Soon after launching AI playlists in the US, Spotify is adding a new way to keep the music going when you lose your internet connection. The new Offline Backup feature for iOS and Android automatically creates a playlist of your queued and recently played tracks, ready for listening on flights or off-the-grid excursions. Offline Backup is for Premium users only.
The feature complements Spotify’s existing offline mode for user-triggered downloads. In contrast, the Offline Backup playlist doesn’t require any manual downloads. So, think of it as more preparation with less planning. (And, of course, the standard offline mode will still be there.)
Spotify says the playlist will “evolve,” learning your habits as you continue to listen. It will also include the tracks already cached on your device from regular use.
Spotify
Once you go offline, the Offline Backup playlist will appear automatically in your Home feed. Once it populates, you can filter and sort songs within it to more easily nail down the artist, genre or vibe you’re feeling. Spotify also lets you add the playlist to your library for easier access.
You’ll need to turn it on manually to start using the feature. You’ll find it under Data Saving and Offline or Storage in the Spotify app’s settings. Turn on the toggle for Offline Listening to activate Offline Backup.
Offline Backup is available now for Spotify Premium subscribers globally. (And you’ll need to have listened to five songs or more recently.) If you don’t see it after toggling it on and going offline, the company recommends checking for updates to the Spotify app.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/spotify-can-now-automatically-create-a-playlist-for-airplane-mode-120038259.html?src=rss
Oura’s next-gen ring appears to be an upgrade in every way. It features a sleeker design, longer battery life and smarter sensors to offer deeper insights for wearers. No more squarish edges; it’s a perfect ring this time. Oura says Ring 4 has 18 signal pathways, up from eight in the Gen3, which is paired with its new Smart Sensing algorithm.
New features include automatic heart rate and activity detection for up to 40 activities. It’ll land in six colors: Silver, Brushed Silver, Gold, Rose Gold, Stealth and Black. All bar the Stealth is made of titanium. Oura Ring 4 is available to pre-order today, with shipping expected to begin on October 15, 2024. Prices start at $349.
Through an Instagram stream and publicly available information.
Two Harvard students used facial recognition tech and a large language model to unearth a subject’s name, occupation and other details. Their setup (dubbed I-XRAY) can use that information to pull data like addresses, phone numbers, family member details and partial social security numbers from various sources online.
In a demo video, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio used the glasses to address people who appear to be strangers by name, discuss their work and bring up a place where they may have met in the past, based on information picked up. The students told 404 Media they developed I-XRAY to make people aware of what’s possible with current technology — they won’t release the code they used.
Following its first two cars of the same name, the Polestar 3 delivers what many of us were looking for. It’s a mass-market machine to fill the needs and wants of buyers looking for an all-electric SUV with proper dimensions — and yellow seat belts. After all the delays, we’ve got a test drive.
Tesla’s Model 3 Standard Range Rear-Wheel Drive is no longer available in its online configurator. Electrek first reported on the absence of the cheapest option from the electric vehicle brand, with a price tag of $39,000. Now the Model 3 with Long-Range Rear-Wheel Drive takes that title with a retail price of $42,500.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-ouras-return-to-the-smart-ring-fight-111642885.html?src=rss
Oura, the Finnish company that has done more than most to put smart rings on the map, is ready to show off its fourth-generation Ring. The new model gets a sleeker design, longer battery life and smarter sensors producing even smarter insights for wearers. But the thing I really care about is that the company has finally made a perfectly-round ring that doesn’t include any ugly-ass etchings on the outside.
The biggest change made to the Ring 4 is in the sensors, which were previously housed in raised bumps that kept contact with your finger. Now, the sensors are flush with the body, making the whole thing a lot smoother and sleeker than it was before. And while I haven’t seen it in the flesh yet, the press images seem to suggest it’s a decent chunk thinner than its predecessors.
Those sensor improvements aren’t just focused on making them smaller, but also improving their ability to peer into our bodies. Oura says Ring 4 has 18 distinct signal pathways, up from eight in the Gen3, which is paired with its new “Smart Sensing” algorithm. The ring will automatically optimize which of those 18 pathways to use to maintain a constant reading, given how much jewelry moves around through the day.
This is a real issue for some Oura users, because if the ring shifts around too much, you’ll get inconsistent readings. The company claims that the new hardware offers a 30 percent increase in blood oxygen sensing, 31 percent fewer gaps in nighttime heart rate and seven percent fewer gaps during the day. Oura hasn’t said what battery size the Ring 4 has, but says the above tweaks should help it get up to eight days of life on a single charge.
Oura
Ring 4 is available in 12 sizes (4-15) and in six colors; Silver, Brushed Silver, Gold, Rose Gold, Stealth and Black. All bar the Stealth is clad in titanium with physical vapor deposition coating, with the outlier draped instead in titanium with diamond-like carbon coating. Much like its predecessor, its water-resistant to depths up 100 meters, and is suitable for saunas and swimming, but not deep-sea diving.
