It’s been textbook knowledge for over a century that our Milky Way galaxy is doomed to collide with another large spiral galaxy, Andromeda, in the next five billion years and merge into one even bigger galaxy. But a fresh analysis published in the journal Nature Astronomy is casting that longstanding narrative in a more uncertain light. The authors conclude that the likelihood of this collision and merger is closer to the odds of a coin flip, with a roughly 50 percent probability that the two galaxies will avoid such an event during the next ten billion years.

Both the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies (M31) are part of what’s known as the Local Group (LG), which also hosts other smaller galaxies (some not yet discovered) as well as dark matter (per the prevailing standard cosmological model). Both already have remnants of past mergers and interactions with other galaxies, according to the authors.

“Predicting future mergers requires knowledge about the present coordinates, velocities, and masses of the systems partaking in the interaction,” the authors wrote. That involves not just the gravitational force between them but also dynamical friction. It’s the latter that dominates when galaxies are headed toward a merger, since it causes galactic orbits to decay.

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Nothing plans to launch the Phone 3, its first proper flagship, on July 1, the company announced today. We already knew the phone was coming this summer, thanks to a teaser Nothing shared during last month’s The Android Show I/O Edition. During the segment, Nothing CEO Carl Pei said the new device will cost around £800 ($1080), which would easily make it the most expensive handset the company has produced to date. Pei also said Nothing plans to go “all-in” on Phone 3 with “premium materials, major performance upgrades and software that really levels things up.” 

It will be interesting to see how Nothing builds on the Phone 3a and 3a Pro (pictured above), the two mid-range handsets the company released earlier this year. I reviewed both phones for Engadget, and felt they offered great value for the asking price of $379 and $459. I’m also curious to see if Nothing decides to make a proper push into the US market. While you can buy the company’s phones stateside, they don’t have robust carrier support. In any case, we’ll find out more about the new Phone 3 next month.   

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/the-nothing-phone-3-arrives-in-july-134121908.html?src=rss

You can no longer use Google Wallet to pay with your PayPal account in the US. As Android Authority has reported, Google has updated the Wallet Help page to state that the integration will be ending on June 13. Your linked PayPal account can no longer be used to pay for anything, and it will automatically be deleted from the digital wallet application. To be able to continue paying online with the app, including recurring payments for subscriptions, you’d have to add at least one card if you haven’t yet. 

While it’s no longer possible to link a PayPal account to Wallet, it’ll still work as intended if you attach a PayPal-branded debit card to the app, which will also let you spend your Paypal balance. It’s just the account integration itself that will no longer work. That said, the change seems to only affect users in the US. In Germany, where the option to link PayPal accounts to Wallet is also available, PayPal will continue supporting the integration. 

Google Wallet lets you store cards for payment online and for tap-to-pay services, as well as documents that include digital passports, state IDs, driver’s licenses, virtual car keys and flight information. Last year, Google shut down its standalone Pay app in favor of Wallet in order to simplify its payment options. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-wallets-paypal-integration-is-ending-this-june-133045777.html?src=rss

I remember the moment I reached for the knife: I was attempting to divide a clump of irises with rhizomes so thick that my shovel refused to cut through them.  I thought to myself, “a serrated knife would cut right through these”—and after a moment of reflection, couldn’t come up with a reason not to do precisely that. And just like that, a bread knife that saw no action in the kitchen became one of my most valued garden tools.

The key to being efficient in the garden is to use the right tools for the job, and there’s no rule that says those tools have to come from the garden center. If you identify a non-traditional tool that can do the job, don’t be afraid to claim it from whatever part of the house it usually lives in and reallocate it to your garden. 

Serrated knives

When your shovel can’t get through roots, and a hori hori is too short, it’s time to take out a long bread knife. What I like most about using a bread knife is that I can stick it right into the ground and use it like a saw on resistant root balls, rhizomes or roots.  As long as you wipe off the knife when you’re done with it, it shouldn’t rust, and should remain a trusted tool in the yard. 

PVC pipe

PVC pipe being used as a dibbler.
Credit: Amanda Blum

A traditional dibbler is a tool you use to make indentations in the soil, to place seeds in. Turns out, a stick of PVC pipe does roughly the same thing. And if you misplace a piece of PVC in the yard, it won’t drive you crazy the way it does when I misplace my dibbler. In fact, PVC is more effective than a dibbler when it comes time to plant leeks, which you dig up and replant every few months so that more of the stem is blanched underground. When you replant them, you want a hold that’s very narrow and 10 inches deep—and PVC gets the job done. 

But PVC can do more. It’s the perfect material for building hoops for a low tunnel over your beds, and because of all the connectors and fittings for PVC, you could even build a small greenhouse out of it.

Electric toothbrush 

While you’re not going to find a method for pollination better than good ol’ bees, there are instances where your plants are going to need an assist. Sometimes, you don’t have a lot of pollinators around, and sometimes you’re gardening indoors. In those cases, you need an electric toothbrush, or, uh, anything else that vibrates.  Once the plant has blossoms, and those blossoms are open, you hold the vibrating tool against it, and you will see the air fill with pollen, like a yellow cloud. Some of that pollen will land on other flowers and pollinate. I’ve found this method wildly effective on my indoor gardens.

