Tech Spite

Razer has officially announced its acquisition of Interhaptics, a.k.a. Go Touch VR SAS, a company well known for its haptic feedback products. Razer has developed products with Interhaptics before, including the Nari Ultimate headphones back in 2018 and even a haptic gaming chair called the Enki Pro HyperSense . And in the press release announcing the acquisition, Razer stated that Interhaptics would remain independent but closely meld with Razer’s ecosystem. Interhaptics has developed for a wide range of gaming platforms like PCs, consoles, mobile devices, virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality. One of its most well-known VR products is the Sense Glove, which simulates touch and interaction with virtual objects by giving physical feedback. Analysis: Could a haptic feedback gaming chair take off?  Razer debuted the Enki Pro HyperSense, a gaming chair that uses haptic feedback, during CES 2022. At the time it sounded like a cool, if not “out there” concept, but it c

Spam comments on YouTube have been getting worse recently and the platform has decided to fight back. Via a Twitter thread , YouTube revealed it’s working on three new tools to combat spam comments and the bad actors who impersonate content creators. As it currently stands, the update includes removing the ability to hide subscriber counts, improving comment moderation, and changing the rules on special characters in a name. Cleaning up comments YouTube states removing the ability to hide subscriber counts will make it more difficult for people to impersonate creators. Copycats have become so prominent that big-name YouTubers like Marques Brownlee have published videos showing the severity of the problem. In his video, you’ll see, in what is obviously a scam, spam comments with Marques’ channel logo telling people to message him on Telegram to get a prize. The subscriber count change releases on July 29. It’s unknown if the other tools will release on that date too. We asked YouTu

TV and projector maker Hisense announced that its flagship line of L9G Laser TV projectors have received a free Dolby Vision upgrade. The upgrade was supplied this week via an automatic firmware update, allowing L9G owners to immediately experience the benefits of Dolby Vision high dynamic range. While Hisense isn’t the first company to announce a projector with Dolby Vision – Xiaomi has released a model with Dolby Vision compatibility, though that model is only available in China – the L9G is the first such model in the US market to provide that feature, which is commonly found in the best 4K TVs , but not in projectors. Otherwise, the L9G is a complete A/V package consisting of a 4K ultra short throw (UST) projector and bundled ambient light-rejecting (ALR) projection screen. The projector, which sits approximately 12 inches from the wall-mounted screen, features a built-in 40-watt Dolby Atmos audio system, Android TV for streaming, and Google Assistant voice control. It’s sold wi

The legal battle between Sonos and Google has gone up a notch following a new ruling by the US Customs Service. As reported by Paul Thurott , Google has been found guilty by the Customs Service of having broken an import ban imposed by the International Trade Commission (ITC) after continuing to infringe on five Sonos patents. “US Customs Service confirmed that Google was flouting the importation ban and continuing to import infringing products in violation of that ban. This finding marks yet another example of Google continuing to misuse our intellectual property and acting in wholesale disregard of the law. We remain committed to defending our IP [intellectual property] and will continue to do so, on behalf of our own technology, as well as the broader innovation landscape," Sonos Chief Legal Officer Eddie Lazarus said. The legal battle has been running since 2020, when  Sonos first sued Google over patent infringements . Sonos claimed that Google stole key elements of its

Anyone who’s used the Xbox Series X|S controller over an extended period will know the perils of its Share button, but it need not annoy you any longer. The Share button on the Xbox Wireless Controller has a habit of getting in the way at the most inopportune times. As one Redditor recently pointed out, its placement between the controller’s View and Menu button makes it all too easy to accidentally tap while you’re playing a game.  Get a little too enthusiastic with the thumbstick in Forza 5 , and you may unintentionally screenshot the very moment your vehicle careens off the track. Become distracted in Halo Infinite , and you could inadvertently capture the instant an enemy player runs you down in a Warthog. The Reddit post has generated a lot of discussion about the Share button’s unfortunate placement, but there’s an easy fix. Earlier this year, Microsoft rolled out an update for the Xbox Series X |S that lets you reassign the Share button to a range of custom actions – or,

Microsoft is taking Collections in a rather Pinterest-like direction. A new Microsoft Edge update promises several new organization features, an inspiration feed, and the ability to directly follow creators. In fact, Collections is getting the lion’s share of enhancements in the update. For those unaware, Collections allows you to pull together web pages, pictures, or videos from across the internet and stuff them into folders. The inspiration feed will show you tangentially related ideas from other websites. For example, you might have a series of food recipes saved. The new feed will show you other recipes to inspire you. Making collecting easier The announcement notes that the update will be released soon, but it appears some features are already live. Alongside the inspiration feed, users will be able to directly save images and videos to Collections by hovering over them and clicking the add button. It appears this feature only works on Bing search results. We tried saving

