Dell is back with a variety of new monitors that range from its first 14-inch portable to a trio of 27-inch displays. At its thinnest, the former is just 4.95mm thick — making it slimmer than an iPad Air, but slightly heavier at 1.3 pounds. The portable display is essentially a second screen that you can slot in your bag or purse when you leave your home office to go to work. In terms of design, the $350 monitor is attached to a tilt stand that beefs up its overall dimensions and weight. But, it also allows you to bend the display up to 90 degrees. It will be available worldwide on August 31st.
Dell
The 27-inch monitors include a 4K model with a 60Hz refresh rate that is the priciest of the lot at $620. There's also AMD FreeSync for tear-free, low-latency gaming. Like several of the other newcomers, the S2722QC comes with a USB-C port that can receive a display and data signal plus deliver enough power (up to 65W) to charge your laptop.
Dell
If you're on a tighter budget, there's also a $500 27-inch display dubbed the S2722DC, which essentially swaps 4K for QHD visuals with a higher 75Hz refresh rate. Both screens arrive August 19th. For $100 more, you can grab some neat extras for video calls on the 27-inch S2722DZ, including a pop-up 5-megapixel camera, noise-cancelling mics and dual 5W speakers. If you don't mind settling with full HD instead of QHD, then the 24-inch S2422HZ offers similar specs for $440. The two displays will come to North America first on September 7th followed by the rest of the world from October 12th.
You won't have to spring for AT&T's regular phone service if you want HBO Max tacked on to your plan — provided you're wiling to make some sacrifices. The carrier's Cricket Wireless brand has revealed that it will provide free HBO Max service to customers using its $60 per month Unlimited plan if they're willing to live with the ad-supported tier. This isn't as sweet as what you'll get at AT&T proper, but it will give you a chance to catch up on shows without pricier wireless service or a separate Max subscription.
The offer will be available to both new and current customers starting on August 20th. We've asked if Cricket customers can pay extra for ad-free HBO Max.
It's a logical move for AT&T. The telecom will likely still own WarnerMedia until 2022, and this gives it a chance to boost both Cricket and HBO Max until that split happens. It could help the company maintain or increase plan prices, too. Nonetheless, you might appreciate this if you're looking to save money. Prepaid phone customers in the US seldom get the no-extra-charge services and other perks that increasingly come with conventional (postpaid) plans — this could save you money if you've been looking for something to watch.
General Motors and AT&T are expanding their partnership with plans to bring 5G to cars within the next few years. Some model year 2024 vehicles, which should start arriving in 2023, will be the first GM models equipped with 5G. Among GM's 2024 models is the electric Hummer SUV. GM vehicles from model year 2019 and later with 4G LTE capabilities will have faster connection speeds via the 5G network too.
The companies are building out a "high-performance 5G core network" with upgraded coverage centered on roadways. GM and AT&T claim the network will enable faster software updates and music and video downloads, as well as more responsive navigation and voice services.
Improved connectivity should benefit autonomous vehicles as well. GM says the 5G network will "provide a strong foundation" for its semi-autonomous Super Cruise tech along with its Vehicle Intelligence Platform.
Bringing 5G connectivity to cars at a broad level was always on the cards. It'll be a while yet before there's widespread network coverage on highways and in rural areas, so adding 5G to vehicles starting in model year 2024 seems a reasonable timeline. AT&T says its 5G network is currently available in 14,000 cities and towns across the US.
Amazon is preparing to increase its brick and mortar footprint in a big way. The retailer plans to open several large physical locations in the US akin to department stores, according to anonymous sources cited by The Wall Street Journal. The new stores — the first of which will come to Ohio and California — will sell clothing, household items and electronics from "top consumer brands." Obviously, shoppers can also expect to run into Amazon's own-brand products, too.
While the sites are tipped to be around the third of the size of a typical department store at 30,000 square feet, they'll still be much larger than Amazon's other physical locations. The move sees the company expanding into an area it originally disrupted as it grew into an all-in-one online shopping destination.
With their sales already plummeting, the pandemic sealed the fate of several high-profile department stores. The likes of J.C. Penney and Neiman Marcus Group have filed for bankruptcy along with other big names in the sector. Though some were thrown a lifeline when they managed to attract new owners.
