Category: Technology

During its I/O annual developer conference earlier this year, Google said it was giving users the ability to transition their first-generation Nest Cam Indoor and Nest Cam Outdoor devices from the old Nest app to its new Home application. Well, the time has come — for the indoor camera, at least. Google has just started rolling out the ability to manage the camera model through the public preview version of its Home app, and it will take a few weeks before it’s done making its way to all users. 

Nest cameras used to have their own application before the company was acquired by Google. Over time, Google added support for all its smart home products to its Home app, but users of the the oldest Nest cameras had to stick to the original application to be able to manage their devices. With this update, and as long as the user is on public preview, people will be able to access their first-gen Nest Cam Indoor device through the Home app and enjoy its updated camera history experience. They’ll also be able to add the camera to their Favorites tab, so that its feed shows up as soon as they open the app. 

When Google first announced the ability to add the old Nest cam models to the Home app, it said the transfer would take users around 10 minutes. After that, they’ll no longer need the old application to see the camera’s data and footage, enabling a single app experience for a lot of users. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-adds-first-gen-indoor-nest-cameras-to-its-home-app-065924878.html?src=rss 

Former President Donald Trump is back on Twitter (now X) more than two years after he was banned from the platform in the aftermath of the January 6th Capitol riot. On August 24th, 2023, Trump tweeted for the first time since the website reinstated his account on November 19th, 2022. His first post? An image with the mug shot taken when he was booked at the Fulton County jail in Georgia on charges that he conspired to overturn the results of 2020 Presidential elections. 

The image also says “Election Interference” and “Never Surrender!,” along with the URL of his website. Trump linked to his website in the tweet, as well, where his mug shot is also prominently featured with a lengthy note that starts with: “Today, at the notoriously violent jail in Fulton County, Georgia, I was ARRESTED despite having committed NO CRIME.”

In November last year, Musk appeared to make the decision to reinstate Trump’s account based on the results of a Twitter poll. He asked people to vote on whether Trump should have access to his account returned. At the end of 24 hours, the option to reinstate the former president won with 51.8 percent of a decision that saw more than 15 million votes. Musk admitted at the time that some of the action on the poll came from “bot and troll armies.” Prior to the poll, Musk also said the decision on whether to reinstate Trump would come from a newly formed moderation council, but he never followed through on that pledge.

The website then known as Twitter banned Trump in early 2021 after he broke the company’s rules against inciting violence. The initial suspension saw Trump lose access to his account for 12 hours, but days later, the company made the decision permanent. At first, Trump tried to skirt the ban, even going so far as to file a lawsuit against Twitter that ultimately failed. Following his de-platforming from Twitter, Facebook and other social media websites, Trump went on to create Truth Social. Following his reinstatement, Trump said he didn’t “see any reason” to return to the platform. That said, the promise of reaching a huge audience with something as dramatic as a mug shot was obviously too good for Trump to pass up, particularly with what is likely to be a messy Republican primary on the horizon.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/trumps-first-post-since-he-was-reinstated-on-x-is-his-mug-shot-025650320.html?src=rss 

Wing, Alphabet’s aviation subsidiary, is partnering with Walmart to kick off drone deliveries from the retail chain in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) metro area. The flights will begin taking off “in the coming weeks” from a Walmart Supercenter in Frisco, TX, and the companies plan to expand to a second DFW location before the end of the year. The companies say the coverage area from both stores will cover 60,000 homes.

The service will be available to homes within about six miles of the supported stores. Residents in those areas can order things like quick meals, groceries, essentials and over-the-counter medicines. The drones can fly up to 65 mph, and Wing says you’ll get your items in under 30 minutes. They use a retractable tether to “gently deliver even delicate items” — including challenging products like eggs and frozen treats.

Wing’s drones are largely automated and monitored remotely. “Wing’s technology allows operators to oversee the system from a remote location, which means pilots won’t need to be stationed at stores or customer homes,” Alphabet’s company wrote in an announcement blog post. “The aircraft essentially fly themselves, so each operator is approved to safely oversee many drones at the same time.”

Wing has already partnered with Walgreens for drone deliveries in the DFW region. Meanwhile, Walmart said in 2022 that its own DroneUp delivery service had covered around four million households in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah and Virginia. However, the retailer reportedly laid off 418 DroneUp employees earlier this year.

If you live in the DFW metroplex, you can check eligibility by installing the Wing Drone Delivery app from the App Store or Google Play. You’ll need to create an account and enter your address to view the results. A “coming soon” message means you’ll be covered as soon as deliveries begin. If the app tells you you’re not eligible, Wing says it will add new DFW neighborhoods soon.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wing-and-walmart-will-offer-six-mile-drone-deliveries-over-dallas-204501938.html?src=rss 

Dropbox is killing off unlimited storage in its business-focused Advanced plan following a surge in shady activity. It wrote in a blog post that as other services made similar changes to limit storage capacity, it has seen an increase in people using Advanced plans “not to run a business or organization, but instead for purposes like crypto and Chia mining, unrelated individuals pooling storage for personal use cases or even instances of reselling storage.”

