The most fascinating aspect of Weird West’s design is how friendly the game is to my fuck-ups. Have you ever thought to yourself: “I would like to play a top-down Dishonored game, but as a western?” Say no more. Even if that’s not a thought you’ve ever had, you should consider it. Weird West, which came out today for…
Source: Kotaku – A Horror Game That Commits So Hard To Consequences, It’s A Knockout
Google Meet video chats should now be more useful if you need to get work done, or just don’t want them monopolizing your screen. Google is rolling multiple Workspace updates that include offering Meet video chats directly in Docs, Sheets and Slides. You can start a virtual meeting and carry it over to the document you’re working on to help you collaborate without flipping between tabs. You can also present that content if it’s ready to go. This should be available in the “coming weeks,” Google said.
You will have the freedom to switch tabs if you want, though. Google is also introducing much-needed picture-in-picture support to Meet sometime in April. You’ll need to use Chrome, but the feature will let you see up to four video tiles in a separate window while you jump between other tabs and apps. This will be helpful if you need to show different tabs during a presentation, but let’s be honest — it will also help you keep a video chat running when you can’t (or don’t want to) devote your full attention.
Other upcoming Meet improvements include in-meeting emoji reactions (due in April) and the option to add your own video tile from the interactive Companion Mode and your laptop camera (arriving later this year). Meet hardware is starting to offer automatic noise cancellation, too. The collaborative Spaces environment, meanwhile, will finally offer inline threading to keep your conversations tidy.
The improvements are acknowledgments that remote and hybrid work are here to stay despite return-to-office plans at many companies. At the same time, they appear to be genuinely helpful features that might encourage you to use Workspace… and, of course, skip rivals like Microsoft Teams.
Source: Engadget – Google Meet video chats will be available directly in Docs
A lot has changed at OnePlus over the past year. The company has merged with Oppo, and OnePlus’ OxygenOS now shares a common codebase with Oppo’s ColorOS. Warp Charge is now called SuperVOOC, which is Oppo’s fast charging brand. OnePlus also set sales records in 2021, shipping 11 million phones worldwide, and growing by 286%…
Source: Hot Hardware – OnePlus 10 Pro Review: A Solid Android Flagship With Innovative Cameras
Instagram is making it a little easier to chat while browsing your feed. The app is adding a new multitasking feature that allows users to quickly respond to incoming messages without switching back and forth between their feed and the inbox.
With the change, new chats will appear at the top of your feed while browsing, and you can respond by tapping on the message. The app is also adding a shortcut to make sharing posts a little quicker. Instead of scrolling through a list of contacts, users can designate four friends that will appear as shortcuts when tapping and holding the share button.
The app is also adding a music sharing feature, so users can swap 30 second previews of songs coa Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music
Ever since Meta began merging Instagram and Messenger, Instagram’s in-app chat has been steadily getting more features — and becoming more like Messenger. Now, those who have opted to link their inboxes, will also see a tray at the top of their DMs indicating which of their friends are currently online, much like the Messenger feature.
Instagram is also adding a Slack-style @Silent shortcut, similar to the update Messenger showed off earlier this week. Adding @silent to messages allows them to be delivered without triggering a notification. (It’s not clear if Instagram plans to adopt more of the “command” shortcuts in the future.) And, finally, group chats are getting a polling feature of their own, so polls will no longer be limited just to Stories.
As is often the case, these updates won’t be available everywhere all at once. The company says the new features “are available in select countries, with plans to expand globally,” but didn’t elaborate on which countries, or how long it would take for the changes to reach everyone.
Source: Engadget – Instagram will let you multitask while you DM
Apple isn’t the only major tech brand introducing a fix-it-yourself program this year. Samsung is teaming up with iFixit to launch a self-repair program for Galaxy devices in the US sometime this summer. Most details won’t be available until the program is ready, but you’ll have access to official parts and repair tools as you walk through step-by-step repair guides. The early part selection will include back glass, charging ports and display assemblies.
