Category: I-phone

Apple didn't even touch on the HomePod line during its iPhone 13 event, but that doesn't mean the smart speakers will go untouched this fall. 9to5Macnotes an impending version 15 update will make the HomePod considerably more useful, particularly if it's part of a larger smart home. To start, you can set two or more HomePod minis as your default speakers for an Apple TV 4K. You won't have to specify them when it's time to sit down for a movie. They won't exactly produce thunderous audio, but they could save you from buying separate smart speakers or a pricier soundbar.

You also won't have to approach your HomePod to use Siri. The update enables Siri voice control through supporting HomeKit accessories. While Apple's smart home ecosystem isn't nearly as large as Amazon's or Google's, that could be handy if you want to quickly turn the lights on.

Other improvements are subtler, but could be valuable in the right circumstances. You can ask Siri to turn on your Apple TV, play a title and control playback. You'll automatically see playback controls on your lock screen if a nearby HomePod mini is playing music. You'll get notifications if compatible HomeKit Secure Video cameras and doorbells detect a package at your door. This is also a big update if you've ever woken your partner or neighbors by mistake — Siri will adjust its speaking volume based on both the room and your own voice, and you can specify a lower bass level to avoid irritating people in the apartment below.

Apple didn't outline the HomePod update's release timing, but it's likely to arrive on September 20th alongside iOS 15 and watchOS 8. Don't assume you'll get the vaunted spatial audio or Apple Music lossless updates, however. The release notes don't indicate support will be available with version 15, so you'll likely have to wait for a follow-up patch to experience more immersive HomePod sound.

Battlefield 2042, the next entry in EA's long-running first-person shooter series, has been delayed. Instead of coming out on October 22nd as previously announced, the game is now scheduled to debut almost a month later on November 19th. EA announced the delay in a message attributed to Oskar Gabrielson, the CEO of series developer DICE. Like many other studios over the last two years, DICE blamed the delay on the coronavirus pandemic.      

"Given the scale and scope of the game, we had hoped our teams would be back in our studios together as we move towards launch," Gabrielson said. "With the ongoing conditions not allowing that to happen safely, and with all the hard work the teams are doing from home, we feel it is important to take the extra time to deliver on the vision of Battlefield 2042 for our players."

DICE promised to share details on Battlefield 2042's upcoming open beta later this month. While the delay means series fans will have to wait longer to play the sequel to 2018's Battlefield 5, it's still coming out in 2021. That's not something you can say of some of the games that were pushed back this year like Dying Light 2 and Horizon Forbidden West.  

SpaceX is making history by launching the first ever all-civilian mission to orbit, and you can watch it happen live. The aerospace corporation is opening a five-hour launch window for the mission called Inspiration4 today, September 15th, at 8:02PM Eastern time. Inspiration4 was paid for a billionaire who was relatively unknown before this: Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman. He's bringing three more people with him, and none of them are trained astronauts or have been to space before.

Isaacman, who's an experienced pilot, will be the mission's commander, while Hayley Arceneaux will be its medical officer. Arceneaux is a physician assistant at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital who had cancer herself as a child. According to The Atlantic, one of the goals for this mission is to raise $200 million for the hospital, and Isaacman wanted to bring one of its employees. 

Geoscience professor and former NASA astronaut program finalist Sian Proctor will serve as the mission pilot. Finally, data engineer and Iraq War veteran Chris Sembroski will serve as mission specialist. Proctor won an online competition organized by Isaacman, while Sembroski got his slot from a friend who won a raffle for a seat on the mission.

The team trained together for six months and completed a full rehearsal of launch day activities on September 13th. They'll spend three days orbiting our planet aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule that will blast off on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. While they're hurtling across space, the team will conduct scientific research meant to provide more data on the effects of long-duration spaceflights on the human body. 

SpaceX has started streaming the event on its website and its YouTube page. Netflix will also stream the launch on YouTube.

Update 9/15/21 9:45PM ET: The Inspiration4 mission successfully blasted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida shortly after 8PM today.

Psyonix has revealed details for the next Rocket League Championship Series season, and it's looking to take the esport to new heights. Not only will the 2021-22 RCLS have the biggest prize pool of any season with $6 million up for grabs, there will be three new regions in the biggest expansion to date.

The inclusion of the Asia-Pacific North, Asia-Pacific South and Middle East & North Africa regions mean that players in dozens more countries can compete in pro Rocket League in the upcoming season. Teams in Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and several other nations can take part in the RCLS for the first time.

Although the Sub-Saharan Africa region won't have full participation in the 2021-22 RCLS, teams there still have a shot at getting to the World Championship. Two wildcard spots are earmarked for the best teams from tournaments in that region. 

