Technology

Microsoft has shuttered three ZeniMax teams: Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks and Alpha Dog Studios. The company is also folding Roundhouse Games into Zenimax Online Studios. Arkane Austin is the home of Prey and Redfall, while Tango is responsible for The Evil Within, Ghostwire Tokyo and Hi-Fi Rush. Alpha Dog is the creator of Mighty Doom and Roundhouse was a support studio for ZeniMax projects.

In an email to employees, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty outlined the upheaval, stating that some workers would transition to other teams under ZeniMax's purview. Most employees, however, will be let go. Here's Booty's breakdown of the layoffs for each affected studio:

Arkane Austin – This studio will close with some members of the team joining other studios to work on projects across Bethesda. Arkane Austin has a history of making impactful and innovative games and it is a pedigree that everyone should be proud of. Redfall’s previous update will be its last as we end all development on the game. The game and its servers will remain online for players to enjoy and we will provide make-good offers to players who purchased the Hero DLC.

Alpha Dog Studios – This studio will also close. We appreciate the team’s creativity in bringing Doom to new players. Mighty Doom will be sunset on August 7 and we will be turning off the ability for players to make any purchases in the game.

Tango Gameworks – Tango Gameworks will also close. We are thankful for their contributions to Bethesda and players around the world. Hi-Fi Rush will continue to be available to players on the platforms it is today.

Roundhouse Games – The team at Roundhouse Games will be joining ZeniMax Online Studios (ZOS). Roundhouse has played a key role in many of our recent game launches and bringing them into ZOS to work on The Elder Scrolls Online will mean we can do even more to grow the world that millions of players call home.

Additionally, "a small number of roles across select Bethesda publishing and corporate teams will also be eliminated," Booty's email says.

In summary, at least when it comes to the games: Redfall development has been stopped completely and people who spent $100 on the game's Bite Back edition will be eligible for a partial refund to compensate for the DLC they never received. Sign ups for the refund are right here. Hi-Fi Rush will remain playable. Mighty Doom will shut down on August 7.

The remaining studios under ZeniMax Media, which is owned by Microsoft, are Arkane Lyon, Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, MachineGames, ZeniMax Online Studios, and the Bethesda publishing and corporate teams. Arkane Lyon is currently building Marvel's Blade and it's the home of Deathloop and the Dishonored franchise.

The co-creative director of Arkane Lyon, Dinga Bakaba, shared his reaction to the layoffs on X with the following thread:

This is absolutely terrible. Permission to be human : to any executive reading this, friendly reminder that video games are an entertainment/cultural industry, and your business as a corporation is to take care of your artists/entertainers and help them create value for you.

Don't throw us into gold fever gambits, don't use us as strawmen for miscalculations/blind spots, don't make our work environments darwinist jungles. You say we make you proud when we make a good game. Make us proud when times are tough. We know you can, we seen it before.

For now, great teams are sunsetting before our eyes again, and it's a fucking gut stab. Lyon is safe, but please be tactful and discerning about all this, and respect affected folks' voice and leave it room to be heard, it's their story to tell, their feelings to express.

Microsoft purchased ZeniMax Media — including Bethesda, id Software, Arkane and Tango — in 2021 for $7.5 billion. The acquisition marked an escalation of Microsoft's efforts to eat the entire industry: The company acquired five mid-size teams in 2018, including Compulsion Games and Ninja Theory, and by February 2019, there were 13 studios under the Xbox Game Studios banner. The ZeniMax purchase cleared regulators in 2021, setting the stage for Microsoft to buy Activision Blizzard, one of the largest game producers in the world. The Activision Blizzard acquisition was the most expensive in Microsoft's history, costing around $69 billion. After nearly two years of regulatory negotiations, the purchase was cleared in February 2023.

It's not just Microsoft making the video game industry smaller. Sony, Take-Two Interactive, Tencent, Epic Games and publishers of all sizes have been gobbling up talent in a rash of post-pandemic corporate consolidation, and this has led to an avalanche of mass layoffs in the industry. In 2023, an estimated 10,500 people in video games lost their jobs, breaking previous annual layoff records. Prior to today's studio closures, roughly 9,400 video game workers had been fired in 2024, setting a pace that should outstrip last year's figures. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/arkane-austin-and-tango-gameworks-have-been-shut-down-183913558.html?src=rss

Just moments after Google announced its latest smartphone, both Amazon and Best Buy swooped in with deals to convince you to get yours from one of them. Right now, the Pixel 8a is open for pre-orders at Google's storefront, but if you go through Amazon, you'll get a physical $100 Amazon gift card once the phone ships. Purchase through Best Buy and you'll get a$100 gift card for its store, plus a one-month membership to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Whichever way you go, your new phone will ship May 14, the same day as Google's I/O developer conference. 

On both Amazon and Best Buy, the offer apples to the 128GB model in any of the four colorways, including the new Aloe hue. The model with a larger 256GB capacity, a first for A-series Pixel phones, goes for $559 and also includes the $100 gift card, but only if you order it in Obsidian. 

New for this latest generation of Google's most affordable smartphone is a screen that's a little brighter and smoother thanks to a higher peak brightness and a 120Hz refresh rate. The battery is slightly larger than it was on the Pixel 7a and software improvements should help it last longer. The camera array stayed the same as with the previous generation, but a few more of Google's AI tricks, like Best Take and Magic Editor should help you get more out of what the lenses pick up.

Engadget's Sam Rutherford had a chance to check out the new Pixel 8a ahead of its release and, while a full review is still forthcoming, he said the new handset is "shaping up to once again be the mid-range Android phone to beat." And if a $100 gift card sweetens the deal for you at all, now might be a good time to pre-order. Amazon says its deal will run through 5/19 or until supplies run out, so if you want to wait to see what we think, you may have some time. 

