engadget-rss

CNBC is getting in on the streaming game with a service called CNBC+. The platform will have a global livestream with financial news happening in the US, UK and Asian markets. Subscribers can also watch full show episodes on demand. The service is available via iOS and Android apps or on cnbc.com. 
According to Variety, CNBC announced the news and pricing plans for CNBC+ on January 1 in an email to people who had signed up for the network’s digital offerings. Seems odd to announce a brand new property intended for business and financial professionals on a day when most companies are closed. CNBC is also one of the properties current owner Comcast is planning to spin off into a new company, which makes this a potentially challenging time for the network to launch an expensive new endeavor.
And expensive is the key word. Not only is it costly to run a digital platform like this, but CNBC+ also doesn’t come cheap for viewers. A regular subscription will cost $15 a month, while the Pro tier bundles in additional stock ratings and picks as well as a My Portfolio feature for $35 a month or $300 a year. For the truly committed fans, there is also an All Access plan that includes participation in an online investment club led by CNBC personality Jim Cramer. That plan costs a staggering $600 annually.
This isn’t the first time cable news has tried a streaming standalone. Warner Bros. Discovery launched a CNN+ service in March 2022, only to immediately pull the plug mere weeks later. We’ll see if CNBC+ can last longer.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/cnbcs-new-streaming-service-can-cost-up-to-600-a-year-211554221.html?src=rss

CNBC is getting in on the streaming game with a service called CNBC+. The platform will have a global livestream with financial news happening in the US, UK and Asian markets. Subscribers can also watch full show episodes on demand. The service is available via iOS and Android apps or on cnbc.com. 

According to Variety, CNBC announced the news and pricing plans for CNBC+ on January 1 in an email to people who had signed up for the network’s digital offerings. Seems odd to announce a brand new property intended for business and financial professionals on a day when most companies are closed. CNBC is also one of the properties current owner Comcast is planning to spin off into a new company, which makes this a potentially challenging time for the network to launch an expensive new endeavor.

And expensive is the key word. Not only is it costly to run a digital platform like this, but CNBC+ also doesn’t come cheap for viewers. A regular subscription will cost $15 a month, while the Pro tier bundles in additional stock ratings and picks as well as a My Portfolio feature for $35 a month or $300 a year. For the truly committed fans, there is also an All Access plan that includes participation in an online investment club led by CNBC personality Jim Cramer. That plan costs a staggering $600 annually.

This isn’t the first time cable news has tried a streaming standalone. Warner Bros. Discovery launched a CNN+ service in March 2022, only to immediately pull the plug mere weeks later. We’ll see if CNBC+ can last longer.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/cnbcs-new-streaming-service-can-cost-up-to-600-a-year-211554221.html?src=rss

Read More 

Sony just revealed the first set of PlayStation Plus games in 2025 available for all subscribers, regardless of what service tier they’re signed up for. Up this month are Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered and The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. I can’t say it’s the most exciting set of games, but at the very least The Stanley Parable is a classic, albeit an old one — the game was first released way back in 2011 as a mod for Half-Life 2. The game then got a proper full release in 2013, and the Ultra Deluxe version was released for modern consoles in 2022. 
Original creators Davey Wreden and William Pugh put together the Ultra Deluxe edition, with an expanded script and a number of other new changers that the developers weren’t exactly forthcoming about: “Everything you remember has been recreated, yet it’s different somehow. We’ve been here before, haven’t we?” Broadly speaking, though, the game expands on the original with more choices, more dialog and more choices for the player to navigate. If you haven’t given the game a shot, you now have no excuse not to check it out.
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered is another oldie — released originally in 2010, but updated for the PS4 in 2020. That’s the version available here, with full career modes for either a racer or cop, depending on which side of the law you feel like being on. This version also includes multiplayer modes and all the DLC that was released for the original game.
Finally, the newest game in the batch is Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, a live service game that went through multiple delays, got largely negative reviews and reportedly cost Warner Bros. some $200 million. Adding insult to injury, developers announced that the current season of content would be its last, though there are no plans to shut the game down yet. Given that it only came out this past February, that’s a pretty short lifespan. I’m not sure that I’d want to jump onto the sinking ship at this point, but at least you can give it a shot without shelling out the $70 it still costs.
All these games are available as of January 7 to PS Plus subscribers, and you have until then to add December’s games to your library. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/the-first-playstation-plus-games-of-2025-include-the-stanley-parable-and-suicide-squad-172531311.html?src=rss

Sony just revealed the first set of PlayStation Plus games in 2025 available for all subscribers, regardless of what service tier they’re signed up for. Up this month are Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered and The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. I can’t say it’s the most exciting set of games, but at the very least The Stanley Parable is a classic, albeit an old one — the game was first released way back in 2011 as a mod for Half-Life 2. The game then got a proper full release in 2013, and the Ultra Deluxe version was released for modern consoles in 2022. 

Original creators Davey Wreden and William Pugh put together the Ultra Deluxe edition, with an expanded script and a number of other new changers that the developers weren’t exactly forthcoming about: “Everything you remember has been recreated, yet it’s different somehow. We’ve been here before, haven’t we?” Broadly speaking, though, the game expands on the original with more choices, more dialog and more choices for the player to navigate. If you haven’t given the game a shot, you now have no excuse not to check it out.

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered is another oldie — released originally in 2010, but updated for the PS4 in 2020. That’s the version available here, with full career modes for either a racer or cop, depending on which side of the law you feel like being on. This version also includes multiplayer modes and all the DLC that was released for the original game.

Finally, the newest game in the batch is Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, a live service game that went through multiple delays, got largely negative reviews and reportedly cost Warner Bros. some $200 million. Adding insult to injury, developers announced that the current season of content would be its last, though there are no plans to shut the game down yet. Given that it only came out this past February, that’s a pretty short lifespan. I’m not sure that I’d want to jump onto the sinking ship at this point, but at least you can give it a shot without shelling out the $70 it still costs.

