An anonymous reader shares a report: A group of states is seeking to extend a World Trade Organization agreement to refrain from placing customs duties on digital transmissions, a World Trade Organization document showed on Thursday. The proposal submitted by Barbados on behalf of a group of African, Caribbean and Pacific states proposed to extend the current moratorium — a key pillar of internet development for decades — beyond March 2026, when it was set to expire.

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Disney is rolling out its redesigned interface for Disney+ to more users in the US today. The redesign brings the streaming service in line with the loud, key art-forward approach of Netflix, and follows a price increase for both tiers of Disney+ that the company introduced in October.

The biggest change in the new Disney+ is the addition of a horizontal navigation bar with separate tabs for recommendations (For You), Disney+, Hulu and ESPN. Disney is leaning on a new algorithm that better uses your viewing history to make recommendations, and it now also integrates live TV streams via a dedicated tab in its vertical menu. Outside of the US, the new interface is also being paired with the rebranding of Disney’s Star streaming service to Hulu.

The new interface is the latest step in Disney’s plan to eventually completely fold Hulu into Disney+ in 2026. The Hulu has a dedicated tab in the app, but eventually it’ll just be one of the many sources of content Disney+ collects. Meanwhile, the live TV component of Hulu + Live TV will eventually be merged with Fubo, creating an even larger YouTube TV competitor that Disney will have 70 percent stake in. The growing competition between Google and Disney could be one of several reasons the companies have yet to settle the carriage dispute that’s currently blocked channels like ABC and ESPN on YouTube TV.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/the-redesigned-disney-app-is-rolling-out-to-more-users-in-the-us-204759533.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader shares a report: Nintendo has always been a company willing to try just about anything. Cardboard cutout toys that mesh with games? Done. A console called the Wii with a remote-shaped controller? Massive success. Legendary game designer and Nintendo executive Shigeru Miyamoto offered more insight into how the company operates in a recent financial briefing. “Nintendo has always worked with the idea that there are no limits to our efforts,” he said. “For example, when we tried our hand at movies with The Super Mario Bros. Movie, its success was compared to the box office revenues of other movies. However, even if the movie topped the rankings, we would think there was more room for growth.”

Nintendo has been expanding its efforts in Hollywood after The Super Mario Bros. Movie became one of the best-selling films of 2023. The Legend of Zelda movie is now in production, and the Super Mario Galaxy movie is expected sometime in 2026. Miyamoto believes that some Nintendo IPs could see sales numbers “potentially reach beyond the boundaries of entertainment.”

“My latest theme is that there is no ceiling in the world of entertainment,” he said. “In that sense, there are still many markets around the world that can be expanded through Nintendo Switch […] One thing that is interesting about Nintendo is that it’s okay to try anything.”

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Two years ago, Peloton recalled seat posts on its classic Bike models. Now, the brand is doing the same for seats on its older Bike+ models (but not the new Cross Training Bike+ that came out a few weeks ago).

If you have the old model of Bike+, you’ll need to reach out to Peloton to arrange a replacement.

Which Peloton models are affected by the recall?

Per Peloton, this is a voluntary recall of seat posts for Bike+ models made between December 2019 and July 2022 and sold in the U.S. and Canada. If your Bike+ has a PL02 model number on the label inside or behind the front fork or behind the flywheel, it is impacted by the recall. If you’ve checked and you’re still not sure, head to this link for more information.

Why the recall is happening

Like the previous recall of classic Bike seats, this issue centers around the Bike+’s seat post, which, “can break during use, posing a potential fall and injury risk to consumers,” according to Peloton.

The situation seems less serious than that previous recall, when at least 11 people were injured due to the faulty posts. Peloton says it has received three reports of seats breaking across about 833,000 units in the U.S., but no reports of broken seats among the almost-45,000 units in Canada.

How to get a replacement Bike+ seat

The replacements are free, so if you qualify, get one right away. To get yours, visit this link or call Peloton’s customer service at (833) 821-0099.

The next time you encounter an unusually polite reply on social media, you might want to check twice. It could be an AI model trying (and failing) to blend in with the crowd.

On Wednesday, researchers from the University of Zurich, University of Amsterdam, Duke University, and New York University released a study revealing that AI models remain easily distinguishable from humans in social media conversations, with overly friendly emotional tone serving as the most persistent giveaway. The research, which tested nine open-weight models across Twitter/X, Bluesky, and Reddit, found that classifiers developed by the researchers detected AI-generated replies with 70 to 80 percent accuracy.