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/pre-order-the-google-pixel-8a-from-amazon-or-best-buy-and-get-a-free-100-gift-card-181519020.html?src=rss

It’s been a while since we’ve had an update on Blade Runner 2099, the sequel series heading to Amazon Prime Video. The cast list is starting to take shape, as Oscar-winner and all-around icon Michelle Yeoh is set to play a lead role, as reported by Variety.

Plot details are being kept under wraps, but Variety has a source that says Yeoh will play a character named Olwen, who has been described as a replicant near the end of her life. That’s pretty much all we know about the story, aside from the fact that it's set 50 years after Denis Villeneuve’s critically acclaimed Blade Runner 2049. This is likely due to the fact that we’ll be nowhere near the level of tech shown in that film when we actually hit the year 2049. The original Blade Runner, after all, was set in 2019.

Franchise creator Ridley Scott is involved in some capacity, but not as showrunner. That duty falls to TV writer Silka Luisa, who recently ran the Apple TV+ adaptation of the book Shining Girls. The show was great, so color me optimistic.

As for Yeoh, what more can be said? She won a long-deserved Oscar for her work in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once and has been involved with classic films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Sunshine and Tomorrow Never Dies, among many others. She spent a few seasons hamming it up on Star Trek: Discovery, and her character is getting a spinoff film that will likely release later this year. The actress also just received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, so this has been a big month. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/michelle-yeoh-just-got-cast-to-lead-amazons-blade-runner-show-180312046.html?src=rss

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Julian Stratenschulte)

The field of dentistry is lagging on adopting evidence-based care and, as such, is rife with overdiagnoses and overtreatments that may align more with the economic pressures of keeping a dental practice afloat than what care patients actually need. At least, that's according to a trio of health and dental researchers from Brazil and the United Kingdom, led by epidemiologist and dentist Paulo Nadanovsky, of the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro.

In a viewpoint published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, the researchers point out that many common—nearly unquestioned—practices in dentistry aren't backed up by solid data. That includes the typical recommendation that everyone should get a dental check-up every 6 months. The researchers note that two large clinical trials failed to find a benefit of 6-month check-ups compared with longer intervals that were up to 2 years.

A 2020 Cochrane review that assessed the two clinical trials concluded that "whether adults see their dentist for a check‐up every six months or at personalized intervals based on their dentist's assessment of their risk of dental disease does not affect tooth decay, gum disease, or quality of life. Longer intervals (up to 24 months) between check‐ups may not negatively affect these outcomes." The Cochrane reviewers reported that they were "confident" of little to no difference between 6-month and risk-based check-ups and were "moderately confident" that going up to 24-month checkups would make little to no difference either.

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Enlarge / An American Airlines Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner preparing to take off at Barcelona-El Prat Airport in Spain on May 1, 2024. (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating whether Boeing failed to complete required inspections on 787 Dreamliner planes and whether Boeing employees falsified aircraft records, the agency said this week. The investigation was launched after an employee reported the problem to Boeing management, and Boeing informed the FAA.

"The FAA has opened an investigation into Boeing after the company voluntarily informed us in April that it may not have completed required inspections to confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes," the FAA said in a statement provided to Ars today.

The FAA said it "is investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records. At the same time, Boeing is reinspecting all 787 airplanes still within the production system and must also create a plan to address the in-service fleet." The agency added that it "will take any necessary action—as always—to ensure the safety of the flying public."

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The United States joined the United Kingdom and Australia today in sanctioning 31-year-old Russian national Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev as the alleged leader of the infamous ransomware group LockBit. The U.S. Department of Justice also indicted Khoroshev and charged him with using Lockbit to attack more than 2,000 victims and extort at least $100 million in ransomware payments.

Image: U.K. National Crime Agency.

Khoroshev (Дмитрий Юрьевич Хорошев), a resident of Voronezh, Russia, was charged in a 26-count indictment by a grand jury in New Jersey.

“Dmitry Khoroshev conceived, developed, and administered Lockbit, the most prolific ransomware variant and group in the world, enabling himself and his affiliates to wreak havoc and cause billions of dollars in damage to thousands of victims around the globe,” U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said in a statement released by the Justice Department.

The indictment alleges Khoroshev acted as the LockBit ransomware group’s developer and administrator from its inception in September 2019 through May 2024, and that he typically received a 20 percent share of each ransom payment extorted from LockBit victims.

The government says LockBit victims included individuals, small businesses, multinational corporations, hospitals, schools, nonprofit organizations, critical infrastructure, and government and law-enforcement agencies.

“Khoroshev and his co-conspirators extracted at least $500 million in ransom payments from their victims and caused billions of dollars in broader losses, such as lost revenue, incident response, and recovery,” the DOJ said. “The LockBit ransomware group attacked more than 2,500 victims in at least 120 countries, including 1,800 victims in the United States.”

The unmasking of LockBitSupp comes nearly three months after U.S. and U.K. authorities seized the darknet websites run by LockBit, retrofitting it with press releases about the law enforcement action and free tools to help LockBit victims decrypt infected systems.

The feds used the existing design on LockBit’s victim shaming website to feature press releases and free decryption tools.

One of the blog captions that authorities left on the seized site was a teaser page that read, “Who is LockbitSupp?,” which promised to reveal the true identity of the ransomware group leader. That item featured a countdown clock until the big reveal, but when the site’s timer expired no such details were offered.

Following the FBI’s raid, LockBitSupp took to Russian cybercrime forums to assure his partners and affiliates that the ransomware operation was still fully operational. LockBitSupp also raised another set of darknet websites that soon promised to release data stolen from a number of LockBit victims ransomed prior to the FBI raid.

