Hasta La Gadget!

The gaming industry has been plagued with rounds of layoffs and studio closures and it’s not showing any signs of stopping anytime soon. The latest round of layoffs comes from Sony-owned Bungie, best known at this point for Destiny 2.

Pete Parsons, the chief executive officer for Bungie, announced on its official website that it will eliminate 220 roles “representing roughly 17 percent of its workforce.” Executive and senior leader roles are the ones most affected by this round of layoffs but he also noted “these actions will affect every level of the company.”

Parsons blamed the need for layoffs on several factors including the “rising costs of development,” “industry shifts” and “enduring economic conditions.” He also noted the studio will focus its development efforts “entirely on Destiny and Marathon.”

Bungie and Sony seem to have been butting heads over economic concerns. Sony Interactive Entertainment chairman Hiroki Totoki noted during a February earnings call that he wanted to see more “accountability” with budgets and schedules from Bungie’s leaders. Destiny 2 alone has seen a noticeable dip in player numbers and revenues that fell 45 percent below its projections, according to PC Gamer.

Last year in October, Bloomberg reported that Bungie had to lay off an undetermined number of staffers that caused noticeable delays for its next game Marathon and an expansion for Destiny 2. A month later, Bungie announced it had to push back the release date for The Final Shape expansion for Destiny 2 from February to June.

Sony’s various game studios have also seen scores of layoffs in the last few months. Sony announced in February it had to eliminate around 900 positions from its PlayStation division as well as its Technology, Creative and Support teams. The cuts also affected studios like Insomniac, Naughty Dog and Guerilla that produced some of the PlayStation 5’s biggest titles like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, The Last of Us and Horizon Forbidden West. Sony also shut down its London studio after more than 20 years in operation that was right in the middle of working on a new fantasy co-op multiplayer game for the PS5.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bungie-is-laying-off-220-employees-200242815.html?src=rss

A deadly accident in Washington that took the life of a motorcyclist earlier this year was caused by a Tesla vehicle while it was in “Full Self Driving” mode. The Associated Press reported that investigators from the Washington State Patrol confirmed that a 2022 Tesla Model S involved in the fatality accident in April was in self-driving mode from the car’s event-data recorder.

The accident occurred on April 19 on the eastbound side of State Route 522 approximately 15 miles northeast of Seattle. The unidentified driver told police he had his Tesla’s self-driving mode on and was looking at his phone at the time of the crash. The vehicle crashed into the back of the motorcycle pinning Jeffrey Nissen, 28, underneath the vehicle. Paramedics pronounced Nissen dead at the scene of the accident, according to Seattle-based KIRO 7 News.

Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk has been making promises for autonomous cars for years now. Musk’s promises coupled with vehicle safety concerns prompted Sen. Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal to issue a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) urging them to open an investigation into Tesla’s “misleading advertising and marketing” practices for its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving modes. Last year, the NHTSA recalled over 2 million Tesla vehicles due to concerns about driver inattention during Autopilot mode.

Musk also promised “one million robo-taxis” in 2019 by the end of the following year. Four years later, the car company is still delaying the unveiling of its robotaxi initiative due to design changes.

The Washington accident happened just a few days before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) concluded a review that linked 14 deaths caused by 13 accidents to Tesla vehicles operating in Autopilot mode. The NHTSA’s report concluded that “Tesla’s weak driver engagement system was not appropriate for Autopilot’s permissive operating capabilities” and the Full Self-Driving mode “did not adequately ensure that drivers maintained their attention on the driving task.”

The Wall Street Journal conducted its own investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot mode using data obtained from cars involved in accidents and published its findings on Monday. The video report found that Tesla reported over 1,000 crashes to the NHTSA since 2016. The data the WSJ obtained from 222 of those crashes determined that 44 were in Autopilot mode.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tesla-involved-in-fatal-washington-crash-was-using-self-driving-mode-170706606.html?src=rss

There are many devices out there that no-one really needs, but have a specific purpose that can help to improve one’s quality of life a bit. Twelve South’s AirFly Duo is one such product. It’s a dongle that lets you connect Bluetooth earbuds and headphones to in-flight entertainment systems. The device is currently on sale for $30, which is a record low. The AirFly Duo usually costs $45.

