If you’re the kind of pro or college football fan who wishes they could time travel so they can watch every game as they happen, Apple Sports may be able to help. The iPhone sports app can’t break the laws of quantum physics but it can help you keep track of all the games during football season.
Apple Sports’ newest update adds more comprehensive alerts and features for National Football League (NFL) and National Collegiate Athletic Association Football (NCAAF) games. The app will not only provide up-to-the-minute scores and stats on games but it will also deliver play-by-play updates for scoring drives with its new “dynamic drive tracker” that can show the ball’s location on the field. The Apple Sports app will also provide real-time betting odds during every game.
The app will eventually add a drop-down screen that will show the main scorecards from game to game, a feed of updates for your teams and a search function that makes it easier to find and switch between games even if you don’t follow them. It'll also cannibalize the “Live Activities” alert feature from Apple TV. Both those features will drop when the iOS 18 beta launches in the fall.
The Apple Sports app launched in February for free and is available now on the App Store. As of Thursday, the app can track games for 15 different leagues’ seasons including the NFL, NCAAF, Major League Soccer (MLS), Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Basketball Association (NBA). Apple says more leagues will be added to the app in future updates.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/apple-sports-is-ready-for-some-football-with-new-game-tracking-updates-181536944.html?src=rss
Here’s what the leaker has laid out. Take all of this with a grain of salt, as it’s not coming from Sony. First of all, it’ll actually be called the PS5 Pro. This was assumed, based on the PS4 Pro, but we didn’t have any actual naming details. The user claims to have access to the packaging design, but didn’t feel comfortable sharing copyrighted images. Instead, they sketched out the packaging, as seen below.
Dealabs / billbil-kun
As you can see, the design is similar to the PS5 Slim, with a white colorway. We don’t know if it’ll be available in other colors beyond white. There looks to be three black stripes across the middle, which is a new design element. These stripes could double as cooling vents but, again, we just don't know.
The leaker also doesn’t know if the console will have a disc drive, though it has been theorized that it could ship without a drive in order to keep costs down. It’s equally unclear if there will be two versions of the PS5 Pro, one with a disc drive and a digital-only edition.
Adidas x PS5... (no, just joking) 😅
The wait is over!
It took me some time to finish the drawing,
Here is the final design of PS5 Pro with many other details including:
The report also indicates that the console will ship with the same standard DualSense controller that comes with the original PS5 and the PS5 Slim. The leaker, however, offers no information regarding internal specifications. In other words, we are still (mostly) in the dark about the “Pro” part of the PS5 Pro.
To that end, there have been other leaks that hint at the console’s power. Back in March, a YouTuber leaked official documentation from Sony that explained some of the console’s specifications. The document is believed to be legitimate by IGN and other sites, but the video has since been taken down at Sony's behest.
The video suggested that the forthcoming console will have the same CPU as the standard PS5, but that there will be a “High CPU Frequency Mode” that pushes the chipset by ten percent to 3.85GHz. It has also been indicated that the GPU will be powered by 33.5 teraflops versus the standard PS5’s 10.28 teraflops.
This doesn’t mean that the PS5 Pro will be three times better at rendering than the regular PS5. There have been recent changes in AMD’s architecture that make it difficult to directly compare teraflops between the PS5 and the PS5 Pro, as indicated by The Verge. The leak suggests a 45 percent uptick with rendering.
Sony has filed a copyright strike against the PS5 Pro leak video from Moore’s Law is Dead. The video has been removed from YouTube pic.twitter.com/lxv5jS9CMY
In any event, it sure looks like we are mere weeks (or even days) away from an official announcement from Sony. Here’s to hoping the PS5 Pro won’t absolutely shred our bank accounts.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/it-sure-seems-like-the-ps5-pro-will-be-announced-in-the-next-few-weeks-173708822.html?src=rss
Researchers at Cornell University tapped into fungal mycelia to power a pair of proof-of-concept robots. Mycelia, the underground fungal network that can sprout mushrooms as its above-ground fruit, can sense light and chemical reactions and communicate through electrical signals. This makes it a novel component in hybrid robotics that could someday detect crop conditions otherwise invisible to humans.
The Cornell researchers created two robots: a soft, spider-like one and a four-wheeled buggy. The researchers used mycelia’s light-sensing abilities to control the machines using ultraviolet light. The project required experts in mycology (the study of fungi), neurobiology, mechanical engineering, electronics and signal processing.
