T-Mobile and Hasbro have released a limited edition Lite-Brite that comes with 200 magenta pegs and custom templates related to the carrier, including its 5G logo. You may never have read the words T-Mobile and Lite Brite in the same sentence before this, and even T-Mobile knows the partnership is a bit odd. In its announcement, the carrier said "You may be thinking... 5G... toy from 1967... what the eff? And you wouldn't be wrong."
As for why you'd want a T-Mobile Lite-Brite, well, some of the kits come with prize packs, and you're not exactly stuck with just magenta pegs and the carrier's templates. The kit has 412 pegs in all — 212 are multicolored — and you can download and upload templates at the product's official website.
Four of the kits hide a Magenta Ticket, which gives winners two new 5G smartphones with a free year of T-Mobile Magenta Plus service. The prize pack includes an HD flatscreen TV with a free year of the carrier's Home Internet service, as well. In addition, the winners get an all-expense paid trip for two to an event of their choice to any of the three of the company's venues: T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, T-Mobile Center in Kansas City and T-Mobile Park in Seattle.
If you want to get the Lite-Brite T-Mobile edition for the magenta pegs or for the chance to win those prizes, you can get one from the carrier's website for $20. It'll ship for free until Cyber Monday and will only be available for a limited time.
The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) has fined Apple and Amazon a combined total of €203.2 million (US$228 million) after an antitrust investigation involving the reselling of Beats products. According to the watchdog, the two companies signed an agreement in 2018 that would prohibit both official and unofficial resellers of Apple and Apple-owned Beats products on Amazon's Italian website. That agreement allegedly contained contractual clauses that only allowed Amazon itself and select sellers "chosen individually and in a discriminatory way" to sell those items.
AGCM said in its announcement that those clauses violate article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. In addition, the watchdog said the agreement restricted cross-border sales, ultimately limiting buyers' options and depriving them of the discounts typically offered by third-party sellers. The Italian authority opened the antitrust case against both companies in 2020 and even searched their offices in the country.
A total of 70 percent of consumer electronics purchases in the country are from Amazon, AGCM explained, and 40 percent were purchases from sellers that use the website as their main platform. That's why it's essential for Amazon to implement Italy's competition rules and ensure a level playing field for all sellers, as well as to ensure that buyers have access to more options.
AGCM imposed a fine of €68.7 million (US$77 million) on Amazon and a fine of €134.5 million (US$151.2 million) on Apple. It also ordered the companies to end the restrictions and allow the sale of Apple and Beats products on Amazon Italy in "non-discriminatory manner." In a statement sent to Reuters, Amazon called the imposed penalty "disproportionate and unjustified." A spokesperson said in a statement:
"We reject the suggestion that Amazon benefits by excluding sellers from our store, since our business model relies on their success. As a result of the agreement, Italian customers can find the latest Apple and Beats products on our store, benefiting from a catalogue that more than doubled, with better deals and faster shipping."
Meanwhile, Apple denied any wrongdoing:
"To ensure our customers purchase genuine products, we work closely with our reseller partners and have dedicated teams of experts around the world who work with law enforcement, customs and merchants to ensure only genuine Apple products are being sold."
According to Reuters, both companies are planning to appeal the watchdog's penalty.
The ups and downs of smartwear have continued for at least a decade — longer than I’ve written for Engadget. For all the progress, innovation and big-player involvement (Levi’s, Adidas, Ralph Lauren, Google and the rest), you rarely see a professional athlete — let alone a normal runner or gym-goer — in connected clothing.
Instead, we’ve all adopted smartwatches and fitness trackers, from cheap-and-cheerful step counters through to performance-level running watches and the Apple Watch Series. Is that ever going to change?
Engadget
I’ve been testing out a new generation of smart clothing from Prevayl, a UK-based company looking to strike the middle ground between luxe gymwear brands, like Jacques, Lululemon, Castore and the rest, and tech companies that have tried to insert their sensors and technology into less...style-conscious garments. Prevayl's tiny sensor, which slides into an almost invisible pouch in the tee, tank and crop-tops, has a “clinical-grade” ECG, monitors breathing frequency, motion, body temperature. There’s even a bioimpedance sensor.
