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Activision Blizzard’s return-to-office plans are prompting another labor dispute. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) union has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against Activision for the allegedly illegal firings of two quality assurance testers who objected to a hybrid plan that required them to be in the office three days a week by April 10th. Management ostensibly fired the pair for using “strong language” in their opposition, the CWA says, but union Secretary-Treasurer Sara Steffens characterized the move as “retaliation” against staff who joined co-workers in protected labor activity.

Many employees are balking at the office strategy, the CWA claims. They’re reportedly concerned the end to purely remote work will raise the cost of living and force some employees out of their jobs. The NLRB expressly protected the use of harsh language until 2020, when the government loosened standards for firing people over their statements.

In a statement to Engadget, an Activision spokesperson doesn’t address the return-to-office effort and maintains that it fired the testers for violating company policy with their language. The game publisher insists that the CWA is “advocating for this type of behavior.” We’ve asked the NLRB for comment.

There’s no certainty the charge will succeed. However, it comes after successes for the CWA’s fight against Activision. Last May, the NLRB determined there was merit to claims the company illegally threatened staff and stifled social media posts. In October, the board found that Activision withheld raises from testers at Raven Software over their unionization efforts. An in-progress charge asserts the firm surveilled protesters and cut off chat channels used to discuss labor issues. Activision has routinely denied these allegations, arguing that it’s honoring the law and internal policy.

Regardless of the claims’ validity, the pressure has led to changes for some employees. Activision converted all its contract and part-time testers to full-time status last July, granting them improved pay and benefits. Some teams have also managed to unionize.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/activision-accused-of-illegally-firing-game-testers-who-opposed-a-return-to-office-171526812.html?src=rss 

The International Olympics Committee has laid out more details for the upcoming Olympic Esports Series, which will take place in Singapore in June. The lineup features facsimiles of real-world competitive events rather than what many people may think of as traditional esports, such as real-time strategy titles, fighting games and first-person shooters.

The initial batch of nine games connect to disciplines overseen by international sports federations. They include Just Dance and online chess from Chess.com. Some titles that have appeared at previous IOC-sanctioned events are returning, including Gran Turismo and Zwift, which requires participants to physically pedal on a stationary bike. Archery, baseball, sailing, taekwondo and tennis games round out the list. Qualifiers for the various titles, which include mobile games like Tennis Clash, start today.

“The Olympic Movement brings people together in peaceful competition,” David Lappartient, chair of the IOC Esports Liaison Group, said. “The Olympic Esports Series 2023 is a continuation of that, with the ambition of creating more spaces to play for both players and fans of elite competition.”

The Esports Series follows on from the Olympic Virtual Series, which took place in 2021 in the lead up to the Olympic Games in Tokyo. That esports event featured baseball, cycling (on Zwift), rowing, sailing and motorsport. The IOC says the series drew in more than 250,000 participants from 100 countries.

Although the organization is still just warming up to the idea of bringing esports into the Olympic Games proper, the series is part of the IOC’s efforts to engage with younger people and perhaps provide a gateway for them into sport. A strategic plan (PDF) approved by the IOC in 2021 includes a recommendation to “encourage the development of virtual sports and further engage with video gaming communities.” Part of this involves an effort to “strengthen the roles and responsibilities of [international federations] in establishing virtual and simulated forms of sports as a discipline within their regulations and strategies.”

“The idea first is really to make the bridge between the sports and the gaming space,” Vincent Perieira, the IOC’s head of virtual sport and gaming, told the Evening Standard. “We’re not making [an] opposition between sports and gaming. The point is really… how we can encourage people to do both to keep a good balance.”

On one hand, it makes some sense to ground the Esports Series in virtual versions of traditional sporting disciplines. The basic rules of virtual cycling, chess and tennis should be generally easy for participants and viewers to understand.

