EA has had quite the month, and the numbers tell its story. A few weeks ago, the company confirmed an agreement to go private in a $55 billion sale. And now we know that Battlefield 6 sold over 7 million copies in its first three days. The game also had over 172 million online matches played during the holiday weekend. On top of that, it logged 15 million hours watched on streaming services.

Battlefield 6‘s sales numbers make it the biggest opening yet for the franchise. By comparison, 2021’s Battlefield 2042 reportedly sold a relatively paltry 4.2 million copies in its first week.

The quotes in EA’s blog post read like awards ceremony acceptance speeches. “First and foremost, we want to thank our players,” franchise General Manager Byron Beede said. “We never take moments like this for granted, so I want to express our sincere gratitude to our global Battlefield Studios and passionate community that has helped get us to this point,” Executive VP Vince Zampella added.

The game’s launch came weeks after the company’s announcement that it will go private. The gaming giant will be owned by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners. On Wednesday, unionized EA staffers spoke out against the acquisition, warning that “every time private equity or billionaire investors take a studio private, workers lose visibility, transparency and power.”

Battlefield 6 launched on October 10. It’s available for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Its Season 1 content is just around the corner, arriving on October 28.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/battlefield-6-sold-over-7-million-copies-in-three-days-181826351.html?src=rss

Hanneke Faber, CEO of global tech manufacturing company Logitech, says she’d be open to the idea of having an AI-powered board member. From a report: “We already use [AI agents] in almost every meeting,” Faber said at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C., on Monday. While she said AI agents today (like Microsoft Copilot and internal bots) mostly take care of summarization and idea generation, that’s likely to change owing to the pace at which the technology is developing.

“As they evolve — and some of the best agents or assistants that we’ve built actually do things themselves — that comes with a whole bunch of governance things,” Faber said. “You have to keep in mind and make sure you really want that bot to take action. But if you don’t have an AI agent in every meeting, you’re missing out on some of the productivity.” “That bot, in real time, has access to everything,” she continued.

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The IMF has issued a stark warning over soaring global government debt, saying it is on track to exceed 100% of GDP by 2029. Semafor: Such a ratio would be the highest since 1948, when large economies were rebuilding post-war. Today, “there is little political appetite for belt-tightening,” The Economist wrote: Rich nations are reluctant to raise taxes on their beleaguered electorates — but they’re facing pressure to spend more on defense, and on social services for aging populations.

Higher long-term bond yields, meanwhile, suggest investor wariness over governments’ balance sheets. In the short term, the debt concerns manifest in political disruption: France’s budget fight recently toppled another government, while the US federal shutdown highlights the tension between new spending demands and deficit reduction.

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There’s a new streaming bundle in town. Apple TV and Peacock are teaming up to offer a combined subscription that starts at $15 per month. This will allow access to all original programming from both platforms, in addition to Peacock’s stable of network and cable shows.

This is a mighty fine deal, given that Apple TV recently changed both its name and price. The platform costs $13 per month now on its own. Peacock starts at $11 per month. In other words, this is a discount of around $9 each month. In this economy, we’ll take any savings we can get.

There’s one caveat here. The $15 price tag is for Peacock with ads. The subscription shoots up to $20 per month for an ad-free version. However, a standalone subscription to ad-free Peacock is $17 on its own. This bundle becomes available on October 20. Additionally, Apple One subscribers will get a 35 percent discount on Peacock Premium Plus plans. It’s always nice when two lonely corporations find friendship, isn’t it?

For the uninitiated, Apple TV is the company’s big-wig streaming platform. It’s primarily known for sci-fi like Severance, For All Mankind and the upcoming Pluribus. The platform is also host to plenty of comedy, like The Studio, Shrinking and Ted Lasso.

