Those who are enrolled in the Android Auto testing program can now check out new features as part of the 14.1 beta, including support for a few games. As things stand, four Android games are available on compatible vehicle displays — Candy Crush Soda Saga, Angry Birds 2, Farm Heroes Saga (another match-three game) and Beach Buggy Racing. They could help you pass the time when, say, you’re waiting for your EV to charge or to pick up your kids from school.
According to 9to5Google, which tried out the feature, you need to have the games installed on your phone to play them on your car’s screen. They’ll also only be accessible while the vehicle is parked. The publication noted that, when you get ready to move the car, the game will close right away. Until you park again, you can’t tap on a game to reopen it. In addition, 9to5Google was unable to actually play Angry Birds 2 — the app got stuck on an “internet required” screen — though Beach Buggy Racing appeared to run well enough.
Also part of this beta is a fullscreen mode for apps. To back out from that, you may need to swipe down from the top of the display. This gesture reveals an Exit button.
Google announced Android game support in the latest Android Auto beta as part of its latest feature drop for Pixel devices. As The Verge points out, however, cars with Google built in already allow users to play a broader range of games while the vehicle is parked. As such, this appears to be a case of Google trying to give Android Auto more feature parity with cars that have Google built in. Still, it is not yet clear if or when Google plans to bring Android gaming and fullscreen support to the stable track of Android Auto.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/beta-test-brings-candy-crush-soda-saga-and-angry-birds-2-to-android-auto-143021332.html?src=rss
SoftBank Group plans to create industrial parks for AI across the US and is considering an investment of more than $1 trillion, Nikkei reported. From a report: Founder and Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son is expected to visit the US to discuss his ideas for such industrial parks, the newspaper said. The factories would likely use AI-equipped robots that would operate autonomously because of labor shortages in the country, according to the report.
Son teamed up with OpenAI and Oracle in January to unveil a $100 billion joint venture to fund AI infrastructure in the US, one of the first such pledges after Donald Trump became president. They said at the time they would deploy $100 billion immediately with the goal of increasing that to at least $500 billion for data centers and physical campuses.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson’s Wheel of Time books, and they previously brought that knowledge to bear as they recapped each first season episode and second season episode of Amazon’s WoT TV series. Now we’re back in the saddle for season 3—along with insights, jokes, and the occasional wild theory.
These recaps won’t cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. We’ll do our best to not spoil major future events from the books, but there’s always the danger that something might slip out. If you want to stay completely unspoiled and haven’t read the books, these recaps aren’t for you.
New episodes of The Wheel of Time season three will be posted for Amazon Prime subscribers every Thursday. This write-up covers episode five, “Tel’Aran’Rhiod,” which was released on March 27.
The EU is set to impose minimal fines on Apple and Facebook-owner Meta next week under its Digital Markets Act, as Brussels seeks to avoid escalating tensions with US President Donald Trump.
According to people familiar with the decisions, the iPhone maker is expected to be fined and ordered to revise its App Store rules, following an investigation into whether they prevent app developers from sending consumers to offers outside its platform.
Regulators will also close another investigation into Apple, which was focused on the company’s design of its web browser choice screen without any further sanctions.
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The old cliché “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies perfectly to the first-generation Google Pixel Watch. Released in 2022, Google’s first smart watch looks great, is designed to work with FitBit’s infrastructure, and is one of the best deals for Amazon’s Big Spring Sale. You can pick one up for $129.99, 61% cheaper than the regular list price of $329.99, and the lowest price this model has ever sold for.
Here’s a chart so you can see how the price falls off a cliff a few days ago:
If you compare features of the original Pixel Watch with the Pixel Watch 3 that came out in 2024, you can see how competitive the older watch is. Sure, the Pixel 3 has an extra sensor that measures skin temperature, fall detection, a faster processor and a bigger battery, but if you want a dependable watch to keep track of your workouts, play music, make calls, and control your household smart devices, both work great, and you could literally buy two Pixel Watch 1’s for the $289.99 sale price of the newer model and still have $30 left to buy lunch.
If you want to take a deeper look at all the smart watch and fitness tracker bargains on Amazon this week, Lifehacker’s Senior Health Editor Beth Skwarecki has broken them all down here.