While there will of course be legitimate outliers when it comes to unlimited storage plans, Dropbox says bad actors “frequently consume thousands of times more storage than our genuine business customers, which risks creating an unreliable experience for all of our customers.” It already has policies that prohibit abusive behavior, but the company says that creating a set of acceptable-use restrictions is unworkable. To that end, Dropbox is moving to a metered model.

The company will gradually move current users over to the modified Advanced plan starting on November 1st. Customers will get at least a 30-day heads up before Dropbox migrates them to the new policy.

Over 99 percent of customers on the Advanced plan each use less than 35TB of storage per license. Dropbox says those teams can continue to use however much storage they’re taking up at the time they get migration notification, plus an extra 5TB of pooled storage for five years with no price increase to their current plans.

The minority of users taking up over 35TB of storage per license will receive a similar offer but for one year. Dropbox will work with them in the aim of finding a plan that works for everyone involved in the long run. All versions of the Advanced plan will max out at 1,000TB of storage.

From today onward those who buy an Advanced plan with three licenses will get a total of 15TB of pooled storage. Every additional license will add 5TB of storage. Beyond that, starting on September 18th for newcomers (November 1st for current users), Dropbox will start offering storage add-ons. These cost $10 per month for 1TB on a month-to-month payment plan, and $8 per month if purchased annually.

If that all seems necessarily complicated compared with the previous version of the Advanced plan, there’s only one thing for it: blame crypto bros.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/dropbox-ditches-unlimited-storage-in-its-advanced-plan-because-of-crypto-goons-195335867.html?src=rss 

The Call of Duty franchise continues its Fortnite-ification by announcing the latest playable character will be Tomb Raider star Lara Croft. The fictional grave robber will appear in Call of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare II, joining recent real-life playable characters like Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg, Kevin Durant and various characters from the Prime Video show The Boys, among others.

Publisher Activision hasn’t announced details as to how you get Lara Croft on your side, though it’s likely you’ll have to purchase some sort of bundle to access the renowned ruins ruiner. For instance, Minaj was available as part of the $10 season 5 battle pack. There will also likely be Croft-related items, skins and weapons for sale, though her signature dual-wielded pistols should be part of the initial buy-in.

Additionally, the publisher hasn’t announced when Croft would officially debut as a battle-tested combatant. There’s a mid-season update coming for season 5, which would be as good a place as any to introduce the treasure hunter. Engadget reached out to Activision for clarification regarding pricing and availability.

In related news, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare IIIis rapidly approaching, hitting consoles in November. As for Croft, the last mainline Tomb Raider game was 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Developer Crystal Dynamics, along with Amazon, announced in December that a new game is on the way and that it’ll be a “single-player, narrative-driven adventure” built using unreal Engine 5. Amazon is also making a Tomb Raider TV show, though who knows when that’ll premiere.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tomb-raiders-lara-croft-joins-call-of-dutys-war-effort-184948028.html?src=rss 

Baldur’s Gate III is arguably the game of the summer, and it isn’t even out on consoles yet. Developer Larian Studios has taken a “it’ll be out when it’s ready” approach to releasing the game on various platforms. After becoming an instant hit on Windows when it came out of early access earlier this month, Baldur’s Gate III will land on PlayStation 5 and macOS on September 6th. The exact Xbox release date is still unclear, but Larian has finally confirmed the massive RPG will come to Microsoft’s consoles later this year.

The main reason that Larian delayed the Xbox release (and thus making Baldur’s Gate III a PlayStation console exclusive for a limited time) was due to Microsoft’s rules about games having feature parity on Series S and Series X. The latter is the more powerful of the two consoles and tends to deliver visuals with higher fidelity and framerates, as well as ray-tracing.

“We have no exclusivity deal that prevents us from launching on Xbox,” Michael Douse, director of publishing at Larian Studios, wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) last month. “The issue is a technical hurdle. We cannot remove the split-screen feature because we are obliged to launch with feature parity, and so continue to try and make it work.”

Larian CEO and Baldur’s Gate III director Swen Vincke said that after meeting Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer at Gamescom, “we’ve found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox players this year still, something we’ve been working towards for quite some time.” Vincke implied that Spencer granted Larian an exception to having feature parity between the Series S and Series X. On the less-powerful system, Baldur’s Gate III will not have the split-screen mode, but the Series X will support that feature. Cross-save progression between Steam and the two consoles will be supported too.

Some third-party developers have claimed that the Series S is holding them back when it comes to delivering state-of-the-art gaming experiences. There have been suggestions that studios making multi-platform games have to make tradeoffs when it comes to the Series S, such as not being able to offer 60 frames per second gameplay on the console. Now that Larian has obtained an exception to drop split-screen co-op from Baldur’s Gate III only on the Series S, other studios might press Xbox to let them omit some features on that console too.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/baldurs-gate-iii-is-coming-to-xbox-this-year-after-a-series-s-compromise-174258062.html?src=rss 

The long-awaited web version of Threads has finally arrived. After announcing that its Twitter competitor would be accessible from browsers earlier this week, Meta’s rollout is finally underway. Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed Thursday the update is now live for all users.