Peacock is NBC’s streaming service. It streams old-school network programming like The Office, Grimm and Superstore. The service features a stable of original programming like Poker Face, Twisted Metal and the underrated Mrs. Davis. The platform also recently premiered a little show called The Paper, which is a spinoff of The Office. Against all odds, this is actually a great little sitcom and a worthy successor to the original.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/apple-tv-and-peacock-team-up-on-a-bundle-that-costs-15-per-month-170403406.html?src=rss

Snap is continuing to lay the groundwork for its first consumer-ready AR glasses called Specs. While the company has still revealed few details about the device set to launch next year, it used its Lens Fest event to preview new features and apps that will work on the new hardware.

At the event dedicated to AR developers and creators, Snap said it would enable Specs users to buy items directly from their glasses. Snap CTO Bobby Murphy said that new software tools called Commerce Kit would allow “select developers to accept payments directly inside lenses,” either for “digital goods” or as upgrades to unlock “premium features.”

Snap already allows lens creators to make money off AR effects via its Lens Creator rewards program, but offering in-lens commerce could allow the company to monetize its AR platform in a new way. “This is the start of developer monetization for lenses on Specs, and we plan to continue to find ways you can build sustainable businesses on our platform,” Murphy said.

Whether this could turn into a meaningful business for Snap is less clear. The company has so far released two versions of its standalone AR glasses, but those devices have been aimed at Snap developers not users. That’s set to change next year with its next version of glasses. CEO Evan Spiegel has promised the new glasses will be “lightweight” compared with the current bulky and awkward-looking frames, but has said little else about the design.

When Specs do launch, we know there will be a solid lineup of AR features available. Snap has already released a standalone experience for watching Spotlight videos and a more powerful web browser. There’s also a new translation lens that can translate and transcribe audio in real-time. 

There are more AR integrations in the works, according to Snap. Tripadvisor is working on an AR lens that will overlay “trusted insights” into your field-of-view as you encounter restaurants, shops and other establishments in the real world. Design platform Figma is also working on a lens, though Snap didn’t share details about how these will work. 

The updates are a reminder of how ambitious Snap’s vision for AR glasses is. The company has been nurturing an ecosystem of AR creators and developers for years; it’s now getting ready to carry that work over to its nascent glasses platform. “We see Specs powering everything from classrooms to design studios, creating opportunities and work for developers in entirely new categories,” Murphy said.

Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Engadget’s parent company Yahoo, joined the board of directors at Snap on September 12, 2024. No one outside of Engadget’s editorial team has any say in our coverage of the company.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/snap-is-bringing-shopping-features-to-its-ar-glasses-170000985.html?src=rss

China now generates well over twice as much electricity as the United States. The country’s economy has become substantially larger than America’s in real terms, measured at purchasing power parity, economist Paul Krugman wrote this week. The Trump administration has moved aggressively against renewable energy development. It rolled back Biden’s tax incentives for renewables through the One Big Beautiful Bill. The administration is attempting to stop a nearly completed offshore wind farm that could power hundreds of thousands of homes. It canceled $7 billion in grants for residential solar panels. A solar energy project that would have powered almost 2 million homes was killed. The administration canceled $8 billion in clean energy grants, mostly in Democratic states, and is reportedly planning to cancel tens of billions more. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said solar power is unreliable because “you have to have power when the sun goes behind a cloud and when the sun sets, which it does almost every night.”

California has already integrated substantial solar power into its grid through battery storage technology. Republican support for higher education has collapsed over the past decade, according to polling data. The administration has also targeted vaccines and research in multiple areas. Krugman argues that by 2028 America will have fallen so far behind China that it is unlikely to catch up.

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If you’ve even idly checked in on the robust world of Doom fan development in recent years, you’ve probably encountered one of the hundreds of gameplay mods, WAD files, or entire commercial games based on GZDoom. The open source Doom port—which can trace its lineage back to the original launch of ZDoom back in 1998—adds modern graphics rendering, quality-of-life additions, and incredibly deep modding features to the original Doom source code that John Carmack released in 1997.

Now, though, the community behind GZDoom is publicly fracturing, with a large contingent of developers uniting behind a new fork called UZDoom. The move is in apparent protest of the leadership of GZDoom creator and maintainer Cristoph Oelckers (aka Graf Zahl), who recently admitted to inserting untested AI-generated code into the GZDoom codebase.

