Google is bringing its handy Smart Replies to Google Docs comments in the coming days. You'll see suggested responses just underneath the reply box in comment threads. You can still type your own comments or edit a suggested one, but opting for a Smart Reply could save you a little time if Google proposes one that does the trick. 

Smart Reply will be enabled for all Docs users by default, though you can switch it off through the Preferences section of the Tools menu. The feature is only available in English for now.

Google has added the AI-powered Smart Reply and Smart Compose features to several of its products over the past few years, perhaps most notably in Gmail. Since January, those who add comments in Docs have been able to use Smart Compose and autocorrect, so Google is effectively completing the circle here.

Google

Smart Replies might not always have that personal touch, but they often get the job done since Google takes context into account when it offers suggestions. They might also help you avoid lashing out when someone proposes cutting a perfect joke from your document — not that I'm speaking from personal experience or anything. 

Companies using a Rapid Release Workspace domain should start seeing the feature over the next couple of weeks. Google plans to roll it out to everyone starting on September 13th.

When you order a salad at Sweetgreen at some point in the future, it might roll off a conveyor belt after a robot kitchen puts it together. The company is buying Spyce, an automated kitchen startup. The deal is expected to close in the coming weeks.

Sweetgreen is figuring out when and how to incorporate Spyce's tech at its more than 130 locations, but the overall goals are to improve food quality and consistency, and to make operations more efficient. All going well, Sweetgreen employees will spend more time on preparation and hospitality. Sweetgreen aims to fulfill orders faster and to offer more healthy menu options beyond salads, warm bowls and sides.

Spyce

“Spyce and Sweetgreen have a shared purpose,” Sweetgreen co-founder and CEO Jonathan Neman said in a statement. “We built Sweetgreen to connect more people to real food and create healthy fast food at scale for the next generation, and Spyce has built state-of-the-art technology that perfectly aligns with that vision. By joining forces with their best-in-class team, we will be able to elevate our team member experience, provide a more consistent customer experience and bring real food to more communities.”

Spyce, which some Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni founded in 2018, has a couple of fast casual locations in Boston. Employees add prepared ingredients to the robot kitchen's refrigerated containers. The system aims to produce consistent orders using a blend of measurements, timing and techniques, as The Boston Globe notes. The Infinite Kitchen can sear food with its double-sided plancha and steam noodles, pasta and grains before placing everything in bowls, which progress through the kitchen on a conveyor belt.

Kanye West is no stranger to dabbling with technology (he discussed a Teenage Engineering collaboration in 2019), but now there's a device you can buy for yourself. The rapper and electronics design firm Kano have introduced a Donda Stem Player that, as the name implies, lets you remix music from Kanye's upcoming album Donda (plus your own tunes) using song stems.

The puck-like gadget reportedly lets you isolate song parts and control aspects like bass, drums, samples and vocals. You can reportedly split "any" song into stems. We've asked Kano how this works, but it's unlikely that it will perfectly separate song elements — that's a difficult feat for a full-fledged PC, let alone something as portable as this.

The Stem Player also includes familiar tools including effects, four-channel audio mixing, live sampling and real-time loop and speed controls. You navigate much of the interface through four touch-sensitive "light sliders" with haptic feedback and customizable colors, and you can save and share your creations with othrs.

You can pipe audio through the built-in speaker, Bluetooth or a 3.5mm headphone jack through a variety of lossy and lossless formats (including AAC, AIFF, MP3 and WAV). You'll have just 8GB of storage to work with, though — minus the bundled Donda stems.

You can order the Stem Player now for $200. That's not a trivial outlay if you're eager to tinker with songs, but it's relatively affordable as far as electronic music-making devices go. Just be aware that it's really just one part of a larger creative toolset, not your ticket to stardom.

Gamers under 16 in South Korea have a reason to celebrate today: The country plans to end its shutdown law (AKA the Cinderella Law), which prevented underage players from gaming between midnight and 6AM, the Korea Herald reports. When it was introduced in 2011, the law was meant to prevent gaming addiction. At the very least, it gave kids a six-hour block to get some sleep. 

South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, as well as the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, say that they're ending the law to respect children's rights and encourage at-home education. The country aims to abolish the law by the end of the year when it revises its Youth Protection Act.

