Kalakshar US

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $825,000 this year for surveillance tech that can spy on nearby mobile phones. TechCrunch identified the contract, which “provides Cell Site Simulator (CSS) Vehicles to support the Homeland Security Technical Operations program,” in public records. This isn’t the first time ICE has used cell-site simulators, but the agency has recently drawn outcry for actions such as unlawfully detaining US citizens and using violence against journalists and protestors as it carries out the immigration enforcement ordered by President Donald Trump.

TechOps Specialty Vehicles supplied the vehicles equipped with cell-site simulators, also known as IMSI-catchers, in this contract with ICE. IMSI stands for “International Mobile Subscriber Identity,” and is a unique identifier for every user on a cellular network. Cell-site simulators act as fake cellular towers that can eavesdrop on any mobile phone in the nearby area when a user connects to the actual cellular towers of their service provider.

There are active and passive versions of IMSI catchers. The passive ones are less intrusive, but the active IMSI catchers can intercept all data transferred from mobile phones as well as tracking the phones’ location. The TechCrunch report didn’t uncover which version is being used by ICE. This surveillance tech can also interfere with a targeted phone’s ability to contact emergency services via 911, posing a safety risk. It is also controversial since it doesn’t involve obtaining a warrant and can expose innocent bystanders’ information to the government.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ice-spent-825k-this-year-on-vehicles-with-imsi-catchers-182947167.html?src=rss 

Our favorite wireless headphones are on sale for October Prime Day. The excellent Sony WH-1000XM6 wireless headphones are $22 off and down to $428 right now. It’s not a huge discount, but it matches the best price we’ve seen these cans drop to since they debuted earlier this year.

The WH-1000XM6 takes a leap forward in sound quality, active noise cancellation (ANC) and other features. Our audio reviewer, Billy Steele, called them the best headphones you can buy right now. “The crown is safe once again,” he wrote. “Sony has managed to overhaul its flagship headphones in all the right ways that keep the 1000X line atop our best headphones list.”

The XM6 has a powerful new chip, the QN3, that unlocks much of its potential. Sony also developed new drivers for this model, resulting in richer details, clearer vocals and a better overall balance. The headphones added four extra microphones to enhance ANC. The XM6 is especially improved at blocking out voices.

If you’re a fan of spatial effects, which simulate a wider soundstage, Sony added that for this generation. The (optional) 360 Spatial Sound feature transforms regular stereo content into something with a surround-sound effect. It’s similar to what Apple and Bose have in their models. It’s yet another audio effect option in Sony’s app, alongside 360 Reality Audio and DSEE Extreme upscaling.

The headphones are no slouch in the battery life department. The XM6 is rated for up to 30 hours with ANC on and up to 40 hours with it off. In Engadget’s testing, we had no problem hitting those advertised figures.

If you’d rather save more money for a lesser (but still great) pair of cans, Sony’s last-gen model is also on sale. You can get the WH-1000XM5 for $100 off. The 2022 flagship headphones offer premium sound, ANC, and battery life. Typically $400, you can get them during October Prime Day for $298.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-sony-wh-1000xm6-headphones-are-20-off-for-prime-day-094527714.html?src=rss 

Steam went down on Tuesday, but appears to be coming back to life. Steamstat.us indicated earlier that the Steam Store, Steam Community and Web API were all down. But it’s been all systems go for a few minutes now.

Engadget staffers’ experience matches that. Earlier, when trying to access the Steam Store on Steam Deck and in the mobile app, only the UI loaded as an empty wrapper. Now everything appears to be loading normally.

Steamstat.us shows that it has had 1,534,000 page views in the past hour. (That typically means lots of annoyed gamers are trying to find out why they’re having problems.) PC Gamer reports that APIs for Valve’s first-party games (including Counter-Strike 2 and Deadlock) were also offline earlier.

We’ll continue to monitor Steam’s status and update this story.

Developing…

Update, October 7, 2025, 1:14PM ET: This story has been updated to reflect additional problems.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/steam-is-coming-back-online-170514483.html?src=rss 

The sequel to 2022’s surprisingly engaging first-person clean-‘em-up, PowerWash Simulator, finally arrives on October 23.If you enjoyed the first game (along with the other 17 million people it got its hooks into), it looks like you’re in for even more shockingly dirty locations on which you can unleash your trusty power washer.

A new release date trailer shows off a variety of tools you can use to get the job done, as well your own customizable home base that you’re free to decorate, cover in muck and clean to your heart’s content. There are also cute cats to play with, a very knowing reference from the developers to this being a 2025 video game, which means you must be able to pet an animal of some description.

The latest trailer doesn’t focus on it, but PowerWash Simulator 2 also introduces split-screen co-op. The original quickly cemented itself as the ultimate chillout game, so you can now kick back and clean twice as effectively with the help of a buddy. You can also share campaign progress when playing online with friends.

PowerWash Simulator 2 hits the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2 and PC on October 23, and it’s coming to Game Pass, for those still hanging around those parts after Microsoft’s recent price hike. Here’s hoping for an eventual DLC add-on as good as the first game’s (slightly random) Shrek tie-in.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/powerwash-simulator-2-arrives-on-october-23-154854867.html?src=rss 

California has passed a law to ban loud commercials on streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu.

This is great news for people who don’t want to wake the neighborhood up when a streaming show suddenly turns into an aggressively loud ad for migraine medication.

Governor Gavin Newsom just signed the law and the ban goes into effect on July 1, 2026. On that date, streaming services won’t be allowed to “transmit the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany.”

