Apple will introduce a new 12.9-inch iPad Air alongside the long-rumored OLED iPad Pro to kick off upgrades for its entire iPad lineup in 2024, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Updated versions of the iPad Air are expected to arrive in the beginning of the year, with the new iPad Pro models to follow by the second quarter.
Kuo predicts Apple will release a 10.9-inch iPad Air and, for the first time, a 12.9-inch model. While it’ll come in the Pro size, it isn’t likely to sport the Pro’s mini-LED display. But, Kuo says it will get the oxide backplane, which will make for better performance over the smaller model. As for the new iPad Pro, Kuo says there are two upcoming M3 models that will drop the mini-LED display for OLED and use the iPhone 15 Pro’s LTPO backplane.
The rest of the iPad lineup is due for upgrades as well, with both the 11th generation iPad and new iPad mini anticipated to arrive in the second half of 2024. It’s been over a year since Apple last released a new iPad.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-ipad-refresh-next-year-could-bring-oled-ipad-pros-and-a-129-inch-ipad-air-193729591.html?src=rss
A new “Cybertruck Only” clause in Tesla’s purchase agreement stipulates that buyers cannot sell their new vehicle within the first year unless they have explicit permission from the automaker, or they may be sued. The company just updated its Motor Vehicle Order Agreement ahead of the first Cybertruck deliveries, which it said last month are on track for November 30.
Under the terms, which have been making the rounds on social media this weekend, Tesla states that it “may seek injunctive relief to prevent the transfer of title of the Vehicle” if buyers breach its resale provision, or it may “demand liquidated damages from you in the amount of $50,000 or the value received as consideration for the sale or transfer, whichever is greater.” The terms also warn that offending resellers could be barred from buying vehicles from Tesla in the future.
Tesla says it may grant exceptions to some people wishing to sell their Cybertruck within the first year, but they must get written consent. If the company does agree, it will either buy the car back at a reduced price — deducting $0.25 per mile driven, plus wear and tear, and the cost of any necessary repairs — or allow the owner to resell the truck to a third-party buyer. Tesla’s Cybertruck is only being released to a small number of select customers at first and won’t enter mass production until 2024, so naturally, the company is trying to get ahead of resellers looking to cash in on the vehicle’s rarity.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tesla-fine-print-says-it-may-sue-cybertruck-resellers-for-50k-if-they-flip-it-too-soon-173137300.html?src=rss
Netflix is giving the Terminator franchise the anime treatment in a new series that’s set to hit the streaming platform “soon.” The company dropped the first teaser for Terminator: The Anime Seriesthis weekend during its Geeked Week event. Details so far are scant, but we do know it’ll be produced by Production IG, the Japanese animation studio behind the original Ghost in the Shell movie and spinoff TV series.
Terminator: The Anime Series will take us back to August 1997, when the Skynet AI has first become self-aware and turned against humans. It will feature a cast of new characters, according to Variety.
Also on board as executive producers are Skydance and Project Power writer Mattson Tomlin, who will be the series’ writer and showrunner. Netflix hasn’t announced a release date yet or shown any preview scenes, so here’s hoping we get an expanded trailer soon. The Terminator franchise has had quite a few installments, not all of them good, but going back to the beginning could be just the refresh it needs.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/terminator-is-back-with-a-new-anime-series-coming-to-netflix-154925265.html?src=rss
The man made flood that miraculously saved our heroes at the end of O Brother Where Art Thou were an actual occurrence in the 19th and 20th century — and a fairly common one at that — as river valleys across the American West were dammed up and drowned out at the altar of economic progress and electrification. Such was the case with Washington State’s Elwha river in the 1910s. Its dam provided the economic impetus to develop the Olympic Peninsula but also blocked off nearly 40 miles of river from the open ocean, preventing native salmon species from making their annual spawning trek. However, after decades of legal wrangling by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the biggest dams on the river today are the kind made by beavers.
In this week’s Hitting the Books selection, Eat, Poop, Die: How Animals Make Our World, University of Vermont conservation biologist Joe Roman recounts how quickly nature can recover when a 108-foot tall migration barrier is removed from the local ecosystem. This excerpt discusses the naturalists and biologists who strive to understand how nutrients flow through the Pacific Northwest’s food web, and the myriad ways it’s impacted by migratory salmon. The book as a whole takes a fascinating look at how the most basic of biological functions (yup, poopin!) of even just a few species can potentially impact life in every corner of the planet.
When construction began in 1910, the Elwha Dam was designed to attract economic development to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, supplying the growing community of Port Angeles with electric power. It was one of the first high-head dams in the region, with water moving more than a hundred yards from the reservoir to the river below. Before the dam was built, the river hosted ten anadromous fish runs. All five species of Pacific salmon — pink, chum, sockeye, Chinook, and coho — were found in the river, along with bull trout and steelhead. In a good year, hundreds of thousands of salmon ascended the Elwha to spawn. But the contractors never finished the promised fish ladders. As a result, the Elwha cut off most of the watershed from the ocean and 90 percent of migratory salmon habitat.
