Google seems to be preparing the announcement of a new evolution of its Material Design 3 framework at its upcoming I/O 2025 conference. Dubbed “Expressive,” this potential update was uncovered through code repositories maintained by the company, with early elements reportedly already present in beta versions of Android 16 and Gboard.
The discovery was made by developer and Android Authority journalist Mishaal Rahman, who found a reference to a new theme called “Material3Expressive” within Google’s GitHub repositories related to Material Design for Android. In response to a query about the theme, a Google engineer noted that the Material team is experimenting with new ways to make apps more engaging by introducing additional expressive features.
Additional evidence was found in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), where a patch titled “DO NOT SUBMIT I/O 2025 Expressive talk code demos” was identified. Although the name was later changed to remove direct reference to “Expressive,” the patch still mentions I/O 2025, suggesting that the new design language may be officially unveiled during the event.
While Google has not provided official confirmation and declined to comment on the findings, internal references refer to the update as “Material Design 3 Expressive.” The exact features and final name remain unconfirmed, but Android Authority’s investigations hint at upcoming changes.
Preliminary insights from Android 16 Beta 3 show a redesigned system settings app featuring more rounded elements and updated buttons. Additionally, Gboard is testing a new progress bar in its meme generator tool.
The revamped design is expected to be formally introduced during the opening keynote of Google I/O 2025, scheduled for May 20.
As part of their ongoing celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope’s 35th anniversary, NASA and ESA have shared a new image of the Eagle Nebula, specifically a “spire of cosmic gas and dust” that’s in a region last captured by the telescope two decades ago.
The tower in the image is 9.5 light years tall, according to NASA and ESA, and only a portion of the larger Eagle Nebula, which is considered a “nursery” for young stars. The tower’s unique mix of oranges and dark blues is thanks to a combination of swirling hydrogen gas and space dust. The nebula’s “Eagle” name comes from how it looks when you pan across it, where edge clouds like the one in the image look like the wings of a giant bird of prey.
ESA/Hubble & NASA, K. Noll
As of late, the James Webb Telescope has become the designated source for spectacular images of space, but clearly Hubble still has some juice in it, too. Some of that is thanks to “new data processing techniques” that are being applied to the images captured by the telescope.
The Eagle Nebula is just one of several celestial targets Hubble is revisiting for its 35th anniversary. By capturing different angles and using data differently, the telescope is able to produce more spectacularly colored images. There’s no major discoveries made with these “reruns,” but they are, without a doubt, even cooler than before.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/celebrate-the-35th-anniversary-of-the-hubble-space-telescope-with-a-gigantic-tower-of-gas-and-dust-184340147.html?src=rss
Tesla is facing a proposed class action suit over allegations that it has been speeding up odometers so its vehicles will fall out of warranty faster, according to a report by Reuters. This would make it easier for the company to get out of paying for repairs.
Nyree Hinton, the plaintiff in the case, alleges that Tesla odometer readers are designed to change with energy consumption, driver behavior and mysterious predictive algorithms, and not actual mileage driven. He said that the odometer on the 2020 Model Y he bought in December 2022 had 36,772 miles on the clock at the time of purchase.
Hinton alleges that the odometer went up by 72 miles each day, when he only drove around 20. He made comparisons to his other vehicles and concluded that the odometer ran, at the minimum, 15 percent fast. This caused his 50,000-mile basic warranty to expire ahead of schedule, which forced him to pay a $10,000 suspension repair bill out of pocket.
“By tying warranty limits and lease mileage caps to inflated ‘odometer’ readings, Tesla increases repair revenue, reduces warranty obligations, and compels consumers to purchase extended warranties prematurely,” the complaint said.
Hinton is seeking compensatory damage for himself, but also punitive damages for all Tesla drivers in California. This encompasses over one million vehicles, according to court papers. Tesla has denied all allegations in the lawsuit. EV forums and related subreddits, however, are filled with odometer complaints involving the company.