The 2021-22 RCLS regular season will run from October 15th until July 3rd, with the World Championship wildcard and main event tournaments scheduled for later that month. Sixteen teams will qualify for the wildcard tournament. The top eight will join another eight squads that progress directly to the main event. The championship-winning team will earn $600,000.

Psyonix hopes to hold events with fans depending on how the COVID-19 situation evolves. The Fall Major in Stockholm, Sweden will take place without a live audience.

It's neat to see Rocket League take a step toward becoming a true global esport. It might secretly be the best esport for casual viewers. As long as you know the basic rules of soccer (get the ball in the goal), it's super easy to follow and understand what's going on. It's a blast to watch with a crowd. Here's hoping things are safe enough for Psyonix to run events with fans this season.

You no longer need to use the likes of Chrome or Safari if you want the occasional suggestions for web searches. Mozilla is rolling out a Firefox Suggest feature that, as the name implies, offers relevant links when you're typing in a search, whether from the general web or from Pocket. Look for Costa Rica, for instance, and you'll get a Wikipedia link to help you learn more about the country.

The company is also working on contextual suggestion that rely on sending typed searches, click info and "city-level" location info. That may raise concerns given Firefox's historical focus on privacy, but Mozilla stressed the handful of early US users would have to opt-in.

The larger concern may be the objectivity of some Suggest links. Mozilla also plans to recommend content from "sponsored, vetted partners," such as an eBay link when you look for Vans shoes. While Mozilla is promising "credible" material, these won't necessarily be the most logical, organic suggestions possible. You can simply launch a standard web search to ignore these de facto ads, but this does mean you'll want to look carefully at some links before you click them.

From the opening scene of Iron Man back in 2008, the military-industrial complex has been stitched into the fabric of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Captain America, the Hulk, War Machine and Captain Marvel are all involved in it to some extent. But the portrayal has always tilted toward the positive due to Hollywood’s long-standing partnership with the US military. This week’s What If…? uses the freedom offered by animation to go a little dark on the subject and show us how easily the business of war could have overrun the narrative.

The point of divergence this time around is that Erik Killmonger is apparently assigned to an undercover mission with the Ten Rings and, in the process, ends up saving Tony Stark’s life. So Tony is never injured and forced to build the Iron Man suit, instead continuing his war profiteering ways — though now with a new BFF at his side. Instead of becoming someone who buries himself in his work (and builds a literal suit of armor to protect himself) Tony instead lashes out, with Killmonger all-too-ready to point him in the direction of taking down Wakanda.

This pulls Wakanda into the narrative a lot sooner than its main-timeline debut in 2006’s Captain America: Civil War. The country’s isolationist policy has been used as the retcon for why we never heard a peep from Wakanda sooner but it quickly comes to the forefront here, in lieu of all the stories that spun out of the initial attack on Stark: the conflict with Obadiah Stane and Tony’s palladium poisoning in the first two Iron Man films, and then later the attack on Sokovia in Age of Ultron and Baron Zemo’s revenge scheme in Civil War. General Ross even makes an appearance here, casting doubt on whether the events of The Incredible Hulk even still happened the same way. Instead of being introduced to Wakanda through a UN peace conference, instead they’re a country on the defensive against a horde of mechanical forces.

Marvel Studios

The episode makes it quickly apparent how much of the MCU was dependent on Tony Stark’s participation, though not in a feel-good George Bailey It’s a Wonderful Life way. In Civil War, Vision points out that the power shown since Iron Man’s debut invites challenge. Here, we end up in a major conflict anyway, showing that the aggressive energy that created the MCU’s Heroic Age already existed, spurred on by advancing technology. Without superheroes to pick up the banner, it’s the military that becomes the beneficiary of all that power.

Marvel Studios

However, the military is a system as much as it is people, and there’s a weird sense throughout the episode that responsibility isn't in any particular person’s hands, even Eric Killmonger’s. We’re clearly shown where he’s pulling the strings, but characters like Tony Stark and General Ross are all too willing to be tugged along. But even they don’t feel fully in control of what happens. The conflict just escalates quickly and disproportionately in the episode’s half-hour runtime, perhaps a victim of the show’s need for expedited storytelling.

It’s no coincidence that the war that started the MCU was the conflict in Afghanistan, though it is happenstance that this episode aired only a month after the US brought its involvement to a messy close. It’s been a way of life for so long that it’s easy to feel swept away by the whole thing, especially if you were born after 9/11. This episode reinforces the MCU’s role as escapism during this era, a place where we could move beyond all this ugly terrestrial conflict and address more cosmic issues. By removing the heroes from the equation, the MCU becomes a grim mirror of the mindset we’ve been living in for two decades.

