The GoPro Hero 10 Black offers significant updates from the Hero 9 like improved image quality, a faster UI and more slow-motion options — but it also costs significantly more. Now, you can pick up the camera alone for $399 at Amazon, $100 off the regular price and less than launch price of the Hero 9.
With a faster GP2 processor, the Hero 10 black offers 5.3K maximum resolution (up from 5K) at up to 60 fps, 4K at 120 fps and 2.7K and 240 fps. It also comes with the latest Hypersmooth 4.0 feature that stabilizes rough bumps, along with new tone mapping and noise reduction. All of that results in noticeably better and smoother video, which helped it achieve an excellent 92 Engadget review score.
As with the Hero 9, it has a front screen that lets you frame yourself when looking at the camera, but that display now runs at a smoother 30 fps rather than 20 fps as before. Other features include a new horizon leveling option and faster navigation. The main downside is lower battery life compared to the GoPro 9.
The new deal is even better than Amazon's $450 price we saw during Amazon's Black Friday sales. However, keep in mind that you can still get one cheaper from GoPro directly if you're willing to sign up for its 1-year GoPro subscription. Right now, it's available from GoPro for $350 rather than the usual $400 price with the subscription included for one year (it costs $50 per year after that). Amazon's $399 deal, by contrast, is more for folks who really just want the camera with no strings (or forgotten subscriptions) attached.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
FedEx has received it's first five GM-built electric delivery vans out of an order of 500, the company announced. The move represents an important landmark for FedEx in its stated goal to be have an all-electric delivery fleet and be carbon neutral around the world by 2040.
"The delivery of the first BrightDrop EV600s is a historic moment, born out of a spirit of collaboration between two leading American companies," said FedEx's chief sustainability officer Mitch Jackson. "[T]ransforming our pickup and delivery fleet to electric vehicles is integral to achieving our ambitious sustainability goals announced earlier this year."
FedEx
FedEx was announced as a key customer for the Brightdrop EV600 vans and has been testing Brightdrop's electric EP1 pallets over the last while. GM, which owns Chevrolet and Cadillac, spun out the Brightdrop business unit early this year. "The EV600 combines the best attributes of a traditional and a step-in van into one vehicle, keeping driver safety, comfort, and convenience top of mind," said Brightdrop CEO Travis Katz. "It’s also the fastest built vehicle, from concept to market, in GM’s history."
The all-wheel-drive EV600 has 600 cubic feet of cargo space and can go up to 250 miles on a charge. Inside, drivers get a security system in the cargo area, auto-locking doors and motion-activated interior lighting. They also benefit from automatic emergency braking and parking assistance. The EP1 is a kind of trolley often found in stores an warehouses, with 23 cubic feet of space and an electric motor that makes it easier to move heavy objects.
The first five EV600s are being delivered to FedEx's Express facility in Inglewood, California. To support them FedEx is building charging stations across its network of facilities, including 500 already installed across California. It's also working with utility companies to evaluate electrical grid capacity required for its charging infrastructure.
While FedEx has thrown its electric delivery lot in with GM, rival UPS has ordered 10,000 electric delivery trucks from UK-based Arrival Ltd. Amazon, meanwhile, placed an order for 100,000 Rivian electric delivery vans and even owns a 20 percent piece of the company. Amazon is ahead of both FedEx and UPS, having already started Rivian electric deliveries in both Los Angeles and San Francisco.
This week, Devindra chats with Engadget Editor-at-large James Trew about the Analogue Pocket, an innovative portable gaming device that accurately can play cartridges from older systems like the Game Boy, Game Gear and Atari Lynx. Also, Senior Editor Dan Cooper joins to dive into this week’s news and why you should be watching HBO’s Succession. Senior Editor Jessica Conditt also joins to dive into her investigative feature on MetaWorld, an intriguing VR project that turned out to be a scam.
Listen below, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!
Credits Hosts: Devindra Hardawar, Daniel Cooper Guests: James Trew, Jessica Conditt Producer: Ben Ellman Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos,Luke Brooks Graphics artists: Luke Brooks, Kyle Maack Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
Meta, formerly Facebook, is firmly in the FTC's crosshairs over its various acquisitions that the agency believes may have been made to dominate the space and eliminate competition. According to The Information, one of the purchases the Federal Trade Commission is looking into is its $400 million deal to acquire Within, the developer of popular virtual reality workout app Supernatural for the Oculus platform.
The agency reportedly opened a probe into the purchase after Thanksgiving, almost a month after the companies announced the acquisition back in October. If the report is true — neither the FTC nor the companies confirmed the regulatory review to the publication — then Within and Meta wouldn't be able to finalize the deal for another year. It could take even longer than that if the agency challenges it in court.
Within wasn't the only VR app developer that Meta had acquired, but the others were apparently too small to be investigated. VR fitness apps, like at-home workout equipment, soared in popularity during the lockdown, and Supernatural quickly became popular after its launch in April 2020. As The Information notes, one of the FTC's possible lines of inquiry is whether Meta was planning to develop a VR workout app of its own. It will take Meta less time to snap up an existing product than make one of its own, after all.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg famously said in the past that "it's better to buy than to compete," with regards to Facebook's Instagram acquisition. The FTC recently filed new antitrust charges against the company, accusing it of using its Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions in 2012 and 2014 to secure its position in the market. Meta is still also facing an investigation over its reported $400 million Giphy purchase in 2020.