Tesla owners are seeing inflated odometer readings 20-30% higher than driving the same route with a different vehicle or compared to Google Maps trip distance.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Tesla has been charged with fibbing about mileage data. The automaker has faced litigation that accused it of inflating vehicle driving ranges. It has also been accused of forming a secret “Diversion Team” that would cancel range-related service appointments.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/tesla-accused-of-messing-with-odometers-to-get-out-of-repair-bills-165625372.html?src=rss
Google seems to be preparing the announcement of a new evolution of its Material Design 3 framework at its upcoming I/O 2025 conference. Dubbed “Expressive,” this potential update was uncovered through code repositories maintained by the company, with early elements reportedly already present in beta versions of Android 16 and Gboard.
The discovery was made by developer and Android Authority journalist Mishaal Rahman, who found a reference to a new theme called “Material3Expressive” within Google’s GitHub repositories related to Material Design for Android. In response to a query about the theme, a Google engineer noted that the Material team is experimenting with new ways to make apps more engaging by introducing additional expressive features.
Additional evidence was found in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), where a patch titled “DO NOT SUBMIT I/O 2025 Expressive talk code demos” was identified. Although the name was later changed to remove direct reference to “Expressive,” the patch still mentions I/O 2025, suggesting that the new design language may be officially unveiled during the event.
While Google has not provided official confirmation and declined to comment on the findings, internal references refer to the update as “Material Design 3 Expressive.” The exact features and final name remain unconfirmed, but Android Authority’s investigations hint at upcoming changes.
Preliminary insights from Android 16 Beta 3 show a redesigned system settings app featuring more rounded elements and updated buttons. Additionally, Gboard is testing a new progress bar in its meme generator tool.
The revamped design is expected to be formally introduced during the opening keynote of Google I/O 2025, scheduled for May 20.
Blue Prince is an incredible puzzle game. Set in a lonely mansion with impossible architecture, it’s layered in mysteries, conspiracies and family drama. The mansion, Mt. Holly, officially has 45 rooms, but in order to collect your inheritance, you have to find the 46th. Every day you’re given a set number of steps, and you have to literally build the manor (and the game) as you go, drawing from a pool of floorplans to create a new layout with each run.
This is the foundation, but it goes so much deeper: When I previewed Blue Prince in December 2024, I couldn’t have imagined its complexity. It’s not a game you can fully understand in a few runs; it takes 10 hours to realize what its core puzzles even are, and even longer to then piece their solutions together, room by room, step by step. It’s a slow, supremely satisfying burn. The puzzles in Blue Prince are cavernous and surprising, and it’s thrilling to interact with the game’s mechanics and items. Not to mention, it’s all absolutely gorgeous.
Dogubomb
Though Blue Prince isn’t marketed as a cooperative experience and it doesn’t have any kind of multiplayer input, it naturally lends itself to co-op play. Mechanics matter less than the concepts on-screen, and it’s useful to have one person on controls and another on a notepad, jotting down clues and tracking progress. Plus, one of the best ways to get unstuck in a game like this is to talk things through, and this naturally happens when you’re playing together. Blue Prince is just a really intricate puzzle, after all, and we’ve been doing those things in group settings for ages.
This is a true of many single-player puzzle games — their common theme being that they’re secretly couch co-op experiences. You could say all games are local co-op if you try hard enough, but only in puzzle games can a bystander play along without ever touching a controller, directing the action and providing critical breakthroughs simply by paying attention. You’re not going to have the same level of impact watching your friend play Assassin’s Creed, you know?
Dogubomb
Blue Prince is only the latest example of an undercover couch co-op puzzle game. My partner and I have happily played a handful of similar games together in recent years, and it’s gotten to the point that I now breeze right past the “single-player” descriptor on most puzzle titles. Here’s a shortlist of my household’s favorites:
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
The Talos Principle 2
The Sexy Brutale
The Rise of the Golden Idol
Return of the Obra Dinn
The Witness
Viewfinder
Storyteller
All of these games are officially single-player, but they’re as good, if not even better, when played with a loved one. On my couch, we’ve also enjoyed actual local co-op puzzlers like Escape Academy, so if your relationship can survive those games, it should be able to handle Lorelei, Talos or Blue Prince with ease.