All these games are available as of January 7 to PS Plus subscribers, and you have until then to add December’s games to your library. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/the-first-playstation-plus-games-of-2025-include-the-stanley-parable-and-suicide-squad-172531311.html?src=rss

Read More 

Squid Game has set a new high for Netflix’s television programming. Variety reported that the second season of the Korean show drew in 68 million views over its first four days. That’s the biggest debut for a TV show on the streaming platform, besting the 50.1 million set by Wednesday in 2022. The first season of Squid Game also held the crown as the top-watched Netflix series for a while; 142 million households had watched it as of October 2021. The third and final season could deliver a hat trick of record results for the company when it airs next year.
While the show offers a skewering critique of capitalism, Netflix has been turning Squid Game into quite the cash cow. The streamer launched a less deadly reality show spinoff, an in-person pop-up experience and a multiplayer mobile game based on the TV series.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/squid-games-second-season-is-officially-netflixs-biggest-tv-debut-205113266.html?src=rss

Squid Game has set a new high for Netflix’s television programming. Variety reported that the second season of the Korean show drew in 68 million views over its first four days. That’s the biggest debut for a TV show on the streaming platform, besting the 50.1 million set by Wednesday in 2022. The first season of Squid Game also held the crown as the top-watched Netflix series for a while; 142 million households had watched it as of October 2021. The third and final season could deliver a hat trick of record results for the company when it airs next year.

While the show offers a skewering critique of capitalism, Netflix has been turning Squid Game into quite the cash cow. The streamer launched a less deadly reality show spinoff, an in-person pop-up experience and a multiplayer mobile game based on the TV series.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/squid-games-second-season-is-officially-netflixs-biggest-tv-debut-205113266.html?src=rss

Read More 

There’s no longer any question that Threads and Bluesky have created the most viable alternatives to the platform once known as Twitter. But while the two services may share some of the same goals, they’ve shown very different visions for how text-based social networks should operate.
Threads, of course, is controlled by Meta, which is controlled by Mark Zuckerberg. And though the company has claimed to embrace “public conversation,” it has also consistently put its thumb on the scale to encourage certain types of speech over others. The company throttled “political” content in an election year, forcing users to tweak their settings to enable posts about elections or “social topics” to appear in their “for you” feed.
This desire to limit any of what Meta described as “potentially sensitive” content has also led to some questionable moderation decisions. For months, the app prevented users from searching for some topics, including those related to COVID-19 and vaccines. Those limits have since been lifted, but there have been numerous and inexplicable instances of other moderation failures on Threads.
In October, Instagram head Adam Mosseri admitted the company had “found mistakes and made changes” after users reported their accounts had been penalized for using mundane words like “saltines” and “cracker.” Earlier this month,, Meta’s communications director Andy Stone apologized after users noted that searches for posts about Austin Tice, the American journalist who disappeared in Syria in 2012, were blocked on the app because the content “may be associated with the sale of drugs.” Stone didn’t offer an explanation but said the issue has been addressed.
Bluesky, on the other hand, has taken less of a top-down approach to moderation. While the company employs some of its own moderators to enforce “baseline moderation,” users have a lot of control over how much questionable or harmful content they want to see. Blueksy also allows people to create their own moderation services for an even more custom experience.
“Moderation is in many ways, like governance,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber told me earlier this year. “And setting the norms of a social space, we don’t think one person or one company should be unilaterally deciding that for an entire ecosystem where people are having public conversations important to the state of the world.”
That philosophy plays out in other important ways. Twitter was never a major source of traffic for most publishers, even before Elon Musk’s takeover. But the platform once played a vital role in the news ecosystem. At a time when Elon Musk has acknowledged that X penalizes posts with links and Threads’ top exec has said that Meta doesn’t want to “encourage” hard news, Bluesky’s leaders have actually tried to foster link sharing, and several publishers have reported seeing significantly more traffic from Bluesky, compared with Threads and X.
But perhaps the most obvious difference between Meta and Bluesky’s approach is in what order posts even appear. Bluesky defaults to a reverse chronological feed that shows posts from accounts you follow. Users can also choose to add custom feeds based on hundreds of different topics. For example, I follow a “cat pics” feed that surfaces posts with photos of cats and a “trending news” feed that surfaces links to news stories that are being shared widely on the platform.
And while Meta has recently come out with its own version of custom feeds, the app still defaults to an algorithmic “for you” feed that surfaces a mix of content users actually want and unasked-for drivel that’s so random and bizarre it’s been compared to a gas leak. (Meta said it would test allowing users to make their following feed the default, but hasn’t provided an update.) It’s also telling that even the content creators getting paid hundreds or thousands of dollars to post on Threads don’t really understand the platform.
There are even more significant changes coming in 2025. While both Threads and Bluesky have so far been blissfully ad-free, both services will need to eventually make money.
Bluesky has so far experimented with other ways of making money, including selling custom domains and an upcoming subscription service that will offer extra features to paying users. Though Graber hasn’t entirely ruled out advertising, she’s also been clear that she doesn’t want to “enshittify” the service for the sake of advertising.
Threads, on the other hand, is already attached to Meta’s multi-billion dollar ad machine, an entity so intrusive many people believe the company’s apps literally listen to their conversations (a theory that’s been repeatedly debunked.) Though Zuckerberg has indicated the company isn’t in a rush to turn Threads into a “very large business,” it could see its first ads in January, according to reports, and there’s little reason to believe Meta won’t eventually employ the same playbook it has with all its other services.
All this makes Bluesky even more of an underdog. Threads is already more than 10 times its size and Meta has made it clear it has no problem using its copy-or-kill tactics against the upstart.
But that’s also exactly why so many Bluesky users fervently believe that the platform is the one that “has the juice.” While Threads and X put public conversations in the hands of autocratic billionaires, Bluesky is an independent entity and has structured its platform much more democratically. The platform has had its share of moderation controversies, but it puts far more control in the hands of its users. It’s welcomed developers, who have created dozens of third-party apps for the service.
All that may not ultimately be enough to fend off Meta, which can afford to throw billions of dollars at Threads. But Bluesky’s vision for an open-source decentralized platform is about much more than becoming the next big social media site. “We set out to change the way social media works from the bottom up,” Graber said during a recent press event. “I want us to have choice over what we see.”This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-and-threads-showed-us-very-different-visions-for-a-post-x-future-171046336.html?src=rss

There’s no longer any question that Threads and Bluesky have created the most viable alternatives to the platform once known as Twitter. But while the two services may share some of the same goals, they’ve shown very different visions for how text-based social networks should operate.

