Category: Technology

I’m sure some of you have looked at robo mowers as Roombas for your yard but, sadly, many of them require you to install a boundary wire around the perimeter of your lawn. And any product that requires you to dig a trench is the opposite of what “low effort” means to me. That’s why I was interested in trying Segway’s Navimow i105, its £945 (around $1,200) GPS-equipped mower which eliminates that busywork. And keeping your lawn neat and tidy is a job that’s all busywork.

Ask a gardener and they’ll tell you the secret to a great lawn is to seed a piece of flat land and then mow it into submission. Regular, militant mowing kills off all the other flora, ensuring only grass can grow until everything looks well-manicured. But that relentless mowing requires a lot of time, a luxury I’ve never had. It’s the sort of job a robot mower was born to do, given it can scuttle around and trim grass without you there.

Segway’s i Series is the company’s latest, more affordable offering compared to its pricier S Series. The new units have a smaller battery and range, with the i105 able to handle areas up to 500 square meters. Unlike some GPS mowers, the i105 is equipped with a forward facing HD camera with a 180-degree field of vision. So while it relies on satellites for positioning, it’ll have enough sense to stop before it clatters into an obstacle. It’s not packing sophisticated computer vision smarts, but it’ll play safe lest it charge into a pet, inattentive family member or prized flower.

I wanted to test the Navimow because I have whatever you’d call the opposite of the platonic ideal of a Good Garden(™). My house sits at the base of a hill, with the garden built into tiers along its height, and the lawn 1.5 meters above ground level. There’s a sheer drop down its nearest edge and a foot-long drop along the side where the pathway has been cut into the ground. It’s a high-stakes test to see how accurate the unit’s positioning is, given what would happen if things went wrong. Plus, I’m not green-fingered and my lawn is usually overrun with an orgy of Borage that grows faster than I can cut it down.

Setup requires you to plant the Navimow i105’s docking station and connect it to a mains power and standalone GPS antenna. Once the unit is paired with the app, you’ll use your phone as a remote control to drive it around the perimeter of your lawn. You’ll also quickly learn that what you thought was a flat lawn has plenty of hidden bumps and dips. Which meant my first few mapping runs left with me a very wonky edge that I had to keep tweaking.

You’ll also need to give your lawn a good mowing before you run the Navimow, because it’s obviously not built to clear masses of unkempt grass. Spare a thought for me, as I was testing this during a typical British April, where we get torrential rain and bright sunshine in equal measure. And that will give your lawn — and the weeds lurking therein — time and opportunity to spring back. The unit’s obstacle avoidance made it skirt even just a sprightly patch of grass and weeds, leaving me with a patchy cut that meant I had to get the lawnmower out again.

Setup took about half an hour, which didn’t feel too onerous given there’s a fair chunk of stuff to do. Staking the GPS antenna into the ground, running the cables and locking down the charging station are all easy enough. I’m fortunate enough to have no tall buildings or obstacles blocking my GPS signals, either. Once it was all working, all I had to do after the initial run-around was let it work its magic without supervision. And, on flat ground in fair weather, Navimow does all you could ask it to do.

Bear in mind that the Navimow will have the same limitations as any other robotic domestic aid (like a robovac). The cutting blades sit underneath the center of its body so it can’t do edges unless you opt to have the machine ride beyond its boundary. If you can’t do that, then you’ll need to get a weed wacker to trim the unreachable edges of your turf. But I’ll admit, I’m very much an edge case compared to most folks.

I was deeply concerned about leaving the Navimow out in the weather, but the company said its IP66 rating for water- and dust-resistance meant I shouldn’t worry. The company will sell you a canopy that can sit on top of the charging station to protect it from the elements. You’ll have to bring the unit indoors from the end of fall to the start of spring each year, but that’s hardly a shock.