Copper pennies

Copper pennies being used as a slug shield.
Credit: Amanda Blum

With pennies about to be decommissioned by the US Mint, here’s another way to use up the ones you have. If they were made before 1982, they’re made of copper, and if there’s one thing slugs hate, it’s copper. It gives slugs a shock, and they usually will not cross it. Sure, you could buy copper tape—or you can just glue copper pennies around your raised beds. I like epoxy for this, rather than hot glue, since hot glue is just going to melt again in the heat. 

Wire trash cans

Wire trash can as plant cage.
Credit: Amanda Blum

Perhaps you don’t have chickens who want to devour all your plants and are instead just dealing with the average birds, raccoons, rats, and squirrels. In any case, a wire trash can serve as an excellent cage for your plants, keeping animals out while the plant gets big enough to stand on its own. The dollar store is an excellent place to locate these gems, and when you do, grab a bunch of them. 

Five-gallon buckets and milk crates

5 gallon buckets being used for weed collection
Credit: Amanda Blum

Look, I’m convinced five gallon buckets—the cheap ones you get at Home Depot—are the unsung heroes of garden work. There’s always eight to 10 of them kicking around my yard. When I’m weeding, I look for the closest bucket to toss them in. When I get into a tight squeeze where my wheelbarrow can’t reach, a bucket is great for scooping and dumping. It’s easy to toss a bunch of buckets in the back of the car if I’m running to get sand or soil for the garden, or if I’m picking up a freebie plant from a neighbor that needs something to ride in until I plant it. Fill a bucket with water and dunk entire plants in that have become hydrophobic. You can use buckets to mix soil amendments. Buckets can make a decent planter, too, if you drill holes in them. I’ve seen driveway gardens full of tomatoes and peppers in five-gallon buckets. 

In a similar vein, milk crates are invaluable for garden storage, since water can’t pool in them. You can see everything stored in them at a glance, and they stack. Being able to stack things in a garden is an equivalent to discovering a dress has pockets: priceless. But the best use of milk crates is to use them for planting bulbs. Flower farmers often use the crates that bulbs are shipped in (which look like milk crates) for planting that year’s bulbs, and once the crates are filled with soil and start flowering, you won’t notice the crate.

Cardboard

Cardboard sheet mulching.
Credit: Amanda Blum

In my neighborhood, large cardboard rarely makes it to the recycling station. It is quickly claimed for gardening, because clean tape- and paint-free cardboard is the basis for sheet mulching. If you want to kill your grass, tamp down weeds, and/or create walkways in your garden, you start with a layer of cardboard. It will smother whatever is under it, and as the cardboard decomposes, add nitrogen to the soil. In a similar vein, cardboard can be the brown in your composting bin, which should be balanced with the green (grass clippings, leaves, stems, etc). 

You can also use cardboard in germination. Some seeds, like carrots, are a real bugger to germinate, and need consistent moisture, and don’t much like the sun at this stage. A sheet of cardboard over your carrot seeds will keep the soil moist and ensure darkness. Lift the cardboard after a week or two and check the germination. Once you see seedlings, remove the cardboard. 

Scissors

Cutting sweet peas with a scissor.
Credit: Amanda Blum

I have every pair of pruners out there (I tend to lose them, somehow), but for some situations, nothing beats a pair of scissors. For delicate flowers like sweet peas, trying to get a pair of pruners between the growing vines will do more harm than good. I consistently find myself needing to cut twine while out and about in summer, and pruners rarely give a clean cut. 

Good news to anyone living in the European Economic Area (EEA): Microsoft is toning down its “pick me” energy in order to further comply with the Digital Markets Act. The company has announced updates that notably include Microsoft Edge no longer begging to be your default browser. However, if you open the AI-powered browser, the guilt trip will return for the time being. This change should already be available, rolling in with an Edge update released on Thursday, May 29. 

On top of that, you should no longer get pestered by other apps to reinstall Microsoft Edge if you choose to remove it altogether. The only exception are progressive web apps (PWAs) that have Microsoft Edge tech. This update is still coming to some apps, and should roll out to Windows 10 and 11 this month.

You can also separate yourself even further from the tech giant and uninstall the Microsoft Store on your device. Any apps you already downloaded will continue to update. The new option should come “later this year” on Windows 10 and 11 devices. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/microsoft-edge-will-stop-begging-you-for-attention-in-europe-at-least-130038477.html?src=rss

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

If you’ve been holding out for a good deal on wired headphones, the Sennheiser HD 660S2 is currently sitting at $349.99 on Woot, down from its original $679.95. That’s a serious cut for a set of headphones that usually don’t dip below the $400 mark elsewhere—for reference, they’re $415.90 on Amazon right now. Plus, Prime members get free standard shipping (non-Prime buyers pay $6 for delivery), and it comes with a two-year Sennheiser manufacturer warranty. That said, Woot doesn’t ship this item to Alaska, Hawaii, or P.O. boxes.

Thanks to the open-back build of the HD 660S2, you get a wide, natural soundstage that makes instruments and vocals feel more spacious. And with 300 ohms of impedance, they do their best work when paired with a good amp or DAC, delivering deep bass without being muddy; even at louder volumes, the sound stays clean and detailed. Comfort is handled well too—the velour ear pads are soft, and the headband has precise notches for a snug, repeatable fit. Long sessions are fine for most, though you might notice some fatigue after several hours, depending on how sensitive you are.

