A digital frame may seem like too obvious of a gift — but that's for a reason. They actually improve upon something we all have around our homes, allowing you to display more of your favorite photos all the time. Engadget's favorite option in this space, the Aura Carver Mat, is on sale for Prime Day, down from $179 to only $141.
While many digital photo frames are a mixed bag at best, the Aura Carver Mat topped Engadget's best digital frames list because it's simple to set up and looks great. The 10.1-inch frame is made of plastic and designed to be used in landscape, and it makes for a convincing copy of traditional mat photo frames. Aura's designed the Carver to rotate through the photos you upload on its own, but there's also a built-in touch bar that can be used to swipe forwards and backwards through your collection, if you want.
Buying into Aura's system means committing to a device that has to be connected to the internet to work, but Aura's app for adding photos is easy-enough to use that it should more than make up for it. You can even set the app to automatically upload new photos from a specific album if you want. That feature, along with the ability for multiple accounts to add photos to a single frame, makes the Aura Carver Mat perfect for families who might not all live in the same place. Speaking from experience, grandparents love being able to receive fresh photos of their grandkids without having to lift a finger.
A $150 Amazon Echo Show 8 could make for a formidable alternative to the Aura Carver Mat, especially if you're interested in having a voice assistant on-call to control your smart home. The single-minded focus of Aura's device — especially at $141, within spitting distance of last year's $139 low — is its real charm, though, something you just won't get from an Echo Show.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/prime-day-has-our-favorite-digital-photo-frame-in-stock-and-on-sale-for-20-percent-off-101539085.html?src=rss
If you already plan on using Prime Day as an excuse to upgrade your home theater, Amazon has a great deal on one of its premium streaming dongles that could be the perfect thing to complete your setup. The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max is available for $25 off for Prime Day, lowering its normal price from $60 to $35. That's $2 away from its lowest price of $33.
While we still prefer Amazon's Fire TV Stick HD as a budget streaming option, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max could be worth the upgrade for you. Amazon's device supports 4K video, Dolby Atmos, HDR10+ and if you have a newer router, Wi-Fi 6E. It's the best option if you're committed to the dongle-lifestyle — the even-more-powerful Fire TV Cube needs a TV stand to rest on — and a surprisingly great choice if you're looking for a capable retro game console.
Amazon's also added in several features to the Fire TV Stick 4K Max that take it beyond a basic streamer. The built-in Ambient Experience lets the dongle display art and widgets when you're not using your TV, not unlike Samsung's The Frame and The Frame Pro. The Fire TV Stick 4K Max can also stream games from Xbox Game Pass using the Xbox app or Amazon Luna.
The only real reasons to not consider Amazon's platform is if you don't like using Alexa, which acts as the main voice interface for all Fire TVs, don't want to be pushed towards Amazon's services or your subscriptions are tangled up in another platform. You can buy subscriptions to a variety of streaming services and live channels through Amazon Prime Video, but if you've already done that on Apple TV+ for example, you might want to wait out your subscription before jumping ship.
This is just one of a few Fire TV deals you can snag for Prime Day. Others include the Fire TV Cube for $90 and the Fire TV Stick HD for $18.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/amazon-prime-day-deals-include-the-fire-tv-stick-4k-max-on-sale-for-35-122512260.html?src=rss
E Ink, the company behind the highly readable displays you'll find in ereaders the world over, has created a new touchscreen trackpad for some reason. And rather than act as an extension of your laptop's screen, E Ink thinks it should be a dedicated home for AI interactions.
The new touchscreen trackpad appears to use a color E Ink display, not unlike what you'll find on the Kobo Libra Colour or the Kindle Colorsoft, and is supposed to offer the normal swiping, tapping, dragging and clicking functionality of a normal trackpad. When you're not using it like that, E Ink imagines the trackpad offering "second-screen capabilities," like quick access to "frequently used shortcuts and system notifications and GenAI contents like text/image summaries, gaming tactics, or custom AI tasks."
E Ink says it leveraged several different Intel technologies to prototype its AI tools, and it specifically designed the trackpad so it's useable even if your laptop is off. Unfortunately, that doesn't make the idea of cramming a touchscreen into a laptop trackpad any less whack.
E Ink
Using an E Ink display is novel, sure, but plenty of attempts have been made to turn the seemingly untapped resource of the trackpad into another place for content, and none of them have caught on. ASUS in particular has taken multiple bites at the apple with its ScreenPad feature, which it first introduced on the ZenBook Pro 15. The ScreenPad could be an extension of your main display, but it also ran simple apps and widgets. E Ink believes one of the advantages of its trackpad is that it'll consume less power than those previous versions, but was anyone worried about a laptop's trackpad affecting its battery life before they also had to be screens?