While we’re waxing poetic about the intricacies of video game sub-genres (OK fine, just one of us is), Blue Prince falls into another one of my favorite categories, which I affectionately call “anti-GameFAQs puzzle games.” These are designed to be impossible to capture in a traditional walkthrough guide, and while the category isn’t large, it includes some of the best titles of this generation, like Tunic and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. These lean so heavily on the thing that makes video games unique as a media product — player autonomy — that they feel like a hostile attack on step-by-step explainers, and I absolutely love that. (These games also tend to remind me of House of Leaves, which could be another sub-genre on its own, but I’ll stop here. For now.)
Playing Blue Prince with my partner in 2025 reminds me of the specific lazy afternoon in the summer of 2008 when some friends and I discovered Braid on Xbox Live Arcade. We spent hours playing from my buddy’s dingy couch, passing the controller around, pointing at the screen and yelling out strategies, and just marveling at that little time-shifting toxic dude. Shared experiences like this generate a specific kind of warmth, and a great puzzle game can produce these moments over and over again.
Even if it’s technically single-player.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/every-puzzle-game-is-a-couch-co-op-game-actually-163024595.html?src=rss
Google seems to be preparing the announcement of a new evolution of its Material Design 3 framework at its upcoming I/O 2025 conference. Dubbed “Expressive,” this potential update was uncovered through code repositories maintained by the company, with early elements reportedly already present in beta versions of Android 16 and Gboard.
The discovery was made by developer and Android Authority journalist Mishaal Rahman, who found a reference to a new theme called “Material3Expressive” within Google’s GitHub repositories related to Material Design for Android. In response to a query about the theme, a Google engineer noted that the Material team is experimenting with new ways to make apps more engaging by introducing additional expressive features.
Additional evidence was found in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), where a patch titled “DO NOT SUBMIT I/O 2025 Expressive talk code demos” was identified. Although the name was later changed to remove direct reference to “Expressive,” the patch still mentions I/O 2025, suggesting that the new design language may be officially unveiled during the event.
While Google has not provided official confirmation and declined to comment on the findings, internal references refer to the update as “Material Design 3 Expressive.” The exact features and final name remain unconfirmed, but Android Authority’s investigations hint at upcoming changes.
Preliminary insights from Android 16 Beta 3 show a redesigned system settings app featuring more rounded elements and updated buttons. Additionally, Gboard is testing a new progress bar in its meme generator tool.
The revamped design is expected to be formally introduced during the opening keynote of Google I/O 2025, scheduled for May 20.
If you’re looking for a VPN to use on your next trip, or even just at home while you’re streaming or gaming, ExpressVPN is one of our favorites and you can subscribe at a discount right now. ExpressVPN is offering a two-year plan plus an extra four free months for a total of $140. That’s 61 percent off the typical price, and it comes out to $5 per month.
Even though you have to pay the $140 upfront, it’s a solid deal — especially considering having access to a good VPN service into late 2027 sounds pretty dang nice. ExpressVPN earned a top spot on our best VPN list thanks to its speedy connections, Network Lock kill-switch feature and its support on a variety of devices including smart TVs and game consoles.
It works on a variety of devices, so this isn’t just for the living room desktop. ExpressVPN integrates with mobile gadgets, smart TVs and game consoles, among other items. It’s really the best solution for gamers who travel a lot. It also comes with an in-house password manager, which would eliminate the need for a standalone subscription.