Threads, of course, is controlled by Meta, which is controlled by Mark Zuckerberg. And though the company has claimed to embrace “public conversation,” it has also consistently put its thumb on the scale to encourage certain types of speech over others. The company throttled “political” content in an election year, forcing users to tweak their settings to enable posts about elections or “social topics” to appear in their “for you” feed.

This desire to limit any of what Meta described as “potentially sensitive” content has also led to some questionable moderation decisions. For months, the app prevented users from searching for some topics, including those related to COVID-19 and vaccines. Those limits have since been lifted, but there have been numerous and inexplicable instances of other moderation failures on Threads.

In October, Instagram head Adam Mosseri admitted the company had “found mistakes and made changes” after users reported their accounts had been penalized for using mundane words like “saltines” and “cracker.” Earlier this month,, Meta’s communications director Andy Stone apologized after users noted that searches for posts about Austin Tice, the American journalist who disappeared in Syria in 2012, were blocked on the app because the content “may be associated with the sale of drugs.” Stone didn’t offer an explanation but said the issue has been addressed.

Bluesky, on the other hand, has taken less of a top-down approach to moderation. While the company employs some of its own moderators to enforce “baseline moderation,” users have a lot of control over how much questionable or harmful content they want to see. Blueksy also allows people to create their own moderation services for an even more custom experience.

“Moderation is in many ways, like governance,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber told me earlier this year. “And setting the norms of a social space, we don’t think one person or one company should be unilaterally deciding that for an entire ecosystem where people are having public conversations important to the state of the world.”

That philosophy plays out in other important ways. Twitter was never a major source of traffic for most publishers, even before Elon Musk’s takeover. But the platform once played a vital role in the news ecosystem. At a time when Elon Musk has acknowledged that X penalizes posts with links and Threads’ top exec has said that Meta doesn’t want to “encourage” hard news, Bluesky’s leaders have actually tried to foster link sharing, and several publishers have reported seeing significantly more traffic from Bluesky, compared with Threads and X.

But perhaps the most obvious difference between Meta and Bluesky’s approach is in what order posts even appear. Bluesky defaults to a reverse chronological feed that shows posts from accounts you follow. Users can also choose to add custom feeds based on hundreds of different topics. For example, I follow a “cat pics” feed that surfaces posts with photos of cats and a “trending news” feed that surfaces links to news stories that are being shared widely on the platform.

And while Meta has recently come out with its own version of custom feeds, the app still defaults to an algorithmic “for you” feed that surfaces a mix of content users actually want and unasked-for drivel that’s so random and bizarre it’s been compared to a gas leak. (Meta said it would test allowing users to make their following feed the default, but hasn’t provided an update.) It’s also telling that even the content creators getting paid hundreds or thousands of dollars to post on Threads don’t really understand the platform.

There are even more significant changes coming in 2025. While both Threads and Bluesky have so far been blissfully ad-free, both services will need to eventually make money.

Bluesky has so far experimented with other ways of making money, including selling custom domains and an upcoming subscription service that will offer extra features to paying users. Though Graber hasn’t entirely ruled out advertising, she’s also been clear that she doesn’t want to “enshittify” the service for the sake of advertising.

Threads, on the other hand, is already attached to Meta’s multi-billion dollar ad machine, an entity so intrusive many people believe the company’s apps literally listen to their conversations (a theory that’s been repeatedly debunked.) Though Zuckerberg has indicated the company isn’t in a rush to turn Threads into a “very large business,” it could see its first ads in January, according to reports, and there’s little reason to believe Meta won’t eventually employ the same playbook it has with all its other services.

All this makes Bluesky even more of an underdog. Threads is already more than 10 times its size and Meta has made it clear it has no problem using its copy-or-kill tactics against the upstart.

But that’s also exactly why so many Bluesky users fervently believe that the platform is the one that “has the juice.” While Threads and X put public conversations in the hands of autocratic billionaires, Bluesky is an independent entity and has structured its platform much more democratically. The platform has had its share of moderation controversies, but it puts far more control in the hands of its users. It’s welcomed developers, who have created dozens of third-party apps for the service.

All that may not ultimately be enough to fend off Meta, which can afford to throw billions of dollars at Threads. But Bluesky’s vision for an open-source decentralized platform is about much more than becoming the next big social media site. “We set out to change the way social media works from the bottom up,” Graber said during a recent press event. “I want us to have choice over what we see.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-and-threads-showed-us-very-different-visions-for-a-post-x-future-171046336.html?src=rss

Read More 

When it comes to new horror games, there are times of feast and famine, and this past year we gorged until our bellies bulged and our mouths dripped with gruesome grease. In 2024, we received a rich spread of dark experiences from solo creators, indie teams, AA developers and AAA studios in a vast array of genres and visual styles. There was a fantastic Silent Hill 2 remake and beefy updates to contemporary classics like Phasmophobia, Alan Wake 2 and The Outlast Trials, and there was also a steady cadence of brand-new horror franchises expanding the genre in unexpected ways.
First, let’s take a moment to celebrate a sampling of the year’s fresh horror universes. In 2024, we got the following new titles:

Crow Country from brothers Adam Vian and Tom Vian at SFB Games
Fear the Spotlight from husband-and-wife team Cozy Game Pals
Hollowbody by solo dev Nathan Hamley at Headware Games
Home Safety Hotline by Utah studio Night Signal Entertainment
INDIKA from Spain- and Kazakhstan-based studio Odd Meter
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess from Capcom
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes by the high-strangeness experts at Simogo
Mouthwashing from Swedish indie team Wrong Organ
Slitterhead by Silent Hill and Gravity Rush creator Keiichirō Toyama at Bokeh Game Studios
Still Wakes the Deep from horror veterans The Chinese Room

