Technology

Alexa routines can now be triggered using multiple custom phrases making it easier for everyone in a household to initiate smart home automations without having to remember the exact wording (via AFTVnews). For example, instead of having to remember to say “Alexa, good night” to kick off a nighttime routine that locks the doors and shuts off the lights, you can now assign additional phrases like “Alexa, bedtime” or “Alexa, night night.” You can even add “Alexa, bonne nuit” to the same routine thanks to Amazon’s support for multilingual households. Up to seven custom phrases can be assigned to the same routine. It’s a small but welcome change for smart homes built around Alexa. It follows a big week for Alexa, where we saw it get a masculine voice option and a huge developer push to drive A...

LG’s new Tone Free FP true wireless earbuds feature a “Whispering Mode” where you can hold the right earbud next to your mouth during calls to use it as a dedicated microphone. It’s a neat privacy-conscious feature for those moments when you don’t want to have to speak loudly enough for the sound to be picked up by the earbuds in your ears. There are three new earbuds in the lineup — the FP5, FP8, and FP9 — and they share a lot of the same specs. All are noise cancelling, have three microphones per earbud, and have an IPX4 water resistance rating to withstand light splashes. Their earbud stems are 4.4mm shorter than LG’s previous models, and they have improved drivers and diaphragms which LG claims offers more bass without impacting clarity. Headphone Spatial Processing and 3D Sound Stage ...

Twenty years ago, when photorealistic games were still just a faraway dream, companies like Square sent our imaginations soaring before we played, with big-budget intros and cutscenes. Long before Overwatch normalized the practice of releasing Pixar-quality animated shorts for each new character, Blizzard’s Diablo II and Capcom’s Onimusha 3 put us in the demon slaying mood with incredible mini-movies stretching to six minutes each. But if you dare try watching these classics on a modern 4K TV or even a 1080p monitor, they’ll look like a pixelated mess. That’s where a YouTube channel named Upscale and machine learning comes in — making them look nearly as good as they did on your old CRT. Or perhaps even better. It just depends how well the game’s art style works with the AI algorithms brin...

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed Doctor Who to do something it hasn’t done in the modern era — dedicate an entire season to a single story. That’s the word from showrunner Chris Chibnall in a new Doctor Who panel at the online-only San Diego Comic-Con today. Oh, and did I mention we’re getting our very first fleeting glimpse at Series 13 in a teaser trailer? Hit that video play button above to watch it. We’d learned last year that the new season would just be eight episodes long, but Chibnall says it pushed the BBC to go big: “The big thing that we’re going to be doing this year is it’s all one story, so every episode is one chapter in a bigger story,” he says. More: There were two ways you could go: we’re just going to do lots of tiny episodes in one room with no monsters, or we could thr...

Baseball has a sign stealing problem — or at least, a technological one, seeing how reading another team’s pitches is technically legal, but using Apple Watches or telephoto cameras and then suspiciously banging on trash cans is very much not. But soon the MLB may try fighting fire with fire: on August 3rd, it plans to begin testing an encrypted wireless communication device that replaces the traditional flash of fingers with button taps, according to ESPN. The device, from a startup called PitchCom, will be tested in the Low-A West minor league first. As you’d expect from something that’s relaying extremely basic signals, it’s not a particularly complicated piece of kit: one wristband transmitter for the catcher with nine buttons to signal “desired pitch and location,” which sends an encr...

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch NASA‘s Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s icy moon, according to the national space organization. NASA said that the Europa Clipper spacecraft will launch in October 2024 from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It also disclosed that the contract with SpaceX will cost the agency roughly $178 million USD. Previously, the Europa Clipper was legally obligated to launched via NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS); however, due to multiple delays and an excessively high budget, Congress gave NASA permission to launch the probe through a commercial vehicle, saving approximately $1 billion USD in the process. The Europa Clipper first received clearance from NASA in 2015, when the mission moved from its initial concept into its development phase...