The company is also redesigning its mobile app to group all of the data it collects about you into three distinct categories: Today, Vitals and My Health. The first two of those help you explore your vital signs for the day in aggregate or in detail. My Health, meanwhile, will offer longer-term insights including your cardiovascular age, cardio capacity, stress and sleep. This will start rolling out today for all users, regardless of which generation of ring they own.
When I reviewed the third-generation Ring, I griped about the company’s decision to paywall features behind a monthly subscription. Look, I get you can’t build a sustainable hardware business on device sales alone and this sort of recurring revenue helps keep the lights on. But that only works if what you’re offering is compelling enough to justify the $5.99 a month, or $70 per year, which is why the Ring 4 is getting some new membership-only features.
Oura
That includes automatic heart-rate and activity detection for up to 40 different activities, removing the need for users to manually log their stats after a workout. When the app detects symptoms of high stress, it’ll now place that data in context with your movement, activities and tags. There’s also a better-developed suite of features for people who menstruate, with new insights for fertility windows — the company adding that this is designed to aid pregnancy, not prevent it.
Of course, while Oura’s never been the only game in town, it’s now got competition from Samsung’s Galaxy Ring. You can see that Samsung got to the integrated sensors ahead of the company it’s drawing inspiration from, but the Galaxy Ring is fairly basic, features-wise. Oura CEO Tom Hale told Bloomberg he feels the Korean giants are two years behind his company as things stand.
Oura Ring 4 is available to pre-order today, with shipping expected to begin on October 15, 2024, with prices starting at $349. The first month of membership is free, with users asked to cough up $5.99 a month or $69.99 for the year. Even if you already have an Oura Ring sizing kit, the company urges you to get the new updated sizing kit before ordering your ring, which is available in sizes 4-15.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/ouras-fourth-generation-smart-ring-gets-smaller-and-smarter-070005477.html?src=rss
One of the year’s scariest and most engrossing horror games is clawing its way to a new console. SFB Games’ Crow Country will launch on the Nintendo Switch on October 16.
Crow Country may look like a cheerier, grainier Animal Crossing but that just adds to the horror adventure’s creepy and dark atmosphere. You play as Mara Forest, a plucky young woman exploring the remains of an abandoned amusement park called Crow Country. Its owner Edward Crow mysteriously disappeared in his park and has been missing for two years. It’s up to Mara to uncover the mysteries behind the abandoned theme park and its long lost owner.
Engadget’s Cheyenne MacDonald reviewed the game back in May and highlighted that it drew some inspiration from the aesthetics and horrific monsters of horror games on Sony’s first Playstation like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. She also described the game as “cozy,” an odd word to describe a horror game. Crow Country’s “cozy” nature adds to the horror by taking familiar seeming characters and putting them in the Lovecraft-ian atmosphere of terror and mystery. It’s so good that it even made our list of the best horror games of the year.
Crow Country is also available on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox X/S.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/the-creepy-crow-country-is-coming-to-nintendo-switch-on-october-16-215954902.html?src=rss
Tesla's least expensive car is off the market: the Model 3 Standard Range Rear-Wheel Drive is no longer available in the online configurator. Electrek first reported on the absence of that Model 3 build. It was the cheapest option from the electric vehicle brand with a price tag of $39,000. Now the Model 3 Long-Range Rear-Wheel Drive takes that title with a retail price of $42,500. Tesla unveiled a refresh to its Model 3 line in the US in January.
The company also posted numbers for the third quarter today, with 462,890 vehicles delivered between July and September. Sales were aided by price cuts and other incentives during the quarter, enough to reach a 6.4 percent increase from the previous year's deliveries. However, the figure fell short of analysts' predictions for more than 469,000 deliveries during the period. This quarterly result could also hamper CEO Elon Musk's projections for the company to surpass the 1.8 million vehicles it handed over in all of 2023.
Tesla has also been struggling with recalls this year. Most of those issues were fixed with over-the-air updates, but the scope and number of the issues may also be leaving customers with doubts. Recalls impacted 200,000 vehicles in January, 2 million in February, 125,000 in May, 12,000 in June, 1.8 million in July, and more than 9,000 in August.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/tesla-has-stopped-selling-its-cheapest-car-212756966.html?src=rss
Until now, the mobile version of the Epic Games Store has mostly been focused on the brand’s staples like Fortnite and Fall Guys. It won’t be that way for long.
Epic Games Store general manager Steve Allison announced at Unreal Fest in Seattle that it plans to expand the Epic Games Stores’ mobile library with 10 to 50 new third-party games and start a free games program, according to mobilegamer.biz.
Allison said the free games program and third-party titles will be available in “Q4” or the last part of the year. Epic’s Unreal Fest keynote also teased that Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition will be one of the new third-party games on the mobile store.
Epic Games also wants to make the game submission process a lot easier. Allison mentioned the store would offer “self publishing tools” for developers. This will allow them to release their games “without any interactions with us, like they do on PC today.”
The Epic Games Store is available worldwide on Android devices and for iOS users in the European Union.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/epic-will-extend-its-free-games-program-to-its-mobile-store-211158377.html?src=rss
Meta is rolling out some of the previously announced features to its AI-powered Ray-Ban smart glasses for users in the US and Canada. CTO Andrew Bosworth posted on Threads that today's update to the glasses includes more natural language recognition, meaning the stilted commands of "Hey Meta, look and tell me" should be gone. Users will be able to engage the AI assistant without the "look and" portion of the invocation.
