Technology

Oculus is turning on its Air Link PC streaming feature for the Quest 2 virtual reality headset. Air Link is part of the Oculus v28 software update, which recently started rolling out to Oculus headset owners. Facebook Reality Labs head Andrew Bosworth says you can find the feature if you’re running v28 on your PC and Quest 2 headset; if you haven’t gotten access to the update yet, “it’s coming very soon.” Air Link lets Quest 2 owners with a strong Wi-Fi connection play PC VR games wirelessly on their headsets. Air Link was initially disabled on v28. But as Upload points out, Quest 2 owners had found a way to unofficially turn it on, and Oculus had warned that the experience was “not representative” of the final result. Bosworth says Oculus is releasing the feature today because “the excite...

For the past 20 years UK Post Office employees have been dealing with a piece of software called Horizon, which had a fatal flaw: bugs that made it look like employees stole tens of thousands of British pounds. This led to some local postmasters being convicted of crimes, even being sent to prison, because the Post Office doggedly insisted the software could be trusted. After fighting for decades, 39 people are finally having their convictions overturned, after what is reportedly the largest miscarriage of justice that the UK has ever seen. The impact on these employees has been vast: according to the BBC, some have lost marriages or time with their children. Talking to the BBC, Janet Skinner said that she was taken away from her two kids for nine months when she was imprisoned, after the ...

Federal officials said that the United States should resume use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, which has been on pause since April 13th. The company updated the fact sheets about the vaccine for doctors and patients to include information about the risks of clots. Vaccinations with the Johnson & Johnson shot could start back up as soon as tomorrow morning, said Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, during a press briefing. The decision to reinstate the J&J vaccine follows the recommendation of an independent CDC advisory group earlier today. The committee stressed that officials should make people aware of the risk of rare blood clots, which appear most often in women under 50. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Cen...

Google probably wasn’t planning to reveal this until the company’s I/O developer conference on May 18th, but it looks like a cat may be out of the bag: the company’s testing a feature that should let you stop alarms and answer calls on your Android phone simply by saying “stop” — no need to pick up your phone or even say “Hey Google.” We know this because a mysterious new setting called “Guacamole” has popped up in the Google app on Android 11 for some users — including me. (Android Police and 9to5Google tipped us off.) And while none of us journalists have been able to actually turn on the feature yet, it’s fairly easy to imagine what it does. The menus where Guacamole can be found, for some users running Android 11 and Google app version 12.15.9.29. If you’d rather not imagine, 9to5Googl...

The YouTube mobile app for iOS and Android now has new video settings that might make it a bit easier to save on data while watching video on the go (via MacRumors). Along with specific resolutions in the video player, you can now toggle between three separate modes that either favor video quality, data use, or whatever works best for your current internet connection. You might already be familiar with “auto” mode as the default setting for most videos, which automatically adjusts video resolution depending on your current internet speed to give the best experience. YouTube’s new additions are the “higher picture quality” mode, which uses more data when not on Wi-Fi and defaults to 720p, and a “data saver” mode that maxes out at 480p. YouTube’s new video settings include options for “highe...

Visiting Super Potato in Akihabara is usually a key reason why many die-hard gamers want to venture to Japan. The flagship Super Potato store (of the eight total in Japan, according to its Twitter) is nondescript, yet its shelves are covered wall-to-wall in rare yet reasonably priced games and consoles. It’s a magical place that’s a store-meets-museum. It’s fun enough to just look around, but if you’re a collector, there aren’t many places left where you can walk in and pick up a Virtual Boy headset or find a cache of Sega Dreamcast games that never released outside of Japan. My point is that you absolutely should go at some point if you can. But thankfully, going there in person isn’t the only way you can peep the store’s vast collection of retro Japanese video games. Per IGN, the beloved...