Thousands of dams block the rivers of the world, decimating fish populations and clogging nutrient arteries from sea to mountain spring. Some have fish ladders. Others ship fish across concrete walls. Many act as permanent barriers to migration for thousands of species.
By the 1980s, there was growing concern about the effect of the Elwha on native salmon. Populations had declined by 95 per cent, devastating local wildlife and Indigenous communities. River salmon are essential to the culture and economy of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. In 1986, the tribe filed a motion through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to stop the relicensing of the Elwha Dam and the Glines Canyon Dam, an upstream impoundment that was even taller than the Elwha. By blocking salmon migration, the dams violated the 1855 Treaty of Point No Point, in which the Klallam ceded a vast amount of the Olympic Peninsula on the stipulation that they and all their descendants would have “the right of taking fish at usual and accustomed grounds.” The tribe partnered with environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Seattle Audubon Society, to pressure local and federal officials to remove the dams. In 1992, Congress passed the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act, which authorized the dismantling of the Elwha and Glines Canyon Dams.
The demolition of the Elwha Dam was the largest dam-removal project in history; it cost $350 million and took about three years. Beginning in September 2011, coffer dams shunted water to one side as the Elwha Dam was decommissioned and destroyed. The Glines Canyon was more challenging. According to Pess, a “glorified jackhammer on a floating barge” was required to dismantle the two-hundred-foot impoundment. The barge didn’t work when the water got low, so new equipment was helicoptered in. By 2014, most of the dam had come down, but rockfall still blocked fish passage. It took another year of moving rocks and concrete before the fish had full access to the river.
The response of the fish was quick, satisfying, and sometimes surprising. Elwha River bull trout, landlocked for more than a century, started swimming back to the ocean. The Chinook salmon in the watershed increased from an average of about two thousand to four thousand. Many of the Chinook were descendants of hatchery fish, Pess told me over dinner at Nerka. “If ninety percent of your population prior to dam removal is from a hatchery, you can’t just assume that a totally natural population will show up right away.” Steelhead trout, which had been down to a few hundred, now numbered more than two thousand.
Within a few years, a larger mix of wild and local hatchery fish had moved back to the Elwha watershed. And the surrounding wildlife responded too. The American dipper, a river bird, fed on salmon eggs and insects infused with the new marine-derived nutrients. Their survival rates went up, and the females who had access to fish became healthier than those without. They started having multiple broods and didn’t have to travel so far for their food, a return, perhaps, to how life was before the dam. A study in nearby British Columbia showed that songbird abundance and diversity increased with the number of salmon. They weren’t eating the fish — in fact, they weren’t even present during salmon migration. But they were benefiting from the increase in insects and other invertebrates.
Just as exciting, the removal of the dams rekindled migratory patterns that had gone dormant. Pacific lamprey started traveling up the river to breed. Bull trout that had spent generations in the reservoir above the dam began migrating out to sea. Rainbow trout swam up and down the river for the first time in decades. Over the years, the river started to look almost natural as the sediments that had built up behind the dams washed downstream.
The success on the Elwha could be the start of something big, encouraging the removal of other aging dams. There are plans to remove the Enloe Dam, a fifty-four-foot concrete wall in northern Washington, which would open up two hundred miles of river habitat for steelhead and Chinook salmon. Critically endangered killer whales, downstream off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, would benefit from this boost in salmon, and as there are only seventy individuals remaining, they need every fish they can get.
The spring Chinook salmon run on the Klamath River in Northern California is down 98 percent since eight dams were constructed in the twentieth century. Coho salmon have also been in steep decline. In the next few years, four dams are scheduled to come down with the goal of restoring salmon migration. Farther north, the Snake River dams could be breached to save the endangered salmon of Washington State. If that happens, historic numbers of salmon could come back — along with the many species that depended on the energy and nutrients they carry upstream.
Other dams are going up in the West — dams of sticks and stones and mud. Beaver dams help salmon by creating new slow-water habitats, critical for juvenile salmon. In Washington, beaver ponds cool the streams, making them more productive for salmon. In Alaska, the ponds are warmer, and the salmon use them to help metabolize what they eat. Unlike the enormous concrete impoundments, designed for stability, beaver dams are dynamic, heterogeneous landscapes that salmon can easily travel through. Beavers eat, they build dams, they poop, they move on. We humans might want things to be stable, but Earth and its creatures are dynamic.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-eat-poop-die-joe-roman-hatchette-books-153032502.html?src=rss
A Reuters investigation into unsafe working conditions at SpaceX has uncovered more than 600 injuries going back to 2014 that have not been publicly reported until now. Current and former employees cited in the report blame CEO Elon Musk’s aggressive deadlines and hatred of bureaucracy, alleging his goal of getting humans to Mars “as fast as possible” has led the company to cut corners and eschew proper protocols.