“Due to some disagreements—some recent; some tolerated for close to 2 decades—with how collaboration should work, we’ve decided that the best course of action was to fork the project,” developer Nash Muhandes wrote on the DoomWorld forums Wednesday. “I don’t want to see the GZDoom legacy die, as do most all of us, hence why I think the best thing to do is to continue development through a fork, while introducing a different development model that highly favors transparent collaboration between multiple people.”

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Over the past week, OpenAI has faced backlash over subpoenas it sent to nonprofits accused of conspiring with Elon Musk to amplify public criticism of OpenAI as it sought to shift from a nonprofit to for-profit structure.

The subpoenas are supposed to support OpenAI’s defense in a lawsuit Musk’s X Corp filed to block the for-profit transition. Seeking a “wide variety of documents”—including a sweeping request for all communications regarding Musk and all information on nonprofits’ funders and donations—OpenAI claimed that the subpoenas are intended to probe if Musk was involved in the actions or paid nonprofits to make critical comments, NBC News wrote in a report exhaustively documenting the controversy.

But nonprofits have alleged it’s obvious that OpenAI is using the lawsuit to harass, silence, and intimidate its critics—most glaringly when it comes to targeting nonprofits that are even more publicly critical of Musk’s companies than they are of OpenAI.

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What’s in a name? Apparently quite a bit, according to Amazon. The company recently announced yet another change to its Fire TV devices lineup, which just means they renamed a few things yet again. The family now includes the $35 Fire TV Stick HD, the $40 Fire TV Stick 4K Select, the $50 Fire TV Stick 4K Plus, the $60 Fire TV Stick 4K Max and the $140 Fire TV Cube.

That was a pain to type out and probably a pain to read (my apologies). Two of those devices were “rebranded” previously within the past year, so if you’re confused, you’re likely not alone. What’s a humble shopper to do when you’re trying to decide which is the best (and budget-friendly) option to upgrade an old TV so you can binge-watch Hunting Wives and ask Alexa about tomorrow’s weather forecast?

I’ll make your decision quite easy: just get the Fire TV Stick 4K Max. Really, if you’re looking for the best streaming device, period, we recommend turning to Google for that. But if you’ve decided Amazon’s Fire TV lineup is where you want to spend your money, the 4K Max is the best option of the bunch. Not only has it stuck around without being subject to a “rebrand” for quite some time, but it also has arguably the best balance of features and price of any Fire TV streaming device.

The Fire TV Stick 4K Max gives you 4K streaming capabilities with Dolby Vision and all the HDRs that matter, Dolby Atmos audio and support for Amazon Luna and Xbox Game Pass. (It has some decent retro gaming chops, too, as our Jeff Dunn has previously explained.) Aside from the lack of an onboard Ethernet port present on the Fire TV Cube, the 4K Max has the same Wi-Fi 6E support as the more expensive Cube, plus the same 16GB of storage and 2GB of memory.

When compared to the other dongles in the Fire TV lineup, things get even more perplexing. The $60 4K Max and the $50 4K Plus are essentially the same stick, but the latter has less storage, only Wi-Fi 6 capabilities (not 6E), a standard Alexa Voice remote and no support for the Fire TV ambient experience, which turns your TV into an Alexa smart display when you’re not actively watching anything. Step down further once more to the $40 4K Select and you miss out on Dolby Vision and extra memory, and you’ll have to settle for Wi-Fi 5.

If you’re going to make all those compromises to save a few dollars, then you should just get the entry-level $35 Fire TV Stick HD. The biggest thing here is that it only supports 1080p streaming, but that will be ok for some people. We consider it to be the best budget streaming device on the market right now, and for folks just looking to make a cheap, basic upgrade to an aging set — go off and know your $35 was well spent (or, pro tip: wait for a sale and pick one up for less than $20).

