Technology

While many new wireless headphones and earbuds are already equipped with support for virtual assistants, Google has extended that convenience to more users of wired headphones. As 9to5Google points out, it’s now possible to quickly access Google Assistant features on an Android phone using 3.5mm and USB-C headphones that were previously unsupported. Until now, Google Assistant integration was limited to wireless or wired options “optimized for Google Assistant support.” The company’s USB-C Pixel Buds were one of a few wired headphones to offer rich, hands-free integration with Google Assistant. That’s no longer the case: plugging in a set of “non-optimized” wired headphones will now trigger a notification indicating that you can summon Google Assistant by pressing the action button on your...

Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red’s latest game, has been in development for nearly a decade. It was first announced in May 2012, and it’s had a rocky development cycle, with numerous delays and, in the final stretch of development, a required six-day workweek. But despite the long development, the game didn’t review quite as well as CDPR wanted, meaning developers who had been toiling for years could have been on the brink of losing performance bonuses that were tied to review scores. The studio’s developers won’t have to worry about review scores anymore, though: CDPR will now pay full performance bonuses regardless of the critical reception of the game, according to Bloomberg. “We underestimated the lengths and complexity involved to make this a reality” “We initially had a bonus system th...

The Food and Drug Administration has authorized the use of a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, a landmark moment in the fight to suppress a virus that has killed nearly 300,000 people in the United States and sickened tens of millions around the world. “Today’s emergency use authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine holds the promise to alter the course of this pandemic in the United States,” Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a press release. The vaccine is authorized in the US for people over the age of 16. It was found to be 95 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in clinical trials. “That is extraordinary,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disea...

iFixit has released its teardown of the PlayStation 5 and its DualSense controller — and it goes into even more detail than the one Sony did earlier this year. The gadget repair company discovered that the console has a ton of screws holding it together, and that there’s a weird catch to replacing the optical drive. The company also released a always-fun X-ray of the PS5Photo: Creative Electron (via iFixit) It turns out that the optical drive is software-locked to the motherboard. The physical swap is apparently a piece of cake, but any replacement you put in won’t read disks, so if your optical drive fails you’ll be sending it to Sony. It’s a bummer, especially for me: I’ve had terrible luck with PlayStation optical drives, and the only drive I haven’t had to replace is the one on my PS4 ...

Microsoft tweeted a fake commercial for a pretend holiday album called Microsoft Holiday Hits, a not-real, four-CD album that claims it features “60 festive favorites.” I want to reiterate that this is not a real album — but the company actually went to the effort to record tidbits of Microsoft-themed versions of classic Christmas carols anyway for the lols. I dearly love puns, dad humor, and terrible jokes, but even I groaned at some of what Microsoft did here. Here are the lyrics to one eye-rolling carol: Joy to the Word / spellcheck is done It fixed all of my stuff Or how about this classic? I look forward to hearing your collective sighs of despair over the Internet: Please Mute Ye Merry Gentlemen / You’re talking far too loud We’re trying to have a meeting / You’re yelling in a crowd ...

Norman Abramson, one of the pioneers behind wireless networks, has died at 88, The New York Times reports. Abramson and the team of graduate students and faculty he led were responsible for creating ALOHAnet, an early wireless network whose innovative techniques are still being used today in modern satellite, phone, and computer networks. Abramson died of skin cancer that had metastasized in his lungs, according to The New York Times. An engineer and student of communications theory — a discipline at the intersection of mathematics, information theory, and semiotics — Abramson studied at Harvard, and he received a master’s at UCLA and a PhD from Stanford. He was drawn to Hawaii partly because of his love of surfing, and in 1966, took a faculty position at the University of Hawai’i (UH) Mān...

Familiars.io is a minimalist monster-catching game that went online last year, and right now, you can play it inside Twitter. As developer Nigel Nelson tweeted this afternoon, he ported (or in his words, “smuggled”) the entire game to an embedded Twitter card. That means that you can play it directly through Twitter’s web interface or mobile app. The game is built around Pokémon-style exploration and combat in a shared, lo-fi setting. You can wander around capturing enemies to expand your team of familiars, then use them to fight other players (or simply walk around saying “howdy,” if you prefer.) “Me and my brother used to do this thing where we would start new games on Pokémon Red and Blue, progress through the game as fast as we could in a 3-hour period, and then fight each other with o...

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red (CDPR) is rolling out an update to the game that could reduce the potential for some sequences to induce epileptic symptoms. The risks of seizure were brought to light by Game Informer editor Liana Ruppert earlier this week. The 1.04 hotfix is now live on PlayStation consoles and PC, and CDPR is working to have the update out “as soon as possible” on Xbox. CDPR says it has changed the way its “braindance” sequences look. During these sequences, a device is placed in front of your character’s eyes that flashes red and white lights. The effect is similar to what actual neurologists do to trigger seizures for diagnoses, according to Ruppert, who reported that she suffered an epileptic episode when she played the game. The flashing effect during braindan...

This week, United Airlines pledged to completely eliminate its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To make good on that promise, the company says it will invest in emerging technologies that capture planet-heating carbon dioxide from the air. It also plans to continue powering its flights with sustainable aviation fuel. United is the latest airline to respond to consumers’ growing concerns about climate change and make ambitious commitments to reduce its effects on the environment. Delta announced in February that it would spend $1 billion over 10 years to become carbon neutral by reducing and canceling out emissions with carbon offsets and carbon removal schemes. JetBlue joined a Climate Pledge initiative last week that commits it to becoming carbon neutral by 2040. The new steps United is ...

You may have never heard of the company X-Mode Social, but its code may be in some of the apps on your phone, tracking and selling your location data. Now, Google and Apple are trying to put a stop to it. According to a Wall Street Journal article, the tech companies have told developers to remove X-Mode’s code from their apps, or risk getting them pulled from their respective app stores. X-Mode works by giving developers code to put into their apps, known as an SDK, which tracks users’ location and then sends that data to X-Mode, which sells it. In return, X-Mode pays the developer a certain amount based on how many users the app has. According to the company, its technology is in over 400 apps, including many apps designed for Muslim users, such as one that reminds users when to pray, an...

If you’ve noticed that you’re receiving SMS texts and iMessages from people but aren’t getting any notifications about them, you’re not alone. Far from it. I’m one of many people experiencing an annoying bug where messages come through fine — but without any pop-up notification or even the usual red badge to indicate that there’s a new message waiting to be read. Last month, MacRumors wrote about increasing reports of the problem on the new iPhone 12, 12 mini, 12 Pro, and 12 Pro Max phones. But it seems to also be affecting people with older iPhones as well, so this is looking more and more like an iOS 14 issue. What’s more aggravating about the glitch is that it doesn’t always happen. I’ve noticed some messages pop up on my lock screen like normal, but others just quietly roll in wi...

Christopher Nolan recently went on a very public tirade about the importance of movies, including his, being seen on the big screen — but if anyone’s interested in watching Tenet’s opening prologue, they can do so now on YouTube. Warner Bros. has posted the film’s first six minutes on YouTube ahead of the movie’s digital release next week. Don’t worry about spoilers for the time-warping heist film, there aren’t any. (I saw Tenet when it was released at a theater in suburban Canada; it was me and one other person at the other end of the theater.) The scene follows John David Washington’s Protagonist and a couple of other characters as they enter an auditorium to complete a mission. That’s really all you need to know. It’s a pretty fun, entirely Christopher Nolan segment that works on its ow...