Author Archives: Steve Dent

Urtopia’s Fusion e-bike has fully integrated ChatGPT

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Urtopia has tried to separate its e-bike's from the pack with copious use of technology and this year the company has outdone itself. It just showed off its flagship Fusion model for the first time in full at CES 2024 (after teasing it earlier this year) and it's fully integrated with none other than ChatGPT, the buzzy AI assistant. The Fusion follows the company's previous tech-infused Chord and original Urtopia models.

Urtopia calls the Fusion "the world's first dual battery, dual motor ebike by design visionary Hartmut Esslinger," a very specific claim. It's built with carbon fiber to reduce weight and uses a Shimano CUES derailleur on the regular model and Enviolo stepless shifter on the premium CVT version. The dual 540Wh battery allows for 120km of range (75 miles), but the 360Wh battery extender brings that up to 200km (124 miles) — enough to traverse Paris from north to south about 20 times. 

Urtopia's Fusion e-bike has fully integrated ChatGPT
Urtopia

It can hit up to 25 km/h thanks to the 95Nm mid-drive motor and has 100mm of travel with the air suspension fork. All that, combined with the relatively light weight (23 kg) wide tires and stable frame, make it suitable for off-road, trails and city riding.  

That could be any e-bike, but the Fusion's headline feature is the tech. It's connected by 4G and uses GPS tracking to keep you informed of the bike's location even if stolen. It also comes with a movement alarm, fingerprint unlock, route tracking, navigation without a cellphone and Bluetooth music via a built-in speaker — all as with past models. 

What's new is what the company calls "Jarvis" technology enabled by a smart ring (the company didn't say which one) to power the bike on, play music or activate the other tech feature, ChatGPT. You can also converse directly with ChatGPT through the built-in speaker. You may reasonably ask what ChatGPT is doing on an e-bike — the answer is that it can help you "explore new routes, get real-time information, and even engage in entertaining conversations," according to Urtopia. 

We're not sure how useful a chat assistant is when dodging traffic at 25 km/h, but it might at least keep you company on a lonely trail. It's also a pretty solid marketing gimmick that the company is using to separate itself from the many, many other e-bikes on the market. Buyers will have to be pretty well heeled, though, as the Fusion will cost €3,999 (around $4,375) and the Fusion CVT will run a hefty €4,999 ($5,467). There's no word yet on when it'll go on sale or if it will come to the US. 

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/urtopias-fusion-e-bike-has-fully-integrated-chatgpt-144429572.html?src=rss

Humane lays off staff before its ‘Ai Pin’ begins shipping

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Wearable startup Humane AI laid off four percent of its employees before it has started shipping its Ai Pin, The Verge has reported. Leadership reportedly told employees that budgets would be lowered in 2024, according to sources familiar with the matter. The cuts were implemented earlier this week and affect around 10 people. 

On LinkedIn, CEO and co-founder Bethany Bongiorno called the cuts "part of a wider refresh of our organizational structure as our company evolves with purpose for this next phase of growth." She added that CTO Patrick Gates will be transitioning to an advisor role, and that Humane AI had promoted new heads of hardware, software and others as part of a reorganization. Bongiorno told The Verge that the cuts were "not communicated as a layoff," though sources told that outlet that they were, both verbally and in writing.  

Humane was founded by ex-Apple executives Bongiorno and her husband Imran Chaudhri. It's primary product is the "Ai Pin" that acts as a sort of wearable AI assistant. The company first unveiled the device at a Paris fashion show and announced last month that it would start shipping in March for $699. 

Ai Pin startup Humane is already laying off people before even shipping a product
Humane

The pin takes voice commands from the user and beams relevant information onto the user’s hand via a built-in projector. It can also perform AI-powered optical recognition via a camera. It's powered by a quad-core Snapdragon processor with a dedicated Qualcomm AI Engine using Cosmos OS software. The founders have said that it "quickly understands what you need, connecting you to the right AI experience or service instantly." 

The Ai Pin has yet to be thoroughly reviewed (other than a few short tests), but the company demonstrated how it works in a video released last month. The founders showed how you can give it specific commands like "play music written by Prince, but not performed by Prince." The device can then display the information on your hand via the projector and control music playback and more by tilting or closing your hand. 

