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As a potential FTC antitrust lawsuit looms in the background, Amazon plans to reduce its in-house brands. According toThe Wall Street Journal, the retailer will eliminate 27 of its 30 clothing brands and all of its private-label furniture lines. It isn’t clear how many other areas the cuts could affect, but the Amazon Basics brand appears to remain largely, if not wholly, intact. The retailer told the WSJ that it looks to eliminate products that “aren’t resonating with customers.”

Among the Amazon clothing labels reportedly being phased out are Lark & Ro, Daily Ritual and Goodthreads. (Amazon Essentials, Amazon Collection and Amazon Aware will reportedly remain.) Meanwhile, the retailer is allegedly dropping its Rivet and Stone & Beam furniture brands once their current stock is depleted. “We always make decisions based on what our customers want, and we’ve learned that customers seek out our biggest brands — like Amazon Basics and Amazon Essentials — for great value with high quality products at great price points,” Matt Taddy, VP of Amazon Private Brands, said in a statement to the WSJ.

Although Amazon didn’t explicitly connect the changes to the expected FTC lawsuit, the timing seems unlikely to be coincidental. Company representatives will reportedly sit down next week with FTC chair Lina Khan and commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. The chat is viewed as a “last rites” meeting, giving the company one final chance to sway the government agency to back down before a filing decision. The anticipated lawsuit culminates a four-year investigation into the company’s alleged anticompetitive practices. It also faces a separate FTC lawsuit related to tricking customers into Prime subscriptions.

Part of the FTC’s interest reportedly lies in Amazon’s dealings with third-party sellers, a longstanding point of focus in antitrust arguments. The WSJ reported in 2020 that Amazon employees used internal data about third-party sellers to create in-house products. That led to the company agreeing to stop boosting its in-house brands in search results, making them harder to sell.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-is-reportedly-cutting-most-of-its-in-house-clothing-brands-175110764.html?src=rss 

Regulators with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are opening a probe involving a fatal crash involving a Tesla Model Y. The accident, occurring on July 19, found a Tesla striking a tractor-trailer truck in Virginia, fatally wounding the driver of the automobile. These regulators believe that the 57-year-old Tesla driver was relying on the company’s advanced driver assistance programs at the time of the accident, according to a report by Reuters.

The Fauquier County Sheriff’s Office provided more details on the accident, saying that the tractor trailer attempted to turn onto a highway from a truck stop when the Tesla struck the side and slid underneath the trailer. The Tesla driver was pronounced dead at the scene. As for the truck driver, authorities issued a summons for reckless driving.

The summons indicates that authorities blame the truck’s driver for the incident, but Tesla’s assistance program is supposed to account for mistakes stemming from other people on the road, thus the NHTSA investigation. To that end, the safety regulator has opened more than three dozen investigations into crashes involving Tesla vehicles and their advanced assistance algorithms. All told, the agency suspects the system has been involved in 23 deaths since 2016.

In 2021, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) urged the NHTSA to issue stricter regulations for autonomous driving, stating in its letter that “Tesla is testing on public roads a highly automated AV technology but with limited oversight or reporting requirements.”

Tesla’s proprietary Autopilot technology is intended to steer, accelerate and brake within the vehicle’s lane, while an enhanced system assists with changing lanes on highways. Tesla says the system isn’t truly automated and requires active human supervision. The company hasn’t responded to a request for comment by Reuters regarding this latest accident and the newly-opened probe.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tesla-faces-fresh-safety-probe-following-fatal-accident-180725262.html?src=rss 

The rumors were true: Bethesda has announced an upgraded version of Quake II. Best of all, you can play it today on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. The enhanced edition is on Game Pass on PC, console and Xbox Cloud Gaming. Those who own the original game on GOG or Steam are getting a free upgrade.

Nightdive Studios worked with Bethesda to modernize id Software’s 1997 first-person shooter. You can relive the single-player campaign or try it for the first time with Sonic Mayhem’s original soundtrack and all kinds of other enhancements. The visuals have been upgraded to include widescreen support, 120Hz refresh rates and 4K resolution.

Content that was cut at one point is back in the enhanced edition of Quake II, which includes the Nintendo 64 port as well. You’ll be able to dive into the original expansions — Mission Pack: The Reckoning and Mission Pack: Ground Zero — which include more than 30 extra single-player levels and 20-plus deathmatch maps between them.

There’s a brand-new expansion titled Call of the Machine as well. Wolfenstein: The New Colossus studio MachineGames (which is working on an Indiana Jones game) built 28 more campaign levels and a completely fresh deathmatch map for this expansion.

On the multiplayer front, there’s splitscreen support, including local and online co-op for up to four players. You can battle it out in deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag with up to 16 players.

Full crossplay is a welcome inclusion across all platforms. However, if you’re on PC and want to hop into a lobby with your buds who are playing on console or via the cloud, you’ll need to use a controller. This is to nullify the aiming advantage that keyboard and mouse players have.

Last but not least, there are some welcome updates to make Quake II more accessible. Players will receive an accessibility options notification after they install the game. Settings include high contrast, voice chat transcription, input remapping options, aim assist and the ability to automatically switch to a new weapon when you pick it up.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-long-rumored-quake-ii-remaster-is-out-now-on-pc-and-consoles-183652854.html?src=rss 

Activision is doing something different with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, this year’s entry in the blockbuster military shooter series. Rather than starting from scratch and having to rebuild your collection of weapons and cosmetic items, Activision is letting players carry over nearly everything they unlock in Modern Warfare II.

