The Wall Street Journal reports:
Walking into his kitchen, Tim Yoder recoiled at a message on his refrigerator door: “Shop Samsung water filters.” Yoder, a supply-chain manager in Chicago, owns a Samsung Electronics Family Hub fridge. He paid $1,400 for an appliance that came with a 32-inch screen on the door that allows him to control other Samsung gadgets, pull up recipes or stream music. But since last fall, it’s been intermittently serving up ads, part of a pilot program being tested on some of Samsung’s smart fridges sold in the U.S. The response? Not warm. “I guess this is another place for somebody to shove an ad in your face,” said the 47-year-old Yoder, recalling the first time he noticed one…
The ads are only on certain Family Hub fridges that have screens and internet connectivity. They run as a rectangular banner at the bottom — part of a widget that also shows news, the weather and a calendar. Samsung declined to say how long the pilot might last or whether it would end. The firm recently unveiled a “Screens Everywhere” initiative that also includes washers, dryers and ovens…. Samsung launched the banner-type fridge ads that come as part of the widget via an October software update. In a footnote of a news release at the time, Samsung pledged to “serve contextual or non-personal ads” and respect data privacy. The banner ads can be turned off in settings.
Samsung said the purpose of the pilot is to explore whether ads relevant to home chores can be useful to owners, and that overall pushback has been negligible. The “turn-off” rate for the pilot ad program remains in the bottom single-digit range, it said… While owners can turn off the banner ads, doing so eliminates the widget altogether, a bummer for Brian Bosworth, a media-industry engineer who liked the feature. Bosworth thinks it’s wrong to take away the new feature as a condition. Wanting to keep the widget but not the ads, the 49-year-old in Edgewater, Md., made sure his home router’s ad-blocking software extended to his fridge. He hasn’t seen another since.
One 27-year-old plans to return his refrigerator after the entire display “lit up with a full-screen ad for Apple TV’s sci-fi show Pluribus,” according to the article. The all-caps ad beckoned him “with an oft-used refrain directed at protagonist Carol Sturka: ‘We’re Sorry We Upset You, Carol.'”
Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article.
Two new models of Meta Ray-Ban AI glasses are on the way, and they’re going to be catered towards those who use prescription lenses, according to a Bloomberg report. While these are supposed to be announced next week, Bloomberg noted that these won’t be a “new generation” of Meta’s smart glasses.
You can already add prescription lenses to Meta Ray-Ban’s AI glasses, but the upcoming models will come in rectangular and rounded styles and will be sold through traditional prescription eyewear channels. Bloomberg didn’t specify how these new glasses will differ from existing options, but noted that it’s the first time Meta and Ray-Ban are releasing a pair of AI glasses specifically designed for this demographic.
The two models are likely the codenamed products Scriber and Blazer, which were first spotted by The Verge in filings with the Federal Communications Commission. The filings described the devices as production units, meaning Meta could be close to the actual product launch. Looking at the filings, it’s unlikely these upcoming prescription AI glasses will have a display like the Meta Ray-Ban Displays.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has hinted at AI glasses that are meant for prescription glasses wearers in a previous earnings call. As noted by Bloomberg, Zuckerberg previously said that “billions of people wear glasses or contacts for vision correction,” adding that, “it’s hard to imagine a world in several years where most glasses that people wear aren’t AI glasses.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/metas-next-ai-glasses-are-reportedly-designed-with-prescription-lenses-in-mind-162730768.html?src=rss
In case you missed the news on Thursday, AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition is a real product, and it’s coming to market next month for an as-yet-undisclosed price. This CPU is a Socket AM5 desktop processor with fully sixteen Zen 5 CPU cores, split across two eight-core chiplets, both of which are stacked on top of a 64MB slab of SRAM cache,
The first crewed mission of NASA’s Artemis moon program may take off in a matter of days, with a launch window that opens on April 1, and as preparations are underway for that, the space agency is refocusing its plan to establish a human presence on the moon. NASA announced major changes to its approach for moon landings that are expected to play out over the coming years, including axing its plan to build an orbiting station called Gateway. Read on to learn more about the agency’s new vision for the moon, along with other interesting science stories from this week.
Gateway out, moon base in
Just a few weeks after overhauling its Artemis program, NASA this week announced even more changes to its plans for putting astronauts back on the moon. Most notably, the space agency is abandoning the lunar Gateway project, which was intended to be the first ever space station orbiting the moon. Gateway, an international collaboration, wasn’t just going to support exploration of the lunar surface, but deep space missions too. But the writing has been on the wall for some time; in the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts last May, Gateway was among the programs selected for the chopping block. Now, NASA is officially putting it on “pause” and plans to build a $20 billion moon base instead.
