An anonymous reader shares a report from The Verge: Microsoft is getting ready to announce an ad-supported version of Xbox Cloud Gaming. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that the software maker has started testing ad-supported games streaming internally, allowing employees to play select titles free without a Game Pass subscription.

I understand that the free ad-supported version of Xbox Cloud Gaming will include the ability to stream some games you own, as well as eligible Free Play Days titles, which let Xbox players try games over a weekend. You’ll also be able to stream Xbox Retro Classics games. Sources tell me the internal testing includes around two minutes of preroll ads before a game is available to stream for free through Xbox Cloud Gaming. […] The ad-supported Xbox Cloud Gaming version will be available on PC, Xbox consoles, handheld devices, and via the web.

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A new listing of the 50 most concerning pieces of space debris in low-Earth orbit is dominated by relics more than a quarter-century old, primarily dead rockets left to hurtle through space at the end of their missions.

“The things left before 2000 are still the majority of the problem,” said Darren McKnight, lead author of a paper presented Friday at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney. “Seventy-six percent of the objects in the top 50 were deposited last century, and 88 percent of the objects are rocket bodies. That’s important to note, especially with some disturbing trends right now.”

The 50 objects identified by McKnight and his coauthors are the ones most likely to drive the creation of more space junk in low-Earth orbit (LEO) through collisions with other debris fragments. The objects are whizzing around the Earth at nearly 5 miles per second, flying in a heavily trafficked part of LEO between 700 and 1,000 kilometers (435 to 621 miles) above the Earth.

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Earlier this week, Peloton unveiled a whole host of new app features and updates to its equipment, from AI coaching to enhanced bikes and treadmills.

I’ve spent the last few days playing around with all of the new stuff (Peloton devotee that I am) and was especially curious about the little rank that suddenly appeared on my profile. It’s a signifier of my progression through Club Peloton, a new member recognition program that comes with some solid rewards.

What is Club Peloton?

Club Peloton is a new ranking system that’s meant to reflect a person’s efforts and participation with Peloton workouts. Progress is applied retroactively (good news for my 201-day streak) which means I’ve achieved the rank of Silver III. The ranks are as follows:

• Bronze (I, II, and III)

• Silver (I, II, and III)

• Gold (I, II, and III)

• Champion

• Legend

Within each of the first three ranks, there are three tiers, and Champion and Legend each stand alone, so there are 11 levels to work through overall.

Importantly, you can never be demoted on Club Peloton; you can only move up. If you miss a week’s worth of workouts while you’re in Bronze III, you won’t log in to find that you’ve been bumped down to Bronze II. It’s meant to encourage you, not shame you.

How do you earn points?

The purpose of this new ranking system is to encourage members, make people try new things, and give recognition and rewards to participants. The methods of earning points demonstrate that. Here’s what you can do to rise the ranks:

• Earn two points for each day you work out with Peloton, whether using the company’s equipment, its app, or Strength+.

• Earn points corresponding to your weekly streaks, so three points for a three-week streak, etc. If you work out two weeks in a row, you’ll get two points. If you work out 40 weeks in a row, that week is going to end with a 40-point boost.

• Earn points for yearly streaks, too. If you work out 52 weeks in a row, you end up with a year-long streak, which earns you double points. Instead of 52 points at the end of that year, you get 104.

• Earn points for milestones. Milestones can be found on your Peloton profile and include things like taking 10 or 25 of a certain kind of class. When you achieve a milestone in a second activity beyond one you’ve already got one in, you get a 10% boost. Milestones in three or more give you a 20% boost.

• Earn points for participating in programs. Every week you are actively involved in one, like Peloton’s FTP program, you get two points. You get one point for every class you complete in your new, AI-generated personal plan and 10 points any time you undertake a Peloton challenge.

• Earn points for being a team player. Every week, you can earn up to one point each for giving someone a virtual high five during class, taking a live class, or participating in a Team.

How are the ranks calculated?

Want to know how many points are required to raise your rank? Here’s the breakdown:

• Bronze is your level if you have zero to 99 points.

• Silver is for 100 to 1,999 points.

• Gold covers 2,000 points to 14,999 points.

• Champion is 15,000 to 29,999 points.

• Legend is for anyone with over 30,000 points.

Like I said, I’m on a daily streak that stretches almost two-thirds of a year and I’m only in Silver III with just 1,205 points and 795 to go until I hit Gold I. You can tap into your point history to see a breakdown of how you got to where you are.

What is the point of all this?

To me, this is awesome, but I am a well-known lover of all manner of streak-based app gimmicks. I will do anything for the pleasure of a digital badge, like go to Dunkin’ Donuts every day or keep track of my to-do list on an app that forces me to report my progress to a little cartoon bird. Simply put, I find it motivating to compete for something, even if I’m just competing with myself to earn what amounts to little more than pixels.

