Apple has updated the operating software for the Apple Vision Pro, visionOS, and added a bunch of features. The company unveiled the changes at its live WWDC keynote and they look pretty useful.
The biggest news with visionOS 2 is the addition of spatial photos that provide depth to 2D images. When the Vision Pro released earlier this year, Apple had reserved this technology for videos. Spatial photos will allow users to peek beyond the frames of the photo by moving your head, giving people a bit more to see from the right and left sides of the original image.
Engadget
There's a new way to share these spatial photos with friends and family. The SharePlay feature in the Photos app lets people simultaneously view content and discuss it in real-time by integrating the headset's avatar personas. Vacation photos just got a serious level up.
The operating system is also bringing updated gestural control options. You'll be able to hold your hand up and tap to open the home view and flip your hand over to bring up time and battery details. Another tap will bring up Control Center and quick access to notifications.
Engadget
Later this year, visionOS 2 will offer some benefits to those who use the AVP for screen-mirroring. Resolution is getting an upgrade, and a forthcoming option for a wraparound ultrawide will be able to approximate two 4k monitors placed side by side.
Travel mode is even getting a little bit of an update here, with train support. In other words, the algorithm will be familiar with the usual bumps from a subway or long-distance train ride, so you can continue using the headset without any interruptions.
For developers, there are plenty of new APIs coming down the pike, like one for tabletop apps and another for advanced volumetric images. Finally, there's a lens coming for the Canon EOS R6 digital camera that will allow filmmakers to make immersive video experiences for the headset.
While not a game-changing software update, the addition of the aforementioned features should make strapping a computer to your head more of an attractive notion. The thing’s still $3,500 though.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/visionos-2-adds-spatial-photos-new-ui-gestures-and-improved-mac-mirroring-172746000.html?src=rss
As the grand finale of Xbox’s Summer Game Fest showcase, after the new consoles, we were treated to the exclusive premiere of the latest addition to the Gears series, Gears of War: E-Day.
The trailer kicks off with a one-on-one brawl between the Gears guy and a grunt, ending in a headshot. Immediately after, however, the floor collapses between them. Fortunately, Gears’ Guy #2 is there to grab your hand. And the sad Mad World melody plays in the background. Because Gears. Called E-Day, and ending on an apocalyptic view of a city, it looks like this game will center on an invasion. Apparently, this is the origin story centered on the Locust invasion on Emergence Day, through the eyes of Marcus Fenix — AKA Gears guy. Get the big guns. There’s no release window just yet, but it will, of course, be landing on Game Pass when it does arrive.
Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gears-of-war-e-day-is-the-origin-story-of-the-gears-franchise-183755128.html?src=rss
Alan Wake 2 is getting its first DLC package, which will consist of three separate chapters letting players explore the weird world of Alan Wake 2 with three new, if familiar, characters. The DLC itself is called Night Springs, and it’ll be available to download and play tomorrow.
Night Springs is a TV show that appears in the Alan Wake universe and if we followed that show’s Twilight Zone theme, these spin-off chapters could be ‘episodes’ of this series, existing in “parallel realities”.
Think of it as Remedy’s take on Marvel’s What If…, because you’ll get to play as Alan Wake’s biggest fan, Rose Marigold, Quantum Break’s Jack Joyce and Control’s Jesse Faden, in each chapter, respectively.
It's a fun idea for DLC and it seems like Remedy is looking to get silly. Sinister voices tell Jesse to “try the coffee.” We get a jump cut to Shawn Ashmore's ‘acting’ as Quantum Break’s Jack Joyce and a talking Billy Bass for fair measure. As mentioned alongside the full reveal, the DLC will be downloadable starting June 8.
Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/alan-wake-2s-first-expansion-brings-remedys-other-heroes-to-night-springs-225204575.html?src=rss
Qualcomm’s new commercial that revives Justin Long as a frustrated Mac user who decides to spend hundreds of dollars on a new computer rather than manage his notifications is objectively terrible. (The mocking has been so brutal that Qualcomm deleted the commercial from its YouTube channel!) But, it does raise one fair point: notifications, regardless of what OS or device you’re using, are a complete mess. The tools you’ll find on your computer or phone for managing them are overly complicated and hard to explain to someone who isn’t intimately familiar with the settings menu. I’ve been covering and using iOS for years, so for some stupid reason I do understand how Apple’s various notification options work, but wish me luck if I have to explain it to someone else.
That’s why the number one thing on my list for Apple to fix in iOS 18 (and really all its platforms) when its announced at WWDC next week is notifications. Rumors haven’t pointed to any big change this year, but a boy can dream. But the big problem with notifications isn’t really with Apple, or Microsoft, or Google — it’s with app developers.