Following a pandemic-related delay, the Unicode Consortium has finalized Unicode 14.0. In all, the update adds 838 characters to the text standard. Of those 838 characters, 37 represent new emoji that will make their way to your devices before the end of the year and throughout 2022. The selection includes all the emoji the Unicode Consortium included in its final candidate list back in July. That means characters like “beans,” “troll,” “mirror ball” and “melting face” made the cut.

Emojipedia

Notably, the finalized list also includes multiple skin tone variations of the handshake emoji. Due to some technical limitations, it was one of the few characters in previous releases you couldn’t modify to represent different skin shades. The Unicode Consortium and its volunteers spent the better part of two years working to fix that, and now they have.

The ghost of Quibi is giving up the Turnstyle rotating video tech that let users watch its short-form content in either landscape or portrait mode on phones. A company called Eko filed a lawsuit over the feature a month before Quibi's ill-fated launch. Eko accused Quibi of patent infringement and claimed it used stolen trade secrets to build the tech.

The companies have settled their legal claims against each other, and Quibi is transferring the Turnstyle tech and intellectual property to Eko. The financial terms of their settlement haven't been disclosed, as Variety notes. Eko sought over $100 million in damages from Quibi.

“We are satisfied with the outcome of this litigation, and proud of the independently created contributions of Quibi and its engineering team to content presentation technology,” Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg said.

Eko filed its suit in March 2020. That July, a court ruled that Quibi could keep using Turnstyle pending the outcome of the lawsuit. As it turns out, the case lasted far longer than Quibi's streaming service — the app shut down last December, less than eight months after it debuted.

Quibi sold its content library to Roku, which won an Emmy for one of those series this past weekend. After selling its shows, a Quibi holding company called QBI Holdings was formed as the legal battle played out.

The settlement is another nail in the coffin for a big, expensive, failure of a bet on mobile streaming. Quibi was designed for on-the-go viewing, but it launched in the midst of a pandemic, when most people weren't moving around. Still, at least we'll always have memories of "The Golden Arm."

Sony’s upcoming live-action adaptation of Twisted Metal has found its leading man. Altered Carbon and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier star Anthony Mackie will play the role of series protagonist John Doe. Deadline was the first to report on the casting. “We’re thrilled to have Anthony Mackie on board. His ability to blend comedy, action and drama is perfect for the Twisted world we’re creating,” Asad Qizilbash, the head of Sony’s PlayStation Productions unit, told the outlet.

News that Sony was developing a live-action adaptation of the Twisted Metal franchise first came out at the end of February. The company is billing the project as an action comedy, with Deadpool and Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick set to produce the series. Cobra Kai scribe Michael Jonathan Smith is also on board to write and produce.

Twisted Metal is just one of the properties Sony is in the process of adapting for television and film. At the end of March, the company announced it was making a Ghost of Tsushima movie. Its The Last of Us series at HBO also recently found its Joel and Ellie in Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.

Disney+ is about to lean more on sci-fi nostalgia to reel in viewers. Deadlinereports Disney is remaking its 1986 classic Flight of the Navigator for the streaming service. Details of the reboot are scarce, but it would feature a female lead and see Bryce Dallas Howard (who directed two The Mandalorian episodes) both direct and produce the title.

There's no mention of the cast or a release date. It's safe to say the basic premise, of a child who bonds with an alien spaceship, won't change much for this adaptation.

The project is a shrewd move for Disney. The company still focuses Disney+ originals (and many of its other titles, for that matter) around familiar brands and shows. A Flight of the Navigator reboot lets Disney+ bank on a well-known name and speed up story development — it can draw in a generation of fans (you can probably still hear "compliance!" in your head) without investing huge sums in production.

HBO's subscriber numbers will take a hit after it disappears from Amazon Prime Video Channels today. Earlier this month, Amazon told users who signed up for HBO through Channels their $15/month plans would be canceled on September 15th with pro-rated refunds being issued.

In all, HBO is expected to lose around 5 million subscribers as part of this move, which WarnerMedia agreed with Amazon last year. Amazon refused to support HBO Max if it wasn't available through Channels. According to The Hollywood Reporter, HBO may offer its former Amazon subscribers a discount to persuade them to sign up to HBO Max.

That's what this shift is all about for WarnerMedia: cutting out the middleman and having a direct connection to viewers through HBO Max. It's willing to lose some subscribers in the short-term to make that happen, so it can, for instance, personalize the HBO Max home page. WarnerMedia removed HBO as premium add-ons on Apple TV and Roku for similar reasons.

The HBO Max app is available on Amazon Fire TV devices. Those who switched from HBO on Prime Video to HBO Max on Fire TV shouldn't encounter any disruptions when the former disappears from channels, THR notes.

