Technology

When you think of true surround sound stereo systems, you imagine cumbersome multi-speaker affairs that take all day to set up. Sony may have just upended that notion with its HT-AX7 portable theater system, complete with 360 spatial sound mapping. The hook here is that the speakers are detachable and the whole system can easily … Read more

Yuji Naka likely won’t face prison time over his insider trading. Tokyo judge Madoka Hiruta has given the Sonic the Hedgehog co-creator a suspended 2.5-year prison sentence, deferred for four years, as well as two fines worth the equivalent of $1.1 million and $14,000. Naka’s actions hurt the “fairness and soundness” of the stock market … Read more

Another European car manufacturer is adopting Tesla’s charging technology. Mercedes-Benz has confirmed that it will use the North American Charging Standard (NACS) on new North American EVs starting in 2025. Drivers will initially get access to the Tesla Supercharger network before through a CCS-to-NACS adapter arriving in 2024. This won’t affect Mercedes’ plans to deploy … Read more

Jony Ive has been busy since leaving Apple, with his design agency working on things like a typeface, a charity clown nose and “the future of Airbnb.” LoveFrom’s latest project takes Ive back to his hardware days — it’s a new model of a modular turntable that’s been around for half a century. LoveFrom helped … Read more

Threads, Meta’s text-based Twitter rival, is finally out in the world (most of it, anyway). Compared with other would-be Twitter challengers, Threads has absolutely exploded. By the morning after its launch, the Instagram offshoot had already attracted more than 30 million new sign-ups, according to Mark Zuckerberg. The momentum seems to have spooked Elon Musk, … Read more

Volkswagen is no stranger to testing self-driving cars, but now it’s finally bringing those experiments stateside. The car maker is rolling out its first US fleet of autonomous test vehicles in Austin this month. The 10 modified ID.Buzz electric vans will use longtime partner Mobileye’s Level 4 self-driving system (that is, full autonomy in some … Read more

2K announced today that NBA 2K24 will arrive on September 8th. The 25th-anniversary installment in the long-running basketball sim adds crossplay between PS5 and Xbox Series X/S — a first for the series — while celebrating one of the league’s greatest all-time shooting guards. The game focuses heavily on the likeness of Hall of Famer Kobe … Read more

Apple is planning to roll out its $3,500 Vision Pro headset gradually, starting in the US with appointments for demos in designated Apple Store areas, according to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman. The gradual rollout is in line with the “niche and complex nature” of the mixed reality headset, and resembles what Apple originally did with the … Read more

This is a great time to grab a 2022 Apple iPad from Amazon, where it’s currently on sale for just $1 more than its all-time low. The 10.9-inch tablet will set you back $400 on the website, or $49 lower than its retail price of $449. That price applies to the blue, pink and yellow … Read more

While Twitter encountered many self-inflicted wounds this week, users jumped to Blue Sky and Mastodon. Then Meta decided it was a fine time to drop its Twitter copycat, Threads. In this episode, Cherlynn and Devindra chat with Engadget’s Karissa Bell about where all of these services are headed. Will Threads be the clear winner, thanks … Read more