Google is testing its new Privacy Sandbox settings in Chrome

Google is starting “origin trials” for the Chrome Privacy Sandbox, its new system for serving targeted ads without using cookies, the company announced. The initial aim is to test ad relevance via its new Topics API, along with FLEDGE and Attribution Reporting that allows remarketing and ad click measurement without tracking behavior across sites. 

Origin trials will let Google test experimental Chrome technology with a limited number of people to make sure it’s ready for general use. Starting today, developers can begin testing code for Topics, FLEDGE and Attribution Reporting in the Canary Chrome beta “and we’ll progress to origin trials with a limited number of Chrome Beta users as soon as possible,” it wrote. Eventually, the company will expand trials to a stable version of Chrome to access a larger user subset. All the trials will be available globally, with updates available here. 

Google begins trials of new Privacy Sandbox settings in Chrome
Google

Google will be testing updated settings that allow you to control your participation in the origin trials. For example, under the “Browser-based ad personalization” section, you’ll be able to remove various interests estimated by Chrome, or remove specific sites that “define your interests.” You’ll also be able to control how ads are measured and choose how to participate in spam and fraud reduction that helps advertisers detect bots.

Privacy Sandbox has met with significant criticism, particularly from EU and UK advertisers that claim removing cookies will hurt their ad businesses. Government also has concern that the new system will only serve to strengthen Google’s stranglehold on the online ad marketplace, while putting consumer privacy at risk. Last month, however, Google agreed to a legally binding set of commitments with UK regulators to address those issues.

Watch Blue Origin’s New Shepard space tourist launch at 9:30 am ET

Blue Origin’s first crewed space tourism mission of 2022 is go for launch today with a crew of six, the company has announced. The NS-20 mission is set to take place at the company’s launch facility in Van Horn, Texas at 9:30 AM ET after a two-day delay due to high winds.

Passengers will ride aboard the New Shepard reusable launch system which marks its 20th flight to date (hence the NS-20 mission designation). The crew includes angel investor Marty Allen, nonprofit founder Sharon Hagle, Hagle’s husband and Tricor CEO Marc Hagle, entrepreneur Jim Kitchen and Commercial Space Technologies founder Dr. George Nield. 

SNL’s Pete Davidson was supposed to be aboard but had to drop due to a scheduling conflict, so he’ll be replaced by New Shepard’s chief architect, Gary Lai. In previous flights, Blue Shepard has carried Laura Shepard, the daughter of pioneering astronaut (and New Shepard’s namesake) Alan Shepard, Michael Strahan, William Shatner and of course Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos. 

The company is competing in the space tourist arena with Virgin Galactic, which recently completed its first fully crewed spaceflight with four onboard including owner Richard Branson. Another rival is SpaceX, which did its first tourist spaceflight (Inspiration 4) last year with four civilian passengers.

The livestream for the launch is set to start at 8:20 AM ET, with the launch scheduled for 9:30 AM ET. 

ASUS ZenBook laptops are up to $250 off at Amazon today only

If you’re looking for a new Windows laptop, you may find what you need in Amazon’s one-day ASUS sale. Today, the online retailer has a number of ASUS laptops on sale, with some up to $250 off. Likely best for most people are the ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED and the ZenBook 13 Flip OLED, which are down to $650 and $745, respectively. You can also grab the ZenBook Duo 14, a dual-screen laptop that earned a score of 84 from us, for $906, which is $194 less than usual.

Shop ASUS sale on AmazonBuy ZenBook 13 OLED at Amazon – $650Buy ZenBook 13 Flip OLED at Amazon – $745Buy ZenBook Duo 14 at Amazon – $906

If you go for the standard ASUS ZenBook 13, you’re getting an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U processor, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, along with a 13.3-inch 1080p OLED display. The Flip version shares the same display, RAM and storage, but runs on an 11th-gen Core i5 processor. While we didn’t review these exact models, we did put the ZenBook Flip S through its paces and gave it a score of 84 for its sleek design, powerful performance and lovely OLED display.

The main difference between the Flip S and the Flip on sale today is that the former runs on a Core i7 processor and has a 4K OLED panel. Otherwise, you’ll get a similarly premium Windows experience from both machines. Also, both the standard ZenBook and the Flip have ASUS’ unique and convenient NumberPad 2.0, which is combined with the trackpad and illuminates only when you need it.