This is one of our favorite pieces of travel gear. It plugs into any 3.5mm audio jack, actually, so you can use it with the likes of gym equipment, gaming systems or even TVs. Musicians can use it to listen to audio from amplifiers too. What’s more, you can connect two sets of earbuds or headphones at once, so two people can watch a movie on the same iPad while traveling.

Twelve South says the device uses aptX Low Latency Codecs to minimize audio lag. The AirFly Duo is said to have a battery life of over 22 hours, so it should last for even the lengthiest of long-haul flights. But, if you need to, you can charge the device while it’s in use.

Again, the AirFly isn’t a product that anyone truly needs — you can buy a set of wired earbuds that’ll work in a pinch for a few bucks. But you’ll be able to use any Bluetooth earbuds or headphones of your choice with this device. Best of all, you’ll avoid the awkwardness of a trailing wire draping over (and perhaps into) your in-flight meal.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twelve-souths-airfly-duo-bluetooth-dongle-drops-to-a-record-low-of-30-144231948.html?src=rss

Google has rolled out updates for Search with the intention of making explicit deepfakes as hard to find as possible. As part of its long-standing and ongoing fight against realistic-looking manipulated images, the company is making it easier for people to get non-consensual fake imagery that features them removed from Search. 

It has long been possible for users to request for the removal of those kinds of images under Google’s policies. Now, whenever it grants someone’s removal request, Google will also filter all explicit results on similar searches about them. The company’s systems will scan for any duplicates of the offending image and remove them, as well. This update could help alleviate some of the victim’s fears if they’re worried about the same image popping up again on other websites. 

In addition, Google has updated its ranking systems so that if a user specifically searches for explicit deepfakes with a person’s name, the results will surface “high-quality, non-explicit content” instead. If there are news articles about that person, for instance, then the results will feature those. Based on Google’s announcement, it seems it also has plans to school the user looking for deepfakes by showing them results that discuss their impact on society. 

Google doesn’t want to wipe out results for legitimate content, like an actor’s nude scene, in its bid to banish deepfakes from its results page, though. It admits it still has a lot of work to do when it comes to separating legitimate from fake explicit images. While that’s still a work in progress, one of the solutions it has implemented is to demote sites that have received a high volume of removals for manipulated images in Search. That’s “a pretty strong signal that it’s not a high-quality site,” Google explains, adding that the approach has worked well for other types of harmful content in the past.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-makes-it-easier-to-remove-explicit-deepfakes-from-its-search-results-130058499.html?src=rss

Nothing just announced a relatively surprising hardware update for its Phone 2a smartphone. The Phone 2a Plus is a modest upgrade, but still significant, being as how the original 2a was just released back in March.

Most notably, the 2a Plus has a faster chip than the OG 2a. The original’s Mediatek Dimensity 7200 Pro maxed out with a clock speed of 2.8GHz. The 2a Plus boasts a Mediatek Dimensity 7350 Pro that can hit 3.0GHz. Beyond that, the new model features a slightly quicker wired charging speed, at 50W instead of 45W.

Nothing

That’s about it. Every other aspect is nearly identical to the 2a. It has the same camera system, the same battery, the same display and similar aesthetics. This isn’t a bad thing. We loved the Phone 2a in our official review, calling it “a budget phone that’s packed with personality.”

Now onto the bad news. This phone will technically be available to US customers via the company’s beta program, though there are some caveats. American customers can only buy the gray version and not the black one. Even more important, the 2a Plus doesn’t offer true 5G connectivity with many of the major US carriers. This includes both AT&T and Verizon.

The Nothing Phone 2a Plus costs $400 and that gets you 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. Nothing Beta members will be able to order the phone on August 3. UK residents can scoop it up directly from the company on the same day. Nothing says we’ll have to wait until September to find out more details regarding global availability.

Nothing

The company also released a few tidbits about the upcoming Nothing OS 2.6. There will be an updated Game Dashboard with new features and the ability to block third-party app notifications.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nothing-just-announced-the-phone-2a-plus-a-minor-refresh-of-a-pre-existing-model-093049030.html?src=rss