You do have a couple of small trade-offs. There’s some audio leakage, as with any open-back design, so they’re not ideal for shared spaces. Also, while they include two cables (one with a quarter-inch connector and one with a 4.4mm balanced plug), both are just under six feet—fine for casual setups, but maybe a bit short for studio rigs or larger rooms, notes this PCMag review. Still, for those who want clear, balanced sound without artificial tuning and don’t mind being tethered to a wire, the HD 660S2 offers a lot of value at this price. For more options, here are our picks for best over-ear headphones.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Broadcom’s VMware business unit has dropped the lowest tier of its channel program, a move one analyst told The Register will benefit its rivals. The virtualization pioneer currently operates a four-tier channel program spanning Pinnacle, Premier, Select, and Registered partners. On Sunday the business unit announced the retirement of the Registered tier. A blog post written by Brian Moats, Broadcom’s Senior Vice President for Global Commercial Sales and Partners, states VMware made the decision because “the vast majority of customer impact and business momentum comes from partners operating within the top three tiers.”

Laura Falko, Broadcom’s Head of Global Partner Programs, Marketing & Experience, told The Register “The vast majority of these [Registered] partners are inactive and lack the capabilities to support customers through VMware’s evolving private cloud journey. That’s why the Registered tier is being retired to ensure every active partner meets a higher standard of technical, sales, and service readiness.” Falko told us VMware will give Registered partners 60 days’ notice before deauthorization and then “work proactively with affected customers to transition them to qualified partners in the new ecosystem, ensuring continuity and support throughout the change.”

VMware has also introduced new requirements for partners in its remaining tiers. The virtualization giant will require Pinnacle and Premier partners to maintain dedicated sales and technical resources, and to “execute joint business plans with VMware to ensure alignment and delivery with mutual results.” The Broadcom business unit is also “beginning the process of transitioning partners who no longer meet the minimum program requirements or have not demonstrated consistent engagement,” suggesting even Pinnacle, Premier, and Select partners are not safe. The Register asked VMware to define “consistent engagement” and Falko told us it includes “regular deal activity,” ongoing participation in joint sales activities, staying up to date with training, and “sustained, proactive commitment to a partner’s VMware customer base.” The changes will only apply in its Americas, and Asia-Pacific and Japan regions. Broadcom didn’t explain why Europe was excluded.

The Register notes that trade associations in Europe have criticized Broadcom’s changes at VMware and urged the European Commission to investigate the company.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Black Voices in Gaming will be at Summer Game Fest 2025, with its showcase taking place on June 9 at 12PM Eastern time. You’ll be able to stream it live online on The Game Awards YouTube channel. The non-profit organization focuses on putting a spotlight on titles created by Black game developers and on curating culturally relevant games centered on the lived experiences of Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC). On X, the team said you can expect “world premieres, dope interviews, and bold voices pushing the culture forward” during the event. It didn’t list out the games it’s going to feature, but you can peek at the kind of titles the organization champions on its website.

Summer Game Fest kicks off on June 6 with its opening livestream, followed by the indie-focused showcase Day of the Devs. On June 7, you can watch a showcase for time-sucking cozy games called Wholesome Direct, as well as the Women-led Games Showcase that will feature 39 titles from women-led and majority women development teams. That will be followed by the Latin American Games Showcase for titles created by Latin American developers and the Green Games Showcase for games that make direct contributions to green initiatives. On June 8, there will be showcase dedicated to Xbox games, featuring reveals and updates from across Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda and Activision Blizzard. In addition, Death Stranding 2 will premiere at the event on the evening of June 8. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/how-to-watch-black-voices-in-gaming-at-summer-game-fest-2025-125906747.html?src=rss

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Putting together a cake might seem straightforward, but it’s so much harder than it looks. Making the “bones” of the cake sturdy is just as important as making the outside look good, and having layers that are domed or topsy-turvy can mess up your cake from the jump. I’ve been a professional cake decorator for 14 years and there’s one tool that makes cake baking so much easier that I no longer bake without them: cake strips. 

Wilton Bake Even Cake Strips

$9.87
at Amazon

$9.87
at Amazon

One thing that used to drive me crazy in commercial kitchens and bakeries is food waste. Some waste is to be expected, but it can become rather extreme. Working as a cake decorator, I would chop off pounds of domed cake tops a day to make flat cake layers. As you might guess, if the layers aren’t flat, the cake won’t be straight. Those tops went straight into the trash.

Cake strips ensure your cakes rise and cook evenly. They reduce irregular humps in your cakes, which means you don’t have to cut anything off and waste it. At roughly five dollars each and with (potentially) years of use, cake strips can save you money and put more cake in your belly. 

Why cakes dome on top

If you’ve ever baked cake, muffins, or even cookies, you’ve witnessed the phenomenon of a domed center and browned, short edges. This is to be expected. The batter or dough on the edges, directly in contact with the metal cake pan, heats up and cooks first. With cake, these areas cook and solidify before the leavening agent reaches its maximum potential—thus, shorter edges. The center of the cake takes longer to heat up and so the baking powder or baking soda has a chance to fully activate, rising fully. There’s nothing wrong with this most of the time—muffins get beautiful cracks and pointy tops, and cookies get soft, chewy centers. Cakes, however, with a tall domed top and shorter edges, can complicate things.

