Electric vehicles are more likely to be fixed at the roadside than petrol or diesel cars despite public fears to the contrary, according to new breakdown data from the AA. From a report: New research from Autotrader and the AA, carried out in December among more than 2,000 consumers, found 44% of respondents are concerned about the risk of breakdowns or roadside repairs when considering switching to an EV. Concern was highest among drivers aged 75 and over, with 56% saying they were worried.

The North East recorded the highest level of concern at 52%, while women were slightly more likely to express reservations than men – 46% versus 41%. Even so, AA call-out data indicates EVs are more likely to be successfully repaired at the roadside than a 12-volt battery in a petrol or diesel car.

Separately, industry data continues to indicate growing readiness to service electric cars. A recent Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) survey of aftermarket businesses found 81.2% of UK workshops are already equipped to work on EVs, according to the campaign partners.

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Budget TVs have improved dramatically over the years, and the Hisense U6 Series is a great example of what you can get today for a “budget” price. This is a QLED Mini LED TV, so while it’s not at the quality that OLED TVs can offer, it makes up for it with a much lower price. Right now, the 65-inch Hisense Class U6 Series TV is $529.96 (originally $847.99), the lowest price it has been, according to price-checking tools.

65″ Hisense U6 Series 4K Mini-LED QLED Smart TV (2025 Model)

$529.96
at Amazon

$847.99
Save $318.03

$529.96
at Amazon

$847.99
Save $318.03

Don’t let the budget price fool you; this is a quality TV. The best one of 2025, according to PCMag’s “outstanding” review. Its main attributes are its incredible levels of brightness, peaking at 1,024 nits, and its beautiful colors. This is expected from a QLED Mini LED TV, but not for under $550 for a 65-inch TV. It is also packed with features and specs that you won’t find in other TVs at this price.

The refresh rate is 144Hz with VRR and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, making it a good option to play games. You’ll get an input lag of 4.6 ms at 1080p and 13.1 ms at 4K. For those who pay premium in their streaming apps for HDR, you’ll be able to take advantage of HDR10+ and Dolby Vision IQ. If you have a surround sound system, you’ll also be able to take advantage of Dolby Atmos for a more immersive, 3D sound.

The biggest downside, in my opinion, is that the OS is Amazon’s Fire TV, but that’s fixable with a TV stick, and also down to preference. While there is no hands-free voice control, there is Apple AirPlay for casting devices.

If you’re looking for a 65-inch TV that punches above its price tag, is at a great discount, offers great colors, brightness, and features, get the Hisense Class U6 Series TV.

Several of Meta’s VR studios have been affected by the company’s metaverse-focused layoffs. The company has shuttered three of its VR studios, including Armature, Sanzaru and Twisted Pixel. VR fitness app Supernatural will no longer be updated with fresh content.

Employees at Twisted Pixel, which released Marvel’s Deadpool VR in November, and Sanzaru, known for Asgard’s Wrath, posted on social media about the closures. Bloomberg reported that Armature, which brought Resident Evil 4 to Quest back in 2021 has also closed and that the popular VR fitness app Supernatural will no longer be updated with fresh content, though the current version will continue to be supported. 

A spokesperson for Meta confirmed the closures. “We said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward Wearables,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Engadget. “This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year.”

The cuts raise questions about Meta’s commitment to supporting a VR ecosystem it has invested heavily in. The company hasn’t announced any new VR headsets since the Quest 3S in 2024, and last month it “paused” planned Horizon OS headsets from Asus and Lenovo. Now, it’s also pulling back on in-house game development too. 

Meta is claiming, internally at least, that it remains committed to supporting the industry. “These changes do not mean we are moving away from video games,” Oculus Studios director Tamara Sciamanna wrote in the memo reported by Bloomberg. “With this change we are shifting our investment to focus on our third-party developers and partners to ensure long-term sustainability.”

Have a tip for Karissa? You can reach her by email, on X, Bluesky, Threads, or send a message to @karissabe.51 to chat confidentially on Signal.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-has-closed-three-vr-studios-as-part-of-its-metaverse-cuts-202720670.html?src=rss

On Tuesday Microsoft announced a new initiative called “Community-First AI Infrastructure” that commits the company to paying full electricity costs for its data centers and refusing to seek local property tax reductions.

As demand for generative AI services has increased over the past year, Big Tech companies have been racing to spin up massive new data centers for serving chatbots and image generators that can have profound economic effects on the surrounding areas in which they are located. Among other concerns, communities across the country have grown concerned that data centers are driving up residential electricity rates through heavy power consumption and by straining water supplies due to server cooling needs.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that global data center electricity demand will more than double by 2030, reaching around 945 TWh, with the United States responsible for nearly half of total electricity demand growth over that period. This growth is happening while much of the country’s electricity transmission infrastructure is more than 40 years old and under strain.

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Analyst Ben Thompson, sharing the experience of watching an NBA game on the Vision Pro: When I started the broadcast [on Apple Vision Pro’s immersive view of the Bucks vs. Lakers NBA game] I had, surprise surprise, a studio show, specially tailored for the Apple Vision Pro. In other words, there was a dedicated camera, a dedicated presenter, a dedicated graphics team, etc. There was even a dedicated announcing team! This all sounds expensive and special, and I think it was a total waste.

Here’s the thing that you don’t seem to get, Apple: the entire reason why the Vision Pro is compelling is because it is not a 2D screen in my living room; it’s an immersive experience I wear on my head. That means that all of the lessons of TV sports production are immaterial. In fact, it’s worse than that: insisting on all of the trappings of a traditional sports broadcast has two big problems: first, because it is costly, it means that less content is available than might be otherwise. And second, it makes the experience significantly worse.

[…] I have, as I noted, had the good fortune of sitting courtside at an NBA game, and this very much captured the experience. The biggest sensation you get by being close to the players is just how tall and fast and powerful they are, and you got that sensation with the Vision Pro; it was amazing. The problem, however, is that you would be sitting there watching Giannis or LeBron or Luka glide down the court, and suddenly you would be ripped out of the experience because the entirely unnecessary producer decided you should be looking through one of these baseline cameras under the hoop […]

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We all know how annoying unwanted notifications are, especially when you’re trying to focus. But turning notifications off entirely for a given app potentially means missing important messages. That’s where the free Android app DoNotNotify comes in—with it you can set up custom filters for notifications.

Maybe you’re in a group chat that is, for the most part, useful, but includes one person who talks too much. With this application, you could filter that person out, meaning you’d only get notifications when anyone else sends a message. You could also use this to filter news notifications about particular subjects or public figures you’d rather not see pop-ups about. You get the idea.

The application itself is deceptively simple. Launch it and you’ll need to give it permissions to access your notifications. Once you do, it will start collecting a log of notifications. You can tap any of these notifications in order to set up a rule.

The first thing you need to decide is whether you want to create a blacklist or a whitelist. You can add filters for the title of the notification (the bolded part at the top of the notification) or the text (which is the excerpt below the title).

The whitelist feature is great when you only want certain notifications from your apps. For example: Maybe your banking app sends out notifications about your credit score, which you want to see, but also promotions for other services, which you don’t. You could whitelist the words “credit score.” The same goes for news applications—maybe you only want to see headlines from a particular app when the headline mentions a certain country or public figure.

Blacklists, meanwhile, allow you to do the opposite. The group text example I gave earlier is an example of this. You could also use blacklists to prevent certain public figures or topics from showing up in notifications from news applications.

It’s worth noting that the application needs access to your notifications in order to filter them, meaning it could potentially gather a lot of information about you—concerns were raised about this on Hacker News. On the other hand, the app’s privacy policy is quite robust, claiming not to collect any information and not to work with any third parties.

I don’t think this is the kind of application every person is going to want—it’s for the obsessive. If that’s you, though, and you get annoyed by notifications often, you should give this a try.

Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car company, tested its autonomous vehicles in New York City in 2025, and as part of proposed legislation from New York Governor Kathy Hochul, the company could soon offer its services across the state, Wired reports.

Governor Hochul’s proposed legislation was formally announced during a State of the State address covering policy proposals for the upcoming year. The new law, if passed, would loosen the state’s restrictions on self-driving car companies by forming a pilot program that would allow for “the limited deployment of commercial for-hire autonomous passenger vehicles outside New York City.” Applicants to the pilot program would need to demonstrate that they have “local support for [autonomous vehicle] deployment” and prove their “adherence to the highest possible safety standards” to be considered.

As a company with presumably good odds of being approved, Waymo supports the legislation. “Governor Hochul’s proposal to legalize fully autonomous vehicles is a transformative moment for New York’s transportation system,” Waymo’s Head of Global Public Policy Justin Kintz said in a statement. “With the Governor’s leadership, New York has the opportunity to pair its investments in slower speeds, better traffic enforcement, and first-in-the-nation congestion management strategies with Waymo’s demonstrably safe technology, creating a future where living in New York is safer, easier, and more accessible.”

Waymo already has commercial robotaxi services in select cities in California, Texas and Georgia, offered on its own or in partnership with Uber. The company announced plans to expand in Texas and Florida late last year, and is already committed to offering service in Las Vegas, San Diego and Detroit in 2026. Wired reports Waymo spent over $370,000 lobbying regulators in New York about telecommunications and transportation issues in 2025, and based on today’s announcement, it appears those efforts are paying off.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/proposed-legislation-opens-the-door-to-robotaxi-services-in-new-york-193804671.html?src=rss

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Oura announced last week that its long-awaited charging case is finally shipping. I got one to try out, and can confirm that it works well and is arguably better designed than those of its competitors. That said, is it really worth $99? 

The charging case works with the Oura Ring 4, not the older models like the gen 3. I’ve previously reviewed the Oura Ring 4, and it’s probably the best smart ring out there right now. You pay a premium for it, though—not only are Oura’s prices higher than many of its competitors ($349 to $499), Oura also requires a $5.99/month subscription to access nearly all of its features. 

The standard charger that ships with any of the Oura rings is a simple flat square with a post that the ring fits onto. (The square base then plugs into a USB-C cord.) This works fine, but it’s inconvenient to travel with, and also susceptible to jostling. Maybe you never bump things around on your nightstand, or snag a charging cable, but it’s certainly happened to me. 

Like other Oura users, I’ve been wishing for a charging case. RingConn and Luna Ring both come with cases, so it would be nice if Oura would catch up. I usually keep my ring in my gym bag during weightlifting workouts (since it’s neither comfortable nor useful in those workouts). I plan to keep the charging case in my gym bag and use it during workouts. 

Specs of Oura’s charging case

Charging my size 8 ring
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Oura says the case holds enough power for five full charges of the ring, and it takes up to 80 minutes to charge the ring (less if the ring is partially charged, obviously). The case itself charges in 90 minutes. 

I haven’t been able to test the case in the long term, since I just got it, but the ring has a battery life of five days or more depending on the size of the ring and the settings you have enabled. That means you could go about a month without charging from a cable. 

The case is sized to your ring, so you have to make sure to buy the correct size of charging case—for example, a size 8 case for a size 8 ring. 

There’s a colored LED on the front of the charging case. When a ring is inside and charging, a white LED will pulse, just like the nightstand charger does. When the case is empty and open, it will indicate the case’s charge level. Green means the battery is full. The case pairs to your Oura app, so you can check the app to see the charge level of both your ring and the case. 

How it compares to other brands

Top to bottom: Oura, Luna, RingConn
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

I happen to have a Luna Ring and a RingConn gen 2, which both ship with a charging case. Luna’s case holds about 30 days of charge, similar to Oura’s, while RingConn says its case can hold 150 days of charge. 

The other noticeable difference is size. RingConn’s case is the largest of the three, which probably explains its longer battery life. Oura’s case is slightly wider than Luna’s, but slimmer. You can see the size differences in my photos here.

RingConn is the larger black case to the left. Oura is bottom right, Luna is top right.
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

RingConn’s case comes with the ring, and costs $299 for the package. Luna charges $329 for a ring plus charging case. (I recall Luna’s charging case being optional, and available for an extra $49, as I wrote here, but right now I can only find the package deal on their site.) Oura’s charging case is sold separately, for $99, so you’d spend $448 to $598 for the ring plus the case.

Google’s Veo video AI made stunning leaps in fidelity in 2025, and Google isn’t stopping in 2026. The company has announced an update for Veo 3.1 that adds new capabilities when you provide the model with reference material, known as Ingredients to Video. The results should be more consistent, and output supports vertical video and higher-resolution upscaling.

With Ingredients to Video, you can provide the AI with up to three images to incorporate into the generated video. You can use that to provide the robot with characters to animate, backgrounds, and material textures. When you do that, the newly upgraded model will allegedly make fewer random alterations, hemming closer to the reference images. You can also generate multiple clips and even prompt for changes to the setting or style while keeping other elements consistent.

Google is also expanding its support for mobile-first video in Veo. When using Ingredients to Video, you can now specify outputs in a 9:16 (vertical) ratio. That makes it ideal for posting on social apps like Instagram or TikTok, as well as uploading as a YouTube Short. So get ready for even more phone-centric slop. Google added support for vertical videos via a text prompt last year.

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Mercedes-Benz is pausing the roll-out of Drive Pilot, an “eyes off” conditionally automated driving feature that was available in Europe and the US. From a report: As first reported by German publication Handelsblatt, the revised S-Class will not have the Level 3 system when it arrives at the end of this month. Mercedes was one of the first automakers to offer a Level 3 driving system to its customers when it launched Drive Pilot with the electric EQS sedan and the gas-powered S-Class in the fall of 2023. At up to 40mph in traffic jam situations on highways, Drive Pilot provided hands-free, eyes-off driving that allows the driver to look away from the road at something else, like a game or a movie.

It was big leap up from hands-free Level 2 systems — Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) included — which still require the driver to be in full control, looking ahead and paying attention while the system is active. But now Mercedes says it is temporarily scrapping the feature, citing middling demand and the high production costs of developing the technology.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump asked Elon Musk to get Starlink working more reliably in Iran to thwart the Iranian government’s Internet shutdown. Starlink operator SpaceX was apparently already working on the problem before Trump reached out to Musk.

Iran severed Internet connections and phone lines last week as the government conducted a violent crackdown on anti-government demonstrators, according to numerous reports, which say that thousands of people have been killed.

Starlink hasn’t been completely disabled. The government’s jamming technology has reportedly caused Starlink packet loss of anywhere from 30 to 80 percent.

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I have taught spin classes for four years, but the majority of my friends have never taken one—they’re just not “class” people. Everyone works out differently and classes are a very specific kind of experience. I take a class nearly every day, whether in-person or using my Peloton, so obviously I am firmly in the pro-class category, but I can understand why being blabbed at by an instructor wouldn’t motivate some people. I learned recently, though, that Peloton offers a solution to those who don’t enjoy all the yap: You can actually customize how much of their in-app instructors you hear, so whether you want to pay close attention to cues or hear practically nada from the teacher, you can make it happen, creating a truly custom “class” experience.

How to customize instructor volume on Peloton

If you’re using a Peloton machine, like the Bike or the Tread, locate the volume buttons on your touchscreen. When you press them, not only can you control the overall volume output of the class you’re taking, but you get options like Boost instructor and Customize. When you tap Customize, you’re presented with a slider that can reduce the volume of the instructor down to practically nothing or boost them so they’re significantly louder than the music in the class’s playlist.

On the mobile app, you have a similar option for classes that don’t require the brand’s proprietary cardio equipment, though it’s not always as customizable. First, load up a class (like stretching or yoga). The video of the instructor walking you through it will start to play. Tap the video itself and you’ll get a menu of icons that show what appears to be a phone turning on its side (to play the video full-screen), a volume slider, a Bluetooth caster to enable AirPlay across other devices in the area, and a speech bubble for subtitles. Tap that volume slider, the second icon from the left. It opens an Audio Mix box that allows you to choose whether you want Music Boosted or Instructor Boosted. You can’t control the mix between the music and the instructor as precisely as you can when you’re using the equipment, but you can at least prioritize the music or the teacher.

Credit: Peloton/Lindsey Ellefson

Why you’d want to do this and what to keep in mind

Some of Peloton’s instructors are notoriously chatty. Personally, I think it’s endearing and I see nothing wrong with the parasocial relationships it creates if those motivate someone to hop on their Bike more often. The instructors are beamed into hundreds of thousands of homes every month and are akin to celebrities, so it’s good for marketing and engagement if users feel connected to them, especially because at-home workouts are otherwise pretty isolating (although Peloton offers plenty of other ways to replicate the feeling of connectedness you get from in-person classes, like Teams competitions).

Still, some people aren’t trying to replicate that feeling; they just want to work out by themselves with no chatter. Usually, that means loading up your own music or taking one of Peloton’s scenic rides, but the trade-off there is that you don’t get a well-planned workout designed by a professional trainer, like you do when you take an instructor-led class. You trade the suggested resistance and speed for something self-paced, which can be detrimental to motivation or effort. By cutting down the volume of the instructor’s mic and amplifying the playlist, you get to take a real class, follow along with the resistance and speed cues on the screen, and listen to a playlist you don’t have to bother curating. If you don’t care what a teacher had for breakfast but do care to follow along with a 45-minute progressive push because it aligns with your fitness goals, turning down the instructor volume could be for you.

That said, there is a reason these classes are instructor-led. Teachers are certified for a reason and the ones on high-profile platforms like Peloton are well-credentialed. They provide safety cues, insights into why playlists and rides are structured the way they are, and helpful information you can carry into your self-led workouts—plus motivation when you need it. I wouldn’t recommend cutting out the instructor volume if you’re a beginner. There is value in hearing what a pro has to say about form, speed, and self-pacing. You should only cut it out if you’re a seasoned rider with good form and a solid understanding of your own abilities and limits. That said, if you’re just getting started with Peloton and have concerns about your form or understanding of the workouts, it might even be worth it for you to use this feature the opposite way, prioritizing the instructor feed and deprioritizing the music. Riding to the beat will come in time, but doing it safely and effectively is most important.

If you’re a newbie and you don’t like instructor chatter, I recommend filtering your classes so you only take ones from the less-talkative teachers, like Ben Alldis, Sam Yo, Matt Wilpers, and Leanne Hainsby. It might take you some time to find the instructor whose methods align best with your interests and motivators, but it’s worth it. You can also take specialty Metrics classes, which are designed to focus more heavily on performance metrics like cadence, resistance, and output. Those have less talking overall.