Injury rates at some SpaceX facilities are much higher than the industry average of .8 injuries or illnesses per 100 workers, Reuters found. At its Brownsville, Texas location, the 2022 injury rate was 4.8 per 100 workers. At the Hawthorne, California manufacturing facility, it was 1.8. In McGregor, Texas, where the company conducts rocket tests, the injury rate was 2.7.
Employees have suffered broken bones, lacerations, crushed fingers, burns, electric shocks and serious head wounds — including one that blinded Brownsville worker Florentino Rios in 2021 and another that left employee Francisco Cabada in a coma since January 2022. At SpaceX’s McGregor site, one worker, Lonnie LeBlanc, was killed in 2014 when wind knocked him off the trailer of an improperly loaded truck. Yet over the years, SpaceX has only paid meager fines as a result of its safety lapses. After LeBlanc’s death, the company settled with OSHA for $7,000, according to Reuters.
Reuters spoke to over two dozen current or former employees, as well as others “with knowledge of SpaceX safety practices.” One SpaceX ex-manager told Reuters that “workers take care of their safety themselves,” and others said employees were even told not to wear bright-colored safety gear because Musk does not like it. SpaceX has also repeatedly failed to submit injury data to regulators for much of its history, according to Reuters.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spacex-workers-face-above-average-injury-rates-as-musk-prioritizes-mars-over-safety-report-finds-224235095.html?src=rss
Netflix now has more than 80 games that subscribers can dive into at no extra cost on iOS and Android (and TVs and desktops, in some cases). As part of its Geeked Week event, the company has revealed some more titles that are on the way to the service, including some indie classics.
Hades, one of the very best games of 2020, will soon be available to Netflix subscribers on iOS, but not Android for the time being. It’s a rogue-lite dungeon crawler that places a heavy emphasis on replayability.
You’ll play as Zagreus, the prince of the Underworld. Whenever he dies (which will probably be often to begin with), he’ll go back to the beginning. It’s different every time you play, but you’ll carry knowledge — and some weapons and abilities — from one run into the next. The Hugo award-winningHades has a rich cast of characters too. It’s a real treat, and you might find yourself sinking hundreds of hours into this one.
Classic time-manipulation platformer Braid is on the way to iOS and Android for Netflix users. The long-delayed Braid, Anniversary Editionfeatures upgraded audio, hand-repainted visuals, fresh animations “and a whole new world of puzzles to solve.” In a neat touch, there will also be over 15 hours of commentary that delves into game design, programming and other aspects of development. Braid creator Jonathan Blow revealed that the new edition of Braid is coming to Netflix Games, Windows, PlayStation and Xbox on April 30
Death’s Door was one of the standout indies of 2021, and the Zelda-esque adventure title will soon be a mobile exclusive for Netflix subscribers. You control a crow that’s tasked with collecting souls for the Reaping Commission Headquarters, a bureaucratic entity in the afterlife.
A game based on one of Netflix’s biggest hits is coming soon too. In Money Heist, you’ll get to take part in a version of the heist from the franchise’s original series. Netflix says the game will arrive alongside spinoff series Berlin.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflix-is-bringing-hades-braid-and-deaths-door-to-mobile-devices-214008933.html?src=rss
SAG-AFTRA has released more information about its tentative deal with Hollywood studio executives ahead of ratification votes starting on Tuesday. The actors’ union announced the agreement on November 8, bringing to an end a nearly four-month-long strike.
Under the deal, actors would get three wage increases between the time of ratification and July 2025: a 7 percent bump right away, followed by a 4 percent increase in July 2024 and 3.5% in July 2025. For background actors, there will be a wage increase of 11 percent as of November 12, followed by 4 percent and 3.5% increases in July 2024 and July 2025, respectively.
It also secures a bonus for some members whose work has landed on streaming platforms, albeit it much smaller than the union demands initially called for. According to Variety, there will be a bonus fund amounting to $40 million a year for the deal’s three-year term to be paid out to actors on top of their normal streaming residuals. But to be eligible, the show or movie in question must meet certain criteria of “success,” which will only work out to be “a thimble worth of shows on these platforms,” said SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher in a press conference on Friday.
Regarding studios’ use of artificial intelligence, the deal would require “informed consent and compensation for the creation and use of digital replicas of our members, living and deceased, whether created on set or licensed for use.” It also establishes higher contributions toward SAG-AFTRA workers’ health and retirement benefits, and aims to put an end to longstanding practices in hair and makeup that actors of color have called out as racist, like “inappropriate wiggings and paintdowns.” The deal would also require the use of intimacy coordinators for sex scenes and those involving nudity, or if an actor otherwise requests it.
The SAG-AFTRA National Board approved the deal with 86 percent of votes in its favor, and now members will get their chance to weigh in. The voting period for ratification will open on Tuesday, November 14 and run until December 5.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sag-aftra-deal-includes-a-40-million-streaming-bonus-and-ai-protections-204526458.html?src=rss
Gadget accessory maker Dbrand has released a pair of novelty mechanical keyboard keycaps, and they’re just as absurd as fans might expect. The company has been teasing its artisan keycaps for months, and their launch today coincides with Dbrand’s 12th anniversary.