That’s a relatively minor gripe, however, and I’ve enjoyed the ability to set this thing to run out on a regular basis. Once the inclement weather and weed growth subsided, the unit showed its worth eliminating around 90 percent of the busywork I would otherwise have to do. The fact I have a neat lawn that only needs a quick trim around the edges has been a delight. And I’ve spent more time in the garden now than I would otherwise given that it’s nice by default, rather than needing a mow.

Fundamentally, if you have a patch of ground you’d like to see become a lawn and don’t have time to do it yourself, take a look at this. It may not be the set-and-forget solution you could hope for, but it’ll reduce the amount of effort to almost nothing. And, while it costs a grand, if it lasts more than a couple of years, it’ll work out cheaper than hiring a gardener to do the same job.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/segways-robot-mower-spared-me-from-my-least-favorite-chore-163659951.html?src=rss 

Take me to Phoenix Springs. 

I didn’t make it all the way to the remote desert oasis and its mysterious community of misfits while playing the Phoenix Springs demo at Summer Game Fest, but after spending a brief time in Iris Dormer’s neo-noir world, I’m desperate to get there. I want to find out what happened to Iris’ brother, a man I’ve only heard about in strange, sad tales. I want to hear Iris’ voice articulating in my ear, providing brusque context for every scene. I’m ready to get lost again in the game’s sickly green shadows. I’m wildly curious to find out what awaits me in the desert. Take me back.

Phoenix Springs is a point-and-click detective game starring Iris Dormer, a reporter who’s looking for her estranged brother, Leo. Her search eventually leads beyond the city’s crumbling skyscrapers and across the desert, to an oasis community called Phoenix Springs. Iris investigates the area and its people using an inventory of mental notes, collecting ideas instead of physical objects as clues.

The Summer Game Fest demo covered the game’s initial stages, featuring Iris on a train and in the city, only teasing the oddities that might be hiding in the desert community of Phoenix Springs. Each scene in the game is a work of art and Iris is its historian, revealing threads of relationships and storylines as she reads documents and picks up information from strangers. In any situation, she has three options for interaction: talk to, look at, use.

Iris’ mental inventory fills with names, dates, places and obscurities as she unpacks boxes, searches the net and tries to speak with her brother’s former neighbors. Leo’s last address is a building that’s been boarded up, abandoned by its landlords mid-remodel, and here she encounters the people that have been left behind. There’s a young boy making a plant dance with some kind of electronic box, and a middle-aged man sprawled, unconscious, on top of a shipping container. They’re called the orphans and neither of them are up for conversation. On the other side of the building, an intercom houses a separate voice that shares the history of the area, filling Iris’ inventory with words. Selecting an idea allows Iris to investigate her surroundings with that information, narrowing her focus and often unlocking solutions. It’s a clean and familiar investigation mechanic presented in a starkly beautiful format.

Phoenix Springs is gorgeous. Undeniably. Its canvas is menacing — dark green backgrounds are striped with even-deeper shadows, while pops of yellow, red and blue define the edges of important set pieces. The inventory bursts onto the screen as a bright white screen with black text, individual ideas separated by delicate thought bubbles. There’s a papery sheen to the entire experience, as if it’s an interactive interpretation of a mid-century sci-fi novel cover.

Where the game lacks color, Iris provides it via narration, and her verbal palette is just as stark as the game’s appearance. She speaks dispassionately and with a posh nihilism that would feel at home in an Orson Welles detective noir. Her voice is comforting and foreboding, and it’s a welcome, near-constant companion in the demo.

In the middle of a busy trade show packed with compelling games, I wanted to keep playing Phoenix Springs, and that’s pretty much the highest praise I can give. Phoenix Springs feels utterly unique. It’s coming to Steam on September 16, developed and published by London-based art collective Calligram Studio.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/phoenix-springs-offers-breathtaking-beauty-in-a-desolate-neo-noir-world-130046288.html?src=rss 

Last year, LinkedIn began experimenting with AI-powered tools for job seekers on its platform. Now the company has added a bunch of new capabilities for its premium subscribers who are #OpentoWork, including personalized resumé, AI-assisted cover letters and more conversational job searches.