This is not a comprehensive list of new horror franchises in 2024, but it’s a suitable demonstration of how vast and varied the offerings were this year. Indie studios are leading the charge when it comes to fresh ideas and original mechanics, of course, but there are also plenty of references to early-2000s graphics and PS1- or PS2-era survival horror on this list. The combination of innovation and nostalgia is particularly potent in titles like Fear the Spotlight, Crow Country, Mouthwashing and Hollowbody. These games infuse blocky 3D worlds with modern sensibilities and smooth animations, resulting in experiences that illuminate the staticky memories of Resident Evil and Silent Hill that lurk in our heads. This is how we wanted those games to feel, fixed camera angles be damned — or, in the case of Hollowbody, lovingly embraced.
Fear the SpotlightCozy Game Pals
 
It should also be noted that Fear the Spotlight marks the debut of acclaimed horror-movie maker Blumhouse as a video game publisher. Fear the Spotlight is the first release in Blumhouse’s lineup — which includes future titles from EYES OUT, Half Mermaid, Perfect Garbage, Playmestudio and Vermila Studios — and it’s an excellent exploration of low-fi teenage drama and dread. The horror-game revolution is upon us and Blumhouse is absolutely going to snag a piece.
The least horror-like game on the above list may be Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, and it also happens to be the only title from a AAA studio. I’ve included it because, as a dedicated fan of horror games, I think Kunitsu-Gami checks plenty of boxes: It features huge, disgusting demons and a lethal blight that envelops whole towns in skeletal yet strangely juicy organic material. Its monster designs feature colorful displays of lechery and body horror, and there’s comfort to be found in its tense strategy-action gameplay loop. Kunitsu-Gami wasn’t marketed as a horror experience, and it certainly contains just as many scenes of stunning beauty as it does grotesquerie, but I heartily recommend it to any horror fan. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the GoddessCapcom
INDIKA is another entry that straddles the genres of horror, camp and religious satire, but it definitely features a few scenes of soul-piercing terror. Plus, the literal devil is your friendly companion throughout the game, and that has to count for something. Among scenes of grief, inhumanity and devastation, INDIKA is a laugh riot, and it’s a preeminent example of mature themes handled well in video game form. An additional genre-bending standout from 2024 is Simogo’s Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. It contains incredibly satisfying logic puzzles in a hotel made out of mysteries — but phantoms haunt the hallways, there’s a corpse in the back garden and every scene drips with palpable unease. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is one of the best and most unsettling games of the year, period.
Still Wakes the Deep, meanwhile, offers a familiar and beautiful brand of monster-stalking horror on an oil rig in the middle of the angry North Sea. It’s a must-play game for any horror fan, acting as a vessel for The Chinese Room to show off its skills in building authentic worlds and cultivating ceaseless tension with a paranormal edge. Plus, it’s one of the best-looking games I played on PS5 all year. Slitterhead is another one for the action-horror players out there, presenting a supernatural mystery in a version of Hong Kong that’s been infested by body-snatching demons, featuring buckets of blood and frantic close-range combat.
Still Wakes the DeepThe Chinese Room
The year began with the release of Home Safety Hotline, a simulation of a 1990s call center where players help diagnose and treat household pests, which include otherworldly threats like Bed Teeth, Fae Flu, The Horde, Laundry Gnome, Mirror Nymph, Toilet Hobb, Unicorn Fungi and others. Home Safety Hotline really was the amuse bouche of 2024’s horror game lineup — and Mouthwashing is the dessert. 
All the horror kids nowadays are playing Mouthwashing, a polygonal first-person romp through a stranded space ship filled with doomed crew members steadily losing their minds, overseen by a maimed captain with a maniacal, bandaged smile. Mouthwashing is strange and claustrophobic, and it’s a fabulous way to end the year in horror gaming.
Silent Hill 2Bloober Team
But we haven’t even talked about the existing franchises yet. The Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Team, the Polish studio behind Layers of Fear and Blair Witch, was a brilliant success, even in the face of exacting standards from longtime series fans. The remake looks and feels like the game that players remember, only spit-shined and smoothed over, and Silent Hill 2 remains just as terrifying in 2024 as it originally was in 2001. Maybe even more so. Bloober Team had a lot to prove with this one, and they made us elder-Millennial horror players proud.
Alan Wake 2 was one of the best games of 2023, horror or otherwise, and it received two significant batches of DLC this year: Night Springs landed in June and The Lake House went live in October. Each bit of content not only keeps Alan Wake’s hellish world alive, but it adds depth to the cross-franchise universe that Remedy is building between Control and Alan Wake. Personally I always want more Alan Wake, and in that regard, 2024 didn’t disappoint.
The Outlast TrialsRed Barrels
Two live-service indie games, The Outlast Trials and Phasmophobia, also saw major updates in the past 12 months. After entering early access in May 2023, The Outlast Trials studio Red Barrels has been working to establish a solid cadence of new content drops, and this year they really got into the groove. The Outlast Trials launched in full in March 2024 and it’s received multiple updates since then, introducing new enemies, maps, game modes and limited-time events for the players trapped in the Murkoff Corporation’s secret Sinyala Facility. The amount of work that Red Barrels puts into The Outlast Trials is endlessly impressive, especially considering there are only about 65 developers at the studio.
Phasmophobia has an even smaller team than Red Barrels, but they’re making big moves. The crew at UK studio Kinetic Games have kept Phasmophobia alive since its Steam launch in September 2020, and this year, they finally brought the ghost-hunting game to consoles. Phasmophobia hit PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 29, and it also came to PS VR2. Kinetic Games has grand plans to keep supporting and expanding Phasmophobia in 2025 and beyond, so even though the console release happened four years after launch, this is really just the beginning.
Lorelei and the Laser EyesSimogo
There it is — our humble ode to horror gaming in 2024. It’s been a dozen months of indie innovation and gorgeous gore, with a side dish of fabulous remakes and sizable updates. Some new horror games push against the boundaries of the genre, expanding our ideas of what’s scary and why, while others find fresh ways to dissect classic tropes. It’s a case of modern cuisine vs. comfort food, and on my plate, there’s plenty of room for both.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/dang-2024-was-a-great-year-for-horror-game-fans-160009640.html?src=rss

When it comes to new horror games, there are times of feast and famine, and this past year we gorged until our bellies bulged and our mouths dripped with gruesome grease. In 2024, we received a rich spread of dark experiences from solo creators, indie teams, AA developers and AAA studios in a vast array of genres and visual styles. There was a fantastic Silent Hill 2 remake and beefy updates to contemporary classics like Phasmophobia, Alan Wake 2 and The Outlast Trials, and there was also a steady cadence of brand-new horror franchises expanding the genre in unexpected ways.

