Dead by Daylight‘s next chapter isn’t too far away and it’s another crossover rather than an original creation. Behaviour Interactive likes to keep fans on their toes with some unexpected partnerships and the latest one is no exception. This time around, Dungeons and Dragons is entering the fog. It’s a bit of a surprising turn as D&D isn’t normally associated with horror, but there’s enough connective tissue for it to make sense.
Behaviour revealed the crossover in a short teaser trailer with no further details about what to expect. It remains to be seen what the chapter will bring in terms of a killer, survivor and/or map. But you won’t have to wait too long to find out.
The Dead by Daylight anniversary stream will take place on May 14, starting at 11AM ET (for what it’s worth, a new player test build will go live that day). You can tune in to find out more details about the Dungeons and Dragons chapter as well as what’s ahead for Dead by Daylight as a whole in the coming months. Perhaps we’ll find out a bit more about the spinoff games that are in the works. And given Behaviour’s track record, it may just have some other surprises in store…
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/dungeons-and-dragons-is-coming-to-dead-by-daylight-161537165.html?src=rss
Apple has reportedly apologized for its tone-deaf “Crush!” ad that sparked a furious backlash with artists, musicians and other creators. AdAge reports that Apple said the video “missed the mark” and has scrapped plans to run the cutesy-turned-cringey commercial on TV.
It’s clear that Apple intended for the ad to serve as a metaphor for all the myriad creative tools one has when they throw down $1,000 or more for a new iPad Pro. Run during Tuesday’s event, the video shows a series of musical instruments and creative tools, including a guitar, drums, trumpet, amplifiers, record player, TV and much more. “All I Ever Need Is You” by Sonny & Cher soundtracks the clip.
Soon, it’s revealed that the objects are all sitting on an industrial crusher. It descends upon the scattered creative instruments, exploding in plumes of colorful smoke. But when the crusher pulls back up, we see that everything was transformed into a shiny new iPad Pro.
Apple
A decade ago, this ad likely wouldn’t have been a big deal. But Apple’s marketers completely whiffed on the context of the moment. The ad comes weeks before Apple will take the stage at WWDC to announce its generative AI features that its investors have been salivating for.
Generative AI, as you may have heard, needs something to train on — and that means humans’ work. It learns from existing content to make algorithmically generated words, pictures, music, voices or who knows what else. It also has the capability to put those same creators — most of whom don’t have cushy jobs at Apple or other Big Five tech companies — out of work as corporations and consumers eagerly adopt the robots destined to put creators on the unemployment line.
Context is everything, and Apple failed spectacularly there. Its ad serves as a pitch-perfect metaphor for generative AI’s potential to crush human creation, turning us all into “prompt artists” who type words into text boxes to replace their years of training and experience. (Granted, generative AI has genuinely exciting applications, too, but much more needs to be made of the society-level chaos it can and will unleash.)
“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world,” Tor Myhren, Apple VP of marketing communications, told AdAge. “Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”
Hey, an apology means something. But we’ll see what tone Apple adopts next month when it rolls out the tools that set the stage for the apology in the first place. Something tells me that train is out of the station and will be plowing forward full steam, no matter how much creativity the company has in its DNA.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-apologizes-for-its-tone-deaf-ad-that-crushed-human-creativity-to-make-an-ipad-211116524.html?src=rss
All the way back in 2011, Rise of the Planet of the Apes seemed like it’d be an unremarkable but potentially solid movie. No one really knew what to make of Fox doing a prequel/reboot of the classic sci-fi series, especially since it’d already tried a decade prior with Tim Burton’s divisive 2001 remake. That wariness…
Ember’s highly-esteemed Travel Mug 2+ has dropped to a record-low price of $128, which is a discount of $72. The actual sale price is $160, but there’s a clippable coupon for the remaining $32. This is a pretty great deal for those in the market for a tech-heavy travel mug.
To that end, the Travel Mug 2+ integrates with Apple’s Find My technology, so you’ll always know exactly where your beverage is. It even has a built-in speaker that’ll ping when you’re looking for it. Anything can happen while traveling, so it’s good to have a little peace of mind, particularly because the usual price of this mug is $200.
Otherwise, this is a fantastic mug that keeps beverages hot for up to three hours and boasts a 12-ounce capacity. The battery’s on point, allowing for three hours of use on its own and a full day while resting on the included charging coaster. You also get access to the Ember’s proprietary app for setting the temperature, customizing presets and more. The mug does feature a little touchscreen for this, so the app’s not always necessary.
Ember makes great products, which is why we often recommend the company’s mugs. However, the Travel Mug 2+ isn’t perfect. You can hand wash it, but don’t put it in the dishwasher, unless you want to turn it into an expensive mug-shaped thing that doesn’t actually work. There’s also the price. At $200, it’s very hard to recommend this product because, well, it’s a mug for drinking tea and coffee. It’s easier to recommend at $128, and it makes a great gift, but at the end of the day it’s still just a container for liquids.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/embers-travel-mug-2-with-find-my-support-drops-to-a-record-low-price-163054893.html?src=rss
Dario and Daniela Amodei, siblings and founders of Anthropic, fired indirect jabs at OpenAI while not stating the company’s name on Thursday. The founders told a San Francisco audience that Anthropic’s AI was the best in the world, and defended their competitive advantage over industry leader, OpenAI.
