Cable company Altice agreed to give Warner and other record labels the names and contact information of 100 broadband subscribers who were accused of pirating songs.
The subscribers “were the subject of RIAA or third party copyright notices,” said a court order that approved the agreement between Altice and the plaintiff record companies. Altice is notifying each subscriber “of Altice’s intent to disclose their name and contact information to Plaintiffs pursuant to this Order,” and telling the notified subscribers that they have 30 days to seek relief from the court.
If subscribers do not object within a month, Altice must disclose the subscribers’ names, phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses. The judge’s order was issued on February 12 and reported yesterday by TorrentFreak.
Engineers who work for Elon Musk’s SpaceX have been brought on as senior advisers to the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), sources tell WIRED.
On Sunday, Sean Duffy, secretary of the Department of Transportation, which oversees the FAA, announced in a post on X that SpaceX engineers would be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia to take what he positioned as a tour. “The safety of air travel is a nonpartisan matter,” Musk replied. “SpaceX engineers will help make air travel safer.”
By the time these posts were made, though, according to sources who were granted anonymity because they fear retaliation, SpaceX engineers were already being onboarded at the agency under Schedule A, a special authority that allows government managers to “hire persons with disabilities without requiring them to compete for the job,” according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
A year on from the big overhaul of Plasma 6, more functionality appears. KDE Plasma 6.3 is here, closely followed by a point release, alongside new versions of the KDE Frameworks and KDE Gear apps collection.
Mesa’s generic Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver has landed support for cl_khr_gl_sharing, the extension that allows using OpenGL buffer / texture / render-buffer objects as OpenCL memory objects for better interoperability between the OpenGL and OpenCL APIs. This is important as in turn it is needed for the Zink driver to be used with the popular DaVinci Resolve video editor application…
The $599 iPhone 16e is many things, but don’t you dare call it a budget phone. I hesitate to even call it “cheap.” As a successor to the $429 iPhone SE, it’s hard not to see the 16e as a disappointment. Sure, it’s $200 less than the vanilla iPhone 16 (which I argued was a great deal at launch), and the 16e also packs in the latest A18 chip with support for Apple Intelligence. But it’s no longer a small phone, and it pushes Apple’s cheaper iPhone option well beyond $500. That’s something we’ll likely never see again. (And it’s potentially terrible news for future iPhone pricing, as well.)
Given the sheer amount of new hardware in the iPhone 16e — including a larger 6.1-inch OLED screen, Apple’s first in-house “C1” modem and that aforementioned A18 chip — it’s easy to make excuses for the price. The 16e is certainly far closer in specs to the iPhone 16 than the third-gen SE was to the iPhone 13. But I’d argue that Apple didn’t exactly need an OLED screen for this model, and there are likely other ways to cut down costs. (It’s even stranger Apple kept out MagSafe and fast wireless charging, which would have been cheaper to implement, and arguably more useful, than a large OLED display.)
Apple
And while it’s nice to have the A18 chip (albeit with one less GPU core) and full Apple Intelligence support, I agree with my colleague Igor Bonifacic that users aren’t exactly clamoring for those AI features. If we had to blame one culprit for the iPhone 16e’s pricing, though, it’s likely Apple Intelligence. After all, Apple is still fighting to prove it isn’t too far behind Microsoft, Google and OpenAI. In any other year, Apple might have been able to justify throwing an older chip in the 16e, but that’s not possible when it’s in the middle of an AI hype war.
Mostly, I’m just sad that Apple is once again raising the price of admission to its walled garden without much justification. There’s something special — noble, even — about sub-$500 smartphones. They’re a reminder of a saner era of smartphones, when prices were being driven down by phones like the Moto G. These days you’re left with Android phones like the Pixel 8a (and potentially the upcoming Pixel 9a), as well as the $400 Samsung Galaxy A35 and $499 Galaxy A55.
Apple
Now that the dream of a sub-$500 iPhone is well and truly dead, it feels like Apple is just setting the stage for future price jumps. A $600 or $650 iPhone 17e will certainly look like a deal compared to a $850 or $900 iPhone 17. And just wait for the inevitable $2,000 iPhone foldable, which could potentially be specced beyond $3,000.