As for the ZenBook Duo, it’s best for those who want something a bit different in their next laptop. Its main screen is a 14-inch 1080p touch panel and it also includes a 12.6-inch matte touchscreen that sits above the keyboard and lifts up slightly when you open the laptop. That’s one of the new features ASUS built in to this second-gen laptop that makes it easier to use and more viable as your daily driver. The latest ZenBook Duo also has better dual-screen software and much improved build quality than the previous version. The keyboard and trackpad area are still a bit cramped for our liking, but if you’re going to invest in a dual-screen notebook, this is one of the few solid options available right now.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Google tweaks Search and News results to direct people to trusted sources

Google is rolling out some updates for Search and News it hopes will reduce the spread of misinformation. Since last June, the company has applied labels to results for “rapidly evolving topics,” which include things like breaking news and viral videos that are spreading quickly. It may suggest checking back later for more details as they become clearer. Starting in the US (in English) today, the labels will include some information literacy tips.

The idea is to help people assess whether the information they see about a rapidly evolving topic is legitimate. It will suggest actions such as checking the publication date and searching the author’s name to find out if they’re credible. Taking information at face value is rarely the wisest approach, so it’s good to see Google encouraging users to dig a little deeper.

In Google News, there will be a new label in Top Stories to indicate sources that have been widely cited by other news organizations. It may be applied to things like a news story from local newspapers, an interview, an investigative feature, an announcement or even a press release that other publishers have linked to. Google says it’s interested in using the label to highlight original reporting as well.

Again, the aim is to help users find more relevant and helpful information. The label will initially be available on mobile in the US (again, only in English). Google plans to roll it out worldwide in the coming weeks.

BMW’s first all-electric 3 Series is made just for China

BMW has developed the first fully electric 3 series vehicle — but it will only be available in China. In May 2022, the BMW i3 eDrive35L model that’s based on the automaker’s line of compact cars, will enter the Chinese market. It uses BMW’s 5th-gen eDrive powertrain that’s also found in the BMW iX3, BMW i4 and BMW iX. The four-door sedan will also be the first 3 Series car with the company’s OS8 operating system and its features, including Digital Key, which turns the owner’s smartphone into a key for their vehicle.

In its announcement, BMW also shared some key data about the EV, including its 281 horsepower max output and 295 pound-feet of maximum torque. It can apparently go from zero to 62 mph in 6.2 seconds, and it can reach a charge of 80 percent within 35 minutes of being plugged in. Fully charged, it has an estimated range of 327 miles, which is longer than that of the basic BMW i4’s.

The automaker says the 3 Series line led the premium-compact segment in China in 2021, so releasing an electrified version in the region makes sense for the company. BMW even even fine-tuned and customized the EV’s suspension system for Chinese road conditions and will assemble the vehicle at a plant in Lydia, Shenyang.

The i3 eDrive35L EV is BMW’s sixth all—electric model. Similar to rival automakers that are aiming to make a complete shift towards electric vehicles over the coming 10 to 20 years, BMW also ramped up its electrification goals last year. It announced that the last Mini with a combustion engine will be released in 2025 and that it expects its all-electric vehicles to account for 50 percent of its global sales by 2030.

The Morning After: The effects of working in space

After 355 days aboard the International Space Station, astronaut Mark Vande Hei returns to Earth both a NASA record holder and a changed man. Though his run was not as long as Peggy Whitson’s 665 cumulative days spent in microgravity, Vande Hei’s accomplishment is still one of the longest single stints in human spaceflight — and makes him the subject of intensive research into the effects of zero-gravity on humans.

Though NASA’s Human Research Program has spent 50 years studying the effects of spaceflight on the human body, the full impact of long-duration space travel has yet to be exhaustively researched. As humanity’s expansion into space accelerates in the coming decades, more people will be going into orbit — and going much farther — and the medical needs obviously increase along with this. Andrew Tarantola outlines where the research is headed.

— Mat Smith

 

The biggest stories you might have missed

Canada will ban sales of combustion-engine passenger cars by 2035

It’ll demand “at least” 20 percent zero-emissions sales by 2026.

Canada has outlined its Emissions Reduction Plan, which will require all new passenger car sales to be zero-emissions models by 2035. The government will gradually put pressure on automakers, requiring “at least” 20 percent zero-emissions sales by 2026, pushing steeply to 60 percent by 2030. Officials didn’t say whether this applied to a make’s product mix or simply the volume of cars sold.