Meanwhile, Amazon is hoping people will subscribe to other premium channels. It's offering discounts on Paramount+, Starz and Showtime plans. You can pay 99 cents per month for two months if you sign up by Friday.

One of the largest marketplaces for trading NFTs has found itself embroiled in controversy. In a blog post spotted by The Block, OpenSea admitted on Wednesday that one of its employees, Nate Chastain, had purchased NFTs he knew the company had planned to feature predominantly on its platform.

The admission came after a Twitter user named Zuwu accused Chastain this week of using secret Ethereum wallets to buy front-page NFT drops before they were available for the public to purchase, and then later selling them at a profit following the inevitable spike in interest.

OpenSea called the incident “incredibly disappointing,” and said it’s investigating what happened. “We want to be clear that this behavior does not represent our values as a team,” the company stated. “We are taking this very seriously and are conducting an immediate and thorough review of this incident so that we have a full understanding of the facts and additional steps we need to take.”

The company notes it has already implemented two new policies to prevent incidents like this from happening in the future. Moving forward, OpenSea employees aren’t allowed to buy or sell from collections and creators while they’re being promoted. They’re also prohibited from using confidential information to buy and sell NFTs on OpenSea and elsewhere.

Understandably, the incident has caused quite a stir among the company's customers, with some likening Chastain’s behavior to insider trading. More than anything, the episode highlights just how much of a wild west the NFT market is at the moment. According to an analysis by business law firm McMillan, there are currently no laws in either the US or Canada that regulate the sales of NFTs. This incident may push the Securities and Exchange Commission to change that. 

Boston Dynamics' Spot dog is learning some new behaviors that will help the robot adapt to the real world. The company has delivered a Release 3.0 update that helps Spot do its jobs without human intervention. Most notably, it can dynamically replan routes — the robot's inspection will go smoothly even if someone inadvertently left a forklift in the way.

The upgraded Spot can also handle human-free scheduled missions, and it's smart enough to automatically plan routes when you choose the actions you want to perform. The robot will help you notice when something's amiss, too. It uses scene recognition to capture photos at the same angle every time, and human inspectors can conduct live reviews of changes Spot notices with computer vision, such as gauge readings and heat changes.

These updates won't mean much if you don't have the $74,500-plus to spend on a Spot of your own. They do show how Boston Dynamics' signature canine is evolving, though, and illustrate just how robots like this can help in real life — they're increasingly useful for tasks where it would be impractical (or just a hassle) for humans to step in.

YouTube TV is now a better proposition for Spanish-speaking viewers. The cord-cutter service has added three Spanish-language channels from Univision at "no extra cost," including Univision proper as well as the youth-oriented UniMás network and the general entertainment of Galavisión. All three are included at "no extra cost," so you shouldn't have to brace for another rate hike.

You'll have more options in the near future. YouTube TV is promising on-demand movies and originals from Pantaya as a $6 per month add-on in the weeks ahead. If you're more interested in variety, an upcoming add-on bundle will provide channels like Cinelatino, CNN Español, Discovery en Español, Estrella TV, Fox Deportes and Sony Cine for an added fee. The launch date and price are due in the "coming months."

The expansion represents a logical move. YouTube TV has some fierce competition, including Sling TV and Hulu Plus Live TV. This could help YouTube keep up with and claim an edge over rivals by courting Latinx viewers that don't always get a healthy selection from streaming TV services. It's just as well — at $65 per month, YouTube's offering is expensive enough that it has to rely more on selection than raw value to attract subscribers.

TP-Link knows WiFi gaming routers are as hot as ever, and it's determined to keep up by offering a string of high-end features without going completely over the top. The company has unveiled an Archer GX90 router that offers not just WiFi 6 speeds (virtually required at this stage), but a dedicated 4.8Gbps "Game Band" to keep your play sessions free of interference from other local network transfers. An accelerator also spots and fine-tunes streams for games it recognizes, such as the Call of Duty series or League of Legends, while a dashboard provides stats on your playtime to help pinpoint problems.

You can expect some of the other familiar tricks to improve gaming performance. Improved OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiple access) modulation is meant to reduce lag, and a 1.5GHz quad-core processor (TP-Link doesn't name it) helps juggle heavy traffic. This also happens to be a solid router for general use with a 2.5Gbps Ethernet jack (plus four 1Gbps jacks), two USB ports and support for mesh networking through TP-Link's OneMesh-capable devices.

The Archer GX90 will be available through Amazon (not as of this writing) and other outlets for $250. It's definitely more expensive than a typical home WiFi router, but that's decidedly less expensive than some tri-band WiFi 6 routers. So long as you don't mind the alien looks, this might strike a healthy balance between raw speed and a reasonable price.