It can also answer questions by searching the web and send messages with modifiers like "add more excitement." You can use it to monitor your health and nutrition, and Humane provides a central hub for images, etc., along with accessories like clips, battery cases and more. How well it performs its AI tasks in the real world, though, remains to be seen.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/humane-lays-off-staff-before-its-ai-pin-begins-shipping-103548514.html?src=rss

Twitch is laying off 35 percent of its workforce

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Amazon-owned Twitch is preparing to lay off 35 percent of its employees or a little over 500 people. The news was first reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday and confirmed a day later by Twitch in a blog post signed by CEO Dan Clancy. Employees will learn today via email whether they are or aren't losing their jobs.

"Over the last year, we’ve been working to build a more sustainable business so that Twitch will be here for the long run and throughout the year we have cut costs and made many decisions to be more efficient," he wrote. "Unfortunately, despite these efforts, it has become clear that our organization is still meaningfully larger than it needs to be given the size of our business."

The move follows a headcount reduction of around 400 people in 2023 and Twitch's decision to cease operations in Korea. As Bloomberg reported earlier, the move comes amid concerns over losses at Twitch, which has failed to become profitable nine years after Amazon acquired it for nearly $1 billion. The costs of running the site are huge, given that it supports around 1.8 billion hours of live video content a month. A similar issue forced Twitch to leave South Korea, though CEO Dan Clancy said costs there are "ten times more expensive" than other countries. 

Near the end of last year, several key executives departed the company, including its chief product officer, chief customer officer, chief revenue officer and chief content officer. Clancy himself has been CEO less than a year, as he replaced co-founder and CEO Emmett Shear in March of 2023. 

In attempts to boost profitability, Twitch has reworked the way it does advertising and pays streamers in recent years. The site had over 50,000 partner creators back in 2022 and many have reportedly praised Clancy for using a more hands-on approach and listening to their concerns.

Parent Amazon has been on a cost-cutting mission, having laid off 27,000 employees over the last two years, including 9,000 in 2023. That's part of a downturn across tech companies, with large-scale layoffs last year at Google, Meta, Spotify, Epic Games, Unity and others. 

Update, January 10 2024, 10:13AM ET: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Twitch has now confirmed the layoffs, which were first reported by Bloomberg.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitch-is-reportedly-laying-off-35-percent-of-its-workforce-085946333.html?src=rss

Meta will hide topics like self-harm and eating disorders from teens

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Meta is introducing one of its most significant privacy updates yet related to teen user protection, the company announced today. They greatly expand on previous content control measures aiming to lock down teens' privacy settings, following recent lawsuits by US states and others.

The new measures will hide content related to self-harm, graphic violence, eating disorders and other harmful topics from teens on Instagram and Facebook. Related content will now be restricted from users under 16 in their Feeds and Stories, even if it's shared by an account they follow. When teens search for those topics, they'll instead by directed to "expert resources." The company said it consulted with experts in adolescent development to determine what type of content to block. 

In addition, Meta will be automatically placing existing teen users into the most restrictive control settings, expanding on a previous update that placed only new users into that category. Those users will be unable to opt out of those settings, called "Sensitive Content Control" on Instagram and "Reduce" on Facebook.

The social media giant is also introducing notifications with prompts that direct teens to update their privacy to "turn on recommended settings." That will automatically restrict who can repost their content and tag or mention them. It'll also stop non-followers from messaging teen users and hide offensive comments.

It's the latest in a series of privacy updates designed to protect teens using Meta products. In 2022, the company introduced measures to switch users under 16 to the most restrictive content settings and added a new feature to prevent "suspicious" adults from messaging teens on Facebook and Instagram. More recently, it limited ads targeting teens based on gender.  

Today's update more significantly limits what youths can access, though, following a series of recent lawsuits against the platform. Those include a complaint filed by 41 states accusing Meta of harming the mental health of its youngest users, another filed by Seattle schools over a youth "mental health crisis" and a recent ruling that social media companies will be forced to defend teen addiction lawsuits. 

Another recently unsealed complaint filed by 33 states alleges that Meta "coveted and pursued" users under the age of 13 and has been dishonest about how it handles underage users' accounts when they're discovered. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-will-hide-topics-like-self-harm-and-eating-disorders-from-teens-151012630.html?src=rss

Nanoleaf does smart outdoor lights now

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Nanoleaf, the company best known for its modular wall lighting tiles, is now moving outside your house. As part of CES 2024's avalanche of smart home news, the company unveiled its first exterior lights designed to bring extra visibility to your home. It also announced the Orchestrator app that creates a light show synced up to your playlists and songs. 

The new Outdoor String Lights and Permanent Outdoor Lights are the company's first exterior lighting products, bringing "the magic of dynamic gradients and warm ambience to your home's exterior spaces, lighting up patio areas, backyards and gardens all year round," the company said. 