However, the IOC may be missing a trick by opting not to feature the likes of League of Legends, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, StarCraft II, Minecraft, Fortnite or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Those games (and many others) have significant built-in audiences that may not especially care about the Olympics otherwise. Perhaps one day we’ll see Stardew Valley,Tetris and GeoGuessr as medaled events at the Olympic Games, but not anytime soon.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-olympic-esports-series-will-feature-just-dance-gran-turismo-and-chess-172704742.html?src=rss 

Airbnb is reportedly banning users who, despite having a clear background, were associated with people the company deems a safety risk. Although the short-term rental company faces an impossible balancing act of making owners feel secure without discriminating unfairly against renters, its appeals process — a critical step in catching overreaches — sounds lackluster and confusing while erring on the side of perceived homeowner security.

Airbnb confirmed to Motherboard that it sometimes refuses to rent to users associated with banned individuals “likely to travel” with them. For example, in January, Airbnb informed a user named Amanda that she was prohibited from the platform due to being “closely associated with a person who isn’t allowed to use Airbnb.” Amanda used the credit card of her boyfriend — who has a criminal record — to book the rental. (Amanda doesn’t have a criminal record.) She told Motherboard that her partner’s flagged history was from “a white collar charge” while adding that the two don’t share an address or bank account.

Two days after appealing the ban, Airbnb informed her it was upholding it “after careful consideration” to help “safeguard our community.” Then, it slammed the door shut on the case, adding that it wouldn’t “offer additional support on this case at this time.” Although the company is less than transparent about how long it’s enacted this process or how often it uses it, its procedures require one of two things to appeal successfully: the banned acquaintance causing their prohibition successfully appeals their ban, or the person attempting to rent proves they aren’t “closely associated” with the problematic person. 

Either way, the company’s subliminal message has concerning undertones: Associate with someone with a checkered past — regardless of who they are today — and neither of you can use our platform.

Airbnb is a private business, and Amanda could try booking through a competitor — or simply get a hotel room. Further, we don’t know the precise details about why her boyfriend was banned in the first place. But the company’s approach highlights a more significant issue we may see again as Big Tech’s ability to profile users grows more advanced. (The company already uses “anti-party tech,” and competitor Vrbo used what’s essentially pre-crime for house parties during the Super Bowl.) 

So where do you draw the line? Airbnb’s answer appears to be a cynical calculation that risking negative press about banning acquaintances — perhaps unfairly — is preferable to anything that could make homeowners feel less secure about using the service.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/airbnb-is-banning-people-likely-to-travel-with-prohibited-users-173553947.html?src=rss 

Back at CES, most of the big TV makers like LG and Samsung announced their upcoming high end TVs. But one major company was missing: Sony. Now it’s finally ready to show off its latest flagship sets, and after getting a chance to see them in person, I can say it was worth the wait.

Sony’s 2023 line of Bravia XR TVs, are all powered by the company’s Cognitive Processor XR. That means they share the same underlying tech and processing including support for stuff like Sony’s XR Clear Image tech, which allows for adaptive noise reduction, auto HDR tone mapping and more.

For 2023, Sony is trying to take as much of the guesswork out of setup as possible by making its TVs look great right out of the box in the standard video or cinematic modes. That means you shouldn’t have to fuss around with various settings or need to get your TV professionally calibrated. Granted calibration is still the way to go if you want to get the very best image quality, but for people who don’t have a colorimeter at home or don’t want to pay someone else to do it – which I think is pretty much everyone – this is a welcome upgrade.

Sony has also made a few design tweaks including new tweeters that are built into the frame of select models. While you can’t really see them, they help deliver richer and more expansive audio, particularly when paired with one of the company’s high-end soundbars with center sync audio. Sony is also introducing an updated stand for most of its new sets, which allows for a bit more flexibility when trying to accommodate external speakers and soundbars.

The new Eco dashboard in Sony’s 2023 Bravia XR TVs makes it easy to turn on and adjust power-saving settings like brightness, idle power-off times and more.

Finally, Sony also added new Gaming and Eco dashboards, so it’s easier to find and adjust various settings. For gaming, you have options like VRR, motion blur reduction and more. And for FPS fanatics, there’s even a setting for adding a permanent crosshair to the middle of the screen, complete with various reticle choices. Alternatively, the Eco Dashboard includes a simple walkthrough to help you choose power-saving settings, including a happy little tree that grows when you do things like reduce the brightness or enable shorter idle power-off times.