“NASA is committed to achieving the near‑impossible once again, to return to the moon before the end of President Trump’s term, build a moon base, establish an enduring presence, and do the other things needed to ensure American leadership in space,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at the agency’s Ignition event on Tuesday.
There are three phases to the moon base plan, according to NASA: first using contractors to send rovers and instruments to the moon through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program; next establishing “semi-habitable infrastructure,” with astronauts on the ground and collaboration with other space agencies; and finally adding “heavier infrastructure” to support long-term stays on the lunar surface, including the Italian Space Agency’s Multi-purpose Habitats and the Canadian Space Agency’s Lunar Utility Vehicle. NASA says it’s aiming to start this plan off with crewed moon landings every six months following the Artemis V mission, which is currently planned for 2028.
Comet 41P pulls a reverse card
A study published this week in The Astronomical Journal describes what’s said to be the first observation of a comet reversing its spin. Observations taken several months apart in 2017 show the comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák starting to spin more slowly after making a close flyby of the sun, before picking up speed again by December of that year. Its spin period, measured using NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, was about 46-60 hours in May 2017, but later observations by the Hubble Space Telescope showed it was just 14 hours, according to NASA. The researchers say what likely happened is that the heat from the sun caused the comet’s ice to sublimate, sending gases spewing off its sides.
“Jets of gas streaming off the surface can act like small thrusters,” author David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles, said in a statement. “If those jets are unevenly distributed, they can dramatically change how a comet, especially a small one, rotates.” Jewitt compares it to pushing a merry-go-round. “If it’s turning in one direction, and then you push against that, you can slow it and reverse it.”
Comet 41P is thought to have come from the Kuiper Belt and passes through the inner solar system every 5.4 years. It’s small, with a nucleus of just around .6 miles, and the researchers found it’s become less active over recent years, indicating that there are changes taking place on the surface. While it’s thought to have been in this orbit for about 1,500 years, it now appears to be rapidly evolving, and the rotational changes — which could cause structural instability if it continues — could mark the beginning of the end for it. “I expect this nucleus will very quickly self-destruct,” said Jewitt.
Saturn in a new light
A side-by-side-comparison of photos captured of Saturn from the Webb telescope and the Hubble telescope.
NASA/ESA/CSA
Stunning images of Saturn released this week by NASA, ESA and CSA provide a more detailed look at the many layers of the ringed planet’s “busy” atmosphere. The images, which show storms, clouds at different depths, Saturn’s “ribbon wave” jet stream and so much more were taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope in 2024. Read more about it here.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasa-pauses-its-lunar-gateway-plan-a-comet-reverses-its-spin-and-more-science-news-160000163.html?src=rss
Ivy Road, the video game developer behind Annapurna-published cozy game Wanderstop, is shutting down on March 31. While Wanderstop was well-received and even critically acclaimed, it seems like it wasn’t enough of a hit to sustain the studio while it develops a new game without getting investors involved. In its announcement, the Ivy Road team said the company failed to land a funding and publishing deal for its new project, Engine Angel. The studio’s problems securing funding for its new game first came to light back in January when it laid off five team members.
Even though the studio is shutting down soon, the team said it has one last surprise that will help Wanderstop reach new players. It didn’t say what the surprise was, but the team said Annapurna Interactive will share more news about it in the future. Wanderstop revolves around a former fighter, Alta, who manages a tea shop in a magical forest. In the game, you can gather ingredients and concoct tea, tidy up, talk to customers and learn their stories or just sit on a bench to think and relax. The game will still be available to play and purchase even after Ivy Road shuts down.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/wanderstop-developer-ivy-road-is-shutting-down-153655278.html?src=rss
Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino writes: … but the CERN Project “Antimatter in motion” just did it. For the first time in history researchers at CERN have transported 92 antiprotons on a truck in a specially designed magnetic enclosure. The test-drive went so well that the researchers spontaneously decided to go another round… The purpose of the experiment was to test the feasibility of transporting antimatter to other facilities in Europe to conduct further antimatter research. German news Tagesschau has a nice report.
CNN reports that the antiproton enclosure was nearly six feet tall and weighed about 1,760 pounds. And Smithsonian magazine explains that it trapped the antiprotons in a vacuum chamber that had to be cooled to around -450 degrees Fahrenheit:
Experts used a crane to carefully move the box of precious cargo from a lab onto a truck, which took about three hours, per the Associated Press’ Jamey Keaten. Then, they drove the vehicle for roughly 30 minutes around CERN’s campus, and subsequently returned the antiprotons to the lab. They worked with so little antimatter that even if it did touch ordinary matter and annihilate, it would release a small amount of energy detectable only by a special instrument, reports the AP.
AMD’s GAIA AI agent framework (that previously stood for “Generative AI Is Awesome” albeit they seemed to have dropped promoting it as that name) for Ryzen AI hardware is out with a new version. AMD GAIA 0.17 introduces Agent UI as a new privacy-first web application for local AI agents…
A dog missing for two months was found at an animal shelter — and its owner received an email from an artificial intelligence service that identified it, according to the Washington Post.
“As controversial as AI is right now, this is one of those areas where it’s a real win,” according to the chief executive at the nonprofit animal welfare organization Best Friends Animal Society. And while it shouldn’t replace microchipping pets, AI does offer another tool to help desperate pet owners (and overcrowded animal shelters) — and might even be “game-changing”…
People send photos of their lost pets to a database, and AI compares the pets’ features — including facial structure, coat pattern and ear shape — to photos of stray pets that have been spotted elsewhere. Many of the stray pets have already been taken to shelters… Doorbell cameras have recently implemented facial recognition for dogs, and perhaps the largest AI database for pet reunification is Petco Love Lost, which says it has reunited more than 200,000 pets and owners since 2021… After owners upload photos of their lost pets, AI scans thousands of photos of lost animals from social media and from about 3,000 animal shelters and rescues that use the software, according to Petco Love, an animal welfare nonprofit that’s affiliated with the pet store Petco. It notifies owners if two photos match.
The article notes that one in three pets go missing during their lifetime, according to figures from the Animal Humane Society. “But as technology has progressed, so have resources for finding lost pets” — including GPS collars — and now, apparently, AI-powered pet identification.
The English translator and editor for KDC II claimed that he’s been replaced with AI in a bid to make Warhorse Studios “more effective” and “save finances”
One of the major selling points of AMD’s Ryzen processors for the desktop is the chip designer’s commitment to socket longevity. To put it into perspective, socket AM4 introduced with AMD’s original Zen processors is turning 10 years old this year and is still seeing platform support with chipset updates and even new processor models. Will
TaVRn’s Takedown, a new beat ’em up from VR studio LDLC, is out now on Quest and Steam.
The chaotic and comedic physics-driven melee game throws players into over-the-top tavern brawls. You’ll fight your way through tavern after tavern of troublemakers, all in various stages of inebriation, defeat epic bosses, and restore order to the land of Mliuej one punch at a time. The game’s immersive combat involves throwing punches and using weapons and the environment to dispatch your foes.
The game’s developers describe TaVRn’s Takedown as “equal parts absurd adventure and stress-relieving brawler.”
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TaVRn’s Takedown is the first VR experience set in the fictional Naheulbeuk universe. Created in 2001 by John Lang, The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk began as a comedic audio fantasy series parodying traditional role-playing game tropes, and has grown into a cult phenomenon with comics, novels, videogames, and more.
We’ve been playing TaVRn’s Takedown over the past week and will have an impressions article posted early next week.
Meta went first, then Valve, and now PlayStation VR2 players can take advantage of discounts for dozens of games right now.
The annual PlayStation Spring Sale kicked off earlier this week with many of the best PS VR2 games on sale. Just to name a few: UploadVR’s 2025 Game of the Year Arken Age, The Game Awards’ Best VR/AR Game The Midnight Walk, and the Dice Awards Immersive Reality Game of the Year Ghost Town.
A partial list of the games on sale is below, but be sure to check out the full sale here. Over seventy full games are on sale along with many DLC add-ons and bundles.
Note: Games marked with an asterisk (*) have an additional discount for PlayStation Plus Premium subscribers.
The open world Middle Ages life simulator sees a drastic price cut alongside the free new content update. The new update also adds support for Meta’s new FrameSync technology to improve performance.
Medieval Dynasty New Settlement celebrates its two year anniversary this week. It first released in late March 2024 for $29.99. Update 2.5, the fifteenth post release update accompanies a permanent price drop to $13.99, less than half its original price.