One of the aluminum keycaps, a replacement for the Escape key, is a pyramid designed to stab you when you press it — because, according to Dbrand’s tongue-in-cheek announcement, “there is no escape.” The second is for the Enter key, and has a message for whoever is looking at it: “F off.” They’ll both be available in black, silver, and a colorful neochrome.
Dbrand is selling the keycaps through NovelKeys for $60 (Pyramid) — nearly the cost of its PS5 Darkplates — and $40 (F*** Off) in a limited drop. They’ll ship in two waves, with the first going out immediately and the second set for the last week of November.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/dbrands-artisan-keycaps-are-here-to-curse-you-out-and-stab-you-170254661.html?src=rss
The live-action adaptation of the classic shonen manga and anime YuYu Hakusho is hitting Netflix on December 14, and the streaming service has given fans some idea of what they can expect in a short teaser video. Live-action adaptations of anime shows are a hit or miss. Some, like Netflix’s Death Note, were generally panned and poorly received, while others like the Rurouni Kenshin movies starring Takeru Satoh and Netflix’s One Piece had managed to win over existing fans and new audiences alike.
As a long-time fan of Yoshihiro Togashi’s YuYu Hakusho, I have witnessed fellow fans dread its arrival after the streaming service published the first posters for the series. Certain actors were a miscast, they said, and even the actors in YuYu Hakusho’s stage production had better costumes and styling. The teaser, however, actually looked pretty good, and fans seem to be hopeful that the show will end up becoming of the better anime adaptations out there.
When Netflix announced the series’ streaming date, it hinted that it will not be an exact copy of the manga and the anime. “The series breathes new life into the story, and fans old and new can expect to encounter their favorite characters in ways that have never been seen before,” it said. The teaser’s too short to reveal most of the changes the show has made, but eagle-eyed viewers might find some in the video below.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflix-teases-the-live-action-yuyu-hakusho-series-before-it-arrives-in-december-140055463.html?src=rss
Netflix has given The Witcher fans their first look at a new animated film that’s set to hit the streaming service in late 2024. The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep is based on A Little Sacrifice, a short story written by the universe’s creator Andrzej Sapkowski. It will have Geralt of Rivia investigating a series of attacks in a seaside village in the midst of rising conflict between its human inhabitants and merpeople from the ocean. Netflix says the film is set between episodes 5 and 6 of the live-action series’ first season, and it does show: The Geralt in the film resembles original Witcher actor Henry Cavill more than the Geralt in the games.
The live action’s stars Anya Chalotra and Joey Batey will also be reprising their roles as Yennefer of Vengerberg and Jaskier in the animated film. But Geralt will be voiced by Doug Cockle, who’s known for voicing the White Wolf in the Witcher games. The movie is directed by Kang Hei Chul, who served as a storyboard artist for The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, which featured the story of Vesemir before he became Geralt’s mentor. It was also animated by Studio MIR, the same South Korean studio that worked on Nightmare of the Wolf.
The film may be the last time those who were particularly fond of Cavill as Geralt can see, well, a version of him play the role. He left the live-action show after its third season and is set to be replaced by Liam Hemsworth.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflixs-the-witcher-sirens-of-the-deep-animated-film-will-feature-geralts-original-voice-actor-120020251.html?src=rss
NVIDIA really, really doesn’t want to lose access to China’s massive AI chip market. The company is developing three new AI chips especially for China that don’t run afoul of the latest export restrictions in the US, according to The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. Last year, the US government notified the chipmaker that it would restrict the export of computer chips meant for supercomputers and artificial intelligence applications to Russia and China due to concerns that the components could be used for military purposes. That rule prevented NVIDIA from selling certain A100 and H100 chips in the country, so it designed the A800 and H800 chips specifically for the Chinese market.
However, the US government recently issued an updated set of restrictions that puts a limit on how much computing power a chip can have when it’s meant for export to the aforementioned countries. The A800 and the H800 are no longer eligible for export under the new rules, along with NVIDIA’s other products, which include its top-of-the-line RTX 4090 consumer GPU. Some reports even suggest that the company could end up canceling over $5 billion worth of advanced chip orders in China.
The new chips meant for the Chinese market are called the HGX H20, the L20 and the L2, based on the specs sent to distributors. While the H20 is supposed to be the most powerful model out of the three, all of them don’t go beyond the computing power threshold set by the US government’s new export rules. That means customers using them for AI applications may need more chips than they would if they had access to higher-spec models.