Shopping for tech? Lifehacker can help you make the right decision. Browse our tech reviews and head-to-head comparisons for everything from laptops and smartwatches to e-bikes and home gyms. Subscribe to our deals newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox, or browse our best-of lists directly on Amazon, including:
uninet writes: The same year Apple launched the iPhone, it unveiled a massive upgrade to Mac OS X known as Leopard, sporting “300 New Features.” Two years later, it did something almost unheard of: it released Snow Leopard, an upgrade all about how little it added and how much it took away. Apple needs to make it snow again. Current releases of MacOS Sequoia and iOS/iPadOS 18 are riddled with easily reproducible bugs in high-traffic areas, the author argues, suggesting Apple’s engineers aren’t using their own software. Messages can’t reliably copy text, email connections randomly fail, and Safari frequently jams up. Even worse are the baffling design decisions, like burying display arrangement settings and redesigning Photos with needless margins and inconsistent navigation.
Apple’s focus on the Vision Pro while AI advances raced ahead has left them scrambling to catch up, the author argues, with Apple Intelligence features now indefinitely delayed. The author insists that Apple’s products still remain better than Windows or Android alternatives — but “least bad” isn’t the premium experience Apple loyalists expect. With its enormous resources, Apple could easily have teams focus on cleaning up existing software while simultaneously developing AI features.
Further reading: ‘Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino’ .
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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One of the best markdowns during Amazon’s Big Spring Sale this year is on the DJI Osmo Action 4 Essential Combo, now $199, down from $289—its lowest price yet, according to price trackers.
This Essential Combo keeps it simple without skimping on the must-haves—you get the camera, an extreme battery, a horizontal-vertical frame for quick swaps, and all the basics to get started, out of the box. The camera itself shoots 4K video at 120fps, with a 1/1.3-inch sensor that handles low light better than most other action cams in this range. That means clearer shots at dusk or in shady spots—basically, where cheaper cameras start to give up. The image stabilization is excellent and on par with GoPro, notes this PCMag review. You can run, bike, or strap it to your chest while snowboarding, and the footage’ll be smooth. But there’s no onboard storage, so you’ll need a microSD card. Not a dealbreaker, but something to know upfront.
That said, this isn’t the full Adventure Combo, so you don’t get the extra batteries or the charging hub. For casual users, that’s probably fine. But if you’re looking to vlog or shoot for longer sessions, the add-ons might be worth budgeting for later. It’s also waterproof to 59 feet, and the touchscreen works well even when wet. The DJI Osmo Action 4 camera pairs with your phone through DJI’s app if you want to shoot remotely or transfer clips quickly. If you’re already sitting on a GoPro setup, this won’t do much to make you switch. But for first-time buyers or casual creators, this deal is about as low-risk as it gets.
This week, we learned that even government officials are addicted to their group chats — except with the Trump administration those chats include war plans and potentially classified information. In this episode, we dive into the sheer recklessness and stupidity of Signalgate. And speaking of reckless, we also discuss 23andMe’s bankruptcy and the privacy concerns around selling off customer DNA data.
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you’ve got suggestions or topics you’d like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!
Signalgate: What happened, who was involved, and how to safely add someone to a Signal group chat – 0:48
23andMe files for bankruptcy, customers are urged to delete their sensitive data – 21:25
Canon’s PowerShot V1 and R50 V cameras go all in on vlogging – 27:21
Apple announces WWDC dates, updates Airpods Max, and dodges fines in the EU – 32:52
How did Napster sell for $207 million in 2025? – 45:32
Around Engadget – 48:44
Working On – 55:22
Pop Culture picks – 57:56
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Cherlynn Low
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/engadget-podcast-signalgate-and-the-collapse-of-23andme-121504641.html?src=rss
Instagram has rolled out an update for Reels that will let users go through more of them more quickly. As TechCrunch has reported, the app now allows users to play Reels at 2x the speed by long-pressing on the right or the left edge of the screen. They’d simply have to release it if they’d like to resume watching at normal speed. Some users have had access to the feature for a while now, while others used to have it until Instagram removed it from their accounts, likely because the app was only testing it out. Now, an Instagram rep has told CNET that it’s rolling out to everyone. We previously didn’t have the feature and can confirm that we’ve gained access to it within the past few hours.