Continue reading.

Here’s why your iPhone auto-updates often arrive late

First, the early adopters test the waters.

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Reuters

A Reddit user wrote to Craig Federighi, Apple’s Vice President of Software Engineering, to ask how iOS auto-updates work. Federighi responded, revealing that Apple gradually releases “new iOS updates by first making them available for those that explicitly seek them out in Settings, and then 1-4 weeks later (after we’ve received feedback on the update) ramp up to rolling out devices with auto-update enabled.” Generally, this means it takes a few weeks for iOS auto-updates to reach everyone’s iPhone and, in the case of iPadOS, iPad.

Continue reading.

YouTube TV finally supports picture-in-picture on iOS

It’s pretty late.

Google has begun rolling out a new update for its iOS YouTube TV app. Now both iPhone and iPad users have picture-in-picture functionality. To watch something in PiP mode, swipe up from the bottom of the screen. The video will automatically resize and move across your device’s display. You’ll need to be running iOS 15 or newer — and make sure your app is up to date.

It’s taken its time: Apple’s mobile operating system has supported picture-in-picture functionality on iPad since iOS 13 and iPhone since iOS 14. The feature has also been available on the company’s main YouTube app since last year.

Continue reading.

Intel teases first Arc A-series desktop GPU ahead of summer launch

This is the second delay in as many months.

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Intel

Intel’s finally offered a glimpse of its Arc A-series Limited Edition video card, which is arriving sometime this summer — yes, that means another delay. There are no specs or prices, unfortunately, but the double-height design and twin-fan cooling make clear this aims directly at gamers. Early Arc desktop GPUs are expected to support a raft of modern features, including hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI-based supersampling. It’s still too soon to say if Arc desktop models will offer truly competitive performance. NVIDIA should deliver its first Ampere Next-based GPUs (likely the RTX 40 series) later this year, and AMD will follow suit with the Radeon RX 7000 series.

Continue reading.

Yelp expands its restaurant health-grading initiative

Yelp today announced it would further expand its health grades information on restaurant listings. While the reviews platform developed its own digital standard for restaurant hygiene (called “Local Inspector Value-entry Specification” or LIVES) alongside the “the technology departments of the cities of San Francisco and New York” in 2013, it’s now broadening its partnership with firm Hazel Analytics. Yelp and Hazel teamed up last year, and together the LIVES metric now incorporates “data from health departments across 48 U.S. states” as well as Toronto and Vancouver.

“The expansion of Yelp’s health scores program comes at a time when people are returning to indoor dining as COVID-19 restrictions continue to lift, health inspections are restarting from the early pandemic pause, and restaurants are embracing more diner safety measures like contactless payments and virtual menus,” wrote Yelp in a blog post.

There’s a chance you’ve seen health scores on your city’s Yelp restaurant pages already. But in recent years, Yelp became even more proactive in displaying restaurant health scores — it displays information from local health departments or uses third-party vendors like Hazel. Yelp listings for restaurants in Los Angeles also include alerts for the lowest health scores in the last six months.

Still, some in the restaurant industry have criticized Yelp’s efforts. Cities and states vary widely in their food inspection scoring, with some assigning a letter grade or numerical score, and others opting for a pass/fail system. Restaurants have complained about inaccurate or out-of-date scores on their listings. The Mercury News reported back in 2018 that restaurants in Bay Area counties that use a pass/fail system were taken aback when Yelp showed health inspection scores from their previous third-party analytics vendors for their businesses.

Yelp calculates health inspection scores using three methods: directly using a score provided by a city’s health department, generating a score from raw health data or using an estimated health score generated by Hazel. The third option — which Hazel defaults to in cases where cities don’t publish health inspection scores — leaves a great deal of room for misinterpretation. And as The Mercury News points out, restaurants that, deservedly or not, show low LIVES-generated scores on Yelp might see their business dry up significantly.

Correction, 8:30AM ET: This story has been updated to note that Yelp itself doesn’t estimate health scores for restaurants; it displays third-party data from firms like Hazel Analytics. We apologize for the error.

TweetDeck may become a paid Twitter Blue option

TweetDeck — a version of Twitter beloved by journalists, social media pros and other power users — might soon become a paid app, The Verge has reported. A new version of the app redirects to the Twitter Blue subscription signup page, according to code discovered by security researcher Jane Manchun Wong. It promises “a powerful, real-time tool for people who live on Twitter” and would be an “ad-free experience,” according to screenshots. 