Putting a display in a trackpad isn't going to be the reason anyone upgrades to a premium laptop. Beyond that, it's just not intuitive. You have to both learn to look down to see what's on the trackpad and learn not to cover it, something hands naturally do while using a laptop.
If you're not dissuaded, E Ink hasn't actually shared when its trackpad will be available. Given the use of the Intel tech, though, odds are good it shows up in an expensive "AI PC" at some point in the future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/neither-ai-nor-e-ink-can-make-touchscreen-trackpads-a-good-idea-202505733.html?src=rss
It's nearly the end of the road for Warcraft Rumble. Blizzard has announced that it will no longer be developing new content for the free-to-play mobile strategy game, and instead focus on "regular, systemic in-game events and bug fixes." The change comes as the rest of Microsoft's business is in upheaval: The company is laying off as many as 9,000 employees across its global workforce.
Blizzard's statement doesn't get into the details of what motivated the decision, but is clear that Warcraft Rumble hasn't been living up to expectations. The game "struggled to find its footing" relative to Blizzard's ambitions, prompting the studio to explore different options to improve it over the last few years. "Some of that work showed signs of progress, but ultimately wasn’t enough to put the game on a path to sustainability," Blizzard writes.
Warcraft Rumble was announced in 2019 as Warcraft Arclight Rumble. Much like Hearthstone, the game was a high-profile attempt to translate a popular Blizzard franchise into something that works on smartphones and tablets. Warcraft Rumble plays like a more flexible version of Clash Royale, where miniaturized armies face off in PVP or singe-player challenges, and the biggest strategic choices are when and where characters are placed.
Aftermath reports that winding down Warcraft Rumble is a direct result of the wider Microsoft layoffs effecting Blizzard. While some of the team who created new content for Rumble will be given new roles at the studio, others will be let go, according to a staff email sent by Blizzard president Johanna Fairies that Aftermath viewed. Blizzard's public statement doesn't acknowledge these layoffs beyond a mention that the studio is "focused on supporting [its] teammates," which is telling in context.
While Warcraft Rumble will live on for now in a diminished state, some future Xbox games have been outright cancelled as a result of Microsoft's restructuring, including Everwild and Perfect Dark. The bigger damage is the loss of talent. Gregg Mayles, the lead designer on Donkey Kong Country and creative director of Sea of Thieves, is leaving Rare, according to Video Game Chronicle. ZeniMax Online Studios shared on X that director Matt Firor is also making an exit following the cancellation of the studio's next MMO.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/blizzard-is-giving-up-on-its-warcraft-mobile-game-amid-layoffs-215021940.html?src=rss
The Initiative, the Xbox studio developing a modern reimagining of Perfect Dark, is being shut down, and development of the game is ending. As first reported by Windows Central, the studio's closure is part of major cuts Microsoft is making across its business, affecting around four percent of the company's global workforce.
Based on a memo from Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty obtained by Windows Central, which Microsoft has confirmed is genuine, the decision to close The Initiative was born out of the cancellation of Perfect Dark, rather than the other way around. "We have made the decision to stop development of Perfect Dark and Everwild as well as wind down several unannounced projects across our portfolio," Booty wrote. "As part of this, we are closing one of our studios, The Initiative."
While cancelled games are the most visible impact of Microsoft's layoffs, it increasingly sounds like countless studios will end up being affected in one way or another. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier writes that Call of Duty studio Raven is also facing cuts, and Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10 could end up losing around 50 percent of its staff.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/microsoft-is-closing-the-studio-developing-the-perfect-dark-reboot-and-cancelling-the-game-182257902.html?src=rss
Kobo, a Rakuten subsidiary that sells ebooks and ereaders, has built its name on being a more open and author-friendly version of Amazon Kindle. However, a recent change to the company's self-publishing business has some writers worried that reputation might change. Last month, the company updated its Terms of Service for Kobo Writing Life, its publishing platform, which opened the door to AI features on the platform. With that new contract language going into effect on June 28th, authors seem no clearer on what it will mean for their futures on Kobo.
For authors who haven't broken into (or have opted out of) traditional publishing both Kobo Writing Life and Kindle Direct Publishing offer a way to sell books without needing representation or a publishing deal. If they can provide their work and the information needed to make a store page — and have a willingness to serve as not only author but marketer — they have everything they need to sell their books.