That means if you’ve been impatiently refreshing threads.net waiting for it to be available, you should check again. Up to now, many Threads users have been frustrated by the lack of a web version. Though it was possible to manually navigate to a specific user’s profile, people have been unable to browse their feeds, post, reply or even log in to their accounts from browsers. 

As the app has seen a significant drop-off in engagement following its initial launch, many have viewed the lack of a web version as a significant barrier to the app. Both Mark Zuckerberg and Mosseri have been promising a web version was high on their agenda for Threads, though Mosseri recently said the team was working out some bugs with the experience. 

Now that the web version is finally live, it will be interesting to see which of the many “missing” features Threads will get next. Users have also complained about the lack of content search — right now people can only search for users, not for specific posts — and hashtags, both of which help people discover new content on Instagram and Twitter.

One feature, however, that seems unlikely is the addition of DMs. Mosseri has said he’s reluctant to add another inbox to user’s lives, though he recently raised the possibility of incorporating Instagram DMs into the Threads experience. But he did confirm that post-editing features are in the works, so at least Threads users won’t have to wait more than a decade for an edit button.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-web-version-of-threads-is-finally-here-174909701.html?src=rss 

Sony Interactive Entertainment (i.e. Sony’s PlayStation division) is looking to make more waves in the audio space. It has struck a deal to buy premium headphone maker Audeze to help it “continue innovating when it comes to the audio experience of PlayStation games.” Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed.

Audeze will continue to operate independently and develop products for multiple platforms while “benefiting from being a part of the PlayStation ecosystem,” SIE said. “Audeze is a premier brand for headphones, and this acquisition highlights Sony Interactive’s focus on innovation and providing the best audio experience to PlayStation players,” Hideaki Nishino, SIE’s senior vice president of platform experience, said in a statement. “We’re excited to bring Audeze’s expertise into the PlayStation ecosystem, building on the great strides we’ve made with PlayStation 5’s Tempest 3D AudioTech and the Pulse 3D wireless headset.”

Sony notes that Audeze’s headphones use planar magnetic drivers to “deliver an outstanding sound experience” for consumers as well as audio professionals like sound engineers. This week, Sony revealed more details about new earbuds and a headset for the PlayStation 5 and the PlayStation Portal handheld. Both the Pulse Explore earbuds and Pulse Elite headset have custom planar magnetic drivers.

SIE also said that both upcoming audio devices employ new lossless low-latency tech called PlayStation Link, which is primarily designed for PS5 and PlayStation Portal. The tech will also work on PC and Mac with the use of a USB dongle. The Pulse Explore and Pulse Elite will arrive later this year for $200 and $150, respectively.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/playstation-is-buying-premium-headphone-brand-audeze-170022395.html?src=rss 

The US Department of Justice just sued SpaceX, alleging that the company engaged in discriminatory hiring practices against refugees and asylum seekers. The suit says that these practices occurred between 2018 and 2022 and that SpaceX “wrongly claimed” that export control laws limited it to hiring US citizens and lawful permanent residents.

The DOJ began its investigation in 2020 when the department’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section received complaints of employee discrimination. Kristen Clarke, Assistant Attorney General of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement that the “investigation found that SpaceX failed to fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees because of their citizenship status” going on to say that this amounted to a “ban” regardless of their qualifications. This is a violation of federal law.

The investigation also found that “SpaceX recruiters and high-level officials took actions that actively discouraged” these people from seeking employment with the company.

The DOJ lawsuit seeks damages and back pay for “asylees and refugees who were deterred or denied employment at SpaceX.” It also seeks civil penalties and hiring policy changes from the company. The Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER) even alleges that SpaceX ignored a subpoena related to the suit in 2021, forcing the DOJ to request a judge order the company to comply with document requests.

The IER opened this probe in 2020 after claimant Fabian Hutter alleged discrimination after losing a spot at SpaceX when asked about his citizenship status during a job interview. It’s requesting other alleged victims to come forward and contact the department, particularly if they were discouraged from applying to SpaceX due to citizenship concerns.

Is this the only Elon Musk-led company facing legal troubles regarding hiring practices and employee treatment? Of course not! The self-proclaimed “Technoking of Tesla” faced penalties when a federal court found that Musk made unlawful threats surrounding employee compensation and unions. There’s also a suit making its way through the New York courts that alleges Musk and Tesla fired workers “in retaliation for union activity.” 

Another big suit alleged a racist work environment at Tesla, which was recently settled for just over $3 million. Employees recently sued Twitter/X after Musk-led mass layoffs. The list goes on and on for the man who used to repeatedly state that he simply wants to save the world. Nowadays, he spends most of his time issuing controversial posts on X and being investigated for building literal glass houses using Tesla company funds.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-justice-department-sues-spacex-for-alleged-discriminatory-hiring-practices-172405156.html?src=rss