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Steam Families opens up game libraries for sharing, with a few caveats
Enlarge (credit: Valve)
PC gaming is often regarded as a solitary pursuit, but the advent of PC gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck has made sharing favorite titles far easier—at least unofficially. Valve's Steam platform, which previously didn't have too much in the way of sharing, has embraced this hand-off reality with Steam Families.
Steam Families, now in beta, replaces both the more limited Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View. You invite up to five family members (for a six-person total family), share games with them (if developers allow it), and then family members can see their family library games in a subsection of their list. Anyone can play a shared game and keep their own save files and achievements.
Steam Families is, on the surface, more permissive than Family Sharing. You can play a game from a family member's library even if they're already online and playing something else. Multiple members of a Steam Family can play the same game at the same time, although the total number of people playing must match the total number of purchased copies among household members. All games are automatically shared with all other family members, though parents can use parental controls to limit games, playtime, and tune other features.
New Kansas City museum, The Rabbit Hole, transports visitors into world of children's books
Meet the Press NOW — March 18
Former President Trump stirs up controversy after making inflammatory remarks at a campaign event over the weekend. Garrett Haake, Daniella Diaz, Doug Thornell and Brendan Buck join the Meet the Press NOW roundtable. NBC News Global Security reporter Dan De Luce explains new warning by experts about deepfakes ahead of the 2024 election. NBC News campaign embed Alex Tabet reports on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s association with the anti-vaccination movement.
Playtron’s wildly ambitious gaming OS aims to unite stores, lure “core casuals”
Enlarge / This isn't what the first PlaytronOS-powered device will look like. That could be your Steam Deck, a 5G device from your cell carrier, or maybe your car. (credit: Playtron)
The Steam Deck's OS is purpose-built for handheld gaming, but it's confined to one device, unless you're willing to head out to the bleeding edge. Beyond SteamOS, there is Windows, which can let down ambitious Deck-likes, there is the Nintendo Switch, and there are Android-based devices that are a lot like Android phones. This setup has got at least one company saying, in infomercial tones, that there has got to be a better way.
That company is Playtron, a new software startup that aims to fix that setup with a Linux-based gaming OS that's tied to no particular game store or platform. Playtron has $10 million, coders from open source projects like ChimeraOS and Heroic Games Launcher, and the former CEO of Cyanogen. With that, it aims to have "Playtron-native devices shipping worldwide in 2025," and to capture the 1 billion "core casual" gamers they see as under-served.
Demo of Playtron running on a Lenovo Legion Go, uploaded by Playtron CEO Kirk McMaster.
What devices will Playtron use to serve them? Some of them might be Steam Decks, as you will "soon be able to install Playtron on your favorite handheld PC," according to Playtron's ambitious, somewhat scattershot single-page website. Some might be "Playtron-powered 5G devices coming soon to markets around the world." Really, though, Playtron aims to provide a gaming platform to any device with a CPU and a screen, be it desktop or mobile, ARM or x86, TV or car.
Google’s phone app no longer searches Google Maps
Enlarge / The Google Phone's Play Store listing still touts Nearby Places as a major feature. (credit: Google)
9to5Google reports that Google has killed off the Google Phone app's "nearby places" feature. Google announced the impending death of the feature in February, saying: "We’ve found only a very small number of people use this feature, and the vast majority of users go to Google Search or Maps when seeking business-related phone numbers." Now it's really dead.
Google kills product
- Google’s phone app no longer searches Google Maps
- Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead
- Google announces April 2024 shutdown date for Google Podcasts
- Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds
- This week’s dead Google products: Google Podcasts, basic Gmail, and more!
The feature has been around on Pixel phones since at least the Pixel 2 and has been generally available to anyone who downloaded the "Phone by Google" app in the Play Store for the past few years. It was a perfect "Google" feature, combining the company's OS, breadth of online data, and search into a useful function. Google has made its AI-infused phone app a primary selling point of Pixel phones over the years, so stripping it of features is weird.
USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update
A couple of weeks ago, Apple released macOS Sonoma 14.4 with the usual list of bug fixes, security patches, and a couple of minor new features. Since then, users and companies have been complaining of a long list of incompatibilities, mostly concerning broken external accessories like USB hubs and printers but also extending to software like Java.