The news doesn't mean underage gamers are entirely off the hook, though. Instead, excessive gaming will be managed by the country's "choice permit" system, which lets parents and guardians arrange approved play times. Still, that sounds more permissive than China's gaming curfew, which bans players under 18 from playing between 10PM and 8AM. Additionally, they're limited to 90 minutes of game time during weekdays, and three hours on weekends and holidays.

As Kotaku reports, the shutdown law was originally meant to curb PC gaming, but it also affected consoles. Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live ended up restricting their accounts to adults. That's why Minecraft is now an R-rated game in the country.

"In the changing media environment, the ability of children to decide for themselves and protect themselves has become important more than anything,” Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae said, according to The Korea Times. “We will work with related ministries to systematically support media and game-use education at schools, homes, and in society so that young people can develop these abilities, and continue to make efforts to create a sound gaming environment and various leisure activities for children.”

Gamescom officially gets underway today as an online-only event for the second year running. It kicks off with Geoff Keighley's Opening Night Live, a two-hour showcase filled with trailers, announcements and updates about a ton of upcoming games.

Keighley has already announced some of what to expect, including news on the likes of Call of Duty: Vanguard, Far Cry 6, Death Stranding: Director's Cut, Genshin Impact, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Splitgate, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge and much more. A new football game will be revealed, and we could get confirmation of the Halo Infinite release date, which is expected to be December 8th. Fingers crossed for another look at Elden Ring too.

Publishers involved include Amazon Games, Bandai Namco, Devolver Digital, Mediatonic, PlayStation, Sega, Warner Bros. Games, Ubisoft and Xbox Game Studios. 

Opening Night Live starts at 2PM ET. You can watch it via the YouTube embed below, or on Twitch, Twitter or Facebook. Engadget will cover the biggest news coming out of the event too.

If you're a Discord user, there's a good chance you've benefitted from Groovy Bot, which lets people jam together with music from YouTube, Spotify and others. But it turns out Google didn't appreciate its ability to rip music out of YouTube. The company has sent a cease and desist letter to Groovy Bot's owners, The Verge reports, asking them to shut down within seven days. They're not putting up a fight: Groovy Bot will officially go offline on August 30th.

A YouTube spokesperson noted that Groovy Bot violated its terms of service, particularly because it modified the way YouTube worked and charge for the privilege. If Groovy Bot were merely free, it may have been able to live on. But it also offers a premium subscription starting at $3.99 a month, which unlocks a slew of useful features. 

The bot is currently installed on over 16 million Discord servers and has reportedly amassed more than 250 million users. Groovy Bot owner Nik Ammerlaan tells The Verge that around 98 percent of played tracks came through YouTube (naturally, because it's free). With one bot down, there's a good chance Google is also targeting the more popular Rhythm music bot. While the owner of that service claims it's not shutting down, its days are clearly numbered. 

The US has suffered a flurry of major cyberattacks targeting everyone from federal prosecutors through to meat suppliers, and the White House hopes some discussions with key companies will produce some long-term security solutions. The Washington Postreports that President Biden, certain cabinet members and relevant security officials are holding talks on August 25th with tech giants ADP, Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM and Microsoft to see how they can help bolster cybersecurity.

While the spate of ransomware attacks will be on the agenda, a senior Biden administration official said the White House wanted to tackle the "root causes" of cybersecurity issues. This included addressing a wide range of vulnerabilities, instituting "good operational practices" and hiring more security workers.

The conversations will also involve financial and insurance giants (including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Travelers) as well as educational organizations like Code.org and Girls Who Code. While the Biden meeting is at the center of the discussions, the chats with cabinet members and officials are billed as "informal" sessions that will help establish definitive solutions.

The White House said the meetups were a recognition that the US needed a "whole-of-nation" cybersecurity strategy involving both the government and private sector. It also promised this wouldn't be the "last engagement" with companies on security issues. This comes soon after Biden took multiple steps in a bid to improve digital security for vital infrastructure, such as issuing an executive order meant to bolster federal security standards and coordination.

