Technology

Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ already robust design tools are getting some improvements with a free update hitting March 18th. One new addition is a big upgrade to the NookPhone’s design app that will let you customize umbrellas, small flags, uchiwa fans, and photo stands. The app already let you make designs for shirts, dresses, and hats, so with the upgrade, you’ll be able to tailor an even more custom look (and make a fun photo stand while you’re at it). The upgraded app will also add 50 design slots to both the normal and Pro custom design modes, allowing you to create and save even more designs than before. You can make designs for new items in the New Horizons update. Image: Nintendo You’ll be able to buy the app upgrade with Nook Miles at the terminal in the Resident Services build...

Longtime industry veteran Jade Raymond is heading up a new studio that will create original games for PlayStation. Raymond announced the news today via the PlayStation Blog. “We want to create worlds where players can escape, have fun, express themselves, and find community,” Raymond wrote about the new studio, Haven. “We want to pour our passion into a project. We want to make something wondrous for people to experience.” Raymond is one of the game industry’s most prolific developers; her career’s spanned major stints at companies like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft in leadership roles. Most recently, she was leading Google’s first-party games studio, Stadia Games and Entertainment. Earlier this year, however, Google shut down its in-house developer. Although many other devs shifted to new r...

The chairman of Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn says the electronics giant is considering making electric vehicles at its mostly empty worksite in Wisconsin, where the company originally planned to make LCD panels. Either that, or Foxconn may make EVs in Mexico. The decision will be made by July 1st, chairman Young Liu said at a press conference Tuesday. Best known for manufacturing iPhones, Foxconn has recently shifted some of its attention to the booming electric vehicle space as a way to diversify its revenue. Late last year, the conglomerate announced an EV platform on which other companies could build. This year, Foxconn announced tie-ups with China’s largest private automaker, Geely, and with a number of EV startups. It has agreed to build an electric vehicle with Fisker Inc., struggl...

Google has announced a new version of its Nest Hub smart display. The updated Nest Hub includes several enhancements over the model that debuted as the Home Hub in 2018, including a refined design, faster processor, and louder speaker. But the most significant upgrade is found in its ability to measure your sleep without requiring you to wear anything. The new Nest Hub is $99.99, comes in four colors, and will be shipping on March 30th, with preorders starting today, March 16th. The new Nest Hub looks basically identical to the prior model, but you can now get it in a light blue color (Google calls it “mist”) in addition to the light pink, light gray, and dark gray options. Google says it has refined the bezel around the screen to be flush with the rest of the frame, which should make it e...

Dropbox is adding a new feature on top of its usual offerings of storage and file sharing for free Basic accounts. Dropbox Passwords, the password management feature the company introduced for paying customers in 2020, will be free for Dropbox Basic accounts in April — with a new, arbitrary limit of 50 passwords that makes it seem suspiciously like a way to upsell you on a paid Dropbox account. Now that LastPass is putting a device limit on its free plans, many are looking for a free alternative, and Dropbox Passwords will indeed allow you to sync your passwords across three devices for free. Like other password managers, it exists as a web browser extension, a mobile app on iOS and Android, and desktop applications on MacOS, Windows, and Linux. But other free password managers, like Bitwa...

When she thinks of pay equity these days, Katie Moussouris thinks of her mother Anuncia. “The fact that she was never, ever paid what she was worth impacted every single aspect of our life,” Moussouris says. “She died before she could even retire, 10 years ago in June.” An indigenous Chamorro woman from an island just north of Guam, Anuncia worked as an infertility specialist, researching in vitro fertilization and stem cell techniques. Part of her work meant training other doctors, many of whom went on to far more lucrative practices on their own. Anuncia was left to make ends meet on far lower wages as a single mother. “Pay inequity hurts families,” Moussouris says, “And in my case, I really do feel like my mom should have been able to retire and take it a lot easier earlier in her life,...

A couple weeks ago, Facebook briefly turned off the ability for anyone in the world to post links from Australian news publishers. They just blocked ‘em with a little message. This is a real thing that happened. The company, along with Google, was locked into a fight with the Australian government over something called the Media Bargaining Code, which would have required social platforms and search engines to pay news publishers for linking to their work. Just linking to it. This was a big deal — it would change the way the web works. Both Google and Facebook threatened to leave Australia over the proposed law, until Google cut a deal with Australia’s biggest news organizations, and Facebook turned off their access to the news feed entirely. After a few days, the law was slightly changed, ...

Logitech’s latest earbuds, a $50 model called the G333, are unremarkable in terms of design, with a flat cable that houses an inline remote and mic, swappable silicone ear tips, and the ability to connect to gadgets via a 3.5mm jack. What makes them stand out is the included 3.5mm-to-USB-C adapter. If your phone or other audio device lacks a headphone jack but has a USB-C port to spare, you’re all set to plug in with this model. With the adapter attached, I had no issues hooking up the G333 to my 3.5mm-less Pixel 3, my Nintendo Switch, or through a USB-C port on the MacBook Pro I use for work. Also included with these earbuds are two additional sizes of silicone ear tips and a small mesh carrying case. The G333 looks almost identical to Logitech’s other two gaming earbuds: the $50 G333 VR ...

A new season of Fortnite is upon us, and the latest digs even deeper into the battle royale’s reality-spanning narrative. Today, Epic Games officially launched season 6 of the game’s second chapter, which is dubbed “Primal.” It takes place directly after the “Zero Crisis Finale” that concluded season 5 and introduces a new prehistoric biome to the island. When players start playing the season for the first time, they’ll be greeted with a quick cinematic — which you can watch below — following a short-yet-intense single-player adventure where you help Agent Jonesy attempt to save reality. [embedded content] That new setting includes a towering spire in the center of the island — right where the zero point explosion from season 5 took place — which is surrounded by a village and other new lo...

Cricut machines offer a customizable, automated way to speed up the precise cutting required in crafting projects, but the capabilities of these devices are about to be limited by an upcoming update. Cricut is updating the machines’ accompanying software, Design Space, by putting caps on uploads that could restrict the number of projects Cricut owners are actually able to make. Getting a Cricut ready to cut requires using premade patterns or uploading original designs to an application called Design Space. That’s been free and unlimited for all users in the past, but now Cricut is limiting users to 20 free uploads per month. To upload more, owners will soon have to subscribe to Cricut’s Access Standard plan for $9.99 per month / $95.88 per year or Access Premium plan for $118.88 per year. ...