The Samsung self-repair program will initially cover the Galaxy S20 and S21 phone lines as well as the Galaxy Tab S7+. Don’t expect to service your new Galaxy S22 Ultra at first. The company will expand its effort to cover more devices and repair categories, though, and you can send the faulty parts to Samsung for recycling.
The company pitches the self-repair option as both a “convenience” and a sustainability move. You can fix your Galaxy hardware on your own terms rather than creating more e-waste. However, this is also likely a response to Right to Repair regulation and advocacy. Samsung can show that it’s at least somewhat DIY-friendly before regulators swoop in, even if the products themselves aren’t very conducive to repairs at the moment.
Source: Engadget – Samsung and iFixit will launch a self-repair program for Galaxy devices
To keep its customers as happy as Apple’s—and save the planet, I guess—Samsung has announced that Galaxy device owners will no longer have to seek third-party help to repair their smartphones and tablets.
Source: Gizmodo – Samsung Is Making It a Lot Easier to Repair Your Galaxy Smartphone
Not to brag, but I go on a lot of first dates. But this point, I’m familiar with navigating all the unspoken rules of the game. Will we split the bill, or is that too platonic? Should we acknowledge the fact that I obviously stalked you before showing up tonight? To hug or not to hug?
Source: LifeHacker – Just Be Yourself, and Other Dating Myths You Should Stop Believing
In a huge win for right-to-repair advocates, Samsung is teaming up with iFixIt on a self-repair program that will give Galaxy device owners easier access to genuine replacement parts, repair tools, and step-by-step guides. The initiative is part of a broader effort to “promote a circular economy and minimize e-waste.” It’s also the only program
Source: Hot Hardware – Samsung Schools Apple On Right To Repair With A Galaxy Phone Consumer Self Repair Program
Enlarge (credit: Darryl Fonseka | Getty Images)
Independent researchers and the United States military have become increasingly focused on orbiting satellites’ potential security vulnerabilities in recent years. These devices, which are built primarily with durability, reliability, and longevity in mind, were largely never intended to be ultra-secure. But at the ShmooCon security conference in Washington, DC, on Friday, embedded device security researcher Karl Koscher raised questions about a different phase of a satellite’s life cycle: What happens when an old satellite is being decommissioned and transitioning to a “graveyard orbit”?
Koscher and his colleagues received permission last year to access and broadcast from a Canadian satellite known as Anik F1R, launched to support Canadian broadcasters in 2005 and designed for 15 years of use. The satellite’s coverage extends below the US southern border and out to Hawaii and the easternmost part of Russia. The satellite will move to its graveyard orbit soon, and nearly all other services that use it have already migrated to a new satellite. But while the researchers could still talk to the satellite using special access to an uplink license and transponder slot lease, Koscher had the opportunity to take over and broadcast to the Northern Hemisphere.
Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Researchers used a decommissioned satellite to broadcast hacker TV
In our second installment of “Which Gadget Should You Buy?” our consumer tech experts help a reader choose a full-fledged smartwatch that is not only capable of fitness tracking, but also productivity tasks.
Source: Gizmodo – I Need a Smartwatch for Work, Not Just Fitness! What Gadget Should I Buy?
The video game industry faces a long-overdue reckoning. The average game developer is underpaid relative to the generous bonuses and shareholder payouts enjoyed by the CEOs above them, and recent reports and lawsuits have uncovered a wide range of mistreatment across companies big and small. Many feel that something…
Source: Kotaku – Allegations Of Sexism, Bullying, And Burnout: Inside The Microsoft Studio Behind State Of Decay 3
The cryptocurrency and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace is filled with scammers. Investors lost over $1.7 million to grifters in March alone, with project founders draining all the liquidity in a given project.