Of course, you could be a smart Apple shopper and opt for used or refurbished iPhones. I recently picked up a refurbished iPhone 14 Plus as an early Mothers’ Day gift for $420, and Amazon currently has listings for iPhone 14 Pros right under $500. Those devices won’t support Apple Intelligence, but I’d argue sticking to the used market is simply a more useful form of intelligence.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/a-599-iphone-16e-is-a-cruel-joke-200507275.html?src=rss
Evidence instead shows that Meta “took precautions not to ‘seed’ any downloaded files,” Meta’s filing said. Seeding refers to sharing a torrented file after the download completes, and because there’s allegedly no proof of such “seeding,” Meta insisted that authors cannot prove Meta shared the pirated books with anyone during the torrenting process.
Whether or not Meta actually seeded the pirated books could make a difference in a copyright lawsuit from book authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Authors had previously alleged that Meta unlawfully copied and distributed their works through AI outputs—an increasingly common complaint that so far has barely been litigated. But Meta’s admission to torrenting appears to add a more straightforward claim of unlawful distribution of copyrighted works through illegal torrenting, which has long been considered established case-law.
Whenever I have a carb emergency I make one of two things: cookies or quick bread. Lately I’ve been leaning toward the latter—like banana bread, lemon poppy muffins, or biscuits—because they’re less sweet compared to cookies, and I enjoy the ritual smear of salted butter. I’ve been making this Irish soda bread on repeat and I think you’ll like it too.
Quick-bread satisfaction
The quick breads category is pretty wide. They can be sweet and cake-y like banana bread, barely sweet like scones, or savory like cheddar cheese and thyme biscuits. Unlike yeast-raised breads, quick breads are raised with chemical leaveners (baking soda or baking powder), which means they require absolutely none of the long proof times. What’s more, something like Irish soda bread requires very few ingredients.
The Dutch oven is my vehicle of choice for this lofty, tender Irish soda bread. Similar to baking a sourdough loaf, humidity is your soda bread’s friend. Encasing your soda bread in a small space allows humidity to build up as moisture evaporates from the dough. The moist air keeps the surface of the loaf flexible for longer than if you bake it open on a sheet tray. The extra flexibility means the loaf can rise taller, uninhibited by a hard crust.
How to make Irish soda bread
I slightly modified this simple recipe, which has only four ingredients: flour, salt, baking soda, and buttermilk. It’s very similar to biscuit dough (minus butter or oil). While traditional soda bread is the simplest—no raisins—I choose to toss them in. You can substitute in other mix-ins if the mood strikes you: Try dried cranberries, chopped dried apricots, or chocolate chips. The dough is relatively plain so any flavor profile you choose will work just fine.
I have two notes before you set out to make your loaf. Most importantly, don’t overwork your dough. You’ve heard it before, but with shaggy doughs like this it’s hard to resist kneading it until smooth. Don’t do it. Leave it a bit shaggy and you’ll have a more tender loaf.
About preheating your Dutch oven: The conventional oven should be preheated no matter what, but I’ve made this recipe with a cold Dutch oven before. I actually made a whole Irish soda bread YouTube video using a cold pot. It comes out perfectly and well-risen. However, I’ve recently been preheating the Dutch oven as the conventional oven heats up, and the loaf comes out perfectly there too. In the recipe below, I preheat the pot. You can do either—the only difference I detect is a faster bake by 10 minutes if you choose to preheat.
Any other Irish soda bread questions you have might be answered here. Otherwise, the dough takes mere minutes to put together.
Irish Soda Bread
Ingredients:
12 ounces all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon baking soda
10 ounces buttermilk
2 ounces raisins (optional)
1. Put the Dutch oven inside the oven and preheat to 425°F. Mix the flour, salt, and baking soda together in a large bowl.
2. Pour in the buttermilk all at once and combine the ingredients by pressing and stirring. I use a plastic bowl scraper to do this.
3. When the dough starts to become clumpy and shaggy, add the raisins (if using) and continue pressing and stirring.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
4. When it’s mostly combined but there is still loose flour at the bottom of the bowl, pour the dough out onto an un-floured countertop. Pat and press the dough to pick up the dry bits. Use any sticky areas to target the loose flour. Once you’ve collected most of the loose parts, pat the dough into a (roughly) two-inch thick round. Use a serrated knife to score a half-inch deep plus sign into the dough. Place the loaf on a piece of parchment paper.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
5. Carefully take the Dutch oven out and use the parchment to lift and lower the loaf into the pot. Put the lid back on and return the pot to the oven. Bake for 25 minutes, then remove the lid and bake for another 10 minutes until golden brown. Cool the soda bread on a wire rack before noshing.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has launched an inquiry into potential “censorship” by technology platforms ranging from Meta to Uber, marking an escalation in scrutiny of content moderation practices. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson called for public comment on what he termed “Big Tech censorship,” describing it as “un-American” and “potentially illegal.”