MacRumors has a good rundown of the list of issues, which has been steadily getting longer as people have run into more problems. It started with reports of malfunctioning USB hubs, sourced from users on Reddit, the Apple Support Communities forums, and elsewhere—USB hubs built into various displays stopped functioning for Mac users after the 14.4 update.
Other issues surfaced in the days after people started reporting problems with their USB hubs, including some instances of broken printer drivers, unexpected app crashes for some Java users, and problems launching apps that rely on the PACE anti-piracy software (and iLok hardware dongles) to authenticate.
Apple may hire Google to power new iPhone AI features using Gemini—report
Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards)
On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Apple is in talks to license Google's Gemini model to power AI features like Siri in a future iPhone software update coming later in 2024, according to people familiar with the situation. Apple has also reportedly conducted similar talks with ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
The potential integration of Google Gemini into iOS 18 could bring a range of new cloud-based (off-device) AI-powered features to Apple's smartphone, including image creation or essay writing based on simple prompts. However, the terms and branding of the agreement have not yet been finalized, and the implementation details remain unclear. The companies are unlikely to announce any deal until Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
Gemini could also bring new capabilities to Apple's widely criticized voice assistant, Siri, which trails newer AI assistants powered by large language models (LLMs) in understanding and responding to complex questions. Rumors of Apple's own internal frustration with Siri—and potential remedies—have been kicking around for some time. In January, 9to5Mac revealed that Apple had been conducting tests with a beta version of iOS 17.4 that used OpenAI's ChatGPT API to power Siri.
Microsoft is planning some more pre-Build AI announcements
It's shaping up to be a busy spring for Microsoft, which has multiple events lined up over the next few months. Not only is there a work and Copilot-centric event this Thursday and almost certainly an Xbox showcase coming up in early June, but Build is on the horizon. The company's major developer conference is set to run from May 21 until May 23. However, three days apparently isn't long enough to cram in everything Microsoft wants to talk about.
The company sent Engadget an invite to a private event taking place on May 20, the day before Build starts. Details are scant, but Microsoft says CEO Satya Nadella will dig into its "AI vision across hardware and software." There won't be a livestream of the briefing, but reporters who attend in person will learn the news first and get hands-on demos.
Microsoft having an "AI vision" that spans across hardware and software lines up with recent reports that the company is gearing up to release its first "AI PCs." This week's event is expected to include at least the business and commercial-focused versions of the OLED Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6.
The consumer variants of the systems may not arrive until later this spring, though those are expected to have significant processor upgrades that will deliver “huge performance and efficiency gains," according to Windows Central. They're slated to have Intel Core Ultra or Snapdragon X Elite chips with next-gen neural processing units.
These chips are said to be capable of supporting more advanced AI features that Microsoft plans to bring to Windows later this year, such as on-device Copilot and a tool called AI Explorer. The latter has been described as a searchable timeline of all of your activity on a device.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-is-planning-some-more-pre-build-ai-announcements-194843363.html?src=rssFujitsu says it found malware on its corporate network, warns of possible data breach
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Japan-based IT behemoth Fujitsu said it has discovered malware on its corporate network that may have allowed the people responsible to steal personal information from customers or other parties.
“We confirmed the presence of malware on several of our company's work computers, and as a result of an internal investigation, it was discovered that files containing personal information and customer information could be illegally taken out,” company officials wrote in a March 15 notification that went largely unnoticed until Monday. The company said it continued to “investigate the circumstances surrounding the malware's intrusion and whether information has been leaked.” There was no indication how many records were exposed or how many people may be affected.
Fujitsu employs 124,000 people worldwide and reported about $25 billion of revenue in its fiscal 2023, which ended at the end of last March. The company operates in 100 countries. Past customers include the Japanese government. Fujitsu’s revenue comes from sales of hardware such as computers, servers, and telecommunications gear, storage systems, software, and IT services.
Report: Sony stops producing PSVR2 amid “surplus” of unsold units
Enlarge / PSVR2 (left) next to the original PSVR. (credit: Kyle Orland / Ars Technica)
It looks like Sony's PlayStation VR2 is not living up to the company's sales expectations just over a year after it first hit the market. Bloomberg reports that the PlayStation-maker has stopped producing new PSVR2 units as it tries to clear out a growing backlog of unsold inventory.