“If you think about a synthetic system — let’s say, any passive sensor — we just use it for one purpose,” lead author Anand Mishra said. “But living systems respond to touch, they respond to light, they respond to heat, they respond to even some unknowns, like signals. That’s why we think, OK, if you wanted to build future robots, how can they work in an unexpected environment? We can leverage these living systems, and any unknown input comes in, the robot will respond to that.”
The fungal robot uses an electrical interface that (after blocking out interference from vibrations and electromagnetic signals) records and processes the mycelia’s electrophysical activity in real time. A controller, mimicking a portion of animals' central nervous systems, acted as “a kind of neural circuit.” The team designed the controller to read the fungi’s raw electrical signal, process it and translate it into digital controls. These were then sent to the machine’s actuators.
Cornell University / Science Robotics
The pair of shroom-bots successfully completed three experiments, including walking and rolling in response to the mycelia’s signals and changing their gaits in response to UV light. The researchers also successfully overrode the mycelia’s signals to control the robots manually, a crucial component if later versions were to be deployed in the wild.
As for where this technology goes, it could spawn more advanced versions that tap into mycelia’s ability to sense chemical reactions. “In this case we used light as the input, but in the future it will be chemical,” according to Rob Shepherd, Cornell mechanical and aerospace engineering professor and the paper’s senior author. The researchers believe this could lead to future robots that sense soil chemistry in crops, deciding when to add more fertilizer, “perhaps mitigating downstream effects of agriculture like harmful algal blooms,” Shepherd said.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/these-robots-move-through-the-magic-of-mushrooms-171612639.html?src=rss
Meta has published an update on how its Llama large language models are performing, and they're apparently doing so well that they're now "approaching 350 million downloads to date." That's 10 times more than the downloads it accumulated compared to the same time last year. Approximately 20 million of those downloads took place in the last month alone, after the company released Llama 3.1, its latest LLM that it says can now rival OpenAI's and Anthropic's.
The monthly usage of Llama grew ten times from January to July this year for some of Meta's largest cloud service providers, the company said. From May to July, in particular, hosted Llama usage on its cloud partners more than doubled by token volume. In addition to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, the company teamed up with Databricks, Dell, Google Cloud, Groq, NVIDIA, IBM watsonx, Scale AI and Snowflake, among others, to make its LLMs more readily available to developers.
Meta attributed Llama's growing usage to "the power of open source." It said that making the LLMs available to all allowed it to see "a vibrant and diverse AI ecosystem come to life where developers have more choice and capability." When Meta released Llama 3.1, Mark Zuckerberg extolled the virtues of open source AI, calling it the "path forward." He also talked about the steps Meta is taking to make open source AI the industry standard.
In its latest report, it gave examples of how companies are using Llama for their needs. AT&T apparently uses Llama to fine-tune customer searches, while DoorDash relies on the LLM to make tasks easier for its software engineers. Llama also generates the real-time reactions of the creatures called "Dots" in Niantic's Tamagotchi-like game Peridot. Meanwhile, Zoom uses Llama (along with other LLMs) to power its AI Companion that can summarize meetings and make smart recordings. "The innovation has been broad and rapid, from start-ups pushing new boundaries to enterprises of all sizes using Llama to build on-premises or through a cloud service provider," Meta wrote. "Industry is building and innovating with Llama, and we’re even more excited for what’s to come."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-says-llamas-usage-grew-tremendously-due-to-the-power-of-open-source-140020454.html?src=rss
LG has introduced a smart home hub called ThinQ ON that has the technology to control not just LG-branded appliances but also other smart home devices. It comes with a built-in speaker that gives you a way to talk to LG's AI voice assistant, so you can use it to look up information, as well as to control your smart devices with spoken commands. LG says its technology can "understand the context of conversations" and can determine your preference for a specific device. It could, perhaps, tell your preferred temperature for the thermostat or the washer cycle you typically use. And it can notify you when a task is done, such as when the dryer cycle is finished.
The ThinQ ON hub is Matter-certified and can use Wi-Fi or Thread — a low-power wireless protocol — to connect to smart home devices and appliances. In addition, LG's acquisition of smart home platform company Athom and its smart hub Homey Pro earlier this year gives the device's compatibility a huge boost. Apparently, the Homey App Store contains over 1,000 applications that will give the hub that capability to control products from a wide number of brands around the world.
LG has yet to reveal the ThinQ ON's pricing and availability, but it's showcasing the hub at IFA 2024 in Berlin, Germany, which will take place from September 6 to 10.
