Apple’s AirTags don’t go on sale often, but we’re now seeing a solid deal from two separate retailers. You can pick up a four-pack at Amazon and Best Buy for $89, just a dollar higher than the best deal we’ve seen so far. The offer helps if you have multiple items you want to track, and unlike with the previous Woot deal, both companies have generous return policies.
If you’re in Apple’s ecosystem, AirTags give you some big advantages over rival trackers from Tile and others. The ultra-wideband functionality offers precise tracking with iPhone 11 (and up) devices when you get close, so you can tell whether your missing object is under a couch cushion or behind a chair, for example. Meanwhile, the AirTag network enabled by al Apple device users allows you to find a missing bag that might be a longer distance away.
The coin-sized design is nice and simple and you’ll get a seamless experience thanks to the Find My App. You can also force the AirTag to emit a chime to help you more easily locate your item if you’re close to it. However, it doesn’t have a built-in keyring like rival devices, so you’ll need to buy additional accessories like the $35 leather keyring.
The main drawback is that it only works with Apple devices, so Android users will have to look elsewhere, and battery life is also limited. Still, if you’re in Apple’s ecosystem, you can now pick one up for an extra discount with no worries about returns or the warranty.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
Epic continues to shake things up for the biggest battle royale game. This is a big change, however. It’s temporarily ditched one of the game’s core mechanics — building — for Fortnite Chapter 3, Season 2. You can still destroy objects, but you won’t receive any wood, stone or metal to create a temporary wall or other fortifications — lest we forget, the game’s calledFortnite. In a suitably meta twist, the loss of the building ability seems to be a key part of this season’s storyline.
If you live to build, the feature will still be available in competitive, creative and Save the World modes — it’s only gone in casual game queues for now. Fortnite’s creators are also supporting Ukraine relief efforts, with all proceeds from V-Bucks sales, Battle Passes and Fortnite Crew subscriptions are being donated through April 3rd.
It’s trying to stop workarounds to run Windows 11 on older PCs.
The Verge has learned that the most recent Windows 11 Release Preview build applies a watermark to the desktop if you use a workaround to run the operating system on unsupported hardware. Windows 11 officially requires either an 8th-generation Intel Core CPU or an AMD chip based on a Zen+ or Zen 2 architecture. Many believe the cutoff is arbitrary. You just need to add a Microsoft-sanctioned registry tweak to bypass a CPU check to install the OS without a rejection message. Microsoft has warned it might not provide updates to these PCs, however.
We’ve got picks for every ecosystem and some affordable options.
Engadget
While tablets don’t always get the same level of attention as smartphones or laptops — landing right in the middle in size and specs — they’ve become an increasingly important category of devices for many, particularly with the recent shift to working and learning from home. Their straightforward designs make them easy to use, while improvements to Windows 11 and iPadOS allow many tablets to pull double-duty as part-time productivity devices.
However, there are a lot of options out there, so it can be difficult to pick the right one. We’ve done a bunch of the hard work for you, and we’ve got our top picks across a range of categories and prices, smartly timed after the release of the latest slates from both Apple and Samsung.
Now the developer has run out of platforms to port The Witcher 3 to (it made it, somehow, to the Switch), it’s time for a new game. CD Projekt Red announced the project today with a teaser it shared on Twitter. “A new saga begins,” the teaser states, with what looks like a lynx-like Witcher medallion image. The teaser suggests this new game will star a Witcher from the School of the Cat — the last protagonist, Geralt, was from the School of the Wolf. This could mean a different style of game, as these Witchers don’t have a policy that stops them from involving themselves in the politics of the Continent. Intrigue abounds!
DJI has unveiled the Matrice 30, an enterprise-class drone with IP55 dust and water resistance that lets it fly in heavy rain, strong wind and even icy situations. It can fly to altitudes as high as 22,965ft above sea level (with the right propellers) and survive temperatures between -4F and 122F. DJI is taking orders for the M30 today, and M300 RTK drone owners can also buy a new Zenmuse H20N sensor with “starlight-grade” night vision. The base M30 starts at $9,999.