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Medieval Dynasty is no stranger to seasonal events. Developer Spectral Games has previously done Christmas, Halloween, and Easter updates with themed decorations in towns across the valley and as craftable items. This year’s Easter update brings back an Easter egg hunt spanning the entire map and three new decorations: an outhouse (with a ‘smelly’ daily reward), a stone pathway, and a barricade.
In the announcement, Spectral Games also addressed the noted downturn in frequency of updates with the following statement:
We’re not hiding the fact that in recent months the pace of work on the game has slowed down. We want to be transparent and explain that this is tightly connected to production economics and technological barriers. Maintaining the original development pace has become unprofitable given current sales. Although the game has been successful, the cost of further development is enormous. As a small studio, we must manage our resources wisely. Moreover, with the scope of features like its open-worldness and customizations, we’re reaching the limits of Meta Quest 3, and with Quest 2 we’ve likely already exceeded them.
The new update also notes support for Meta’s new FrameSync technology, bringing better gameplay performance. There were no specifics in the announcement about FrameSync-specific improvements.
Medieval Dynasty is available on Meta Quest for $13.99.
Developer Buffalo Buffalo has rescheduled the move out of Early Access; the Quest is now slated for April while PC VR will follow later in the year.
Birdseed VR is a cozy birdwatching sim currently available free-to-play on Meta Quest in Early Access. The game participated in a recent Steam Next Fest with the demo still available to play. We took a look at Birdseed recently, saying “when it works without crashing, I’m enjoying every minute that I spend in Birdseed. Though those minutes amount to just about 30 per day, it’s a nice half hour in VR.”
The full release was originally slated for March on Quest and Steam, but today Buffalo Buffalo announced on BlueSky that the full release on Quest has been pushed to April 30. The PC VR version is stated to come “at a later date in 2026.” This also delays the planned multiplayer support that was to come with the 1.0 update. Buffalo Buffalo is also working on a VR port of its skiing rhythm game Fresh Tracks.
Birdseed VR
Birdseed VR is available now in Early Access on Quest 3 headsets. A free demo on Steam will be kept up for a few more weeks due to the delay.
The Boys: Trigger Warning has the proverbial face only a mother could love. In spite of underwhelming visuals, it still pulls off stealth action that neither betrays its source material nor the tropes of its genre.
For those not familiar with The Boys, imagine if the Justice League or the Avengers were arrogant, socialite, super-powered jerks (‘supes’ is the canon term) working for and protected by a corrupt mega corporation. The titular Boys are a group of vigilantes working to take them down.
The Facts
What is it?: A stealth action game based on the comic book inspired Amazon Prime series Platforms: Meta Quest (played on Quest 3) Release Date: March 26, 2026 Developer: Arvore Immersive Games Publisher: Sony Pictures Virtual Reality Price: $ 29.99
VR stealth games are an acquired taste. Some VR gamers who put on a headset want to actually do something and stealth works against that. Great stealth games are about waiting, usually crouched or otherwise out of sight, while plotting and memorizing guard patterns to either sneak past or take them out quietly. In that respect, The Boys: Trigger Warning delivers, bringing every stealth trope in the book to its roughly ten hours of gameplay.
Bad enemy AI that rarely thinks to look up? Yes. Getting spotted, only to hide and wait out the thirty seconds of alarms and guards before they forget they spotted you? Absolutely. The same enemies never noticing what should be very loud movement above their heads? Of course. A powerful, well armed protagonist that still manages to die far too quickly if attacked? You bet! I laughed each time I killed a guard and watched another walk past the body as if nothing was wrong. If you are expecting any innovations on the basic stealth formula, look elsewhere. For comparable games in VR, Digital Lode’s Espire series and Fast Travel Games’ Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice come to mind.
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Taking down guards in The Boys: Trigger Warning – Captured by UploadVR
You play as Lucas Costa, who takes his daughters to visit The Armstrongs, a celebrity superhero family. Things go tragically wrong, leaving Lucas on the brink of death. He’s rescued by series regulars Butcher, Mother’s Milk, and Kimiko and injected with a drug called Compound V that saves his life and grants him superpowers. After this, he is recruited into The Boys with the promise of vengeance. It’s a fairly straightforward revenge story wrapped in the vulgar, violent world The Boys fans know and love.
With these artificial powers, starting with telekinesis, a ‘TK sense’ (X-ray vision), and a long range teleport, you infiltrate Vought to gather intel on and eventually confront the Armstrongs. Throughout the game are injectables called ‘Temp V’ that temporarily grant other abilities. Dosages are limited, but like any good stealth game, there are just enough refills scattered about to avoid going empty for too long, plus they regularly respawn. When you do use your powers to take enemies down, particularly the sneak-behind telekinetic kill, it’s very satisfying.