Poshmark, a platform for buying and selling fashion items, is a perfect example. My spouse gets constant notifications from the app, making me wonder why she hasn’t just turned them off. Turns out that when you’re selling something, you want to know if someone messages you or buys something — but sorting those notifications from the myriad of other promotional junk the app shoves at you is near impossible.
To test things, I just went through the onboarding process for Poshmark myself. After creating an account and signing in, the app asked if I wanted to turn on notifications. Every app on iOS is required to ask you if you want them — but if you say yes, you’re opting in to anything the app wants to send you. Buried in the Poshmark app itself are more granular controls that let you turn various types of notifications on or off, including things like “party invites,” “just picked for you” items, “daily deals,” “live events” and more. In fact, there are nearly two dozen different notification types in this app alone! That is too many. I also got something like four notifications in the first hour, after barely using the app. Too. Many.
Apple has done what it can to help users find these settings. If you go to the global iOS notifications settings, you can manage preferences for every app on your phone. There’s now an option at the bottom of that list to take you directly into the app to let you do things like turn off most of Poshmark’s 23 different notification types. There’s also an option to allow “time sensitive” notifications (things like direct messages or calendar reminders) to alert you immediately while shuttling other notifications into a summary.
The problem is that most people don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to do this for every app they install, which leads to situations like the one that Qualcomm so cleverly skewered in its awful ad. I’ve accepted the fact that when I get up in the morning, I’m going to find a ton of notifications cropped up on my phone that aren’t meaningful, even though I’ve done my best to aggressively prune them where possible. At this point, it’s a crapshoot whether I’ll find anything useful when I swipe into my Notification Center, which means that I am surely missing important reminders about things I need to deal with.
It's also worth noting that Apple has tried to fix notifications over the years with tools like Do Not Disturb, grouping notifications, sending them to a summary and of course letting you decide how intrusive they are to begin with. You can easily turn off red bubbles if they give you agita, or make it so your phone doesn't light up with every message you get. But again, the onus is on the user to be aware enough of the many ways they can customize notification settings, and a lot of people don't do that until their phone is completely overwhelming them with pings.
Of course, I don’t have anything useful like a “solution” to offer here, but I think the best way forward is for Apple to figure out how to disincentivize developers to flood users with notifications. Perhaps in addition to the existing opt-in dialog for notifications when you first launch an app, Apple can force developers to show you the notifications preferences so you know exactly what an app wants to send you. And instead of turning on all notifications, an app could start with everything off by default and you only check the things you actually want to see.
But I’m also skeptical that more settings to wade through are going to fix anything. People are still going to want to install an app and get started using it without spending five minutes going through an increasingly granular notification settings process. The end result would be the same, too many apps taking up valuable real estate on your phone and in your brain. But they pay Craig Federighi and company the big bucks to figure this stuff out, not me — here’s hoping he has some good news on Monday.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/my-one-wish-for-wwdc-2024-is-better-notifications-on-iphone-and-mac-172004630.html?src=rss
The US has banned companies like Nvidia from selling their most advanced AI chips to China since 2022. But if loopholes exist, profit-hungry corporations will find and exploit them. The Informationpublished a bombshell report on Thursday detailing how Oracle allows TikTok owner ByteDance to rent Nvidia’s most advanced chips to train AI models on US soil.
ByteDance, which many US lawmakers believe has direct ties to the Chinese government, is reportedly renting US-based servers containing Nvidia’s coveted H100 chips from US cloud computing company Oracle to train AI models. The practice, which runs against the spirit of the US government’s chip regulations, is technically allowed because Oracle is merely renting out the chips on American soil, not selling them to companies in China.
The US government has cracked down on exporting the chips to China as an extension of the tensions between the two nations. The Biden Administration fears the nation could use advanced AI for military or surveillance purposes or to gain an economic upper hand. The US government passed bipartisan legislation in April that will force ByteDance to either sell its US operations or face a ban. But ByteDance still has until early next year to close a deal, and it’s suing the US government, which could delay enforcement.
Although ByteDance is training its models in the US, “it could be difficult to stop them from sending the models they produced back to their headquarters in China,” according to US-based cloud providers and a former Nvidia employee who spoke to The Information. Quite the loophole, indeed.
ByteDance’s Project Texas initiative, which the company claims siloes off TikTok’s US operations from its Chinese leadership to allay US fears, is at the heart of the arrangement. However, former ByteDance employees have described Project Texas as “largely cosmetic,” as they claim the company’s US wing regularly works closely with its Beijing-based leadership.