The case for the $140 Fire TV Cube isn’t a strong one, but it’s one that I’ll admit might be attractive to some users. It adds into the mix an Ethernet port, hands-free Alexa controls (meaning you don’t have to press a button on its remote to activate the virtual assistant, you can just talk to it) and it can control your other entertainment devices like a cable box and game console. It ultimately gives you more control over both the other things in your entertainment ecosystem and Alexa all in one device.

That means Amazon has three strong streaming devices with very clear value propositions: the $35 Stick HD, the $60 4K Max and the $140 TV Cube. Affordable, mid-tier and high-end categories are covered and most people will find something that fits in their budget and their needs with these three. The two Sticks sandwiched in the middle do nothing but confuse consumers. Looking at a comparison chart of all the Fire TV streaming devices, you might start to ask yourself, do I really need Wi-Fi 6E over Wi-Fi 6? Will one extra gigabyte of memory make a difference? Can I live without the Alexa Voice Remote Enhanced?

You shouldn’t be asking yourself these questions; you have better things to do. There are only three Fire TV streaming devices worth considering, and I’d take it one step further and say most people should just get the Fire TV Stick 4K Max when it inevitably goes on sale for Black Friday for around $35. You’ll spend less and get a better product.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/why-does-amazon-need-five-tv-streamers-163014576.html?src=rss

Twitch will now allow its users to buy products without dragging them away from the stream they’re watching. Announced ahead of TwitchCon, which kicks off today in San Diego, Twitch is launching the live-shopping feature in partnership with e.l.f. Cosmetics, a sub-brand of e.l.f. Beauty. The tech is powered by Amazon Ads.

The brand’s eyes.lips.first. shoppable element will appear on its official Twitch channel, e.l.f.YOU!, which Patrick O’Keefe, the company’s Chief Integrated Marketing Communications Officer, said was designed to “empower female gamers, celebrate creativity and build confidence at the intersection of makeup and the streaming culture.” Twitch users can purchase e.l.f. Cosmetics products as they discover them in a stream, without being taken to a separate page.

E.l.f. Launched on Twitch in 2020 and often collaborates with gaming content creators to boost brand awareness. Twitch’s move into live shopping is likely at least partly inspired by TikTok, which launched the TikTok Shop back in 2023, where businesses can display their products and have affiliate videos placed in users’ feeds. TikTok creators can earn commission if a product they’re promoting is converted into sales.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/twitch-adds-a-new-live-shopping-feature-powered-by-amazon-ads-162554481.html?src=rss

Spotify sees the music industry’s AI problem, and it’s going to do… something about it. On Thursday, the company published a blog post heavy on principles, partnerships and vague plans. Unfortunately, it’s practically devoid of specifics. The most explicit bit is that it’s partnering with the big three music labels. Together, they’ll “develop responsible AI products that empower the artists and songwriters they represent, and connect them with the fans who support them.”

The move follows Spotify’s announcement last month that it would clean up the AI slop proliferating on its platform. The company frames today’s news as a direct defense against competition from unauthorized AI music production. “If the music industry doesn’t lead in this moment, AI-powered innovation will happen elsewhere, without rights, consent or compensation,” the company wrote.

Spotify says artists don’t find that current AI tools are “built to power their careers, their businesses, and their fan bases.” That will inform whatever comes out of the partners’ plans. “We’ll develop new products for artists and fans through upfront agreements, not by asking for forgiveness later,” the company wrote.

Spotify laid out four principles that will guide its hazy plans for “artist-first AI music products.” The first is through partnerships with labels, distributors, and publishers. (In addition to the big three of Sony, Universal and Warner, Spotify is partnering with digital rights company Merlin and the French music label Believe.) The other tenets include choice in participation, fair compensation and artist-fan connections.

Although it’s been forced to clean up the AI mess that grew on its platform, Spotify has adopted AI features of its own. Most notably, that includes its AI DJ. But it’s also released a personalized daylist and AI Playlist features. The company differentiated its tools from unauthorized ones it’s combating. It described its AI features as helping listeners to discover and connect with real artists.