While Sony hasn’t released exact pricing just yet, the X90L will likely be the most affordable of the bunch, as it’s positioned as the entry-level option in the Bravia XR family. It’s the replacement to last year’s X90K, and sports a full-array LED panel with improved Clear Image upscaling and significantly reduced blooming. And while Sony doesn’t publicly disclose the exact number of dimming zones, the company says the X90L has up to 60 percent more dimming zones while also being up to 30 percent brighter than before.

While it’s a mid-range TV overall, the new X90L is poised to be the entry model in Sony’s high-end Bravia XR TV family. And with the largest model going up to 98 inches, it’s also the biggest.

This model is also getting a new aluminum bezel instead of the plastic one on the X90K, and with the addition of a massive new 98-inch model, the X90L is the biggest TV in Sony’s 2023 Bravia XR lineup.

Next, when it comes to OLEDs, we have the A80L and A95L. Not only do both models boast improved contrast, when viewed side-by-side with rivals like the LG C2, I noticed Sony’s OLEDs definitely did a better job at preserving details in shadows. The A95L was particularly impressive thanks to its QD-OLED panel and Cognitive Processor, with Sony claiming brightness that’s now two times higher than last year’s model. This is big because for a long time, the brightness of OLED TVs has generally lagged behind that of more traditional LED sets. But now, Sony says the A95L is brighter than basically all but the most high-end LED rivals. And as someone who loves the super vibrant colors you get from OLED displays, the A95L might be my favorite of the entire line.

Thanks to a new QD-OLED panel, Sony claims the A95L is two times brighter than last year’s model.

Speaking of high-end, Sony’s X93L and X95L are the company’s two super premium flagship options. Both sets feature Mini LED displays with the main difference being that the X93L doesn’t come with Sony’s XR Clear Image tech. Meanwhile, the X95L offers similar peak brightness with 30 percent more local dimming zones. The downside is that the X95L is only available as an 85-inch model, so if you need something smaller, you’ll have to go with the X93L.

That said, when I compared the X93L and X95L to one of Sony’s super expensive reference monitors in a room with typical lighting, both did a great job of preserving details while also delivering extremely accurate colors. In certain scenes, Sony’s TV’s almost made rivals like Samsung’s QN90B look washed out. Admittedly, things like film grain were a bit more noticeable on the X93L because it doesn’t have Clear Image tech, but for film aficionados who really care about watching movies that look as close as possible to what the director intended, these are the sets to get.

The X95L is the new flagship set for Sony’s entire Bravia XR TV family.

After seeing the new TVs, regardless of what type of panel you prefer, all of Sony’s upcoming Bravia XR sets look fantastic. You get way more local dimming zones on the X90L line, while the two times higher brightness on the A95L is absolutely stunning. And with Sony adding larger screen options to basically all of its models, it should be even easier to find the right-size display for your room.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sony-2023-bravia-xr-tv-hands-on-bigger-brighter-and-even-better-looking-150030819.html?src=rss 

Netflix has revealed more details about a Stranger Things prequel that you’ll need to get off your couch to experience (at least for the foreseeable future). A stage play called Stranger Things: The First Shadowwill premiere at the Phoenix Theatre in London’s West End later this year. Netflix announced the production last year.

The play takes place in Hawkins in 1959, over two decades before the beginning of the ’80s-set sci-fi/horror series. It will feature younger versions of key characters, including Joyce Byers, Jim Hopper, Bob Newby and Henry Creel (aka Vecna). Netflix says The First Shadow “will take you right back to the beginning of the Stranger Things story — and to the beginning of the end.” That suggests the play will tie into the show’s fifth and final season, which doesn’t have a release window as yet.

The First Shadow comes from the minds of series creators Matt and Ross Duffer, Stranger Things writer Kate Trefry and Jack Thorne, the writer of Enola Holmes 2, which features Millie Bobby Brown. Trefry wrote the play, which is being directed by Tony and Emmy winner Stephen Daldry. Tickets will go on sale this spring and Netflix says those who register at the play’s website will jump to the front of the line.