Cake strips make better cakes

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Cake strips are genius in their simplicity. They’re long pieces of sturdy cotton fabric—sometimes they’ll be shiny with a metallic fabric—and they’re multiple layers thick. On one end there are two small cotton loops. You use cake strips by soaking them in water and then wrapping them around the outside of round cake pans, securing one end into the cotton loops on the other end, like a belt. This damp cotton strip essentially insulates the edges of the cake pan so they don’t cook as fast, giving the leavening agent plenty of time to fully activate. The cake batter bakes evenly, cooking in the center at the same rate as the outside edges and resulting in a flat cake. 

How to use cake strips

I usually drop my cake strips into a bowl of water in the sink and let them soak while I’m preparing the cake batter. Once everything is in the pan and the oven is preheated, I’ll wring out the cake strips (they should be wet but not dripping everywhere) and wrap the cake pans. I take a moment to ensure the strip is pushed all the way up toward the top of the rim. If the cotton touches the oven racks under the pan then you can get a little toasty spot on the cotton. (Light browning over time is to be expected, but rest assured, these cake strips are perfectly safe to use inside of gas or electric ovens.)

I buy these Wilton brand cake strips for about $5 each (they sometimes come in a two-pack for $10). Wilton is a cake brand I’ve used for years and I find them to make consistently reliable products. Most cake strips are built for nine-inch cakes, but there are no rules against piggy-backing your cake strips. I link two strips together to cover 12-inch cake rounds all the time. 

While cake strips aren’t efficient for large-scale cake operations—wrapping hundreds of cake pans would be too much of a time-suck—they’re excellent for home use or small independent bakery situations. Yes, I’ve replaced working in production bakeries for writing food hacks for you fine folks, but I do make wedding cakes and celebration cakes on a low-production scale. I can honestly say that there’s not one cake that goes in my oven without a cake strip around it. 

I did not expect to feature NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers in the Tuesday Telescope so soon, but a recent photo she shared is just sublime. (In case you missed it, we wrote about her photo of lightning from space about a month ago.)

This week Ayers has a time-lapse sequence she captured from the Cupola as the International Space Station soared near Central and South America.

“Soooooo much going on in this picture,” Ayers wrote on the social media site X. “You can see Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, with South America off in the distance.”

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The FDA has launched the generative AI tool, Elsa, agency-wide to help its employees with everything from clinical reviews to investigations. Sure, we’re living in a time of widespread disinformation and pushbacks against science, but why not rush things through with AI?

Elsa — yes, weirdly like the snow queen from Frozen — completed a “very successful pilot program with FDA’s scientific reviewers.” According to the FDA, the AI tool can help with reading, writing and summarizing everything from adverse events to assessments. Elsa can also do label comparisons and generate code. It’s already being used to speed up clinical protocol reviews and scientific evaluations, along with finding “high-priority inspection targets.”

Elsa should be a secure platform, the FDA states. It’s not clear how exactly the agency trained Elsa, but the FDA claims it’s not through “data submitted by regulated industry.” The information exists in Amazon Web Services’ GovCloud that, again, should keep all information internal.

The FDA calls Elsa the first step in its AI journey. “Today marks the dawn of the AI era at the FDA with the release of Elsa, AI is no longer a distant promise but a dynamic force enhancing and optimizing the performance and potential of every employee,” said FDA Chief AI Officer Jeremy Walsh. “As we learn how employees are using the tool, our development team will be able to add capabilities and grow with the needs of employees and the agency.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-fda-rolls-out-its-own-ai-to-speed-up-clinical-reviews-and-scientific-evaluations-120052323.html?src=rss

Tracking code that Meta and Russia-based Yandex embed into millions of websites is de-anonymizing visitors by abusing legitimate Internet protocols, causing Chrome and other browsers to surreptitiously send unique identifiers to native apps installed on a device, researchers have discovered. Google says it’s investigating the abuse, which allows Meta and Yandex to convert ephemeral web identifiers into persistent mobile app user identities.

The covert tracking—implemented in the Meta Pixel and Yandex Metrica trackers—allows Meta and Yandex to bypass core security and privacy protections provided by both the Android operating system and browsers that run on it. Android sandboxing, for instance, isolates processes to prevent them from interacting with the OS and any other app installed on the device, cutting off access to sensitive data or privileged system resources. Defenses such as state partitioning and storage partitioning, which are built into all major browsers, store site cookies and other data associated with a website in containers that are unique to every top-level website domain to ensure they’re off-limits for every other site.

A blatant violation

“One of the fundamental security principles that exists in the web, as well as the mobile system, is called sandboxing,” Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez, one of the researchers behind the discovery, said in an interview. “You run everything in a sandbox, and there is no interaction within different elements running on it. What this attack vector allows is to break the sandbox that exists between the mobile context and the web context. The channel that exists allowed the Android system to communicate what happens in the browser with the identity running in the mobile app.”

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The promise is seductive: Snap a photo of your meal, and artificial intelligence will instantly tell you exactly how many calories you’re consuming. No more tedious manual logging, no more guessing at portion sizes, no more human error. Apps like Cal AI, Lose It!, and MyFitnessPal’s new photo features claim to revolutionize calorie tracking by letting your smartphone’s camera do the heavy lifting.

But as someone with a long, complicated history with calorie counting—and admittedly, a somewhat cursed expertise in it—I can tell you that counting calories with a photo is exactly as stupid as it sounds.