“Our goal is to ensure the future of music innovation happens responsibly, and to invite the best minds in AI to help build it,” Spotify wrote.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/spotify-partners-with-the-big-three-music-labels-on-artist-first-ai-music-products-161047159.html?src=rss

South Korea’s government has stripped AI-powered textbooks of their official status after a single semester of use. The textbooks were introduced in March for math, English, and computer science classes as a flagship initiative under former President Yoon Suk Yeol. Students and teachers complained about technical problems, factual inaccuracies, and increased workload.

The government spent more than 1.2 trillion won ($850 million) on the program. Publishers invested around 800 billion won ($567 million). The textbooks were reclassified as supplementary material. Adoption rates dropped from 37% in the first semester to 19% in September. Only 2,095 schools now use them, about half the number from earlier in the year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you use Firefox, and you’re lucky, then you might be getting a free VPN. Over the next few months, Mozilla says it will be testing a “free, browser-only VPN” for some users, but you’ll need to rely on the luck of the draw if you want to try it yourself.

That’s because Mozilla is only enabling the feature for randomly selected users, at least for now. The announcement technically came in June, but fortunate writers at a number of different tech sites are now reporting that they’re finally starting to see the feature pop up.

How Firefox’s free VPN compares

The VPN, once fully implemented, would put Firefox in competition with Opera and Microsoft’s own Edge browser, but ahead of other alternatives like Chrome and Safari, which do not offer free VPNs at time of writing.

The key selling point here, it seems, is that Firefox VPN will run on Mozilla’s VPN network, which likely means it will use the same respected Mullvad servers as Mozilla’s paid VPN service. Incidentally, Mullvad is currently Lifehacker’s favorite VPN for privacy.

That said, don’t expect the same functionality from the free offering as a full Mozilla VPN subscription. While Mozilla VPN can encrypt all web traffic from up to five devices at once, Firefox VPN only covers your browser. Also, while Mozilla VPN offers servers across 30 countries, allowing you to act as if you’re browsing in that country, Firefox VPN will instead automatically connect to the nearest available server, which is likely to be in the same country as you.

Still, the move is a boon for privacy, as the free VPN will hide your IP address and mask your traffic from your ISP. As for Mozilla itself, the company says it will collect “only the technical data needed to keep Firefox VPN reliable and secure,” and will automatically delete logs linked to your account after three months. Firefox VPN also purportedly “never logs the websites you visit or the content of your communications,” and there are no stated usage limits at this time.

All of that is great news, particularly as governments and websites start to ask for more personal data. Sadly, you likely won’t be able to use Firefox VPN to get around a website block in your state (unless it happens to direct your traffic through another state, if you’re lucky), but it’s always a good idea to let websites and ISPs collect as little personal information about you as possible.

How to check if you have the free Firefox VPN

Because the VPN is only going out to random testers at the moment, it could take a while until you’re actually able to access it. Check if you can try out Firefox VPN by opening the browser and seeing if there’s a VPN setup prompt in the top-right corner, next to the toolbar.

If it’s there, hit the Next button to begin. The setup process will guide you through turning it on, which will involve signing into (or creating) a Mozilla account and hitting a toggle. To turn Firefox VPN off after enabling it (useful if a website blocks VPN traffic), simply click the VPN icon in the Firefox toolbar and toggle it off.

EA employees involved with the Communications Workers of America union have issued a sternly-worded statement against the recently-proposed private acquisition of the company by Saudi-backed investors, according to a report by Eurogamer. The complaints don’t involve Saudi Arabia’s long history of human rights violations, but rather that workers weren’t represented in any negotiations for the $55 billion deal.

The employees worry that any jobs lost as a result of the purchase would “be a choice, not a necessity, made to pad investors’ pockets.” In addition to this formal response, unionized workers have issued a petition that urges regulators to scrutinize the deal.

“EA is not a struggling company,” the statement reads, going on to note that the company’s success has been driven by workers. “Yet we, the very people who will be jeopardized as a result of this deal, were not represented at all when this buyout was negotiated or discussed.”