Netflix has already expanded Stranger Things to several other mediums, including games, comics, novels and a drive-thru experience. The First Shadow is the company’s first live stage production. It remains to be seen, however, if a filmed version of the play will hit the streaming service at some point so those who can’t make it to London (or, perhaps, Broadway) can see it.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflixs-stranger-things-stage-play-will-debut-later-this-year-152919732.html?src=rss 

The ID.3 isn’t even three years old, but that isn’t stopping Volkswagen from giving its well-known EV a makeover. After months of teasers, the company has introduced a second-generation ID.3 that addresses criticisms of the first model. The new compact car offers a “sharper” design with improved aerodynamics and a higher-quality (and heavily recycled) interior. More importantly, VW has upgraded the technology — including its software, which garnered a long list of complaints from drivers.

The second-gen ID.3 includes the “latest software,” with a simpler layout, better performance and over-the-air updates. The 12-inch infotainment display is now standard. You also have access to a Travel Assist feature that uses “swarm” data to aid driving — the crowdsourced info can keep you in your lane on a backroad even if there’s just one known lane marking. Charging should be easier, too, between an automatic charge start (at compatible stations) and a route planner that factors in the availability and capacity of stations along the way. Your car won’t direct you to a busy station with slow chargers.

Don’t expect huge changes in performance. The new ID.3 uses the same 201HP motor system and battery options as before. That nets up to 265 miles of range (using the WLTP testing method) with the base 58kWh battery and 339 miles with the 77kWh pack. Those are still very healthy figures for an EV this size, however, and VW has teased a smaller battery for those who only need a commuter car.

Production is slated to start in fall 2023. VW hasn’t outlined pricing or country-by-country availability, but we wouldn’t count on this reaching the US. Like the original ID.3, the revamp is aimed primarily at European customers where North America gets larger vehicles like the ID.4 crossover and upcoming ID.Buzz.

Even larger software improvements are in store, regardless of where you live. VW’s Cariad unit has unveiled an app store (pictured at middle) for the automaker’s brands, including Audi and Porsche. The platform will help third parties bring apps to a wide range of cars with relatively little fuss, including over-the-air-updates. Major early partners tend to be driving-oriented services like Spotify, TuneIn, The Weather Channel and Plugshare. However, you’ll also find TikTok, Cisco’s Webex meeting app and even Vivaldi’s web browser.

The app store debuts in several Audi models (including EVs like the E-Tron GT and Q8 E-Tron) this summer for European and North American customers. More models and VW brands are coming later. Don’t expect to upgrade your existing ride, though, as VW cautions that the shop will only be available in cars produced from summer onward.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/vw-unveils-second-gen-id3-ev-and-an-app-store-for-its-cars-154817061.html?src=rss 

In recent years, we’ve seen an influx of self-proclaimed “cozy games,” video games explicitly designed to invoke good vibes. Being cozy, however, isn’t the same as being good. To help those who could use some help winding down, we’ve rounded up a selection of games that purposefully deemphasize fail states, violence, overwhelming grinds, intense competition and other aggressive urges, but aren’t overly cute for the sake of it or so stripped-down that they’re boring.

Stardew Valley

Apart from being one of our favorite couch co-op games, the farming life sim Stardew Valley is also notable for its relaxing qualities. It’s a game that’s willing to meet you at your pace: If you want to putter around your farm, casually chat up townsfolk, brew beer or fish for a few hours, you can. (On the flipside, if you want to turn your land into a model of ruthless efficiency as soon as possible, the experience will be more overwhelming, and the story will have a darker undercurrent.) It all starts a bit slow, but there’s no external force rushing you, and the game’s trajectory of progress always points upward. It’s an alternate little life, one that gives you the choice to take it easy.

Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Length: 90 hours

Tetris Effect

Tetris Effect is, in essence, a prettier version of the falling-block puzzle game that has compelled the globe since the mid-’80s. Its spacey pop soundtrack and themed boards have an ethereal, almost spiritual quality, one that fits neatly with the trance-like condition Tetris can induce. (This helps explain where the title comes from.)