How AI-powered calorie counting is supposed to work

Calorie counting apps promise to solve what developers claim is the biggest problem with calorie tracking: human error. The pitch is compelling—why spend time searching databases and measuring portions when your phone can instantly analyze your plate?

Apps like Cal AI or SnapCalorie AI use visual cues like color, texture, and relative size to make educated guesses about what you’re eating and how much of it there is.

They claim that AI methods can solve the pesky problem of human accuracy in calorie estimation—which, to be fair, is easy to get wrong. Cal AI markets itself as one of the more sophisticated options in this space, so I decided to see for myself. The app was free for the first three days, then $29.99/year.

The setup process is straightforward: Download the app, create an account, input basic demographic information, and set your goals. Here’s where I encountered my first red flag. The app cheerfully informed me that “losing 10 lbs is a realistic target”—except that losing 10 pounds would actually push me into underweight BMI territory. This kind of blanket statement reveals a concerning lack of nuance about individual health needs.

Cal AI’s photo logging process follows these steps:

1. Take a clear photo of your food, ideally against a plain background.

2. Make sure all ingredients are visible and well-lit.

3. Include a reference object (like a coin or your hand) for scale.

4. Upload the image and wait for AI analysis.

5. Review and correct the app’s identifications and portion estimates.

6. Save the entry to your daily log.

The app provides detailed tips for getting better results: Use natural lighting, avoid shadows, keep the camera parallel to the plate, and ensure no ingredients are hidden. These guidelines sound reasonable in theory, but they hint at the fundamental challenge these apps face—the complexity of real-world eating.

The reality is wildly disappointing

I started my testing with something simple: a Pink Lady apple weighing 222 grams. Surely this would be an easy win for the AI—apples are among the most photographed foods on earth, with a distinctive shape and color that should be instantly recognizable.

Cal AI confidently identified my apple as tikka masala.

Gorgeous tikka masala, yes?
Credit: Meredith Dietz

I gave it another chance, this time photographing the apple alongside its barcode and sitting on a kitchen scale displaying its exact weight. The app did recognize it as an apple this time, but estimated it at 80 calories when the actual count should have been closer to 120. That’s a 33% underestimation—not exactly the precision you’d want if you’re trying to track intake accurately.

The real test came with a more complex meal: my current meal-prepped lunch of fried tofu, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, feta cheese, and chickpeas, all generously dressed with an oil-based homemade vinaigrette. This is the kind of mixed dish that presumably showcases AI’s advantage over manual logging—no need to search for individual ingredients or estimate their quantities.

The results were a masterclass in algorithmic overconfidence. The app identified the golden-brown fried tofu as croutons, which I had to manually correct. It did a reasonably good job recognizing the vegetables and feta, but completely whiffed on the oil content. Despite the salad being visibly glistening with dressing, the app estimated the entire dish at 450 calories.

This estimate was laughably low. A single can of chickpeas contains about 400 calories, and my portion included roughly that amount plus significant quantities of feta cheese and several tablespoons of olive-oil-based dressing. A realistic calorie count for this meal would have been closer to 800 to 900 calories.

The app’s portion estimation proved even more problematic than its ingredient identification. When I photographed a smaller serving—less than a quarter of the original salad—Cal AI estimated it at 250 calories. According to the app’s own logic, less than 25% of the meal somehow contained more than 55% of its calories. The math simply doesn’t work.

Cal AI was way, way off.
Credit: Meredith Dietz

This highlights a fundamental limitation of photo-based calorie counting: Cameras capture two-dimensional images of three-dimensional objects. Without consistent reference points or sophisticated depth analysis, estimating volume from photos remains largely guesswork. Even humans struggle with this task, which is why nutrition professionals typically recommend weighing foods for accuracy.

To get a fuller picture of the AI calorie counting landscape, I also tested two other popular apps: SnapCalorie and Calorie Mama.

SnapCalorie: better numbers, same problems

SnapCalorie did immediately assuage some skepticism by suggesting a much more reasonable daily calorie target of 1,900 calories, compared to Cal AI’s problematic weight loss messaging. However, this accuracy comes at a steep price—$79.99 per year after just a one-week free trial, making it the most expensive option I tested.

The app does offer one interesting feature: an “add note” function that lets you provide additional context about ingredients the camera can’t see. In theory, this addresses one of the fundamental limitations of photo-based tracking.

SnapCalorie has a useful “add note” feature and more accurate results.
Credit: Meredith Dietz

When I tested SnapCalorie with the same Pink Lady apple, it performed much better than Cal AI, estimating 115 calories. But the Greek salad test revealed familiar problems. SnapCalorie’s initial estimate was an absurdly low 257 calories. When I photographed a smaller portion—the same sub-quarter serving that had stumped Cal AI—SnapCalorie estimated 184 calories. The math still didn’t work; this smaller portion should have been roughly 25% of the larger serving, not 70%.

Determined to give the app a fair shot, I used the note feature to manually specify “full container of tofu, feta, chickpeas and olive oil.” With this human intervention, SnapCalorie bumped its estimate to 761 calories—much more reasonable and accurate, though still on the low side.

But this raises the obvious question: If I need to manually input detailed ingredient information to get accurate results, what exactly is the photo accomplishing? I’m essentially doing the work of traditional calorie counting while going through the motions of taking pictures.