The representative said that the option has been highly requested by the app’s users. Being able to fast-forward Reels has become somewhat of a necessity for a lot of people today, seeing as Instagram’s short-form videos are no longer limited to 15 seconds in length like they used to be. Reels can now be as long as three minutes, and there are signs indicating that the app could allow uploads as long as 10 minutes. We wouldn’t be surprised if Instagram started allowing Reels that long in the future. Instagram and TikTok have had history of adopting new features previously unveiled by the other, and TikTok allows videos recorded within its app to be 10 minutes long. In fact, TikTok has had the option to watch videos at twice the speed for a while now, which is even more necessary for the app, since its users can upload videos up to an hour in length.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/instagram-will-let-you-watch-reels-at-twice-the-speed-120047663.html?src=rss
The US will append a 25 percent tariff on top of any existing tariffs on all cars produced outside its borders. Additional fees will be imposed on imported components too like engines, transmissions, powertrains and electrical components. There’s a number of carve outs for US-based companies, as well as those sourcing gear from Mexico and Canada. But the move has been taken under the guise of “protecting” America’s car industry from imports.
Of course, hefty tariffs are no guarantee consumers will flock to buy American if other brands are pricier. We’ve been here before: The ’70s oil shock meant bulky and inefficient American cars were suddenly money pits. That made light and efficient Japanese cars far more attractive to buyers who didn’t want to go broke at the gas pump. And that was despite a tariff regime that, as PBS reported in 2017, was equivalent to a 60 percent levy. Before 1980, Chrysler, GM and Ford were kings — now they muscle with Toyota, Honda and Hyundai for a slice of the pie.
Given the new administration’s work to undermine the EV transition, it’s likely we’ll see a big pivot back to gas-powered vehicles. Especially as the one EV company likely to benefit from such a move has potentially diminished its reputation in the eyes of some buyers. The end result, however, may likely erode any sort of advantage the US auto industry has, allowing China the chance to race ahead in the rest of the world.
— Dan Cooper
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The biggest tech stories you missed
The Pentagon warns government officials that Signal is being targeted by Russian hackers
I’m not sure why we should worry, it’s not as if government officials are secretly using Signal to agree war plans, are they?! Sorry… what’s that?
The minimalist Light Phone III is officially available for purchase
It offers private GPS for folks who don’t want Google tracking their movements.
No Man’s Sky now lets players dig up planets to look for ancient alien skeletons
Better charge up that Terrain Manipulator.
A new MEMS tweeter for wireless earbuds doesn’t require an amplifier
Better sound in a smaller package is always welcome.
Utah just became the first state in the country to pass an age verification law for app stores
Nobody involved in this law has ever put their thumb on a TouchID sensor to allow an app to download because their kid hasn’t shut up about something for three hours.
Engadget’s Jeff Dunn has put the new 2025 base-model iPad through its paces, and it comes with no surprises. The new slate gets a faster chip, A16, and 2GB more ram than its immediate predecessor. Naturally, compared to the pricier iPads, its performance isn’t going to pull up too many trees, but you’re not using a base model iPad for intensive work. Plus, it’s not going to get any Apple Intelligence features, which I’ll take any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Canon has announced two new compact mirrorless cameras for the vlogging crowd, the R50V Mirrorless and PowerShot V1 Compact. Both are attempts to muscle in on Sony’s turf in the videography space, boasting 4K video (1080p as a webcam), fancy autofocus tricks and a fully articulating display (at the expense of an electronic viewfinder). Engadget’s Steve Dent will review them in due course, but it’s hard to wonder if the vlogging space really needs yet more entrants, especially right now.
Block, Jack Dorsey’s payments company which owns Square and Cash App, has laid off 931 workers. The outfit denies the move is to cut costs, saying it’s to improve efficiency and flatten the organization by eliminating managers. As much as I’m sad for those folks who have lost their jobs, I’m staggered that 931 workers is only around eight percent of its workforce.
When the tedious bores moaned Twitter was overstaffed, I knew they were talking out of their backsides. After all, a global social network needs bodies to keep the site running, engage with advertisers and moderate such a sprawling platform. And while most financial institutions need plenty of qualified folks to comply with financial laws — not that Block has a stellar record in that area — 10,000 people to run Square and Cash App seems like a lot.
This fall, Robinhood will offer banking services to users with a Gold subscription, with all the usual perks banks throw at customers. That includes checking and savings accounts, money transfers to more than 100 countries and same-day cash deliveries to your door. You can even get your own wealth-management service, for all of the vast riches you’ve got left over once you’ve paid your rent, your car loan and bought six eggs from your local corner store.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-will-the-us-imported-car-tariffs-work-112509770.html?src=rss
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Amazon’s Big Spring Sale (spanning seven days from March 25 to March 31) gives shoppers the chance to grab great deals on everything from tech to home goods. It’s Amazon’s second-ever spring sale, and while it may not be as flashy as Prime Day, it’s still packed with discounts that are hard to ignore. Prime members get the best deals, so if you want in but don’t want to commit, Amazon’s 30-day free trial of Prime does the trick—just remember to cancel after the sale.
