Technology

The pandemic has made ordering restaurant takeout a little less of a guilty pleasure, both because it’s safer and it helps support local businesses. Google is now trying to make the process faster, too, by having Google Assistant fill in contact information and payment details automatically on Android phones after you find a restaurant via Google Search. To use the new feature, you have to search for whatever restaurant you’d like to order from in the Google app, then select the “Order Online” button on the restaurant’s information card. After making your food selections, you can tag in Google Assistant to complete the order using your stored contact and payment information from Google Pay and Chrome Autofill. Assistant then confirms you’re ready to pay, and the order is placed. There are ...

Nintendo broadcast its latest “Indie World Showcase” today, and the 20-minute event was pretty packed full of announcements for upcoming Switch games. There’s a good amount of variety, too: everything from fantastical skateboarding worlds to procedurally generated road trips to a puzzle classic that’s available later today. If you missed out on the presentation, here are the highlights. Road 96. Road 96 Described as “a narrative-focused game with a mix of adventure, exploration, and puzzle-solving,” Road 96’s story features procedurally generated elements, meaning no two road trips will be exactly alike, and choice will also play a big part in how it unfolds. It’s expected to launch on the Switch later this year. Oxenfree II: Lost Signals A surprise sequel to the incredibly surreal adventu...

TCL is once again teasing a foldable phone concept — and it’s a Frankenstein’s monster of some previously showcased flexible concepts. Called Fold ‘n Roll, it combines the company’s “dragonhinge” technology with an extendable display panel. The result is a 6.87-inch phone that can expand to an 8.85-inch phablet size or fully extend to a 10-inch tablet. Outside of that, the company isn’t offering any other detailed information. TCL says it’s “still exploring the technical specifications” of this type of device, which doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence that the Fold n’ Roll will hit the market anytime soon. But TCL did say it plans to launch some kind of foldable phone before the end of 2021. The company has offered no shortage of foldable display concepts; most recently, it had several to ...

Sony’s new PS5 software update is live right now, and includes some surprise improvements to HDR and 120Hz support. While Sony already detailed a big new feature to let players store — but not play — PS5 games on an external hard drive, there’s also a new option to automatically switch video output to non-HDR when you’re using a game or app that doesn’t support HDR. This is a key improvement for those using HDR on the PS5, as it now means you no longer have to dig into the settings menu to manually disable HDR when you’re viewing SDR content. Alongside these HDR changes, this update also adds two new HDMI controls in the system part of the PS5 settings menu. You can now toggle one-touch play, which will automatically turn on a connected TV when you power up a PS5 and switch it to the corre...

Urbanista’s new wireless noise-canceling Los Angeles headphones have a solar panel integrated into the length of the headband, allowing them to draw power from both indoor and outdoor light, Wired reports. Although its built-in 750mAh battery can be charged traditionally via USB-C and offers up to a respectable 50 hours of battery life, the real appeal to these headphones is the solar charging. They’re due to ship in early summer for £169 (around $232), according to Wired. Although Urbanista’s site promises “infinite playtime” from the headphones, the exact amount of power these headphones can generate while solar charging varies. One hour spent in the sun should generate enough power for three hours of playtime, but on a cloudy day that drops to just two hours, the company says. In a wors...

USB microphones are great for creators starting out in podcasting — until they have to mic more than one person in a room. There hasn’t been an efficient way to simultaneously record multiple USB mics on one computer, so now Rode is introducing an app that starts to offer a solution. Rode’s new app, Rode Connect, lets you record multitrack or mixed stereo audio when plugging up to four USB microphones into your computer. There’s one big catch, though: for now, you can only do this with one model of USB microphone — Rode’s $99 NT-USB Mini. You can think of the app as a virtual version of Rode’s $599 hardware mixer, the Rodecaster Pro, which allows you to plug in multiple XLR microphones, play audio clips, and record locally. The Rode Connect does that in an app on your computer with USB mic...