Chinese companies, including Baidu, Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo, have already started designing their own semiconductor to prepare for a possible future wherein they could longer be able to import chips from the US and other countries. Old NVIDIA customers may prefer sticking to the company’s components, however, due to its reputation and its software, which The Journal says is some of the most robust for AI development. NVIDIA, according to the source, may announce the new chips as soon as November 16 and start selling them before the year ends.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nvidia-may-soon-announce-new-ai-chips-for-china-to-get-around-us-export-restrictions-100509873.html?src=rss
Amazon gives Apple’s product pages the special treatment and keeps them relatively clear of unrelated ads, signifying an arrangement between the companies, according to Insider. When the Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust lawsuit against the e-commerce retailer in September, it accused Amazon of “deliberately increasing junk ads that worsen search quality.” However, Insider found that the pages for Apple products, such as “iPhone” and “iPad,” show a clean page layout with no ads or recommendation. Meanwhile, products from rival brands, including Samsung Galaxy and Microsoft Surface, show multiple banner ads and several sponsored recommendations from other brands.
We tried it out ourselves and did find that Apple’s product pages do look cleaner. Microsoft Surface Pro’s, however, showed a carousel of sponsored listings “4 stars and above,” along with products related to the specific item and multiple banner ads. Insider says Apple asked Amazon to keep its product pages free of ad clutter back in 2018, based on an email shared by the House Judiciary Committee. “We understand that Apple does not want to drive sales to competing brands in search or detail pages,” Jeff Wilke, who was then Amazon’s retail CEO, reportedly wrote.
Apple has admitted to the publication that it has some sort of an agreement with Amazon that prevents other companies from buying ads for “specific Apple-related brand queries” on the latter’s marketplace. They can still buy ads for key phrases with an Apple name, say “iPad keyboard case,” but not for “iPad” itself. “Apple’s goal for the Agreements was to create the best possible customer experience, and others are free to do the same,” Apple’s representative said in a statement. They added that the deal was also meant to address the company’s issues with counterfeit products on the platform, because it used to send Amazon “hundreds of thousands of take-down notices” before then.
While it’s not clear whether money exchanged hands between the two companies, the email shared by the House talked about a potential financial deal. Amazon reportedly turned down Apple’s request at first, but Wilke wrote in the email: “We cannot alter our organic search algorithm to return only Apple products in the search results when an Apple team is searched… Apple would need to purchase these placements or compensate Amazon for the lost ad revenue.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-reportedly-blocks-junk-ads-on-apple-product-pages-045018125.html?src=rss
Netflix’s new prestige sci-fi show is delayed until March 22, 2024. 3 Body Problem was originally scheduled to debut in 2023, before being pushed back to January 2024, and now March. Just as the initial delay was accompanied by a teaser trailer, so too is this one:
3 Body Problem is being adapted by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (who created HBO’s Game of Thrones) alongside screenwriter Alexander Woo. The new trailer gives us our first look at the series’ key “video game,” Three-Body, which involves a nebulous and extremely shiny VR headset. According to John Bradley’s character Jack Rooney, the headset has “no screen… no headphone jack… not even a charging port.” Donning the headset transports Rooney to a hyper-realistic world, before he’s swiftly ejected and the trailer ends.
The show’s source material is The Three-Body Problem, the first novel in Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past series. Originally released in the mid ’00s in China, it gained international recognition and a Hugo award when Tor Books published an English-language translation in 2014. Netflix’s ill-grammared take on the book was announced in 2020, and stars Benedict Wong, Eiza González and several Game of Thrones alums including Jonathan Pryce and the aforementioned Bradley.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflixs-new-3-body-problem-trailer-reveals-a-delay-to-march-2024-004430208.html?src=rss
Back in January, Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Satellite, a project that aimed to let Android users send texts via satellite when they don’t have cell service. It would have been the company’s answer to Apple’s emergency SOS feature that debuted in the iPhone 14 lineup. However, the initiative hasn’t worked out as Qualcomm hoped.
Qualcomm is ending its Snapdragon Satellite partnership with satellite phone maker Iridium. Although the pair “successfully developed and demonstrated the technology” smartphone makers “have not included the technology in their devices,” Iridium said in a statement.
Smartphone makers have “indicated a preference towards standards-based solutions” for satellite connectivity, Qualcomm told CNBC. In other words, they’re looking for a more open approach that doesn’t necessarily position Qualcomm as a go-between. As The Vergenotes, the cost of satellite texting may have dissuaded some manufacturers too. Apple is footing the bill for emergency SOS for the time being.
Now that its agreements with Qualcomm are coming to an end, Iridium says it will be able to work directly with smartphone makers, mobile OS developers and other chipmakers. Apple, meanwhile, has expanded its emergency SOS feature by adding crash detection integration in iPhone 15.
Elsewhere, Starlink is set to roll out its satellite SMS service next year. It plans to eventually offer satellite-powered voice and data functions directly to phones, meaning users won’t necessarily need to have a Starlink terminal nearby.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/qualcomms-satellite-texting-plan-is-dead-because-phone-makers-arent-interested-204331091.html?src=rss
That Netflix subscription you’re suddenly paying another couple of bucks for every month will soon give you a bit more value for money. The Super Mario Bros. Movie — the second highest-grossing film of the year so far after Barbie — is coming to Netflix on December 3.