TweetDeck is already an essentially ad-free experience, so the inclusion of that language strongly implies that it would become a paid service. The new version would be a “complete rebuild with the parts from the new Twitter app,” Manchun noted in a reply. However, she also spotted a link for a “legacy version” which could still be free. 

Twitter launched its Twitter Blue subscription service last November for $2.99 per month. Some features like top articles were seen as positives, but users also criticized Twitter for hiding key features like an “undo” button behind a paywall. 

Twitter has been testing a new version of TweetDeck since last year, with significant changes like “a full Tweet composer, new advanced search features, new column types, and a new way to group columns into clean workspaces,” the company wrote. Some power users haven’t exactly embraced it, however, due to user interface and other issues. 

The company has also pondered a TweetDeck subscription service, asking users in 2017 if they’d be willing to pay up to $20 per month for a “more advanced TweetDeck experience.” And last year, Bloomberg reported that Twitter was considering a subscription fee for the app. 

The move would make sense for Twitter internally, as TweetDeck has always been a black sheep product that lets users bypass ads. Adding it to Twitter Blue would finally allow the company to monetize it and offer a true ad-free experience — since Twitter Blue itself still includes ads.

Here are some of the best storage deals we’ve seen on World Backup Day

Today is World Backup Day and to mark the occasion, retailers including Amazon and Best Buy are offering some solid deals on storage. Amazon’s sale includes an all-time low price for SanDisk’s 1TB Extreme microSDXC UHS-I memory card. It has dropped by $35 from $175 to $140 in a one-day-only deal. If you’re looking to seriously upgrade the amount of storage available on your Nintendo Switch, that’s not a bad option.

Shop storage deals at Amazon

Also falling to an all-time-low price for today only is the 500GB version of Samsung’s T7 Touch SSD. The external drive has a fingerprint sensor you can use to keep your data secure. It’s currently $80, which is a temporary drop of $30. The deal only applies to the silver model, unfortunately, and not the black version. The larger-capacity models, which you can find on the same page, have been discounted too.

Elsewhere, SanDisk’s 2TB Extreme Portable SSD has been reduced to its second-best price ever. The price of the rugged drive has dropped significantly from $460 to $200 — you’ll save $260. Again, this deal is only available for today only.

Shop storage deals at Best Buy

Meanwhile, Best Buy’s World Backup Day sale isn’t quite as extensive, but there are still some good deals to be found, especially if you could do with adding a ton of storage to your backup process. Take, for instance, the 14TB version of WD’s Easystore External USB 3.0 Hard Drive. The price has dropped by $163 to $200. As with the Amazon deals mentioned above, the offer is only available today.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Boston Dynamics begins selling its Stretch warehouse robot

Almost exactly a year ago, Boston Dynamics introduced a new robot called “Stretch.” It’s not quite as exciting or as terrifyingly adorable as the Hyundai-owned company’s Spot robotic dog, but it can make loading, unloading and moving boxes in warehouses a lot easier. Now, Boston Dynamics has announced that Stretch is finally available for purchase. Or, more precisely, it’s now accepting reservations for deliveries in 2023 and 2024, because it’s sold out throughout the year due to strong pre-order demand. 

One of the early Stretch customers is DHL, which signed a $15 million deal with Boston Dynamics to equip its warehouses in North America with the robots over the coming years. TechCrunch says Gap and H&M are equipping their warehouses with the robot, as well.

What makes Stretch a feasible option for any company is that it was built for easy deployment and doesn’t require warehouses to be set up for automation. It doesn’t have to be pre-programmed and doesn’t need information on the box sizes it needs to handle, though they have to weigh 50 pounds and below. Stretch has a wheeled base, so it can move around without the need for fixed infrastructure, and it has an advanced vision system that gives it the power to autonomously identify boxes and its surroundings.

Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter says companies are showing interest in Stretch due to labor shortages, especially since it can be installed and ready to work within existing warehouses in just a few days:

“Labor shortages and supply chain snags continue to create challenges in keeping the flow of goods moving. Stretch makes logistics operations more efficient and predictable, and it improves safety by taking on one of the most physically demanding jobs in the warehouse. Many of our early adopter customers have already committed to deploying the robot at scale, so we are excited Stretch will soon be put to work more broadly, helping retailers and logistics companies handle the continued surging demand for goods.”

You can watch Stretch in action below: