Новости за 06.07.2022

Time is running out to download Epic Games’ The Matrix Awakens. The free open-world interactive demo made with Unreal Engine 5 will be removed from the PlayStation and Xbox stores on July 9th. Luckily, players can still access the game an unlimited amount of times once it’s downloaded. The tie-in experience to The Matrix Resurrections debuted last year, and was one of the first examples of what Epic’s next generation game engine can do. UE5 has since been released to the wider developer community. Читать дальше...

The otherworldly dust has settled on season four of Stranger Things, which just wrapped up with a blockbuster pair of episodes. While The Duffer Brothers, who created the show, have one more season of the Netflix megahit to make, they're looking ahead to future projects.

For the second time this year, Square Enix is delaying Forspoken. Following a delay that pushed the title from its original May 24th release date, the upcoming action RPG from Final Fantasy XV studio Luminous Productions was scheduled to hit PlayStation 5 and PC on October 11th, 2022. It will now instead come out on January 24th, 2023, the publisher announced on Wednesday.

Apple has announced Lockdown Mode, an "extreme" level of security designed for a "very small number of users who face grave, targeted threats." It will be available this fall when the company rolls out iOS 16, iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura.

Insulting someone online could land an individual in Japan a one-year prison term under an amendment to the country’s penal code enacted on Thursday morning. Following the apparent suicide of Hana Kimura and a paltry ¥9,000 (around $81) fine for one of the men accused of bullying the Terrace House star in 2020, government officials began a review of Japan’s cyberbullying laws. Under the previous version of the country’s penal code, the punishment for posting online insults was a fine of ¥10,000 or less and fewer than 30 days in prison. Читать дальше...

Nintendo occasionallyreleases special-edition Switch models for its big games and Splatoon 3 will be no different. A very colorful version of the Switch OLED will be available on August 26th, a couple of weeks before the game arrives on September 9th. This version of the console costs $360 — $10 more than the regular OLED. Pre-orders are open now.

After it spun out from Huawei, Honor wanted to make a splash with its first flagship, the Magic3 Pro. One of the biggest features the company boasted about was the camera, saying it was good enough to shoot a proper movie with. Armed with one, we’d all be turned into miniature Tom Cruises, shooting TikToks as if they were destined for the multiplex. Unfortunately, the phone never left its native China, but Honor is using the same pitch for its successor, the Magic4 Pro, which has arrived in Europe. Читать дальше...

Microsoft will have to satisfy more than just the Federal Trade Commission to complete its $68.7 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard. On Wednesday, the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority announced it would investigate the proposed merger. The watchdog says it seeks to determine whether the agreement would create a “substantial lessening of competition” within the UK. The CMA could announce a decision on whether it will move forward with a probe as early as September 1st. With today’s announcement... Читать дальше...

It's been a wild 48 hours for NASA's CAPSTONE mission. Following the lunar satellite's successful launch on Monday, ground control lost contact with the spacecraft shortly after it escaped Earth's gravity well and separated from its Electron rocket carrier. But after nearly a full day in the dark, NASA announced on Wednesday that its engineers have managed to reopen a line to the 55-pound satellite.

Marriott confirmed it was the target of yet another data breach after attackers recently breached the company's systems. The company said hackers used social engineering techniques to gain access to an employee's computer. After obtaining around 20GB of data, the person or group behind the attack tried to extort Marriott, but the company refused to pay up. 

If you have fond memories of older Ubisoft games with online components from the early 2010s, you might want to check in on them soon. That's because on September 1st 2022, Ubisoft is dropping support for online services in 15 different games including Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.

Toyota is the latest automaker to run out of US federal tax credits and it will join Tesla and GM in losing access to the $7,500 subsidy. The company surpassed the qualifying sales threshold for EVs and hybrids in June, as Bloomberg reports.

With Amazon Prime Day less than a week away, it’s a good time to start thinking about the things you’ll want to look for once the deal wave hits. Everything from gadgets to clothes to household necessities will be on sale during the 48-hour event, and if you’re a Prime member, you’ll have access to all of the deals on Amazon’s site. Engadget will be surfacing all of the best tech deals we can find – both on Amazon and elsewhere – but there are some important things to know ahead of time so you... Читать дальше...