Citizen will reportedly test an on-demand private security service in Chicago as part of a partnership with Securitas. The crime alert app and security company may offer a check-in service (in which agents could follow up with the victim of a crime to make sure they’re OK) and scheduled private security, according to Motherboard.
The app previously tested a rapid-response security service (not unlike a private police force) in Los Angeles with Citizen-branded cars. Security agents responded to calls from Citizen employees. Motherboard‘s sources suggested the response time was fairly slow, which may have led to the company taking a different approach in Chicago.
Citizen provides push alerts to users based on incident reports it puts together from police scanners. It also runs a $20 per month subscription service that connects users with agents who can direct emergency services to their location and notify contacts if it’s not safe for them to call 911 directly.
The move suggests Citizen is still interested in offering private security despite its questionable history and stating it wouldn’t run its own on-demand force (though it didn’t rule out partnerships). Apple and Google removed a previous version of the app, which was called Vigilante, from their stores for encouraging vigilantism.
Last year, it was reported that Citizen’s CEO offered users a $30,000 bounty for tracking down an alleged arson suspect, but the app identified the wrong person as the culprit. Police apprehended the man but quickly released him for a lack of evidence. They later arrested another suspect in connection with the wildfires.
Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite is one of the nicest (and newest) e-readers out there, and you can now pick one up at an all-time low. It’s on sale for just $105, for a savings of $35 (25 percent) off the regular $140 price. You’ll also find deals on the regular Kindle with a built-in front light, Kindle Paperwhite Kids and Kindle Kids models.
Amazon refreshed the Kindle Paperwhite last September, with the biggest change being a larger 6.8-inch, 300 ppi glare-free screen. The idea is that it’s supposed to look as much like real paper as possible, allowing for “easy reading in all conditions, even in direct sunlight,” according to Amazon. It’s also faster, allowing for quicker page turns, and comes with 8GB of storage, USB-C fast charging and an IPX8 water-resistant rating.
Steve Dent
If you’re looking for a cheaper model, the regular Kindle with a built-in front light is on sale for $55, for a savings of $35 off the regular $90 price. Though several years old, it’s still competitive thanks to the touchscreen with front illumination, high-contrast 167 ppi display and compact design. It comes with 8GB of storage and a single battery charge “lasts weeks, not hours,” Amazon says.
Finally, Amazon has also discounted two reader models for children, the Kindle Paperwhite Kids available near an all-time low at $115 or 28 percent off, and Kindle Kids ($65 or 41 percent off). The latter model is similar to the regular Kindle, but comes with a kid-friendly cover, 1 year of Amazon Kids+ and a “worry-free guarantee.” The latter, meanwhile, bundles the Kindle Paperwhite with the same options.
Nintendo’s latest software update includes a feature you may have been waiting for: The ability to group games on your home screen. It’s been over five years since the console was released, and there are now thousands of games available for the system. Unlike the PlayStation, which gives you a way to sort titles into folders, the Switch only shows your most recently played ones in a single horizontal lineup you can scroll. This update changes that.
The first time you create a group, an information card will pop up telling you about the new feature and with the suggestion to sort games into themes, such as genres or developers, to make them easier to find. You only need to check all the titles you want to add, re-arrange them in the order you want them to be displayed and then type in a name for the group. To create another group, just press the + Button.
You can create up to 100 groups containing up to 200 titles each, so you can sort everything into however you want even if you’ve accumulated quite the collection over the years. While you can group large numbers of titles together, take note that the button to proceed to the “All Software” screen will show up if there are 13 or more titles displayed.
In addition to groups, the latest software update will also allow you to adjust a Bluetooth device’s volume on the device itself, so long as it supports AVRCP profiles. Also, Nintendo has increased the max volume for some Bluetooth devices.