Nanoleaf also announced a new Smart Multicolor Lightstrip for indoor use. All the new panels work with the Nanoleaf app and integrate with the company's other products in terms of controls and customizations. You can also group products together to schedule automations using Matter hubs "and paint your own animations with multiple colors... for a stunning gradient effect," Nanoleaf said. The new products are set to arrive in Spring 2024, with pricing to be revealed at a later date.

Nanoleaf reveals its first smart outdoor lights
Nanoleaf

The Orchestrator software, meanwhile, can create color and light shows using real-time music analysis and beat detection. It supposedly goes beyond existing music visualizers that simply pick up audio within a space by connecting directly to your computer's sound source to provide the "most accurate real-time audio-visual experience," the company said. In other words, you'll get light shows synced up perfectly to your preferred music apps, including playlists and songs. 

Orchestrator, set to arrive in Spring 2024, works via the Nanoleaf desktop app and is compatible with any music streaming platform or audio player. The company also announced that its Skylight Smart Modular Ceiling Light announced last year is now on pre-order at $250 for the Smarter Kit (3 panels), and $70 for each expansion pack (1 panel).

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nanoleaf-does-smart-outdoor-lights-now-123522915.html?src=rss

Watch Sony’s CES 2024 keynote in under 6 minutes

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As it often does in Las Vegas, Sony focused its CES 2024 keynote on some of the company's more esoteric products. To start with, it rolled out the Afeela electric car first introduced last year at CES, but did it with some gaming panache by driving it using a PlayStation DualSense controller. Otherwise, it mostly talked about how the in-vehicle experience is getting smarter thanks to our old friend, artificial intelligence (AI). 

Sony also unveiled something else we weren't expecting, namely a new mixed reality headset. Unlike the PlayStation VR 2 consumer model, though, this one is designed for "spatial content creation," so it's designed more for developers, creators and artists than users. 

It's powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chip (so it doesn't need to be tethered to a computer) and comes with a controller wand and a smaller ring-sized peripheral. It also sports dual 4K OLEDS microdisplays for a "crisp viewing experience" and allows for "user and space tracking" for mixed reality experiences. There's no word on price, but we should know more when it goes on sale later in 2024. 

The company also discussed its latest offerings from Sony Pictures entertainment, some PlayStation stats and more. The press conference went on for 46 minutes, but we've cut it down to just six so you can get the gist as quickly as possible.  

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/watch-sonys-ces-2024-keynote-in-under-6-minutes-110037656.html?src=rss

Apple tells developers not to call their AR or VR apps AR or VR apps

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With Apple's Vision Pro VR/AR headset set to go on sale on February 2, we're starting to see more details about the app requirements. For example, the company has released guidelines for visionOS developers planning to release apps and there's one strange caveat. It would rather developers don't use the terms AR and VR when referring to Vision Pro apps, but rather call them "spatial computing apps," according to the developer page spotted by 9to5Mac. 

"Spatial computing: Refer to your app as a spatial computing app. Don’t describe your app experience as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), extended reality (XR), or mixed reality (MR)," the company states. The headset itself should be called "Apple Vision Pro" with three uppercase words, while "visionOS begins with a lowercase v, even when it’s the first word in a sentence." The terms should never be translated or transliterated, Apple added. 

Given that they're definitely going to be AR and VR apps built for an AR/VR headset, Apple may want to differentiate its own offerings so that consumers don't confound apps for other VR/AR headsets, particularly Meta's Quest 3, with its own. At the same time, Apple has used those terms extensively to describe the headset, with CEO Tim Cook calling Vision Pro an "entirely new AR platform" when it launched at WWDC 2023. 

In the same document, Apple asked developers to indicate if their AR/VR, er, spatial computing apps contain movements like quick turns or sudden changes in camera perspective. That way, the product page will show a badge to warn users. It also described the use of privacy labels and game controllers. As mentioned, the Apple Vision Pro headset arrives on February 2 for $3,495 — a price likely to attract only highly motivated buyers. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-tells-developers-not-to-call-their-ar-and-vr-apps-ar-or-vr-apps-085136127.html?src=rss

Unity is cutting a quarter of its workforce

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Gaming software developer Unity plans to lay off 1,800 employees or about a quarter of its global workforce, according to a securities filing first spotted by The Wall Street Journal. The company said it made the move "as it restructures and refocuses on its core business" in an aim to get back to profitability. The cuts follow major turbulence in the company after it angered developers by introducing and then partially walking back a controversial runtime fee for its game engine. 

