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Netflix is finally ready to dip into livestreaming months after word emerged of its plans. The service has confirmed that Chris Rock will debut a comedy special live on the service sometime in early 2023. He’s the “first artist” to receive the distinction, the company says, and the stream will be available worldwide.

The firm revealed its live show strategy following a Deadlinescoop this May. At the time, Netflix said it would focus on unscripted material like stand-up specials, competition shows and an upcoming Netflix is a Joke festival. In theory, you could vote on a reality TV series or watch a raw comedy gig with mistakes intact.

The expansion isn’t a shock when some of Netflix’s main rivals have at least some form of livestreaming in place. Disney+ livestreamed Oscar nominations in February, and will air live episodes of Dancing With the Stars this fall. Others focus heavily on sports. Amazon Prime Video broadcasts weekly NFL matches, for example, while Apple TV+ has Friday Night Baseball. These offerings give you a reason to either join a service or stay subscribed when you’ve exhausted the usual on-demand fare.

Netflix also hasn’t been shy about experimenting with different formats beyond its linear movies and TV shows. It has offered trivia shows and other interactive programming, and is diving further into mobile games. Livestreams could help Netflix further diversify its content and help it avoid a repeat of this year’s subscriber losses.

A documentary crew searching for World War II-era aircraft wreckage recently discovered historical artifacts of a more modern variety. After reviewing the footage, NASA has confirmed that underwater wreckage filmed off the Florida coast is from the disastrous final flight of the space shuttle Challenger, in which seven people were killed.

Divers working on the documentary noticed “a large human-made object covered partially by sand on the seafloor.” It had a modern construction, including eight-inch square tiles, commonly used in shuttles’ thermal protection systems. That tipped off the crew members that the wreckage may be NASA-related, and they contacted the space agency, which looked over the footage and confirmed its origin. NASA says it is considering what additional actions to take regarding the debris.

The tragic Challenger flight took off on January 28th, 1986, breaking apart only 73 seconds into its journey. All six crew members and school teacher Christa McAuliffe were killed in the explosion or resulting impact. McAuliffe was selected from over 11,000 applicants for the position of NASA’s Teacher in Space. The launch was broadcast live on national television, and it stands as a tragedy so infamous that many people remember exactly where they were when it happened.

In addition to McAuliffe, the mission took the lives of commander Francis R. “Dick” Scobee; pilot Michael J. Smith; specialists Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, and Judith A. Resnik; and payload specialist Gregory B. Jarvis. In 2018, ISS astronauts completed the science lessons McAuliffe had planned for the trip.

An investigation into the explosion revealed that O-ring seals in the solid rocket booster segment joints had stiffened from unexpectedly cold temperatures the night before. Despite concerns from O-ring manufacturer Morton Thiokol’s engineers, the company’s management submitted a recommendation to launch. The tragedy ultimately grounded the space shuttle program for 32 months and led to the creation of the agency’s Office of Safety, Reliability and Quality Assurance.

In Search of The Bermuda Triangle, the documentary revealing the wreckage, is set to air on Tuesday, November 22nd, on The History Channel.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement on Thursday: “While it has been nearly 37 years since seven daring and brave explorers lost their lives aboard Challenger, this tragedy will forever be seared in the collective memory of our country. For millions around the globe, myself included, January 28th, 1986, still feels like yesterday. This discovery gives us an opportunity to pause once again, to uplift the legacies of the seven pioneers we lost, and to reflect on how this tragedy changed us. At NASA, the core value of safety is — and must forever remain — our top priority, especially as our missions explore more of the cosmos than ever before.”

Google’s pilot for Play Store billing alternatives is finally coming Stateside. The company is expanding its “user choice billing” test to the US, Brazil and South Africa. As before, you’ll be asked to choose either Google’s in-app purchasing system or something else (such as the developer’s) when you buy in-app content.