To be clear, Tetris is not the most relaxing game in the abstract. The way it makes you scramble to fix your past decisions is part of its magic, and several modes in Tetris Effect specifically thrive on stress. Others, however, are explicitly designed to tap into the game’s zen aspects. “Chill Marathon,” for one, simply resets your score upon failure instead of giving you a game over. And since Tetris itself comes as second-nature to an unusually large amount of people, we’ll make an exception for it here. It can be difficult, but even in failure, Tetris Effect induces a mind-freeing state like few games can.

Buy for: Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox, PC, Meta Quest

Dorfromantik

Dorfromantik is a puzzle game in which you lay down tiles to create an idyllic countryside. The tiles come in distinct types: forests, fields, rivers, railroads, little houses and so on. The idea is to chain similar pieces together, and the game will give you little “quests” to connect a certain number of matching tiles to grow your overall stack. Since you can only see a few tiles at once, exactly what your landscape looks like differs from game to game.

The need to keep gaining tiles creates a contingent sort of pressure, but even still, Dorfromantik is a game that encourages slowness. There’s no time limit, and no way to even really “win.” You’re led to consider each piece, look at the land and see how it all fits. When the tiles run out, you’ve usually created a beautiful little scene. And if you just want to build a landscape without any restrictions, there’s a separate mode for that.

Buy for: Switch, PC

A Short Hike

A Short Hike is a lovely little adventure game that is completely in tune with itself. You play as Claire, a young bird in a world of anthropomorphic animals, who is staying in a small yet bustling provincial park. Something is weighing on her, and she needs to make a phone call, but the only place with cellular reception is the top of the mountain at the park’s center. Your only real objective in the two-hour game is to get her there.

There is a conventional core to A Short Hike that involves doing light fetch quests for other park-goers and collecting golden feathers to climb higher and double-jump more. But most of these tasks are straightforward, and it quickly becomes apparent that you can (literally) soar around most of the park as you please, taking in the sights and interacting with the other park visitors as they go about their lives. Apart from simply feeling nice, this freedom ties beautifully into the game’s themes: That mountain is calling, but you don’t have to climb it right away. When you do, the world will still be there for you to explore.

Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Length: 2 hours

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is an adorable puzzle-platformer from Nintendo that has you navigate a series of contained, diorama-like levels, each with a gold star at its end. It’s technically a spin-off of the Super Mario games, but here, you can’t jump. Instead, you need to explore the game’s densely-packed spaces from new angles, shifting the camera to find hidden pathways and bonus treasures.

The whole thing is neither overlong nor super difficult, but it is determined, in that delightful Nintendo way, to constantly hit you with new ideas, each as playful and meticulous as the last. While it doesn’t reach the creative heights of the best Mario games — some of which were developed by the same team — it is similarly amiable and more easygoing.

Buy for: Switch
Length: 11 hours

Desert Golfing

Desert Golfing is exactly what its title says and nothing more. There is a ball, a hole, and some procedurally generated desert land in between. That’s it. No par, no club selection, no music, no items, no pause menu, no restarts, not even a physical avatar. Only dragging a cursor back to determine the next shot’s angle and power, and an attempt to get A to B. Once you do, a new hole appears, and you go on, infinitely. (The game technically has an “ending,” but may God have mercy on anyone who plays long enough to see it.)

Desert Golfing reads as overly simple on paper, and sure, it makes sense as a sneaky critique of time-sucking, player-debasing mobile games. Actually playing it, though, borders on meditative. The game’s radical minimalism makes everything and nothing matter all at once. There’s a shot counter at the top, but it’s functionally meaningless, merely signifying how long you’ve played. You may spend 60 shots on one hole, but there’s no invisible eye judging you. Instead, you’re allowed to focus entirely on the simple pleasure of arcing a ball through the air, seeing it kick up sand and eventually making it plonk in the hole. It’s about the act of play more than the rules of a game: golfing, not golf. And when something new does pop up — a well of water, a setting sun, a cactus — it feels momentous.