The early days, when the iPhone was new, were special. 15 years ago, Steve Jobs and Apple engineered what could best be described as a hype beast of a product launch. First, Jobs unveiled the iPhone at Macworld in January 2007, but it would be months before the iPhone would officially launch. Whether by design or necessity, that delay turned out to be the best possible way to launch what would become a technological and cultural touchstone. Anticipation for availability details and the official launch date built and built until Apple announced and, naturally, the tech media reported it. Hype central turned out to be the one-year-old Apple Flagship Store on Fifth Ave. While I remember launch day, I don’t recall attending or even walking by. However, reports from the time described a line that literally ran down the front steps of the store and snaked around the block. There was media, and third-party companies trying to ride this cresting wave of excitement. It was pandemonium. Th

A brand new phishing campaign leveraging chatbot software on Messenger has been uncovered by cybersecurity firm SpiderLabs. The goal of the campaign is to obtain people’s Facebook credentials and various other personal information, the researchers explained. At first, the victim receives an email, pretending to be from Facebook, claiming that their page is in violation of the site’s community standards and will be terminated in 48 hours. Share your thoughts on Cybersecurity and get a free copy of the Hacker's Manual 2022 . Help us find how businesses are preparing for the post-Covid world and the implications of these activities on their cybersecurity plans. Enter your email at the end of this survey to get the bookazine, worth $10.99/£10.99. The email also carries an “Appeal Now” link, which gives the victim a chance to appeal the termination. Red flags galore Thankfully, the content of the email contains a few red flags that should help users identify the messa

HPE has unveiled a new Arm-based server at its annual Discover event; the 11th-generation ProLiant RL300 runs on Altra and Altra Max processors from Ampere Computing, which also feature in Oracle and Azure cloud offerings. The RL300 server will be available in Q3 and is the first (and only) Arm-based product in HPE’s server portfolio (excluding the Apollo 80 which, with its Fujitsu A64FX, targets a very small niche). Geared towards cloud-native applications, the RL300 is a 1U, single-socket server with a chassis that can hold up to ten 2.5-inch storage drives ( SSD or HDD ) and 16 DIMM slots. Meanwhile, the Altra processor goes back to basics, with 1-core/1-thread running at constant speed; no multi threading, base speeds shenanigans, providing what HPE calls “predictable performance”. This is not HPE’s first Arm server; in its previous life, HP had a pet project called Moonshot that used Arm-based Calxeda chips, but things didn’t go to plan. The company will be hoping for be

Mozilla is rolling out Firefox version 102 which now has the ability to prevent websites from tracking you. The full patch notes can be seen on Mozilla's page , which states Firefox will now mitigate “query parameter tracking when navigating sites…” Query parameters are the string of characters that appear in a URL after a question mark and can be used to track people across the internet. These parameters are used to display targeted ads, for example. To illustrate how the new feature works, BleepingComputer created a test page where you can click on one of the links and see a URL that looks like this: “example.com/?mc_eid=12”. If you take that URL into the new Firefox browser, the characters after the question mark will be gone. You can update Firefox by going to the browser menu and locating About Firefox to begin updating. To activate the anti-tracking feature, you’ll have to go to the Privacy & Security tab in Firefox Settings. Under Enhanced Tracking Protection,

Spotify is rolling out Supergrouper, a new feature for creating playlists and living out your supergroup fantasy. The idea behind Supergrouper is for users to imagine what it would be like if their favorite musical artists came together to form one giant band. But Songs aren’t going to be melded together to form a new song as you might think -- Stairway to Heaven merged with Adele? No thanks. Instead, the feature is essentially just an easier way to create playlists without having to pull together songs one by one. To create a playlist, you first have to go to the Supergrouper website on your mobile device. (Visit on a desktop or some other device and Spotify will just tell you to use your phone.) You can choose between three to five musical artists to make up the group. From there, name your newly christened supergroup and share it on social media. And if you’re stuck on what to include in the playlist, Spotify has a randomizer button near the top that’ll throw in an artist bas

