Technology

Resident Evil has been in a pretty good place of late. After reaching its possible creative nadir with Resident Evil 6, 2017’s Resident Evil 7 represented a welcome return to the series’ horror roots while reinventing itself with a first-person perspective. Since then, Capcom has put out a phenomenally good remake of Resident Evil 2, as well as a solid if less substantial take on its successor. Now we have Resident Evil Village, which comes with a logo styled in a way to let you know that this is really Resident Evil 8, even if Capcom isn’t explicitly naming it as such. It’s a direct sequel to 7, with the same first-person perspective and bland protagonist Ethan Winters. But while 7 evoked the slow-burning housebound horror of the original game, Village is more like a first-person take on ...

Google is today announcing a new feature on Android tablets that plays to one of their greatest strengths: media consumption. The simply named “Entertainment Space” will be a new section to the left of the home screen on tablets from Walmart starting this month, and it’ll expand globally to devices from Lenovo, Sharp, and others later in the year. It’s an all-encompassing hub that brings together video (TV shows, movies, and YouTube), games, and books. Entertainment Space is something Google has been building for a couple years, and it’s one of the more significant changes to the Android tablet experience in a long time. “You’ll save time and avoid having to hop between apps to try to figure out what to do, whether it’s to watch, play or read,” Google’s James Bender wrote in a blog post. “...

Nike, Sony, and basketball player Paul George have collaborated on another pair of sneakers, the PG 5, with help from PS5 designer Yujin Morisawa. According to Sony, “the colors of the shoe are heavily inspired by the industrial design of the PS5” with the PlayStation’s signature circle, square, cross, and triangle shapes woven into the materials like a DualSense controller. There’s also a PlayStation logo on the tongue of the right shoe, while the left’s tongue has Paul George’s PG logo. The release comes a little over two years after Nike and PlayStation’s last sneaker collaboration, the PG 2.5, which drew inspiration from the design of the original PlayStation console. Earlier that year, the two companies worked together on the PG2, which were inspired by the PS4. Image: Nike / Sony Ima...

Facebook, which never saw a social network it couldn’t copy, says its Nextdoor-clone Neighborhoods is now available across Canada and is coming soon to four US cities. According to CNET, the US locations being targeted are Charlotte, North Carolina; San Diego, California; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Newark, New Jersey. Like Nextdoor, Neighborhoods is all about corralling geographically-defined groups of users into a single space to discuss local goings-on. Facebook says users should be able to get to know neighbors, ask for recommendations for the best coffee shops or locksmiths, and organize local events. Users can also create splinter groups specific to their interests. “You can find vibrant local Facebook groups about your area, or you can create your own Neighborhoods-bounded groups ba...

A new report from The Intercept has shed light on a worrying new technology that lets law enforcement agencies extract personal data from people’s cars. It reports that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recently made an order worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from Swedish data extraction firm MSAB which included iVe “vehicle forensics kits” made by US firm Berla. Here’s what MSAB advertises the kits can do, according to The Intercept: MSAB marketing materials promise cops access to a vast array of sensitive personal information quietly stored in the infotainment consoles and various other computers used by modern vehicles — a tapestry of personal details akin to what CBP might get when cracking into one’s personal phone. MSAB claims that this data can include “Recent destinations...

In a new blog post, Basecamp CEO Jason Fried apologized after the “policy changes” he announced last week ultimately led to a third of the company’s workforce opting to leave. “Last week was terrible. We started with policy changes that felt simple, reasonable, and principled, and it blew things up culturally in ways we never anticipated,” Fried wrote. “David and I completely own the consequences, and we’re sorry. We have a lot to learn and reflect on, and we will.” The blog post that started the software company’s terrible week was a list of new company policies that prohibited, among other things, “societal and political discussions” on internal forums. Today’s social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, a...

The Apple Watch Series 3 was first released in September 2017, bringing fitness improvements and a faster processor. Nearly four years later, in 2021, Apple is still selling the Series 3 as its entry-level Apple Watch model starting at $199, an $80 savings compared to the more recent Apple Watch SE. Only, as I’ve recently learned, “still selling” and “supporting in a reasonable manner” are two very different things, and updating an Apple Watch Series 3 in 2021 is a nightmare of infuriating technological hoops to jump through. Normally, updating an Apple Watch is an annoyingly long but straightforward process: you charge your Watch up to 50 percent, plug it in, and wait for the slow process of the update transferring and installing to your smartwatch. But the non-cellular Apple Watch Series...

On April 26th, Basecamp founder and CEO Jason Fried posted on his blog about some policy changes that would be happening at the company, which makes team collaboration software. One policy stuck out to many on the internet — the company would no longer be allowing its employees to have discussions about society or politics on its internal account. What followed was a tidal wave of public outcry, employees speaking out against the policies (and talking about what led to them), several revisions of the blog post, and, finally, almost a third of the company’s employees deciding to accept buyouts and leave. There has since been an apology from Fried, but it remains to be seen if any more will be coming — there are still accusations made by employees that haven’t really been addressed. Whether ...

In what looks to be a first in terms of subscriber perks, Boost Mobile has announced that its $60 per month Unlimited Plus cellphone plan will come with access to to 24/7 telemedicine through K Health starting this summer. Specifically, Unlimited Plus subscribers will get all of the features of K Health’s usual $9-per-month offering. That includes the ability to text chat or hop on a video call with a doctor through the K Health app, which uses the app’s AI suggestions to identify symptoms and potential ailments, and receive actual treatment, including medications and other prescriptions. The service is free and available for all Boost Unlimited Plus subscribers and offered at a discounted price of $7.99 per month for all of Boost Mobile’s other customers. You can sign up to get access to ...

WhatsApp is again rolling out its payments service in Brazil, after the service was suspended by Brazil’s Central Bank in June of 2020 a few days after it launched there. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement in a video aired in Brazil, where he spoke about how the payment information added to WhatsApp will also be able to be used on Facebook and Instagram. According to David Marcus the head of Facebook Financial, the service returning to Brazil will be part of a “gradual rollout,” but it seems like the company is serious about it returning: it’s already posted a video promoting the service, and has published a page that states the underlying Facebook Pay system has been authorized by the Central Bank (Facebook is WhatsApp’s parent company). When the service originally launche...

One of the Epic v. Apple trial’s big keywords is “cross-wallet play.” In Epic’s Fortnite, “cross-wallet” means you can buy in-game currency (known as V-Bucks) with real money on one device, then spend it on a different device. The latter platform doesn’t get a cut of your initial, non-virtual financial transaction, which is why Nintendo and Sony don’t support cross-wallet access on the Switch and PlayStation. Apple did support cross-wallet play before banning Fortnite last year — and on the trial’s second day, that fact became a serious pitfall for Epic. Apple continued a long cross-examination of Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, whose hours of testimony included a digression on whether Fortnite counts as a true metaverse or simply a big free-to-play game that has concerts. (Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rog...

A new Show Mode feature from Amazon is now rolling out to some Lenovo laptops. When you activate this, it will change your home screen to look like the home screen of an Echo Show smart display, in a similar fashion to the Show Mode feature on Amazon’s tablets. That means you’ll be able to do smart display things like controlling smart home devices, glancing at the weather and news headlines, and chatting with Alexa — you know, the kind of stuff you’ve always wished you could do on your ThinkPad. The feature is currently rolling out to Yoga, ThinkPad, and IdeaPad PCs that have Alexa built in, and it’s available in the US, UK, Germany, Japan, India, Ireland, Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand. Lenovo says it’s coming to more Alexa-enabled PCs later this year...