One of the better deals in the mix is the EufyCam S3 Pro (2-Cam Kit with HomeBase 3), now going for $439.99, marked down from $549.99—it’s lowest price ever, according to price-trackers. It’s still pricey, no doubt, but it’s one of the few security cameras that manages to deliver actual 4K resolution without locking you into a subscription plan.
The cameras come equipped with Eufy’s MaxColor Vision technology, which uses AI-powered image enhancement and an impressive f/1.0 aperture to deliver vivid nighttime footage that’s almost daylight-clear. Plus, the added benefit of the SolarPlus 2.0 panel means you can go nearly an entire year without charging the camera, provided it gets an hour of direct sunlight daily. All of this is backed by the included HomeBase 3 (with 16GB of built-in local storage, expandable up to 16TB if you ever need it), which acts not only as a storage hub but also as a siren-equipped central control for Eufy’s security lineup, ensuring local video storage without recurring cloud fees.
That said, while the IP67-rated EufyCam S3 Pro offers a robust feature set—two-way audio that allows you to communicate through the camera, customizable motion detection zones that can be adjusted to avoid false alerts, and AI-powered system that can distinguish between people, pets, and vehicles, ensuring you only get the notifications that matter—it’s important to note that integrating it with Apple’s HomeKit can be a bit of a headache, with resolution dropping to 1080p and necessitating an iCloud subscription for video storage (which kind of undercuts the whole no-subscription appeal), according to this ZDNet review.
In the growing canon of AI security, the indirect prompt injection has emerged as the most powerful means for attackers to hack large language models such as OpenAI’s GPT-3 and GPT-4 or Microsoft’s Copilot. By exploiting a model’s inability to distinguish between, on the one hand, developer-defined prompts and, on the other, text in external content LLMs interact with, indirect prompt injections are remarkably effective at invoking harmful or otherwise unintended actions. Examples include divulging end users’ confidential contacts or emails and delivering falsified answers that have the potential to corrupt the integrity of important calculations.
Despite the power of prompt injections, attackers face a fundamental challenge in using them: The inner workings of so-called closed-weights models such as GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini are closely held secrets. Developers of such proprietary platforms tightly restrict access to the underlying code and training data that make them work and, in the process, make them black boxes to external users. As a result, devising working prompt injections requires labor- and time-intensive trial and error through redundant manual effort.
For the first time, academic researchers have devised a means to create computer-generated prompt injections against Gemini that have much higher success rates than manually crafted ones. The new method abuses fine-tuning, a feature offered by some closed-weights models for training them to work on large amounts of private or specialized data, such as a law firm’s legal case files, patient files or research managed by a medical facility, or architectural blueprints. Google makes its fine-tuning for Gemini’s API available free of charge.
Welcome to Edition 7.37 of the Rocket Report! It’s been interesting to watch how quickly European officials have embraced ensuring they have a space launch capability independent of other countries. A few years ago, European government satellites regularly launched on Russian Soyuz rockets, and more recently on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets from the United States. Russia is now non grata in European government circles, and the Trump administration is widening the trans-Atlantic rift. European leaders have cited the Trump administration and its close association with Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, as prime reasons to support sovereign access to space, a capability currently offered only by Arianespace. If European nations can reform how they treat their commercial space companies, there’s enough ambition, know-how, and money in Europe to foster a competitive launch industry.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Isar Aerospace aims for weekend launch. A German startup named Isar Aerospace is will try to launch its first rocket Saturday, aiming to become the first in a wave of new European launch companies to reach orbit, Ars reports. The Spectrum rocket consists of two stages, stands about 92 feet (28 meters) tall, and can haul payloads up to 1 metric ton (2,200 pounds) into low-Earth orbit. Based in Munich, Isar was founded by three university graduate students in 2018. Isar scrubbed a launch attempt Monday due to unfavorable winds at the launch site in Norway.
