Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: over a half-decade of rumors, infrequent teases and affirmations that something is on the way, only for fans to impatiently bide their time and the thing to eventually arrive with very little advance warning. No, I’m not talking about Hollow Knight: Silksong this time. Spotify is finally rolling out a lossless option that offers higher-quality music streaming.

Best of all, the company is offering it to Premium members at no extra charge. You’ll get a notification once it’s enabled on your account. Starting today, Spotify is rolling out lossless audio in the US, UK, Australia, Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Portugal and its home territory of Sweden. In all, Spotify Premium users in more than 50 markets will gain access to lossless audio by the end of October.

The option is available on mobile, desktop and tablets, along with many Spotify Connect-compatible devices, including Sony, Bose, Samsung, and Sennheiser products. Spotify Lossless will make its way to Sonos and Amazon devices, as well as others, next month.

Somewhat annoyingly, you’ll have to enable Spotify Lossless manually, and you’ll need to do that on each device on which you want to use it. To switch it on in the Spotify app, tap your profile icon in the top left, then go to Settings & Privacy > Media Quality. From there, you can choose to turn on lossless audio for Wi-Fi and cellular streaming, as well as your downloads. When it’s on, you’ll see a lossless indicator in the Now Playing view and the Connect Picker.

Lossless streaming uses more data than other quality options, which is why Spotify is offering several settings for Wi-Fi, cellular and downloads so you (hopefully) don’t bust through any data caps you might have. You’ll be able to see how much data the various options — low, normal, high, very high and lossless quality — will use to help you figure out which way to go.

Spotify Lossless offers up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC streaming. The company says the option means you’ll be able to stream in “greater detail across nearly every song available on Spotify.” 

Of note, the company says that you’ll get the best lossless experience when you stream music on Wi-Fi using wired headphones or speakers on non-Bluetooth connections, because Bluetooth doesn’t yet have enough bandwidth to support lossless audio. As such, if you try streaming lossless music with a Bluetooth connection, the audio signal will still be compressed before it reaches your ears. It might take slightly longer for each lossless audio track to start playing too, as your device might need to cache it to avoid mid-song stutters.

“The wait is finally over; we’re so excited lossless sound is rolling out to Premium subscribers,” said Gustav Gyllenhammar, Spotify’s vice-president of subscriptions, said. “We’ve taken time to build this feature in a way that prioritizes quality, ease of use, and clarity at every step, so you always know what’s happening under the hood. With Lossless, our premium users will now have an even better listening experience.”

Gyllenhammar isn’t kidding about Spotify taking its time to offer lossless listening. It was reported all the way back in 2017 that the company was “close” to delivering lossless audio. In 2021, Spotify said it would start offering a CD-quality option that year, but that didn’t happen and the company has largely kept mum about a higher-quality streaming option since (it said in 2022 a Spotify HiFi experience was still in the pipeline, but declined to commit to a release window).

Earlier this year, it was suggested that Spotify would finally offer a lossless option in 2025 and that it would be a $6 per month add-on. Thankfully, that’s not quite the case, as Lossless is included with a $12 Premium subscription that will definitely not get more expensive at some point in the future. Nope, no way. In any case, including it with Premium puts Spotify on par with the likes of Apple Music, which has offered lossless streaming to paid subscribers at no extra cost since 2021. Now then, Spotify, about Dolby Atmos…

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/spotify-lossless-streaming-is-finally-here-and-its-included-with-a-premium-plan-131009528.html?src=rss

Leading Internet companies and publishers—including Reddit, Yahoo, Quora, Medium, The Daily Beast, Fastly, and more—think there may finally be a solution to end AI crawlers hammering websites to scrape content without permission or compensation.

Announced Wednesday morning, the “Really Simply Licensing” (RSL) standard evolves robots.txt instructions by adding an automated licensing layer that’s designed to block bots that don’t fairly compensate creators for content.

Free for any publisher to use starting today, the RSL standard is an open, decentralized protocol that makes clear to AI crawlers and agents the terms for licensing, usage, and compensation of any content used to train AI, a press release noted.

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If you had told me five years ago that playing PC games over the cloud would soon look  indistinguishable from using a powerful rig, I would have called you a fool. But after diving into NVIDIA’s new RTX 5080-powered GeForce Now servers for several hours, I think we’ve reached a major milestone for cloud streaming. From a New Jersey server almost a thousand miles away from my Atlanta-area home, I was able to play Cyberpunk 2077 in 4K at 170 fps (with NVIDIA’s DLSS 4 frame generation) and Overwatch 2 at a blistering fast 360 fps in 1080p. I genuinely couldn’t tell the difference between this souped-up GeForce Now server and my own RTX 5090-powered desktop.