The study introduces what the authors call a “computational Turing test” to assess how closely AI models approximate human language. Instead of relying on subjective human judgment about whether text sounds authentic, the framework uses automated classifiers and linguistic analysis to identify specific features that distinguish machine-generated from human-authored content.

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iPadOS 26 is a huge deal for anyone who wishes Apple would just make a touchscreen MacBook already. The update rolls out a major multitasking redesign that introduces macOS-like windows, a macOS-like menu bar, and a macOS-like file management. The iPad even has the Preview app, for crying out loud—though, to be fair, so does the iPhone.

Apple has toed the line with its tablets over the years, introducing features and functions that make the experience more like using a computer, while never really committing to the bit entirely. To that point, iPadOS 26 probably won’t replace your MacBook, but it comes pretty close. If your major concerns have to do with things like window and file management, this update is likely up your alley. But even as this new iPad era seems all about a more traditional computing affair, Apple is going backwards a bit, but in a very good way: The latest iPadOS update brings back a fan-favorite multitasking feature: Slide Over.

Slide Over makes window management easier

Prior to iPadOS 26, Slide Over had been a cornerstone of multitasking on Apple’s tablets for years. While you could have multiple apps open at once in varying window sizes, Slide Over let you designate an app window that kept more of an iOS shape—specifically something long and vertical. As the name implies, this window could slide over from the ride side of the display whenever it was needed, and could easily slide back when it wasn’t. It was perfect for keeping a social media feed or a messaging app at hand while working on something else: Imagine having two windows open on your iPhone, one for Safari and one for Google Docs, but whenever you needed to send a text, you could pull a Messages window out from the right side of the screen, and swipe it away when it was time to get back to work.

The Mac has no equivalent to this, of course, as it relies on standard window management. Perhaps Apple thought that if iPadOS 26 also had more of a standard window management, it no longer needed Slide Over. As such, the company removed the feature as part of its big iPad update this fall. It’s not clear whether Apple received negative feedback about this omission, or whether the company decided it missed the feature as well, but regardless of the reasoning, Slide Over is back as of iPadOS 26.1.

Slide Over is a little different with iPadOS 26.1

Credit: Lifehacker

That said, t feature doesn’t work exactly the same as it used to. In order to use it, you need to be using your iPad in Stage Manager or windowed mode, which you can choose from Control Center, or from Settings > Multitasking & Gestures.

From here, open an app for which you want to use Slide Over. Long press on the window controls in the top-left corner of the app window, then choose “Enter Slide Over.” The app will squish into an iOS-like window on the right side of the display, and you can dismiss it by swiping it away. You can also resize the window into whatever shape or size you want, while still retaining that Slide Over ability. In the image above, you’ll see that I shrunk my Apple Music window into more of a square, but you can make it as big as you want—though that might defeat the purpose of setting it as a Slide Over window.

How to update to iPadOS 26.1 (and beyond)

If you haven’t yet done so, you can install the 26.1 update right now from Settings > General > Software Update. In addition to Slide Over, you’ll find some other neat features and changes, like the ability to control how Liquid Glass looks on your iPad. If you’re a beta tester, you’ll skip right over iPadOS 26.1, as Apple is currently testing iPadOS 26.2. The public beta is currently available, and lets you add alarms to reminders for the first time.

NextGov: The IRS has notified states that offered the free, government tax filing service known as Direct File in 2025 that the program won’t be available next filing season. In an email sent from the IRS to 25 states, the tax agency thanked them for collaborating and noted that “no launch date has been set for the future.”

“IRS Direct File will not be available in Filing Season 2026,” says the Monday email, obtained by Nextgov/FCW and confirmed by multiple sources. It follows reports that the program was ending and Trump’s former tax chief, Billy Long, remarking over the summer that the service was “gone.”

The program, which debuted in 2024, was a big shift from the decades-long IRS policy of not competing with the tax prep industry in offering its own free, online tax filing service for Americans. Many Republicans had opposed Direct File, and tax prep companies also lobbied against it.

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Development on the next Mass Effect is still underway, Mass Effect executive producer Mike Gamble confirmed in a blog post celebrating the series’ “N7 Day” fan holiday. Bioware shared that it had started work on the new game in 2020, but Electronic Arts’ decision to go private have naturally called the future of the series into question.