There are more apps involved in the test, too. On top of Spotify, which started rolling out an early implementation of billing choices this week, Bumble is now set to participate. The dating app will offer your pick of payment systems in some countries in the “coming months.”

The official terms of Google’s Play Store billing choice system cut Google’s service fee by four percent. It’s still making 11 or 26 percent from every transaction through these alternatives. In a response to TechCrunch, however, Spotify said its deal with Google met its expectations for fairness. It’s not known if Spotify received any special conditions.

The test was originally announced in March. In September, Google said the pilot would initially serve Play Store shoppers in Australia, the European Economic Area, India, Indonesia and Japan. Google says “positive” early feedback from developers and users prompted the expansion.

This experiment isn’t altruistic. Along with Apple, Google faces pressure from regulators and politicians that believe mobile OS creators are abusing their dominance to rob users of options for in-app payments. It’s also no secret that large developers and media outlets, including Spotify, Epic Games and The New York Times, are banding together to demand the freedom to use alternative billing. Bumble’s main rival, Match Group, is even taking action against Google over alleged antitrust violations. In theory, the test helps Google avoid (or at least mitigate) fines and regulatory crackdowns it would otherwise face.

Update 11/10 4:25PM ET: We’ve updated the story with Google’s correct cut of in-app sales, and clarified that the remaining percentage is for transactions through those other billing systems.

Netflix’s The Witcher franchise is going through some major changes, with Henry Cavill, the star of the main show, set to depart. Before Cavill’s swansong in season three, though, a miniseries set in the same universe will hit the streaming service, and Netflix has offered another look at it.

The latest teaser for The Witcher: Blood Origin opens with sword-elf Scian (Michelle Yeoh) carrying out a ritual before showing violence, devastation and magic in otherworldly, high-fantasy settings. The four-episode miniseries is set 1,200 years before the events of The Witcher. Scian and her cohorts will bring about the very first witcher — a monster hunter with magic powers.

The Witcher: Blood Origin will arrive on Netflix on December 25th. It could help you bide time until the arrival of season three of The Witcher, which is slated to premiere next summer.

Human fingers are clearly too big to safely play with bugs, but technology might offer a far gentler option. Scientists at Ritsumeikan University have developed soft robotic “microfingers” that let people interact with insects. The tiny digits (just 0.47in long and 0.12in wide) combine flexible liquid metal strain sensors with pneumatic balloon “muscles” to offer just enough force for touching a bug without hurting it. The human operator controls the miniscule hand with a robotic glove.

To test the technology, researchers used the microfingers to measure the reaction force from a pill bug’s legs and torso. The creature’s 10 millinewtons of pushback from the legs lined up with previous estimates — a figure that science couldn’t directly verify until now.

The technology could be helpful for studying insect forces like walking or flying (and yes, the temptation to tickle a bug is there). However, the team also sees the invention as potentially useful for other micro-scale interactions, particularly with the help of augmented reality glasses that could provide a clearer view. Future versions could one day help doctors directly interact with bacteria and viruses.

The challenge, as with many scientific inventions, is translating the discovery to a practical product. The Ritsumeikan team warned that this is a proof of concept and a “representative study.” It could be a while before the technology is thoroughly tested, let alone ready for mass production. All the same, this hints at a future where humans can grab and poke the smallest objects in a very natural way.

It’s a day ending in the letter “y” which inevitably means there’s more drama at Twitter. Chief information security officer Lea Kissner, chief privacy officer Damien Kieran and chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty have all quit, according to The Verge. The report suggests that the company’s engineers will now be responsible for ensuring compliance with regulations. Twitter is currently subject to a Federal Trade Commission consent order, which includes certain privacy and security requirements.

“I’ve made the hard decision to leave Twitter,” Kissner wrote in a tweet. “I’ve had the opportunity to work with amazing people and I’m so proud of the privacy, security and IT teams and the work we’ve done.”