Club Peloton, however, amounts to more than that: The company promises that as you work through ranks, you’ll unlock “surprises.” Future surprises notwithstanding, some of the rewards are already known. You can get early access to new classes or challenges, discounts on apparel or other retail goods, instructor shoutouts during class, and invitations to exclusive in-person events.

On Thursday, a team of researchers led by Microsoft announced that they had discovered, and possibly patched, what they’re terming a biological zero-day—an unrecognized security hole in a system that protects us from biological threats. The system at risk screens purchases of DNA sequences to determine when someone’s ordering DNA that encodes a toxin or dangerous virus. But, the researchers argue, it has become increasingly vulnerable to missing a new threat: AI-designed toxins.

How big of a threat is this? To understand, you have to know a bit more about both existing biosurveillance programs and the capabilities of AI-designed proteins.

Catching the bad ones

Biological threats come in a variety of forms. Some are pathogens, such as viruses and bacteria. Others are protein-based toxins, like the ricin that was sent to the White House in 2003. Still others are chemical toxins that are produced through enzymatic reactions, like the molecules associated with red tide. All of them get their start through the same fundamental biological process: DNA is transcribed into RNA, which is then used to make proteins.

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The blackout that left Spain without power last April was the most severe incident to hit European networks in two decades and the first of its kind, according to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity. Damian Cortinas, the organization’s chairman, said the April 28 outage was Europe’s first blackout linked to cascading voltages. More than 50 million people lost electricity for several hours.

A preliminary report published in July attributed the outage to a chain of power generation disconnections and abnormal voltage surges. The final assessment will be released in the first quarter of next year and presented to the European Commission and member states. A government probe in June found that grid operator Red Electrica failed to replace one of 10 planned thermal plants, reducing reserve capacity. Spain spent only $0.3 on its grid for every dollar invested in renewables between 2020 and 2024, the lowest ratio among European countries and well below the $0.7 average.

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Google doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to user privacy, but every once in a while, they do something surprising. Back in April, the company began testing end-to-end encrypted email messaging for enterprise users. On Thursday, it officially rolled out the feature. If you have a Google Workspace through work, you should now be able to send emails protected by E2EE, even if you’re sending the email outside of Gmail. That should make it possible to send emails that only you, the recipient, and the IT department that manages your account can access.

E2EE is essential for anyone who wants to ensure that their communications are totally private. To simplify a complex technology, encrypting something like an email essentially means scrambling all of the code into something completely unrecognizable. In order to unscramble it, you need a “key.” In the case of Gmail’s E2EE, you have a key, the recipient has a key, and whoever manages your Google Workspace account has a key. The keys to decrypt these emails aren’t saved on Google’s servers, so even Google should have no way to access your encrypted emails. You can send things like sensitive company information or medical information protected by HIPAA without worrying about prying eyes intercepting the message.

The only bummer here is that E2EE in Gmail is restricted to business accounts at this time. That said, there is a way to send more secure messages over a standard Gmail account—just don’t expect E2EE-level protections.

E2EE for enterprise Gmail users

Credit: Google

In order to send E2EE emails through your enterprise Gmail account, you need to ensure your Workspace admin turns it on. Once they do, you’ll need to tell Gmail you want to send your email with E2EE. To do so, open Gmail, and choose “Compose” to start a new email. Choose “Message security,” then, under “Additional encryption,” choose “Turn on.” From here, you can compose your message as you normally would, adding your recipients to the list.

If your recipient is another Google Workspace user, the message will automatically be decrypted when it reaches their inbox. If they aren’t a Gmail user, they won’t be able to decrypt the email in their client. Instead, they’ll receive a link that opens a “restricted” version of Gmail. Once they sign in, the message will decrypt, and they’ll be able to read and respond to it from this restricted window. Note that IT departments can choose to have all E2EE messages open in restricted Gmail windows, even if the recipients are Google Workspace users.

Use confidential mode to send “secure” messages for free

If you don’t have an enterprise account, there really isn’t any way to send E2EE emails through Gmail. For that, you’d need a dedicated encrypted email service, like Proton. However, you can add an extra layer of security to your messages before you send them out.

To do so, start a new email in Gmail, then choose “Confidential mode” from the options. This mode blocks recipients from forwarding, copying, printing, or downloading the email. You can also choose to have the message expire after a set period of time—including one day, one week, one month, three months, or five years—as well as password protect the email. If you choose the latter, Gmail will automatically generate a password and send it to the recipients via SMS.