One of the victims LockBitSupp continued extorting was Fulton County, Ga. Eve LockBit’s darknet sites. Following the FBI raid, LockbitSupp vowed to release sensitive documents stolen from the county court system unless paid a ransom demand before LockBit’s countdown timer expired. But when Fulton County officials refused to pay and the timer expired, no stolen records were ever published. Experts said it was likely the FBI had in fact seized all of LockBit’s stolen data.

LockBitSupp also bragged that their real identity would never be revealed, and at one point offered to pay $10 million to anyone who could discover their real name.

KrebsOnSecurity has been in intermittent contact with LockBitSupp for several months over the course of reporting on different LockBit victims. Reached at the same ToX instant messenger identity that the ransomware group leader has promoted on Russian cybercrime forums, LockBitSupp claimed the authorities named the wrong guy.

“It’s not me,” LockBitSupp replied in Russian. “I don’t understand how the FBI was able to connect me with this poor guy. Where is the logical chain that it is me? Don’t you feel sorry for a random innocent person?”

LockBitSupp, who now has a $10 million bounty on his head from the U.S. Department of State, has been known to be flexible with the truth. The Lockbit group routinely practiced “double extortion” against its victims — requiring one ransom payment for a key to unlock hijacked systems, and a separate payment in exchange for a promise to delete data stolen from its victims.

But Justice Department officials say LockBit never deleted its victims data, regardless of whether those organizations paid a ransom to keep the information from being published on LockBit’s victim shaming website.

Khoroshev is the sixth person officially indicted as active members of LockBit. The government says Russian national Artur Sungatov used LockBit ransomware against victims in manufacturing, logistics, insurance and other companies throughout the United States.

Ivan Gennadievich Kondratyev, a.k.a. “Bassterlord,” allegedly deployed LockBit against targets in the United States, Singapore, Taiwan, and Lebanon. Kondratyev is also charged (PDF) with three criminal counts arising from his alleged use of the Sodinokibi (aka “REvil“) ransomware variant to encrypt data, exfiltrate victim information, and extort a ransom payment from a corporate victim based in Alameda County, California.

In May 2023, U.S. authorities unsealed indictments against two alleged LockBit affiliates, Mikhail “Wazawaka” Matveev and Mikhail Vasiliev. In January 2022, KrebsOnSecurity published Who is the Network Access Broker ‘Wazawaka,’ which followed clues from Wazawaka’s many pseudonyms and contact details on the Russian-language cybercrime forums back to a 31-year-old Mikhail Matveev from Abaza, RU.

Matveev remains at large, presumably still in Russia. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of State has a standing $10 million reward offer for information leading to Matveev’s arrest.

Vasiliev, 35, of Bradford, Ontario, Canada, is in custody in Canada awaiting extradition to the United States (the complaint against Vasiliev is at this PDF).

In June 2023, Russian national Ruslan Magomedovich Astamirov was charged in New Jersey for his participation in the LockBit conspiracy, including the deployment of LockBit against victims in Florida, Japan, France, and Kenya. Astamirov is currently in custody in the United States awaiting trial.

The Justice Department is urging victims targeted by LockBit to contact the FBI at https://lockbitvictims.ic3.gov/ to file an official complaint, and to determine whether affected systems can be successfully decrypted.

Some live sports and studio shows from ESPN will start appearing on Disney+ this year. Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors on an earnings call that this follows an encouraging start for Hulu programming on the company's namesake streaming service. 

"By the end of this calendar year, we will be adding an ESPN tile to Disney+, giving all US subscribers access to select live games and studio programming within the Disney+ app," Iger said. "We see this as a first step to bringing ESPN to Disney+ viewers, as we ready the launch of our enhanced standalone ESPN streaming service in the fall of 2025." Iger also noted that ESPN+ subscribers will also be able to access content from that service through the new Disney+ tile, so Disney bundle subscribers will more or less have everything in one app.

Iger didn't reveal exactly what sports Disney would make available to everyone on Disney+, but made it clear that it would only bring a “modest” amount of programming over from ESPN. The company is also working with Fox Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery on another sports streaming service that's slated to arrive later this year and will include games from the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA. 

Meanwhile, Disney+ just had its first profitable quarter in its four and a half years of existence. The service had been expected to lose $100 million in the first three months of 2024, but it actually posted a $47 million profit — surely aided by Taylor Swift's Eras Tour concert film debuting on the platform in March.

However, Disney's streaming business as a whole (which also includes Hulu and ESPN+) lost $18 million during the quarter. That's still a vast improvement over the $659 million that side of the business lost a year earlier as Disney edges toward overall profitability in streaming.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/disney-will-start-showing-some-live-sports-from-espn-this-year-173524610.html?src=rss

Designers, photographers and other creators may want to check out this deal from Adobe. From now through May 13, first-time subscribers can save 40 percent on the monthly cost of the Creative Cloud All Apps plan for a full year. That brings the price down from a hefty $60 per month to a slightly more palatable $36. To get the deal, you'll need to agree to a 12-month subscription commitment. After the year is up, the plan will automatically renew at the regular price, unless you cancel. If you want to pay for the whole year at once, it'll run you $396, which is also 40 percent of the standard $660. 

Creative Cloud All Apps includes online access to Adobe stalwarts like Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Illustrator, and InDesign, plus about 20 additional apps — including Firefly, the text-to-image generative AI tool and the social-content-focused Adobe Express. The plan also comes with 100GB of cloud storage, tutorials, Adobe Fonts and 1,000 credits per month to use towards generative AI creation in Firefly and others.  

Adobe doesn't often run discounts on their service, so this is a rare opportunity to catch a break on the tools that, for some creative pursuits, are tough to replace. The $36 monthly price tag is likely the closest most of us will get to the enviable student and teacher pricing of $20 per month.