Buy for: PC, iOS, Android

The Ramp

Much like Desert Golfing, The Ramp is a successful experiment in minimalism. It’s a skateboarding game, but its approach is a far cry from the Tony Hawk series. It doesn’t burden you with high scores, skill points, objectives, camera adjustments or a HUD, and it respects you enough to unlock all of its courses and characters after a brief tutorial.

While it takes a moment to get the hang of its controls, The Ramp excels at conveying the joy of motion and momentum in vert skating, from launching at speed, to that brief moment of weightlessness in the sky, to the rush of gravity pulling you back down. There’s a handful of tricks to pull off, some chill music to help set the tone, and no real penalty for biffing it.

The Ramp doesn’t have much “depth” by conventional gaming standards; its developer describes it as a “digital toy,” which sounds about right. But what it does, it does well, and it’s uncompromising in its focus.

Buy for: Switch, PC

Euro Truck Simulator 2

Euro Truck Simulator 2 lets you drive a bunch of big trucks across a condensed version of Europe, delivering cargo and eventually growing your own trucking business. It’s a simulator, not a GTA game, so you’re expected to follow traffic laws, refuel your vehicle and complete your deliveries on time with as little damage as possible.

It doesn’t have the gentlest learning curve, and its management elements aren’t as interesting as the actual trucking. But Euro Truck Simulator2’s pleasures are similar to those of real-life driving: cruising down a long road, tapping your thumb to the radio, checking out the scenery, going where the route takes you. You’ll get there when you get there. As an aside: All of this is most fun with a wheel, but one isn’t required.

Buy for: PC
Length: 117 hours

Wide Ocean Big Jacket

There’s been no shortage of easy-to-play “walking simulators” in recent years, but Wide Ocean Big Jacket stands out among them for telling a particularly warm short story. It’s crudely animated and maybe an hour long, but it develops more identifiable and human characters in that time than most big-budget games do in 30 hours.

The story follows the camping trip of a young couple, Brad and Cloanne, their 13-year-old niece Mord and her friend Ben, and the subsequent lessons they learn about love and each other. It has the air of an indie comedy: a little quirky, funny but not mean-spirited, honest but not long-winded, and moving when it’s time to bring the story home. Its world isn’t ending, and there’s no combat. It’s a game about these characters in this specific moment, and it’s presented like a series of memories, something its bold colors amplify.

The game’s approach to interactivity plays a big role in selling all of this. Instead of merely controlling a specific character, you’re often in charge of the camera, a sort of director role that brings you closer to each scene but distances you, the player, from the action (or what qualifies as action in this case).

Buy for: Switch, PC
Length: 1 hour

Hidden Folks

Hidden Folks is like a digital take on those Where’s Waldo? puzzle books you might’ve had as a kid. It presents you with a series of living scenes, each brimming with detail and micro-narratives. You get a set of things to uncover, and once you find enough, you can move to the next stage. The monochrome art is hand-drawn, and all the sound effects derive from people’s voices. It’s cute, intimate and often funny.

Trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack may get frustrating if you’re in the wrong headspace, but this is a game that demands you slow down and be patient. There’s no rush; nobody on the screen is going anywhere.

Buy for: Switch, PC, iOS, Android
Length: 6 hours

PowerWash Simulator

You know those oddly satisfying YouTube videos of people deep-cleaning rugs, driveways, old electronics and the like? PowerWash Simulator is the video game version of those. You take on a range of power washing jobs around the town of “Muckingham,” slowly but steadily erasing the grime from various objects in each gig. There’s no time limit or score to meet, and each dirty thing has a corresponding progress bar to complete.

There’s more meat to PowerWash Simulator than you might expect: You can earn money to spend on upgraded power washing equipment, and there’s a narrative mode that goes places, literally and metaphorically. It probably doesn’t need to do quite as much as it does, but PowerWash Simulator’s pleasures are layered: the immediate satisfaction of making dirty things pristine, and the larger one of systematically “working” toward a job well done.

