Technology

Sony just announced its intent to acquire Destiny maker Bungie for $3.6 billion, capping what’s been an absolutely massive month for gaming acquisitions. Take-Two kicked things off with its deal to buy Zynga for $12.7 billion, which at the time may have counted as the biggest deal in the video game industry, but Microsoft significantly one-upped that just a week later with its $68.7 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard. The total value of all three acquisitions, assuming they all go through, is a staggering $85 billion. With Bungie, Sony will house the talent behind the hugely popular Destiny 2, and it seems likely the company will use Bungie’s expertise to help create similarly expansive and long-running live service titles. Sony is renowned for its expensive single-player games like G...

Meta is rolling out new 3D avatars that people can use across Facebook, Messenger, VR, and now, Instagram. Available to those residing in the United States, Mexico and Canada, users can opt to show up as their avatars in profile pictures, as well as comments, stickers, stories and more. Sharing the news, Meta said that it sees the “metaverse as an interconnected digital world” and described the avatars as an “early step” in bridging VR and AR. The company has given avatars a greater range of facial shapes and skin tones in the latest update. They’ve also expanded representation with the addition of Cochlear implants, over-the-ear hearing aids and wheelchairs. “We’re updating Meta avatars with a lot more expressions, faces and skin tones, as well as wheelchairs and hearing aids,” Mark Zucke...

All Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface has really wanted deep down is to be unbothered by the outside world and left to his murderous hobbies. But the first trailer for Netflix and Legendary’s upcoming sequel makes clear that almost 50 years later, the iconic serial killer still knows no peace despite his attempts to go looking for it. What the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre lacks in terms of having a unique title, it may make up for with its premise, which directly connects it to director Tobe Hooper’s original 1974 feature of a similar name. Though most everyone living near Harlow, Texas is familiar with the story of how Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré) narrowly managed to escape Leatherface’s (Mark Burnham) clutches, Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s out-of-towner protagonists have no idea what th...

China’s first Mars orbiter, Tianwen-1, is showing off its journey around the Red Planet in a newly released selfie video ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year. The brief clip, released Monday by the China National Space Administration, shows a good portion of the spacecraft’s body, engines, and solar array zooming through space, with portions of Mars’ surface appearing in the background. The Tianwen-1 orbiter has been circling Mars for nearly a year now. After launching from China in July of 2020, the vehicle inserted itself into the planet’s orbit in February of 2021. The spacecraft is China’s first mission to successfully reach the Red Planet’s orbit, making the nation one of just a handful of countries to explore Mars robotically. Tianwen-1 came to Mars bundled together with a lander and ...

Troy Baker, a prominent voice actor perhaps best known for playing Joel in The Last of Us, is stepping away from an NFT partnership following significant outcry. In the early hours of January 14th, Baker announced on Twitter that he would be partnering with a company called Voiceverse, which creates “Voice NFTs” that each have a “unique AI-generated voice map,” but he now says he won’t continue the partnership. In his original announcement, it seems Baker expected some backlash — perhaps he has seen some of the gaming community’s opposition to NFTs already, like what led to the removal of planned NFTs from the upcoming S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl. “You can hate,” part of Baker’s tweet read. “Or you can create. What’ll it be?” On Monday, he apologized for that choice of language. “...

Pinterest is adding a “Try On for Home Decor” feature to its app, letting you see furniture from stores like Crate & Barrel, CB2, Walmart, West Elm, and Wayfair in your house through the power of augmented reality. While it’s certainly not a new idea (Pinterest itself already has a similar feature in its app for cosmetics), it could make shopping in the app a little more enjoyable — and Pinterest seems very into shopping right now. According to the company’s announcement post, you’ll be able to use its Lens camera to try out over 80,000 pieces of furniture from “shoppable Pins.” If you like what you see, you’ll be able to follow a link to the retailer’s website, where you can buy that new chaise or lamp that fits so well next to your coffee table. Trying out a West Elm chair in the Pin...

Walmart doesn’t want a lack of know-how to prevent its customers from buying smart home tech, TVs, and other devices that require installation or assembly. The retailer has announced a new partnership with in-home services provider Angi to help mount TVs, set up smart home devices, and complete other DIY projects around your home. Angi says over 150 “common home projects” will be available to order from nearly 4,000 Walmart stores, as well as Walmart’s website. Prices range from $45 for a simple job like furniture assembly, rising to $79 to mount a TV. Some tasks like installing new floors will require custom quotes. Google and Ring have similar installation partnerships Angi says that the third most popular project it carried out in 2021 was smart home device installations. First was inte...

It’s not a rower or the forthcoming Peloton Guide, but Peloton announced today that it’s releasing a new Bluetooth heart rate monitor. Unlike its existing chest strap, the Peloton Heart Rate Band is meant to be worn on a user’s forearm and features optical heart rate sensors. The Heart Rate Band will be available in small and large sizes and will cost $90. That’s a little less than double the price of its existing chest strap, which retails for $49 on Peloton’s website. It’ll also sport five LED lights that indicate which heart rate zone you’re currently training in, battery level, and Bluetooth connectivity status. It also has a rechargeable battery that gets an estimated 10 hours on a single charge. The device is meant to be an accessory that slots into the rest of the Peloton ecosystem:...

Designing robots that can handle fragile items is a big challenge for engineers. For warehouses, robots have been developed that use soft rubber fingers to grab items like fruit, but what about targets that are even more delicate? Like, say, a raw egg yolk? Well, researchers from North Carolina State University have demonstrated a new type of gripper that could one day help machines pick up even the most breakable items — including yolks. Inspired by the Japanese art of kirigami (like origami, but you fold and cut the paper), their gripper is made from flat sheets of material cut with parallel slits. When the ends of the sheet are pulled apart, the gripper forms itself into a 3D sphere that can be used to gently and precisely grab objects, from live fish to single strands of human hair. Th...

Intel claimed at CES that its new Alder Lake mobile chips would be the fastest mobile chips ever made. We’ve finally gotten to try out the flagship in this line, the 14-core Core i9-12900HK, inside MSI’s GE76 Raider gaming laptop. And it turns out that Intel was right… with some caveats. The GE76 Raider is a monster in both gaming and productivity workloads. It blew every 11th Gen gaming system I’ve ever tested out of the water. And it even beat Apple’s MacBooks in many of our benchmarks, but that comparison is a bit more… complicated. Check out the video above to see the full results of our Alder Lake testing and our impressions of how it compares to the M1 Max. For even more benchmark results, in-depth performance analysis, and details about the laptop’s chassis, make sure yo...

LGBTQ dating app Grindr has been removed from the Apple App Store in China, and is also unavailable on popular Android app marketplaces, Bloomberg reports. The app reportedly disappeared from the iOS App Store on January 27th, although it’s unclear when it was removed from the country’s popular Android app stores — which are operated by local companies like Huawei and Tencent in the absence of the Google Play Store. The apparent removals follow the Chinese government’s announcement last week that it would be cracking down on illegal content, pornography, and “ill-natured” activities online, Bloomberg previously reported. The tightening of restrictions comes ahead of China hosting the Winter Olympics in Beijing, which are due to kick off later this week. While homosexuality isn’t illegal in...