The departures will surely have a significant impact on Twitter’s security and privacy teams. To that end, The Verge obtained a Slack message purportedly shared by a Twitter lawyer, which notes that engineers have been asked to “self-certify” that they’re complying with FTC requirements and other laws. “This will put huge amount of personal, professional and legal risk onto engineers,” the message reads. “I anticipate that all of you will [be] pressured by management into pushing out changes that will likely lead to major incidents.” The lawyer, who urged workers to seek whistleblower protection if they felt the need to, warned that such changes are “extremely dangerous for our users.” 

The FTC consent order is part of a settlement Twitter reached with the agency in May. One of the conditions requires the company to employ a “comprehensive privacy and information security program” to examine new products for privacy and security risks. The lawyer noted that if Twitter violates the consent order, it could be on the hook for “billions of dollars” in fines, which would be “extremely detrimental to Twitter’s longevity as a platform.”

This week, the company revamped the Twitter Blue service and started allowing users to obtain a checkmark (previously used to denote that an account was verified) for $8 per month. That’s already created a minefield of impersonation, spoof accounts and scams.

A Twitter employee suggested to The Verge that the rushed rollout of the paid checkmark scheme, as mandated by new owner Elon Musk, bypassed the typical privacy review process. “The people normally tasked with this stuff were given little notice, little time, and [it’s] unreasonable to think [the privacy review] was comprehensive,” said the employee, who noted that none of the team’s recommendations were put into effect before the new Twitter Blue went live. That team was only able to review possible risks the night before Twitter rolled out the retooled service.

“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” Douglas Farrar, the FTC’s director of public affairs, told The Washington Post. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”

Engadget has contacted Twitter for comment.

GM has announced the first few vehicles that will gain access to Super Cruise’s expanded road network. The company announced in August it would double the size of the hands-free advanced driver assistance system’s (ADAS) network to over 400,000 miles (644,000 kilometres) of roads in the US and Canada. What a surprise: the first vehicles to gain access to this broader Super Cruise network are the newest, high-end SUVs.

GM says it will start delivering vehicles with expanded Super Cruise access in mid-November. The following SUVs will be able to use the larger hands-free driving network, as long as they were built on October 3rd or later:

2023 Chevrolet Tahoe – High Country and Premier trims

2023 Chevrolet Suburban – High Country and Premier trims

2023 Cadillac Escalade, Escalade ESV and Escalade-V

2023 GMC Yukon Denali Ultimate

In the coming months, existing Super Cruise vehicles that are built on GM’s Vehicle Intelligence Platform will gain access to the expanded network following over-the-air updates. GM says that by the end of next year, Super Cruise will be available around the globe on 22 models.

As for Ultra Cruise, GM’s next-gen ADAS that’s currently in pre-production, that will be available on select premium models. GM anticipates that Ultra Cruise will work on 2 million miles of North American roads at the outset.

If I’m honest with myself, my one true hobby is collecting hobbies. I play guitar and record electronic music. I picked up painting last year. (I am objectively horrible at it.) I cook. I brew beer. I dabble in DIY electronics. I’m an avid hiker. An on-again-off-again runner. I’ve flirted with boxing. Oh, and I write. Obviously.

Now I’ve added photography to the list. I explored it a bit back in high school and college, but had only picked up a camera (that wasn’t built into my phone) outside of work a handful of times since. Then in 2021, after a couple of years exclusively using my phone’s camera for review photos, I decided I desperately needed to upgrade. I eventually settled on the Fujifilm X-T30, in part because I had a limited budget. But, while I went out in search of an affordable workhorse to up my photo and video game at Engadget, what I ended up with was the perfect camera to rekindle my interest in the art of photography.