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/adobes-full-creative-cloud-suite-is-40-percent-off-in-a-rare-deal-170847284.html?src=rss

We all think we’re pretty good at identifying images made by AI. It’s the weird alien text in the background. It’s the bizarre inaccuracies that seem to break the laws of physics. Most of all, it’s those gruesome hands and fingers. However, the technology is constantly evolving and it won’t be too long until we won’t be able to tell what’s real or not. Industry leader OpenAI is trying to get ahead of the problem by creating a toolset that detects images created by its own DALL-E 3 generator. The results are a mixed bag.

OpenAI

The company says it can accurately detect pictures whipped up by DALL-3 98 percent of the time, which is great. There are, though, some fairly big caveats. First of all, the image has to be created by DALL-E and, well, it’s not the only image generator on the block. The internet overfloweth with them. According to data provided by OpenAI, the system only managed to successfully classify five to ten percent of images made by other AI models.

Also, it runs into trouble if the image has been modified in any way. This didn’t seem to be a huge deal in the case of minor modifications, like cropping, compression and changes in saturation. In these cases, the success rate was lower but still within acceptable range at around 95 to 97 percent. Adjusting the hue, however, dropped the success rate down to 82 percent.

OpenAI

Now here’s where things get really sticky. The toolset struggled when used to classify images that underwent more extensive changes. OpenAI didn’t even publish the success rate in these cases, stating simply that "other modifications, however, can reduce performance.”

This is a bummer because, well, it’s an election year and the vast majority of AI-generated images are going to be modified after the fact so as to better enrage people. In other words, the tool will likely recognize an image of Joe Biden asleep in the Oval Office surrounded by baggies of white powder, but not after the creator slaps on a bunch of angry text and Photoshops in a crying bald eagle or whatever.

At least OpenAI is being transparent regarding the limitations of its detection technology. It’s also giving external testers access to the aforementioned tools to help fix these issues, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. The company, along with bestie Microsoft, has poured $2 million into something called the Societal Resilience Fund, which hopes to expand AI education and literacy.

Unfortunately, the idea of AI mucking up an election is not some faraway concept. It’s happening right now. There have already been AI-generated election ads and disingenuous images used this cycle, and there’s likely much more to come as we slowly, slowly, slowly (slowly) crawl toward November.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-says-it-can-detect-images-made-by-its-own-software-mostly-170012976.html?src=rss

Enlarge / Line up those colors and close those gaps... for science!

In 2020, a new minigame appeared in the video game Borderlands 3, located in the resident scientist’s laboratory on the spaceship Sanctuary III.  Although the arcade game may seem like just another way to pass in-game time, the tile-matching puzzle game—Borderlands Science—has allowed millions of players to help map the human gut microbiome.

Borderlands Science is one of the first examples of a citizen science game being embedded in a mainstream video game; it translates players’ tile matching into sequence alignment of microbial DNA strands that encode ribosomal RNA. Ultimately, this can help deduce the genetic relationships between different gut microbes—crucial information for demystifying the complex web of interactions among diet, disease, and microbiome.

Since launch, over 4 million gamers have played Borderlands Science, collectively solving over 100 million puzzles, making this one of the largest citizen science projects ever. Not only has the game generated huge player engagement, but the results have outperformed state-of-the-art computational methods, according to an analysis of the project published in Nature Biotechnology.

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Apple refreshed its iPads in a major way today with new launches in both the iPad Pro and iPad Air lineups. Both have significant hardware updates, but somehow the iPad Pro now weighs less than all of its Air equivalents.

The 11-inch iPad Pro is 0.98 pounds (444 grams for the Wi-Fi model and 446 grams with cellular), while the same size version of the iPad Air is 1.02 pounds (462 grams with no difference between the Wi-Fi and cellular models). 

The weight difference is more evident in the 13-inch tablets — the iPad Air comes in that size for the first time. The 13-inch iPad Pro starts at 1.28 pounds (or 579 grams) for the Wi-Fi model, with the cellular version coming in three grams heavier. Meanwhile, though the Wi-Fi and LTE variants of the 13-inch iPad Air are only one gram apart, they both weigh 1.36 pounds, which is noticeably heavier than the iPad Pro.

Apple says the latest iPad Pro is the thinnest product it has made, with a switch to dual OLED panels helping make the tablet more slender than ever. On the flip side, that makes the name of the iPad Air a little janky at this point. 

Sure, it's just a name and it doesn't matter that much. But at 1.03 pounds, the original Air was nearly half a pound lighter than the iPad 4. The latest model is essentially the same weight, but it's now heavier and chonkier than the iPad Pro, making Apple's premium tablets literally lighter than Air.

Follow all of the news live from Apple's 'Let Loose' event right here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-m4-ipad-pro-is-literally-lighter-than-air-164942372.html?src=rss

Another Apple event is in the books and, as expected, the Let Loose showcase was all about iPad. We now have our first Apple device powered by an M4 chip in the iPad Pro, with the company surprisingly choosing to debut it there rather than in a Mac. There's also an upgraded iPad Air that's available in two sizes: 11 inches and 13 inches.

There are some accessory updates too, which isn't a big shock given that an Apple Pencil was prominent in the event's teaser image. So, without further ado, here's a rundown of everything Apple announced at its blessedly brief Let Loose event.

iPad Pro

It had been expected for a while that any updated iPad Pro would have an M3 chip, but Apple decided to upend the expectations of many by instead slotting the brand new M4 into its highest-end tablet. Apple says the new device delivers 50 percent faster performance than the M2 iPad Pro. 