First, let’s take a moment to celebrate a sampling of the year’s fresh horror universes. In 2024, we got the following new titles:

Crow Country from brothers Adam Vian and Tom Vian at SFB Games

Fear the Spotlight from husband-and-wife team Cozy Game Pals

Hollowbody by solo dev Nathan Hamley at Headware Games

Home Safety Hotline by Utah studio Night Signal Entertainment

INDIKA from Spain- and Kazakhstan-based studio Odd Meter

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess from Capcom

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes by the high-strangeness experts at Simogo

Mouthwashing from Swedish indie team Wrong Organ

Slitterhead by Silent Hill and Gravity Rush creator Keiichirō Toyama at Bokeh Game Studios

Still Wakes the Deep from horror veterans The Chinese Room

This is not a comprehensive list of new horror franchises in 2024, but it’s a suitable demonstration of how vast and varied the offerings were this year. Indie studios are leading the charge when it comes to fresh ideas and original mechanics, of course, but there are also plenty of references to early-2000s graphics and PS1- or PS2-era survival horror on this list. The combination of innovation and nostalgia is particularly potent in titles like Fear the Spotlight, Crow Country, Mouthwashing and Hollowbody. These games infuse blocky 3D worlds with modern sensibilities and smooth animations, resulting in experiences that illuminate the staticky memories of Resident Evil and Silent Hill that lurk in our heads. This is how we wanted those games to feel, fixed camera angles be damned — or, in the case of Hollowbody, lovingly embraced.

Fear the Spotlight

It should also be noted that Fear the Spotlight marks the debut of acclaimed horror-movie maker Blumhouse as a video game publisher. Fear the Spotlight is the first release in Blumhouse’s lineup — which includes future titles from EYES OUT, Half Mermaid, Perfect Garbage, Playmestudio and Vermila Studios — and it’s an excellent exploration of low-fi teenage drama and dread. The horror-game revolution is upon us and Blumhouse is absolutely going to snag a piece.

The least horror-like game on the above list may be Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, and it also happens to be the only title from a AAA studio. I’ve included it because, as a dedicated fan of horror games, I think Kunitsu-Gami checks plenty of boxes: It features huge, disgusting demons and a lethal blight that envelops whole towns in skeletal yet strangely juicy organic material. Its monster designs feature colorful displays of lechery and body horror, and there’s comfort to be found in its tense strategy-action gameplay loop. Kunitsu-Gami wasn’t marketed as a horror experience, and it certainly contains just as many scenes of stunning beauty as it does grotesquerie, but I heartily recommend it to any horror fan. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

INDIKA is another entry that straddles the genres of horror, camp and religious satire, but it definitely features a few scenes of soul-piercing terror. Plus, the literal devil is your friendly companion throughout the game, and that has to count for something. Among scenes of grief, inhumanity and devastation, INDIKA is a laugh riot, and it’s a preeminent example of mature themes handled well in video game form. An additional genre-bending standout from 2024 is Simogo’s Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. It contains incredibly satisfying logic puzzles in a hotel made out of mysteries — but phantoms haunt the hallways, there’s a corpse in the back garden and every scene drips with palpable unease. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is one of the best and most unsettling games of the year, period.

Still Wakes the Deep, meanwhile, offers a familiar and beautiful brand of monster-stalking horror on an oil rig in the middle of the angry North Sea. It’s a must-play game for any horror fan, acting as a vessel for The Chinese Room to show off its skills in building authentic worlds and cultivating ceaseless tension with a paranormal edge. Plus, it’s one of the best-looking games I played on PS5 all year. Slitterhead is another one for the action-horror players out there, presenting a supernatural mystery in a version of Hong Kong that’s been infested by body-snatching demons, featuring buckets of blood and frantic close-range combat.

Still Wakes the Deep

The year began with the release of Home Safety Hotline, a simulation of a 1990s call center where players help diagnose and treat household pests, which include otherworldly threats like Bed Teeth, Fae Flu, The Horde, Laundry Gnome, Mirror Nymph, Toilet Hobb, Unicorn Fungi and others. Home Safety Hotline really was the amuse bouche of 2024’s horror game lineup — and Mouthwashing is the dessert. 

All the horror kids nowadays are playing Mouthwashing, a polygonal first-person romp through a stranded space ship filled with doomed crew members steadily losing their minds, overseen by a maimed captain with a maniacal, bandaged smile. Mouthwashing is strange and claustrophobic, and it’s a fabulous way to end the year in horror gaming.

Silent Hill 2

But we haven’t even talked about the existing franchises yet. The Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Team, the Polish studio behind Layers of Fear and Blair Witch, was a brilliant success, even in the face of exacting standards from longtime series fans. The remake looks and feels like the game that players remember, only spit-shined and smoothed over, and Silent Hill 2 remains just as terrifying in 2024 as it originally was in 2001. Maybe even more so. Bloober Team had a lot to prove with this one, and they made us elder-Millennial horror players proud.

Alan Wake 2 was one of the best games of 2023, horror or otherwise, and it received two significant batches of DLC this year: Night Springs landed in June and The Lake House went live in October. Each bit of content not only keeps Alan Wake’s hellish world alive, but it adds depth to the cross-franchise universe that Remedy is building between Control and Alan Wake. Personally I always want more Alan Wake, and in that regard, 2024 didn’t disappoint.