Let’s start with what attracts many people to the Fujifilm family in the first place: the controls. My first photography experiences were with film. Sure, it’s been a long time since I last used a film camera, but at least I have some level of comfort there. Unlike most digital cameras, Fujifilm’s X series mimics the look and feel of a 35mm film camera. There are dedicated dials for shutter speed and exposure compensation, and many of Fuji’s first-party lenses have physical aperture rings. If I had sprung for the X-T3 I’d have even gotten a dedicated ISO dial. But there are two programmable dials that can be mapped to control ISO and aperture, even if you’re using a lens without an aperture ring.

This makes the X-T30 far more tactile and satisfying than other digital cameras I’ve used, whereas I would usually just put them in aperture priority and forget about it. Without a PASM dial (Program, Aperture priority, Shutter priority and Manual) as a crutch, I’ve been forced to learn the camera’s various options inside and out. I also have to think more carefully and critically about each exposure. Yes, you can essentially put the X-T30 in shutter or aperture priority mode by changing certain settings to auto, but you can’t just turn a dial and be done with it.

The other big thing for me is the film simulations. Fuji cameras have a built in set of profiles that are supposed to mimic particular film stock. Think of them kind of like Instagram filters, but less terrible. Astia is tuned for portraits, Velvia is perfect for landscapes, Eterna gives you that low-contrast cinematic look, and so on.

And that’s just scratching the surface: You can tweak the settings further to fine-tune your straight-out-of-camera (SOOC) JPGs to achieve various styles and approximations of other films. There’s even a whole little Fujifilm subculture dedicated to “film recipes” that aim to capture the general vibe, if not the look of many classic film stocks. One of the best resources for this is Fuji X Weekly, where Ritchie Roesch shares and shows off various recipes to try and recreate things like Kodak’s Portra 400 or Ilford Delta.

Because I’m someone who likes to obsess over tiny details and tweak things, this is perfect for me. When I first discovered Fuji X Weekly I spent several days going through the recipes that were compatible with my particular camera (and some that weren’t), punching in the settings and taking test photos, saving my favorites to Evernote for easy recall. Fuji makes it simple to load up to seven of these presets with the Q menu, so I can essentially go out with seven different “films” loaded in my camera and switch between them as the situation dictates.

What I like most about this setup is that I can just go out and shoot, and come back with great looking photos that don’t need any editing. I can decide in the moment: Would this be better with a warmer color palette? Should I be turning up the saturation here? How would this scene look in high-contrast black and white? And I don’t need to do a lot of menu diving to test different looks out.

I always shoot in RAW + JPG, in case I change my mind later or if something doesn’t come out quite how I wanted. But being able to basically see the finished product and focus on actually composing photos, as opposed to spending even more time sitting at a laptop is great. It’s exactly what I need in a hobby: less staring at a computer screen.

Without getting absurd and gimmicky – artificially limiting how many pictures I can take or using only one preset for at least 24 shots in a row – this feels about as close to shooting film as I’m gonna get on a digital camera. And while, yes, I know I could always just go back to shooting on film, I’d really rather not. I like many of the modern conveniences afforded by a digital camera. Plus, 35mm film and quality development services have gotten quite expensive. Even expired rolls of lower-end stock can fetch a decent price on Craigslist.

It’s not all roses, though. The X-T30 is limited to recording 10 minutes of 4K video at a time, which can make shooting reviews a PITA. And, perhaps more importantly, I may have joined the Fujifilm flock at the exact wrong time. For years the company cultivated a loyal fan base with its philosophy of “kaizen,” which saw it continuously updating even older devices to bring new features and bug fixes. Unfortunately, the company has started to move away from that in recent years.

The X-T30 last received a firmware update over one year ago, in early October of 2021, and that was almost entirely minor bug fixes. It wasn’t even three years old at that point. The company introduced the X-T30 II around the same time which from a hardware point of view is almost identical, but it has a host of new software features and film simulations. There seems to be no technical reason that many of those features couldn’t be ported over to the slightly older camera, especially the film sims, but Fuji has left some of its users out in the cold.