The broad probe could examine social media, video sharing, ride-sharing and event planning services. The announcement follows long-standing Republican claims that conservative viewpoints face discrimination on social media platforms.
This title keeps the core gameplay loop from the original, but shifts to a first-person perspective. It’s basically a new way to keep sabotaging your friends and family. Among Us 3D is for four to ten players and includes native proximity voice chat, with no need for a third-party platform. All of the minigames are returning, though there’s also some new ones coming down the pike. Innersloth is holding off on those details for now.
It features crossplay with Among Us VR, but not with the original game. That’s a bummer, but understandable. There will be, however, an expanded costume selection to offer “an endless number of cosmetic customization combinations.” There’s a new in-game currency called Stardust that will, presumably, be used to purchase some of those outfits.
There’s no release date yet, other than “soon.” However, a demo will be available to US players as part of Steam Next Fest from February 24 to March 3. Preorders for the full game are already live on Steam.
This is just the latest cool thing that developer Innersloth has announced. The company recently revealed a publishing arm called Outersloth. There’s also an Among Us cartoon coming sometime in the near future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/among-us-vr-is-being-transformed-into-a-traditional-3d-game-for-pc-194545497.html?src=rss
Steam currently stands as king of the hill when it comes to PC game distribution, with Valve’s storefront operating as the default choice for almost everyone looking to play games on their computer. Many companies have tried to dethrone Steam, only to fall to the wayside. Ethan Evans, former VP of Prime Gaming at Amazo,n is sharing how the
If you know how OLED displays work, you know about one of their greatest strengths: Individual pixels can be shut off, offering deeper blacks and power savings. Dark modes, now available on most operating systems, aim to save power by making most backgrounds very dark or black, while also gratifying those who just prefer the look.
But what about on the older but still dominant screen technology, LCDs? The BBC is out with a small, interesting study comparing the light and dark modes of one of its website pages on an older laptop. Faced with a dark mode version, most people turned up the brightness a notable amount, sometimes drawing more power than on light mode.
It’s not a surprise that dark modes don’t do anything to reduce LCD power draw. However, the study—not peer-reviewed but published as part of the International Workshop on Low Carbon Computing—suggests that claims about dark mode’s efficiency may be overstated in real-world scenarios, with non-cutting-edge hardware and humans at the controls.
The Action button is available on nearly every iPhone Apple sells, offering a quick way to access a feature, app or shortcut on your phone, just by pushing a button. It can be a flashlight, activate a smart home routine or let you access any number of custom shortcuts without having to unlock your phone and pick through apps.
Apple added the Action Button on the iPhone 15 Pro as a replacement for the iPhone’s original Ring / Silent switch, and it was an acknowledgement of sorts that lots of people keep their phones on silent anyway. Having a reassignable button was pitched as a “Pro” feature at the time, but much like the Dynamic Island, it came to all of Apple’s other phones in short order, even the entry-level iPhone 16e.
How to use the Action Button
Apple
You can use the Action Button for yourself on an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max and iPhone 16e just by pressing or holding down the small button above the volume up and down buttons on the left side of your phone. By default, the Action Button will mute or unmute your text and ringtones. This fills the same role as the old Ring / Silent switch. Heading into the Settings app will let you reassign it to another task and you can silence your phone via the Control Center.
How to reassign the Action Button to Flashlight
Ian Carlos Campbell for Engadget
Out of the box, Apple lets you assign the Action button to several different controls: Silent Mode (Ring / Silent), Focus (either a specific Focus or a menu that lets you pick each time), Camera (a specific mode like Photo or Video), Flashlight, Voice Memo, Recognize Music, Translate, Magnifier, Controls (a specific control from Control Center like Airplane Mode), Shortcut, Accessibility (toggling a specific accessibility feature) or do nothing at all.
If you wanted to switch from the default, Silent Mode, to the Flashlight, you need to first unlock your phone. Then:
Open the Settings app.
Tap on “Action Button.”
From there, swipe through the different options until you land on Flashlight.
To test that it worked, try pressing on the Action Button.
You can use this same process to reassign the Action Button to any of the built-in actions Apple provides.