That got me thinking: What’s the point of investing thousands in a desktop when cloud streaming can look this good for $20 a month? That’s the price for GeForce Now’s top-end Ultimate plan, which is required to use the RTX 5080 servers. And if you don’t need that level of power, you can also get a pretty solid gaming experience with the $10 Performance plan, which is restricted to 1,440p/60 fps at best.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

During my testing, I was constantly astounded by how sharp every game looked. The neon lights and reflective surfaces of Cyberpunk’s Night City lit up my Alienware OLED monitor. A few minutes into my first session, I completely forgot I was streaming the game. There were none of the video compression artifacts or occasional stuttering I’ve seen on other streaming services. Hell, I was even able to rip through several Overwatch 2 matches without noticing much lag. I only noticed a bit of latency when I turned on multi-frame generation while playing Cyberpunk in 4K — that pushed my frame rate up to 160 fps from 70 fps, but those interpolated frames made everything feel more sluggish.

We’ve clearly come a long way from Microsoft and Sony’s foray into game streaming for consoles. I’ve used Xbox offering on and off over the years, and while it’s typically been easy to use, it always felt a bit low-res (it tops out at 1080p/60 fps) and filled with blotchy video compression. Even today, it’s obvious you’re getting a second-rate experience. Sony’s streaming for PS Plus Premium subscribers can now reach up to an admirable 4K/60 fps for some PS5 titles, and it also turned the PlayStation Portal into a more viable handheld. But Sony’s cloud gaming seems more useful for letting you play older PS3 games, instead of giving you a complete gaming experience untethered from its core console business.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

GeForce Now has always had a technological advantage over the competition, as it’s easy for NVIDIA to stuff servers full of high-end GPUs. But it’s lagged behind a bit when it comes to usability, since playing games involves connecting to your accounts on storefronts like Steam, followed by downloading and installing those titles in a remote connection window. It’s not as easy as hitting a button on the Xbox Windows app. GeForce Now is clearly aimed at PC gamers who already have large collections of games and are used to suffering through the indignities of Steam’s interface.

For those players, NVIDIA’s latest upgrades have turned GeForce Now from a “nice to have” service to something that could be essential. There’s the raw power inherent in the leap to RTX 5080-level GPUs, which leads to higher frame rates and the ability to lean into demanding features like ray tracing. The actual “Blackwell” GPU hardware NVIDIA is using in its servers also sports a whopping 48GB of VRAM, a major leap from the 16GB of VRAM the consumer-grade RTX 5080 cards are stuck with. Technically, you could see better performance in GeForce Now compared to running a 5080 locally.

NVIDIA has also bumped its resolution and frame rate limits up to 5K/120 fps (which is currently only supported by one LG monitor), 4K/240 fps and 1080p/320 fps. That covers the gamut of people who want the highest quality possible, to those who demand the most frames for fast-paced shooters. 

And in an effort to make cloud gaming look a bit less like you’re just streaming video, NVIDIA has also developed “Cinematic Quality Streaming” features, including support for better color depth with 4:4:4 chroma subsampling. There are also “AI-powered” video filters to help make text clear, as well as support for AV1 encoders for efficient streaming that can adapt to network changes.

If you’re stuck with an aging video card, it may make more sense to subscribe to GeForce Now Ultimate for $20 a month, instead of shelling out $1,200 or more for a genuine RTX 5080. 

As usual for cloud streaming, though, the Achilles heel of GeForce Now is its exorbitant bandwidth demands. NVIDIA bumped up its maximum video bitrate to 100Mbps, which can add up to 45GB of bandwidth over an hour. You’ll need a beefy internet connection to stream games without slowing down the internet for everyone else in your home, and you can just give up on the idea entirely if you’re restricted by bandwidth caps. If you’ve been thinking of an excuse to upgrade to an uncapped gigabit internet connection, this is it.

Streaming Cyberpunk 2077 in 4K consumed 29.5GB over an hour of gameplay. GeForce Now hovered between 60Mbps and 80Mbps for most of the session, but it occasionally peaked to 100Mbps. I’ve got a reliable AT&T fiber connection in the suburbs, but I’d definitely be worried if I was still using a finicky cable internet in Brooklyn, where the overall bandwidth is shared with everyone on your cable node. A single GeForce Now session could take down internet speeds for your entire block, or you could find yourself without enough bandwidth to play smoothly during peak usage.

It’s also worth noting that GeForce Now also doesn’t support every PC game out there. You can access more than 4,000 recent titles, but you may run into issues trying to find obscure older games. NVIDIA is expanding its streaming library a bit with a new “Install to Play” feature, which lets you install some games in persistent cloud storage. I was able to set up and play 1000xResist without any trouble, and I’m hoping more indie titles will be added eventually.