These added protections are certainly helpful when sending sensitive information over Gmail, but they’re imperfect. Again, this is not end-to-end encryption, which means it’s possible to intercept and read messages sent this way. More practically, there’s nothing stopping users from taking photos of the message with another device—though the same could be said with E2EE messages.

Unless you have an enterprise account, I’d avoid sending anything too important via Gmail at this time. You’re better off using a dedicated E2EE platform, like Signal, WhatsApp, or iMessage.

Following Apple’s removal of ICEBlock from the App Store, an app used to report on the activity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, 404 Media reports that Google is also removing similar apps from the Play Store. In a statement to Engadget, Google said “ICEBlock was never available on Google Play, but we removed similar apps for violations of our policies.”

Google says that it decided to remove apps that shared the location of a vulnerable group following a violent act that involved the group and a similar collection of apps. It suggests the apps were also removed because they didn’t appropriately moderate user-generated content. To be offered in the Play Store, apps with user-generated content have to clearly define what is or isn’t objectionable content in their terms of service, and make sure those terms line up with Google’s definitions of inappropriate content for Google Play.

404 Media report specifically focuses on Red Dot, an app that both Google and Apple removed. Like ICEBlock, Red Dot designed to let users report on ICE activity in their neighborhood. Rather than just rely on user submissions, the app’s website says that it “aggregates verified reports from multiple trusted sources” and then combines those sources to determine where to mark activity on a map of your area. “Red Dot never tracks ICE agents, law enforcement, or any person’s movements” and the app’s developers “categorically reject harassment, interference, or harm toward ICE agents or anyone else.” Despite those claims, the app is not currently available to download from the Play Store or the App Store.

The pushback against ICE tracking apps seemed to begin in earnest following a shooting at a Dallas ICE facility that injured two detainees and killed another on September 24. According to an FBI agent that spoke to The New York Times, the shooter “had been following apps that track the location of ICE agents” in the days leading up to the event.

Apple pulled the ICEBlock app from the App Store yesterday following a request from US Attorney General Pam Bondi. In a statement shared with Fox Business, Bondi said that “ICEBlock is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs, and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable red line that cannot be crossed.” Apple’s response was to remove the app. “Based on information we’ve received from law enforcement about the safety risks associated with ICEBlock, we have removed it and similar apps from the App Store,” Apple told the publication.

Google says it didn’t receive a similar request to remove apps from the Play Store. Instead, the company appears to be acting proactively. The test for either platform going forward, though, is if there’s a way that developers can offer these apps without them being removed again.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-is-also-removing-apps-used-to-report-sightings-of-ice-agents-192940612.html?src=rss

theodp writes: From Thursday’s Code.org press release announcing the replacement of the annual Hour of Code for K-12 schoolkids with the new Hour of AI: “A decade ago, the Hour of Code ignited a global movement that introduced millions of students to computer science, inspiring a generation of creators. Today, Code.org announced the next chapter: the Hour of AI, a global initiative developed in collaboration with CSforALL and supported by dozens of leading organizations. […] As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms how we live, work, and learn, the Hour of AI reflects an evolution in Code.org’s mission: expanding from computer science education into AI literacy. This shift signals how the education and technology fields are adapting to the times, ensuring that students are prepared for the future unfolding now.”

“Just as the Hour of Code showed students they could be creators of technology, the Hour of AI will help them imagine their place in an AI-powered world,” said Hadi Partovi, CEO and co-founder of Code.org. “Every student deserves to feel confident in their understanding of the technology shaping their future. And every parent deserves the confidence that their child is prepared for it.”

“Backed by top organizations such as Microsoft, Amazon, Anthropic, Zoom, LEGO Education, Minecraft, Pearson, ISTE, Common Sense Media, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), National Education Association (NEA), and Scratch Foundation, the Hour of AI is designed to bring AI education into the mainstream. New this year, the National Parents Union joins Code.org and CSforALL as a partner to emphasize that AI literacy is not only a student priority but a parent imperative.”

The announcement of the tech-backed K-12 CS education nonprofit’s mission shift into AI literacy comes just days after Code.org’s co-founders took umbrage with a NY Times podcast that discussed “how some of the same tech companies that pushed for computer science are now pivoting from coding to pushing for AI education and AI tools in schools” and advancing the narrative that “the country needs more skilled AI workers to stay competitive, and kids who learn to use AI will get better job opportunities.”

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I’ve tested a lot of smart glasses for Lifehacker, and it’s tricky to compare them because the category is all over the place. Some “smart glasses,” like Chamelo’s Music Shield, are stylish accessories with built-in speakers; others, like the XReal One Pro, are cutting-edge display glasses packed with tech. So lining them up side by side is like kiwis-to-tangelos.