Amazon, on the other hand, has seen its fortunes skyrocket during the pandemic as it profited from an increasing shift toward e-commerce. Its booming business even helping to bankroll founder Jeff Bezos' trip into space.
Amazon's move into physical retail predates the virus, however. The company started with brick and mortar bookstores back in 2015, later acquiring Whole Foods for $13.4 billion in 2017. More recently, it opened cashierless Amazon Go stores in the US and UK. Not to mention its highly-curated Amazon 4-star stores and Amazon Pop-Ups inside malls.
The larger stores are apparently viewed as a way of letting shoppers try before they buy, which is particularly useful for things like apparel. That's an area where Amazon has historically struggled. As the WSJ notes, the only high-fashion label on its online store is Oscar de la Renta. It also lost a major seller in Nike in 2019, which decided to go it alone in e-commerce — a move that has paid off for the sneaker company.
Amazon's department stores would also allow it to showcase its range of electronics, from its Fire TVs and tablets to Echo speakers to its Ring home security range, and even its Luna cloud gaming service. Notably, big box retailers have shown that emboldened shoppers are returning to stores. Both Walmart and Target recently smashed estimates in their respective second quarters as sales rose across most categories.
While Bird is mostly known for its rental scooters, it expanded its electric transportation offerings back in June when it introduced a bike-sharing service. Now, the company is giving those who want electric bikes of their own a new option to choose from: It has launched a new product called Bird Bike, which people can purchase right now for US$2,299. The electric bike has a Bafang rear hub motor with 50 miles of range and a 36-volt removable battery made of LG cells for easy charging.
In the UK and the European Union, owners will have access to 250 watts of continuous rated power in line with local regulations. Meanwhile, users in the US will have access to 500 watts of electric support. The bike has a pedal assist speed of 20 mph and has a thumb throttle, which can give riders an extra burst of acceleration to help them take on difficult inclines.
Bird
It's also equipped with an LCD display showing the rider's speed, battery charge, assist information and other details. Other features include a commercial-grade aluminum alloy frame, puncture-resistant tires and Bluetooth connectivity with the Bird app, allowing riders to easily switch their vehicle lights on and off and to view their battery range and miles ridden.
The Bird Bike comes in two types: One has a step-through frame, while the other has a step over frame. It also comes in two colors, namely Stealth Black and Gravity Gray. Bird is selling limited quantities of the e-bike right now on its website, but it will be available more broadly from retailers in the US and Europe this fall.
After a bit of a break from the headlines, the Pokémon juggernaut is back. A Nintendo Direct event yesterday gave us a better look at Pokémon: Legends, a new kind spin-off title from the Pocket Monster universe. Combining the cute monsters with feudal Japan aesthetics is a fun twist, and it looks like Legends will offer a different kind of battle system. Battles are still turn-based, but rather than Pokémon each taking a turn and trading blows, their stats and equipped items dictate the order of actions.
Each Pokémon's four moves has two styles: agile style and strong style. The former speeds up your action speed and might bump up your next turn in the queue, but the move will be weaker than unusual. It appears this action queue will be core to battles in Legends.
And if you’re just here for Pokémon silliness, you’ll be able to ride your Pocket Monsters around like steeds and, well, jet skis.
Holoride’s VR gaming system for passengers caught our attention a few years back at CES when we were given a track ride in an Audi and had the game react to the movement of the vehicle while we played. Well, the company is back, and this time it demoed two games and threw off the shackles of the track for the real world. Roberto Baldwin tackles a new kind of in-car entertainment.
Researchers from Italy have created a robot that deals with diabetes without needles. PILLSID involves two separate parts: an internal insulin dispenser that a doctor would surgically implant in your abdomen and a magnetic capsule loaded with the hormone. When you need to top-up, you swallow the capsule, which makes its way to the dispenser.
In a test involving three diabetic pigs, the research team found the system could successfully manage insulin levels for several hours. In some instances, they found bodily fluids from the pigs would leak into the robot. It’s early days for now.
The FBI received a tip-off about suspicious activity ahead of the Capitol Riot on January 6th from a surprising source: a recreational mapmaker. Elliot Carter contacted law enforcement after his site about Washington, DC's underground infrastructure got a spike in activity from suspicious websites. His warning eventually made it to the highest ranks of the Capitol Police.
His "online tip" to the FBI was even mentioned in the US Senate Rules and Homeland Security committees' June 2021 review of the US Capitol insurrection.
Since the start of the pandemic, Facebook has taken a much tougher stance on health misinformation than it had in the past, removing millions of posts for sharing misinformation. Now, we know how many accounts, groups and pages have been banned from the platform for repeatedly breaking those rules: just 3,000.
But the relatively low number of bans tracks with findings by researchers who say that only a few individuals are responsible for the vast majority of vaccine mistruths on social media. Facebook’s VP of Content Policy, Monika Bickert, told reporters that the company has had to continually evolve its policies, noting that some groups have used “coded language” to try to evade the company’s detection.
Am I a weirdo for liking in-person meetings? Sure, they can go on too long, be scheduled far too often and distract from your core work. But even before the pandemic made them an exotic memory, I always loved the energy of being in a room with other people, finding the same creative wavelength, working towards a common goal. There's no video chat app that can replicate that. So, what about VR?
We've already seen companies like Spatial take a stab at virtual meetings, where you can chat with others, inspect objects and even explore 3D environments from the comfort your home with a VR headset. Now Facebook's Oculus is entering the fray with Horizon Workrooms, an ambitious attempt to capture the best aspects of in-person meetings for Oculus Quest 2 users.
To be clear, Workrooms isn'tFacebook Horizon, its long-awaited multiplayer VR playground. But it is part of the company's overall vision for the Horizon universe, one entirely devoted to collaborating in meeting rooms and classrooms. And despite being so focused, it's still a showpiece for Facebook's VR ambitions, tapping into the company's expressive avatars, spatial sound, hand tracking and mixed-reality capabilities. You'll even be able to stream your PC desktop in VR to take notes or goof off during meetings (just like real life!).
After spending an hour in a Horizon Workrooms demo, it's clear that Facebook still has plenty of work left to do. There were a few connection issues, avatar glitches and at one point I got booted out entirely. But when it was running smoothly, it was the closest I've felt to being in an live meeting since March of last year.
But let me start from the beginning. After creating a Workrooms account, I installed the PC companion app and the Workrooms Quest 2 app. Once I booted it up in VR, I was surprised that it recommended putting my controllers down and enabling the Quest 2's hand-tracking. Outside of demos for that feature, I can't think of any Oculus apps that have done the same. After that, I customized a goofy avatar — an idealized version of myself with purple hair and no beer belly — and mapped out the edge of my desk so Workrooms can accurately place me in front of virtual tables.
Facebook
As soon as I hopped into my Horizon Workrooms demo, it was instantly clear why Oculus recommended hand-tracking. I waved to a PR rep, and as I struggled to unmute myself, I was able to throw a thumbs up to confirm I was hearing her. I shouted hello to CNET's Scott Stein, who was sitting a few seats away, and his audio sounded appropriately far off. We all spent way too much time staring at our hands and testing the limits of the Quest 2's finger tracking capabilities (for the record, rolling your hands over each other like a wannabe raver can easily scramble things).
Even though I was in a swanky virtual room, with a stylized deer head wearing VR goggles on the wall, and ceiling-tall windows overlooking expansive lake and mountain rage somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, sitting desk-side with others felt vaguely normal. We made small talk about our families and our vastly different locations (including folks in California, New Jersey, London and myself in Atlanta). I could see who was working on Macs and PCs, based on the virtual accessories in front of them. And along the wall there were also video feeds from other Facebook reps calling in from their PCs, which reminded me of the enormous video conferencing screens in many meeting rooms.
To see my keyboard and mouse, I hit a button to enable pass-through mode, which projected grey-scale footage of my actual desk inside of Workrooms' VR environment. It wasn't crystal clear, but it was enough to touch-type notes in Evernote by streaming my PC desktop. If you're running an Apple Magic Keyboard or a specific Logitech model, you'll also be able to see your keyboard in VR, so you won't have to deal with the pass-through video.
Andrew Bosworth, Facebook's head of VR and AR, said during the demo that he believes there's "something missing" with video calling, and that there's a strong pull towards VR collaboration apps as a solution. Of course, that's exactly what you'd expect Facebook's VR lead to say. But he has a point.
Video calls are a fantastic way for seeing people and maintaining social connections. But when it comes to getting work done, they can get old fast. Everyone's audio comes in from one channel; it's hard to make eye contact in large group chats; and the entire session just lives on your computer or phone screen. There's no sense of actually being in a space with others. Bosworth says that Facebook has been using Workrooms internally for about six months, and he's noticed some clear benefits. In particular, he can remember specific meetings better thanks to the immersion of sitting beside people in VR with realistic spatial audio.
Facebook
Of course, virtual reality can also make meetings awkward in entirely new ways. I quickly learned that I couldn't look closely at someone's avatar if they were sitting nearby, because it actually felt like I was staring at them. I couldn't reach for a cup of water on my real-world desk, because it was sitting in front of my neighbor's virtual space. I also had to be careful about where I placed my hands, because the Quest 2's hand tracking could make things look... suspect, if they're under your desk.
All of that awkwardness culminated when Mark Zuckerberg crashed our demo and sat in the virtual chair beside me. He sketched out his overall vision for Horizon as a stepping stone for his metaverse ambitions. But as he was speaking, I was also trying hard to keep my virtual cool: Don't stare! Don't be weird with your hands! Pay attention and be respectful! I thought I was doing pretty well in the heat of the moment, but a recording of our session looked like I was performing some sort of interpretive dance beside the world's fifth richest man. (Thankfully, that footage isn't meant for public consumption.)
Zuckerberg only stopped by for a few minutes, but the fact he made an appearance at all is telling. Workrooms isn't some side project: It's a significant component of what he wants Facebook to become. You can see that in the app's more ambitious features, like a whiteboard that can grow as long as you'd like. You can sketch out thoughts by holding your Oculus controller straight up, so that you can use the end like a massive pen. And if you want to stretch your legs, you can assign a blank wall in your room to serve as your life-sized whiteboard. You can also change the size and layout of your workspace at will, allowing you to move from a circular conference table to something that resembles a classroom.
Facebook
Perhaps because Zuckerberg wants Workrooms to be a success, the company is also making it more accessible to people who don't want Facebook accounts. You can join a session via video chat by creating a Workrooms account, which is separate from Oculus and Facebook logins. If you want to enjoy the experience in VR, though, you'll need a Facebook account to use the Quest 2. Maybe letting people peek at the 2D Workrooms experience could encourage them to go virtual.
The company is also being up-front about security and privacy, saying that it won't use conversations or materials from Workrooms sessions to inform Facebook ads. You'll also be able to report individuals and entire groups if they're harassing you or violating community standards. That was a major concern when I demoed Facebook Horizons last year; the idea of a VR playground sounds great, but how do you make it safe for everyone?
If anything, Horizon Workrooms tells us that Zuckerberg's metaverse ambitions are more than just marketing fluff. He paid $2 billion for Oculus, after all, and Facebook has continually invested in VR development and content. You don't spend that sort of money if you don't have a vision for the future.
When he stopped by our demo, Zuckerberg told us he used to scribble code in his notebook during middle school. As soon as he got home, he would type it up with the hopes of building an immersive world to hang out with friends. Workrooms isn't the perfect VR collaboration solution yet, but it could be the start of what the younger Zuckerberg envisioned. After all, the metaverse won't be built in a day.
Splitgate, a frenetic free-to-play arena shooter with portals, has become a word of mouth hit with 10 million downloads in under 30 days. Developer 1047 Games has announced that the game will remain in open beta indefinitely as it works on managing the sudden influx of players. As a result, Splitgate is no longer slated to fully launch this month. Instead, 1047 will continue to roll out updates and fixes to the game complete with new content and improvements to the backend that can facilitate the uptick in players. Queue times are now less than 10 minutes and a new Ranked Duos mode recently went live.
Splitgate injected the tired arena shooter with a much need blast of vitality by adding portals to the mix. Players can cast these wormholes around the map and even shoot opponents through them. It helps that it's free-to-play, contains a variety of guns and plenty of game modes (like Team deathmatch, Team Shotty Snipers and Team SWAT).
While the game has been in early access since 2019, it exploded in popularity in the wake of its open beta launch in early July, which brought with it cross-play with Xbox and PlayStation consoles. According to 1047, the shooter went from an initial 4,000 concurrent players to more than 175,000 in a few weeks. Naturally, the massive increase caused backend issues. Splitgate was taken offline twice in recent weeks as the small 1047 team worked on server optimizations.
