It’s been quite the week for Xbox news. A lot of people are still coming to terms with Microsoft’s veritable gut-punch of an announcement that the price of a Game Pass Ultimate subscription is about to soar by 50 percent. And if that has already pushed you into washing your hands with Xbox altogether, it looks like Microsoft may soon attempt to tempt you back by giving away its cloud gaming service for free. That is, an extremely limited version of it, with ads.

According to The Verge, Microsoft is preparing to announce an ad-supported version of Xbox Cloud Gaming, which finally exited beta this week. Sources said to be familiar with Microsoft’s strategy told The Verge that game streaming with ads is already being tested internally with employees. You’ll reportedly be able to play select games that you own as well as a selection of Xbox Retro Classics titles. Microsoft will also offer Free Play Days games, an initiative that already lets Xbox users try games over a weekend. All of this will be possible without a paid Game Pass subscription.

But the inevitable catch, beyond the restricted catalogue of available games, is that you could have to watch up to several minutes of ad content before getting into a game, and it sounds like there are a number of time-based restrictions as well. It’s currently being tested with a one-hour time limit, up to five times per month, though that could change come launch.

Microsoft could launch its ad-supported Xbox Cloud Gaming tier in beta soon, and it will reportedly be available on PC, Xbox, handheld devices and on browsers. What isn’t clear is what streaming quality will be offered on the free version. Xbox Cloud Gaming’s recently-unlocked 1440p option is going to be exclusive to Game Pass Ultimate, with Microsoft saving the “best quality” streaming for its most expensive plan. You’ll be capped at 1080p on the Premium and Essential tiers.

All three paid Game Pass tiers include unlimited cloud gaming, but wait times get longer the further down you go. It’s fair to assume that any free cloud service not tied to Game Pass will be hit with longer wait times, though perhaps the enforced ads would hide those pretty well anyway.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/a-free-ad-supported-xbox-cloud-gaming-option-might-be-on-the-way-165739468.html?src=rss

Air pollution increases the likelihood of people becoming frail in middle and old age, according to an international review of studies. The Guardian: The review team found 10 studies that looked at outdoor air pollution and frailty. The people studied came from 11 countries including China, the UK, Sweden, South Africa and Mexico. Two of the studies showed that men were more vulnerable than woman, with a stronger association between particle pollution and frailty. The risk of frailty increased with outdoor particle pollution. For the UK, this could mean about 10-20% of frailty cases are attributable to air pollution.

Exposure to secondhand smoking was the environmental factor that presented the greatest risk of frailty. The risk of frailty was increased by about 60% for people who breathed other people’s smoke at home. Using solid fuels for cooking or home heating also carried an extra risk of frailty. This was about half the risk of living with a smoker, based on studies from six countries.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pew Research: Public awareness of legal sports betting has grown in recent years — and so has the perception that it is a bad thing for society and sports, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Today, 43% of U.S. adults say the fact that sports betting is now legal in much of the country is a bad thing for society. That’s up from 34% in 2022. And 40% of adults now say it’s a bad thing for sports, up from 33%.

Despite these increasingly critical views of legal sports betting, many Americans continue to say it has neither a bad nor good impact on society and on sports. Fewer than one-in-five see positive impacts. Meanwhile, the share of Americans who have bet money on sports in the past year has not changed much since 2022.

Today, 22% of adults say they’ve personally bet money on sports in the past year. That’s a slight uptick from 19% three years ago. This figure includes betting in any of three ways:
1. With friends or family, such as in a private betting pool, fantasy league or casual bet
2. Online with a betting app, sportsbook or casino
3. In person at a casino, racetrack or betting kiosk Further reading: Filipinos Are Addicted to Online Gambling. So Is Their Government.

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Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source.

Much has been said about Comet, Perplexity’s web browser, not just because of its AI features, but also because of its paywall. Early access was initially reserved to a waitlist of Perplexity Max users, a subscription that costs $200 per month, before Perplexity opened up access to Perplexity Pro users, who only need to pay $20 per month. Still, seeing as most web browsers are free to use, I imagine most people still shied away from trying Comet because of the price.

If that sounds like you, there’s good news. On Friday, Perplexity made Comet available to anyone who wants to try it for free. You don’t need to subscribe to any Perplexity plan, nor do you even need a Perplexity account—though the company has some features tied to those who sign in. Comet is built on Chromium, so if you’re coming from Chrome, or another Chromium browser like Edge, you’ll be able to jump right in.

Installing Comet is as easy as any other web browser: just head to Perplexity’s website, and choose “Download Comet.” Even setting up the browser feels familiar, as you can import another Chrome profile, choose a profile pic, and set a name. But of course, the real advertised advantage here is the AI assistant. Like other AI-powered browsers, Comet has a built-in chatbot you can talk to about whatever it is you want—particularly the web pages you happen to be browsing. But Comet’s AI is agentic, which means you can ask the AI to do things for you.