But there is one thing that almost every pair of smart glasses shares: they play sounds. So I decided to focus on just that—how these glasses actually sound—using every pair I own, from $650 XReal One Pros to $25, get-em-at-Walmart WearIQ glasses. And it was weirdly difficult.

The challenge of comparing audio in smart glasses

There are two big hurdles to judging audio quality in smart glasses:

• Subjectivity. There’s no universal scale for “good sound.” Even if I measured the frequency response or output or something, that wouldn’t tell the whole story—mixing, balance, and how our ears interpret sound all matter too. So it’s all subjective.

• Open-ear limitations. All open-ear audio is terrible for music compared to just about any other way of listening to it. The gap between the speaker and your ear means the bass gets lost, and the speakers are necessarily tiny, so everything trends toward the tinny side. Until someone manages to squeeze a subwoofer into a pair of sunglasses, even a $40 pair of earbuds will beat the most expensive smart glasses for playing back music.

How I tested

To keep things consistent, I listened to the same track for every pair: Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy.” It’s bass-heavy, with lots of spatial production elements, which makes it a solid stress test for both low-end response and clarity; the finger-snaps are a good test of high frequencies, and Eilish’s voice is a nice test for the mids.

I’ll start with the strongest glasses first and work my way down to the worst of the bunch.

XReal One Pro

XReal One Pro AR Glasses

$798.00
at Amazon

$968.00
Save $170.00

$798.00
at Amazon

$968.00
Save $170.00

XReal’s AR-ready display glasses are at the top of the list for audio quality. XReal One Pros are a high-end piece of kit, with audio to match. The highs and mids are subtle, they handle the spatial effects well, and the bass almost sounds like bass. These glasses’ sound system, developed by Bose, is as good as I’ve heard from a pair of smart glasses. 

Ray-Ban Metas

Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses

$263.00
at Best Buy

$263.00
at Best Buy

Ray-Ban Metas are my daily drivers, so maybe I’m a little biased, but the mids sounds “warmer” than in competing glasses, and the highs sound clear. Bass isn’t amazing, but it’s serviceable. They’re comfortable for everyday listening.

Chamelo Music Shield

Chamelo Music Shield Sunglasses

$259.99
at Amazon

$259.99
at Amazon

Chamelo Music Shields have “music” right in the name, so you’d expect good things, and they mostly deliver. They come closer than anything else here to sounding “bass-y,” (but it’s really far from shaking your guts), but the top end is a little tinny. It’s a subtle difference from the Meta glasses above and the BleeqUps below, but it’s there. For me, anyway.

BleeqUp Cycling Glasses

BleeqUp AI Sports Camera Glasses

$449.00
at BleeqUp

$449.00
at BleeqUp

These audio/video sports glasses have a nice sound system, including an “extra loud” mode to account for windy conditions when you’re out on a bike ride or trail run. They sound nice, warm, and balanced at medium volume, but cranking them up adds harshness and sharpness, particularly on the higher end.

Reebok Audio Smart Glasses

Reebok Nitrous Smart Audio Sunglasses

$199.00
at Amazon

$199.00
at Amazon

The difference in audio quality between almost all of these smart glasses is subtle, even more so among the entries in the middle of the pack. Having switched between various smart glasses more times than I care to admit, I prefer the audio of Chamelo Music Shield, the closest competitor to Reebok’s audio glasses, but the music controls on Reebok’s smart glasses are preferable, so it’s really close.

Rokid Max 2

Rokid Max 2 AR Glasses

$429.00
at Amazon

$429.00
at Amazon

The audio from Rokid Max 2 glasses isn’t bad, but the bass is weaker than the similar display glasses from XReal, and the overall clarity feels slightly mushy. Some listeners might put these higher on the list, but for me they lag just behind the top tier.

WeariQ Wireless Smart Glasses

WeariQ Smart Audio Glasses

$24.88
at Walmart

$29.88
Save $5.00

$24.88
at Walmart

$29.88
Save $5.00

You can buy these WeariQ “smart glasses” for about $25, so they’re almost 10 times cheaper than any other glasses listed here. They work, too: the Bluetooth connects with no problem and sounds come out of the speakers. They don’t sound great—the audio is tinny and distorts at high volume—but they exceeded my (very low) expectations and didn’t even come in last place.

Solos AI Powered Glasses

SOLOS AI Powered Glasses

$249.00
at Amazon

$249.00
at Amazon

Even the $25 WearIQ glasses sound better than these: in a blind test with two other people, we all chose WearIQ over Solos. The Solos are all hissy top-end with no balance—fine for voice, maybe, but music is unlistenable. To be fair, these are last year’s model of glasses, so perhaps newer models have improved the audio.