You can check out my early impressions here. I’m still intrigued in the future of smartwear, but the pricing (and need for multiple items) remains the big challenge. I don’t need to wash my fitness tracker band after every workout session. That can’t be said for smartwear.
— Mat Smith
Nintendo's Zelda-themed Game & Watch is a love letter to Link's 8-bit origins
If you loved the oldest Zelda games, this tiny console is worth $50.
Engadget
For the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. last year, Nintendo released a special edition Game & Watch. Nintendo’s pulling the same trick this year with a 35th-anniversary Legend of Zelda-themed Game & Watch that just went on sale. And like last year’s model, it includes a color screen and full games, but the selection is more generous. It includes the original The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, both originally released on the NES. It also includes The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, which came out on the Game Boy in 1993. It’s for die-hard Zelda fans, yes.
Just two months after its maiden flight, Rolls-Royce's Spirit of Innovation has hit a top speed of 387.4MPH, tentatively smashing the speed record for electric airplanes, Gizmodo has reported. It also claimed the top speed of 345.4MPH over a three-kilometer course and lowest time to a 3,000-meter altitude, doing so in just 202 seconds. The records have yet to be certified, but if the 345.5MPH speed stands, it would beat the current record of 213MPH.
Blade Runner director Ridley Scott has confirmed a TV show based on the sci-fi classic is in the works. The filmmaker also mentioned in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today that work is progressing on the Alien series. Scott didn't provide any insight about who's involved with the Blade Runner series — or how it ties into his movie or the sequel.
Uber Eats is moving into the cannabis market. Starting today, users in Ontario can place an order at retailer Tokyo Smoke through the app. Don't expect an Uber driver to drop off joints, though — it's pickup-only for the time being.
Users will need to confirm they're of legal age before they can make their purchase, and orders will be ready for pickup within an hour. At the store, buyers will need to present their ID to Tokyo Smoke staff to prove they're aged 19 or older.
Tile first arrived by a crowdfunding campaign and popularized the idea of using tags to locate lost items — but recently, it has faced formidable competition from the likes of Apple's AirTags. Now, Tile has been acquired family tracking company Life360 for $205 million in a move that could give it the resources to better contend with rivals. It will continue to operate with the same branding under current Tile CEO CJ Prober, Life360 announced.
Life360 said the acquisition will help it expand beyond family tracking to letting people "locate the people, pets, and things they love." It noted that the addition of Life360's 33 million smartphone users will increase the reach of Tile's Finding Network by around 10x.
At the same time, Life360 will gain access to consumers in 27,000 retail stores where Tile trackers are sold. Tile's technology is also used in over a million third-party devices, ranging from wireless earphones to dog collars. The company will also acquire Tile's subscribers, boosting its total paid subscriber base by 45 percent to 1.6 million users.
The company emphasized that both Life360 and Tile are "platform agnostic," working on both iOS and Android. The subtext is that Apple's AirTags only work on iOS, though Apple does have plans to introduce Android compatibility by year's end. Last year, Tile filed an EU complaint against Apple for alleged anticompetitive behavior, claiming the iOS 13.5 update made its app harder to use.
There's certainly synergy between the companies, as Life360 has operated as a multi-platform 'Find My Friends'-style service for years. Parents in the US, especially, have used the devices to keep track of their kids — so adding the ability to track objects and gadgets makes a lot of sense.
Dodge is phasing out its gas-powered Charger and Challenger muscle cars by 2024 in favor of electric muscle cars, Motor Trend has reported. The company plans to introduce its first concept EV by 2022, followed by a plug-in hybrid and a third type of unknown vehicle. That follows Dodge's announcement in July that it would introduce its first "eMuscle" car by 2024, promising it will "tear up the streets, not the planet."