The need for killer bandwidth and the reality of shoddy internet infrastructure are the biggest issues holding cloud gaming back from truly replacing local play. If my normally stable internet goes down, that means no gaming at all. And the same is true if NVIDIA’s servers get slammed. For most people, picking up a console or gaming PC will simply be more reliable.

Even with those caveats, GeForce Now still makes a compelling case for gaming away from your main rig. Perhaps you’re itching to put a dent in your Steam library while on vacation, or you just want to keep playing Mafia: The Old Country on your couch. It’s all possible, as long as your internet holds up.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nvidias-geforce-now-with-rtx-5080-gpus-is-a-cloud-gaming-revelation-130000231.html?src=rss

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The 2024 Motorola Razr+ (Unlocked) is going for $449.99 on Woot right now, undercutting Amazon’s price and even dipping below its previous all-time low of $499.99 (according to price-trackers). That’s a significant gap for anyone considering a foldable phone. Woot throws in free standard shipping for Prime members, while everyone else pays $6. The phone ships unlocked with a full one-year Motorola warranty. This discount is valid for the next three days (or until stock runs out).

Motorola hasn’t reinvented the wheel with this model, but the Razr+ 2024 is refined in ways that make it easy to like. The aluminum frame has softer edges, and the vegan leather back keeps the phone from feeling slippery. Folded, it slips neatly into a pocket, and the redesigned hinge feels sturdier while being easy to open one-handed. Plus, the IPX8 rating means it can survive a dunk in water, which is a big step up from the previous year’s splash-only protection. The outer 4-inch OLED screen is genuinely useful, with enough brightness to check emails or run apps outdoors, and the inner 6.9-inch display is sharp, fast, and bright, even if the center crease is still visible when the screen is off, according to this PCMag review.

Performance is where the 2024 Razr+ feels like a real upgrade. The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 paired with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage keeps everything running smoothly, from casual scrolling to heavier gaming. Battery life comes in at about 14 and a half hours (which outlasts Samsung’s Z Flip 5 by a few hours), and it recharges quickly with a 45W brick, though you’ll need to supply your own since it’s not included in the box. That said, wireless and reverse charging are both on board, adding some flexibility. The cameras, however, are a mixed bag. The 50MP main lens holds up well in bright daylight, but the telephoto reportedly produces noisy shots, and low-light photos fall short of what you’d get from Samsung or Google’s flagships.

A popular League of Legends esports player, Bwipo, has been suspended by his organization after he said on a Twitch stream that women shouldn’t be playing competitively while menstruating. Bwipo, whose real name is Gabriël Rau, told viewers on a Twitch stream: “I think there’s just not enough support for female pro players… women’s anatomy and their monthly cycles are just extremely different from males, and there’s no proper support system for women to go through what they’re going through.” And before he mentioned women’s anatomies, some viewers were probably thinking that he was going to talk about how there should be more support for women in esports. But then he continued: 

“…even men just tilt out of their f—ing minds when they’re playing League of Legends. So, when a woman is on the wrong part of the month and playing competitively, there is a time of the month where you should not be f—ing playing competitive games as a woman, in my opinion.” He justified his statement by saying that it’s based on his experience “living with one for a while.” He claimed the woman he lived with played League of Legends made it “really obvious when she was just getting irritated at every stupid little thing.” Bwipo added: “This is not me trying to be sexist or anything.” His video circulated on Reddit, but it’s no longer available. 

In a response to his statement posted on TikTok, the host and co-creator of League Awards, Eefje “sjokz” Depoorter, criticized and opposed his views. “I thought we’re past that,” she said about Bwipo calling a woman’s period the “wrong” time of the month. “That’s such a crazy take,” sjokz continued, talking about how women make Olympic records, climb mountains, work 24-hour shifts, are providers for their children, and care for the elderly, all while bleeding buckets and experiencing pain. “Also the notion that men aren’t emotional in games of League…” she trailed off and made a sound. 

Bwipo’s organization, FlyQuest, then posted an announcement on X, acknowledging that he “made sexist comments” and that they were “antithetical” to its core values. “Comments that might discourage even one young woman from pursuing her dream of becoming a pro player harm the future of esports, and we take that very seriously,” it wrote. FlyQuest has decided to suspend “Bwipo from play for the next series in the LTA playoffs,” which he’s currently in. The organization is also donating his prize money from the event to causes that support women in gaming. To note, FlyQuest has an esports team called Red that showcases “women and gender expansive folks in gaming.” 

After FlyQuest’s announcement, Bwipo posted an apology on X, admitting wrongdoing. “I’m sorry to those I hurt,” he wrote. “I regret using my platform to fuel vitriol and sexism instead of support.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/lol-esports-team-suspends-player-for-saying-women-cant-compete-while-menstruating-120045752.html?src=rss