Calorie Mama: when AI doesn’t even try

Calorie Mama provided the most frustrating and laughable experience of the three apps. The interface feels rudimentary, and the AI’s performance is so poor that the app essentially abandons the premise of automated photo analysis.

After uploading a photo, Calorie Mama requires you to manually confirm not just the food items but also their portion sizes. This defeats the entire purpose of photo-based logging—you’re doing all the work that manual entry would require anyway.

When I uploaded my Greek salad photo, Calorie Mama identified it simply as “tofu”—ignoring the vegetables, feta cheese, chickpeas, and dressing entirely. The app then asked me to manually adjust the portion size and seemed to consider the logging complete, as if a complex mixed dish contained nothing but plain tofu.

This wasn’t just inaccurate; it was useless. At least Cal AI and SnapCalorie attempted to recognize multiple ingredients, even if their calorie estimates were off. Calorie Mama appeared to give up on the core challenge entirely, relegating the AI to little more than a gimmicky photo storage system.

AI-powered calorie counting wasted my time

The promise of AI-powered calorie counting is efficiency—snap and go, no manual entry required. But my experience revealed a different reality. I spent considerable time correcting ingredient identifications, adjusting portion sizes, and second-guessing the app’s estimates. In many cases, I would have been faster using traditional manual logging with a food scale and database search.

This creates a frustrating conundrum: If you don’t scrutinize the AI’s results, you’ll get wildly inaccurate data. But if you do verify every entry, you lose the time-saving benefit that justified using the technology in the first place. It’s the worst of both worlds—the effort of manual tracking combined with the uncertainty of automated guessing.

Perhaps most concerning is what happens when users don’t have the background to recognize inaccurate estimates. My years of calorie counting experience—problematic as that history may be—gave me the knowledge to spot when Cal AI’s numbers were off. But what about users who trust the technology?

Systematic underestimation of calories could be particularly harmful for people trying to lose weight, as it might lead them to believe they’re eating less than they actually are. Conversely, overestimation could cause unnecessary restriction or anxiety around food. Either way, inaccurate data undermines the entire purpose of tracking.

The fundamental issue with AI calorie counting apps isn’t just technical—it’s philosophical. These tools emerge from and reinforce the idea that precise calorie tracking is both necessary and beneficial for health. But research suggests that obsessive calorie counting may do more harm than good for many people.

Intuitive eating, which focuses on internal hunger and satiety cues rather than external metrics, has shown promise as a more sustainable and psychologically healthy approach to nutrition. This framework emphasizes developing a healthy relationship with food based on how it makes you feel rather than hitting specific numerical targets.

For most people, understanding general principles of balanced nutrition—eating plenty of vegetables, choosing whole grains over refined ones, including adequate protein—provides better long-term outcomes than meticulous calorie tracking.

The bottom line

AI-powered calorie counting apps promise to solve human error in dietary tracking, but they introduce new forms of inaccuracy while maintaining many of the old problems. If your goal is simply to get a rough estimate of how many calories are in generic foods, these apps might provide some value. But for anyone seeking precision in their intake tracking, traditional methods combined with food scales remain more reliable.

More importantly, I’d question whether precise calorie counting serves your health goals at all. For many people, developing a more intuitive relationship with food—one based on satisfaction, energy levels, and overall well-being rather than numerical targets—leads to better physical and mental health. Maybe the old-fashioned approach of listening to our bodies works better than any algorithm.

It’s time to game. Kicking off June 6, with Summer Game Fest Live, SGF 2025 runs through to June 9, with the likes of Xbox Games Showcase and even Death Stranding 2 live game premiere likely to make headlines. There is a bunch of others in store, including Day of the Devs. Devolver Direct and Wholesome Direct are peppering the schedule.

For Xbox, games in the pipeline include the new Fable, Perfect Dark, Gears of War: E-Day, Everwild, State of Decay 3, Clockwork Revolution, Hideo Kojima’s OD and Contraband.

What about Nintendo (although it’s a bit busy) and Sony? Traditionally, both have their own presentations, but there is no word yet on either. Ubisoft usually does a thing too, but nothing’s on the docket.

The most recent headline-makers include a glimpse at The Witcher 4, courtesy of Unreal, and a closer look at IO Interactive’s 007 First Light, a James Bond game from the studio responsible for the incredible Hitman series. Hopefully, there are further surprises. Maybe a Silksong release date? Gosh, I can be silly.

— Mat Smith

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The news you might have missed

• Playdate Season 2 review: Fulcrum Defender, Dig! Dig! Dino! and Blippo+

• We might not be getting that handheld Xbox for some time

• Microsoft integrates OpenAI’s Sora video creator into Bing

• The latest Xbox kitchen kitsch is a Series X milk jug for Canadians

I still don’t miss E3

How SGF gave games media a better kind of trade event

Summer Games Fest kicks off at the end of the week. We’re sending a small team of editors to watch, play and interview their way through all the biggest reveals and experiences. While it doesn’t yet have the iconic weight of E3 — which is all but dead — SGF is a crucial lightning rod for most of the gaming industry. Jessica Conditt lays out why she prefers the new form of the gaming trade show — and how she might have cursed the whole thing with her witchy powers.

Continue reading.

28 Years Later used 20 iPhones at the same time

The film used three iPhone rigs.

Sony

Director Danny Boyle has discussed the use of iPhones for 28 Years Later in an interview with IGN. The movies used three special rigs for the iPhone sequences: one for eight cameras, which one person can carry, another with ten and another with 20.