Public companies would be required to disclose greenhouse gas emissions they produce under new rules proposed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The move is part of the Biden government’s push to identify climate risks and cut emissions as much as 52 percent by 2030. The SEC’s three Democratic commissioners voted to approve the proposal, while Republican commissioner Hester M. Peirce voted against it.
“I am pleased to support today’s proposal because, if adopted, it would provide investors with consistent, comparable, and decision-useful information for making their investment decisions, and it would provide consistent and clear reporting obligations for issuers,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
Under the new rule, companies would need to explain how climate risks would affect their operations and strategies. They’d be required to share the emissions they generate and larger companies would need to have those numbers confirmed by independent consulting firms. They’d also need to disclose indirect emissions generated by supplies and customers if those are “material” to their climate goals.
The SEC proposed rule changes that would require registrants to include certain climate-related disclosures in their registration statements and periodic reports.
— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) March 21, 2022
In addition, any companies that have made public promises to reduce their carbon footprint would need to explain how they plan to meet those goals. That includes the use of carbon offsets like planting trees, which have been criticized as being a poor substitute for actually slashing emissions, as Greenpeace said in a recent report.
The SEC already allows for voluntary emissions guidance, but the new rules would make it mandatory. Many companies like Ford already share emissions date from factory production as well as vehicle fuel usage. However, “there are lots of companies that won’t do it unless it’s mandatory,” task force chief Mary Schapiro told The Washington Post ahead of the report’s release.
After the proposed rule is published on the SEC’s website, the public will have 60 days to comment. The final rule will likely head to a vote in several months, and would be phased in over several years. The ruling will likely be challenged in court by Republicans in states like West Virginia, along with business groups, on the grounds that climate change is not a material issue for investors in the near future.
However, experts have warned that time is of the essence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently issued a report stating that many of the impacts of global warming are “irreversible” and that there’s only a brief window of time to avoid the worst. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called it a “damning indictment of failed climate leadership.”
The US Department of Justice has accused Google of training its employees on how to shield business communications from discovery in cases of legal disputes “by using false requests for legal advice.” As Axios reports, the DOJ has told the judge overseeing its antitrust case against the tech giant that Google instructs employees to add in-house lawyers to written communication, apply attorney-client privilege labels to them and make a request for legal advice even when it’s not needed. The department is now asking the judge to sanction the company “for its extensive and intentional efforts to misuse the attorney-client privilege to hide business documents relevant” to the case.
In the brief (PDF) its lawyers wrote for the judge, the DOJ said Google refers to the practice as “Communicate with Care” and that it first started no later than 2015. New employees are reportedly directed to follow the practice without discussion on whether it should only be used when legal advice is truly needed. In addition, Google allegedly provided the same training to teams handling search-distribution for the department’s (and other authorities’) antitrust cases.
Google specifically told those teams to follow the practice for any written communication containing revenue-sharing agreements and mobile application distribution agreements, based on the presentation slides the DOJ included in its brief. Those agreements are central to the case. If you’ll recall, the DOJ accused Google of having an unfair monopoly over search and search-related advertising in its 2020 antitrust lawsuit. It also questioned its terms for Android device manufacturers that force them to pre-load Google apps and set Google as the default search engine.
According to the DOJ, statements such as “adding legal” or “adding [attorney] for legal advice” appear in thousands of Google documents. These emails apparently lacked any specific request for advice and attorneys rarely respond to them. In the brief, the department said the practice “pervades the entire company” and is being used even by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
The DOJ is now asking the court to hold Google’s conduct as sanctionable and to order it to immediately produce “all withheld or redacted emails where no attorney responded to the purported request for legal advice.”
Google spokesperson Julie Tarallo McAlister defended the company in a statement sent to Axios, however, calling the allegations “flatly wrong.” McAlister said:
“Our teams have conscientiously worked for years to respond to inquiries and litigation, and suggestions to the contrary are flatly wrong. Just like other American companies, we educate our employees about legal privilege and when to seek legal advice. And we have produced over four million documents to the DOJ in this case alone — including many that employees had considered potentially privileged.”