The changes are meant to speed up some of the most tedious aspects of looking for a new role. For example, the revamped job search feature now allows you to look for roles with queries like “find me a marketing job that’s fully remote and pays at least $100,000 a year,” or “find business development roles in biotech.” Those are all relatively simple descriptions but anyone who has searched for jobs on LinkedIn (without the help of AI) knows that it can often be a struggle to narrow down job listings with keywords.

Once you find a role you’re interested in, the built-in assistant can give you feedback on your qualifications and help with your application. You can upload a copy of your current resumé and LinkedIn’s AI will provide tips on what to update based on the job description. This can include suggestions on specific experiences to highlight or the ability to rewrite entire sections of the document. Likewise, LinkedIn can generate cover letters based on your experience and the job you want to apply for.

The company gave me a preview of these tools and I thought it did a surprisingly decent job for a first attempt at a cover letter. It incorporated specific details from my profile and the tone didn’t feel as robotic as much of the AI-written text I’ve encountered. Of course, as a journalist, I like to believe I can still write a better cover letter than an AI. But, I can see how the tool could be useful for people applying to dozens of jobs at once, especially since many companies use AI software to whittle down applications anyway.

LinkedIn product manager Rohan Rajiv says that these tools are meant to be more of a jumping off point for users rather than an all-in-one solution. “What we want to do is make it easy for folks who have a difficult time telling their story, have a difficult time staring at a blank screen trying to put something together to at least get started,” he tells Engadget.

But he also notes that the company is still in the relatively early stages of its AI push and it could eventually automate more of the job application process. “The next horizon is going to be … can you just do that for me,” he says. “You can almost imagine people thinking about it from an agent standpoint, and helping you get things done.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/linkedins-ai-job-coach-can-write-your-cover-letters-and-edit-your-resume-130033553.html?src=rss 

If you’re looking for a discreet action camera that can take Dolby Vision-ready 4K resolution videos, Insta360’s latest model is a great candidate. The Insta360 GO 3S is an updated version of the GO 3 action camera the company released last year, and it comes with several upgrades in addition to its capability to capture 4K 30fps footage. It’s equipped with a chip that has 50 percent more computing power than its predecessor’s, and it has a new wide-angle lens that enables videos with less distortion and straighter edges. The model can also take smoother slow-motion footage with a 1080p resolution at 200fps or a 2.7K resolution at 100fps. 

Insta360’s new action-camera is compatible with Apple’s Find My network, which sounds incredibly useful for such a small device that could be easily misplaced. It also has native waterproofing for up to 33 feet, or twice that of the GO 3. If you want to switch from horizontal to vertical shooting, you can simply twist the camera. And if the device is out of reach, you can use its new hand gesture feature to start or to stop shooting, as well as to take photos. 

For hands-free shooting, you can set a recording frequency and length if you want the camera to automatically record your day, thanks to its new Interval Video mode. Plus, you can use its app’s new Auto Edit function to get an AI to combine several clips into one long video, with scoring, in case you’d rather not edit your footage manually. 

The model’s Action Pod serves as its all-in-one housing, remote control and charger, and you can still preview your shots on its 2.2-inch touchscreen that you can flip up or down. Aside from the Action Pod, the Insta360 GO 3S standard bundle also comes with a magnet pendant and an easy clip that you can use to attach the camera to your cap, clothes, your pet’s collar or anywhere else you want to. It also ships with a pivot stand and a lens guard. The standard bundle is now available for purchase around the world via the Insta360 website and retailers like Amazon. You can choose between the 64GB and the 128GB variant, which will set you back $400 and $430, respectively. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/insta360s-go-3s-is-its-new-tiny-wearable-camera-with-4k-video-130044121.html?src=rss 

Push. Push. Push, push, push, jump —

All four wheels reconnect with the glowing pavement in a slap of crisp plastic and crunching wood.

