One of my favorite budget synths just keeps gettingbetter. After adding three new amazing oscillators earlier this year, Arturia is bringing custom wavetables to the MicroFreak as a free firmware update. 

The MicroFreak already had a wavetable engine built in, so this isn't a huge stretch. But being able to import your own wavetables opens up a the ability to really build your own unique sounds. There are countless sources fo free wavetables out there ranging from classic analog tones, to icy atmospheres, to blasts of noise. But you can basically use any sound file you want. Hum into your phone, or capture audio of the stray cats in your neighborhood fighting, then upload it to the MicroFreak and turn it into a synthesizer. 

Adding custom wavetables is easy enough using Arturia's MIDI Control Center desktop app. There's a dedicated tab for them at the top of the interface once you connect your Microfreak. You can only have 16 custom tables at a time, and the format can be a little tricky to nail if you're concerned about perfectly smooth sounding waves — 32 cycles consisting of 256 samples per cycle. But, if you just embrace its quirks, the WaveUser engine is capable of strange, wild and abrasive sounds that speak to the MicroFreak's strengths. 

To show off the new WaveUser engine, of course there are 64 new presets. But, let's be honest, factory presets with Arturia provided wavetables kinda defeats the whole purpose here.

The new 4.0 firmware has a few other minor improvements as well. Including a faster scrolling speed option for the oscillator controls and the ability to use Unison and Chord modes can now be applied to every note, wether they're being played live, coming from sequencer or an external source.

MicroFreak 4.0 is available as a free update now on Arturia's website and through MIDI Control Centre. 

No one in their right mind would actually want to live in the world of A Quiet Place, where denizens walk around barefoot and move as silently as possible to avoid incurring the wrath of highly noise-sensitive aliens. But, if you'd like to find out how well you might cope in that universe, you can test your nerves in the franchise's first video game, which is scheduled to arrive next year.

Publisher Saber Interactive has announced that a single-player, story-driven horror adventure is in development by iLLOGIKA and EP1T0ME. The iLLOGIKA team includes developers who have worked on the Rainbow Six and Far Cry franchises, and the studio helped with the development of games including Hyper Scape and Cuphead.

There aren't many other details about A Quiet Place just yet, such as the platforms on which it will be available. However, it will have an original story and "gameplay that captures the compelling suspense, emotion and drama for which the series is famous," according to a press release. Saber plans to reveal more information about the game by the end of the year.

The FCC might soon have its first permanent woman leader. A New York Timessource says President Biden is "expected" to nominate current acting chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel to a permanent position as soon as today (October 26th), making her the first female to lead the commission. The nomination wouldn't be a surprising move given her existing title, broad support and alignment with White House policies on issues like net neutrality, but it would still represent a milestone for the agency.

Whether or not Rosenworcel is confirmed is another matter. The Senate must confirm Rosenworcel to make her appointment official, and she could face staunch opposition from Republicans who are both historically anti-regulation and eager to reclaim FCC control. The party could retake the majority in the commission if Rosenworcel and an empty commissioner position aren't confirmed by the end of 2021.

If Rosenworcel is confirmed, though, she would contrast sharply with the last permanent FCC chair, Ajit Pai. While much of Rosenworcel's work as acting chairwoman has focused on easy-to-pass rules on issues like robocalls, she has been a strong proponent of net neutrality and other efforts to keep big telecoms in check. That's largely the opposite of Pai, who dismantled neutrality and generally sided with incumbent telcos. Don't be surprised if Rosenworcel used a permanent appointment to undo more of Pai's work, at least so long as she has the votes.

One of the main complaints players had about Returnal, aside from the high level of difficulty, is that, until now, there was no real way to save your game in the middle of a run. Sure, you could leave your PS5 on or put it in rest mode, but if there was a power outage or an overnight automatic system software update, you'd lose all of your progress. Given that runs can last several hours, not having any kind of save state option wasn't great.

Housemarque, now a PlayStation-owned studio, has finally attempted to remedy that problem in Returnal's 2.0 patch. With the Suspend Cycle option, you can pause your run, create a suspend point and close the game without worrying too much about losing progress. 

There are some caveats, though. You'll only be able to resume your run from any suspend point one time. So, don't expect to return to that point if (or more likely when) Selene dies. It's a smart way to introduce a save system and let players take a break without disrupting the game's start-over-when-you-die roguelite structure.