Most of the other AI tools showed off during last month's Connect event are also arriving on the frames today. That includes voice messages, timers and reminders. The glasses can also be used to have Meta AI call a phone number or scan a QR code. CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated the new reminders features as a way to find your car in a parking garage in an Instagram reel. One notable omission from this update is the live translation feature, but Bosworth didn't share a timeline for when that feature will be ready.
Meta's smart glasses already made headlines once today after two students from Harvard University used them to essentially dox total strangers. Their combination of facial recognition technology and a large language processing model was able to reveal addresses, phone numbers, family member details and partial Social Security Numbers.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/metas-smart-glasses-can-now-tell-you-where-you-parked-your-car-195200826.html?src=rss
Physical books are heavy and given everything else a youngster has to carry around in their backpack, who needs to deal with those as well? An ereader can help to lighten the load and there's a good deal on a kid-friendly option at the minute. Just ahead of the October edition of Prime Day, Amazon has dropped the price of the Kindle Paperwhite Kids by $55, bringing it down to $115. That's close to the all-time-low price.
Along with a Kindle Paperwhite with 16GB of storage, the bundle includes a year of Amazon Kids+ access, a kid-friendly cover and a two-year worry-free guarantee. If the ereader breaks for any reason in that timeframe, Amazon will replace it. Amazon says all of that equates to a value of up to $263.
Amazon Kids+ typically costs $6 per month. It includes thousands of kid-friendly books, Amazon says. The Paperwhite is all about reading. So while Amazon Kids+ includes access to games, videos and apps on a Kindle Fire, there's none of that here.
The Kindle Paperwhite Kids has a couple extra features called Vocabulary Builder and Word Wise to help youngsters develop their reading skills. The ereader also includes a font called OpenDyslexic, which Amazon says some readers with dyslexia prefer.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/prime-day-deals-include-32-percent-off-amazons-kindle-paperwhite-kids-193131655.html?src=rss
Now that OpenAI is becoming a for-profit company, it’s making a tidy profit in the process. The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI has raised $6.6 billion in new funding from investors, nearly doubling its value to $157 billion. The new funding also makes it the largest venture capital deal in history.
The new investors jumped on board after the artificial intelligence startup planned to switch from a charitable non-profit to a for-profit, product-focused company. If OpenAI fails to make the move to for-profit, investors have the right to pull their funding, according to Axios.
The venture-capital firm Thrive Capital founded by Joshua Kushner, the youngest son of convicted-turned-pardoned real estate developer Charles Kushner, led the new round of funding with $1.25 billion. Other investors included SoftBank, Nvidia, Fidelity Management and OpenAI’s previous largest investor Microsoft.
One name that was notably absent from the investor list is Apple. The tech giant was in the process of negotiating a funding deal but apparently the agreement fell apart.
Funding isn’t the only thing that’s growing for OpenAI. Its AI app ChatGPT has attracted 250 million weekly active users, up from the 200 million announced at the end of August, and 11 million paying subscribers. The higher usage rate has OpenAI officials thinking they should raise the subscription price for ChatGPT to $22 a month by the end of the year and $44 a month in the next five years.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-rakes-in-over-6-billion-in-new-funding-192110908.html?src=rss
Can you hear the soft, cherubic voices of corporate executives singing in unison? That can only mean one thing. They’ve figured out a new way to squeeze money out of our eyeballs. Amazon is adding even more ads to Prime Video, according to reporting by Financial Times. This uptick in corporate-sponsored splendor will go into effect early next year.
This comes less than a year after Amazon forced ads onto its streaming video platform, which is something all of the major streamers do now. We pay money to watch ads. It’s pretty darn cool. In any event, it remains unclear as to how many more ads will infest that next episode of Reacher or where they’ll be placed. Modern streaming shows aren’t made with advertisements in mind, so these ads just kinda pop up wherever.
Ads have turned into a serious revenue stream for Amazon because, again, they sit on top of our monthly Prime memberships that we already pay for. It costs extra to go ad-free. The company recently crowed that it drew more than $1.8 billion in advertising commitments at an upfront event in September. This exceeded the company’s own targets. Amazon also revealed that the ad tier of Prime Video reaches 19 million monthly users in the UK alone. This tier is used by over 100 million people in the US each month.
Kelly Day, vice-president of Prime Video International, told Financial Times that the platform launched with “a very light load” of ads at first, so as to prepare consumers for the coming onslaught. She said the initial rollout was a deliberate “gentle entry into advertising.”
“We know it was a bit of a contrarian approach to take,” she said. “But it’s actually gone much better than we even anticipated.” Day added that the company has not seen “a groundswell of people churning out or canceling" after it brought in advertisements.
The company is also readying an interactive ad experience that will allow Prime Video watchers to add an item to their cart straight from the video stream. This will work with physical remotes and on the app. Sweet, sweet corporate synergy. Yay!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/more-ads-are-coming-to-amazon-prime-video-182906957.html?src=rss