Bloomberg cites "people familiar with [Sony's] plans" in reporting that PSVR2 sales have "slowed progressively" since its February 2023 launch. Sony has produced "well over 2 million" units of the headset, compared to what tracking firm IDC estimates as just 1.69 million unit shipments to retailers through the end of last year. The discrepancy has caused a "surplus of assembled devices... throughout Sony’s supply chain," according to Bloomberg's sources.
IDC estimates a quarterly low of 325,000 PSVR2 units shipped in the usually hot holiday season, compared to a full 1.3 million estimated holiday shipments for Meta's then-new Quest 3 headset, which combined with other Quest products to account for over 3.7 million estimated sales for the full year.
Dell tells remote workers that they won’t be eligible for promotion
Starting in May, Dell employees who are fully remote will not be eligible for promotion, Business Insider (BI) reported Saturday. The upcoming policy update represents a dramatic reversal from Dell's prior stance on work from home (WFH), which included CEO Michael Dell saying: "If you are counting on forced hours spent in a traditional office to create collaboration and provide a feeling of belonging within your organization, you’re doing it wrong."
Dell employees will mostly all be considered "remote" or "hybrid" starting in May, BI reported. Hybrid workers have to come into the office at least 39 days per quarter, Dell confirmed to Ars Technica, which equates to approximately three times a week. Those who would prefer to never commute to an office will not "be considered for promotion, or be able to change roles," BI reported.
"For remote team members, it is important to understand the trade-offs: Career advancement, including applying to new roles in the company, will require a team member to reclassify as hybrid onsite," Dell's memo to workers said, per BI.
Tesla settles with Black worker after $3.2 million verdict in racism lawsuit
Enlarge / Tesla cars sit in a parking lot at the company's factory in Fremont, California on October 19, 2022. (credit: Getty Images | Justin Sullivan)
Tesla has settled with a Black former factory worker who won a $3.2 million judgment in a racial discrimination case, a court filing on Friday said.
Both sides were challenging the $3.2 million verdict in a federal appeals court but agreed to dismiss the case in the Friday filing. The joint stipulation for dismissal said that "the Parties have executed a final, binding settlement agreement that fully resolves all claims."
Tesla presumably agreed to pay Owen Diaz some amount less than $3.2 million, ending a case in which Diaz was once slated to receive $137 million. As we've previously written, a jury in US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Tesla should pay $137 million to Diaz in October 2021.
Workarounds Listed for Upcoming Visual Studio App Center Retirement
Here’s what we know about the Audi Q6 e-tron and its all-new EV platform
Enlarge / This is Audi's next electric vehicle, the Q6 e-tron SUV. (credit: Audi)
Audi provided flights from Washington to Munich and accommodations so Ars could get a deep dive into the Q6 e-tron. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.
MUNICH—Audi's new electric car platform is an important one for the company. Debuting in the new 2025 Q6 e-tron, it will provide the bones for many new electric Audis—not to mention Porsches and even Lamborghinis and Bentleys—in the coming years. Its development hasn't been entirely easy, either; software delays got in the way of plans to have cars in customer hands in 2023. But now the new Q6 e-tron is ready to meet the world.
There's some rather interesting technology integrated into the Q6 e-tron's new electric vehicle architecture. Called PPE, or Premium Platform Electric, it's been designed with flexibility in mind. Audi took the role of leading its development within Volkswagen Group, but the other brands within that corporate empire that target the upper end of the car market will also build EVs with PPE.
Since SUVs are still super-popular, Audi is kicking off the PPE era with an SUV. But the platform allows for other sizes and shapes—next year, we should see the A6 sedan and, if we're really lucky, an A6 Avant station wagon.
Rivian owners can use Tesla Superchargers now, once they get their free adapter
Rivian owners can now use Tesla Supercharger stations to juice up their electric trucks and SUVs, after a software update issued during the weekend. The company first announced the integration last year, along with plans to include Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) ports in forthcoming vehicles. These ports won’t start showing up until 2025, so Rivian has also started a program to send Tesla-made NACS adapters to current customers.
The adapters will be free of charge, which calls to mind the move Ford made last month as it continues to transition to the NACS charging standard. Rivian will send out one free adapter per customer, based on the vehicle’s VIN number. The company hasn’t announced whether this is a limited time offering or how much additional adapters will cost. As a comparison, Ford will begin charging $230 for these adapters in July.