Twitter has said it’s exploring features like tipping to give people a way to pay other Twitter users, and now we have further evidence that a tip feature may be on the way. App researcher Jane Manchun Wong shared images on Thursday and Friday showing that Twitter could offer a tipping button right on user profiles. Here’s one iteration of what it could look like — check out the little blue cash button under the “@wongmjane” watermark in the left image. Clicking or tapping that button apparently shows options to let you tip via Bandcamp, Cash App (made by Square, which counts Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as its CEO, too), Patreon, PayPal, and Venmo. As you can see in this tweet, Wong also found evidence in March that Twitter is working on a “Tip Jar” feature for Twitter Spaces, the company’s Cl...

California Governor Gavin Newsom today set an aspirational 2045 deadline to stop all oil extraction in the state. He also said that he plans to ban hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” for oil by 2024. “As we move to swiftly decarbonize our transportation sector and create a healthier future for our children, I’ve made it clear I don’t see a role for fracking in that future and, similarly, believe that California needs to move beyond oil,” he said in a statement. NEW: California is now the first state to declare an end to oil extraction in the country. Today, we’re announcing that we will phase out all oil extraction — as part of a world-leading effort to achieve carbon neutrality — and ban fracking by 2024. — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) April 23, 2021 Newsom directed the state’s Depa...

Disney’s R&D labs, commonly known as its Imagineering team, does some extremely impressive — and expressive — things with robots. It’s made mechanical stunt doubles, lifelike alien Na’vi, and, uh, this skinless weirdo. But the company’s latest creation looks like it quite literally walked out of a Disney movie. It’s a bipedal Groot that can amble about tether-free. As Disney’s Pinocchio would put it: he’s got no strings to hold him down. TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino has the low-down on this robotic milestone for Disney. It’s part of the company’s long-term efforts to develop autonomous robot actors for its parks, says Panzarino, under the codename of “Project Kiwi.” The company’s engineers spent years creating their own free-standing bipedal robotics platform to power Groot, and Panz...

Apple’s new 12.9-inch iPad Pro has a big catch: it turns out that the new 2021 model is incompatible with the old Magic Keyboard folio case for the 2018 and 2020 models. The news, first reported by French site iGeneration and confirmed via sources familiar with the matter to The Verge, means that if you’re looking to upgrade from a 2018 or 2020 12.9-inch iPad Pro to the refreshed model (with its Mini LED display, faster M1 processor, and upgraded camera), you’ll also have to shell out an extra $349 for a new Magic Keyboard case, even if you already bought the prior version. Bad news for 2020 iPad Pro owners The 2021 12.9-inch iPad Pro is slightly thicker than the 2020 version: the new model measures in at 6.4mm thick, or 0.5mm thicker than the 5.9mm 2020 model, an increase that’s speculate...

Quiplash, the hilarious sentence-completion party game from Jackbox Games, is available for free on Steam this weekend. The deal runs until April 26th at 1PM ET. Quiplash is, without question, my extended family’s favorite game for group gatherings. (Technically, we play Quiplash 2, included in Jackbox Party Pack 3, but they’re extremely similar games.) The premise is simple. At the beginning of a round, players will be given prompts to fill in an answer privately on their smartphones or browser. Then, everyone will get to vote on which response was the best by seeing them pitted head-to-head on the main screen (whether that’s a TV, a Zoom call, a Twitch stream, etc.). More votes equal more points, and the person with the most points at the end wins. My family can spend hours in Quiplash t...

As Uber founder Travis Kalanick prepared to leave Uber’s board of directors in 2019, he was already hyping his next venture: a startup called CloudKitchens that rents out space to restaurants for delivery-only services. He predicted at the time that the startup would be “bigger than Uber.” The Wall Street Journal reported last October that CloudKitchens had purchased more than 40 properties in some two dozen cities, for more than $130 million. But a new report from Insider suggests that many of the tactics that became infamous at Uber — the always be hustlin’ mentality and aggressive internal culture — are in place at CloudKitchens. Inside CloudKitchens, people describe an alpha-male organization helmed by a “temple of bros,” in which Kalanick and two pals reign supreme and where a “Fight ...