Buy for: Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox, PC
Length: 43 hours

Unpacking

Unpacking is a stripped-down puzzler about unpacking boxes. You methodically work your way through each collection of knick-knacks, placing them around different rooms in a sequence of homes. The game is nearly wordless, but it manages to tell a story almost entirely through its isometric environments: The boxes you unpack all belong to the same character, and each move takes place in a different year of their life. This, combined with the pixelated visuals, gives the game a vaguely wistful tone.

Unpacking is still a puzzle game, so it’ll make items glow red until you put them in a “correct” location. This feels like a misstep: If I want to leave my bookbag off to the side of my bed and just be done with things, why can’t I? Isn’t moving messy? Still, even if Unpacking is a bit too gamified, there’s a quiet catharsis to its fantasy of putting everything in its right place. If nothing else, it’s far less stressful than moving in real life.

Buy for: Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox, PC
Length: 4 hours

Please, Touch the Artwork

Please, Touch the Artwork is a set of three earnest puzzle games, each inspired by abstract art. The specifics of the games differ: One has you mechanically recreate Mondrian-style paintings, another turns Broadway Boogie Woogie into a little love story, and the third reframes New York City as a metaphor for adjusting to life in, well, a big new city. Only the first can get particularly difficult, but the game tells you right upfront that it’s made to be a low-stress experience, with no timers, and hints and redo buttons there if you need them.

What intrigues about Please, Touch the Artwork isn’t what it says about De Stijl and abstract art (as if such works could ever be “solved”). Rather, it’s what it conveys about the experience of taking in art itself, and how close it brings you to the lone developer (Thomas Waterzooi) behind the game. The whole project has an intensely personal feel, like peering into someone’s brain and seeing how this kind of art speaks to them. Some may see that as unbearably pretentious, but even on a mechanical level, Please, Touch the Artwork is welcoming, bold and sincere.

Buy for: Switch, PC, iOS, Android
Length: 4 hours

Zen Bound 2

Like most games on this list, Zen Bound 2 has a simple premise: You get a rope and a series of 3D sculptures, and your goal is to wrap the rope around each sculpture until it’s covered completely, coating it with paint in the process. The sculptures themselves can be more difficult than they first seem, however, with many hidden gaps and sharp angles.

Playing Zen Bound 2 demands slow contemplation, almost like meditating on the object you’re binding. This, in turn, may lead you to reflect on the physical nuances of the things you tie yourself to in real life. But even if that sounds pompous, just know that Zen Bound 2 offers a thoughtful way to zone out.

Buy for: Switch, PC
Length: 8 hours

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-relaxing-video-games-140048572.html?src=rss 

This is a good moment to buy a smartwatch to track your early spring runs. Amazon is once again selling the 41mm Product Red Apple Watch Series 8 at a record low price of $329, or a sizeable $70 off. While you won’t have your choice of case sizes or colors, you probably won’t mind if you were otherwise looking at a Watch SE (or clearance Series 7) to save money.

The Apple Watch Series 8 remains our pick for the best overall smartwatch, and for good reason. While it’s only a slight improvement over the Series 7, that still makes it fast, with a robust app ecosystem and extensive health and fitness features. The most recent model adds temperature tracking for people monitoring their ovulation cycles, and crash detection that can alert first responders.

The iPhone requirement rules out Android users. And if you don’t crave the always-on display or advanced health monitoring, the latest-generation Apple Watch SE may still be the better value. At this price, however, the Series 8 is hard to top if you want a good all-rounder that can handle everything from workouts through to music streaming and navigation.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-watch-series-8-record-low-price-143047556.html?src=rss 

LastPass posted an update on its investigation regarding a couple of security incidents last year, and they sound worse than we thought. The hackers infiltrated a company DevOps engineer’s home computer by exploiting a third-party media software package. They implanted a keylogger into the software and captured the engineer’s master password for an account with access to the LastPass corporate vault. After they got in, they exported the vault’s entries and shared folders with decryption keys. The company insisted all sensitive customer vault data, aside from some exceptions, “can only be decrypted with a unique encryption key derived from each user’s master password.” The company added it doesn’t store users’ master passwords.