Rendering performance is said to be four times faster than on the M2 Pro as well. For the first time on an iPad, Apple is bringing support for dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated ray tracing and hardware-accelerated mesh shading to the Pro with the M4.

There are some power efficiencies here too. Apple says the M4 can deliver the same performance as an M2 using half the power. So, if you're using the tablet for tasks that aren't too strenuous, it stands to reason that the battery should last for longer.

The other major upgrade for the iPad Pro is new display tech called Tandem OLED. As the name suggests, it uses two OLED panels layered on top of each other. That means this tablet should have richer colors and deeper blacks on what Apple is calling the Ultra Retina XDR display. Apple says the brightness levels max out at 1000 nits for standard and HDR, and 1600 nits for HDR.

Despite the dual layer, the OLED panels are still thinner than an LCD display. To that end, Apple says the iPad Pro is now somehow thinner than an iPod nano (RIP, you beautiful thing), making it the company's most slender product ever. There's a nano-textured glass option for the first time on an iPad Pro too, but only if you opt for at least 1TB of storage.

One other notable change is that the Ultra Wide 12MP front-facing camera is now on the landscape edge. The Magic Keyboard users out there may be pleased about that tweak.

The new iPad Pro starts at $999 for the 11-inch model and $1,299 for the 13-inch, each with 256GB of storage. Add $200 to each of you want 5G cellular connectivity via eSIM.

We've already had a hands-on with the iPad Pro and, at first glance, the display seems like the show stealer.

M4

We have to chat a bit about what's powering the iPad Pro: the all-new M4 chipset. The Pro is the first Apple product to use the M4, even before any Mac. 

The M4 has a new CPU with up to four performance cores and six efficiency cores. There's a 10-core GPU as well. Notably, the chipset's neural engine is focused on machine learning and AI. Apple says the neural engine is capable of 38 trillion operations per second — it's 60 times faster than the first neural engine that debuted in the A11 chip. AI features that the M4 will power on the iPad Pro will include real-time Live Captions, the ability to isolate subjects and remove backgrounds in videos in Final Cut Pro and automatic musical notation in StaffPad.

Odds are high that we'll start seeing Macs with the M4 pop up later this year, which might put folks off from buying the M3 MacBook Air Apple started selling just a couple of months ago (though the company says the MBA is now the best-selling 13-inch and 15-inch laptop on the planet). 

The main reason for Apple skipping a silicon generation with the iPad Pro is likely to start a transition into AI hardware ahead of its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Expect the company to talk much more about what it plans to do with AI across all its products next month.

iPad Air Apple

The iPad Air was well overdue for an update after being stuck with an aging M1 chipset for over two years. The latest model (or models) boast an M2 chipset. Still recent enough to make it a notable upgrade from the previous Air while keeping the more powerful iPad Pro distinct.

As I mentioned, the iPad Air now comes in two sizes, the existing 11-inch form factor and the new, larger 13-inch variant. That makes the Air the most cost-effective large screen iPad as things stand. Oh, and the front-facing camera is also positioned on the longer edge of the Air now. Thanks, Apple.

The company has doubled the base storage from the previous generation to 128GB. The 11-inch model starts at $599 and the new 13-inch Air is $799. For 5G cellular connectivity, you'll need to pay $150 extra. As with pretty much everything else Apple showed off today, the new iPad Air will drop next Wednesday.

We've also had some hands-on time with the new iPad Air. With the combination of the price and the various hardware updates, Apple could be onto another winner here.

Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard Apple

There's a new Apple Pencil around town and it has some nifty tricks up its sleeve, including haptic feedback. The Apple Pencil Pro supports a new squeeze gesture too. If you rotate the barrel, you can change the orientation of brush and pen tools, just as you would with a pen and paper.

Find My support for the first time in an Apple Pencil is very welcome, considering how easy it is too lose the dang thing if you don't store it securely on the side of your iPad. 

The Apple Pencil Pro costs $129. Preorders are open today and it ships on May 15.

Apple

Meanwhile, there's a new Magic Keyboard that's only compatible with the iPad Pro. This one is made from aluminum to give it a more premium feel and perhaps help users believe that the iPad Pro is the laptop replacement Apple has long envisioned its tablets being.

The latest version has a larger trackpad with haptic feedback, while there's a row of function keys, à la a more traditional keyboard.

The new Magic Keyboard also ships next week. If you want one for the 11-inch iPad Pro, it'll run you $300, while the larger variant is $350.

Follow all of the news live from Apple's 'Let Loose' event right here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/everything-announced-at-apples-let-loose-ipad-event-161005007.html?src=rss

In the last five days, Helldivers 2 was removed from the PC market in 177 countries and the game’s Steam reviews collapsed under the weight of more than 200,000 negative ratings, dropping from Positive to Mixed. It’s now Tuesday and the Helldivers 2 Steam page is overrun with people ranting against Sony and celebrating democracy, and for anyone taking their first glance at the game, it’s all a bit confusing.

Here’s what’s going on.

Helldivers 2 is a third-person co-op shooter developed by independent team Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It went live on PlayStation 5 and Steam on February 8, marking a rare instance of cross-platform parity from Sony. Immediately, Helldivers 2 was a hit on PC — it clocked more concurrent players on Steam than any other PlayStation game, beating God of War, Spider-Man Remastered, Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last of Us Part I. Helldivers 2 was so popular in its first few weeks that Arrowhead’s servers had trouble meeting demand and had to be capped at 450,000 players.

“I am completely exhausted by the success,” Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt tweeted one week post-launch. “So is the team, many, many late nights, on-calls, emergency meetings, discussions around server capacity, shards, capacity units, CPU utilization, login rates and CCU. Tired, but very, very pleased.”

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Helldivers 2 is one of the first tests of Sony’s long-term multiplatform goals. While Pilestedt was taking stock of Helldivers 2’s launch week, Sony executives were telling investors about their fresh plans to aggressively chase revenue streams on PC. Sony president Hiroki Totoki said the objective was to “proactively work on” releasing first-party games on PC alongside PlayStation, a shift from the company’s longstanding console-first approach.

Helldivers 2 isn’t a first-party Sony game, but it’s console-exclusive to PlayStation 5 and Sony has been supporting its development as its publisher. As long as Helldivers 2 has had a Steam page, it’s also had a dijon-yellow notification box alerting players that they’ll need to link up a PlayStation Network account in order to play. According to Sony, account linking is all in the name of security and cross-platform play, but of course it also helps boost the studio’s PSN monthly active user numbers.

Due to the game’s early network issues, Sony decided to postpone the account-linking requirement when Helldivers 2 went live on Steam on February 8. It hit the digital PC storefront for $40 with no notable region or account-linkage restrictions. For nearly three months, Helldivers 2 had its moment in the sun.

And then it started to burn. On Thursday, May 2, Sony announced that all Helldivers 2 Steam players would be required to log into their PSN accounts in order to continue accessing the game on PC. The requirement would go live for new players on May 6, and existing players would start seeing a mandatory login prompt at the end of the month.

“Due to technical issues at the launch of Helldivers 2, we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional,” Sony’s announcement said. “That grace period will now expire.”

Usually this wouldn’t be a massive issue, since PSN accounts are free and it’s relatively painless to link one to Steam. However, Helldivers 2 had been sold around the world, and PSN is only available in 73 countries. That would leave well over 100 countries and territories in the lurch, with those players unable to play a game they'd already paid for. Refunds were also out of the question for most players — especially the most dedicated ones — since Steam generally limits those to games that’ve been played for less than two hours. The bad reviews started pouring in.

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Neither Arrowhead nor Sony seemed to know what to do next. Sony published an FAQ in the Helldivers 2 Discord that didn’t offer solutions, and instead seemed to advise affected players to create PSN accounts in different countries, a violation of the platform’s terms. It became readily apparent through tweets and Discord updates that while Sony was the driving force behind the PSN requirement, Arrowhead developers kind of hated it. They even encouraged the review riot.

“I want people to make their displeasure known in a place where it might actually make a difference, Steam reviews and refund requests will do that, angry posting in the Discord won’t,” Arrowhead associate community manager Spitz posted in the game’s Discord server on Friday. “I’m not happy about this decision either.”

Over the weekend, more than 200,000 people posted negative reviews of Helldivers 2 on Steam, tanking its overall rating. On Sunday, May 5, Sony silently removed Helldivers 2 from Steam in 177 countries and territories that don’t have access to PSN.

That same day, Arrowhead CEO Pilestedt tweeted, “We are talking solutions with PlayStation, especially for non-PSN countries. Your voice has been heard, and I am doing everything I can to speak for the community — but I don't have the final say.”

Sony Interactive Entertainment

On May 6, the day the PSN requirement was set to go live for new players, Sony backtracked. The company tweeted that its account-linking plans would “not be moving forward.” The message continued, “We’re still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable. Thanks again for your continued support of Helldivers 2 and we’ll keep you updated on future plans.”

Helldivers 2 is now playable in every region that has Steam, with the option to link a PSN account. Notably, it's not purchasable in the countries that were blocked by Sony on May 5. Still, the game's PC review score is slowly recovering as the rioters return to adjust their rankings, now alongside cheeky messages about the power of democracy.

On Monday, Pilestedt quoted Sony’s reversal tweet and added, “Firstly, I am impressed by the willpower of the @helldivers2 community and your ability to collaborate. Secondly I want to thank our partners and friends at @PlayStation for quickly and effectively making the decision to leave PSN linking optional. We together want to set a new standard for what a live game is, and how developers and community can support each other to create the best game experiences.”

With Helldivers 2, the account-linking issue was easily avoidable. Sony was knowingly selling a game to people who wouldn’t be able to play it — but first, it gave them a paid trial and three months of false hope. At best, it looks like Sony was completely unaware of the logistics that would support its bold new PC strategy. At worst, it all feels mildly diabolical.

Sony Interactive Entertainment

It’s unclear what the 2024 Helldivers 2 Steam riots will mean for future Sony games on PC, but there’s another test coming up soon with the release of Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut on May 16. Just like Helldivers 2, the game’s Steam page contains a little yellow rectangle warning players that it requires a PSN account for online multiplayer and the PlayStation overlay. According to SteamDB, Ghost of Tsushima is currently on sale in a handful of countries that don’t have PSN. 

As the Helldivers 2 drama began to kick off on May 3, Ghost of Tsushima developer Sucker Punch Productions responded to a concerned fan on X with the following account-linking clarification: "Just so you are aware, A PSN account is required for Legends online multiplayer mode and to use PlayStation overlay. It is not required to play the singleplayer game."

As long as the terms of engagement are clear and Sony doesn't attempt to pull the rug out from under players three months after the game comes out, that all sounds just fine. Account linking isn't a new or even rare scenario in gaming — Microsoft (including Activision Blizzard), Ubisoft, Riot, EA and most other major video game studios require a proprietary sign-in to access their games on Steam and other third-party storefronts. The issue with Helldivers 2 wasn't account linking. The issue was Sony's short-sighted execution of a high-profile PC rollout and its poor communication with upset players after the fact.

Most gaming fans want to see PlayStation titles on PC, and Sony wants to wring as much money out of its core franchises as possible by putting them on additional platforms — this plan should be win-win. With Helldivers 2, it's been more like win-lose-win, but at least we got there in the end.

Update, May 7, 3PM ET: This article previously stated that Helldivers 2 was available to purchase on Steam regardless of region, but at publication, it is still delisted in countries without PSN.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-helldivers-2-163829512.html?src=rss

TikTok is officially challenging the law that could lead to a ban of the app in the United States. The company, which has long claimed that efforts to force a sale or ban of its app are unconstitutional, announced a lawsuit against the federal government.

In the lawsuit, TikTok claims that a divestiture of its business from ByteDance is “simply not possible,” and that the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” violates the First Amendment. “They claim that the Act is not a ban because it offers ByteDance a choice: divest TikTok’s U.S. business or be shut down,” the suit states. “But in reality, there is no choice. The ‘qualified divestiture’ demanded by the Act to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally.”

The filing of the lawsuit is the first beat in what’s expected to be a lengthy legal battle over the law, which was passed last month. Under the law, TikTok has up to a year to separate itself from Chinese parent company ByteDance or face a ban in US app stores. However, legal challenges from TikTok could significantly delay that process.

Free speech and digital rights groups have also opposed the law, saying that it could set a precedent for further bans. In its lawsuit, TikTok made a similar argument, and said that the alleged national security risks posed by its app are unproven. “If Congress can do this, it can circumvent the First Amendment by invoking national security and ordering the publisher of any individual newspaper or website to sell to avoid being shut down,” it says. “The Act does not articulate any threat posed by TikTok … Even the statements by individual Members of Congress and a congressional committee report merely indicate concern about the hypothetical possibility that TikTok could be misused in the future, without citing specific evidence.”

The filing also references Project Texas, the company’s multibillion-dollar investment into separating US user data and other security measures, as the result of negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Those negotiations eventually stalled and CFIUS told the company last year it wanted TikTok to divest from ByteDance after all.

TikTok says that, as part of those talks, it had already agreed to a “shut-down option,” which would “give the government the authority to suspend TikTok in the United States” if the company violated the terms of its agreement. Instead, TikTok says, Congress “tossed this tailored agreement aside” because it was “politically expedient."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tiktok-is-suing-the-us-government-to-stop-its-app-being-banned-163132752.html?src=rss

Enlarge / Cleveland doctor Sherri Tenpenny gives false testimony on June 8, 2021, saying COVID-19 vaccines magnetize people. (credit: The Ohio Channel)

An anti-vaccine doctor best known for losing her medical license after falsely claiming that COVID-19 vaccines cause people to become magnetic and "interface" with 5G towers, has had her medical license restored, according to local media reports.

Sherri Tenpenny, an osteopathic doctor in the Cleveland area, beamed into the national spotlight in June 2021 while giving repelling testimony before state lawmakers about COVID-19 vaccine recipients. "I'm sure you've seen the pictures all over the Internet of people who have had these shots and now they're magnetized," Tenpenny said in her viral testimony. "You can put a key on their forehead—it sticks. You can put spoons and forks all over and they can stick because now we think there is a metal piece to that."

Her testimony was in support of a bill that would largely ban vaccine mandates in Ohio. The bill never made it out of committee. But the state's medical board opened an investigation the next month. The board intended to ask Tenpenny a variety of questions, including her statements "regarding COVID-19 vaccines causing people to become magnetized or creating an interface with 5G towers… and regarding some major metropolitan areas liquefying dead bodies and pouring them into the water supply," according to a board report.

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Enlarge (credit: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

The federal government has given Tesla quite the homework assignment. The electric automaker has until July 1 to reply to a massive data request from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is investigating the efficacy of Tesla's massive Autopilot recall, following at least 20 crashes post-recall.

Tesla decided to recall more than 2 million cars in the US—almost every vehicle it has ever sold here—in December 2023, following an engineering analysis by NHTSA that found the automaker's Autopilot driver assistance feature had inadequate driver monitoring and that Autopilot was too easily misused.

Last month, we discovered that NHTSA is not happy with the Autopilot recall. Now, the agency has made public the letter it sent Tesla this week, demanding a whole lot of answers by July 1.

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Apple is all over the place today on the hardware side of things, having just announced a slew of new iPads. However, some of Apple’s most beloved software is also getting some love. There’s a new version of the video editing suite Final Cut Pro for tablets that brings plenty of long-requested features.

The big news for video editors? Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 (actual name) now supports external drives. Video editing projects are typically gigantic when you consider all of that raw footage. It’s easy to fill up all of the available space of an iPad with footage from one or two scenes, let alone an entire project. This fixes a major barrier of entry for those curious about editing on a tablet. It also makes it easier to hand off footage to another editor or import footage to Final Cut Pro for Mac.

The software is even bringing live multicam recording to iPads. This lets creators capture up to four different angles of a single scene spread across multiple devices. Everything connects wirelessly via a new app called Final Cut Camera, which gives a real-time “director’s view” on four iPhones or iPads. Each feed has its own settings that can be adjusted, like focus, zoom and more. Editable preview clips immediately get passed on to Final Cut Pro for editing.

As for customization options, Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 brings 12 new color-grading presets, eight basic text tiles, 20 new soundtracks and more dynamic backgrounds. These will be especially useful when creating title sequences and the like.

Apple

The Mac version of Final Cut Pro is also getting a fairly substantial update, with a focus on AI. The software leverages Apple silicon’s Neural Engine to bring a bit of AI flourish to basic editing tasks. The update allows users to change up colors, color balance, contrast and brightness all at the same time. There’s also something called Smooth Slo-Mo that pairs with AI, in which “frames of video are intelligently generated and blended together, providing the highest-quality movement.” The timeline has also been refreshed and looks a bit more intuitive.

Finally, there’s an update to Logic Pro for iPad, with a new session player feature and a stem splitter tool. The updates for Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad are available for free to current users and cost $5 per month for new users, which is the same pricing model as last year when both software packages were first released. Final Cut Pro for Mac costs $300 for new users, but the update is free for pre-existing users. All of these updates drop later this spring.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/final-cut-pro-for-ipad-gets-support-for-external-drives-and-live-multicam-recording-161244729.html?src=rss

Compared to the iPad Pro, the changes Apple made to the iPad Air are more modest. Rather than a total redesign, the iPad Air is getting some expected and slightly overdue changes: a new screen size, a new processor and a front-facing camera that is placed on the landscape side of the tablet. 

Yes, that's some faint praise, but there's a lot to like about the new iPad Air. It's long been the best overall iPad, straddling the line between the budget entry model and the wildly powerful and expensive Pro lineup. That's the case here, again. But now that the 13-inch iPad Pro is even more pricey than before, it's good to see a large-screen iPad that doesn't cost well over $1,000. 

The 11-inch iPad Air is identical in size and weight to the old one, though the screen is .1 inches bigger this time. So there's not a whole lot to say about that one. The 13-inch Air, however, feels quite a bit like the old 12.9-inch iPad Pro that was just replaced today. Indeed, it's identical in all dimensions, but a little bit lighter (1.36 pounds instead of 1.5).

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

That makes it a little more approachable as a hand-held tablet, though I still feel like an iPad this large is best suited to either be used in a keyboard dock or flat on a table with an Apple Pencil. That said, Apple says that about half of iPad Pro sales were for the larger model, so there's clearly an appetite for this bigger screen. There's definitely something luxurious about using such a large screen tablet, provided it's easy to handle, and that's the case with the iPad Air (at least in the limited time I've had so far to handle the device).

I also got to try the new Apple Pencil Pro, which is compatible with the new Air. As I said here, the new tricks like barrel roll for changing the shape of your brush and a squeeze feature to bring up tools like a brush picker are solid additions, and I'm glad that Apple didn't increase the Pencil's price given these new features. 

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

These tablets might not have the wow factor that I experienced when checking out the iPad Pro, but that's OK. From my first look, it feels like the iPad Air lineup offers most of the same experience that you'll get with an iPad Pro — at least in ways that normal buyers will recognize. And I think Apple did well on pricing this time out. The 11-inch iPad Air costs $599, same as before, but it now has a more reasonable 128GB of storage. The 13-inch model is priced at $799, an expected price bump for the larger screen. It's the first time you can get a large-screen iPad for less than a grand, and I'm definitely curious to see if that helps to improve iPad sales. 

You can read my first impressions of the new iPad Pro M4 right here.

Follow all of the news live from Apple's 'Let Loose' event right here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hands-on-with-the-ipad-air-m2-a-big-screen-ipad-that-doesnt-break-the-bank-160655629.html?src=rss

The new iPads are finally here. Apple has announced four new entries in its tablet lineup, including two revamped iPad Pros with OLED screens and an all-new M4 chip, a refreshed iPad Air with an M2 chip and a new larger Air model with a 13-inch display. Along with the new slates, the company also unveiled a new Apple Pencil Pro stylus with haptic feedback support and an updated Magic Keyboard with a more MacBook-like design. The updates come more than a year and a half after the company last unveiled new iPads in October 2022.

All of the new gear is available for pre-order today at Apple's online store and will be fully available on May 15. We plan to put everything through its paces in the coming days, but if you're already 100 percent sure that you want to upgrade, we'll quickly break down what's new and lay out your current purchasing options below. Here's what to know about pre-ordering the new iPad Air, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/how-to-pre-order-apples-new-ipad-air-ipad-pro-pencil-pro-and-magic-keyboard-160521255.html?src=rss

Google announced the Pixel 8a smartphone today, one week ahead of the company’s I/O conference on May 14. We no longer have to rely on leaked info, as Google has confirmed the Pixel 8a will start at $499, the same price as the Pixel 7a at launch, and will ship the same day as the event. You can pre-order it now from Google’s storefront or from Amazon. The sub-$500 price tag maintains the A-series position as the most affordable handset in Google’s lineup. We were able to spend a little time with the phone to get some initial thoughts, and our full review will be coming soon. In the meantime, here’s what’s new about the newest Pixel phone.

The Pixel 8a upgrades to the Tensor G3 chip, giving it the same processor as the standard Google Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8 Pro. The new phone carries the same 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage as the previous generation, along with the option of 256GB of storage, that model is going for $559. The 6.1-inch OLED display is the same size and resolution as its predecessor, but the refresh rate is a smoother 120Hz. The screen's got a little more dazzle too, with a peak brightness of up to 2,000 nits, an increase from the Pixel 7a that now matches the Pixel 8.

The battery is very slightly (about 100mAh) bigger, leading Google to claim a 24-plus-hour battery life, instead of the 7a’s flat 24-hour promise. Speaking of promises, the new budget Pixel comes with seven years of promised security and features updates, putting it on par with the 8-series phones. That’s two years longer than the support offered with the 7a. 

As we expected, the camera array remains largely the same as the prior generation, with a 64MP wide and a 13MP ultrawide lens in back and a 13MP selfie cam up front. Magic Editor and Best Take, two of Google’s AI-assisted photography features that impressed us on the Pixel 8, have come to the Pixel 8a, as well as the new Audio Magic Eraser, which automatically cuts out distracting sounds from video recordings.

The Pixel 8a comes in three of the same colors as the Pixel 8 Pro: Obsidian, Porcelain and Bay but the 8a swaps in an Aloe option instead of Mint. Pre-orders for Google’s new Pixel 8a are now open and orders will ship on May 14.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-google-pixel-8a-was-just-announced-heres-how-to-pre-order-the-new-smartphone-160051570.html?src=rss