An anonymous reader shares a report: California-based TP-Link says it may take a sales hit of more than $1 billion because of erroneous reports that the networking company’s technology has been “infiltrated” by Beijing. In a lawsuit, TP-Link claims its competitor, Netgear, orchestrated a smear by planting false claims with journalists and internet influencers with the goal of scaring off customers.

Closely held TP-Link, which makes wireless routers, alleges in a complaint filed Monday that Netgear’s campaign “threatens injury to well over a billion dollars in sales” and violates a 2024 settlement of a patent fight. That accord, in which TP-Link agreed to pay Netgear $135 million, includes a provision that the public company promises not to disparage its rival, according to the suit in Delaware federal court.

The suit comes as TP-Link faces growing scrutiny in Washington over national-security issues. US lawmakers from both parties have expressed concern that TP-Link’s wireless equipment could be exploited by Chinese hackers following a series of attacks on its routers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Unity and Epic Games, the creators of today’s biggest video game engines, have announced a partnership that will make Unity games available in Fortnite. Epic has allowed creators to publish their own experiences (or “islands”) within Fortnite since 2018, and the number of experiences has grown considerably over the recent years. In 2024, 198,000 islands were published within the game, double the number from the previous year. This partnership has the potential to grow Fortnite experiences even further by welcoming Unity developers and can give existing developers more freedom.

“Just like the early days of the web, we believe that companies need to work together in order to build the open metaverse in a way that’s interoperable and fair,” said Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, in a statement. “Working alongside Unity we’re helping developers build fun games, reach bigger audiences, and find success.” Sweeney announced the partnership with Unity CEO Matt Bromberg at Unity’s annual developer conference. They said that developers will be able to publish games that use Unity’s game engine on Fortnite sometime next year. The companies promised to announce more details and exact timing in the future.

In addition, Unity has announced that the cross-platform commerce management dashboard it launched in October will support Unreal Engine. The dashboard allows developers to manage pricing and promotions across websites and stores for mobile and PC from one place. It will start supporting Unreal Engine in early 2026.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/unity-games-are-coming-to-fortnite-133000076.html?src=rss

Amazon is selling the Echo Spot smart speaker for just $50 as part of a Black Friday promotion. The sale applies to multiple colorways and represents a discount of $30. This isn’t a record low price, but it’s extremely close.

For the uninitiated, the Echo Spot is a diminutive little speaker/alarm clock hybrid unit. It’s a cute little doodad and looks great on a nightstand. The screen is customizable, so it doesn’t have to display a clock. It can show song titles, smart home control dashboards, the weather and a lot more. Of course, there are numerous clock faces to choose from.

The Spot not only integrates with Amazon’s smart assistant Alexa, but it provides access to the newfangled Alexa+. This is a smarter and more conversational version of the iconic smart assistant. Like most modern AI products, it’s still working out some bugs. The underlying tech, however, is promising.

The speaker is decent enough for the size, though you won’t be using it to fuel any house parties. It’s a great tool for bedroom-based listening. This version doesn’t have a camera, which is actually great news for the privacy conscious.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/amazons-echo-spot-smart-speaker-drops-to-50-for-black-friday-130550875.html?src=rss

You probably haven’t heard of Read AI. The company has quietly been making a name for itself in the crowded AI space, signing up 50,000 customers daily in recent months. At first glance, Read AI resembles apps like Otter.ai. You can use the software to transcribe and summarize meetings, but it’s also more ambitious than that. 

“It’s AI on standby,” Read AI CEO David Shim explains, adding that the company’s vision is to give people a tool that can record, transcribe and analyze nearly every professional conversation they have, no matter where those discussions take place and whether they occur online or in-person. Today, Read AI is taking a major step toward realizing that vision with the release of its new Operator agent (I’ll admit, the company could have picked a more original name), and new apps for Windows, macOS and Android. 