The question, as always, is whether or not the discussions will lead to meaningful action. The meeting with tech firms might help with top-down decision-making, but that won't matter much unless the other talks also lead to tangible strategy changes. This could be little more than a public relations exercise if the companies don't (or can't) commit to specific cybersecurity improvements.

Netflix has announced its first-ever global fan event, TUDUM (say it out loud, it's fun). It's named after the sound that plays alongside the Netflix logo whenever you start watching something on the service. The company says TUDUM will be a three-hour event full of news, trailers and exclusive clips from more than 70 series, movies and specials, with appearances from some of Netflix's biggest stars.

The goal of TUDUM is "to entertain and honor Netflix fans from across the globe" and surely create some buzz around many of these shows and movies. Among the projects that Netflix will showcase are Stranger Things, The Witcher, Cobra Kai, Money Heist, Bridgerton, The Crown, Ozark, The Umbrella Academy and Red Notice (a blockbuster heist film starring Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds). Cowboy Bebop is also on the docket, so perhaps Netflix will show the first trailer from the upcoming series during the event.

TUDUM starts at noon ET on September 25th. It will stream live on Netflix's various YouTube channels as well as on Twitch and Twitter. There are pre-shows before the main showcase as well, starting at 8am ET. Those will center around anime and a selection of shows and films from South Korea and India. Netflix says Facebook, Twitch and YouTube users can co-stream the event — in other words, rebroadcast TUDUM on their own channels in real-time and react to it live.

After a year-long delay, Halo Infinite will reportedly arrive on December 8th. Italian gadget site Aggiornamenti Lumia first noticed that the game's Microsoft Store listing was updated with the new date in some regions, and sources tell The Verge that it's correct. Microsoft is likely saving the big reveal for today's Gamescom Opening Night live event, which kicks off at 2PM Eastern. It's just a shame it had to be left out of the company's fairly uneventful Xbox Gamescom presentation.

343 Industries announced last week that Halo Infinite won't be launching with campaign co-op or Forge mode, which allows players to create and play custom maps. But if it means that the developer can ship a more polished single player campaign and competitive multiplayer modes on time, it may be worth the trade-off. Halo Infinite multiplayer betas also kicked off last month, and so far the general consensus seems to be positive.

It's hard to overstate how important Halo Infinite will be for Microsoft. It was originally meant to be one of the big draws for the Xbox Series X and S last year. Its delay left the company without a major exclusive release, while Sony had several for the PlayStation 5 post-launch.

Facebook’s first messaging app is officially 10 years old, and the company is celebrating the occasion with a handful of new features and birthday-themed updates.

Messenger is introducing “birthday” versions of several of its existing features, such as birthday soundmoji, AR effects, stickers, chat themes and other effects. Users will also be able to send cash to friends as a “birthday gift” with Facebook Pay, which is essentially like any other person-to-person payment in Messenger but adds some new celebratory animations.

The app is also adding a new type of mini game to chats with “poll games.” The feature allows friends in group threads to weigh in on lighthearted polls that ask which member of the chat is “most likely” to do something like miss a flight or fight zombies. Both the new birthday effects, poll games, and birthday gifting are rolling out now. Messenger also previewed a new “word effects” feature coming “in the near future” that allows users to pair an emoji with a specific word or phrase in order to trigger an in-chat animation similar to iMessage’s special effects.

The updates underscore just how much Messenger has changed in its first decade of existence. Originally launched in 2011, the app evolved from a basic chat app to one so bloated with features it’s been redesigned at leastthree times in the last two years. It’s been home to many of Facebook’s more ambitious — though not always successful — features over the years.

More recently, Facebook has been weaving Messenger more tightly into its other services by pushing users to link their Instagram DMs with their Messenger account. Facebook wants to bring this same kind of “cross-app communication” to WhatsApp as well, though the company hasn’t said much about how or when it could happen. Likewise, it’s still not clear when Messenger will turn on end-to-end encryption as a default setting.

During a call with reporters, Facebook’s Messenger chief Stan Chudnovsky said that the rollout of encryption as a default is moving slowly in part due to the sheer number of features in the messaging app. “We need to rebuild all these features in [an] end-to-end encrypted environment, and make them fully capable,” he said, noting that Messenger is still continuously adding new features. “It's almost like we are constantly trying to catch up with ourselves.”