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If your group chat is anything like Engadget’s Slack, Balatro probably comes up several times a week. The indie poker-style title is one of the most talked-about games of the year for good reason: it’s endlessly compelling. But what if you don’t have a laptop, phone, Steam Deck, Switch or other console nearby and you need your fix, goshdarnit? That’s where a physical deck of Balatro playing cards may come in handy.

A $16 deck is up for preorder on Fangamerand it’s expected to ship in March. The mockups show subtly pixellated cards that ape the game’s art style. They have a red design on the rear — Balatro players will know that the red deck is the default set in the game. 

But what of the game-changing jokers? I’m afraid you only get four of those: Joker, Juggler, Blueprint and Gros Michel. Plus, they’re just regular ol’ jokers here. That’s a little disappointing, given how important jokers are in Balatro, but at least my personal favorite banana card is here. The same goes for the apparent lack of tarot, planet and spectral cards, which greatly modify each run.

It’s fun that there’s a physical Balatro deck on the way, but it’s a bit of a bummer that it’s a standard set of cards that doesn’t really play into the convention-breaking ethos of the video game. Perhaps a board game along those lines is in the works. But for now I might have to pick up several of these decks. I’m probably going to ruin at least one set by using a Sharpie to have 52 diamond cards.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/a-physical-deck-of-balatro-cards-can-soon-be-yours-for-16-180958044.html?src=rss 

Meta is taking another important step toward making Threads interoperable with the fediverse. The app now allows users to follow accounts from Mastodon and other fediverse apps directly from Threads, Mark Zuckerberg said in an update.

Since the early days of Threads, Meta has promised to bake-in support for ActivityPub, the open-source protocol that powers Mastodon and other decentralized services that make up “the fediverse.” Eventually, the goal is for Threads users to be able to seamlessly interact with other users on Mastodon or other sites that use ActivityPub.

With the latest change, Threads users who have previously opted into fediverse sharing in the app will now be able to view profiles and follow accounts from Mastodon and other services directly in Threads. The update is a significant move toward making Threads compatible with the wider Activity Pub ecosystem.

That said, there are still some significant limitations to Threads’ fediverse support. There’s currently no way to search for users on other servers, so the only way to find those accounts is to look for fediverse accounts that have followed you already or otherwise interacted with one of your posts.

Users are also still unable to reply to posts that originate on Mastodon or other ActivityPub services, so the interactions are still one way — at least for now. And an in-app disclaimer from Meta notes that fediverse sharing is still a beta feature and that some posts from other servers “may not be visible” in Threads. Adam Mosseri, however, said that “more interop features are on the way,” so hopefully fediverse enthusiasts won’t have long to wait to see deeper integrations.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-now-allows-users-to-follow-fediverse-accounts-directly-in-its-app-183517197.html?src=rss 

As Rust Cohle famously put it in HBO’s True Detective, “Time is a flat circle.” So it’s maybe not a huge surprise that Max is the latest service to bring cable-style linear channels to a premium streaming service.

It’s starting to test such channels in the US. Some ad-free subscribers will see a Channels option on the homepage of adult profiles. This will take you to a selection of 24/7 feeds of HBO programming, including HBO and HBO 2 simulcasts. Other channels will showcase prestige drama, comedy and classic HBO shows, movies and documentaries.

The channels work pretty much like any linear TV network in the modern age. You can restart shows, rewind and fast-forward. On select devices, you’ll be able to switch between channels directly in the player, without having to go back to the channels hub.

This initial rollout lays the groundwork for more themed channels, which will start arriving next year. According to The Verge, Max may even offer personalized streaming channels down the road.

These channels could help you avoid wasting time instead of scrolling through Max while figuring out what to watch. If you’re in the mood to laugh, maybe just turn on HBO Comedy. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) will surely be hoping that channels increase engagement and keep people using the streaming service. After all, lots of folks simply switch on the likes of CBS because they want to watch something and they trust the network’s brand enough to deliver a show that suits them.

Max already offers linear channels in Europe. Crave, a Canadian streaming service that has exclusive rights to the HBO library in that market, offers HBO and HBO 2 simulcasts as well. WBD notably pulled shows including Westworld and The Nevers from Max a couple of years ago. Roku and Tubi now offer free, ad-supported channels featuring HBO shows and other WBD programming.

Rivals also have their own linear channels, including Disney+, Paramount+ and Peacock. Amazon, meanwhile, is shutting down Freevee and moving its programming to Prime Video.

As if it weren’t already evident enough that media conglomerates are trying to bring back the heady success that cable saw for decades, they’re teaming up with each other through streaming bundles. One gets you Max, Disney+ and Hulu for $30 per month, while Comcast offers a package of Netflix, Peacock and Apple TV+ for $15 per month.

Saving you money (compared with subscribing to these services separately) while dumping a ton of programming you don’t care about into your lap? This is all really just cable 2.0.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/streaming-is-just-tv-all-over-again-165115834.html?src=rss 

OpenAI will start announcing new features and demos tomorrow for 12 days through livestreams. Sources familiar with the matter told The Verge that these new products will allegedly include OpenAI’s long-awaited text-to-video tool, Sora, and a new reasoning model.

The announcement for “12 Days of OpenAI”, as the company puts it, was made public on X yesterday. The first livestream will broadcast tomorrow, but the announcements themselves remain unconfirmed That said, in addition to the sources that spoke more recently with The Verge, the Wall Street Journal previously reported Sora was likely to come out before the end of 2024.

Sora was revealed early this year, and shared with a small group of testers. But 20 or so of those artists leaked the model to the public in protest of “unpaid labor,” The Washington Post reported. OpenAI has broadly been the subject of criticism regarding the provenance of data supporting its language models, and Sora has been no different. The company has yet to directly address if Sora has scraped public YouTube videos — something that YouTube’s CEO has said would be a breach of the platform’s terms of service.

OpenAI isn’t the only company working on text-to-video models. Google’s Veo is now available to Google Vertex AI users via private review. It was announced three months after Sora’s February unveiling.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-may-launch-sora-its-text-to-video-model-very-soon-171434280.html?src=rss