You won't be able to create a suspend point in certain scenarios either. If you're in the midst of a boss battle, intense combat sequence, cinematic or first-person section, you'll need to see it through, one way or another. "We felt there are certain moments in Returnal that are best experienced unfragmented to preserve the intended challenge and flow," game director Harry Krueger wrote in a PlayStation blog post.

As deadly as the biomes of Atropos are, they're often gorgeous too. To help you capture the sights, another feature that Returnal players have been clamoring for is now in the game — Photo Mode. Other than in certain situations (such as first-person sections), you can pause the PS5 exclusive and enter Photo Mode.

You have a selection of tools at your disposal, including settings like focal distance, aperture, color gradient, saturation and contrast, as well as a way to change the scene's lighting. There are also filters, effects, frames, coloring options and other ways to jazz up your image before you capture it.

Meanwhile, Sony is set to host its next State of Play stream on Wednesday. The showcase will run for around 20 minutes and primarily focus on third-party games, but don't be surprised if Sony sneaks a first-party game or two in there.

The 2022 Volvo C40 Recharge is the automaker’s first EV-only vehicle. Of course, it shares most of its design and all of its powertrain with the XC40 Recharge. But it sets itself apart with a fastback design that makes it both a more distinct vehicle and more efficient than the XC40 Recharge.

Starting at $58,750, the C40 Recharge has a range of 225 miles and includes the new Range Assistant feature. The question, is whether it’s worth the extra $3,500 over the price of the XC40 Recharge? We had a chance to drive the new C40 in Belgium to find out.

If you're going to buy NFT art, it's important to know that you're buying the real thing — and Adobe thinks it can help. It's updating Photoshop on the desktop with a beta Content Credentials feature that, among other upgrades, helps you establish the authenticity of your NFTs. Once artists link their crypto wallets and social media accounts to Content Credentials, buyers can check that the wallet used to produce artwork is the same wallet that minted it.

Adobe has partnered with a handful of NFT marketplaces to enable the feature, including KnownOrigin, OpenSea, Rarible and SuperRare. There's no mention of whether or not other marketplaces will participate in the future.

Content Credentials can be helpful even if you're uninterested in NFTs. An opt-in Photoshop feature attaches edits and identity info to images, adding transparency and (hopefully) quashing concerns about deception. Adobe Stock assets now include credentials, and they'll be visible in Behance. Adobe also hopes to release an open source developer kit that lets anyone fold Content Credentials into their products, expanding its use well beyond Creative Cloud users.

There's little doubt Adobe wants to become a mainstay of the NFT world with this move. All the same, it could be genuinely important if the technology continues to grow. The value of NFT art is highly dependent on its authenticity. The Photoshop addition could help more artists 'stamp' their projects, not to mention save time.

Amazon is said to be working on a live audio app that sounds like it will let anyone be the DJ of their own radio show — including music. Project Mic, as the app is currently known, will reportedly focus on the US market at first, though the launch timeline is not clear.

Creators will be able to play songs from the vast Amazon Music library, according to The Verge. Along with music, it seems programming will include pop culture, sports and comedy. Amazon is said to be looking at bringing in celebrities and influencers to host shows. You’ll be able to search for shows by name, topic or music, and it appears Amazon will highlight live content, including trending topics and certain creators.

The presentation showed that in addition to the app, creators will be able to broadcast shows on Amazon Music, Twitch, Audible and Alexa-enabled devices. With the latter, listeners will reportedly get to interact with the shows, even from their car.

The report doesn’t mention whether listeners will need to be Amazon Music subscribers, but given the breadth of platforms on which the shows will be available, that seems unlikely. Engadget has contacted Amazon for more details.

It’s not the first time we’ve heard about Amazon working on such an app. Axiosreported on its existence this summer, but this latest report provides more details about what Project Mic entails.

Twitter, Facebook, Spotify and Discord have all joined the live audio space over the last year after Clubhouse exploded in popularity. Those apps tend to focus on live conversations, though, rather than songs. 

Spotify does have a morning show called The Get Up that blends chat and personalized music, and it seems the most likely contender to offer a similar feature to what Amazon has in mind. Elsewhere, Clubhouse recently started offering musicians a high-quality audio option for better livestreamed concerts.

Amazon's internet satellites will be put to work expanding rural broadband coverage. CNBCreports Verizon is teaming with Amazon to improve fixed wireless internet access in rural areas in the US. The alliance will initially concentrate on expanding Verizon's LTE and 5G service using Amazon's Project Kuiper for "backhaul," boosting coverage in areas with little or no high-speed data.

Amazon and Verizon later hope to offer unified internet access for industries worldwide, including smart farms and transportation. For now, they're establishing technical requirements for rural broadband using Project Kuiper antenna tech already in development.