“I never say this, but there is an incredible shot in the second half [of the film] where we use the 20-rig camera, and you’ll know it when you see it,” Boyle told IGN. He described the 20-iPhone rig as “basically a poor man’s bullet time.”

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Stranger Things 5 finally has a release date

Spread across three volumes.

Netflix

While I thought they’d keep the Stranger Things train rolling until Bobby Milly Brown morphed into Winona Ryder, this is the end. Netflix has finally revealed the release date for the show’s fifth and final season: November 26. Volume one has four episodes, followed a month later by three episodes for volume two on Christmas Day (December 25) and the final episode on New Year’s Eve (December 31).

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-111341868.html?src=rss

Exercise is generally good for you, but a new high-quality clinical trial finds that it’s so good, it can even knock back colon cancer—and, in fact, rival some chemotherapy treatments.

The finding comes from a phase 3, randomized clinical trial led by researchers in Canada, who studied nearly 900 people who had undergone surgery and chemotherapy for colon cancer. After those treatments, patients were evenly split into groups that either bulked up their regular exercise routines in a three-year program that included coaching and supervision or were simply given health education. The researchers found that the exercise group had a 28 percent lower risk of their colon cancer recurring, new cancers developing, or dying over eight years compared with the health education group.

The benefits of exercise, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, became visible after just one year and increased over time, the researchers found. The rate of people who survived for five years and remained cancer-free was 80.3 percent among the exercise group. That’s a 6.4 percentage-point survival boost over the education group, which had a 73.9 percent cancer-free survival rate. The overall survival rate (with or without cancer) during the study’s eight-year follow-up was 90.3 percent in the exercise group compared with 83.2 percent in the education group—a 7.1 percentage point difference. Exercise reduced the relative risk of death by 37 percent (41 people died in the exercise group compared with 66 in the education group).

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People Can Fly, the developer of Outriders and Gears of War: Judgement, announced Monday that its ending development on two of its upcoming games due to issues with its publisher and an inability to secure funding to continue development. As part of this decision, People Can Fly will be forced “significantly regroup” and “scale down [its] teams,” the studio’s CEO Sebastian Wojciechowksi shared in a statement on LinkedIn.

The statement doesn’t elaborate on how many staff will be impacted by the cuts, but does call out Project Gemini and Project Bifrost as the two games being cancelled. People Can Fly made the decision to shut down Gemini because the game’s publisher failed to provide a publishing agreement and didn’t communicate “its willingness to continue or terminate the Gemini project.” Without that publishing deal or the funds to continue working on Bifrost — a self-published VR game — the studio was forced to cancel it, too.

This isn’t the first time People Can Fly has shut down a project or made cuts to its teams. In December 2024, the studio announced that it was ending development on a game called Project Victoria and also reducing the number of people working on Bifrost. In that same announcement, People Can Fly also revealed that Square Enix was publishing Gemini.

People Can Fly last worked with Square Enix to publish Outriders, somewhat of a minor cult hit now, but not a commercial success at launch. Even with the cuts and cancelled games, the studio still has multiple upcoming projects in the works, including Project Delta, which People Can Fly is creating for Sony and Gears of War: E-Day, which the studio is co-developing with Xbox studio The Coalition.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/people-can-fly-cancels-two-games-and-lays-off-developers-220310524.html?src=rss

Microsoft introduced an AI-powered video generator to its Bing search engine. Bing Video Creator is powered by OpenAI‘s Sora, which creates short clips based on text prompts. The free feature is rolling out to the Bing mobile app starting today and is slated to arrive later on desktop and to Copilot Search.

Microsoft has invested multiple billions of dollars into OpenAI in support of its artificial intelligence endeavors over the years. The tech giant integrated the DALL-E image generation capability from OpenAI into the Bing search engine in 2023, so it’s not surprising that it has followed a similar path with the company’s Sora video tool.

However, Sora had a rocky launch with a rebuke from YouTube’s CEO not to train on its videos and protests from several of its early testing participants. The model became broadly available at the end of last year. It’s also facing more competition from other video AI models offering more complex features, such as Google’s Veo 3.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/microsoft-integrates-openais-sora-video-creator-into-bing-215421408.html?src=rss

Broadcom has cut the lowest tier in its VMware partner program. The move allows the enterprise technology firm to continue its focus on customers with larger VMware deployments, but it also risks more migrations from VMware users and partners.

Broadcom ousts low-tier VMware partners

In a blog post on Sunday, Broadcom executive Brian Moats announced that the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program for VMware Resellers, which became the VMware partner program after Broadcom eliminated the original one in January 2024, would now offer three tiers instead of four. Broadcom is killing the Registered tier, leaving the Pinnacle, Premier, and Select tiers.

The reduction is a result of Broadcom’s “strategic direction” and a “comprehensive partner review” and affects VMware’s Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Japan geographies, Moats wrote. Affected partners are receiving 60 days’ notice, Laura Falko, Broadcom’s head of global partner programs, marketing, and experience, told The Register.

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Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, a reporter who’s covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget.

Please enjoy — and I’ll see you next week.

It’s the week of Summer Game Fest, so I’m mentally wrapped up in a complex web of embargoes, meetings, schedules and cryptic invites, and I can already smell the plasticky, sanitized air that accompanies video game conventions of all sizes. Mmm, smells like pixels.