The statement calls out the huge number of layoffs that have impacted the industry in recent years. Unionized staffers note that “every time private equity or billionaire investors take a studio private, workers lose visibility, transparency and power.”

“We are calling on regulators and elected officials to scrutinize this deal and ensure that any path forward protects jobs, preserves creative freedom and keeps decision-making accountable to the workers who make EA successful,” the statement reads. “The value of video games is in their workers. As a unified voice, we, the members of the industry-wide video game workers’ union UVW-CWA, are standing together and refusing to let corporate greed decide the future of our industry.”

Eurogamer reached out to the FTC to inquire about the status of the proposed acquisition but the agency refused to comment on the grounds that it doesn’t speak about “pending mergers or acquisitions.” It’s worth noting that President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is involved with the purchase. The Financial Times recently suggested that the deal won’t face any real opposition, as “what regulator is going to say no to the president’s son-in-law?”

As previously noted, the proposed deal is valued at $55 billion. This would take the company private for the first time in its 35-year history. Various entities have partnered to make this deal, including the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake and Kushner’s Affinity Partners. US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal have also voiced concerns about this acquisition. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/unionized-ea-staffers-are-not-happy-about-that-proposed-saudi-backed-acquisition-155559256.html?src=rss

The FCC is moving to expel Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) from US telecom networks, citing national security concerns. The agency sent HKT an “Order to Show Cause,” which directs the company to explain why the FCC should not begin revocation proceedings against it.

The 30-page order outlines the agency’s reasoning, including a focus on applying new certification and disclosure requirements to entities “owned by, controlled by or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a foreign adversary.”

“Today’s Order continues the FCC’s work of ensuring that CCP-controlled entities that pose national security risks to our country cannot connect to our telecom networks,” said FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in a statement announcing the move. HKT is one of the largest telecommunications companies in Hong Kong and is a subsidiary of communications giant PCCW. Roughly 18 percent of PCCW is owned by China Unicom, a state-owned telecommunications company.

HKT is not the only target of the agency’s ongoing effort to root out potential vulnerabilities. On October 28, the FCC will be voting on steps to further strengthen guardrails under its equipment authorization program to protect US networks and the communications supply chain against national security threats.

The past month has seen ramped-up regulatory activity from both China and the United States aimed at companies that operate in or generate revenues from one another’s markets. Chinese regulators have been investigating large tech acquisitions, telling local companies not to buy American AI chips and tightening export controls on rare earth minerals. Much of this comes against the backdrop of trade negotiations between the two countries.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-fcc-wants-to-expel-one-of-hong-kongs-biggest-telecom-operators-from-us-networks-155204605.html?src=rss

The Department of the Air Force has approved SpaceX’s plans to launch up to 100 missions per year from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

This would continue the tectonic turnaround at the spaceport on California’s Central Coast. Five years ago, Vandenberg hosted just a single orbital launch. This year’s number stands at 51 orbital flights, or 53 launches if you count a pair of Minuteman missile tests, the most in a single calendar year at Vandenberg since the early 1970s.

Vandenberg is used for missions launching into polar orbits, paths oriented north-south that, over time, cover most of the Earth’s surface area. These orbits are popular for Earth observation satellites.

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The California Broadband & Video Association has objected to legislation signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on October 15 that allows apartment tenants to opt out of mandatory bulk billing for internet service. The cable industry group called the measure “an anti-affordability bill masked as consumer protection.”

The association said property owners would have to provide refunds to tenants who decline internet service provided through building contracts. The law “undermines the basis of the cost savings and will lead to bulk billing being phased out,” the group said. Assembly member Rhodesia Ransom, who authored the bill, said lobby groups for internet providers and real estate companies worked hard to defeat it.

The association told the Sacramento Bee it was disappointed Newsom signed the legislation because it would be “an impediment to utilizing an effective tool” that helped middle-class Californians get discounted rates. The law takes effect January 1. Tenants who are denied the right to opt out can deduct subscription costs from their rent.

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