The Outlast Trials

Two live-service indie games, The Outlast Trials and Phasmophobia, also saw major updates in the past 12 months. After entering early access in May 2023, The Outlast Trials studio Red Barrels has been working to establish a solid cadence of new content drops, and this year they really got into the groove. The Outlast Trials launched in full in March 2024 and it’s received multiple updates since then, introducing new enemies, maps, game modes and limited-time events for the players trapped in the Murkoff Corporation’s secret Sinyala Facility. The amount of work that Red Barrels puts into The Outlast Trials is endlessly impressive, especially considering there are only about 65 developers at the studio.

Phasmophobia has an even smaller team than Red Barrels, but they’re making big moves. The crew at UK studio Kinetic Games have kept Phasmophobia alive since its Steam launch in September 2020, and this year, they finally brought the ghost-hunting game to consoles. Phasmophobia hit PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 29, and it also came to PS VR2. Kinetic Games has grand plans to keep supporting and expanding Phasmophobia in 2025 and beyond, so even though the console release happened four years after launch, this is really just the beginning.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

There it is — our humble ode to horror gaming in 2024. It’s been a dozen months of indie innovation and gorgeous gore, with a side dish of fabulous remakes and sizable updates. Some new horror games push against the boundaries of the genre, expanding our ideas of what’s scary and why, while others find fresh ways to dissect classic tropes. It’s a case of modern cuisine vs. comfort food, and on my plate, there’s plenty of room for both.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/dang-2024-was-a-great-year-for-horror-game-fans-160009640.html?src=rss

Read More 

It’s no secret that Russia has been slowly working towards eschewing as much Western technology as it can and developing its own, and its latest effort seems to be related to video games. On December 25, Anton Gorelkin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, revealed some information on a domestic video game console being developed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, as reported by TechSpot. The theoretical console will have an Elbrus processor and be powered by either Aurora or Alt Linux, both Russian forks of the popular Linux operating system.
According to TechSpot, the Elbrus processor was developed by the Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies and primarily designed for defense, critical infrastructure and other applications. This processor isn’t up to what Intel, AMD and Arm produce right now, and it certainly won’t reach PS5 or Xbox levels of power. Despite the weaker chipset, Gorelkin stressed that the console isn’t designed to play ports of older games, but will play “domestic video game products.” Presumably, this means Russia will also need its own developer community to design these games.
There’s also another console called Fog Play in development, but it’s more of a cloud-gaming device. Users with high-end computers can rent them out to Fog Play owners, who play games on these computers through the cloud.
These potential consoles are only one aspect of Russia’s broader technological sovereignty plans. Ever since its invasion of Ukraine and subsequent Western sanctions, Russia has been trying to make this a reality — but digital isolation is making this difficult.
The adoption of Astra Linux in government, intelligence, military and even educational computers is another Russian effort to develop its own technology. To this end, Russia is also trying to replace file and website scanner VirusTotal (owned by Google) with its own Multiscanner platform in fears of US government infiltration.
Despite this progress, Russia is still heavily reliant on China’s technology. Chinese smartphones are popular there, and Chinese electronics and dual-use technology continue to enter Russia even as the Middle Kingdom no longer exports them to the US.
Russia is likely unable to achieve true technological independence, in video gaming or other crucial areas, as it relies too much on China and doesn’t have the capabilities to produce PS5 or Xbox-level chips. The two Russian video game consoles serve as a good example of the challenges the country faces given its poor relations with many of the world’s superpowers. Just like the Elbrus processor isn’t going to truly compete against the best consoles, Russia will likely continue to struggle for technological sovereignty.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/russia-is-trying-to-make-its-own-game-consoles-in-a-bid-for-technological-independence-151358041.html?src=rss

It’s no secret that Russia has been slowly working towards eschewing as much Western technology as it can and developing its own, and its latest effort seems to be related to video games. On December 25, Anton Gorelkin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, revealed some information on a domestic video game console being developed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, as reported by TechSpot. The theoretical console will have an Elbrus processor and be powered by either Aurora or Alt Linux, both Russian forks of the popular Linux operating system.

According to TechSpot, the Elbrus processor was developed by the Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies and primarily designed for defense, critical infrastructure and other applications. This processor isn’t up to what Intel, AMD and Arm produce right now, and it certainly won’t reach PS5 or Xbox levels of power. Despite the weaker chipset, Gorelkin stressed that the console isn’t designed to play ports of older games, but will play “domestic video game products.” Presumably, this means Russia will also need its own developer community to design these games.

There’s also another console called Fog Play in development, but it’s more of a cloud-gaming device. Users with high-end computers can rent them out to Fog Play owners, who play games on these computers through the cloud.

These potential consoles are only one aspect of Russia’s broader technological sovereignty plans. Ever since its invasion of Ukraine and subsequent Western sanctions, Russia has been trying to make this a reality — but digital isolation is making this difficult.

The adoption of Astra Linux in government, intelligence, military and even educational computers is another Russian effort to develop its own technology. To this end, Russia is also trying to replace file and website scanner VirusTotal (owned by Google) with its own Multiscanner platform in fears of US government infiltration.

Despite this progress, Russia is still heavily reliant on China’s technology. Chinese smartphones are popular there, and Chinese electronics and dual-use technology continue to enter Russia even as the Middle Kingdom no longer exports them to the US.

Russia is likely unable to achieve true technological independence, in video gaming or other crucial areas, as it relies too much on China and doesn’t have the capabilities to produce PS5 or Xbox-level chips. The two Russian video game consoles serve as a good example of the challenges the country faces given its poor relations with many of the world’s superpowers. Just like the Elbrus processor isn’t going to truly compete against the best consoles, Russia will likely continue to struggle for technological sovereignty.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/russia-is-trying-to-make-its-own-game-consoles-in-a-bid-for-technological-independence-151358041.html?src=rss