Newsom said that California is “dialing down this inconvenience across streaming platforms, which had previously not been subject to commercial volume regulations passed by Congress in 2010.” He’s referring to the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, which barred the audio of TV commercials from being broadcast louder than the TV program being aired. California’s new law makes streaming platforms comply with those same volume regulations.

The bill was authored by State Senator Tom Umberg, who said it was inspired by “every exhausted parent who’s finally gotten a baby to sleep, only to have a blaring streaming ad undo all that hard work.” The full text of the bill is available right here.

California holds some major sway in the entertainment industry, so here’s hoping that this type of legislation will come to other states. Americans don’t agree on much, but everyone hates loud ads.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/california-bans-loud-commercials-on-streaming-platforms-155809660.html?src=rss 

Most of what Nintendo uploads to its Nintendo Today app is fairly predictable; think a screenshot or trailer for an upcoming game or the latest soundtrack being agonisingly drip-fed onto Nintendo Music. But today’s surprise drop is more mysterious than usual. If you opened up the app this morning, you’ll have been met with a decidedly Pixar-like animated short, with virtually no context.

Titled “Close to you,” the almost four-minute video focuses on a baby playing with what appears to be an enchanted pacifier. In the child’s attempt to catch the flying soother, they start to walk for what seems to be the first time, given the reaction of the mother when she walks into the room. The whole thing is accompanied by some typically pleasant piano music, but ends without Nintendo telling us what any of it means.

Could this be a teaser for the recently-announced The Super Mario Galaxy Movie? Is the child in the short a young Rosalina, perhaps? They certainly seem to have a relationship with magic. There’s also already some speculation that Nintendo could be teasing a Pikmin film. Anyway, the short is now all over Nintendo’s various social media platforms too, so hopefully we’ll find out more soon. For now, it’s a perfectly nice (albeit unexpected) way to spend a few minutes.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/nintendo-just-released-a-mysterious-animated-short-140749774.html?src=rss 

OpenAI has disclosed that a now-banned account originating in China was using ChatGPT to help design promotional materials and project plans for a social media listening tool. OpenAI says that this work was purportedly done for a government client. The tool was a “probe” that could crawl social media sites like X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok and YouTube for specific political, ethnic or religious content as defined by the operator. The company said it cannot independently verify if the tool was used by a Chinese government entity. OpenAI disrupted similar efforts earlier this year.

The company also says it banned an account that was using ChatGPT to develop a proposal for a tool described as a “High-Risk Uyghur-Related Inflow Warning Model” that would aid in tracking the movements of “Uyghur-related” individuals. China has long been accused of alleged human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in the country.

OpenAI began publishing threat reports in February 2024, raising awareness of state-affiliated actors using large language models to debug malicious code, develop phishing scams and more. The company’s latest blog post serves as a roundup of notable threats and banned accounts over the last quarter.

The company also caught Russian-, Korean- and Chinese-speaking developers using ChatGPT to refine malware, as well as entire networks in Cambodia, Myanmar and Nigeria using the chatbot to help create scams in an attempt to defraud people. According to OpenAI’s own estimates, ChatGPT is being used to detect scams three times as often as it is to create them. .

This summer, OpenAI disrupted operations in Iran, Russia and China that were using ChatGPT to create posts, comments and to drive engagement and division as part of online influence campaigns. The AI-generated content was used on various social media platforms in both the originating nations and internationally.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-has-disrupted-more-chinese-accounts-using-chatgpt-to-create-social-media-surveillance-tools-142538093.html?src=rss 

The unfortunate reality of living in a world that’s largely abandoned headphone jacks is that you have to own a pair of wireless earbuds to listen to things on your phone. Accepting that, you might as well own a good pair of earbuds, and if you’re on Android, Google’s wireless earbuds are one of your best options. You can purchase a pair of Google’s Pixel Buds Pro 2 for $170 for Prime Day, $60 less than its normal $230 price. That’s a pretty great deal for a pair of wireless earbuds that rival Apple’s AirPods Pro 3.

The Pixel Buds Pro 2 are compact wireless earbuds with a touch-sensitive surface and a small circular ring in the back to help them stay in your ears. You can currently purchase the buds in bluish-gray “Moonstone,” off-white “Porcelain,” pink “Peony” or light black “Hazel” color options, but whichever you choose, you’ll get solid active noise cancellation and a collection of other helpful audio features. In terms of ANC, Engadget’s review of the Pixel Buds Pro 2 found that the earbuds do a good job of blocking out “low-to-mid-range noise” but still struggle to block out nearby voices. On the whole, though, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 sounds better than Google’s previous wireless earbuds, particularly when you’re listening bass-forward tracks.

The capabilities of the Pixel Buds Pro 2 extend beyond just listening to music, of course. Like its competitors, Google has turned its wireless earbuds into hearing protection, too. The Pixel Buds Pro 2 were recently updated to support what Google calls Loud Noise Protection, which can reduce incoming loud noises to protect your ears. That’s on top of features like Adaptive Audio, which can adjust noise cancellation and volume based on your surroundings, and Talk to Gemini Live, which gives you a hands-free way to have a free-flowing conversation with Google’s AI chatbot.

There might be other earbuds that offer better audio performance, but the Pixel Buds Pro 2 is the best option if you’re on Android and want a seamless experience. For $170 during Prime Day, that’s hard to pass up.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/googles-pixel-buds-pro-2-are-cheaper-than-ever-for-prime-day-130038433.html?src=rss