Hasta La Gadget!

Reubens, known for his eccentric comedy, died at age 70 in July.

In the future, when you need someone’s help to get a task done, you might find yourself launching the Uber app on your phone. According to Bloomberg, the company is exploring the possibility of offering a new TaskRabbit-like service. Developer Steve Moser found code hidden within Uber’s iPhone app for an offering that’s reportedly codenamed “Chore.” Based on its current iteration, Chore will let you hire “taskers” and will let you specify in the app what you need help with, how long you think it would take and what time you want the tasker to arrive. 

Of course, you’ll be able to input the address of where you want the person to go before you submit your request. Uber will then compute a payment that’s commensurate with the time required to finish the task, but you will have to pay for a minimum of one hour no matter what it is. Bloomberg says the code Moser unearthed didn’t have hints on what types of help you can ask from providers, but the potential service’s rival TaskRabbit has a wide range of categories to choose from. These include cleaning, furniture assembly, electrical help, plumbing, TV mounting, packing and moving, snow removal, computer assistance, pet sitting and even senior care. 

Like any other unconfirmed feature still in development, though, Chore may not even make it to public release. If it does, it’ll be a huge new undertaking for Uber, which is known for its ride-hailing and restaurant delivery services. Over the past months, Uber rolled out Carshare, which lets users borrow cars from private owner, to more locations as part of its efforts to become a zero-emission platform by 2040. It also started testing a toll-free number — 1-833-USE-UBER (1-833-873-8237) — that you can call to schedule an immediate or a future ride.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/uber-could-launch-a-service-similar-to-taskrabbit-133017852.html?src=rss

This isn’t your parent’s Lotus. The British maker, once famous for ultra-lightweight sportscars that had no room for creature comforts like air conditioning, heated seats, or even doors, is now part of the Geely family, with designs on a big international presence with big sales.

That’s going to require bigger cars, and while the Eletre SUV was something of a first big departure for the company, the Emeya is a quick second-act. The Emeya is a four-door sedan with a swoopy, coupe-like profile, comfortably seating four and, Lotus says, offering somewhere around 300 miles of range from a 102kWh battery pack.

That’s quite good range for a car that will offer up to 905 horsepower and that can sprint from 0 – 60 mph in less than 2.8 seconds. Quick, yes, but as a grand tourer, the idea is comfort and luxury, and that the Emeya has in spades. But will it be good enough to convert the Lotus faithful? That we won’t know until sometime in 2024, when this enters production. Watch the video below for the full story.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-lotus-emeya-brings-electric-supercar-performance-for-four-130035674.html?src=rss

There’s no denying Nintendo’s Switch, at 6.5 years, is reaching the end. Nintendo is (finally) gearing up for what’s next and was reportedly showing tech demos of its next-gen system to developers at Gamescom last month.

According to Eurogamer, one of the Switch 2 demos was a beefed-up version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It was apparently a tech demo, showing the world of Hyrule at a higher frame rate and resolution than the existing game.

Engadget

VGC says another tech demo was The Matrix Awakens, running on the dev kit. The captivating tech demo was originally designed to highlight what Unreal Engine 5 can do on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, but Nintendo got it working on an early version of its next system. The Switch 2 demo also featured NVIDIA’s DLSS upscaling tech, ray-tracing and visuals comparable to those on the PS5 and Series X. DLSS support is key, as that could help Nintendo run games at higher frame rates and resolution without having to use more powerful components.

Nintendo is expected to release its next console in 2024 – but what will be its unique trick?

– Mat Smith

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BMW’s terrible heated seats subscription didn’t make it to a second winter

Drivers will no longer have to deal with hardware paywalls in the brand’s cars.

BMW

BMW is one of several automakers that have been nickel and diming customers, with a monthly subscription for heated seats (which already exist in these vehicles) in certain models and territories. The company has dropped that controversial practice to focus on paid software services — it no longer plans to charge drivers extra to use hardware features already in their cars.

Drivers didn’t take to the $18 per month heated seats subscription in the countries where BMW offered that, er, perk. “We thought that we would provide an extra service to the customer by offering the chance to activate that later, but the user acceptance isn’t that high,” Pieter Nota, BMW’s board member for sales and marketing, said.

Continue reading.

iOS apps will publish to the Apple Vision Pro store by default

This should give headset owners access to ‘hundreds of thousands’ of applications.

Engadget

We haven’t heard much about Apple’s mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, in recent weeks, but in the runup to Apple’s big event next week, the company has elaborated on the device’s app offerings. It’s announced every iOS app will automatically publish to the Vision Pro store by default, which the company says will give early adopters access to “hundreds of thousands of iPad and iPhone apps.” Most apps can easily run on Vision Pro, but you won’t get a full futuristic experience. Instead, you’ll see what you normally see on your phone or tablet, just blown up on a fake screen before you.

Continue reading.

Walgreens agrees to pay $44 million to Theranos blood test customers

The company used to offer Theranos’ faulty blood tests in its stores.

There was a time when Walgreens championed Theranos’ blood tests and offered them at “wellness centers” in its stores. That was before it came to light that Theranos’ tests were faulty. Now, according to Bloomberg, Walgreens has agreed to pay $44 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by customers who received flawed Theranos blood tests. A court still has to approve the proposal, but based on the court filing by the plaintiffs, those customers will receive around double their out-of-pocket damages if the terms remain unaltered.

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-nintendo-is-reportedly-showing-off-switch-sequel-console-to-developers-111620441.html?src=rss

Apple has released a critical iOS 16 security update for iPhones and iPads to patch a particularly malicious bug that could allow a hacker to take over your device with no action on your part. The “zero-click, zero-day” exploit allows attackers to install NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, which could let them read a target’s text messages, listen in on calls, pilfer and transmit images, track their location and more. 

The exploit (referred to as “Blastpass”) was first discovered by Citizen Lab, which immediately disclosed it to Apple. It was reportedly used to install Pegasus onto the iPhone of an employee from a Washington DC-based organization. It’s capable of compromising devices running the latest 16.6 version of iOS “without any interaction from the victim,” the group wrote. 

Apple has released iOS 16.6.1 to counter the vulnerability, stating simply that “a maliciously crafted attachment may result in arbitrary code execution.” In addition, Citizen Lab even advised “all at-risk users to consider enabling Lockdown Mode as we believe it blocks the attack.” It’s believed that the attack involved PassKit (an SDK that allows developers to put Apple Pay in their apps), hence the Blastpass name, along with malicious images sent by iMessage. For obvious reasons, Citizen Lab didn’t release any other details. 

Lockdown mode is a recent iOS feature designed to severely restrict the functions of Apple devices and is aimed at a “very small number of users who face grave, targeted threats to their digital security,” Apple has stated. The company has faced a number of threats of late, including a vulnerability from February 2023 that “may have been actively exploited,” Apple said at the time. 

The exploit also brings Pegasus back into the news, following a ban by the Biden administration earlier this year. Developed by the Israel-based cyber-arms company NSO Group, it created a furor after it was used by multiple nations to spy on journalists, activists and others. In one notorious case, it was reportedly used by Saudi Arabia to spy on journalist Jamal Kashoggi, who was later murdered in Turkey. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/update-your-iphone-now-to-patch-a-major-pegasus-vulnerability-114009683.html?src=rss