Gamble’s blog post doesn’t share many details about the new game beyond the fact that Bioware “is heads-down and focused exclusively on Mass Effect.” What does seem more clear is that the game could have some kind of connection to the Mass Effect TV show currently in development at Amazon. “The writers room is going strong, and we’ve got a lot figured out about how it fits within the Mass Effect canon, and where it sits in respect to the new game,” Gamble says. Notably, the series is set after the events of the original trilogy of games, and follows a new story in the universe’s timeline. “It won’t be a retread of Commander Shepard’s story.” 

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Bioware’s last game, was not the smash hit EA apparently wanted it to be, and Bioware has appeared to go through a period of contraction in response. High-profile senior staff were let go in January 2025, and even before the game was released, EA began moving Bioware developers to other studios. EA itself may also be adjusting its larger game development strategy. Following its proposed acquisition, the publisher announced a partnership with Stability AI in October to create new AI-powered tools to better streamline its development process.

The Mass Effect series is beloved, and Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, the 2021 remaster that packaged all the trilogy’s DLC and games into a single package, was a great reminder. With a new entry and a TV show in the works, Bioware seems poised for a comeback. It just needs to survive EA until then.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/bioware-says-next-mass-effect-is-still-in-development-despite-turmoil-at-ea-200000050.html?src=rss

Meta said on Friday that it’s investing $600 billion in US infrastructure and jobs by 2028. Although the announcement is light on specifics (and heavy on standard Big Tech self-congratulation), it sounds like much of it will go toward AI data centers.

“At Meta, we’re focused on creating the next generation of AI products and building personal superintelligence for everyone,” the company wrote. “Data centers are crucial to reaching these goals and helping America maintain its technological edge.”

If you feel like this isn’t the first you’ve heard of Meta and $600 billion in US spending, you’re right. That’s the figure Mark Zuckerberg gave during a September White House dinner with Big Tech CEOs. But more memorable was the hot-mic moment later captured between Zuckerberg and President Trump. “Sorry, I wasn’t ready,” the Meta CEO said to the president, referring to his $600 billion pledge. “I wasn’t sure what number you wanted to go with.”

Meta’s announcement today includes figures intended to bolster its claim to be a champion of US infrastructure. The company says that, since 2010, its data centers have “supported over 30,000 skilled trade jobs and 5,000 operational jobs.” Meta adds that it’s currently bringing over $20 billion to US subcontractors.

As for the “superintelligence” mention, it also surfaced when Zuckerberg announced data center investments in July. That term typically refers to a hypothetical point at which AI surpasses human cognitive abilities. (Steve Wozniak, Geoffrey Hinton and others want it banned until it’s proven safe and controllable.) The company views its AI glasses as a central part of that future. Zuckerberg said in July that anyone without them may eventually suffer from a “pretty significant cognitive disadvantage.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-says-it-will-invest-600-billion-in-the-us-with-ai-data-centers-front-and-center-195000377.html?src=rss

Another day, another malware attack on smartphones. Researchers at Unit 42, the threat intelligence arm of Palo Alto Networks, have revealed a sophisticated spyware known as “Landfall” targeting Samsung Galaxy phones. The researchers say this campaign leveraged a zero-day exploit in Samsung Android software to steal a raft of personal data, and it was active for almost a year. Thankfully, the underlying vulnerability has now been patched, and the attacks were most likely targeted at specific groups.

Unit 42 says that Landfall first appeared in July 2024, relying on a software flaw now catalogued as CVE-2025-21042. Samsung issued a patch for its phones in April 2025, but details of the attack have only been revealed now.

Even if you were out there poking around the darker corners of the Internet in 2024 and early 2025 with a Samsung Galaxy device, it’s unlikely you’d be infected. The team believes Landfall was used in the Middle East to target individuals for surveillance. It is currently unclear who was behind the attacks.

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Flight cancellations under the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) government shutdown order have begun, with hundreds of flights and thousands of travelers across 40 U.S. airports affected. This could continue for as long as the shutdown lasts (and potentially impact many more travelers as the busy holiday season approaches).

While flight cancellations are never fun, the cascading effect of due to the government shutdown could make dealing with one even more frustrating. Here are four actions you should take right away if your itinerary is cut.