When Daniel McGloin decided to trade in his mid-2017 Apple MacBook in February of this year, he thought he was getting a pretty good deal. The software engineer and San Diego native initiated the trade-in with Apple through the Apple Store mobile app, where he was quoted $350 for his used laptop. He felt it was in pretty good condition, with no apparent damage to the case and a fully functioning display and keyboard. So McGloin packed up the device and shipped it in, expecting to receive his money in the coming weeks, which would help offset his purchase of a MacBook Air carrying Apple’s new M1 chip. The situation soon changed after his laptop arrived for inspection. Suddenly, McGloin was told his MacBook was worth just $140, less than half what Apple originally quoted. The mysterious culp...

Last month Nikon announced the development of its highest-end mirrorless camera to date, and now Canon has responded with the announcement of the EOS R3, which ought to fit in a similar bracket. The R3 is still in development and details are thin, but it’s clear that it’ll be positioned above the EOS R5, which is currently Canon’s flagship mirrorless camera. Like Nikon’s upcoming Z9, the EOS R3 looks to be a hefty camera with a built-in vertical grip for shooting in portrait and landscape orientations. The body design and control layout is broadly similar to the EOS-1D X Mark III, Canon’s highest-end pro DSLR, and the body features dust and water resistance. Canon says the EOS R3 will be the first camera to use a new 35mm full-frame stacked CMOS sensor with backside illumination, and its i...

Sony is announcing two new phones today, the Xperia 1 III and the Xperia 5 III. Both are the latest in Sony’s campaign to redefine the Xperia brand as a kind of sibling to its well-regarded Alpha digital cameras. As such, the camera system is once again the main focus, and Sony specifically is touting the “world’s first smartphone with a variable telephoto lens paired with a Dual PD sensor” and improvements to its already fast and accurate autofocus system. Pricing was not announced, but they should both be available in the US “this summer.” Each phone has the basic specs you’d expect on a top-flight Android phone: three cameras on the rear, a Snapdragon 888 processor, and support for 5G. Actually, the 5G support is worth noting because these Xperia phones will be able to work on 5G networ...

The 2022 iPhone lineup will feature substantial changes to the camera system, according to analyst Ming-chi Kuo in an investor note reported on by MacRumors and AppleInsider. Kuo says the high-end iPhones — presumably the Pro range — will use a larger 48-megapixel sensor for the primary camera. Separately, the analyst suggests that 2023 iPhones may start to use Face ID sensors under the screen as a way to get rid of the notch. 48-megapixel sensors have been common in Android phones for years, but this component will reportedly be larger than most. It’ll be a 1/1.3-inch sensor with a pixel size of 1.25µm, according to Kuo. That’s smaller than the 1.7µm pixels in the iPhone 12 Pro Max, but Kuo says that the equivalent pixel size will be more like 2.5µm when the sensor is used for 12-megapixe...

In what’s believed to be an unprecedented move, the FBI is trying to protect hundreds of computers infected by the Hafnium hack by hacking them itself, using the original hackers’ own tools (via TechCrunch). The hack, which affected tens of thousands of Microsoft Exchange Server customers around the world and triggered a “whole of government response” from the White House, reportedly left a number of backdoors that could let any number of hackers right into those systems again. Now, the FBI has taken advantage of this by using those same web shells / backdoors to remotely delete themselves, an operation that the agency is calling a success. “The FBI conducted the removal by issuing a command through the web shell to the server, which was designed to cause the server to delete only the web ...

Oculus is announcing that wireless PC streaming, a 120Hz refresh rate, and improvements to Infinite Office will be coming to the Oculus Quest 2 with the v28 software update, which the company says will be rolling out soon. Infinite Office is a feature that Oculus includes as part of Oculus Home, which lets users work in a virtual environment. With the v28 update, Infinite Office will have an experimental feature that allows users to add a virtual desk where their real-life desk is, letting users know where they can sit and put real-life physical objects down without having to leave VR. The Quest 2 will also be able to show a virtual representation of the Logitech K830 keyboard, though Facebook says that support for visualizing more keyboard models will be coming in the future. Another feat...