– Mat Smith

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Samsung Galaxy S23+ review

A solid phone that’s probably not worth the upgrade.

We’ve already reviewed the Galaxy S23 Ultra which, thanks to a large screen, onboard S-Pen and 200-megapixel camera, is aggressively targeted at power users. For everyone else looking to get a new Android phone, there’s the Galaxy S23+ or the S23. We tested the plus model and were impressed by the battery life, screen and, well, all the areas Samsung typically delivers on. But with few meaningful changes, the S23+ isn’t a hugely worthy upgrade if you’re using an S22 or S21.

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Bing AI is coming to the Windows 11 taskbar, of course

That didn’t take long.

Three weeks after introducing the new AI-infused Bing, Microsoft is ready to shove it into a Windows 11 update today. If you’re in the Bing AI preview, you’ll be able to access all of its new features from the search box in the Windows 11 taskbar. Just imagine a slightly more streamlined version of what we saw with the Bing AI on Edge: In addition to general web searching, you can ask Bing natural language queries, and its intelligent chatbot will reply conversationally.

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Xiaomi’s 300W demo fully charges a phone in 5 minutes

It’s with a slightly smaller battery, but impressive nonetheless.

Realme’s 240W phone charging tech was big news last month. Given it’s MWC week, today Xiaomi has swiftly responded with a whopping 300W demo, which brought the charging time down to a little under five minutes. The charger is the same size as the 200W equivalent. The phone reached 20 percent in a little over one minute and hit 50 percent in two minutes 12 seconds.

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OnePlus will launch its first foldable smartphone later this year

It promises to release more details in the coming months.

As well as revealing its latest experimental phone, which it envisions to have liquid cooling capabilities, OnePlus announced it’ll launch its first foldable smartphone in the second half of 2023. In the background at the OnePlus 11 event earlier this month, the company teased a mysterious Q3 2023 launch with what seemed to be silhouettes of devices that fold, but it fell short of saying what exactly they would be.

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FTX co-founder Nishad Singh pleads guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges

Singh has agreed to cooperate with the case against Sam Bankman-Fried.

Nishad Singh, a co-founder of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has pleaded guilty to US federal fraud and conspiracy charges. Singh, who was FTX’s director of engineering, is the third member of Sam Bankman-Fried’s inner circle to agree to cooperate with prosecutors in the case against him. Singh admitted to making illegal donations to political candidates and PACs under his name using funds from Alameda Research (FTX’s sibling hedge fund and crypto trading firm).

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Elden Ring’s first expansion is called Shadow of the Erdtree

FromSoftware says it’s already in the works.

Developer FromSoftware has confirmed the rumors circulating since earlier this year: Elden Ring is getting a big chunk of DLC. In an announcement posted on the game’s Twitter account, the Japanese developer said an upcoming expansion entitled Shadow of the Erdtree is currently in development.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-hackers-broke-into-a-lastpass-employees-pc-to-steal-the-companys-password-vault-121516607.html?src=rss 

The DownDetector pages for Twitter are exploding in activity — again — and users are sharing that the social network seems to be broken for them. Over the past couple of hours, thousands of users reported having issues accessing the website and its apps. Many trying to access Twitter.com have reported seeing a “Welcome to Twitter” message, while both Android and iOS timelines remained stuck in the past. 

Twitter’s Support account has yet to issue a statement, but some parts of the website are working just fine. Users can still tweet if they want to, or read and respond to their notifications. If they need to see the latest tweets ASAP, they can switch over to Tweetdeck to see them. The outage comes shortly after the company reportedly laid off more employees. 

According to various sources, Twitter released around 200 people on Saturday night, a week after the company’s Slack was taken offline. Twitter Blue head Esther Crawford is believed to be one of the affected personnel. It’s unclear at the moment if the layoffs have anything to do with the outage, but since Twitter has no PR team, we’ll have to wait for the company to issue a statement. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitter-faces-another-global-outage-122800803.html?src=rss