This so-called Carry Forward initiative also applies to Call of Duty: Warzone, given that content is shared between the mainline games and the free-to-play battle royale. Warzone Mobile, which is slated to arrive later this year, will be integrated into all of this too.

For the most part, your unlocked operators, operator skins, bundles, all weapons, attachments and other rewards and cosmetic items will move forward from MW2 to MW3. What’s more, if you continue to level up guns in MW2, that progress will be reflected in MW3.

This is a one-way street, though. Any MW3 progress or unlocks won’t be replicated in MW2. There’s no Carry Back feature.

The main things that won’t progress from the 2022 game to this year’s one are cosmetics for vehicles that aren’t present in MW3. War Tracks, which are songs that can be played in vehicles, won’t move over either. “Some Tactical and Lethal equipment may not be available depending on the removing of those items in MW3, to be replaced with MW3-only equipment,” Activision noted in an extensive FAQ.

Even though MW2 and MW3 are handled by different internal studios (Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games, respectively), you won’t have to jump through any hoops to transfer your weapons and cosmetics either. Activision will handle everything, though of course you’ll need to be using the same account or profile for both games.

Activision will release Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III on November 10th. We’ll learn much more about the upcoming game at a reveal event, which is set for August 17th.

Meanwhile, following the game’s latest trailer, fans are speculating that MW3 will include an updated take on the hugely controversial No Russian mission from the original Modern Warfare II, which came out in 2009. That level wasn’t in last year’s rebooted version of MW2.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/call-of-duty-players-can-bring-most-of-their-modern-warfare-ii-gear-over-to-modern-warfare-iii-170024613.html?src=rss 

Instant Pot pressure cookers and related accessories are on sale via Amazon, with discounts up to 30 percent. If you’ve been mulling over 2018’s hottest kitchen item all these years, this is the perfect time to see what all the fuss has been about. The entry-level Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 model, with a three-quart capacity, is on sale for $60, a price reduction of 25 percent and the cheapest it’s been all year. The feature-rich Instant Pot Duo Plus 9-in-1 model, also boasting a three-quart interior, is available for $70 instead of the usual price of $100.

The sale extends to items like the Instant Vortex Plus XL 8-quart air fryer oven, which holds a spot in our list of best air fryers, as it now costs $140 instead of $170. The same goes for accessories. You can pick up replacement inner cooking pots, tempered glass lids, steamer inserts and a whole bunch of other items to make the most out of your recent Instant Pot purchase.

Cue infomercial voice: but that’s not all. The sale covers just about everything the Instant brand manufactures, so pick up a stand mixer at a deep discount, or a coffee maker. You can basically stock your entire kitchen with gadgets and doodads.

What’s the big deal surrounding Instant Pots in the first place? These are multi-function pressure cookers with plenty of high-tech bells and whistles. They allow you to whip up relatively complex recipes in record time, like putting together a curry in 12 minutes or a pot of bolognese in 15 minutes. Newer models, like the ones on sale today, can also saute, steam, make rice and even prepare yogurt, among other tasks.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/instant-pot-pressure-cookers-and-accessories-on-sale-for-up-to-30-percent-off-162040914.html?src=rss 

X (formerly Twitter) CEO Linda Yaccarino confirmed today that video chat is coming to the platform. In an interview with CNBC’s Sara Eisen (viaTechCrunch), Yaccarino said, “Soon you’ll be able to make video chat calls without having to give your phone number to anyone on the platform.” The move reflects Yaccarino and Musk’s mission to build X into an “everything app” that includes long-form videos, payments and creator subscriptions.

The announcement follows a slightly cryptic post this week from X designer Andrea Conway. “Just called someone on X,” she posted, followed by four exploding-head emojis. Although that post didn’t clarify whether it was voice or video calls, it now appears she was referring to the latter.

It isn’t clear how X video calls would fill a burning need for consumers: The crowded video-chat landscape already includes Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Apple FaceTime and more. But as Musk and Yaccarino try to reshape the company, they increasingly view the platform formerly known as Twitter as expanding far beyond tweets into a real-time town square for various media, communications and payments.

“At the heart of the rebrand, X, we need to keep our minds open that it’s developing into this global town square that is fueled by free expression where the public gathers in real time,” Yaccarino said. “And I want to stop on that for a second because ‘in real time’ is what’s most important about the vibrancy of X and how people interact with it. And now it’s all in one seamless interface.”

One of the platform’s first moves into new areas was in long-form video. The company added a Twitter Blue perk in May that lets subscribers upload videos up to two hours long. Apple was an early adopter as it used the allotment to plug its series Silo by posting the entire first episode on the social platform. X also recently began paying content creators with enough of a following to generate income — with one user claiming to receive $24,000.

Yaccarino echoed the company’s previous comments about X as a payment platform. “Payments: There’s been a lot of talk about that,” she said. “Payments between you and a friend, between you and one of your creators. So there’s been a lot going on in the rebrand represented — really a liberation from Twitter. A liberation that allowed us to evolve past a legacy mindset and thinking and to reimagine how everyone, everyone on spaces who’s listening, everybody who’s watching around the world, it’s going to change how we congregate, how we entertain, how we transact all in one platform.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-ceo-confirms-video-calls-are-coming-to-the-platform-163621725.html?src=rss