Agreeing to sell on one of these platforms comes with a list of conditions. The biggest is the split of sales. If an author sells their novel for $2.99 or more on Kobo Writing Life, they keep 70 percent of what they earn. On the considerably larger Kindle Direct Publishing platform, there are two royalty options — 35 percent and 70 percent — but both have a confusing litany of compounding factors, some of which can significantly reduce authors' earnings. The calculus of fees vs. exposure makes authors develop strong preferences for the platform they choose. But the terms of service under which their work is published are also important — and apparently subject to change with little warning.
Engadget spoke with three authors who were surprised by Kobo's decision to experiment with AI. All of them noticed the company had published new Terms of Service because of a simple banner notification in the Kobo Writing Life Dashboard. Even now, a month after the terms were changed, the company is unable to clarify how the new terms would apply to existing work. There also isn't a means for authors to opt out. If anyone on Kobo is adamantly against any amount of AI use, their best and only option is to stop publishing there, and probably to pull their existing work from the platform.
The authors we spoke to were surprised that Kobo didn't reach out about the proposed changes in advance, but also that the company was choosing to work with AI at all. "I appreciate their transparency in being candid about their use of AI," Michelle Manus, a fantasy author on Kobo's platform, wrote to Engadget over email. "What I think they vastly underestimated was the extent to which their user base dislikes AI."
Kobo's new terms are explicit in saying that the company does not plan to use authors' work to train generative AI. It does, however, reserve the right to use "artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning algorithms or similar technologies" to "read, analyze, and process" writing for a variety of non-training purposes, including:
"Enhancing the discoverability of Works" with tagging and targeted customer recommendations
"Evaluating the suitability of Works" for sale in the Kobo store
"Generating resources" like "creating keywords, promotional content, targeted advertisements, customer engagement strategies and other materials"
"Providing recaps, reading assistance and accessibility features"
Authors have taken issue with the apparent lack of recourse provided to them. What happens if a work is incorrectly tagged as one genre when its author believes it more directly fits another? Or what if the "promotional material" Kobo generates includes some kind of hallucination? The biggest issue for the writers Engadget spoke to was the potential for Kobo to deploy AI-generated recaps. Amazon implemented a recap tool on Kindle in April, using generative AI to help readers get back into a series or remember where they were in a novel, and some authors have already found examples of the company's AI inaccurately summarizing stories.
"We would have immediately gone, 'Ah, okay, we see what you're trying to do, but we don't think that the thing you're suggesting is going to work to address the problem that you're trying to address," Delilah Waan, a fantasy author and YouTube creator, told Engadget. Since self-published authors tend to be more responsive to their audience, these kinds of issues could actually jeopardize that relationship. "Authors frequently get pushback from readers about plot choices, and I can only imagine the levels to which that could rise if they are receiving incorrect recaps of what happened in a book," Manus wrote.
All of the authors Engadget spoke to admired Kobo's attempts to address complaints in public. On Bluesky, the company's CEO Michael Tamblyn posted a long thread getting into the logic of including an AI clause in the company's terms. Essentially, Tamblyn wrote, Kobo is trying to make the job of connecting readers with authors easier, and streamlining the moderation process that goes into maintaining the Kobo Store, all while avoiding trampling over copyright. "We are completely uninterested in creating new content using authors' books, and don’t do anything that would allow us to do that," Tamblyn wrote. "And we don’t want anyone else to do it either because we are in the business of selling books and would like to be able to keep doing that."
Agreeing to not train generative AI with an author's work is what all professional writers have been encouraged to demand from publishers by The Authors Guild, a professional organization that advocates for writers and is currently participating in a lawsuit against OpenAI. By choosing to not train generative AI on books, Kobo is starting on the right foot. The dubious nature of what material gets fed into an AI model still leaves many questions, though. "Keep in mind, all of the models right now are illegally trained, and I mean all of the big LLMs [Large Language Models]," Mary Rasenberg, the CEO of The Authors Guild, says. "So they may be using an AI system that's not one of the big LLMs, but whatever system they're using may be based on one of the big LLMs."
Kobo did not respond to a request for information about which LLM it plans to use. For work that might be misclassified or mislabelled, the company encouraged authors to contact them via its support email, which authors say has been responsive to complaints so far. The company says it has not begun testing what it describes as a "beta feature" for generating a "personalized recap" in the Kobo app. It notes that it's "not interested in doing whole summaries of books." Instead Kobo plans to make its recaps specific to each reader, around 150 words in length based on both the pages they read in their last reading session and the quotes they highlighted.
