Way back in 2018 Intel announced plans to develop its own line of discrete GPUs back designed to compete with rival cards from AMD and NVIDIA. And despite several delays including missing its original 2020 launch window, this spring the first batch of Intel’s new Arc graphics cards are finally ready for use in retail devices, starting with Samsung’s Galaxy Book 2 Pro laptops.

As a quick recap, while Intel’s Arc line will eventually cover both laptops and desktops, the first batch of A-series GPUs are lower-power cards intended mainly for ultraportables and thin-and-light notebooks. The company’s graphics cards will use a naming scheme similar to its CPUs to help differentiate between various performance tiers, beginning with the new Arc A350M and A370M, before moving on to the more powerful Arc 5 and Arc 7 cards which are due out sometime later this summer. 

Across the entire family of Arc GPUs, Intel’s graphics architecture is based on four main pillars: the company’s XE cores, XE Media Engine, XE Display Engine, and the XE Graphics Pipeline. All Arc cards will also have the same basic feature set including support for DirectX 12 Ultimate, ray tracing, XE Super Sampling, AV1 hardware acceleration and more. 

The Arc’s XE cores are based on Intel’s XE HPG (High Performance Graphics) microarchitecture, with each core featuring 16 256-bit Vector Engines. 16 1,024-bit Matrix Engines and 192KB of shared memory. The XE Media Engine is designed to support popular video apps with hardware encoding at up to 8K 10-bit HDR and hardware acceleration for a number of popular standards (VP9, AVC, HEVC, AV1). Meanwhile, the XE Display Engine was built to handle video output for up to two 8K displays at 60Hz simultaneously, four 4K displays running at 120Hz, or a single 1440p screen at 360Hz.

As for the two new cards themselves, both the A350M and A370M are targeting 1080p gaming at 60fps to 90fps across a range of popular games. The A350M is designed to draw between 25 and 35 watts of power and will sport six XE cores, six ray tracing units, a graphics clock of 1,150 MHz (which Intel says is a conservative estimate of the card’s typical clock speed) and 4GB of GDDR6 vRAM. Alternatively, the A370M is designed for slightly larger laptops with a power draw of between 35 and 50 watts, eight XE cores, 8 ray tracing units, a graphics clock of 1,550 MHz, and the same 4GB of vRAM. And as you can see in the image above, the upcoming Arc 5 and Arc 7 cards will be significantly more powerful. But again, they won’t be out until sometime in early summer. 

Also, alongside its new GPUs, Intel created a software suite called Arc Control similar to NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience and AMD’s Radeon Software, designed to allow users to more easily monitor performance, install drivers and updates, record game highlights and even connect to live streaming apps like Xsplit. And thanks to a UI that uses a streamlined overlay, Intel’s Arc Control should be easy to access in the middle of a battle. 

Intel even says it’s working more with developers to provide faster and more responsive driver support for new titles, with featured games on the Arc cards including titles such as Elden Ring, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Dolmen and a whole lot more. And as one of the largest chip makers in the world, Intel also created its Deep Link tech which is designed to give its Arc cards an additional performance boost when working in tandem with Intel’s onboard integrated graphics. 

So while we’re only getting two new Arc cards right now (and relatively low-power ones at that), today marks an important moment as Intel finally becomes the true third horse in the discrete graphics space. The first retail device to feature one of Intel’s A-series cards is Samsung’s Galaxy Book 2 Pro, which goes on sale next month. However, Intel promises that there will be a slew of even more laptops featuring Arc GPUs coming soon from big names including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, MSI, Lenovo and others. 

Source: Engadget – Intel details its first Arc A-series GPUs for laptops

WhatsApp is looking to make it easier for people to send and listen to voice messages with a swathe of new features, albeit fairly basic ones. Users will be able to pause and resume while recording a message and listen back to it before sending.

You’ll soon have the option of listening to messages outside of chats so you can multitask. If you pause during playback, WhatApp will remember where you left off when you return to the chat. A waveform visualization could help you follow recordings as well. Finally, you’ll be able to speed up playback on regular and forwarded messages by 1.5x or 2x.

These aren’t the most groundbreaking features, but they could bolster the voice message experience on WhatsApp. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that, on average, folks send 7 billion of these messages every day. The new features, which are rolling out now, may make them more accessible for WhatsApp users.

Source: Engadget – WhatsApp makes voice messaging less of a chore

Etsy said it would raise transaction fees from 5 percent to 6.5 percent this April, and sellers aren’t happy. The Vergereports over 5,000 Etsy sellers are planning to go on a week-long strike starting April 11th, the day the fee increase takes effect, in protest over both the hike and previous decisions. They’re also urging customers to boycott the site during that week.

The company has drawn flak multiple times in recent years for policies that have hiked costs or put increased demands on sellers. It started automatically enrolling some sellers in an advertising service in 2020, slapping them with varying fees while denying them a chance to opt out. Etsy also launched a Star Seller program in 2021 that gives badges to sellers who can promise fast shipping, quick turnaround times and high ratings, potentially punishing shops that produce custom goods or otherwise can’t realistically meet the criteria.

The strike and boycott might face some challenges. Etsy communications head Kelly Clausen claimed the higher fees would let the company “increase our investments” in marketing, support and policy enforcement to preserve the site as a “beloved, trusted and thriving marketplace.” Previously, CEO Josh Silverman justified the fees by referencing Etsy’s success to date, including a record high for sales per seller last year.

As protest organizer Kristi Cassidy noted, though, the strike is meant as the first step in creating a broader “solidarity support movement.” In other words, this is an effort to give creators a stronger, unified voice that helps them push back against Etsy policies they see as harmful. In that regard, it’s part of a larger movement to obtain more bargaining power from tech companies that previously held all the clout.

Source: Engadget – Etsy seller group plans to strike over fee increases

Last Summer, Spotify introduced Blend, a fun feature that allows you and a friend to compare your musical tastes. After inviting another Spotify user to take part, the platform generates a shared playlist that pulls songs from both your libraries. It also provides a match score and updates the playlist daily, allowing you to see how your tastes change over time.

One limitation of the feature was that you could only create a Blend playlist with a single friend or family member at a time. That’s now changing. Starting today, you can create a Blend playlist with up to 10 people, with Spotify taking into consideration all your disparate music tastes at the same time. Additionally, you can now also create Blend playlists with select artists, including BTS, Diplo, Mimi Webb and others. In that case, it’s partly a showcase of the artist’s latest music, but it’s still fun to see where you overlap.

As with Blend playlists you create with your friends, Spotify will generate a story you can share on Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms to show off how close you are two are on your favorite tunes. If you haven’t made a Blend playlist yet, you do so by typing “Blend” within the “Search” tab and then inviting the people you want to take part.  

Source: Engadget – Spotify’s blended playlists now work with up to 10 people and artists

We may be nearly two years out from the launch of the PlayStation 5, but it’s still pretty difficult to get your hands on one. If you’ve been eyeing the Digital Edition, you have another chance to grab one today. Amazon will have more PS5 Digital Editions for purchase starting at 8am PT/11am ET today, while supplies last.

Buy PS5 Digital Edition at Amazon – $399

As the name suggests, the Digital Edition differs from the standard PlayStation 5 in that it doesn’t have a disc drive. But if you already get and store all of your games in the cloud, this shouldn’t be a big deal. Also, now that you’re able to expand the PS5’s storage with a compatible SSD, you may want to save the extra $100 you’d spend on the standard console and put that towards a high-capacity drive for your Digital Edition.

It’s unclear at this point if Amazon will also restock the regular PlayStation 5 along with the Digital Edition. We don’t expect Amazon’s stock to last long, so if you’ve been trying to get your hands on one of these consoles since they debuted, today’s drop is your next best bet.

Source: Engadget – Amazon will restock the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition at 11AM ET today

LinkedIn is building more tools for its growing base of creators. A year after introducing a dedicated “creator mode” profile setting, the company is adding a suite of new analytics and video features meant to help creators boost their following on the platform.

The updates include more detailed analytics for closely tracking the performance of individual posts, as well as account-level stats meant to help creators “understand who’s reading and engaging” with their content. LinkedIn is also adding tools to help creators boost their presence and get more eyes on the content they’re already creating. Users will not have the option to turn on post notifications for creators they follow, and creators who write newsletters for the platform will be able to highlight their writing directly on their profile.

Finally, the company is updating its tool for profile videos, which allow users to record short introductory videos that appear alongside their profile photos. The feature now includes a series of prompts meant to guide creators and others about what to include in the clips. (Importantly, unlike LinkedIn Stories, which the company killed last year, profile videos are not ephemeral.)

Though LinkedIn may not be the platform most associated with the booming creator industry, the company has been steadily ramping up its efforts to bring in creators. In addition to “creator mode” profiles, the company has also been encouraging influential users to create longer-form content with newsletters and, most recently, podcasts. So far, it seems these efforts are gaining some traction on the platform. The company says that more than 5.5 million users have so far enabled “creator mode,” and followers are up 30 percent overall for people using creator mode.

Notably, LinkedIn is still behind many of its peers in launching monetization features for creators. The company announced a $25 million creator fund last year, but so far only a small group of creators have had access to it. But building out more tools to support creators behind the scenes, like better analytics and increasing the visibility of their content, could be important groundwork should the company decide to build additional monetization features.

Source: Engadget – LinkedIn is building new analytics and video features for creators