Sony has confirmed that God of War Ragnarok, the sequel to 2018's dramatic spin on the franchise, will launch on the PlayStation 5 and PS4 on November 9th. That confirms earlier rumors around a November launch date, and it should be welcome news to gamers worried about a delay into 2023. Many major upcoming titles originally slated for this year, like Bethesda's Starfield, have been pushed to next year (Just take your pick for reasons: the ongoing pandemic, rocky working conditions for developers... Читать дальше...

A new sale at Wellbots knocks the Fitbit Charge 5 down to the best price we've seen it. The GPS-toting fitness band is on sale for $110, or $40 off its usual price, when you use the code ENGDTRUN40 at checkout. If you want something more advanced, Fitbit's Sense smartwatch is $120 off and down to $180 when you use the code ENGDTRUN120 at checkout.

More than 7,000 languages are currently spoken on this planet and Meta seemingly wants to understand them all. Six months ago, the company launched its ambitious No Language Left Behind (NLLB) project, training AI to translate seamlessly between numerous languages without having to go through English first. On Wednesday, the company announced its first big success, dubbed NLLB-200. It's an AI model that can speak in 200 tongues, including a number of less-widely spoken languages from across Asia and Africa, like Lao and Kamba. Читать дальше...

With early Prime Day deals in full swing, Amazon has discounted one of its more niche devices for Prime members. The Glow, Amazon's interactive video-call and projector device, is down to $150 ahead of Prime Day, which is 55 percent off its normal price. That's also the best price we've seen on the gadget since it became widely available in the US earlier this year.

A company in Finland has created an an unusual storage solution for renewable energy: One that uses sand instead of lithium ion or other battery technologies. Polar Night Energy and Vatajankoski, an energy utility in Western Finland, have built a storage system that can store electricity as heat in the sand. While there are other organizations researching the use of sand for energy storage, including the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Finns say theirs is the first fully working commercial... Читать дальше...

A bunch of Amazon devices are starting to go on sale for Prime members ahead of the two-day shopping event next week, and that includes the company's most powerful streaming device. The Fire TV Cube has now been discounted to $60 for Prime members, which is $10 cheaper than its previous all-time low. Amazon appears to be staggering out its early Prime Day deals because the Fire TV Cube is one of two streaming gadgets on sale right now, the other being the Fire TV Stick 4K, which is $10 off and down to $40 for everyone ... Читать дальше...

Good news for those who've been waiting for Apple's colorful laptops to come out: The new M2-powered MacBook Air will be available for pre-order starting on July 8th at 5AM PDT/8AM EDT. It was first introduced in June at WWDC alongside the redesigned 13-inch MacBook Pro that's similarly powered by the tech giant's new M2 chip, but Apple had released the latter first. Those who prefer the redesigned MacBook Air may not have to wait that long to get their laptops after pre-order begins, because... Читать дальше...

In a nutshell, ASUS’ new powerful gaming phone is all about bigger specs and faster performance. It has a 165Hz 6.78-inch display, with 720Hz touch sampling rate, up to 18GB of RAM and a bigger 6,000mAh battery.

Amazon has already started selling a bunch of its smart home devices at a discount, almost a week before Prime Day even begins. One of the most notable deals that's already available is Amazon's smart thermostat, which you can get for $42 — as long as you're a Prime member. That's 30 percent off its regular retail price of $60 and a new all-time low for the device. Amazon's smart thermostat debuted in September 2021, giving you an affordable option to control your home temperature. 

Amazon has announced a handful of new perks for Prime members ahead of Prime Day this month, including free deliveries from nearby restaurants. All Prime members in the US will now get access to a one-year Grubhub+ membership, which typically costs $10 a month, for free. Amazon used to have a restaurant delivery service of its own in an attempt to create a homegrown UberEats rival, but the company ultimately shut it down in the UK and the US. This time, it's teaming up with an established delivery service. Читать дальше...

Stranger Things 4 has become the most popular English-language series on Netflix with the premiere of its last two episodes. The streaming giant has revealed that the show has racked up 1.15 billion hours of viewing time within the first 28 days of each part's release. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the first seven episodes had a viewing time of 930.32 million hours within 28 days of the show's debut. Meanwhile, episodes 8 and 9 reached 221 million hours viewed in the week of June 27th to July 3rd. Читать дальше...

Meta is taking legal action against two prolific data scrapers. On Tuesday, the company filed separate federal lawsuits against a company called Octopus and an individual named Ekrem Ateş. According to Meta, the former is the US subsidiary of a Chinese multinational tech firm that offers data scraping-for-hire services to individuals and companies.