The Sun is a hot mess right now. Solar maximum is fast approaching, and a giant dark spot on the surface of the Sun keeps growing while spewing radiation out to space in the process.
Nintendo has apparently had enough of X’s (Twitter’s) API fees. The Mario maker said on Wednesday that starting on June 10, direct integration from the Switch’s image album to Elon Musk’s Nazi-curious platform will no longer work. With Nintendo’s departure, all three major console makers have pulled the plug on native screen-sharing to X.
X’s official gaming account posted a bizarre, downright Orwellian response that ignores its central role in the Mario maker’s exit. “Our partnership with Nintendo remains strong, and we are working together to ensure a smooth transition for all users,” @xGaming posted at the end of its nonchalantly misleading reply to Nintendo’s announcement. “We will continue collaborating with partners to bring new and exciting experiences to our global gaming community.”
Ironically, X’s built-in reader context feature filled in the omitted subtext. “This is in direct response to X changing their API,” the user-generated context says. “Specifically, X is charging companies upwards of $40,000 or more per month to access its API. Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox already removed integration with X last year.”
As of June 10, 2024, it will no longer be possible to post screenshots and videos to X (formerly Twitter) from the Nintendo Switch’s Album, or send friend requests to social media users via the Friend Suggestions feature.
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) May 9, 2024
Wired first reported last year that access to the cheapest Enterprise API plan for The Dumpster Fire Formerly Known As Twitter starts at $42,000 monthly. Higher tiers can allegedly cost $125,000 and $210,000 per month. Microsoft led the charge when it said the Xbox was abandoning Musk’s API plan in April 2023, while Sony held its nose and stuck it out until November.
The $42,000 (or more) monthly cost may not sound like much to these well-heeled mega-corporations, but apparently, even they have their limits. After all, quick screen-sharing to social channels is a marketing feature from a corporate perspective. If their accountants look at the analytics, weigh them against Musk’s fees and see it isn’t paying off, they’ll do what profit-driven entities do and reduce the overhead. But hey, at least X’s “partnership with Nintendo remains strong.”
Google has an offer for iPad owners who are curious about the Pixel Tablet. The company has a trade-in promotion that covers at least the cost of the Pixel Tablet for iPad owners — if not more, depending on which model you have. It works with Samsung tablets as well, but those trade-in values are lower. The Pixel Tablet costs $399 (without deals) for 128GB storage and no charging speaker dock.
The promo works with iPads as old as the sixth-generation model from six years ago. For that, Google will give you a surprising $399 — matching the Pixel Tablet’s base cost. That iPad model only cost $329 in 2018, so Google is overpaying by a lot for that one.
However, Google balances that with much worse offers for modern, high-end iPads. For example, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro with M2 chip (2022) only nets $450. Until this week (when the company launched a new iPad Pro and iPad Air), Apple sold that model for $1,099, so we don’t recommend that trade-in price. If you’re done with a high-end iPad from the last few years, you can likely sell it on places like eBay, Craigslist or Swappa for significantly more.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
The Pixel Tablet stands out from its Android-running competitors by working with a charging speaker base that lets the device double as a smart display, making it much more versatile. Engadget’s Cherlynn Low thought that part overshadowed its core functionality as a tablet. “As a smart display, the Pixel Tablet mostly shines. It has a useful dashboard, an easy-to-read interface and impressive audio quality,” she wrote in our full review.
The tablet has a 10.95-inch display with a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution (276 PPI) and runs on a Google Tensor G2 chip. It weighs slightly over a pound and is lighter than Android rivals like the Galaxy Tab S8 and OnePlus Pad. Its back has a nano-ceramic coating that gives it a premium, glass-like feeling that you may not expect from a $399 device.
Accessories are where the Pixel Tablet stands out the most. Google’s Pixel Tablet Case, sold separately for $79, has a built-in kickstand that makes the slate more versatile. “What I love about the kickstand-hanger-combo is that it allows you to place the Tablet pretty much anywhere,” Low wrote in Engadget’s review. “So when I want to hang it off a kitchen cabinet to follow along with a recipe video or keep watching Love Is Blind for example, I can. And though the 2,560 x 1,600 LCD panel isn’t as vibrant as the OLED on Samsung’s Galaxy Tabs, it still produced crisp details and colorful images.”
The star accessory is Google’s $129 charging speaker dock, which you can use without removing the kickstand case. This product transforms the tablet into a smart display, potentially voiding the need for other smart home control hubs. The speaker has impressive sound for its size, making it easier to hear its responses if you aren’t right next to it.
Google’s fine print notes that the trade-in value will be finalized after receiving the tablet, and it could be lower if it determines the condition doesn’t match what you selected during the trade-in process. The refund will be processed on the credit card you used to buy the Pixel Tablet (or through Google Store credit if you return your purchase during that time).
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/get-up-to-450-off-a-google-pixel-tablet-when-you-trade-in-your-old-ipad-or-android-slab-192718892.html?src=rss
We’re getting close to the end of Star Trek: Discovery, which means we’re getting close to a season finale. And if there’s one thing Star Trek: Discovery loves—more than love, more than time travel, more than being deeply unsubtle—it is presenting you with a scenario of hope that then has to come crashing down,…
The enormous Dali container ship has been stuck in Baltimore since it hit and destroyed the Francis Scott Key bridge way back in March. The ship lost power and careered into one of the supports for the bridge, bringing it crashing down and killing six workers on the bridge. Now, engineers are planning to blow up the…
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