Enable alerts from your airline

Flight cancellations often happen with little to no notice, sometimes when you’re already en route to your destination, and airlines are certainly scrambling to comply with the FAA’s shutdown order. As they continue to pare down their schedules, there’s a chance your flight may be cut well before you head to the airport.

To keep yourself in the loop, download your airline’s app and turn on push notifications so you receive status updates as soon as they’re available—and keep an eye on your email and text messages for additional alerts.

Check your rebooking options ASAP

Airlines will often automatically rebook passengers whose flights are canceled on the next available alternative—so again, make sure you have your airline’s app on your phone to quickly view your options. If the airline offers this, you can accept the rebooked itinerary, choose a different one, or reject it and get a refund instead. Going through the mobile app is likely to be much faster than queuing at the customer service counter or trying to get through over the phone. (Though if you do need to talk to an actual person at your airline, we’ve got a guide for that.)

Of course, you should check your airline’s guidance specific to shutdown cancellations. Frontier, for example, is waiving change and cancellation fees and allowing passengers to request a rebooked itinerary or refund, but you may not automatically be placed on the next flight. United is offering rebooking options as well as refunds to anyone who chooses not to travel, even if their flight isn’t affected. You’ll find relevant advisories on your airline’s website (for example, Delta, American, JetBlue, and Southwest).

Know what you’re entitled to

If your flight is canceled less than 14 days before departure and you choose not to travel, you are entitled to a refund—even if you booked a nonrefundable or basic economy ticket. Airlines may offer travel credits or vouchers first, but you can try to request cash if that’s your preference.

You can look up your airline’s standard commitments in the event of “controllable” cancellations on the Department of Transportation’s Airline Cancellation and Delay Dashboard, but you should also check the policies specific to the FAA flight reduction as outlined above.

Consider booking a backup

If your trip is an absolute must, you may want to book a back-up option at a different time, on a different airline, or through an alternative airport. While there’s no guarantee that this flight won’t also be canceled, it does at least increase your odds of getting to your destination with a confirmed seat while other affected travelers are being rebooked on itineraries hours or days later.

You can buy a refundable ticket—knowing you’ll either get to where you need to go or get the extra money back if your original itinerary works out—or use points and miles, which are often easily deposited back into your account if you cancel your ticket. Be sure to check the terms and conditions of your rewards program. You can also look into travel insurance, which will usually fully refund your purchase, albeit for a fee

There’s a fine line between luxurious and ludicrous. When you’re talking about a pair of $799 headphones, that line begins to blur. Bowers & Wilkins has been on an excellent run of form over the past few years, consistently offering some of the best sound quality you’ll find on any headphones. It doesn’t load its models down with features — sometimes it could use a few more — but there’s always a great blend of design, audio performance and capable active noise cancellation (ANC) that make for well-rounded products. 

And then there’s the Px8 S2. At $799, it’s $100 more expensive than its predecessor (the Px8) was at launch, which puts them even further out of reach for most. Bowers & Wilkins did change up its familiar design slightly, and there’s a big improvement to audio performance, the addition of high-res music over USB-C and improved call quality. There’s no doubt the Px8 S2 is beyond premium, but did the company go too far?

What’s new on the Px8 S2?

After several generations of the Px7 and Px8 that had pretty much the same design, Bowers & Wilkins changed things up a bit with the Px8 S2. There isn’t a comprehensive redesign here, but the slimmer ear cup silhouette and the exposed cabling on the headband yokes are notable improvements to the overall look. Once again, the company opted for a mix of soft leather and die-cast aluminum, both of which give the Px8 S2 a decidedly high-end aesthetic. 

Inside, new 40mm carbon cone dynamic drivers were updated with a new chassis and motor. Those components are powered by 24-bit DSP (digital signal processing) with a dedicated amplifier and digital-to-analog converter (DAC). There’s also a more robust five-band EQ with True Sound bypass, which allows you to disable any equalizer tweaks to quickly return to Bowers & Wilkins’ stock tuning. The company added aptX Lossless support on top of the existing aptX Adaptive availability, and you can get “true” lossless — 24-bit/96kHz — sound quality over USB-C. 