Source: Gizmodo – 6 Crypto and NFT Projects From This Month That Were Total Scams
The Hubble Space Telescope has glimpsed the most distant single star it’s ever observed, glimmering 28 billion light-years away. And the star could be between 50 to 500 times more massive than our sun, and millions of times brighter. From a report: It’s the farthest detection of a star yet, from 900 million years after the big bang. Astronomers have nicknamed the star Earendel, derived from an Old English words that means “morning star” or “rising light.” A study detailing the findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature. This observation breaks the record set by Hubble in 2018 when it observed a star that existed when the universe was around four billion years old. Earendel is so distant that the starlight has taken 12.9 billion years to reach us. This observation of Earendel could help astronomers to investigate the early years of the universe.
“As we peer into the cosmos, we also look back in time, so these extreme high-resolution observations allow us to understand the building blocks of some of the very first galaxies,” said study coauthor Victoria Strait, a postdoctoral research at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen, in a statement. “When the light that we see from Earendel was emitted, the Universe was less than a billion years old; only 6% of its current age. At that time it was 4 billion lightyears away from the proto-Milky Way, but during the almost 13 billion years it took the light to reach us, the Universe has expanded so that it is now a staggering 28 billion lightyears away.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Hubble Sees Most Distant Star Ever, 28 Billion Light-Years Away
Enlarge (credit: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto)
If you can’t beat ’em, smear ’em.
That appears to be Facebook’s approach when it comes to countering the threat from TikTok, according to a new report in The Washington Post. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has hired Targeted Victory, a large Republican consulting firm, to place stories in op-eds in local newspapers and on local TV newscasts around the US, according to the report.
TikTok poses perhaps the most existential challenge to Meta and Facebook yet. The video-based social media platform has gained users at a swift pace, and it’s especially popular among younger users, a demographic that Facebook and Meta’s other platforms have struggled with in recent years.
Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Meta can’t buy TikTok, so it hired GOP operatives to run a smear campaign
Apple is reportingly considering adding to its fleet of memory chip producers after contamination at key NAND production facilities earlier this year.
Source: Gizmodo – Report: Apple Is Considering Using Chinese-Made Flash Memory for the First Time
Wyze Cam devices are reported to have had a huge security flaw, and the company remained silent for three years about it. The software flaw was found by Bitdefender, and claims it reported the issues to Wyze all the way back in 2019.
Home security devices are meant to make you feel safer in the confines of your home. The thought of being
Source: Hot Hardware – Unpatched Wyze Security Camera Exploit Pathetically Left Millions Vulnerable To Spying For Years
Google is adding a new “highly cited” label to search results frequently sourced by other publications, the company is announcing today. From a report: Anything from local news stories, to interviews, announcements, and even press releases will be eligible for the new label being added to the search result’s preview image, so long as other websites are linking to it. More info is also being added to Search’s “rapidly evolving topics” and “About this Result” notices. The search giant’s hope is that its highly cited label will help highlight original reporting, which can include important context that’s stripped out when a story gets picked up more widely. But it should also be helpful to find press releases, where you can get information directly from companies themselves. Google says it hopes the label will help readers find “the most helpful or relevant information for a news story.” It’ll launch “soon” in the US on mobile for English-speaking users, and will start appearing globally “in the coming weeks.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Google Search’s New Highly Cited Label Helps You Get To the Source of a Story
Ewan McGregor revealed today that the Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney+ show has adjusted its premier date by two days and will now include two episodes rather than the previously-expected one episode. The new release date is now Friday, May 27, coinciding with Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim.
Source: Gizmodo – Obi-Wan Kenobi Moves Its Premiere Two Days, Will Drop 2 Episodes
Now that Intel has formally entered the discrete GPU space with its first Arc Alchemist GPUs (A350M and A370M), all eyes are focused on how the introductory mobile parts perform and what they might reveal about future products. While we wait for official benchmarks to land, some leaked 3DMark scores have tipped up.
Let’s get the usual caveats
Source: Hot Hardware – Intel Arc A350M Laptop GPU Clashes With GeForce GTX 1650 In Benchmark Leak