Between its own software, including an existing iOS app, and third-party integrations, Read AI users can now connect their accounts to more than 22 other platforms. Some of the more notable inclusions there are Gmail, Outlook, Slack, HubSpot and Notion. More importantly, with Read AI’s mobile apps, you can record impromptu in-person meetings; the company has data showing that more than half of professional conversations occur outside of online spaces.   

In any case, no matter where you talk to your colleagues, Operator is there to generate notes and insights. “We don’t just look at meetings,” Shim says. “We look at topics that are interesting to you.” To that end, Read AI has built a series of in-house multimodal models that look for context beyond what’s said during any interaction you record. For example, the company’s systems are designed to catch when you enthusiastically answer a question or look away in disinterest, and use that data to decide how the software goes about summarizing your meetings. 

“That context is what enables us to identify what is valuable to you, and make that discoverable,” says Shim. One way Read AI will surface those insights is through a feature the company calls Monday Brief. At the start of every week, you’ll get a summary of all the calls and conversations you had over the last seven days, with suggestions for follow-up actions you can take.

Now, you might be wondering, like I was, how Read AI hopes to compete in a market where a company like Microsoft is aggressively pushing Copilot on its users. If Shim is worried about the big players, he doesn’t show it. “There’s a need for an independent third party,” he says. “There’s always something new coming out. And that ability to be the independent third-party that plugs into different solutions is actually what consumers want and need.” To his point, since the launch of Copilot two years ago, Read AI has seen a 20x increase in the daily number of people using its software alongside Microsoft Teams. “We’ve seen the same thing along those lines for Zoom and Google Meet.”   

He believes the company’s approach to data privacy is another differentiator. By default, users are opted out of their data being used for training Read AI’s future models. Shim also notes the company takes recording disclosure seriously. “You need to notify people that you’re [recording] a call, and we put that front and center every single time.” 

If you want to try Read AI, the company offers a free plan that includes five meeting transcripts per month. Pricing for its paid subscriptions start at $19.75 per month.    

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/read-ai-is-building-a-note-taking-app-that-works-nearly-anywhere-130000235.html?src=rss

For nearly half a century, the United States has relied on a powerful, quiet engine to drive its innovation economy. It’s not in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street, but in the research labs of universities and non-profit institutions across the country. This engine, created by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, is the single most successful piece of economic legislation of the past 50 years. It has been responsible for countless life-saving drugs, world-changing technologies and entirely new industries.

Today, that engine is under direct threat from an unexpected source: the U.S. government itself.

A recent proposal from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick—suggesting the government should seize half of all patent royalties from federally funded university research—represents a profound misunderstanding of what makes this system work. Standing in firm opposition is the Bayh-Dole Coalition, a group of universities, researchers, patient-advocacy groups and business leaders who understand the stakes. They are fighting to protect a law that has been the cornerstone of American innovation, and their fight is one we should all be paying attention to.

Understanding Bayh-Dole: The Law That Unlocked Innovation

To understand the current battle, one must first understand the world before Bayh-Dole. Prior to 1980, the U.S. government funded billions in research at universities. When that research led to an invention, the patent rights defaulted to the federal government. This sounds reasonable until you look at the results. As detailed in the Bayh-Dole Coalition’s digital library, the government had amassed 28,000 patents by 1980 and had successfully licensed less than 5% of them. The Government was, quite literally, sitting on a treasure trove of innovation and letting it gather dust on a shelf.

The Bayh-Dole Act, a bipartisan effort co-sponsored by Senators Birch Bayh (D-IN) and Bob Dole (R-KS), introduced a simple, revolutionary change. It allowed universities, non-profits and small businesses to retain ownership of the inventions they created with federal funding.

This was not a giveaway. As the Coalition’s technical summary of the Act explains, this ownership came with a critical new responsibility: a mandate to actively pursue commercialization. Universities were now incentivized to file for patents and, most importantly, license those patents to private-sector companies—startups and established firms alike—that could shoulder the risk and cost of turning a raw idea into a marketable product.

The results have been staggering. The impact of Bayh-Dole and technology transfer is undeniable. It has spurred the creation of over 15,000 startup companies, supported millions of jobs and contributed trillions of dollars to the U.S. economy. From the Google search algorithm to life-saving cancer treatments, the fingerprints of Bayh-Dole are everywhere.

A New Threat to a Proven System

This proven system now faces a grave threat from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. His recent proposal suggests that the government should simply “take” 50% of the patent royalties universities earn from these inventions. The rationale seems to be that since the government provided the initial grant funding, it is entitled to a direct cash-back return.

This proposal fundamentally misunderstands the government’s true “return on investment (ROI).” The government’s ROI was never meant to be a simple royalty check. Its return is a stronger economy, the creation of new high-tech jobs, global leadership in science and new medicines that save lives. The Bayh-Dole system was designed to produce those outcomes, which it has done spectacularly.

Lutnick’s plan treats the complex, delicate ecosystem of innovation like a simple ATM, and in doing so, it threatens to break the entire machine.

The Coalition’s Stand: A Unified Voice Against “A Tax That Would Kill Innovation”

The reaction from the innovation community, led by the Bayh-Dole Coalition, has been swift, unified and overwhelmingly negative. As the Coalition’s official statement declared, the proposal “would dismantle the innovation ecosystem” and “undermine U.S. leadership.”

To back this up, the Coalition released survey results from its members—the very people on the front lines of technology transfer. The findings were not just clear; they were practically unanimous. A full 99% of respondents said the proposal would harm their ability to commercialize technology, and 98% said it would make them less likely to license patents to companies.

This isn’t just about money; it’s about incentives. As Joseph Allen, the Coalition’s Executive Director, wrote in a scathing Wall Street Journal op-ed, this proposal is nothing short of “a tax that would kill innovation.”

Why? Because university patent royalties are not “profits.” This money is immediately reinvested into the research enterprise. It pays for the high costs of filing and maintaining patents—a risky, expensive venture that often fails. It funds the technology transfer offices that bridge the gap between labs and industry. Most importantly, it provides seed funding for new, high-risk research, supports graduate students and buys critical lab equipment.

Taking 50% of that money doesn’t just reduce the pie; it shatters the incentive structure. With half the potential return gone, universities will be forced to abandon thousands of promising, early-stage inventions. They will only be able to afford to patent the “safest bets,” letting potentially revolutionary (but less certain) ideas die in the lab. Private companies, seeing the university support system gutted, will be less willing to partner and invest the millions needed to bring a product to market. The pipeline of innovation would slow to a trickle.

Wrapping Up

The Bayh-Dole Act is perhaps the most successful and least-understood law of our time. It transformed the U.S. from a passive funder of research into an active cultivator of innovation, creating a system that is the envy of the world. The Bayh-Dole Coalition is fighting to protect this system not for the sake of universities, but for the sake of the entire nation.

Secretary Lutnick’s proposal is a short-sighted cash grab that would sever the link between public research and public benefit. It would disincentivize discovery, destabilize partnerships and ultimately surrender America’s competitive edge. The government’s role should be to champion and strengthen the Bayh-Dole framework, not dismantle it for a fraction of its true value.

OnePlus got its start courting the enthusiast community by offering blazing-fast phones for a low price. While the prices aren’t quite as low as they once were, the new OnePlus 15 still delivers on value. Priced at $899, this phone sports the latest and most powerful Snapdragon processor, the largest battery in a mainstream smartphone, and a super-fast screen.

The OnePlus 15 still doesn’t deliver the most satisfying software experience, and the camera may actually be a step back for the company, but the things OnePlus gets right are very right. It’s a fast, sleek phone that runs for ages on a charge, and it’s a little cheaper than the competition. But its shortcomings make it hard to recommend this device over the latest from Google or Samsung—or even the flagship phone OnePlus released ten months ago.

US buyers have time to mull it over, though. Because of the recent government shutdown, FCC approval of the OnePlus 15 has been delayed. The company says it will release the phone as soon as it can, but there’s no exact date yet.

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