Rivian owners can select Tesla Superchargers as a charging option via the vehicle’s infotainment system or the manufacturer’s smartphone app. Everything is handled by Rivian, so there’s no need to download or use the Tesla app to pay for charging. Rivian’s chief software officer, Wassym Bensaid, told The Verge that this will give customers access to over 15,000 more DC fast chargers across the country.
The move to incorporate NACS charging into its vehicles will not impact Rivian’s proprietary network. The company still plans on installing thousands of DC fast chargers at hundreds of locations throughout the next few years, as part of its growing Adventure Network.
Tesla’s charging standard is widely considered to be the best available option for EV owners, as these chargers are known to be more reliable than CCS and CHAdeMO chargers. Tesla’s standard is also more readily available, with more than 55,000 Supercharger stations worldwide.
It wasn’t so long ago that Tesla’s Supercharger network was exclusive to the company’s vehicles. Those days are gone. Just about every major automobile manufacturer has announced plans to join the NACS party, including Subaru, Volkswagen, Honda, Toyota and Lexus, among many others.
As for Rivian, the company says customers can access most V3 Tesla Superchargers using the adapter, but only some V2 chargers. The just-announced Rivian R2, R3 and R3X vehicles will all come with factory-installed NACS ports.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/rivian-owners-can-use-tesla-superchargers-now-once-they-get-their-free-adapter-170804461.html?src=rssQualcomm’s “Snapdragon 8s Gen 3” cuts down the company’s flagship SoC
Enlarge / The promo image for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip. (credit: Qualcomm)
Qualcomm's newest smartphone SoC is the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3. Years of iPhone "S" upgrades might lead you to assume this was a mid-cycle refresh to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is a "specially curated" version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. That means it's a slightly slower, cheaper chip than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is still Qualcomm's best smartphone chip.
The older, better Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has a core layout of one 3.3 GHz "Prime" Arm Cortex X4 core, five "medium" A720 cores (three at 3.2 GHz, two at 2.0 GHz), and two "small" 2.3 GHz A520 cores for background processing. This new "S" chip swaps a medium core for a small one, for a 1+4+3 configuration instead of 1+5+2. Everything is clocked lower, too: 3 GHz for the Prime core, 2.8 GHz for all the medium cores, and 2 GHz for the small cores.
The modem is downgraded to an X70 instead of the X75 in the 8 Gen 3 chip. That theoretically means a lower max download speed (5Gbps instead of 10) but since you would actually need to be granted those speeds by your carrier, It's not clear anyone would ever notice this. It also sounds like the X70 is more power-hungry, since it only has "Qualcomm 5G PowerSave Gen 3" instead of "Qualcomm 5G PowerSave Gen 4" on the flagship chip. We don't think Qualcomm has ever given a technical explanation of what this means, though. The SoC is still 4nm, just like the 8 Gen 3. Video maxes out at 4K now instead of 8K.
Elon Musk’s xAI releases Grok source and weights, taunting OpenAI
Enlarge / An AI-generated image released by xAI during the open-weights launch of Grok-1. (credit: xAI)
On Sunday, Elon Musk's AI firm xAI released the base model weights and network architecture of Grok-1, a large language model designed to compete with the models that power OpenAI's ChatGPT. The open-weights release through GitHub and BitTorrent comes as Musk continues to criticize (and sue) rival OpenAI for not releasing its AI models in an open way.
Announced in November, Grok is an AI assistant similar to ChatGPT that is available to X Premium+ subscribers who pay $16 a month to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. At its heart is a mixture-of-experts LLM called "Grok-1," clocking in at 314 billion parameters. As a reference, GPT-3 included 175 billion parameters. Parameter count is a rough measure of an AI model's complexity, reflecting its potential for generating more useful responses.
xAI is releasing the base model of Grok-1, which is not fine-tuned for a specific task, so it is likely not the same model that X uses to power its Grok AI assistant. "This is the raw base model checkpoint from the Grok-1 pre-training phase, which concluded in October 2023," writes xAI on its release page. "This means that the model is not fine-tuned for any specific application, such as dialogue," meaning it's not necessarily shipping as a chatbot. But it will do next-token prediction, meaning it will complete a sentence (or other text prompt) with its estimation of the most relevant string of text.
