Technology

Update September 1st, 10:43AM ET: The following article has been updated following Apple’s termination of Epic Games’ developer account. That action made it impossible to reinstall all Epic apps associated with that account, including Fortnite and the Inifinity Blade trilogy. The headline has been updated to reflect this fact. Fortnite disappeared from the App Store earlier this month as part of developer Epic Games’ big legal and regulatory showdown with Apple, but the battle royale hit was not gone entirely — at least not for a little while. Apple terminated Epic’s developer account last week, making it impossible to reinstall iOS versions of Epic’s apps, but there was a short period of time during which iPhone and iPad owners were still able to get their hands on Fortnite using a lesser...

The difficulty of staying focused in an age of distractions is one of those annoyingly accurate cliches. (I checked my phone three times just writing this paragraph.) But a startup named Auctify has what it claims is the solution: smart glasses that use AI to monitor what you’re looking at and nudge you to pay attention. Depending on your worldview, it’s the product of your dreams or a productivity-hacking nightmare. The glasses are called Specs, and they launch today on Indiegogo. The premise is simple: a camera built into the frame of Specs uses machine learning to identify what you’re looking at, whether that’s a laptop, book, or a fellow human being. It records this data and sends it to a connected app where users can take action in a number of ways. Machine learning tracks how you spe...

Dead by Daylight is coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X this year, and not just as a technicality: developer Behaviour Interactive says the next-gen console versions will not only run at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second, but that it’s aiming to create a “remastered edition of the game” as well. Players who purchased the game on current-gen will receive a free next-gen upgrade The PS5 and Series X ports won’t be the only ones to receive a graphical update, Behavior promises. Every version of the game will get updated animations, lighting, visual effects, modeling, and textures with the intent to “improve the immersion tenfold, making the environments as realistic as a scary, disturbing nightmare,” the company says. Behaviour Interactive is also promising that players who purchas...

Today let’s talk about the controversy around a militia organizing on Facebook, the violence that followed, and where that leaves the company heading into this week’s planned visit by the president to Kenosha, WI, threatening to stoke more unrest. Kenosha police shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back last week, leading to protests in the city. Two people were killed and a third was injured in a shooting during one of the protests, and a 17-year-old has been charged in connection with the shootings. The afternoon before the murders, a 3,000-member Facebook group calling themselves the Kenosha Guard had advertised an event on Facebook encouraging an armed response to the unrest. It was taken down after the shooting. My colleague Russell Brandom broke the news at The Verge: In a post Tuesda...

A newly awarded patent suggests that Sonos is still hard at work on its debut pair of wireless headphones, and gives us a look at their possible design and functionality, Protocol reports. The patent shows a couple of designs that look similar to other over-ear headphones from the likes of Sony and Sennheiser. It also mentions support for multiple voice assistants via wake words, as well as Sonos-specific features like integrating with an existing multi-room speaker setup. There have been reports that Sonos is working on a pair of headphones for over a year now. In early 2019 Bloomberg was first to report on their existence, and said that the audio company was working on a pair of headphones that would cost over $300 and would include support for multiple voice assistants. Sonos speakers s...

Nvidia is promising “the biggest breakthough in PC gaming since 1999” today with its GeForce event. The graphics card maker looks set to launch a new range of GPUs for PC gaming, based on the company’s new Ampere architecture. Rumors suggest we’ll see the RTX 3000 Series, with an RTX 3080 card and possibly even a Titan-style RTX 3090 flagship GPU. Nvidia focused heavily on raytracing with its previous RTX 2000 Series cards, so it’s likely we’ll hear more about the advancements today especially as both the PS5 and Xbox Series X will support raytracing. When is Nvidia’s GeForce event? Today, Tuesday, September 1st, 2020, at 12PM ET (9AM PT). Where can I see the event? Nvidia will be live streaming its event over on Twitch, and the company is already streaming a countdown to what it describes...