Read More 

Terraforms Labs CEO Do Kwon spent the last day of 2024 getting extradited to the US, Reuters reports. Kwon faces charges in the US for “orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud involving an algorithmic stablecoin and other crypto asset securities.” The Terraforms co-founder has been held in Montenegro since March 2023, when he tried to board a flight with a forged passport — six months after Interpol put out a “red notice” warrant for his arrest.
South Korean-based Terraforms Labs wiped out $40 billion from the crypto market when its TerraUSD and Luna stable coins turned out to not be so stable and collapsed in May 2022. Kwon had already fled South Korea the month before.
The US announced its charges in February 2023, with the SEC chair Gary Gensler stating, “We allege that Terraform and Do Kwon failed to provide the public with full, fair, and truthful disclosure as required for a host of crypto asset securities, most notably for Luna and TerraUSD. We also allege that they committed fraud by repeating false and misleading statements to build trust before causing devastating losses for investors.” South Korea has issued similar charges.
Montenegro doesn’t have extradition treaties with the US or South Korea. The request played out in court over the last year and a half, with Montenegro’s Justice Minister Bojan Bozovic ordering Kwon’s extradition last week. Terraform Labs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US last January. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/terraform-labs-co-founder-do-kwon-will-face-securities-fraud-charges-in-the-us-142734704.html?src=rss

Terraforms Labs CEO Do Kwon spent the last day of 2024 getting extradited to the US, Reuters reports. Kwon faces charges in the US for “orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud involving an algorithmic stablecoin and other crypto asset securities.” The Terraforms co-founder has been held in Montenegro since March 2023, when he tried to board a flight with a forged passport — six months after Interpol put out a “red notice” warrant for his arrest.

South Korean-based Terraforms Labs wiped out $40 billion from the crypto market when its TerraUSD and Luna stable coins turned out to not be so stable and collapsed in May 2022. Kwon had already fled South Korea the month before.

The US announced its charges in February 2023, with the SEC chair Gary Gensler stating, “We allege that Terraform and Do Kwon failed to provide the public with full, fair, and truthful disclosure as required for a host of crypto asset securities, most notably for Luna and TerraUSD. We also allege that they committed fraud by repeating false and misleading statements to build trust before causing devastating losses for investors.” South Korea has issued similar charges.

Montenegro doesn’t have extradition treaties with the US or South Korea. The request played out in court over the last year and a half, with Montenegro’s Justice Minister Bojan Bozovic ordering Kwon’s extradition last week. Terraform Labs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US last January. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/terraform-labs-co-founder-do-kwon-will-face-securities-fraud-charges-in-the-us-142734704.html?src=rss