This will be my third SGF and I’m looking forward to it, as usual. I appreciate the event’s focus on independent projects, diverse creators and smaller-scale publishers, particularly with shows like Day of the Devs, Wholesome Direct, Women-Led Games, and the Latin American and Southeast Asian games showcases. I deeply believe that innovation in the industry stems from these untethered, experimental spaces, and SGF has consistently provided room for these types of experiences to shine.

I appreciate SGF even more after spending seven years wandering the cavernous halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center, covering the Electronic Entertainment Expo. E3 was exciting in its own right and I feel privileged to have attended it so many times, but it was also a soulless kind of show. E3 was unwelcoming to independent creators and packed with corporate swag, and by the time Sony decided to stop attending in 2019, it felt like an expensive, out-of-touch misrepresentation of the video game industry as a whole. The best parts of E3 in its final years were the unaffiliated events hosted by Devolver Digital, which took place in a nearby parking lot packed with Airstream trailers, food trucks and fabulous, up-and-coming indie games. It felt a lot like SGF, in fact.

I wrote about this phenomenon in 2018, in a story that questioned whether the video game industry needed E3 at all. Perhaps because I’m a witch but mostly due to the pandemic, E3 shut down in 2020 and it never re-emerged as an in-person show. The Entertainment Software Association hosted one virtual session in 2021, but nothing afterward, and E3 was officially declared dead in December 2023. Meanwhile, the video game market has continued to grow, driven by a maturing indie segment, mobile play and harsh crunch-layoff cycles at the AAA level.

Now, the ESA is back with a new video game showcase called iicon, the Interactive Innovation Conference, heading to Las Vegas in April 2026. The industry’s biggest names are involved, including Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Epic Games, Electronic Arts, Disney, Amazon and Take-Two Interactive, and the show is poised to be “a space for visionaries across industries to come together,” according to ESA president Stanley Pierre-Louis. E3 2.0 has arrived, and it seems to be as AAA-focused as ever. For what it’s worth, Summer Game Fest has its own version of a AAA thought-leader summit this year with The Game Business Live.

Meanwhile, the ESA has remained silent — even when directly asked — as some of the industry’s most influential companies roll back their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, at a time when women, POC and LGBT+ employees are enduring active existential threats. And during Pride Month, no less.

All of this is to say, I’m stoked for Summer Game Fest this year. It all kicks off with a live show on Friday, June 6, and we have a rundown of the full schedule right here. We’ll be publishing hands-on previews, developer interviews and news directly from SGF over the weekend and beyond, so stay tuned to Engadget’s Gaming hub.

The news

Playtonic layoffs

Playtonic, the studio behind Yooka-Laylee, has laid off an undisclosed number of employees across multiple departments, including production, art, game design, narrative design and UI/UX. In a message shared on X, the studio’s leaders said, “This isn’t simply a difficult moment, it’s a period of profound change in how games are created and financed. The landscape is shifting, and with it, so must we.” Playtonic’s latest game, Yooka-Replaylee, is due to come out this year. Though Playtonic is a small, privately owned company (with a minority investment from Tencent), the timing of the layoffs fits the established playbook of many AAA studios, which operate with periods of crunch and bulk layoffs baked into their business plans.

EA cans Black Panther

Electronic Arts revealed its plans to make a single-player, third-person Black Panther game back in 2023 as part of a broader Marvel push at the studio, but apparently, things have changed. EA canceled its Black Panther project and closed the studio that was building it, Cliffhanger Games. EA Motive, the team behind the stellar Dead Space remake, is still working on an Iron Man game, as far as we know.

Roll7 returns to Steam

Any time I can gas up Rollerdrome or OlliOlli World, I’m going to do it. After being delisted from Steam more than a year ago, Rollerdrome and OlliOlli World have returned to the storefront to fulfill all of your flow-state needs. Both games come from Roll7, a London-based studio that Take-Two purchased in November 2021 and shut down in May 2024, removing Rollerdrome and Olli Olli World from Steam in the process.

Playdate Season 2 is live and it’s good

Have we convinced you to get a Playdate yet? Whatever your answer, Playdate Season 2 is live right now, adding two new games to the crank-powered system each week until July 3. Engadget’s resident Playdate expert Cheyenne Macdonald has a review of the initial batch, which includes Fulcrum Defender from Subset Games, Dig! Dig! Dino! from Dom2D and Fáyer, and Blippo+, a fever dream masquerading as a video game. And while you’re in this headspace, check out Igor Bonifacic’s enlightening interview with Subset Games co-founder Jay Ma.

Ex-Ubisoft bosses face sexual harassment trial in France

Three former Ubisoft executives appeared in French court on June 2, accused by multiple employees at the studio of sexual harassment, bullying and, in one defendant’s case, attempted sexual assault. The lawsuit alleges Serge Hascoët, Tommy François and Guillaume Patrux regularly engaged in misconduct and fostered a toxic culture at Ubisoft, and it follows a public reckoning at the studio in 2020, plus arrests in 2023.

The Switch 2 is coming

Nintendo’s Switch 2 officially comes out this week, on June 5. We’ll have a review of the new console as soon as we can, but in the meantime you can find all of the information you need regarding pre-orders in our handy guide.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/video-games-weekly-i-still-dont-miss-e3-214108810.html?src=rss