SpaceX building hundreds of spy satellites for US government, report says
Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on March 3, 2024. (credit: Getty Images | Anadolu )
SpaceX is "building a network of hundreds of spy satellites" for a US intelligence agency under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021, Reuters reported on Saturday. Reuters cited "five sources familiar with the program" in its report on SpaceX's classified contract with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), a Defense Department agency that deploys surveillance satellites and calls itself the "global leader in space-based intelligence."
"The satellites can track targets on the ground and share that data with US intelligence and military officials, the sources said," according to Reuters. The newly reported details are consistent with a Wall Street Journal report in February 2024 that said SpaceX had "entered into a $1.8 billion classified contract with the US government in 2021."
Reuters wrote that it "was unable to determine when the new network of satellites would come online" but stated that about a dozen prototype satellites have been launched in the past few years. The prototypes reportedly launched "among other satellites on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets."
Brewing kombucha in silicone bags makes for less alcohol, faster process
Enlarge / Brewing kombucha tea. Note the trademark gel-like layer of SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast). (credit: Olga Pankova/Getty Images)
Kombucha tea continues to grow in popularity as a healthy alternative to alcoholic beverages—and chemistry can help commercial and amateur brewers alike get faster and better results with their brews, according to a presentation yesterday at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans.
“Brewers typically see making kombucha as an art more than a science,” Jeb Kegerreis, a physical chemist at Shippensburg University, said of the research. “So when we are doing a consultation, we also walk the brewer through the biochemistry of what’s happening during fermentation.”
As we've previously reported, you need just three basic ingredients to make kombucha. Just combine tea and sugar with a kombucha culture known as a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), aka the "mother," also known as a tea mushroom, tea fungus, or a Manchurian mushroom. It's basically akin to a sourdough starter. A SCOBY is a firm, gel-like collection of cellulose fiber (biofilm), courtesy of the active bacteria in the culture creating the perfect breeding ground for the yeast and bacteria to flourish. Dissolve the sugar in non-chlorinated boiling water, then steep some tea leaves of your choice in the hot sugar water before discarding them.
Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro smartphones are up to $250 off ahead of Amazon's Spring Sale
Amazon's Big Spring Sale officially begins this Wednesday, but as with all such sales, a number of deals went live early, including on Google's latest Pixel smartphones. The 128GB-capacity Pixel 8 Pro is 25 percent off, which deducts $250 from the list price and brings the handset to $749. That beats the all-time-low price we saw for Black Friday last November. Larger capacity models are seeing discounts as well, with all three colors that Amazon carries included. If you'd rather buy direct, you can get the same discount from Google's online shop, which also has the Google-exclusive Mint color.
A similar discount goes to the 128GB Pixel 8 which is 29 percent off and down to $499 instead of $699 at both Amazon and from Google. Again, that's the lowest price we've tracked and the discounts extend to the larger capacity models. We named the Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro the best Android smartphones on the market thanks to their speedy chips, brighter screens and improved cameras. Plus the suite of AI-enabled tools are more than just gimmicks and actually help you out with things like search, taking better photos and a more capable Google Assistant. Perhaps the best part is Google's commitment to seven years of software support, which means these phones can stay in your pocket for far longer than the average mobile.
As for the difference between the two phones, the Pro model has a larger screen at 6.7 inches versus the Pixel 8's 6.2 inches. The Pro also has a screen with a 400-nit higher peak brightness, more RAM and a third, telephoto camera. Both have the same chip and many of the same AI tools.
Those looking for an even steeper deal should check out the Google Pixel 7a, which is also down to a record-low price of $374 at both Amazon and Google. We not only named this the best mid-range Android phone in our guide to smartphones, it's also the splurge pick in our budget Android guide.
Your Spring Sales Shopping Guide: Spring sales are in the air, headlined by Amazon’s Big Spring sale event. Our expert editors are curating all the best spring sales right here. Follow Engadget to shop the best tech deals from Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, hear from Autoblog’s car experts on the best spring auto deals on Amazon, and find spring sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-pixel-8-and-pixel-8-pro-smartphones-are-up-to-250-off-ahead-of-amazons-spring-sale-160352403.html?src=rssPages
