will form the first union at a AAA game publisher in North America, despite the company's reported attempts to stymie their efforts.

Activision Blizzard's labor practices came under intense scrutiny last July when California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing accused it in a lawsuit of fostering a "frat boy" culture where sexual harassment and discrimination were present. Other suits have been filed against the company since, including a wrongful death case.

In the wake of the initial suit, Activision Blizzard workers formed an employee advocacy group called A Better ABK. They used social media to organize and share their concerns and demands publicly.

The company is the subject of a proposed $68.7 billion takeover by Microsoft. Its shareholders voted in favor of the deal last month, but regulatory approval is still required.

Update 5/23 3:10PM ET: Added Activision Blizzard's statement.

Meta’s AI division has been busy in recent months finding ways to make concrete production more sustainable and machine translation better. Now one of the company’s ML teams has created a tool that builds realistic musculoskeletal simulations that run up to 4,000 times faster than state-of-the-art prosthetics. According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the company can train the models to do things like twirl pens and rotate objects.

At the moment, Meta sees the platform’s usefulness in two different ways. To start, there’s the obvious metaverse angle. Zuckerberg suggests MyoSuite could help the company develop more realistic avatars for applications like Horizon Worlds. Another more interesting use case could see researchers tapping the platform to develop new prosthetics, as well as novel surgery and rehabilitation techniques. To that end, Meta says it plans to open-source the model.

Meta isn’t the first company to think to use AI to improve prosthetics. Back in 2019, an independent team of researchers created a machine learning system that allowed them to quickly tune a robotic knee to an individual patient. That same year, Intel unveiled a “neuromorphic” deep-learning chip that the company said would make prosthetic limbs more efficient.

Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and Team Coco's other podcasts now belong to SiriusXM. O’Brien has sold his digital media company and podcast network to the satellite radio giant.

As part of the deal, which The Wall Street Journal says is worth around $150 million, O'Brien has signed a five-year talent agreement to keep hosting his podcast. He'll also create and produce a Team Coco comedy channel. In addition, SiriusXM will have the right to distribute some videos from O'Brien's podcast, along with archival footage from his TBS late-night show.

Team Coco's staff of around 50 will continue to produce existing shows and work on other SiriusXM content. The network's other podcasts include Conan O’Brien Needs a Fan (a spin-off of the flagship show) and Parks and Recollection, a Parks and Recreation behind-the-scenes show hosted by star Rob Lowe and writer Alan Yang. Collectively, the 10 podcasts have been downloaded more than 418 million times.

Don't worry too much if you listen to Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and other Team Coco shows elsewhere. They'll still be available on other podcast platforms.

"When I started in television my ultimate goal was to work my way up to radio," O'Brien said. "This new deal with SiriusXM builds on the great relationship that began several years ago with a team that is the standout in their field."

SiriusXM has been trying to become a bigger player in podcasting amid stiff competition from the likes of Spotify. Over the last couple of years, it has scooped up the Stitcher platform and podcasts such as 99% Invisible. SiriusXM has also beefed up its original content with exclusive shows from the likes of Marvel. It bought podcast hosting and analytics platform Simplecast too.