LG Electronics, Inc.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/lg-debuts-its-thinq-on-smart-home-hub-that-comes-with-an-ai-voice-assistant-120052215.html?src=rss
GameStop has announced it’s launching a group of retro game retail locations, which will stock physical consoles, discs and cartridges from classic Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox and Sega platforms. The company announced on X it’ll cover 18 classic systems, from NES through to PS Vita. You can search for retro-friendly locations within a 100-mile radius on Gamestop’s website, but most will find these stores as rare as a mint-in-box copy of Chrono Trigger.
It does make a degree of business sense for the games retailer. When most of us download our games from online stores — or get them delivered by Amazon — a combination of physical media and a degree of expertise could capitalize on GameStop’s strengths. The biggest challenge could be piracy.
The billionaire must remain in France for the foreseeable future.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has been formally charged by French prosecutors and is barred from leaving the country. Durov was officially charged on Wednesday with “complicity in distributing child pornography, illegal drugs and hacking software” on the messaging app he founded. He must stay in France “under court monitoring” and check in at a police station twice a week while the investigation continues.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had a first-person shooter from PlayStation. Firewalk Studios’ debut game, the 5v5 team shooter Concord, however, hasn’t captured the imagination of gamers. Is it the lackluster characters or the at-times unashamed Guardians of the Galaxy vibe theft? Well, they probably don’t help, but under 700 concurrent players on Steam (and no fanfare announcements from Sony on player counts / copies sold) point to a dud.
Anecdotally, no one’s been asking me to play the team shooter — no one’s even asked what I thought about Concord.
However, Engadget’s Kris Holt points out that PlayStation has been having a good year. Helldivers 2, published by Sony, is having a great year while the PlayStation Portal and PSVR 2 hardware continue to find willing buyers, thanks to strong support from handheld gamers. And some VR headset discounts.
Apple’s latest iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 developer betas include a few more Apple Intelligence features. The most notable is a Clean Up tool in the Photos app, very much like Google’s Magic Eraser. The Photos app will identify distracting background elements for you, so you should be able to remove them with a tap. Otherwise, you can circle or brush over an object you want to nix. The tool is compatible with every image on your camera roll too.
Apple's latest iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 developer betas are here, and they include a few new Apple Intelligence features. The most notable is a Clean Up tool in the Photos app, which sounds very much like Google's Magic Eraser. The idea is that you'll be able to remove background objects from your snaps without modifying the subject — even if the undesirable item overlaps the person you're focusing on. According to Apple, the tool can remove the shadow and the reflection of an unwanted object too.
The company notes that the Photos app will identify distracting background elements for you, so you should be able to remove them with a tap. Otherwise, you can circle or brush over an object you want to nix. Clean Up works for finer details when you zoom in too. The tool is compatible with every image on your camera roll, including those you took with an earlier iPhone or iPad, or even a DSLR.
There's one other smaller Apple Intelligence update in the latest beta. Those who have been checking out previous builds have been able to receive summaries of multiple Mail and Messages notifications. This feature will now work for other apps.
There are several other Apple Intelligence features that the company has announced but is yet to start testing in developer betas, including image and emoji generation, priority notifications, in-app actions and personal context updates for Siri, availability for other languages and platforms and, of course, ChatGPT integration.
The only devices that support Apple Intelligence features at the minute are the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, and Macs and iPads with an M1 chip or newer. Anyone with a compatible iPhone or iPad can install the latest iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 developer betas, but it's always worth bearing in mind that betas can have bugs. So be sure to at least back up your data first if you don't have a secondary device for testing and you don't want to run the risk of having any major issues on the phone you use all the time.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/apples-latest-ios-and-ipados-developer-betas-include-an-ai-object-removal-tool-for-photos-185215465.html?src=rss
The Xbox August update is here, bringing with it plenty of little tweaks and new features. Perhaps the biggest news is that the Xbox streaming app is coming to more Fire TV devices. This means that more people will be able to access the wonderful world of Xbox Cloud Gaming.
It was already available for the Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd Gen) and the Fire TV Stick 4K (2nd Gen), but now it’s available for the previous iterations of those devices, alongside the Fire TV Cube (3rd Gen.) Expanding the availability of cloud-gaming is never a bad thing. There’s the usual caveat, however, as a Game Pass subscription is required here.
Xbox is also amping up Discord integration, which is welcome news. Xbox consoles will now deliver let people know when a friend is playing, chatting or streaming, making it easy to jump into a voice chat or watch that stream. This can all be done directly from the console, without having to use the Discord app on PC or mobile.