Last year, the US Interior Department, which is responsible for maintaining federal land, grounded its fleet of more than 800 drones over fears they could be compromised by Chinese spies. Now, an internal memo from the department leaked to The Financial Times says the decision is hampering the federal government’s ability to fight wildfires. The grounding of the fleet led to a de facto ban on the purchase of Chinese drones and drones containing Chinese parts. This caused the Interior Department to cancel plans to buy 17 Ignis drones, says the FT. These are specialist UAVs used to start managed burns, a key tool in controlling wildfires. 28 percent fewer controlled burns by the end of the year Without the drones, says the leaked memo, the department has been forced to use crewed aircraft to...

Apple is planning to ship between 75 and 80 million 5G iPhones this year, according to a new Bloomberg report. The figure is in line with or slightly higher than iPhone launch shipments for the last couple of years, suggesting that Apple doesn’t expect the coronavirus pandemic to dampen demand — even though the company has already said the phones will be delayed into October. Bloomberg’s report also contains a broad roundup of what Apple is said to be planning for its fall hardware announcements. Here’s what Mark Gurman and Debby Wu expect: Four new iPhones with OLED screens coming in sizes of 5.4, 6.1, or 6.7 inches; the 6.1-inch size will be an option for both the steel-edged “Pro” line and the lower-end aluminum equivalent to the current iPhone 11. There’ll be a new dark blue color opti...

Sennheiser is today introducing a lower-cost set of true wireless earbuds that slot in below the company’s flagship Momentum True Wireless 2. At $199.95, the new “CX 400BT True Wireless” — so much for simple names, eh Sennheiser? — aim to retain the strong sound quality of the pricier set, though you’re losing out on active noise cancellation. The CX 400BT True Wireless are not what you’d call subtle. They come in either black or white, but there’s no getting around how big they look in the ear no matter which finish you choose. There’s been a trend recently of companies progressing towards more discreet true wireless earbud designs, but Sennheiser obviously isn’t going in that direction. Image: Sennheiser I don’t know whether it’s because the company needs more space for audio components ...

It’s not often I receive a phone I immediately want to show off to everyone around me, but the Asus Zenfone 7 Pro is exactly that. The second I got the device set up, I ran into each of my flatmates’ rooms in turn and happily flipped and un-flipped its three rear cameras, swinging them around the top edge of the phone to turn them into selfie cameras. It’s far from a unique trick (you can find a similar flipping array on last year’s Zenfone 6, among other handsets), but it’s still hardly mainstream. That means the Zenfone 7 Pro is almost guaranteed to get a reaction, whether it’s from friends when you try to take a selfie together or from strangers when you go to make a video call in public. There’s a lot to like about the Zenfone 7 Pro, but you’ve got to get behind the idea of cameras tha...

Astro’s latest wireless gaming headset, the A20 Gen 2, is an upgraded version of the 2017 model. It will ship in October for $119, which is considerably down from the $149 that the previous-generation A20 was priced at. Despite the price cut, Astro says it has increased the wireless range from the 30 feet offered by the first-gen model to 50 feet, and it charges via a convenient USB-C port. The A20 Gen 2 headset will ship in two different color mixes: blue, white, and black for a PlayStation-like vibe or green, white, and black for an Xbox look. Each includes a USB Type-A wireless adapter that lets it easily connect to the console their color mix corresponds to as well as a PC. Each headset can work with the other console out of the box (e.g., the blue headset can work with the Xbox Series...

American Airlines and Delta Air Lines both said they would permanently eliminate fees associated with changing or canceling a flight. The news comes less than a day after United Airlines first announced a permanent end to its change fee policy. All three carriers have been waiving change fees since March 2020, when the novel coronavirus pandemic first disrupted global air travel. With demand dried up, the airlines are seeking to make flying look safe, stress-free, and, most of all, cheap. And that means eliminating many of the fees and surcharges associated with air travel. “We’ve said before that we need to approach flexibility differently than this industry has in the past, and today’s announcement builds on that promise to ensure we’re offering industry-leading flexibility, space and ca...