The two didn't provide a timeline for this satellite-augmented service. Amazon recently lined up rocket launches for Project Kuiper, but it doesn't expect to have half its satellites in low Earth orbit until 2026. The full constellation is expected no later than July 2029.

There's an enemy-of-my-enemy aspect to this deal. Amazon and Verizon are racing to compete with SpaceX's rapidly developing Starlink service — they both risk losing customers if Starlink claims too strong a foothold, including corporate clients like Google. All the same, Americans might not mind if this brings fast internet access to more parts of the country. Rural internet coverage is still far from complete, even with the FCC investing billions in 5G — this could fill in the gaps without having to wire as much of the countryside as before.

Adobe has unveiled its latest Photoshop update on desktop and iPad for its Adobe Max 2021 event, and as with the last few versions, the most interesting features are powered by AI. Chief among those is the "Hover Auto-masking Object Selection Tool" that allows you to select a scene object simply by hovering your mouse over it. 

The feature is really as simple as that, as Adobe's Sensei AI kicks in to determine the edges of an object and select it automatically with a single click. Adobe has promised that selections made either with the hover or other object selection tools "are now more accurate and preserve more details in the edges of a selection," helping users save time. 

Adobe

The tool can detect most but not all objects in a scene, and Adobe said it's constantly improving it to include additional object categories. If an object is not detected or only partially detected, you can drag a marquee over the areas you'd like to select, which is how the tool worked previously. 

Along the same lines is another new feature called "mask all objects." Also powered by Sensei AI, it simply scans the scene and automatically selects and masks every object in the scene. It can then create masks or objects without the need to do a lick of tedious masking work.

Adobe

Last year, Adobe introduced Neural Filters that let you do things like smooth skin or make a photo look like a Van Gogh painting. For 2021, it has introduced more of those filters in beta, most notably the Landscape Mixer, Color Transfer and Harmonization. Landscape Mixer can essentially blend multiple landscape to create a new scene with desert elements replacing a seaside coastal scene, for example. 

The most useful one, however, sounds like Color Transfer. It lets you take the colors, contrast and other elements from a photo you like and apply it to another photo, or "make this image look like that," as Adobe puts it. That would remove a lot of the tedium or trying to match a photographer's style, or at least give you a starting point toward the look you're aiming for. 

Adobe

The last one, the Harmonization neural filter, makes it easier to composite two images. It overlays a foreground image onto a background, while automatically adjusting the hue and luminosity of the foreground image to match. Adobe also improved the existing neural filters, adding more realistic blurs to Depth Blur, while also improving the Superzoom, Style Transfer and Colorize filters.

Other new updates improved gradients, color management and HDR capabilities. Finally, Adobe has improved interoperability between Photoshop and Illustrator, letting you copy vector shapes from Illustrator and paste them into Photoshop, "all while maintaining editable attributes in Photoshop like fill, stroke, blend mode and opacity." And when Photoshop can't maintain editability from Illustrator because it doesn't support a feature, "we try to maintain visual fidelity." 

Adobe has announced that it's taken "a major step forward for collaboration" by bringing its Photoshop and Illustrator apps to the web. The idea is not to do let you do complex work from a web page, but allow collaborators to open and view your work from a browser to provide comments and feedback — much as you can with a Google Doc. 

It's currently possible to store your work in Adobe's Creative Cloud and let anyone open it from anywhere, but they need to have the desktop or iPad app. Now with Photoshop or Illustrator, your colleagues "can review and add comments right in the browser without having to download apps or have a Creative Cloud subscription," Adobe notes. That means you could show your work directly to ad agency or other clients who don't need or want Adobe's products. 

Adobe

On top of the basic collaboration tools, Adobe is preview some basic browser editing tools that would allow you to make "minor tweaks and quick edits" without having to launch the full Illustrator or Photoshop apps. Those include things like selection, minor color correction and more. 

Taking a page from Microsoft Teams, Klaxoon and similar apps, Adobe is also launching "Creative Cloud Spaces" that allows creative teams to bring "content, context and people together to one place," according to Adobe. That's essentially a whiteboard available to project members, showing documents, images and whatever else is required. 

You can start sharing Photoshop and Illustrator work via the web, for the purpose of commenting and feedback, simply by updating the latest versions of the apps dropping today. If you want to try the basic editing capabilities, they're available via beta for Photoshop (within the Creative Cloud app) or as a private beta for Illustrator. You can request access for the latter here.