In late July, the developer announced that it had raised $10 million in a recent funding round led by Human Capital on top of the $6.5 million it snagged earlier in the year. 1047 said it would put the money toward expanding its engineering team. The company also has a major announcement in store for Gamescom later this month as it looks to build on Splitgate's breakout success. In a recent Q&A session on Twitch, the developer reportedly mentioned that a Switch and mobile port of the game was "part of the vision."
“This has been the most surreal time of my life,” said Ian Proulx, CEO and co-founder of 1047 Games. “The fan support has been incredible as we work to improve the player experience. We never dreamed of having to scale this big this quickly, and as a result we have had to overcome challenges to keep up with player demand. We met several major milestones in a short time, creating a stable platform where fans can expect to find a server to play on relatively quickly, and I’m proud of what our team has accomplished - but there’s a lot more to come!”
Proulx continued, “In looking at the issues facing the scalability of the game’s backend, the process includes far more than simply dealing with server capacity. We are focused on keeping the game stable for fans, and iterating on the game’s concurrent capacity in order to minimize player wait times. We want to do this the right way, and we want to be prepared for massive scale when we officially launch, all the while continuing to improve the beta with frequent updates, additional features, and improvements to server capacity.”
The following contains spoilers for season two, episode two of 'Star Trek: Lower Decks.'
I’ve been a Star Trek fan for most of my life, and yet I still chuckled at this Onion video released after the first J.J. Abrams installment came out back in 2009: “Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable.’” Star Trek isn’t to a lot of people’s taste, J.J. Abrams’ among them. He’s said in interviews he never really liked Trek and was trying to make it more like Star Wars. (This was six years before The Force Awakens came out.) The reboot films were a breath of fresh air after four years of no original Trek content, and they did get some new fans into the franchise. Some of those novices would later dip their toe into the water of TV Trek and found that they did actually enjoy it a lot, despite its slower pace.
However, despite the franchise’s strong TV track record with shows like TNG and DS9, the Paramount+ era has been taking its cues from the Abrams films, which isn’t surprising with executive producer Alex Kurtzman at the helm. Alongside Roberto Orci, he’s one of the two screenwriters behind 2009 Star Trek and 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, as well as a J.J. Abrams collaborator on Alias and Fringe. Given the box office numbers of the Abramsverse films it makes sense to put him in charge, but it still made a lot of long-time Trekkies groan as we had hoped for a return to the kind of shows we grew up on.
After three seasons of heavy action on Discovery and the jaded grimdark of season one of Picard, the first season of Lower Decks injected some levity back into the franchise, with parody that went up to, but not quite over the line. It couldn’t, since it was intended to be canon. It had to fit alongside TNG, DS9 and Voyager. So it packed in plenty of references to keep the wiki addicts over at the Star Trek-centric Memory Alpha busy, while indulging in old tropes like drunk Klingons, arena battles and the occasional omnipotent being. It also took some direct swipes at the live action Trek shows, like how crew members always seem to die in the most low-tech ways like being impaled by spears or how of course the holodeck is used for sex stuff.
CBS
But those references were always in a more general sense, framed in a “wouldn’t X be ridiculous” way that only long-term fans with deep knowledge of the franchise would fully understand. Until this week’s episode, that is, where crew members of the USS Titan specifically call out the Enterprise D and its galactic cruise ship mentality. Shakespearean plays and string quartets? Peace conferences? How utterly boring compared to the constant run-and-gun that the Titan seems to have been stuck in since last season. They judge the value of their work based on how exciting it is, and think that William Riker must have been bored to tears being stuck on that ship for seven years.
Of course, TNG fans know it was anything but boring for Riker. He’s been locked in a mental institution, trapped in an alternate future and even had god-like powers for an episode. And he likes performing in jazz concerts with his trombone!
CBS
None of this slander sits right with new crew member Brad Boimler, who transferred over from the USS Cerritos at the end of last season. The Titan’s pursuit of the dangerous Pakleds has the young lieutenant junior grade in a constant state of panic as he mans the flight conn position, a big change from quietly toiling away on the lower decks of his old ship. But he’s recognized that this is where the opportunities for promotion are, and soon finds himself on an undercover mission with his fellow bridge crew. At least, it’s supposed to be undercover — the other Titan members quickly get them embroiled in a shootout and facing certain death.