As indicated above, users can now watch Discord streams straight from Xbox consoles — or stream their gameplay directly to Discord — which is a nice add-on.
Xbox
The update will also let people customize downloads. This should allow users to only download what’s needed to actually play the game, saving crucial hard drive space. Somebody should get the Call of Duty team on the horn about this one.
Finally, there are additional controller customization options. Toggle hold is coming to the Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 and the Xbox Adaptive Controller. When enabled, toggle sends a string of consecutive inputs just like old-school 'turbo' buttons, but without the need to keep that button depressed. That sounds like a great way to sail past “push this button a million times” minigames.
This update is rolling out now and should reach all users by the end of the week. It applies to the Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/xboxs-streaming-app-is-coming-to-more-fire-tv-devices-172946436.html?src=rss
Sony announced this morning that the game would be taken offline on September 6, and said it will issue refunds to the few people who chose to buy it. The team-based shooter was one of a scant few new first-party PlayStation games scheduled for release this year. Sony released it on both PS5 and PC on August 23. As for the scale of its failure, the company doesn't typically reveal detailed player numbers for its own platforms. However, Steam does. The numbers there are not pretty.
A Steam player count isn't entirely reflective of a game's success, Still, it’s a key data point from which we can extrapolate some assumptions. In its first weekend, Concord failed to break 700 concurrent players on Steam. That's a dismal figure for a reasonably high-profile launch, especially one from a major publisher.
For perspective, Galaxy Burger, an indie cooking sim I'd never heard of that came out on the same day, had more than four times the number of concurrent players on Steam (469) as Concord (104) at one point on August 28. As far as a comparison for a supposed blockbuster from this year goes, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League peaked at more than 13,400 simultaneous players on Steam. That co-op game was a notorious flop that led to a $200 million loss for Warner Bros. Discovery.
In addition, Concord has amassed 766 reviews on Steam at the time of writing. Some analysts estimate that each Steam review translates to between 30 and 50 sales. At the midpoint of the scale, that would put Concord's volume of sales on Steam at around 30,000. Given its concurrent players never surpassed its disastrous opening weekend figures, that feels like a generous estimate.
We don't have a strong idea of the sales numbers on PlayStation just yet, but its swift shuttering suggests things were not much better. Either way, it’s clear sales didn’t remotely come close to covering the development and marketing costs for a game that took Firewalk Studios (which Sony bought last year) eight years to make.
There are a bunch of reasons why Concord just didn't grab people's attention. I played a few rounds during the open beta and thought it was so-so. The combat was okay and some of the core ideas — such as a cool, lore-filled map — were interesting, but it felt like there was not enough novelty.
The first wave of characters was bland, which is not ideal for a hero shooter when Apex Legends and Overwatch 2 (vastly more popular rival titles that are free-to-play) each have dozens of distinct, engaging personalities for fans to connect with. The influence of Guardians of the Galaxy is keenly felt, for better or worse, which makes it seem even more like Firewalk and Sony chased after trends that were popular in 2016.
The biggest mistake of all looks to be the price point. With players able to access so many similar games without paying a penny, having to shell out $40 for Concord was evidently not an enticing proposition for the vast majority of PS5 and PC owners.
It's likely that we haven’t heard the last of Concord. Sony says it plans to “explore options, including those that will better reach our players,” which sounds a lot like a free-to-play pivot.
And yet, Concord seems to only be the one real sour note on what's actually been a quietly strong year for PlayStation overall so far.
Opting to release the game on PS5 and PC simultaneously paid off, as most of the initial wave of sales came via Steam, per analysts. However, the Steam player count has dropped off significantly in recent months, in part because of a controversial account-linking requirement.
Stellar Blade, another Sony-published game from a third-party studio, received a generally positive response from critics and it’s doing well commercially too. Developer Shift Up estimated that sales topped 1 million units within the first two months and said in June that a PC port was under consideration as a result.
Sony's strategy of bringing its major exclusives to PC in the years following their PlayStation debut has been paying off over the last few years. It's released two somewhat older games on Steam this year in the form of Horizon Forbidden West and Ghost of Tsushima. Both are excellent, faithful ports that perform well on my high-end PC as well as my Steam Deck. They were successful sales-wise too, with the former cracking the list of the top 10 best-selling games in the US in its first week. Ghost topped the overall US game sales charts for May overall, per Circana, just after Stellar Blade did the same thing in April.