Truly the only real downside of this service is the price. The regular cost is $13 per month, which is mighty steep. This sale alleviates this concern, at least for 28 months. Spending $5 per month for a VPN of this caliber is something of a no-brainer.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/expressvpn-two-year-subscriptions-are-61-percent-off-right-now-150758431.html?src=rss
Google seems to be preparing the announcement of a new evolution of its Material Design 3 framework at its upcoming I/O 2025 conference. Dubbed “Expressive,” this potential update was uncovered through code repositories maintained by the company, with early elements reportedly already present in beta versions of Android 16 and Gboard.
The discovery was made by developer and Android Authority journalist Mishaal Rahman, who found a reference to a new theme called “Material3Expressive” within Google’s GitHub repositories related to Material Design for Android. In response to a query about the theme, a Google engineer noted that the Material team is experimenting with new ways to make apps more engaging by introducing additional expressive features.
Additional evidence was found in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), where a patch titled “DO NOT SUBMIT I/O 2025 Expressive talk code demos” was identified. Although the name was later changed to remove direct reference to “Expressive,” the patch still mentions I/O 2025, suggesting that the new design language may be officially unveiled during the event.
While Google has not provided official confirmation and declined to comment on the findings, internal references refer to the update as “Material Design 3 Expressive.” The exact features and final name remain unconfirmed, but Android Authority’s investigations hint at upcoming changes.
Preliminary insights from Android 16 Beta 3 show a redesigned system settings app featuring more rounded elements and updated buttons. Additionally, Gboard is testing a new progress bar in its meme generator tool.
The revamped design is expected to be formally introduced during the opening keynote of Google I/O 2025, scheduled for May 20.
If you’re looking for a VPN to use on your next trip, or even just at home while you’re streaming or gaming, ExpressVPN is one of our favorites and you can subscribe at a discount right now. ExpressVPN is offering a two-year plan plus an extra four free months for a total of $140. That’s 61 percent off the typical price, and it comes out to $5 per month.
Even though you have to pay the $140 upfront, it’s a solid deal — especially considering having access to a good VPN service into late 2027 sounds pretty dang nice. ExpressVPN earned a top spot on our best VPN list thanks to its speedy connections, Network Lock kill-switch feature and its support on a variety of devices including smart TVs and game consoles.
It works on a variety of devices, so this isn’t just for the living room desktop. ExpressVPN integrates with mobile gadgets, smart TVs and game consoles, among other items. It’s really the best solution for gamers who travel a lot. It also comes with an in-house password manager, which would eliminate the need for a standalone subscription.
Truly the only real downside of this service is the price. The regular cost is $13 per month, which is mighty steep. This sale alleviates this concern, at least for 28 months. Spending $5 per month for a VPN of this caliber is something of a no-brainer.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/expressvpn-two-year-subscriptions-are-61-percent-off-right-now-150758431.html?src=rss
Google seems to be preparing the announcement of a new evolution of its Material Design 3 framework at its upcoming I/O 2025 conference. Dubbed “Expressive,” this potential update was uncovered through code repositories maintained by the company, with early elements reportedly already present in beta versions of Android 16 and Gboard.
The discovery was made by developer and Android Authority journalist Mishaal Rahman, who found a reference to a new theme called “Material3Expressive” within Google’s GitHub repositories related to Material Design for Android. In response to a query about the theme, a Google engineer noted that the Material team is experimenting with new ways to make apps more engaging by introducing additional expressive features.
Additional evidence was found in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), where a patch titled “DO NOT SUBMIT I/O 2025 Expressive talk code demos” was identified. Although the name was later changed to remove direct reference to “Expressive,” the patch still mentions I/O 2025, suggesting that the new design language may be officially unveiled during the event.
While Google has not provided official confirmation and declined to comment on the findings, internal references refer to the update as “Material Design 3 Expressive.” The exact features and final name remain unconfirmed, but Android Authority’s investigations hint at upcoming changes.
Preliminary insights from Android 16 Beta 3 show a redesigned system settings app featuring more rounded elements and updated buttons. Additionally, Gboard is testing a new progress bar in its meme generator tool.
The revamped design is expected to be formally introduced during the opening keynote of Google I/O 2025, scheduled for May 20.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