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The game also ramps as it wears on. Every mission adds a new wrinkle in the form of new enemies or environmental challenges to test your mastery of Lucas’s powers as well as the restraint to keep from relying on them like a crutch. As you get better, the game raises the stakes to match.
Using new characters is smart because The Armstrongs and the Costas don’t have plot armor, meaning Arvore was free to do whatever it wanted to service the story. With that said, the best parts of the game are with the series’ cast. Butcher’s callous characterization is spot on. Homelander is a standout each time he appears and has the best dialogue in the game. The usage of Soldier Boy is surreal and excellent. Several of the show’s cast members voice their characters, lending some authenticity to the game as well.
There are collectibles in the form of documents and audio recordings for players into that sort of thing. I’m usually not, but thankfully these flesh out the world and contain Easter eggs for fans of the series, so I felt compelled to track them down.
The Boys: Trigger Warning captured by UploadVR
The Boys is hurt by two issues: visuals and interactions. The series characters are at least recognizable, albeit a bit goofy, but this is at least in line with Arvore’s Pixel Ripped aesthetic. The flat and bland environments are the true letdown. You only interact with The Boys between missions, otherwise it’s just Butcher speaking through an ear piece while navigating drab hallways avoiding the same guards for most of the game. Then there are some visual quirks. If I killed a guard on a staircase, their blood hovered above in a flat circle. While scaling an elevator shaft, the area above me flickered in and out of existence. Walking side to side produced a mirrored, almost reprojection-like effect. Here’s hoping the upcoming PlayStation VR2 version gets a visual lift.
You physically touch half a dozen objects in this game. The Temp V syringes, enemies if using one specific Temp V ability, a hacking device, keycards, keycode terminals, and keyboards, the latter of which is just banged on. Your hands just don’t cooperate at times, especially in the vents and using keypads. Telekinesis and teleportation do most of the lifting here, leaving Trigger Warning without a sense of tactile presence I found myself longing for.
Comfort
The Boys is encouraged to be played seated, and with limited physical interaction in the game, is most comfortably played that way. It uses stick-based movement with a teleport ability unlocked after the first mission.
There are motion vignette settings, snap and smooth turning with options for each, and a choice between head or hand based movement. There’s also a forced vignette when crouching that cannot be disabled.
With all that said, I still liked Trigger Warning. There’s a tricky balancing act here, empowering the player to indulge in gloriously graphic violence, while still maintaining a belief that you can die at any moment. Trigger Warning pulls this off while still delivering an effective, if mostly predictable, story.
The Boys: Trigger Warning – Final Verdict
Trigger Warning mostly plays it safe, delivering a run-of-the-mill stealth game lifted by the world it is set in. The wry, dark humor of The Boys undercuts the earnestness of the Costas/Armstrong story and the game strikes a good balance between power complex and a genuine sense of danger.
I would recommend The Boys: Trigger Warning to specifically to fans of the series and players who enjoy stealth games. Others may otherwise find the pace too slow and the lack of physicality off-putting and with underwhelming graphics, it’s tough to recommend.
UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.
Three-hundred million years ago, the skies of the late Palaeozoic era were buzzing with giant insects. Meganeuropsis permiana, a predatory insect resembling a modern-day dragonfly, had a wingspan of over 70 centimeters and weighed 100 grams. Biologists looked at these ancient behemoths and asked why bugs aren’t this big anymore. Thirty years ago, they came up with an answer known as the “oxygen constrain hypothesis.”
For decades, we thought that any dragonflies the size of hawks needed highly oxygenated air to survive because insect breathing systems are less efficient than those of mammals, birds, or reptiles. As atmospheric oxygen levels dropped, there wasn’t enough to support giant bugs anymore. “It’s a simple, elegant explanation,” said Edward Snelling, a professor of veterinary science at the University of Pretoria. “But it’s wrong.”
Insect breathing
Unlike mammals, insects don’t have a centralized pair of lungs and a closed circulatory system that delivers oxygen-rich blood to their tissues. “They breathe through internalized tubing called the tracheal system,” Snelling explained.
Major changes are afoot at Xbox, which has already seen a big shakeup to top management with the departures of Phil Spencer, the long-time face of the brand, and former Xbox President Sarah Bond. Microsoft elevated Asha Sharma to Executive Vice President and CEO of Microsoft Gaming to lead Xbox’s comeback, and while a lot of the talk as been