Ebook platforms are taking a cautious approach to AI broadly. Authors who publish through the Apple Books platform can have AI-narrated audiobooks generated from their work, but doing so is completely optional. Barnes & Noble's Press platform doesn't currently offer AI products. Amazon's recaps are currently the most invasive use of AI across ebook markets, and authors can't opt out of them."It doesn't matter how much money we're making from Amazon. We all hate dealing with it," Waan said. She made it clear that self-publishing authors are scared of Kobo changing because it currently has author-friendly answers to most of Amazon's products. "I cannot describe how much we want Kobo to succeed, like we are rooting for them," she said.
Every company seems keen to continue pushing the boundaries of where and how invasively it can implement AI. Waan's hope now is that Kobo engages in some kind of open forum with authors about its proposed uses for the technology. "I think it's really hard to decide, as an author, 'am I going to pull my books?,'" Waan said. "Because the minute you pull your books it's a whole headache, because you gotta update all the links. If you have ads running, you gotta pull them. It's not as simple as turning off a light switch." Difficult as it may be, that's a decision self-published authors will increasingly be forced to make.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/ai-might-undermine-one-of-the-better-alternatives-to-the-kindle-123039955.html?src=rss
Elon Musk has reportedly fired Omead Afshar, Tesla's head of manufacturing and operations in North America and Europe, according to Forbes. Both CNBCand Bloomberg corroborated the report. Afshar's exit follows Milan Kovac, the head of engineering on Tesla's Optimus robot, who left the company in early June.
Afshar was promoted to the role last year, Bloomberg reports, after working for multiple different Musk-owned companies since 2017. The timing of his exit isn't particularly surprising given the trouble Tesla has faced selling cars. Sales in Europe have shrunk for a fifth consecutive month and the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association reports that registrations of new Teslas dropped by nearly 41 percent in May. The company is also struggling in China, where sales fell 15 percent in the same month.
While Musk appears to be holding Afshar responsible, the blame clearly lies at Musk's feet. Helping to fund President Donald Trump's re-election in the US, running the destructive DOGE cost-cutting efforts after his election and just generally maintaining a noxious public presence have permanently tainted Musk and his companies. While SpaceX still benefits from government contracts, Tesla's sales are vulnerable to public opinion, something the Tesla Takedown movement has been leveraging to its advantage with protests outside of the company's dealerships.
Firing Afshar, leaving his position in the US government and launching Tesla's robotaxi service in Austin are all different attempts from Musk to change the narrative around Tesla. It's not clear yet whether they'll actually help.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/elon-musk-reportedly-fired-a-key-tesla-executive-following-another-month-of-flagging-sales-205118891.html?src=rss
Google has improved its AI-powered Ask Photos feature and is restarting its rollout to eligible users in the US. The company paused the launch of Ask Photos in early June over issues with latency and the feature's interface.
To make Ask Photos speedier, especially on simple searches for dogs or people, Google says its essentially combining the old Google Photos search with Ask Photos. While Google's Gemini models work in the background, the app can now quickly return basic image recognition-based results for searches. Once the more complex Gemini responses are complete, they're automatically displayed.
Google
Announced at Google I/O 2024, Ask Photos uses AI to let you search through your Google Photos library with natural language queries. Besides structuring results as a chat, Google imagines the featuring being useful for sourcing information that you might not even realize your photo library is storing. You could search for your license plate number, for example, or the restaurant you visited on a specific birthday.
Google started rolling out Ask Photos in September 2024, though the early version of the feature was annoying to deal with. Besides being slow to return responses, it also replaced the faster, more traditional search in the app's menu bar. If you want to access normal search results you have to tap through multiple layers of the Google Photos interface. The new approach splits the difference by combining the results.
Ask Photos is once again rolling out to Google Photos eligible users. In order to receive the new feature, you need to be at least 18 years old, based in the US, have a Google Account with the language set to English and have the Google Photos "Face Groups" feature turned on.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-tweaked-its-ai-powered-ask-photos-feature-and-restarted-its-rollout-192505246.html?src=rss
Senators Marsha Blacburn (R-Tenn.), Mike Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) have reintroduced a bill that would force app store owners like Apple and Google to allow third-party payment systems and sideloading apps, among a collection of other developer-friendly changes. The bill, called the Open App Markets App, was originally introduced in 2021, but it never came up for a vote after passing through the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2022.
The Open App Markets Act applies its changes to app stores with 50,000 monthly users or more, most obviously applicable to the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. Like the original bill, the reintroduced Open App Markets Act wants covered companies to allow things like sideloading, third-party app stores and alternative payments systems, while protecting developers ability to "tell consumers about lower prices and offer competitive pricing." It would also prevent app store operators from privileging their own apps and services in app store search results.