A judge in a Moscow court said on Monday that Instagram and Facebook were guilty of “extremist” activity, solidifying a ban on both platforms that went into effect earlier this month, reportedReuters. But the court also spared WhatsApp — one of Meta’s core products and one of the most popular messaging platforms in Russia — from the ban. Russian authorities decided to open a criminal case against Meta after Facebook’s decision to temporarily allow for calls of violence in Ukraine and select other countries. The outcome of that case was determined today in court.
Many Russia experts believe that the court chose not to include WhatsApp in the ban due to its ubiquitous status in the nation. Roughly 80 percent of Russians over the age of 14 use WhatsApp to communicate, according to a 2021 survey from Deloitte. Ironically, the case against Meta led to WhatsApp losing its status as the most popular messenger in Russia. Telegram, which millions of Russians downloaded in recent weeks due to uncertainty over WhatsApp’s fate, is now the most popular messaging app in Russia, mobile operator Megafon toldReuters today.
Under the judge’s ruling, Meta is effectively banned from opening offices or doing business in Russia, according to Russian state media agency TASS. But Russian citizens won’t be accused of extremism for merely using any of Meta’s platforms or services (that is, if they can access them). Many Russians have downloaded VPNs in recent weeks to access many of the Western-owned tech platforms banned by their government.
“The use of Meta’s products by individuals and legal entities should not be considered as participation in extremist activities,” a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office told TASS.
But even those able to access Facebook or Instagram still face limits on free speech. A new Russian law criminalizes the spread of “fake news” or public statements that are critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Thousands of Russians have been arrested, fired from jobs or expelled from school for criticizing Russia’s activities in Ukraine, reported NPR.
Despite WhatsApp being spared, future sparring between Russia and Western tech companies could make it harder for Russians to buy new devices or access services. Samsung, Microsoft, Apple, LG and others have banned device sales in Russia.
MacRumors recently reported that Russian users can no longer access the App Store or pay for any of Apple’s services, which would include iCloud. Google Play has also paused all billing in Russia, although users can still use free apps. WhatsApp offers encrypted backups, but users will need an iCloud or Google Drive account.
When it comes to online games, we all know the “report” button doesn’t do anything. Regardless of genre, publisher or budget, games launch every day with ineffective systems for reporting abusive players, and some of the largest titles in the world exist in a constant state of apology for harboring toxic environments. Franchises including League of Legends, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, Dota 2, Overwatch, Ark and Valorant have such hostile communities that this reputation is part of their brands — suggesting these titles to new players includes a warning about the vitriol they’ll experience in chat.
It feels like the report button often sends complaints directly into a trash can, which is then set on fire quarterly by the one-person moderation department. According to legendary Quake and Doom esports pro Dennis Fong (better known as Thresh), that’s not far from the truth at many AAA studios.
“I’m not gonna name names, but some of the biggest games in the world were like, you know, honestly it does go nowhere,” Fong said. “It goes to an inbox that no one looks at. You feel that as a gamer, right? You feel despondent because you’re like, I’ve reported the same guy 15 times and nothing’s happened.”
Game developers and publishers have had decades to figure out how to combat player toxicity on their own, but they still haven’t. So, Fong did.
This week he announced GGWP, an AI-powered system that collects and organizes player-behavior data in any game, allowing developers to address every incoming report with a mix of automated responses and real-person reviews. Once it’s introduced to a game — “Literally it’s like a line of code,” Fong said — the GGWP API aggregates player data to generate a community health score and break down the types of toxicity common to that title. After all, every game is a gross snowflake when it comes to in-chat abuse.
GGWP
The system can also assign reputation scores to individual players, based on an AI-led analysis of reported matches and a complex understanding of each game’s culture. Developers can then assign responses to certain reputation scores and even specific behaviors, warning players about a dip in their ratings or just breaking out the ban hammer. The system is fully customizable, allowing a title like Call of Duty: Warzone to have different rules than, say, Roblox.