ByteDance isn’t the only Chinese company looking to game the rules. The Information says Alibaba and Tencent are discussing similar arrangements to gain access to the sought-after chips. Those deals could be harder to squash because they have their own US-based data centers and wouldn’t have to rent servers from American companies.
US cloud computing company Oracle reportedly enables ByteDance’s training of AI models in the US.
Oracle
Not every company has been as willing as Oracle to skirt the law’s intent. “Two small American cloud providers” reportedly turned down offers to rent servers with Nvidia’s H100 chips to ByteDance and China Telecom because “they seemed to go against the spirit of U.S. chip restrictions.” However, Oracle, cofounded by American businessman Larry Ellison and run by current CEO Safra Catz, apparently found the opportunity for profit through technically legal workarounds too tempting to pass up.
The US Commerce Department, the bureau that could close the loophole, may already be aware of the practices. Earlier this year, the department proposed a rule that would require US cloud providers to verify foreign customers’ identities and notify the US if any of them were training AI models that “could be used in malicious cyber-enabled activity.” However, the Commerce Department recently said most cloud providers disapproved of the proposal, claiming “the burden of additional requirements might outweigh the intended benefit.” In the meantime, the proposed rule, which could theoretically plug the loophole, remains in limbo.
But even if the US manages to shut down that exploit, The Information says it wouldn’t cover Chinese cloud providers like Tencent and Alibaba from buying Nvidia’s chips and using them to train AI models in their own US-based data centers. The Commerce Department will have its hands full figuring this one out as business and defense interests wrestle for control.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tiktoks-ai-efforts-reportedly-exploit-loopholes-to-use-premium-nvidia-chips-173432988.html?src=rss
Because there simply aren’t enough AI-powered chatbots out there, we’re getting one more. This one, called AI Chat, comes courtesy of DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine that obviously doesn’t want to feel left behind in the AI arms race. The company has been testing AI Chat over the last few months, but as of today, it’s available to everyone.
Unlike other standalone bots like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT that are powered by their own large language models, DuckDuckGo’s AI Chat is not. Instead, think of it as a way to access multiple chatbots in a single place. Right now, AI chat will let you choose between OpenAI’s GPT 3.5, Anthropic’s Claude 3 Haiku, Meta’s Llama 3 and Mistral’s Mistral 8x7B, and the company says that more models are coming soon. The main differences between them largely boil down to how many parameters — technical speak for the settings that a large language model can tweak to give you an answer — each one has. If you don’t like a model’s answer, you can try another one.
AI Chat is free to use but is capped with the daily limit. The company said that it’s exploring a paid plan that will give access to higher limits as well as more advanced AI models. DuckDuckGo said that you can use AI Chat to ask questions, draft emails, write code, and create travel itineraries among other things, but it doesn't generate images yet.
Not surprisingly, DuckDuckGo is stressing how private using AI Chat is compared to just using ChatGPT or Claude on their own. The company claims that your questions and the generated answers won’t be used for training AI models. "[We] call the underlying chat models on your behalf, removing your IP address completely and using our IP address instead,” wrote Nirzar Pangarkar, DuckDuckGo’s lead designer in a blog post. “This way it looks like the requests are coming from us and not you.” And if you’d rather not deal with a chatbot when you’re just trying to search anonymously, DuckDuckGo lets you easily turn the feature off.
AI Chats is separate from DuckAssist, another AI-powered feature that DuckDuckGo added last year that provides AI-generated summaries at the top of search results. It’s just like Google’s AI Overviews, the controversial new feature that recently told people to eat rocks and put glue on their pizza, except that DuckAssist sticks to reliable sources like Wikipedia to generate its responses. DuckDuckGo thinks that AI Chat and DuckAssist are complementary. “If you start with Search, you may want to switch to AI Chat for follow-up queries to help make sense of what you’ve read, or for quick, direct answers to new questions that weren’t covered in the web pages you saw,” wrote Pangarkar. “It’s all down to your personal preference.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/duckduckgo-dips-into-the-ai-chatbot-pond-120035373.html?src=rss
A long time ago I watched a video about John Nese, owner of the iconic Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in LA, and one thing that stuck with me was his response after being asked how much soda he drinks. Nese said that even though he’ll have one or two a day, what it really boils down to is that he “just likes the bubbles.” However, as much as I enjoy hunting down special flavors in stores, nothing beats the convenience of making your own sparkling concoctions at home. So when I heard that Breville was releasing a carbonated beverage maker with a feature not available from rivals like SodaStream I knew I wanted to test it out. And in just a few short weeks, the Infizz Fusion has quickly become one of my favorite and most-used kitchen gadgets.
Design — Expectedly upscale
At $250, the InFizz Fusion costs a lot more than basic soda water makers, which can go for $100 or less. However, it’s clear Breville is using that extra money to create a premium design including a stainless body with a die-cast lever and a magnetic drip tray. This means it’s closer to more premium rivals than plasticky alternatives like almost all of SodaStream’s offerings. And while your taste may vary, the InFizz and Aarke’s line or Carbonators are probably the only two that look good enough to live on my counter full-time instead of being hidden away when not in use. That said, I wish Breville would release an optional glass bottle, as currently the InFizz Fusion is restricted to plastic 0.6- and 1-liter containers. And because its bottles use a proprietary connector, you can’t swap in canisters from competitors.
Operation — The easiest bubbles you’ve ever made
Gassing up liquids with the InFizz is incredibly straightforward. First, you screw a one-pound CO2 tank into the hole on the boom. The InFizz comes with one Breville-branded canister, though you can use generic replacements from Sodastream and others. You just need to remember to buy tanks with threaded tops instead of ones with quick-connect fittings. Then you pour water into the bottle (the colder the better), attach Breville’s FusionCap and then twist the whole setup into the machine itself. From there, you just press the lever on top for a second or two and that’s it. There’s no need for power or to plug a cord, so you have tons of flexibility about where it’ll live in your kitchen.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
When attaching the FusionCap to the bottle or the bottle to the machine, there’s a very obvious and satisfying thunk that lets you know when each component is seated properly. I only had one blowout when I first started using the InFizz and after I learned from my mistake, it never happened again. I found the routine that worked best for me was to fill the bottle and then stash it in the fridge overnight, which made it a cinch to get crisp, chilled seltzer first thing in the morning in less than 30 seconds. It’s really that easy. Sometimes, I saw tiny ice cubes while I was carbonating, which I took as a sign that the water was cold enough. That said, it’s important not to add ice intentionally, as that can damage the machine.
One note is that before you use it, you will want to give it a rinse. After unboxing it, I noticed the InFizz Fusion’s bottle had an oily smell. Thankfully, alongside the InFizz itself, Breville includes a funnel, a strainer and a brush, the latter of which helped erase the odor after a quick wash.
How it tastes - Bubbles, bubbles everywhere
Like a lot of carbonated water makers, you have the freedom to hold the lever down a bit longer, in case you’re like me and you like big bodacious bubbles (similar to what you get in Pepsi) as opposed to the finer effervescence you get in something like Perrier. But the InFizz Fusion’s secret party trick is that it carbonates more than just water. You can add bubbles to cider for a refreshing twist on a fall treat. Or you can give new life to soda that’s gone flat. You can even uplift wine to create your own sparkling alternative in your kitchen. Pretty much any liquid you’d want to drink, the InFizz Fusion can inject with bubbles. And right now, there’s only one other home soda maker that can do this – the Drinkmate – which puts Breville’s machine in a more rarified crowd.
To add bubbles, all you have to do is attach Breville's FusionCap to the included bottle, hook that up to the machine itself and hold down on the lever for a second or two.
Photo by Sam Rutherford
Now this might not sound like a big deal, but as we get closer to summer, you know what’s even more refreshing than lemonade? An icy cold glass of sparkling lemonade. Alternatively, you can add bubbles to OJ, which is essentially a homemade version of Orangina, and I’d argue it tastes even better because it hasn’t been languishing in a bottle for the past few months. With the InFizz Fusion, there’s an entire world of things you can seltzerize.
At this point, you might be wondering why you can’t make lemonade from seltzer. And you can. However, if you make sparkling water first and then stir in lemon juice and sugar, you tend to knock a lot of bubbles out in the process. And for stuff like OJ, unless you’re making things from a concentrate, there may not be a way to start with pure water. The one thing you have to watch out for though is that when carbonating drinks that are more than just water, you may run into extra bubbles. But that’s where the red tab on the FusionCap comes in, as it allows you to release pressure slowly so your concoction doesn’t erupt and make a mess.
Breville's clever FusionCap is what allows the InFizz to carbonate almost any drink you can think of. It can handle drinks like orange juice or lemonade with ease without getting the inside of the machine dirty.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
That said, some drinks work better than others. Milk-based beverages are pretty much a no-go, as the carbonation process curdles the dairy, resulting in a product that just tastes off. And while you can add bubbles to coffee, the CO2 adds an extra dimension of sourness that probably isn’t what you want. After all, there’s a reason effervescent java is usually injected with nitrogen instead of carbon dioxide.