Here’s hoping Fujifilm remembers that it attracted dedicated followers by focusing on the experience and delivering regular meaningful updates to users. Because, while I love my camera, and do think it is probably the best camera for me, I’m a little concerned that I discovered the Fuji community just in time for it to evaporate.

A quick PSA for anyone looking to pick up a new laptop ahead of the holidays: The base model of Apple’s newest MacBook Air is back down to $1,049 at various retailers, including Amazon and B&H. That matches the best price we’ve seen for what is currently the top pick in our guide to the best laptops. The notebook has hit this price a couple of times over the last month or so, but the discount still comes in $150 below Apple’s MSRP and roughly $85 off the average street price we’ve tracked online in recent months. 

We gave the new MacBook Air a review score of 96 earlier this year, praising its thin and typically well-crafted design, vibrant 13.6-inch display, lengthy battery life, reliable keyboard and trackpad, and fast performance aided by Apple’s M2 system-on-a-chip. It’s a good ways pricier than the M1-based Air even with this discount, and you’ll have to get onboard with an iPhone-like display notch, but the extra cash gets you a sharper 1080p webcam (compared to a 720p unit before), much-improved speakers, slimmer display bezels and faster charging support with a dedicated MagSafe connector, alongside the slightly larger display. The M1 Air is still a fine laptop for everyday use if you’re looking to spend less — it’s currently available for $899 — but the M2 model is a clear upgrade.

The big caveat to note is specific to this entry-level configuration, which includes 8GB of memory and 256GB of SSD storage. On this model (as well as the base 13-inch MacBook Pro), Apple uses a single NAND chip to hold all 256GB of storage. Higher-capacity SKUs and even the M1 MacBook Air, meanwhile, are equipped with multiple flash storage chips they can use in parallel. This means the base version of the M2 Air is markedly slower in benchmarks when it comes to read and write speeds. If you’re looking to do more involved tasks like high-res media editing, it’s likely worth stepping up to 512GB version, which is currently $150 off its MSRP as well.

However, for streaming 4K video, web browsing across a bunch of Chrome tabs, word processing, email, lighter editing, and other more common tasks, the real-world differences with this configuration shouldn’t be hugely noticeable. The bigger issue might be whether 256GB is enough space for you in the first place. If it is, this deal should still be a good value. 

In other Mac deals, the base 13-inch MacBook Pro is down to $1,149, which is within $50 of the lowest price we’ve seen. We have a harder time recommending that model over the M2 Air given its more dated design and similar storage limitations, but its battery lasts a little longer, and its built-in fan makes it a bit more performant for heavier tasks. If you can’t afford to step up to the more powerful 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, it may be worth considering.

If you think of robots in the military, your mind may conjure dystopian images of science-fiction battlefields with AI-powered machines trading laser fire. But in a much more humane application, UK researchers are developing a potentially lifesaving medical system equivalent to a VR triage video call.

University of Sheffield researchers are working on a telepresence system to treat military personnel during combat. The plan is for offsite medics to don virtual reality headsets and control a battlefield robot. The machine can take the patient’s vitals with the same technology used in robotic surgery.

Currently, injured combatants often have to see medical technicians with limited on-hand resources. These paramedics often do their jobs at significant personal risk (and, if contagious diseases and contamination are factors, a risk to others as well). If the patient needs further care, moving them to a safe location with proper resources could take hours or days.

The planned telepresence system would allow medical technicians to work offsite, using the robot to gather data like the patient’s temperature or blood pressure. For example, the machines could take mouth swabs and draw blood samples from the patient’s arm. In addition, it could send photos and videos of injuries to the offsite medical workers, allowing them to assess and perhaps even treat the patient remotely.

Project co-lead Sanja Dogramadzi, a professor at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, sees the initiative as a lifesaving measure. “Developing a remotely-operated robotic system would significantly improve safety by reducing the amount of danger military personnel are exposed to on the frontline. Our platform uses the latest technology and would integrate it in a way that hasn’t been done before.”