When Valve and IGN revealed last Thursday that the new Steam Deck handheld will target 30Hz gameplay, not everyone was impressed with that low bar — but Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais has taken to Twitter to clarify his original comment, and reveal a new feature of the portable console. First, he says 30 fps is more of a minimum bar than anything else: @Plagman2 (Twitter) “The ‘30 FPS target’ refers to the floor of what we consider playable in our performance testing; games we’ve tested and shown have consistently met and exceeded that bar so far,” he writes. In other words, when Griffais said in that IGN video interview that “We haven’t really found something that we could throw at this device that it couldn’t handle,” you shouldn’t take it to mean that every modern game runs at 60 fps. Exp...

When Amazon started cracking down on mobile electronics companies with shady reviewer programs, Aukey and Mpow were the first to get whacked — and yet Aukey is still selling at least three sets of wireless earbuds at the giant online retailer, The Verge has found. Two weeks ago, I pointed out to Amazon PR that both Aukey and Mpow had seemingly found a way around their bans. Mpow had an “xMpow MFly” set of wireless Bluetooth headphones, and Aukey was selling several different sets under its “Key Series” sub-brand. I’ve been watching their product pages ever since, and today I noticed that the xMpow MFly has disappeared. But Key Series is alive and well with three products. Aukey appears to be paying Amazon extra to promote them in search, too, as you can see from their “sponsored” disclaime...

LG has announced an updated iteration of its PuriCare Wearable Air Purifier that will feature a small, lightweight motor and a built-in mic, speaker and voice amplifier. LG first introduced the purifying mask last year, which employs a pair of HEPA-style filters and three LG DUAL fans that control airflow by automatically sensing the user’s breathing patterns. Following reports that the original concept design muffled users’ speech, the company created an updated edition equipped with its “VoiceON” technology, which “automatically recognizes when users are talking and amplifies their voice through the built-in speaker,” according to the release. The latest PuriCare mask, which weighs 94 grams, has a built-in 1,000mAh battery that can be recharged in two hours with a USB cable. LG claims th...

“What’s your favorite planet?” is a real question that Robinhood execs really picked to answer during the Q&A section of its retail investor roadshow. “Definitely Pluto,” says long-haired CEO Vlad Tenev. He is having a good time. He goes on to explain that there will be a great view of Venus tonight after sunset. The first meme IPO Many of the questions the management picked have been lackluster; asked if Robinhood will add a customer support line, Tenev cheerily explains there already is one. Another question is wasted on whether the stock will pay dividends — anyone who read the prospectus knows the answer is no. I am watching this roadshow — my first, and the first, I suspect, of many who are watching — because Robinhood plans to sell as much as a third of its IPO to its users. The ...

Happy Saturday! Posting the trailers roundup a day early this weekend since I’ll be on vacation starting Sunday (and shout out to the reader who said he preferred when we did the roundup on Saturdays, you got your wish at least for this weekend). The internet (or at least the little corner I inhabit) seemed divided into camps this week: people who really like the Apple TV Plus show Ted Lasso and people who… don’t. It’s OK to not like things! I had a longer rant prepared about how the effort to look cool online seems so exhausting but really, who cares, Ted Lasso has returned for season two and it’s still a lovely, warm-hearted show about a bunch of very likeable weirdos. We ended up with a very sci-fi themed roundup this week which was not by design, but happened thanks to several ne...

The ShadowCast from Genki is a dongle-size video capture card that might provide all that some gamers and streamers need. It’s $45, a relatively low price for a no-frills device that can get your console games onto your PC. But it has some limitations. The video quality isn’t great, and there’s a noticeable amount of lag if you’re trying to play along with the stream. These compromises aren’t a surprise, considering the ShadowCast costs a fraction of the price of something more capable like Elgato’s HD60 S+. You can actually go a bit cheaper than Genki’s $45 if you’re willing to roll the dice on quality control. Last year we covered an affordable (between $10 and $30, usually) no-brand HDMI capture card that’s very similar to this one, and perhaps its port arrangement may be more convenien...