My one suggestion is that in addition to the one-liter bottle that comes with the machine, if you’re into making all sorts of bubbly beverages, you may want to pick up a spare 0.6-liter container too, because as tasty as stuff like sparkling OJ or cider are, they’re typically better consumed in smaller doses lest you end up drinking too many empty calories.
Wrap-up
There are few things more refreshing than a glass of sparkling lemonade on a hot summer day.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Look, if all you want is a machine for making seltzer, you’ll probably be better off with a basic SodaStream. Alternatively, if you just want a more premium bubble machine that comes with the bonus of having optional glass bottles, Aarke’s Carbonator Pro makes for a solid upgrade pick. Or you could go with the InFizz Aqua, which is the same basic device as the Fusion except that it can only carbonate water. But if you want a device that can turn almost any drink into a sparkling treat while also sporting an upscale design, Breville’s InFizz Fusion is where it’s at.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/breville-infizz-fusion-review-the-bubble-master-173216954.html?src=rss
Instagram launched Notes in December 2022 as a way for people to share statuses (not so dissimilar to Facebook) on the platform. Now, the Meta-owned app is taking inspiration from its sister site for more features, with the addition of Note Prompts.
Instagram first experimented with Note Prompts earlier this year, and the feature allows users to share questions such as "What should I eat?" or "Who is going to be in X city this weekend?" Friends can then respond with tips, suggestions and random thoughts on the subject. It feels very Facebook circa 2012, as does another new feature, Mentions, in which users can tag a friend directly in their Notes. The example Instagram gives, "Hanging with @user later," would be right out of the early 2010s with just adding "Text! :)" Instagram also announced Note Likes, which works similarly to how likes function everywhere else on Instagram — all users need to do is double tap a note or click the heart.
Notes have only emerged on Instagram in the past couple of years. They mirror stories in many ways, lasting only 24 hours and with controls as to who can see them (such as just mutual followers). Notes are visible in a user's inbox and on profiles.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/instagram-makes-its-status-update-feature-more-interactive-160057778.html?src=rss
Instagram launched Notes in December 2022 as a way for people to share statuses (not so dissimilar to Facebook) on the platform. Now, the Meta-owned app is taking inspiration from its sister site for more features, with the addition of Note Prompts.
Instagram first experimented with Note Prompts earlier this year, and the feature allows users to share questions such as "What should I eat?" or "Who is going to be in X city this weekend?" Friends can then respond with tips, suggestions and random thoughts on the subject. It feels very Facebook circa 2012, as does another new feature, Mentions, in which users can tag a friend directly in their Notes. The example Instagram gives, "Hanging with @user later," would be right out of the early 2010s with just adding "Text! :)" Instagram also announced Note Likes, which works similarly to how likes function everywhere else on Instagram — all users need to do is double tap a note or click the heart.
Notes have only emerged on Instagram in the past couple of years. They mirror stories in many ways, lasting only 24 hours and with controls as to who can see them (such as just mutual followers). Notes are visible in a user's inbox and on profiles.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/instagram-makes-its-status-update-feature-more-interactive-160057778.html?src=rss
Instagram is expanding two of its safety features in an effort to ramp up its bullying protections for teens. The company is changing how limiting and restricting work in its app to give teens ways to deal with potential bullies that it claims are less likely to lead to further retaliation.
With the changes, Instagram users will have the ability to “limit” their post interactions to “close friends” only. That means that users will only see comments, direct messages, tags and mentions from people on their close friends list. Other followers will still be able to interact with their posts, but those comments and messages won’t be visible to others.
The company previously introduced comment limiting as a creator-focused anti-bullying feature in 2021 with the goal of preventing the kind of sudden flood of harassment experienced by several UK football players. The latest changes, according to Instagram, are geared more toward teens who are dealing with bullies, but may be hesitant to use the app’s block feature due to fears of escalating potential conflicts,
For cases when people may be dealing with one particular bully, Instagram is making similar changes to its “restrict” feature. Users will be able to prevent restricted individuals from tagging or mentioning them. Comments from those on the restricted list will also be automatically hidden from others.
The updates comes as Meta is facing scrutiny over its handling of teen safety and other issues. The company was sued by dozens of states last year for allegedly failing to protect its youngest users from harmful aspects of its service.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/instagram-is-expanding-its-anti-bullying-features-for-teens-100037418.html?src=rss