The Register: Following our report last week on IBM’s ongoing layoffs, current and former employees got in touch to confirm what many suspected: The US cuts run deeper than reported, and the jobs are heading to India. IBM’s own careers site numbers back that up. On January 7, 2024, Big Blue listed just 173 open positions in India. On November 23, 2024, there were 2,946 jobs available in the nation. At the time of writing, the IT titan listed 3,866 roles in India.
American jobs listed for these three periods are 192, 376, and 333, respectively, though at least among those being laid off, there’s doubt those roles will be filled with job seekers in the States. A current IBMer who won’t be there much longer said that after being told to teach recently hired workers in India “everything I know,” the reward was a resource action, or RA — Big Blue’s euphemism for a layoff. After receiving an RA notification, employees typically have a set period of time to apply for open roles elsewhere in the mega-corporation. But just because there are open positions listed in the US doesn’t mean IBM is making much of an effort to fill them, we are told.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Anthropic researchers have developed a breakthrough “cross-layer transcoder” (CLT) that functions like an fMRI for large language models, mapping how they process information internally. Testing on Claude 3.5 Haiku, researchers discovered the model performs longer-range planning for specific tasks — such as selecting rhyming words before constructing poem sentences — and processes multilingual concepts in a shared neural space before converting outputs to specific languages.
The team also confirmed that LLMs can fabricate reasoning chains, either to please users with incorrect hints or to justify answers they derived instantly. The CLT identifies interpretable feature sets rather than individual neurons, allowing researchers to trace entire reasoning processes through network layers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares a report: For decades, India’s economic promise has rested on its demographic dividend — the competitive edge of a massive, young, and increasingly educated workforce. Economists and policymakers have routinely cited the country’s population profile as its ticket to economic superpower status, with projections of reaching $10 trillion in GDP and achieving high-income status by 2047. These forecasts depend heavily on a critical assumption: that roughly 500 million Indians currently aged 5-24 will find productive employment as they enter the workforce over the next two decades. But a sobering new analysis from Bernstein suggests this fundamental premise may be crumbling under the weight of rapid advances in AI.
“The advent of AI threatens to erode all the advantages of India’s rich demographic dividend,” write Bernstein analysts Venugopal Garre and Nikhil Arela, who characterize their assessment as a potential “doomsday scenario” for a nation that has hitched its economic wagon to services-led growth. At stake is India’s $350 billion services export sector — a sprawling ecosystem of IT outsourcing, business process management, and offshore knowledge centers that employs over 10 million workers, mostly in jobs that place them in the top 25% of the country’s income distribution.
While India’s IT giants have successfully navigated previous technological shifts — from basic call centers in the late 1980s to cloud computing and data analytics more recently — AI poses a fundamentally different challenge. Unlike earlier transitions that required human adaptation, today’s AI systems threaten to replace rather than complement the workforce. “AI subscriptions that come at a fraction of the costs of India’s entry level engineers can be deployed to perform tasks at higher precision and speed,” the report note.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Virginia is set to become the first state in the country to require some reckless drivers to put devices on their cars that make it impossible to drive too fast. D.C. passed similar legislation last year. Several other states, including Maryland, are considering joining them. It’s an embrace of a technological solution to a human problem: Speeding contributes to more than 10,000 deaths a year. Under the Virginia legislation, a judge can decide to order drivers to install the speed limiters in their vehicles in lieu of taking away their driving privileges or sending them to jail. It takes effect in July 2026.
Del. Patrick A. Hope (D-Arlington) said various advocacy groups, including Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the National Safety Council, gave him the idea. He drove a car outfitted with the technology and was impressed. “It was easy to use, and once you’re engaged it’s impossible to go over the speed limit,” he said. “It will make our streets safer.” He thinks the device is preferable to suspending drivers’ licenses, a punishment that people frequently ignore because they have no other way of getting to work or the store or taking their children to school. It’s an approach similar to using an interlock device that requires a person convicted of drunken driving to pass a Breathalyzer test to start their car.
Hope wanted anyone convicted of reckless driving after going 100 mph or more to be required to use a limiter for two to six months, but Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) struck that part of the bill, leaving all use of the limiting technology up to the state courts. Hope expressed concern about the governor’s amendment but will urge the General Assembly to accept it, as the legislature typically does when the bill’s sponsor signals support. Drivers must pay for the speed limiters themselves. (As in D.C., indigent defendants are exempt from paying.) The limiters won’t be used in Virginia on commercial vehicles. Attempting to evade the speed limiter by tampering with it or driving a different car is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
