The free-to-start Mario Kart Tour pulled up to the start line on iPhones and Android devices on Wednesday, bringing with it a pricey subscription option. The Gold Pass, which costs $4.99 a month, lets you access 200cc mode, extra in-game rewards for racing and exclusive bonus goals. It’s also the same monthly price as Apple Arcade, …
Read More »
Standing in a demo room that overlooked the Space Needle at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, Alexa hardware executive Miriam Daniel smiled as she encouraged me to stick a pair of Echo Buds in my ears. The space was noisy and chaotic, punctuated repeatedly by Alexa chiming in with different responses. I tapped the side of the earbuds twice, then suddenly there …
Read More »
HP has unveiled its refreshed Chromebook x360 laptops, with the 12- and 14-inch models getting thinner and lighter. They also now offer USI (Universal Stylus Initiative) pen compatibility. They’ll be available later in September for $359 and $379, respectively, with HP’s rechargeable USI Pen launching in November at a cost of $70. Dubbed by HP as “the best of Chrome …
Read More »
At its Alexa event on Wednesday, Amazon announced a new low-bandwidth network called Amazon Sidewalk that could extend the range at which you can control your devices beyond what Bluetooth and Wi-Fi currently allow. Amazon Sidewalk taps the 900MHz band of the radio spectrum — typically used for amateur radio — to extend the distance at which you can control your smart …
Read More »
Huawei isn’t letting the US blacklisting slow down its 5G plans, it seems. Ren Zhengfei, the controversial Chinese telecom‘s founder and CEO, said the company is already producing next-generation wireless base stations without American parts, according to Reuters. After testing in August and September, Huawei will make 5,000 stations a month from October, Ren reportedly said. The company apparently intends …
Read More »
Apple’s App Store has some problems, but Google’s Play Store is a mess: a confusing wall of icons punctuated by ads disguised as suggestions and useless recommendations. Search results appear in no discernibly logical order, and in-app purchase information and other pertinent details can be buried in low-contrast gray text at the bottom of a page that’s already a wall …
Read More »
It’s a little embarrassing, actually. In my late teens and early 20s, I was Militant Anti Apple Guy. You know the type. Calls Mac users sheep, mocks people when they say they own an iPhone. I’m not proud of it, but I was that guy. “Your new iPhone 5 only has a 4-inch screen,” I scoffed at my friend Taylor …
Read More »
Google has reportedly built a quantum computer more powerful than the world’s top supercomputers. A Google research paper was temporarily posted online this week, the Financial Times reported Friday, and said the quantum computer’s processor allowed a calculation to be performed in just over 3 minutes. That calculation would take 10,000 years on IBM’s Summit, the world’s most powerful commercial …
Read More »
The US Justice Department plans to investigate Facebook to determine whether it violated federal antitrust laws, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The investigation, reportedly begun at the urging of US Attorney General William Barr, comes as the Federal Trade Commission conducts its own investigation into whether the social media giant illegally harmed competition. While the FTC’s probe focuses on whether Facebook’s acquisitions …
Read More »
YouTube, Google‘s massive online video site, is about to embark on the biggest changes yet to kids videos. The company is reengineering how it treats clips directed at children, following this month’s record $170 million penalty for violating kids’ data privacy. YouTube pledged to disable comments, notifications and personalized ads on all videos directed at children, and its machine learning will police YouTube’s sprawling …
Read More »