Push, push, push, push, jump kickflip —

Another slam, a quick screech.

Push, push, push, ju —

A shattering crash. The world flips on its head in an explosion of glittering blacks and iridescent pinks. I let out a small laugh, adjust the controller in my hands, and lean forward. Reset.

Push.

In a hyper-chilled demo space at Summer Game Fest, Skate Story creator Sam Eng drew a picture of a flaming skateboard on a business card while I played his game, occasionally lifting his head to giggle at my crashes and answer my questions. He described Skate Story as an attempt to capture the feeling he often has while skateboarding, invincible in one moment and utterly vulnerable the next. Fragile, like glass.

Skate Story absolutely crystallizes this feeling. You play as the glass skater, a demon made of translucent pain, and your goal is to skate to the moon, eat it, and escape this hell. The game takes place in a series of surreal playgrounds in the Underworld, offering long catwalks for gaining speed, winding pathways lined with lethal red shards, and open areas dotted in concrete ramps, gaps and waxed ledges. The Devil and his minions are your enemies, and their only weaknesses are your sweet tricks.

Skate Story is coming to PC and I played the demo with a standard Xbox controller: Press Y to hop on the board, A to gain speed, X to powerslide and B to ollie. Holding A pushes the glass skater forward in a steady rhythm, holding B does a higher ollie, and combining the trigger and bumper buttons with a jump executes a trick. I leaned heavily on ollies, kickflips (left trigger + B) and grinds (near a ledge + B), but I also landed a few moves that included these inputs plus a nudge of the right analog stick, swapping stances.

As I ollied my way through the Underworld, I encountered a variety of floating stone heads — some friendly, some vicious — and I collected items to unlock new progression areas, slamming my board into the ground to solve little puzzles. There was a shop with custom decks and parts for sale, and wide-open spaces for practicing tricks. The demo’s concluding boss fight, versus a giant stone philosopher’s head no less, provided a concrete arena for me to perform tricks and deal damage with my rad skateboarding prowess.

I’m craving a few uninterrupted hours with the game, ideally at home and after a few edibles, so I can perfect its mechanics, unlock upgrades and learn new moves. I crashed a dozen times in my 45-minute demo, often in the same spot repeatedly and always with a magnificent, shattering explosion — but resets were swift and not too punishing. The crash always hit harder after I’d found a flow state, holding down A to push and jumping smoothly over neon spikes embedded in the shimmering black asphalt, taking a risk and landing a kickflip, reaching peak velocity, feeling completely free. And then I’d clip a sliver of concrete and the ride would be over, sudden and harsh. In Skate Story, sidewalk-high edges are just as dangerous as glowing-red obstacles, and the game requires a constant buzz of situational awareness. A lot like skateboarding in real life, I’d wager.

Skate Story induces a limbo-like haze through its mechanical rhythm, VHS-filtered visuals and the constant, low whoosh of the glass skater’s wheels rolling across the Underworld’s concrete. Strategy becomes impossible and the only option is to feel your way through the brutalist, pearlescent landscapes. The game’s soundtrack is provided by New York artist Blood Cultures and it’s a soothing, lo-fi vibe fest, like OlliOlli’s flow music but with a distorted edge. It feels like a perfect fit.

Skate Story encourages you to enter a peak state early on, only so you can chase that feeling the rest of the game. It’s an incredibly compelling loop, with room for payoff or failure in every push.

The Underworld is so much larger than the slice I explored in Skate Story’s Summer Game Fest demo. The full game has more than 70 tricks to learn, fresh gear to acquire and a leveling system to unlock. Skate Story feels like a game that will easily swallow hours upon hours of my time. As easily as eating the moon, at least.

Skate Story is due out this year (not 2023, as suggested by the top trailer) on Steam, developed by Sam Eng and published by Devolver Digital.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/skate-story-hands-on-kick-push-shatter-120051976.html?src=rss