At the time, the company and its parent Stellantis didn't say what would happen to its internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, but it has now clarified that. "These cars that you know today will go out of production by the time we get to 2024," Dodge Brand CEO Tim Kuniskis told Motor Trend in an interview.
I'm juggling knives because I've gotta keep two different huge factions happy because at some point those two factions will converge.
The new electric vehicles may use the '60s triangular Fratzog name and logo to differentiate them. The first concept arriving in 2022 will be an electric muscle car, revealed in the next four or five months as a high-performance, drivable vehicle. The next model, a plug-in hybrid, will be a new car but not a Durango as some expected, according to Kuniskis. The third vehicle is unknown, but will be a "very, very, very, significant car at the end of the year," he added.
Diehard muscle car fans might not take the news well, though they can't deny the superior performance of EVs. Dodge previously advertised the Challenger in "Demon" trim as the quickest 0-100MPH production car in the world, with the rather large caveat that it "excludes non-mass production vehicles [supercars] and hybrids/electric."
Kuniskis acknowledged that the announcement could create friction. "I'm juggling knives because I've gotta keep two different huge factions happy because at some point those two factions will converge," he said. "The problem is no one knows when they will converge. My job is to provide confidence, over the next 24 months, that we're gonna do this."
TikTok used Amazon's Fire TV to test its app for big screens last year, so it came as no surprise that it officially launched its application on the platform earlier this month in the US and Canada. Now, the video-focused social network has expanded the app's availability and rolled it out to Google TV, other Android TV devices, LG smart TVs and Samsung smart TVs.
While the app will still play the bite-size videos in their original vertical form — a given, because TikTok clips are shot with mobile users in mind — the service designed it to provide a big-screen viewing experience for the whole family. The elements you see superimposed on the video itself when you visit TikTok on mobile have been rearranged to take advantage of a TV's bigger display and horizontal orientation. Like its mobile counterpart, the TV app will give you access to the For You and Following feeds if you sign in to your account. You'll also find a Discover page to find more videos and creators you don't already follow.
TikTok
When TikTok announced that it's testing a TV app on the Fire TV last year, Head of Global Marketing Nick Tran said in a statement:
"People are looking for community right now and TikTok is connecting users to content and people that resonate and are meaningful to them. We've been thinking through what the adoption of streaming devices like Fire TV means for connecting with our users and how we can offer them more dynamic experiences, and we feel bringing our content to the TV to some extent is a natural next step."
If the YouTube TV app on your Roku device isn’t working properly, you’re not the only one. Over on the company’s community forums, there are multiple reports of the latest Roku OS update causing the YouTube TV app to freeze after several minutes of use. In a tweet spotted by Gizmodo, an official YouTube support account said Google was aware of the issue and working on a potential solution.
“Sorry to hear about this — just to clarify, are you having this issue on Roku? If yes, we’re already aware of this issue, and our team is currently working on a fix,” the account said. “We’ll let you know as soon as we receive an update. Let us know if it’s something different.”
Sorry to hear about this – just to clarify, are you having this issue on Roku? If yes, we're already aware of this issue, and our team is currently working on a fix. We'll let you know as soon as we receive an update. Let us know if it's something different.
At the moment, it’s unclear if the bug is the latest development in the ongoing feud between Google and Roku. Back in April, the two started publicly accusing one another of attempting to renegotiate their distribution deal in bad faith. When we reached out to Google, the company pointed us to the above tweet without offering any additional context. We've also reached out to Roku for comment.
As 9to5Google points out, what makes the situation worse is that one potential workaround to the problem doesn’t exist. Normally, in situations like this one you might uninstall the affected app and reinstall it to see if that fixes that problem. That hasn’t been possible since Roku pulled the YouTube TV app from its store back in April.
NASA’s oft-delayed James Webb Space Telescope has suffered yet another setback. While it was most recently scheduled to lift off on December 18th, it now won’t launch until December 22nd at the earliest. The delay is due to an incident that occurred while technicians were preparing to attach the telescope to the Ariane 5 rocket that will ferry it into space.