“We very quickly realized that, first of all, a lot of these reports are the same,” Fong said. “And because of that, you can actually use big data and artificial intelligence in ways to help triage this stuff. The vast majority of this stuff is actually almost perfectly primed for AI to go tackle this problem. And it’s just people just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”
GGWP is the brainchild of Fong, Crunchyroll founder Kun Gao, and data and AI expert Dr. George Ng. It’s so far secured $12 million in seed funding, backed by Sony Innovation Fund, Riot Games, YouTube founder Steve Chen, the streamer Pokimane, and Twitch creators Emmett Shear and Kevin Lin, among other investors.
GGWP
Fong and his cohorts started building GGWP more than a year ago, and given their ties to the industry, they were able to sit down with AAA studio executives and ask why moderation was such a persistent issue. The problem, they discovered, was twofold: First, these studios didn’t see toxicity as a problem they created, so they weren’t taking responsibility for it (we can call this the Zuckerberg Special). And second, there was simply too much abuse to manage.
In just one year, one major game received more than 200 million player-submitted reports, Fong said. Several other studio heads he spoke with shared figures in the nine digits as well, with players generating hundreds of millions of reports annually per title. And the problem was even larger than that.
“If you’re getting 200 million for one game of players reporting each other, the scale of the problem is so monumentally large,” Fong said. “Because as we just talked about, people have given up because it doesn’t go anywhere. They just stop reporting people.”
Executives told Fong they simply couldn’t hire enough people to keep up. What’s more, they generally weren’t interested in forming a team just to craft an automated solution — if they had AI people on staff, they wanted them building the game, not a moderation system.
In the end, most AAA studios ended up dealing with about 0.1 percent of the reports they received each year, and their moderation teams tended to be laughably small, Fong discovered.
GGWP
“Some of the biggest publishers in the world, their anti-toxicity player behavior teams are less than 10 people in total,” Fong said. “Our team is 35. It’s 35 and it’s all product and engineering and data scientists. So we as a team are larger than almost every global publisher’s team, which is kind of sad. We are very much devoted and committed to trying to help solve this problem.”
Fong wants GGWP to introduce a new way of thinking about moderation in games, with a focus on implementing teachable moments, rather than straight punishment. The system is able to recognize helpful behavior like sharing weapons and reviving teammates under adverse conditions, and can apply bonuses to that player’s reputation score in response. It would also allow developers to implement real-time in-game notifications, like an alert that says, “you’ve lost 3 reputation points” when a player uses an unacceptable word. This would hopefully dissuade them from saying the word again, decreasing the number of overall reports for that game, Fong said. A studio would have to do a little extra work to implement such a notification system, but GGWP can handle it, according to Fong.
“We’ve completely modernized the approach to moderation,” he said. “They just have to be willing to give it a try.”
OneWeb will turn to a competitor to ferry its remaining first-generation internet satellites to space after Russia’s Roscosmos space agency issued an ultimatum to the company at the start of the month. On Monday, OneWeb announced an agreement with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The private firm will ferry the remainder of OneWeb’s constellation fleet, with the first launch scheduled for later this year.
“We thank SpaceX for their support, which reflects our shared vision for the boundless potential of space,” OneWeb CEO Neil Masterson said. “With these launch plans in place, we’re on track to finish building out our full fleet of satellites and deliver robust, fast, secure connectivity around the globe.”
On March 3rd, Roscosmos, just days before it was scheduled to put 36 OneWeb satellites in space, said it would not conduct any additional launches for OneWeb unless the company made assurances its network would not be used for military purposes and the UK sold its minority stake in OneWeb. The demand came in response to sanctions the UK imposed on Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24th. At the time, the UK government said it would not sell its stake in OneWeb. To date, Russian Soyuz rockets have carried 428 OneWeb satellites to low Earth orbit. OneWeb’s first-generation network will eventually consist of 648 satellites.