It’s been a Peacock streaming exclusive since early August. Peacock has 28 million paid subscribers, while Netflix has around 74 million paying members in the US, so many more folks will be able to be able to legally watch the movie at home without renting or buying it.
For the families that go a little too hard on Mario Kart over the holidays, The Super Mario Bros. Movie will be on Netflix to help the healing. December 3! pic.twitter.com/5nhvrcJWME
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a fun, but predictably safe trip to the Mushroom Kingdom with a memorable turn from Jack Black as Bowser. A word of warning for anyone checking out the film on Netflix for the first time: good luck getting that “Peaches” song out of your head any time soon. Oh, and Chris Pratt is completely fine as Mario!
Although the Mario movie is the highest-grossing film adaptation of a video game franchise ever, Nintendo and its partners (Universal Pictures and Illumination) have yet to announce the inevitable sequel. However, it emerged this week that Nintendo is teaming up with Sony Pictures for a live-action take on The Legend of Zelda, which seems like a far riskier bet.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-super-mario-bros-movie-is-coming-to-netflix-on-december-3-194407138.html?src=rss
The Call of Duty devs are always trying to stay one step ahead of cheaters to protect the experience for all of us regular non-jerky players. Their latest move to prevent cheating may just be the funniest one yet. The devs have announced an appropriately-named feature called Splat. When a cheater deploys, the system occasionally disables their parachute, sending them careening to the ground until they, well, go splat.
This was designed to call as much attention to the cheater as possible, with devs saying it’ll be “immediately obvious” who’s trying to game the system, as someone quickly descending from the sky is hard to miss. In the past, they’ve handled these cheaters privately, keeping them in the game to collect data or simply making them disappear, among other methods detailed below. The devs say this new tool is simply more “fun.”
The system doesn’t even have to flag the player as a cheater before they deploy. If caught once they reach the ground, the software will speed up the next jump to create the same effect. For instance, a simple bunny hop will turn into a 10,000-foot drop to “take them out instantly.” Like all anti-cheating measures, Splat won’t randomly turn on for normal players and it won’t activate by a report from another player. The machine learning algorithms have to spot verified shady behavior for it to kick in.
The programmers say this is just the beginning, as they’ve developed “many new tricks” that will be discussed at some point in the future. To that end, Splat is just the latest anti-cheating measure. In the past, cheaters were kept from seeing opponents or the system would clone real players to confuse them. When all else failed, the game would just take their guns away. It remains to be seen if the just-released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III will get access to this new Splat system.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/call-of-duty-warzone-will-now-snip-the-parachutes-of-cheaters-so-they-splat-181509485.html?src=rss
You’ve heard of Netflix and chill, but how about Netflix and Max? Verizon may soon offer a discounted bundle of the streaming services’ ad-supported tiers for $10 per month. That’s $7 less than it would cost you to subscribe to them separately. Given that the Max plan costs $10 per month, you’d effectively be getting Netflix access for free.
The bundle may be announced in the coming weeks. According to The Wall Street Journal, Netflix and Max owner Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) will share revenue with Verizon. It seems that Verizon will offer the bundle to its myPlan customers. Netflix is already available through some Verizon bundles, but this would be the first time the ad-supported tier would be on offer through one of them.
It’s no secret that most major streaming services are gettingmore expensive, especially on the ad-free plans. It’s also easy for folks to cancel a subscription and switch to another platform for a while. Discounted bundles could help streaming services convince customers to stick around for longer. That’s key for a number of reasons. For one thing, the more users they have on ad-supported tiers, the easier it will be for them to get advertisers on board.
Netflix has said that its ad supported-plan, which debuted a year ago, is off to a slower start than expected. It has 15 million monthly active users on that tier, which is accounting for an increasingly large percentage of new signups. WBD hasn’t disclosed how many people subscribe to Max’s ad-supported tier, but CEO David Zaslav said this week its streaming service is “losing billions of dollars.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/verizon-may-soon-offer-a-10-bundle-of-netflix-and-max-ad-supported-plans-174029656.html?src=rss
We all knew it was just a matter of time before one of the world’s richest and most controversial men would get the biopic treatment and now it’s happening. Elon Musk is getting his very own movie, helmed by acclaimed director Darron Aronofsky and produced by A24, as originally reported by the Variety.
The film’s going to be based on Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography, which has received its share of unfavorable reviews, with outlets like the Los Angeles Times suggesting the author “mostly accepts Musk’s confident prognostications as gospel” and The Guardian calling it an “insight-free doorstop.” Not all reviews were that dire, of course, but many point to Isaacson’s book as being a clear example of the perils of access journalism.
Isaacson also wrote a biography on Steve Jobs, which was adapted into the 2015 film starring Michael Fassbender and directed by Danny Boyle. This movie ended up being an incredibly loose adaptation of Isaacson’s book, so we’ll see what Aronofsky does with the material. If anyone can put their personal stamp on things, it’s the director behind Mother!, The Whale, Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan.