That’s when Boimler takes the opportunity to tell his crewmates how he really feels. “I’d love to be in a string quartet. I love that when Riker was on the Enterprise he was out there jamming on the trombone and catching love disease and acting in plays and meeting his identical transporter clone Thomas. That stuff might not seem as cool as what you guys do, but it’s Starfleet, all the way.” His confession elicits similar confessions from the other team members, before they manage to find a way out in classic technobabble fashion.
CBS
For years Star Trek has always danced around the question of whether Starfleet was a military force. It employs naval ranks and the ships are outfitted with phasers and photon torpedoes for defense. But its stated purpose was exploration and other activities that help tie the vast Federation together. The Abrams films spent all their time reacting to one crisis after another — the crew didn’t start an actual mission of exploration until the very end of Beyond, and there hasn’t been another film since to follow up on that.
Both DS9 and Discovery engaged in wars with the Klingon Empire. On Enterprise the crew ended up hunting down the Xindi with a cadre of trained soldiers on board for its third season. Even Voyager had to deal with the constant accusations that they were a conquering force as they struggled to get home. Lower Decks is our first look in a while at a Starfleet dedicated to exploration, with the crew of the Cerritos specializing in “second contact,” that is, getting communication and trade set up with the planets that flashier ships like the Enterprise meet in their adventures.
So Lower Decks has always been a sort of commentary on the greater Star Trek philosophy, but it’s never been as blatant as Brad Boimler saying, “I didn’t join Starfleet to get in phaser fights. I signed up to explore, to be out in space making new discoveries and peaceful diplomatic solutions. That’s boldly going.”
CBS
The Onion video takes old school Trek fans to task for being gatekeepers, for wallowing and fetishizing things that other folks find boring. The new era of Trek has stretched the definition of what Star Trek could be, expanding into new genres and injecting a little action to sate the appetites of modern audiences. But Lower Decks is the first time I’ve seen pushback from within the franchise itself. The show is basically saying, “Sure, Star Trek can be exciting, but there’s a reason it became popular in the first place!” Let’s hope that with future programs like Strange New Worlds, Alex Kurtzman is listening.
Never one to shy away from showing off its latest developments, Oppo is now teasing more upcoming mobile camera tech. The most interesting bit is perhaps the 5-axis optical image stabilization, which uses both lens shifting and sensor shifting for maximum effect — apparently three times the angle than that of conventional optical stabilization, according to Oppo. If true, this would compensate for greater shakiness, thus allowing for faster capture and better low-light performance, even when handheld.
Oppo
This kind of implementation is nothing new in the professional camera world, but the challenge here is to miniaturize the solution and fit everything into the little remaining space on a phone. The lens, driven by ball-bearing motors, serves as the primary stabilization tool for light vibrations. For bigger movements, both the lens and sensor kick in to achieve 5-axis stabilization, with the latter's shifting and rotation controlled by shape memory alloys.
Oppo
Oppo admits that incorporating extra moving parts means increasing the number of potential failure points, so it will continue to conduct various drop tests and reliability tests before beginning mass production. The company is targeting Q1 2022 to launch its first phone equipped with this feature.
Oppo
In addition to its 5-axis optical stabilization tech, Oppo teased its next-gen RGBW sensor, which the company claims can take in 60 percent more light and achieve a 35 percent reduction in noise. This will arrive in an unspecified Oppo phone sometime in Q4 of this year. The company is also working on an 85-200mm continuous optical zoom module to offer greater flexibility. It's unclear when exactly that might become commercially available.
Oppo isn't the only phone maker trying to further differentiate itself with obscure camera tech. To name a few, Vivo has been using its impressive micro gimbal camera since its X50 Pro last year, while ASUS is well into its third-gen flip camera on its aptly named Zenfone 8 Flip. Xiaomi even tried a shape-shifting "liquid lens" camera on its Mi Mix Fold, before picking up the latest-gen under-screen camera for its Mi Mix 4. And it now seems we'll see even more attempts in this arena in the coming months.