“A sudden, unplanned release of a clamp band — which secures Webb to the launch vehicle adapter — caused a vibration throughout the observatory,” according to NASA. It’s now conducting additional testing to ensure the telescope wasn’t damaged during the incident. NASA says it will provide an update on the situation by the end of the week.
The successor to the Hubble Space Telescope has been plagued by delays. When development started in 1996, NASA expected to deploy the JWST in 2007. However, by 2005, it went back to the drawing board. The telescope was then deemed complete in 2016 but then delayed again due to its complex construction. It was only fully assembled in 2019 and then the pandemic caused yet another round of setbacks. Given the history of the JWST, you can understand why NASA wants to play it safe.
Since the start of the year, Twitter has operated a pilot program called Birdwatch that has seen it crowdsource fact checks directly from other Twitter users. It’s now introducing a way for program participants to conceal their identity when they append a note to someone’s tweet. Starting today, the company says it will automatically generate aliases for new Birdwatch users that aren’t publicly associated with their Twitter accounts.
🐦Introducing Birdwatch aliases!🔍 We want everyone to feel comfortable contributing to Birdwatch, and aliases let you write and rate notes without sharing your Twitter username. pic.twitter.com/ROlbpYvT7u
“We want everyone to feel comfortable contributing to Birdwatch, and aliases let you write and rate notes without sharing your Twitter username,” the company said in a blog post. Its hope is that the feature will reduce bias by putting an emphasis on what people write in notes they leave instead of their identity. Citing recent research, it says aliases may also make people feel comfortable with “crossing partisan lines, or criticizing their own side without the prospect of peer pressure or retribution.”
Alongside aliases, Twitter is also rolling out profile pages that will make it easy to see someone’s past Birdwatch contributions. The company says it’s doing this to ensure aliases don’t come “at the expense of accountability.” To that end, each note on someone’s public profile will include the current rating that contribution has earned, letting you know what the community thinks of it. Hopefully, that’s something that helps with the reliability problem that has dogged the program.
For those who joined Birdwatch before today’s announcement, all their previous contributions will now fall under their new alias. Since some people may be able to infer a connection between someone’s Birdwatch profile and Twitter username based on fact checks they saw before today’s feature rollout, the company says program participants can DM the Birdwatch account about deleting their past contributions.
Bobby Kotick has reportedly said he may consider resigning as CEO of Activision Blizzard if he can’t fix the company’s cultural problems fast enough. According to The Wall Street Journal, Kotick held a meeting last week involving senior leadership at Blizzard Entertainment in which he said he was “ashamed” of some of the incidents that had occured at the studio under his tenure as CEO. He reportedly went to apologize for his handling of the current situation after he was told some employees would not be satisfied unless he were to resign. According to The Journal, Kotick left open the possibility of a resignation if he couldn’t fix the company’s problems “with speed.”
We’ve reached out to Activision Blizzard for comment.
Calls for Kotick to resign have steadily increased in frequency since The Wall Street Journalpublished a report last week which alleged he knew about many of the sexual misconduct incidents that had occured at the company over the years. According to the outlet, Kotick has also been accused of mistreating women himself, including one episode involving a voicemail in which he allegedly threatened to have his assistant killed.
After the report came out on November 16th, Activision Blizzard employees staged a walkout and later started a petition calling for Kotick to be removed as CEO of the company. Since then, a group of activist shareholders has also called on Kotick to step down. In leaked emails, the heads of Sony Interactive Entertainment and Microsoft’s Xbox division both said they were troubled by the allegations that had come out of the publisher. In the latter case, Phil Spencer reportedly told employees he was “evaluating all aspects of our relationship with Activision Blizzard and making ongoing proactive adjustments.”
One group Kotick has seemingly not lost support among is Activision Blizzard’s board of directors. On the same day The Journal published its report, the company’s board said it “remains confident that Bobby Kotick appropriately addressed workplace issues brought to his attention.”