This film’s still in early development, so there’s no writer attached yet and there have been no casting announcements. In a recent Reddit thread, commenters’ top-voted casting picks for Musk were Nicolas Cage, Rami Malek, Jesse Eisenberg and Robert Downey Jr, as collated by Variety.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/an-elon-musk-biopic-will-be-directed-by-darren-aronofsky-162714444.html?src=rss
Black Friday is coming right up, but you don’t need to wait until then to pick up a flagship foldable smartphone for a good price. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 5 has dropped back down to $800. That’s a drop of $200 (20 percent) for a model with 256GB of internal storage. It matches the best price we’ve seen for the foldable to date.
This is a solid deal for a device that’s only been around for a few months. We gave the Galaxy Z Flip 5 a score of 88 in our review and we reckon it’s the best flip-style foldable that’s widely available in North America and Europe.
The file folder-shaped external screen is one of the Galaxy Z Flip 5’s most striking features and helps it stand out from the pack. The 3.4-inch Flex Window has a 60Hz refresh rate and 720 x 748 resolution. Its larger size compared with previous models makes it a little easier to view information at a glance. You can use it to access widgets such as Timer, Stopwatch and Samsung Health, and there’s built-in support for apps including Google Maps and WhatsApp. You can even watch YouTube and Netflix on this screen without having to tinker with the settings too much.
One of the other major selling points of the Galaxy Z Flip 5 is the new Flex Hinge. That enables the device to have no gap between the two halves of the 6.7-inch internal display, unlike previous models. The performance is solid too, thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chipset.
On the downside, the battery life is still fairly short compared with other Android devices. In addition, you’ll probably have to spend quite some time adjusting settings to get the most out of the foldable. Overall though, if you’re in the market for a foldable for yourself or a loved one, this is a strong option at a great price.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/samsungs-galaxy-z-flip-5-drops-back-down-to-800-in-early-black-friday-deal-152818805.html?src=rss
I am, primarily, a guitarist. Dabbling in keys and synths has always felt a bit unnatural from a physical standpoint. A keyboard doesn’t respond the way a fretted instrument does. This isn’t surprising, nor is it a bad thing. It’s just not what I’m used to. The better part of a decade into my journey with synthesizers, I still find myself wiggling my fingers as if it’s going to create vibrato, or trying to “bend” one note while keeping the other rooted to create shifting harmonies.
I’ve tried my share of MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) controllers, which can capture some of that nuance. But the Roli Seaboard Rise 2 is the first I’ve played that manages to deliver all of that expressiveness without also being an unmitigated headache in some way. It’s probably my new favorite MIDI controller. But, I still have a hard time recommending it to most people.
The immediately obvious issue is the price. $1,399 is a lot of money for a MIDI controller. There are some MIDI controllers that come close, but they generally have more generous software bundles; more extensive controls (including faders, knobs and pads); transport controls for your DAW; built-in arpeggiators or sequencers; and screens for viewing parameters and browsing presets.
Of course, what those controllers usually lack is MPE functionality. And it’s not like the Seaboard Rise 2 isn’t a premium device. It’s constructed almost entirely from metal, save for the silicone keybed and the small selection of controls to its left. It feels extremely durable, and I’m pretty sure I’d have to go out of my way to do any significant damage to it. Despite that, it’s also surprisingly thin and light. At roughly 33 inches, it’s slightly longer than your average 49-key controller, but it’s less than an inch thick and only a hair over 12 pounds. And that’s despite having a battery that can last eight hours when connected over Bluetooth. For comparison, Arturia’s batteryless Keylab 49 MKII is nearly 3 inches thick and tips the scales at 14 pounds.
Terrence O’Brien / Engadget
I’d stop shy of calling it portable, but it’s certainly luggable. I’ve moved it around my home studio quite a bit and it seems easy enough to drag to a gig, especially if you pick up the $100 soft case.
You’re not buying the Seaboard Rise 2 for the portability, though. You’re here for the continuous “Keywave2” surface. And let me tell you, once you get over how strange it feels it’s pretty incredible.
It’s important to note that I’ve never played the original Seaboard Rise. But I have used many other MPE controllers, including Roli’s Blocks lineup. They’ve all had some sort of significant shortcoming, and the Roli Blocks were borderline unusable. Almost everything I’ve tried has felt either like a novelty or a prototype, rather than a consumer-ready product. (The two exceptions to this being the latest Ableton Push and the Expressive E Osmose, though they’re very different devices with drawbacks of their own.) So, while I’m fascinated with MPE and think there’s a lot of potential in the technology, I came into this review with pretty low expectations.
Terrence O’Brien / Engadget
But, the Seaboard Rise 2 feels like the first time a company has gotten almost everything right in a standalone MPE MIDI controller. The subtle “Precision Frets” make feeling your way around the keyboard much easier. I am not a skilled pianist or keyboard player who’s doing lightning-quick scale runs based entirely on muscle memory. Still, I welcomed their addition. They made it a lot more obvious when I should stop a slide and helped me make sure my strikes were centered on the keys so I didn’t end up sounding out of tune.
The squishy silicone keybed also provides excellent feedback. Most other MPE devices I’ve used have very little travel, if any at all. You might as well be trying to play on a coffee table. Not the Seaboard. The “keys” (if you can really call them that) jut up, giving you a sense for where to put your fingers. The surface gently resists and bunches up under your finger when you’re performing slides, delivering much needed tactile feedback. There’s a lot of depth to the surface, too; this isn’t just a thin silicone skin laid over the top of some sensors. It’s not quite as satisfying as feeling a key bottom out beneath your fingers, but it’s actually easier to coax nuance out of the velocity and aftertouch than on more traditional controllers.
That ability to get subtle shifts in timbre, tone and pitch are what make MPE, and the Seaboard in particular, special. With the right combination of hardware or software, each note played can have its own unique expression. A basic example of this being controlling the filter cutoff of a synth patch with the slide parameter on the Seaboard. That means as you move your finger from the bottom of the control surface to the top, the filter opens up to create a brighter sound. But in this case you can raise the cutoff on the higher notes only to emphasize the melody, while keeping the lower register muted and droning.
Terrence O’Brien / Engadget
Giving each note its own unique velocity, cutoff, et cetera can add incredible depth to even the most simplistic performance. In a more advanced example of how this might work, imagine a software instrument based on orchestral strings. On something like the Seaboard Rise 2, quickly tapping the keys and immediately pulling off could be used to play pizzicato for stabbing chords. But lightly pressing into the silicone surface would produce a slower attack, allowing you to play languid melodies over the top of sharp harmonies. Sliding your finger up to the top could add gentle vibrato to emphasize particular notes, and dragging it left or right would produce realistic glides that are normally only possible on an unfretted, stringed instrument, not a keyboard.
I highlight that example because the Seaboard seems especially suited to scoring work. While it’s fine for playing your typical lead and bass patches, it separates itself from the pack once you start exploring sounds that are slower and have more evolution. The slight dissonance I could introduce by moving one finger just slightly off the center of a key created this spooky atmosphere that I kept getting lost in. Maybe it was just the season I was doing most of my testing during, but all I kept thinking about was how much I wanted to score a horror movie.
Terrence O’Brien / Engadget
Clearly Roli knows this is a strength, because a lot of the presets in its Equator 2 softsynth seem geared toward soundtrack work. Normally, the plugin costs $249, but thankfully it’s included for free with the Seaboard Rise 2. It easily does the best job of showcasing the controller’s various powers. The unfortunate thing is, only a little over a third of the presets are MPE-compatible. And while it’s certainly a powerful instrument, Equator 2 has a number of quirks that keep it from feeling fully polished.
Perhaps the biggest of those issues is that, when you first install it, many of the factory presets are completely broken and nonfunctional. That’s because there are two additional libraries you need to install. But these are in a drop-down list, and there is zero indication that anything else is needed until you actually open the app and it repeatedly tells you that files are missing. I uninstalled and reinstalled Equator and all its preset packs, hoping that would fix the issue. It was only after some Googling that I discovered there were more required downloads hiding right inside the Roli Connect app.
The Roli Dashboard at least feels a little less slapdash, and it’s arguably a more essential part of the experience. This is where you’ll do all the necessary configuring, like choosing whether the Seaboard is in MPE mode or standard MIDI, selecting what MIDI CCs the XY pad controls and setting the sensitivity levels of things like glide and slide. You’ll basically always want to have the Dashboard open because, the unfortunate truth is, MPE is still kind of messy. Non-MPE-compatible instruments and plugins might not work right if you don’t switch the Rise to single channel mode. I’ve found getting MPE-enabled plugins to work properly in Ableton Live 11 a little tricky.
Even when you do get an MPE-enabled instrument (hardware or software) paired up with a controller like the Seaboard Rise, you’ll probably need to do some finetuning to get them completely in sync. For example, you’ll have to make sure the pitch bend range in both the Dashboard and whatever you’re controlling match up. If the Seaboard is set for a 48-note range, but, let’s say, Pigments is set for only two, slides will never land where you expect them and even narrowly missing the deadcenter of a key will result in chords that are painfully out of tune.
When everything works, though, it’s pretty special. The Seaboard Rise 2 is easier to play and more versatile than any other MPE MIDI controller I’ve tried. It’s probably the most successful showcase of what is possible with the technology.
Sure, it’s expensive, can be finicky to configure, and there are limited options for instruments that take advantage of its full expressive capabilities. But MPE-capable softsynths are likely only going to grow in popularity over the next few years. Most people should probably hold out and see what the consensus from reviewers is on the more affordable Seaboard Block M. But if you just want the best MPE MIDI controller you can currently buy and don’t mind shelling out for a premium device, the Roli Seaboard Rise 2 is it.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/roli-seaboard-rise-2-review-i-wish-i-had-a-horror-movie-to-score-150028305.html?src=rss