Big things really do come in eensy little packages: Insta360 has just revealed its new tiny 360-degree camera that can shoot videos in enormous 6K resolution. It’s called the ONE RS 1-inch 360 Edition , which is quite the mouthful. It's essentially a direct upgrade to Insta360’s ONE RS camera from March 2022. The new camera is split across five main parts: the 360-degree lens itself, a lens cap, a mounting bracket, a battery, and a ONE RS Core. The Core is what houses the major features, including a small screen to help set up a shot or configure the device. Compared to the older ONE RS model, the 360 Edition improves on three areas while migrating over notable features. Brand new features The biggest change comes in the form of two 1-inch CMOS sensors in the lens, which ensure that images come out as high quality as possible. These sensors let the camera record 360-degree videos in stunning 6K resolution and take photographs at 21MP. The 1-inch 360 Edition is also capable o

The company tapped digital design to turn its latest sedan into a sleek performance ride. from Wired https://ift.tt/tf8FQ36

Political campaign emails could soon be safe from falling into Gmail spam folders if a new initiative from Google gets the green light. The technology giant has petitioned the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to approve a new pilot program that will make it less likely for such emails to end up marked as spam. The move could see Gmail inboxes flooded with political campaign emails, particularly as the United States gears up for a presidential election in 2024. Gmail political spam The filing, spotted by Axios , comes after complaints from the Republican party that Google unfairly filters more of its messaging than that of its Democratic rivals.  A  recent study  of 300,000 emails during the 2020 election claimed Gmail was 50% more likely to designate messages from Republicans as spam than those from Democrats.  The party introduced a bill earlier in June 2022 that, if passed, would require platforms such as Gmail to explain exactly how it filters out messages, as well as mak

The latest beta edition of Google Chrome (Beta 104) has offered a glimpse of a number of useful changes coming to the popular web browser . The updates will be available on Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows devices, with Chrome for iOS notably running a slightly different version. Headlining the list of updates in version 104, available since earlier this week is Region Capture. Browser-based video conferencing has long been supported in Chrome, but screen sharing has sometimes resulted in the so-called "hall-of-mirrors effect". (Image credit: Chromium) In its latest form, Chrome’s Region Capture can now crop a video track and remove content - such as the live video feed of other call members - before sharing it remotely. This means no more awkward video sharing of participants when using video conferencing suites like Google Meet. Other changes in Chrome 104 Media Queries, an important part of the responsiveness in the design of most web pages, ha

 Well, it happened. Nvidia’s much-rumored GTX 1630 GPU has arrived, with an official launch today and confirmed models coming from major GPU manufacturers including EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte, and Zotac. The GTX 1630 is based on Nvidia’s older Turing architecture, similar to the GTX 1650 released in 2019. This is the first Turing-based GTX card to be released in two years, and will compete with AMD’s Radeon RX 6400 and Intel’s new Arc A380 in the super-budget GPU stakes - both of which run on current-generation architectures. As far as specs go, it’s not very impressive. Power consumption and VRAM are basically identical to the original GTX 1650, but the memory bandwidth is cut in half and the die uses fewer CUDA cores too.  These stats line up with recently leaked specs for the GTX 1630, which were compared frequently to Nvidia’s six-year-old GTX 1050 Ti (pictured above). Since this is the older Turing architecture, there’s no support for newer features like ray-tracing or DLSS. Tech

A platform called Coworker has helped effect change for nearly a decade. As the coffee chain’s workers organize, its role has evolved in kind. from Wired https://ift.tt/pJrFgG0

It looks as though Apple has some big plans for its freshly unveiled M2 chip in the coming months, with a recent batch of predictions suggesting we could get a full range of M2-powered hardware, including MacBooks, Mac Mini and Mac Pro within the next 12 months. As reported by MacRumors , this comes from trusted Apple analyst Mark Gurman via the latest edition of his Power On newsletter , in which he outlines the predicted product release roadmap.  A range of Mac hardware was included alongside non-computing products such as the iPhone 14 (which will allegedly include four models), and updated versions of the Apple Watch , Homepod and even Apple TV , which suggests that Apple is going full-steam into 2023 with essential its entire catalog. We’ve already seen the base model M2 chip released within both a new MacBook Air and a refreshed 13-inch MacBook Pro , though if the M1 chips timeline is anything to go by then we can also expect the 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook

Hulu has canceled political comedy Woke after two seasons.  Launched in the fall of 2020, Woke was loosely based on the life of its co-creator, Keith Knight, an American cartoonist and musician known for his accessible yet subversive comic strips The K Chronicles.  It starred Lamorne Morris – best known for his long-running role as Winston Bishop on beloved comedy New Girl – as Keef, a black cartoonist on the verge of mainstream success via his Toast & Butter comic series. Keef takes pride in his comics being light touch and avoiding controversy or political content like the plague.  On the verge of signing a huge new publishing deal, Keef is then the victim of racial profiling by overly aggressive policemen and, unsurprisingly, left traumatized. In the wake of the incident, Keef finds that he's able to see and hear inanimate objects talking to him, plus he's now more sensitive to racism, with everyday microaggressions that he has spent his life trying to avoid acknowle

If you use a mix of Apple, Android, and Windows gadgets, you're in luck: The security tool is now available to any Microsoft 365 subscriber. from Wired https://ift.tt/aiBc21O

Chris Hemsworth has suggested that Thor: Love and Thunder might not be his final Marvel movie outing after all. Speculation has been rife that Hemsworth will call time on his time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) after Thor: Love and Thunder hits theaters in July. The upcoming Marvel movie will be the eighth time Hemsworth has played the character, while Thor will become the first MCU superhero to star in four solo adventures. It stands to reason, then, that Hemsworth may have given serious thought to calling time on his MCU journey once Thor 4 is released. And, with Hemsworth previously telling Wired that Love and Thunder "may be my last [Marvel movie]" earlier in June, the actor hasn't exactly played down reports that he might walk away after the forthcoming MCU Phase 4 flick. However, speaking to ExtraTV before Thor 4's world premiere, Hemsworth appeared to walk back on those claims, suggesting that he would certainly be open to reprising the role in

Apple usually has a bunch of new products launch at the end of each year, but it sounds like the iPhone 14 might get more than its fair share of gadget companions, according to a big name in Apple leaks. This comes from Mark Gurman, in his weekly Power On newsletter about upcoming Apple news and rumors. Gurman mentions loads of products expected to launch "between the fall of 2022 and first half of 2023" - or peak Apple period. The main one of these is the iPhone 14, with Gurman saying there will be four models - we've heard this many times before from leakers, with the expected line consisting of the standard model as well as an iPhone 14 Max, Pro and Pro Max . Much of the other information provided about the upcoming iPhone Pro models are things we've already heard about like its always-on display, high-res rear camera and improved front camera - but the non-Pro versions are supposedly weaker. Next up is the AirPods Pro 2 , though all Gurman says is "I’m

Observations of faraway worlds have forced a near-total rewrite of the story of our solar system. from Wired https://ift.tt/aNt3C7D

A startlingly impressive Dolby Atmos TV audio system, minus the voice control and physical remote you’re used to. from Wired https://ift.tt/8O2rCLB

Boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew. This guide will make sure you can whip up tasty grub no matter where you end up. from Wired https://ift.tt/MKxQeBw

A Google engineer's claim that the LaMDA program is sentient underscores an urgent need to demystify the human condition. from Wired https://ift.tt/JjeL7qU

The rumors around the Samsung Galaxy S23 are starting to pick up pace, and the latest to come to our attention concerns the selfie camera: it sounds as though Samsung isn't going to move to an under-display camera on the front of the phone just yet. This comes from supply chain sources in South Korea (via Wccftech ), and it means the Galaxy S23 phones will still have punch hole notches in the display like their predecessors. We may have to wait for the Galaxy S24 for this particular component to be changed. There's no reason given for Samsung holding off on introducing a selfie camera under the screen, but there are plenty of possibilities: maybe Samsung isn't happy with the photo quality, or maybe it would push the price of the phone up too much. All about the selfies What makes this rumor slightly surprising is that there's a 4MP under-display camera embedded in the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 . Samsung knows how to make the technology and to make it work, even if

The GoPro Hero 11 Black will almost certainly be GoPro's next flagship action camera. There are currently almost no reliable rumors about the upcoming camera, but a little informed digging around tells us a lot about what it may be like. So we've rounded up all of our thoughts, and wishes, in this Hero 11 Black deep dive.  Despite its likely arrival, it's quite possible that GoPro’s biggest news of this year won't have anything to do with the Hero 11 Black. Earlier this year, GoPro CEO Nick Woodman said the company plans to expand its range in 2022 , beyond the Black and Max lines we have today.  One of those new cameras is most likely the drone-friendly GoPro Hero 10 Black Bones . But could we also see a return of the White or Silver series? A new large-sensor GoPro Hero 'Platinum' to take on the 1-inch sensor action cameras from Insta360? Who knows, but we’ll be back with more on those future products as the information lands.  In the meantime, we're h