Square Enix is suspending the sales and delivery ofFinal Fantasy XIV Starter Edition and Complete Edition because it's doing too well and the company's servers can't keep up. The decision applies to both physical and digital versions of the game and will happen in the coming weeks. FFXIV players have been struggling with lengthy queues ever since the Endwalker expansion came out in late November. They still have to wait hours to get into a server and be able to play the game.
It’s a little inside-baseball, but I’m planning a story on the record-breaking online RPG — but can’t access the game while this suspension continues. I guess I’ll have to find something else to write about over the holiday season. At least I have Deathloop and Metroid Dread to keep me busy.
When Facebook decided to change its name, changing its websites, business documents and more, the company didn’t control the @Meta handle on Instagram. It belonged to a small Denver-based magazine called META. The day of the announcement, the magazine posted a photo of assorted print issues with the caption “Since 2014.” But by the next day, the account had mysteriously vanished. @Meta now hosts all the content from the @Facebook Instagram page, while posts from META, the magazine, now appear under the @readmeta handle. What happened? And doesn’t this break Meta’s own rules about Instagram handles?
Uber and autonomous vehicle company Motional announced a partnership for "autonomous deliveries" through Uber Eats. The pilot will launch at some point in "early 2022,” but it won’t offer the full range of Uber Eats options. Instead customers will be able to pick from "a curated set of meal kits from select restaurants." The joint venture isn’t entirely driverless, either. A Motional spokesperson told Engadget: "We will be launching the service with safety operators present in the vehicle." Meal kit deliveries will be in Santa Monica, California, to start, where a large portion of Motional's team works.
Apple has sued the NSO group over the 'nation state' level iMessage attack.
Google researchers have described NSO Group's zero-click exploit used to hack Apple devices as "incredible and terrifying,” calling it "one of the most technically sophisticated exploits we've ever seen," on par with attacks from elite nation-state spies.
The Project Zero team said it obtained one of NSO's Pegasus exploits from Citizen Lab, which managed to capture it via a targeted Saudi activist. NSO's original exploit required the user to click on a link, but the latest, most sophisticated exploits require no click at all. Called ForcedEntry, it takes advantage of the way iMessage interprets files like GIFs to open a malicious PDF file with no action required from the victim. Last month, the US Department of Commerce added NSO Group to its "entity list," essentially banning it for use in the US.
Arrival is a UK–US startup that wants to revolutionize the design and manufacture of electric vehicles. Its first sales pitch is the Arrival Car, designed, first and foremost, for rideshare drivers during their working day. We’ve got an exclusive first look, but is it just me or does it remind you of the Johnny Cab from Total Recall?
Sony has unveiled a new type of stacked CMOS sensor that uses "two-layer transistor pixels" to double the light gathering capability. Typical image sensors have the light-sensitive photodiodes and pixel transistors that control and amplify the signal on the same layer. However, the new design puts the photodiodes on top and the pixel transistors below, "approximately doubling saturation signal levels," Sony said.
Sony pioneered stacked sensors that put fast memory and other electronics directly under the sensor, allowing for faster readout speeds and thus rapid burst shooting and reduced rolling shutter (jello effect) on cameras and smartphones. This latest sensor uses a similar idea, but packs the pixel transistors onto a separate substrate underneath the photodiode layer.
Sony
That means each layer could be optimized, allowing Sony to double the sensor's light saturation (well depth), or the amount of charge each pixel can hold. That in turn allows for around double the light-capturing capability.
Sony notes that because the transistor pixels sit on a separate layer, it was able to boost the amplifier transistors in size. That allows for a bigger signal boost, reducing noise when shooting nighttime or other images in dark locations. The increased dynamic range will allow for "high-quality, low-noise images even in low-light," according to Sony.
Sony specifically stated that the tech will allow for higher-quality smartphone photography. With double the light gathering capability, it will allow for much improved light sensitivity even in relatively small, high-megapixel sensors. Sony has yet to say when this tech will make it to smartphone or cameras, but it plans to further improve the design for both large and small sensors.
A number of school districts in the US has canceled classes for today, December 17th, due to shooting and bomb threats supposedly circulating on TikTok and other social media channels. According to Bloomberg and The Verge, they include districts in Michigan, Washington, California, Texas, Minnesota and Missouri. The threats reportedly don't mention specific schools, but school authorities across the country are on alert and have opted to work with law enforcement and ensure students' safety.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy tweeted that while "there are no known specific threats against New Jersey schools," authorities "will work closely with law enforcement to monitor the situation and remain prepared." In most cases, law enforcement agencies announced that they haven't found evidence that the threats are real and credible. A county sheriff in Missouri said that they don't think their schools are going to be attacked, but they want to be prepared just in case.