The layoffs add to the more than 1,100 jobs it has eliminated since 2021. Unity fired 265 people in November as part of what it called a company "reset," all of whom were employed as part of its 2021 Weta Digital acquisition. The company also closed down 14 offices around the world. In May of 2023, it announced it would let go around 600 employees, following layoffs of over 500 people in 2022. 

Last September, Unity rolled out some significant concessions to its developer pricing model after widespread backlash over its plan to charge developers for game installations. CEO John Riccitiello, who took much of the brunt of the criticism, stepped down shortly afterwards and was replaced by former IBM president James Whitehurst, who continues to serve as interim President and CEO.

After reporting record profits for 2022, the company has missed revenue forecasts over the last three quarters. In a shareholder letter, the company said it aims to emerge from restructuring as a "leaner, more agile and faster growing company." Unity's game engine is used in titles like Cuphead, GTFO and Kerbel Space Program. 

With game sales flat over the past year, Unity isn't the only company in that industry to see layoffs. As we detailed in our year-end video game roundup, The Embracer Group, which owns studios like Crystal Dynamics, Square Enix Montreal and Gearbox Software, laid off more than 900 people. Epic Games fired around 830 people, Sony cut 100 jobs at Bungie, CD Projekt RED and Sega laid off 100 employees each and Electronic Arts reduced 6 percent of its workforce, or around 1,130 employees. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/unity-is-cutting-a-quarter-of-its-workforce-074331467.html?src=rss

Vivoo’s new at-home UTI test kit and app can tell you if you have a urinary tract infection

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Following last year's smart toilet which debuted at CES 2023, Vivoo is at it again for CES 2024 with another urine analysis product. The company has unveiled an at-home digital urinary tract infection (UTI) testing kit that provides what it calls "gold standard accuracy results" via a two-minute test. 

To use it, just pee on the provided UTI test strip and scan it to obtain results via Vivoo's app in "seconds," the company says. If the result is positive, customers can then connect with a doctor to obtain a prescription if required. The company says the product "saves customers time, prevents confusion in readings, and digitalizes the data so customers can share results with healthcare providers via the app, if instant treatment is desired." From the looks of it, the results are obtained via the strip, then deciphered by the app.

Vivoo notes that UTIs are the most common type of outpatient infection, with six in ten women experiencing them in their lifetimes. Normally, you'd send your urine off to a lab for analysis, or use an existing at-home test kit. The company says that the new product spares users the bureaucracy of lab testing while also keeping the relevant data for users who might need that, unlike regular testing kits. 

In fact, many women experience recurrent UTIs, which have become resistant to at least one or even multiple types of antibiotics. By keeping a record of past infections, Vivoo's app could help patients and medical professionals track the problem and treat it appropriately. 

Last year, the company unveiled a smart toilet device that clips onto existing toilets and provides data like your body's water, magnesium, PH, protein and sodium levels. Later on, it released strips for vaginal PH levels. The new home UTI test will come to market in Q2 2024, but pricing isn't yet available. 

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/vivoos-new-at-home-uti-test-kit-and-app-can-tell-you-if-you-have-a-urinary-tract-infection-030021462.html?src=rss

Watch the AMD keynote from CES 2024 in 7 minutes

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AMD gave the first big keynote of many to come for CES 2024 and revealed a couple of interesting products arriving this year. Chief among those is the $329 Radeon RX 7600 XT GPU designed for entry-level gaming, going on sale on January 24th. The main takeaway is that it's designed for 1440p gaming and should be a solidly more capable GPU than the RX 7600, though we didn't see any benchmarks against its main rival, NVIDIA's RTX 4060 8GB. 

The other big news is AI acceleration for the company's Ryzen 8000G desktop processors. Those chips are aimed at folks trying to build capable systems on a budget, with the fastest Ryzen 7 $329 8700G model running eight cores between 4.2GHz and 5.1Ghz, while carrying Radeon 780M graphics. 

The new NPU (neural processing unit) will speed up AI tasks without hitting your CPU or GPU, enabling features like Windows Studio Effects which can blur your background during video chats, or media editing in Adobe and Blackmagic's DaVinci software. 

There's a fair bit of information, but we've made it easier by trimming the announcement down to just 7 minutes, while leaving out filler and extra details — so you should be able to catch up over a cup of coffee. 

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/watch-amds-ces-2024-keynote-in-7-minutes-185209130.html?src=rss