Sony has at least two more blockbuster PC ports on the way this year. God of War: Ragnarök will hit that platform on September 19. The previous game sold more than 2.5 million units on PC as of last February, per the major Insomniac leak, so the sequel seems primed to do well too. The Until Dawn remake is coming to PC and PS5 just a couple of weeks later.
And then there's the small matter of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, which arrived on PS5 earlier this year with a great new roguelike mode included. There's no PC release date yet, but TLOU Day (Naughty Dog's annual celebration of the series on September 26) is fast approaching. That seems like a prime opportunity for an announcement ahead of the second season of the HBO adaptation debuting in 2025.
A cautious approach seems wise for Part 2. Sony will want to make sure the PC port has nothing like the kinds of technical issues Part 1 had when it arrived on that platform, so giving developers as much time as they need for polish is important.
Sony even has a couple more first-party games lined up for the last chunk of the year. It might not have to wait long to wash off the stink of Concord as the highly anticipated and completely adorable platformer Astro Bot lands on PS5 on September 6. Lego Horizon Adventures— a more family-friendly take on the Horizon series — is headed to PS5, PC and Nintendo Switch in a notable multi-platform debut this holiday season.
And then there's the hardware side of the equation. In the first half of the calendar year, Sony sold just under 7 million PS5s. That’s down from 9.3 million over the same period in 2023, but a dip’s to be expected at this point in the system’s life cycle.
How the PS5 stacks up against the competition tells a bigger story. Although Microsoft has long kept quiet about how many Xboxes it's selling, earlier this year some analysts pegged the ratio of PS5 to Xbox Series X/S sales at more than five to one. Yeesh. Given Sony’s larger install base, it’s little wonder why Microsoft is increasingly eager to bring its first-party games to PlayStation.
Meanwhile, at first glance, the PlayStation Portal seemed like an edge-case peripheral for the diehards. All it does is let you play games from your own PS5 remotely without even supporting Sony's cloud gaming service.
However, the Portal has proven to be a surprising hit. Sony said the device, which was often sold out for months, exceeded its expectations. It's the best-selling games accessory so far this year by dollar amount, according to Circana. And rumors are swirling that Sony is "paying very close attention to the current handheld market," perhaps suggesting that the company is finally ready to work on a proper Vita/PSP successor. One can hope.
Even the beleaguered PS VR2 seems to have had an upturn in fortunes after a recent sale and the release of a dongle that lets owners use it to play virtual reality games on PC. According to one report, the lower price led to a sudden 2,350 percent spike in sales. Sony may have even sold more units in a single day (July 28) than it did in the previous seven months overall, according toThe Shortcut. Reports suggest that PS VR2 sales have been disappointing for Sony, but such a sharp increase (or anything close to it) would be astonishing. Along with the discount, the extra utility of being able to use the headset for PC gaming surely helped, as the actual PS VR2 games library remains fairly small.
There's one other piece of hardware that could make 2024 even more of a barnburner for Sony: the widely rumored PS5 Pro. For months, leaks have been suggesting that a mid-generation refresh is coming this holiday season. Rumors point to the PS5 Pro being able to deliver higher speeds, faster game rendering, improved graphics, better ray-tracing performance and an 8K performance mode. Given that Microsoft's new Xbox variants either add internal storage, change the box's color or take away a disc drive, the PS5 Pro may look like an even tastier option for current-gen holdouts.
Update, September 3, 3:15 PM ET: This article was originally published on August 28, six days before Sony announced it was taking Concord offline. It has been updated and republished to reflect that news.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/concord-aside-playstation-is-having-a-great-year-171506490.html?src=rss
If you own a computer with AMD’s Ryzen 9000 Zen 5 or Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 series of CPUs, you can now improve their performance. AMD also just announced that it has clarified why these processors’ performance was lacking in the first place. Before we get into that, let’s talk about the update.
This Windows optional update is labeled KB5041587, and you can immediately download and install it by opening your Windows Update menu. This development means you don’t have to update your Windows to version 24H2. The performance boosts KB5041587 and version 24H2 offer will be identical. Therefore, you don’t have to wait for the increased frames while gaming.
Jeremy Gan/Engadget
The primary reason for the initial slower speeds was that AMD conducted tests in Super Admin mode. This mode isn’t recommended for those who use computers casually or for gaming. Therefore, the new update mentioned above will let you play games at the speeds AMD intended to deliver with their CPUs.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/amd-ryzen-9000-zen-5-and-ryzen-7000-zen-4-cpus-just-received-a-performance-boost-163014261.html?src=rss