How to make the Action Button open an app
Ian Carlos Campbell for Engadget
If you’d like to get a little more adventurous, you can also have the Action Button open a specific app on your phone. Let’s say, for example, your go-to game on the iPhone is Balatro. You can have the Action Button automatically pull up Balatro whenever you press it.
To set it up, you’ll need your iPhone unlocked.
Open the Settings app.
Tap on “Action Button.”
Swipe through the options until you reach “Shortcut.”
Tap on “Choose a Shortcut…”
Then tap on “Open App…”
Then scroll until you find your chosen app and tap on it.
This process works for any app on your phone, including features of specific apps, like if you wanted to jump directly into ChatGPT’s Voice Mode or a new note in the Notes app.
How to make the Action button activate a shortcut
Ian Carlos Campbell for Engadget
The Shortcut action works for more complicated Apple Shortcuts, too. Technically, any shortcut designed to be triggered by you choosing to activate it (as opposed to a time or location-based shortcut) works. There’s a lot of interesting shortcuts out there, and plenty of custom ones you can make on your own, but to use a simple example, here’s how you’d set the Action Button to start a Pomodoro timer.
Open the Settings app.
Tap on “Action Button.”
Swipe through the options until you get to “Shortcut.”
Tap on “Choose a Shortcut…”
Tap on whatever shortcut you want activate.
Press and hold the Action Button to make sure it works.
In the case of the Pomodoro timer, you’ll be prompted to choose how long you want the timer to last, and then you can tap “Done” to start it.
Between lock screen widgets and app shortcuts, home screen widgets, and the Action Button, there’s now multiple ways to check information inside of an app, adjust a specific setting or use specific functionality from the apps on your iPhone. It’s confusing, but a good rule of thumb is that the Action Button works best for actions that you only need to enable once or binary, on / off features. Plenty of others things work, but at a certain point you’ll want to be spending time in an app instead of futzing with the buttons on your phone.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/how-to-make-the-most-of-the-iphones-action-button-193038089.html?src=rss
Android, unlike some phone operating systems, allows users to install software from outside the default app store (even if you don’t live in Europe). And that’s good, because there’s all kinds of great software that you can’t get on Google Play.
The game Fortnite is a prominent example—that game’s developer, Epic, doesn’t want to pay Google a cut of sales and as such isn’t available on Android’s main app store. Other apps aren’t available because of Google’s interests—for example, there’s an ad-free, privacy respecting YouTube client that you can’t find on Google Play.
If you’ve never installed Android software without using Google Play, however, you might not know where to start. The good news is that sideloading is not hard.
Sideloading comes with security concerns
Before you go too wild, though, know that there are security implications—you should be careful about sideloading Android apps. While it’s not always perfect, Google Play has a system to keep malware out of their app store. Installing apps from outside that ecosystem means that you, yourself, need to do that vetting. Only sideload applications if you trust where they’re coming from. F-Droid, which I’m highlighting in this article, is maintained by a community of open source developers and I’m inclined to trust it. Don’t install APK files unless you’ve done your due diligence and have a good reason to trust the source.
Getting started with sideloading
First, you’ll need to download the APK file for the app you want to install. I’m going to use F-Droid, an alternative app store that only carries free and open source applications, to demonstrate how this works. I downloaded the APK file from the website, then I tried to open it. I was told that I was not permitted to install unknown apps from my download manager—in your case the warning may name Chrome, or whatever browser you use. In any case you can tap Settings to adjust the setting to allow installing apps.
Once you’ve enabled the setting, you can now go back to your browser and reopen the file. You will be asked if you want to install the app—tap Install. You’ll see the installer for a few moments, after which the application will be installed.
Credit: Justin Pot
Note that you’ll have to repeat these steps for any other sources of software. For example, if you try to install an APK using your phone’s file browser, you’ll need to enable the file browser as a source for software. The same goes for F-Droid and any other alternative app store—you need to give the application permission to install apps.
The exact steps are going to vary depending on your specific model of phone and operating system—that’s the norm for Android. And in some cases your phone might be locked down to prevent such software from being installed—a lot of company-issued phones, for example, are locked down by IT departments. All that aside, though, you should now be able to install APK files. Enjoy the freedom!
Generative AI seems poised to become an integral part of the game development pipeline, with Microsoft unveiling Muse, a World and Human Action Model (WHAM). It’s the first model of its kind, and comes by way of a collaborative effort between the research team and Xbox Game Studios’ Ninja Theory, which provided gameplay data. The company believes
