Technology

Waymo is introducing a raft of new features designed to make its fleet of autonomous taxis more accessible to passengers with visual impairments and other disabilities. The new features are sure to draw attention when they start hitting the streets. They include displaying the rider’s initials on the rooftop dome as a visual way to identify their assigned vehicle at a near-to-medium distance. The display shows the user’s customizable “Car ID,” which consists of two colored letters that can be configured via the Waymo app. Another feature offers turn-by-turn navigation to guide the rider on the most appropriate path to their awaiting robotaxi, utilizing data on sidewalks, crosswalks, and other terrain features to provide the most suitable route. Waymo The Alphabet-owned company, which first...

Elden Ring just got a bit easier for single-player purists. Patch 1.06, released today, adds a new way to advance the quest of White Mask Varré — something that previously involved using the multiplayer system to invade other players’ worlds. Now, Varré will let you defeat a new character in order to join his assassins’ order, something that grants early access to a major area of the game. This comes alongside a variety of other changes, including the option to invade or help players across a much larger distance. Varré’s multiplayer demand was a rare sore point for people — including me — who either weren’t interested in player-versus-player dueling or played in offline mode. Avoiding his quest didn’t completely lock you out of any areas, but it delayed one of them until fairly late in th...

Apple finally added the battery percent indicator back to the status bar in the latest iOS 16 beta, and as my colleague Victoria Song wrote, it’s hideous. I’m normally somebody who keeps battery percentages off anyway, but the new one seems like it’s just bad. As Victoria pointed out, one particularly egregious issue is that the icon’s “battery” is full no matter what the percentage says, which makes the icon harder to parse. That said, I’ve seen one mockup that’s in line with the new style for the battery percentage indicator but is far more glanceable. Check it out, from Brian Michel, engineering manager at The Browser Company: To me, this mockup is much easier to understand in a pinch, which is what I want when glancing quickly to see how long I can get by without a charge. I love how t...

Following the debut of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, it was only a matter of (apologies) time before the Pokémon anime started focusing on stories about the Sinnoh region’s distant past when it was first settled by humans. While animated shorts like Hisuian Snow have delved a bit into the Sinnoh region’s history by introducing new characters, the mainline anime’s about to give Ash Ketchum yet another crash course in dealing with the legendary pokémon whose power shaped the land. Today, The Pokémon Company announced that the English dub of Pokémon: The Arceus Chronicles, a new animated special, is making its way to Netflix this September after first premiering at the 2022 Pokémon World Championships in London this August. Originally released in Japan as four episodes of Pokémon Journeys: The Ser...

Google has yet to launch its first smartwatch, but the company may already be working on the next steps for its wearable plans. According to a Protocol report, Google is planning to integrate fitness trackers into Google TV and Android TV as part of a broader push to strengthen its product ecosystem. The question is whether the historically fragmented Wear OS platform is up for the challenge. The company purportedly laid out the plans at a closed-door event with its TV partners, Protocol reports. The idea is to let Wear OS and Fitbit users broadcast real-time metrics like heart rate and calories burned on the screen. Better smart home controls are also part of the plan. That said, these efforts may take a while. Google’s fitness plans supposedly won’t show up until 2023 at the earliest, wi...

Here come some new challengers. At the end of EVO 2022’s Street Fighter V tournament, Capcom revealed two more characters coming to the roster of Street Fighter 6: Juri, the “I can fix her” returning fighter, and newcomer Kimberly, an ‘80s-obsessed teen. Kimberly, the spunky new ninja, and Juri, the sadistic thrill-seeker, join #StreetFighter6 when it arrives in 2023! Spray cans, a portable cassette player, and motorcyles have never looked more fresh. ️ pic.twitter.com/Lnw87p27aP — Street Fighter (@StreetFighter) August 8, 2022 Student of Guy and successor to the bushinryu tradition, Kimberly is spunky and colorful with an affinity for spray painting her enemies midmatch. Though Kimberly is a teenager and Street Fighter 6 seems to be set in the current day, she’s enamored with all t...

For those who may not yet be familiar with it, TikTok is a different type of social media platform. Unlike more traditional platforms like Instagram or Twitter where you manually curate your feeds by choosing to follow others — most likely, people you know — TikTok uses an algorithm to curate a highly personalized feed of videos. This algorithm can get shockingly specific as it gathers the videos it thinks you’ll like. TikTok’s main page is named the For You page — and that really means for you. For instance, after I’d been on TikTok for a while, the algorithm figured out that I’m a grown-up emo kid (it was never a phase, Mom) who is trying to learn French, spends too much time playing The Sims 4, and is also queer. But TikTok’s algorithm didn’t get that shockingly specific by itself. It t...

1Password is launching a big update to its Android and iOS apps today. 1Password 8 overhauls the design of the mobile password management apps in many of the same ways the 1Password 8 apps for Windows and Mac were redesigned in recent months. The new mobile interface includes a personalized home tab, which should make it easier to find logins, pin favorites, and organize your passwords. The new personalized homescreen also lets you easily see logins you’ve recently created and even pin individual fields from a login. You can also reorder sections and add quick actions to the home tab, and the navigation bar now provides quick access to search, home, and settings. Search isn’t super obvious in the current 1Password mobile app, and the navigation bar is split into favorites, categories, tags...

The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war is exposing a lesser-known unexpected link between Russia and the United States: the nuclear fuel supply chain. Back in March 2022, President Biden announced sanctions on Russia’s energy exports, specifically oil and gas. But one notable export was left off of that list: uranium. In 2021, the US relied on Russia for 14 percent of its enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. The process of enriching uranium is highly complicated and can only be done in certain countries — including Russia. Uranium fuel starts as uranium ore, a naturally occurring radioactive material. Only very little of this ore is useful for fuel. Once mined, the ore is converted into yellowcake, which is just concentrated uranium. That yellowcake is turned into a gas, which is enriched with the i...

Steam may certainly have the lion’s share when it comes to building a library of PC games, but why would you leave yourself stranded in Valve’s ecosystem when there are mountains of free games and sales on the Epic Games Store and other platforms? For instance, in 2021, the Epic Games Store gave away 89 free games, and GOG is adding new games to its free library all the time. If you had EGS and GOG on your Steam Deck, you could also cash in on all the extra sales that you’d otherwise be missing. Integrating these stores requires a bit of upfront leg work, but it’s totally possible and can pay big dividends if you’re looking to expand the library of your new handheld. Besides, everyone knows that paying full price for games is for suckers. Ready to begin? You’ll need an internet connection ...

Nearly nine months after it stopped taking reservations, Ford is ready to reopen the order banks for the F-150 Lightning. But buyers beware: the price for the electric truck has gone up by around $7,000 across all trim levels. Ford is citing “significant material cost increases and other factors” as the primary reason for raising the price. Indeed, the F-150 Lightning is only the latest electric vehicle to see its price go up as a result of supply chain constraints, inflation, and greater demand for batteries and other components. “Significant material cost increases and other factors” Ford said it will honor the original manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) for all current reservation holders. But anyone plunking down the $100 deposit starting Thursday, when reservations reopen, wil...