While the source of the threats remain unclear, California's Gilroy Police Department determined that the post thought to involve Gilroy High School actually originated from outside of LA. Similarly, the Baltimore County Public Schools Twitter account posted that law enforcement agencies had discovered that the threats originated from Arizona and aren't credible.
(2/3) Law enforcement agencies have investigated this threat and determined that it originated in Arizona and is not credible. We want to continue to encourage members of Team BCPS to report suspicious or threatening activities or postings.
In response to the situation, TikTok issued a statement stating that it's "working with law enforcement" to investigate the rumored threats. However, it denied any knowledge of the threats and said that it found no evidence that they originated or are spreading on the platform.
We handle even rumored threats with utmost seriousness, which is why we're working with law enforcement to look into warnings about potential violence at schools even though we have not found evidence of such threats originating or spreading via TikTok.
LG has unveiled its latest high-end UltraFine OLED 4K monitors aimed at pros and this time it has a smaller version that should be more affordable. On top of that, the new models come with more accessories to make calibration and working in bright rooms easier.
The 32-inch model appears to be much the same as before, with features like a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, true 10-bit color, 60Hz refresh rate and 99 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space. As before, it also conforms to the VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black standard for OLED displays.
The relative lack of brightness and huge contrast ratio shows the compromises and benefits of an OLED display for content creators, in a nutshell. On the one hand, with 400 nits of brightness the UltraFine OLED is barely adequate for doing HDR color grading compared to much brighter (1,000 nit+) mini-LED displays like Apple's $5,000 Pro Display XDR or the $5,000 ASUS ProArt PA32UCG-K display.
LG/Yi Cheol
On the other, LG's OLED display has much better contrast, perfect blacks and zero blooming because each pixel illuminates individually. That feature can give color professionals a much better idea of the true contrast in an image. So in essence, buyers have to make a tough choice between brightness and contrast, both of which are important for color work these days — particularly with video.
The new 27-inch model will attract folks who want the benefits of OLED and the other pro features (10-bit color, 99 percent DCI-P3 and a 1,000,0000:1 contrast ratio) at a lower price. Both displays also offer features like a clean professional design, USB-C with 90W power delivery and four USB ports. It also comes a pair of DisplayPort inputs and one HDMI port. LG's doesn't say what kind for the latter, so it's likely not HDMI 2.1 — though that's not crucial for content creation pros.
The biggest upgrade over last year is that both monitors include a color calibration sensor (LG didn't say which one), along with its LG Calibration Studio software. They also come with a monitor hood so you can better control the image depending on room lighting. LG hasn't released the pricing yet, but its current 32-inch UltraFine Display OLED Pro Monitor costs a cool $4,000, so expect to see a similar price on the new model. The 27-inch version, meanwhile, will likely be north of $2K.
LG has given us a glimpse of the audio products it's showcasing at next year's CES, specifically the lineup's crown jewel: A premium soundbar, which the company claims has the "world's first center up-firing speaker." The LG S95QR soundbar has an 810W output and 9.1.5 channels of surround sound. That's five up-firing channels, three of which are on the soundbar itself and two in the separate rear speakers.
The company says the up-firing channels provide realistic sounds, made even more immersive by the center up-firing speaker that enables clearer dialogue delivery. LG's premium soundbar supports Dolby Atmos, DTS:X codec and IMAX Enhanced titles for three-dimensional audio. The wireless rear speakers it comes with also have six channels instead of four like previous models do, with their four front/side drivers and two up-firing ones.
In addition, the model has a more sensitive receiver that allows greater distance between the soundbar and its accompanying rear speakers and subwoofer. It was designed with a more stable wireless connection to eliminate drops and lags in audio output, as well. In its announcement, LG is presenting the model as an option for gamers, due to its variable refresh rate (VRR) and auto low latency mode (ALLM) features that can adjust its output and ensure that it's in sync with gaming consoles and PCs.
The S95QR soundbar uses LG's AI Room Calibration, the company's automatic sound tuning technology, to analyze the space it's in to tailor its output. It also works with Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and other AI assistants for voice control. Aside from its audio lineup, LG is showcasing a couple of lifestyle TV models at CES. One of them is design-focused 65-inch OLED Evo TV with a motorized cover, while the other is a smaller battery-powered TV on wheels.
Not to be outdone by Spotify (and nearly every other streaming platform, for that matter), Disney’s Hulu has released an end-of-year recap. Dubbed “Your TV DNA,” you can use the tool to find out how many films and TV episodes you watched in 2021, as well as what your favorite genres were over the last 12 months. As part of the experience, Hulu will also generate recommendations for current and upcoming content that is similar to the stuff you watched recently.
It’s no surprise to see the company offer a year-end recap. If social media is any indication, Spotify has had tremendous success with Wrapped. Each year, it seems like Spotify users flock to Twitter and Facebook to share their yearly chronicles. At the same time, you frequently see those who use Apple Music and other platforms lament that their music streaming service of choice doesn’t offer something similar. Hulu clearly wants to replicate some of Spotify's success with the Your TV DNA experience allowing people to share their “streaming personas” on social media.