Compared to the previous model, the Px8 S2 has two more microphones, bringing the total to eight. Six of those are used for external monitoring for ANC while two keep tabs on noise inside the headphones. All eight are used during calls, in addition to an upgraded “pure voice” algorithm to improve performance there. You can also hear yourself better in transparency mode, which is the biggest boost to calls. 

What’s still good on the Px8 S2?

Billy Steele for Engadget

Bowers & Wilkins has excelled at crafting a warm, inviting and immersive sound profile across its headphones for a while now. That’s still the case on the Px8 S2 as the audio quality is rich and detailed, with a wide soundstage that envelops you — almost to the point of bombarding your ears. While I don’t think the bass tuning is well-suited for mellow genres, there’s plenty to like here. On albums like Jason Isbell’s Foxes in the Snow, for example, the amount of texture and subtle nuance where the only instruments are the singer’s voice and a single acoustic guitar is incredible. 

Reliable battery life has been a strong point for the company in the past, and that remains true on the Px8 S2. The 30-hour battery figure (ANC on) is the same as the previous model, and I was able to easily achieve that longevity during my testing. With a mix of active noise cancellation, high-res tunes and transparency mode for work calls, the headphones easily kept up with Bowers & Wilkins’ promised numbers. 

What’s not so good about the Px8 S2?

Billy Steele for Engadget

The biggest knock against the Px8 S2 is the price. These headphones are way more expensive than what most companies charge for their top-of-the-line models, which is around $500 these days. Sure, $799 is only $50 more than the tariff-adjusted rate for the Px8 (which was originally $699), and there are several upgrades here, but that price will be prohibitively expensive for many, thus making the S2 harder to recommend despite their strengths. 

Even with the upgraded sound, I feel like Bowers & Wilkins may have gone too far with the bass tuning. There is some absolutely booming low-end tone on display here, especially for bass-heavy genres like rock, metal, EDM and hip-hop. On Spiritbox’s “Perfect Soul,” as one example, the kick drum edges dangerously close to drowning out the lead and bass guitars. A bit more restraint here would’ve provided ample thump and depth that isn’t almost exhausting to listen to. At times, the enhanced bass is great, but at others, like on Ruston Kelly’s Pale, Through the Window, it can really be too much for the style of music. 

On its recent headphones, Bowers & Wilkins relocated the physical controls from sitting on the edge of their ear cups to a ridge on the outside. In the process, the company also made the buttons much smaller. As I said when I reviewed the Px7 S3, this makes the controls harder to find with your thumbs, and you also have to be more accurate with your presses. That’s especially true for the three-button array on the right side that handles volume changes and playback controls. 

Like it did with its previous headphone models, Bowers & Wilkins hasn’t packed the Px8 S2’s spec sheet with advanced features. You do get a couple of basic items — multipoint Bluetooth and wear detection/automatic pausing — but things like speech recognition, hands-free assistants or automatic sound profiles aren’t here. This is an area where the likes of Sony, Bose and Sennheiser surpass Bowers & Wilkins, even though products like the Px8 S2 typically offer superior sound quality. 

Wrap-up

Billy Steele for Engadget

So how well does Bowers & Wilkins straddle that line between luxury and ludicrousness? I’d say the Px8 S2 is a luxurious set of headphones with a ludicrous price. I fully understand that Bowers & Wilkins is a high-end audio brand and that its products typically demand a premium over most of the competition. But like I already said, the price puts these excellent headphones out of reach. When you consider the price tag alongside the lack of advanced features, the Px8 S2 becomes hard to recommend. But for those who can afford them, a tantalizing symphony of sound awaits.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/bowers–wilkins-px8-s2-review-headphone-extravagance-193000794.html?src=rss

Web-based video games are experiencing an unexpected revival as the broader $189 billion industry stagnates. Sales for browser-based titles like GeoGuessr and chess were expected to triple from 2021 to 2028, reaching $3.09 billion, according to Google and Kantar. Playgama hosted more than 15,000 new web games in the first half of 2025, exceeding the combined total from 2021 through 2023.

Websites provide fast and easy access without console boot-ups or app downloads. Game creators sidestep the 30% revenue cuts imposed by Steam and Apple. Poki has doubled its employee count to 70 since 2020 and now serves 100 million monthly active users. A top-ten developer on the platform earns about $1 million in yearly revenue, up from $50,000 in 2020. Consoles cost more than $450, and smartphone gamers are downloading fewer apps. Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins predicted web games will be “one of the next waves.”

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