"We created the App Store to be a safe and trusted experience our users love and a fantastic business opportunity for developers in the U.S. and around the world. We face intense competition everywhere we operate, and we are proud to be an engine for innovation and economic growth," an Apple spokesperson says. "We are concerned this EU-style regulation will open our users to new privacy and security risks, and will continue to advocate on their behalf."
While the aims of the new bill are largely the same as the original one, the legal environment is meaningfully different. Apple has been forced to allow third-party app stores and alternative payment systems in the European Union following the introduction of the Digital Markets Act in 2022. Thanks to its failure to make good on the small concession Epic won via its lawsuit, Apple has also been forced to allow developers to direct customers to pay for things outside of the App Store and its in-app payments system. The Open App Markets Act would make these kinds of changes the law in the US.
It seems possible the bill could pass, too. Regulatory pressure on tech companies has only increased since 2021. For example, Utah recently passed an age-verification law that would require app stores to only allow users 18 and up to make an account.
Update, June 26 2025, 1:51PM ET: Added comment from Apple.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/us-senators-reintroduce-bill-to-open-apple-and-googles-app-stores-215037373.html?src=rss
U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) walks on the day of a meeting with Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for defense secretary on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 21, 2024. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
Tesla launched its robotaxi service over the weekend, with only a small number of cars and heavy human supervision on and off the road. While less impressive than previously promised, the company's caution ultimately seems for the best — at least one robotaxi attempted to drive on the wrong side of the road, based on a video posted to X and spotted by Bloomberg.
The ride video shared by Rob Maurer is largely uneventful, with the Tesla navigating turns and lane merges with few issues. Except for around seven minutes or so into the ride, when the Tesla's wheel starts jerking back and forth and the car briefly crosses onto the wrong side of the road. As Bloomberg notes, "a honking horn can be heard as the Tesla re-enters the correct lane over a double-yellow line, which drivers aren’t supposed to cross."
Here’s my entire first Tesla Robotaxi trip from start to finish. Ten miles across south Austin. Timestamps in comments. pic.twitter.com/cr6y4z1UWB
The Tesla may have corrected itself on its own or under the influence of someone monitoring the ride remotely, but the in-car supervisor didn't appear to do anything. That's not the only instance of potentially unsafe driving Bloomberg spotted. Early riders have shared multipleinstances of robotaxis going over the speed limit, though that might be more of a reflection of the cars driving around Tesla's vehicles than their collective need for speed. Waymo, which also operates in Austin, strictly follows the posted speed limit as a rule.
Tesla's Full Self-Driving system has been heavily criticized in anticipation of the company's robotaxi launch and the eventual introduction of its Cybercab, which doesn't have a steering wheel. Earlier in June, The Dawn Project staged a demonstration showing a self-driving Tesla plowing through child-sized mannequins eight times in a row. The company's Full Self-Driving system is also currently being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over its involvement in four different crashes.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/teslas-first-robotaxi-rides-are-already-running-into-a-few-bumps-205308245.html?src=rss
The National Science Foundation just shared the first images captured by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a sample of the footage it'll capture as part of a planned decade-long survey that's starting later in 2025. The project, dubbed the "Legacy Survey of Time and Space" is predicted to lead to the discovery of "millions of new asteroids within the first two years" the survey is running.
In just a 10 hour period, the National Science Foundation says that the Rubin Observatory "discovered 2,104 never-before-seen asteroids in our solar system, including seven near-Earth asteroids." The long-term survey project could lead to even more insights, particularly into larger cosmic unknowns like dark matter and dark energy.
The idea is appropriate given the observatory's origins. Jointly funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the Large Synoptic Telescope in Cerro Pachón, Chile was renamed the Vera C. Rubin Observatory after astronomer Vera C. Rubin, who's research into gravitational rotation was used as conclusive evidence of the existence of dark matter.
The short video embedded above should give you a good sense of the scale of the Rubin Observatory's operation. That's a stitched together view of about 10 million galaxies captured during 10 hours of photography, "roughly .05 percent of the approximately 20 billion galaxies" the observatory will capture during its survey.
"The amount of data gathered by Rubin Observatory in its first year alone will be greater than that collected by all other optical observatories combined," the National Science Foundation says. "This treasure trove of data will help scientists make countless discoveries about the universe and will serve as an incomparable resource for scientific exploration for decades to come."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/the-vera-c-rubin-observatory-shares-first-images-from-planned-decade-long-survey-of-the-sky-192557094.html?src=rss
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