If you ask it to take you to a specific website, it will (though I’m not sure that’s any faster than simply typing in the site by hand). If you ask it to open a specific link on the page, you can see the bot take over the page, and choose the URL you asked for. For example, I asked the assistant to open Lifehacker, then asked it to click on our article “How to Browse the Dark Web.” It did both of these things, and even offered a summary of the dark web piece.

But Perplexity says you can also request more complex tasks: According to the company, the assistant can draft emails on your behalf, build websites, make purchases, create citations, add to your calendar. There’s even a voice mode, as with other AI bots like ChatGPT or Gemini, so you can talk to the browser if you want to.

I’m still not sold on the idea that injecting agentic AI into my web browser is what I need to better experience the internet. Maybe I need to spend some time with Comet to experience that “future.” But seeing how often the tech still makes mistakes—not the mention the untapped security risks—I’m not sure I want to hand off all of my browsing tasks to AI just yet. Still, if you’re interested, you can give it a go without spending a dime.

No automaker has matched Tesla’s ability to deliver over-the-air software updates despite years of effort and billions in spending. Tesla introduced the technology in 2012 and issued 42 updates within six months, Jean-Marie Lapeyre, Capgemini’s chief technology officer for automotive, told WIRED. Other automakers ship updates “maybe once a year,” Lapeyre said.

General Motors actually introduced OTA functionality first in 2010, two years before Tesla, but limited it to the OnStar telematics system. Traditional automakers treat software as one bolt-on component among many. Tesla and other digital-native brands like Rivian, Lucid and Chinese companies including BYD and Xpeng treat it as central. There are now 69 million OTA-capable vehicles in the United States, S&P Global estimates. More than 13 million vehicles were recalled in 2024 due to software-related issues, a 35 percent increase over the prior year. OTA updates cost automakers $66.50 per vehicle for each gigabyte of data, Harman Automotive estimates.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over the years, racing sims have come a long way. Gaming PCs and consoles have become more powerful, physics and tire models have become more accurate, and after COVID, it seems like nearly everyone has a sim rig setup at home. Sim racing has even become an accepted route into the world of real-life motorsport (not to be confused with the Indy Racing League).

But what if you aren’t looking to become the next Max Verstappen? What if you miss the more carefree days of old, where the fidelity wasn’t quite so high, nor were the stakes? Rally Arcade Classics is worth a look.

Developed by NET2KGAMES, you might think of RAC as a spiritual successor to legendary titles like Sega Rally and Colin McRae Rally. Forget about the Nürburgring or even street circuits laid out in famous cities you might have visited; instead, this game is about point-to-point racing against the clock—mostly—across landscapes that long-time World Rally Championship fans will remember.

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Apple’s “Pro” iPhones usually look and feel a lot like the regular ones, just with some added features stacked on top. They’ve historically had better screens and more flexible cameras, and there has always been a Max option for people who really wanted to blur the lines between a big phone and a small tablet (Apple’s commitment to the cheaper “iPhone Plus” idea has been less steadfast). But the qualitative experience of holding and using one wasn’t all that different compared to the basic aluminum iPhone.

This year’s iPhone 17 Pro looks and feels like more of a departure from the basic iPhone, thanks to a new design that prioritizes function over form. It’s as though Apple anticipated the main complaints about the iPhone Air—why would I want a phone with worse battery and fewer cameras, why don’t they just make the phone thicker so they can fit in more things—and made a version of the iPhone that they could point to and say, “We already make that phone—it’s that one over there.”

Because the regular iPhone 17 is so good, and because it uses the same 6.3-inch OLED ProMotion screen, I think the iPhone 17 Pro is playing to a narrower audience than usual this year. But Apple’s changes and additions are also tailor-made to serve that audience. In other words, fewer people even need to consider the iPhone Pro this time around, but there’s a lot to like here for actual “pros” and people who demand a lot from their phones.

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Fermenting milk to make yogurt, cheeses, or kefir is an ancient practice, and different cultures have their own traditional methods, often preserved in oral histories. The forests of Bulgaria and Turkey have an abundance of red wood ants, for instance, so a time-honored Bulgarian yogurt-making practice involves dropping a few live ants (or crushed-up ant eggs) into the milk to jump-start fermentation. Scientists have now figured out why the ants are so effective in making edible yogurt, according to a paper published in the journal iScience. The authors even collaborated with chefs to create modern recipes using ant yogurt.

“Today’s yogurts are typically made with just two bacterial strains,” said co-author Leonie Jahn from the Technical University of Denmark. “If you look at traditional yogurt, you have much bigger biodiversity, varying based on location, households, and season. That brings more flavors, textures, and personality.”

If you want to study traditional culinary methods, it helps to go where those traditions emerged, since the locals likely still retain memories and oral histories of said culinary methods—in this case, Nova Mahala, Bulgaria, where co-author Sevgi Mutlu Sirakova’s family still lives. To recreate the region’s ant yogurt, the team followed instructions from Sirakova’s uncle. They used fresh raw cow milk, warmed until scalding, “such that it could ‘bite your pinkie finger,'” per the authors. Four live red wood ants were then collected from a local colony and added to the milk.

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