Read More 

The tricky thing about naming the year’s biggest losers in tech is that in 2024, it once again felt like everyone lost. Amid the depressing spiral that is social media, the will-they-or-won’t-they dance of banning TikTok in the US and the neverending edited and deepfaked content that has everyone questioning what’s real, the world lost. And it is lost.
But a few areas this year stood out as particularly troubling. Specifically, AI and dedicated AI gadgets proliferated more than ever, spreading not only to our digital assistants and search engines but to our wearables as well. We also saw more deterioration in Intel’s standing and bid farewell to a robot maker, as well as Lightning cables. I’m pretty happy about that last one, though.
Our annual collection of the worst tech developments each year is shorter than usual, but that might be because we’re all exhausted. And also because most of the bad things can be attributed to AI, social media or misinformation. Still, we journey down this nightmarish memory lane, hopefully so we can avoid similar pitfalls in future.
Generative AI in every possible crevice
2024 was a year in which consumer-facing AI tools became harder and harder to ignore. That’s thanks to the tech giants Google, Meta and finally Apple baking AI tools into some of the most-used software on the planet. And in this push to get AI in front of everyone, I cannot help but stop and wonder who exactly is asking for this, and is anyone actually using it?
In the past few months, I’ve been testing a Samsung Chromebook with a host of AI tools built-in as well as trying the various Apple Intelligence features that have rolled out through the autumn. It all came to a head in one of Engadget’s Slack channels in early December, just after Apple launched its generative emoji and Image Playground features. Getting Image Playground to spit out AI-created pictures was easy enough, and Genmoji does feel like the logical next step after Apple introduced its personalized Memoji back in 2018. But across the board, the results felt uninspired, off-putting and -— perhaps worst of all -— extremely lame.
Since I take so many pictures on my iPhone, there are tons of images categorized under my name in the Photos app (it will group together similar faces for years, if you let it). With hundreds of images to pick from, Image Playground should have no problem making a convincing facsimile of me… playing the guitar on the moon, right? Well, yes and no.
In this image, as well as ones created of my colleagues Cherlynn Low, Valentina Palladino and Sam Rutherford, there are a few facial characteristics that made me feel that the AI-generated cartoon I was looking at was at the very least inspired by these people. But they all gave off serious uncanny valley vibes; rather than being a cute digital cartoon like we all built with Bitmoji back in the day, these results are soulless representations with no charm and mangled fingers.
In a totally different vein, I just had occasion to try out Google’s “help me read” summarization features on a 250-page government report. I knew I did not have time to read the entire document and was just curious what AI could do for me here. Turns out, not much. The summary was so brief that it was essentially meaningless — not unreasonable, as it tried to parse 250 pages into about 100 words. I tried this trick on a review I was writing recently, and it did a much better job of capturing the gist of the article, and it also accurately answered follow-up questions. But given that the final product amounted to maybe four pages, my impression is that AI does a decent job of summarizing things that most people can probably read themselves in the span of five minutes. If you have something more complex, forget it.
I could go on — I’ve been having a blast laughing at the ridiculous notification summaries I get from Apple Intelligence with my co-workers — but I think I’ve made my point. We’re in the middle of an AI arms race, where massive companies are desperate to get out ahead of the curve with these products well before they’re ready for primetime or even all that useful. And to what end? I don’t think any AI company is meaningfully answering a consumer need or finding a way to make people’s lives better or easier. They’re releasing this stuff because AI is the buzzword of the decade, and to ignore it is to disappoint shareholders. — Nathan Ingraham, deputy editor
Photo by Cherlynn Low / Engadget
Humane AI Pin and other AI gadgets
This year, no two devices arrived with more manufactured hype than the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1. And no two devices were more disappointing either. Both Humane and Rabbit made the argument that people were ready to drop their phones for something smarter and more personal, but neither of their devices were actually good or useful.
Of the two, Humane was easily the biggest loser of 2024. The company achieved the ignominious honor of reaching net negative sales because former buyers began returning the AI Pin faster than new units could be sold. I wish I could say its troubles stopped there, but they didn’t. After Humane first warned customers that the AI Pin’s charging case was a fire risk, it issued a formal recall in October. In the intervening months, the company has reportedly tried to find a buyer without success.
Rabbit has certainly faced its own share of troubles, too. After being roundly panned by reviewers in May, a hacker group announced in June that the R1 had huge security holes. In July, it came to light that user chats with the R1 were logged with no option for deleting.
Last I checked, Humane has since pivoted to making an operating system that it expects other companies will want to add to their devices, but here’s the thing: poor software was a big part of what made the AI Pin bad in the first place. You have to give the company points for trying, but at this point, I would be surprised if Humane is still in business by this time next year. — Igor Bonifacic, senior reporter
Google Search and AI Overviews
This observation has been making the rounds all year long, but if you compare Google from 10 years ago to what it is now, the difference is stark. With the introduction of AI Overviews this year, it felt like Google finally made search results utterly impossible to use without scrolling. Forget sponsored results, newsboxes and discovery panels and all the different modules taking up the top half of the results page for any given query — in 2024, Google decided to add yet another section above everything, pushing the actual list of websites even further down.
Since its initial release in the US in March, AI Overviews told people it was okay to put glue on pizzas or to eat rocks. In spite of the general tendency for AI to get facts wrong, Google continued to expand the feature to more countries, while admitting that the overviews could be “odd, inaccurate or unhelpful.”
Not only that, it also began to add ads to Overviews, meaning that in addition to the unreliable AI-generated results at the top, people could pay to put what they want to promote in that precious real estate, too. Throw in the fact that the actual results boxes and rankings are all susceptible to SEO gaming by websites trying everything they can to garner a higher spot on the list, and you’ll find that Google’s search results are basically pay-for-play at this point. And while that will continue to earn the company billions of dollars, it makes finding actually good, high-quality results much more arduous for the discerning user.
It gets worse when you consider the priority Google’s search engine has on iPhones and Android devices. This year, the US government declared Google a search monopoly, saying the company paid the likes of Apple, Samsung and Mozilla billions of dollars a year to be the default search engine on their devices and browsers. Then there’s Chrome, which is the world’s most popular browser with its own dubious history around tracking users in Incognito mode. Can we even trust what we see on Google Search any more?
People have begun to quit using Google Search altogether, with the rise of alternatives like DuckDuckGo and Kagi, a search engine you’d pay $10 a month to use, as well as OpenAI’s SearchGPT, which launched this year. But I’m not convinced that the vast majority of users will switch to these options, especially since one of them costs money and another involves more AI. I can understand that it’s hard to make a product that adapts to your users’ needs while also keeping your shareholders happy. If only Google (or any big company, really) could re-rank its priorities and bring back a search engine that simply connects people to the best that the internet has to offer. — Cherlynn Low, deputy editor
Intel
The road to every great tragedy is paved with people making the most self-serving decisions at the worst possible times. Which brings us neatly to Intel as it burns through its last remaining chances to avoid becoming a business school case study in failure.
Earlier this month, it fired CEO Pat Gelsinger halfway through his ambitious plan to save the chip giant from its own worst instincts. Gelsinger was an engineer, brought in to fix a culture too beholdened to finance types who can’t see beyond the next quarter.
Sadly, despite telling everyone that fixing two decades’ worth of corporate fuck-ups would take a while and cost money, it came as a surprise to Intel’s board. It ditched Gelsinger, likely because he was trying to take a longer-term view on how to restore the storied manufacturer’s success.
It’s likely the accursed MBA-types will now get their way, flogging off the company’s foundry arm, kneecapping its design team in the process. It’ll take Intel a decade or more to actually feel the consequences of ignoring Gelsinger’s Cassandra-like warnings. But when TSMC reigns alone and we’re all paying more for chips, it’ll be easy to point to this moment and say this was Intel’s last chance to steer out of its own skid. — Daniel Cooper, senior editor
Photo by Cherlynn Low / Engadget
Fans of Apple’s Lightning connectors
We knew the writing was on the wall when the iPhone 15 debuted with USB-C in 2023, but this year put Lightning’s shambling corpse in the grave. The Apple-only connector was a revelation when it debuted in 2012’s iPhone 5, replacing the gigantic iPod-era 30-pin connector. Unlike the then-ascendant micro-USB port that dominated Android phones and other small devices in the early 2010s, Lightning was thinner and — this was key — reversible, so there was no wrong way to plug it in.
It eventually made its way to a large swath of devices in the Apple universe, including AirPods, iPads, Mac accessories and even a Beats product or two. But even Apple relented and started flipping new products to the similarly sized (and likewise reversible) USB-C, albeit years after it had become the dominant standard for data and power connections worldwide. With even holdouts like the AirPods Max and the Mac input devices getting USB-C retrofits in 2024, only a handful of legacy Lightning devices — the iPhone SE, iPhone 14 and old Apple Pencil — are left on Apple’s virtual shelves, and all will doubtless be gone by this time next year. That’s OK: Lightning served us well, but its time has passed. All hail our universal Type-C overlords.
So while the death of Lightning is a flat-out win for cross-device charging for the whole world going forward, anyone whose home is still bristling with soon-to-be-replaced Lightning charging stations can be forgiven for feeling a pang of nostalgia in the meantime. — John Falcone, executive editor
Moxie the robot dies
When I wrote about Moxie, the child-friendly robot from Embodied, I was charmed by its adorable design and chatty demeanor. It was meant to serve as a companion to children, something that could help them read or simply have conversations. I was less charmed by its $1,499 to $1,699 price, alongside an eventual $60 a month subscription. And now Moxie is officially dead, as Embodied announced it’s shutting down operations due to “financial challenges” after a failed funding round.
Dead home robots aren’t exactly a new phenomenon (remember Jibo?), but Moxie’s demise feels particularly rough, since it was a device mainly meant to help kids. Imagine having to tell your child that their robot friend had to shut down because of “financial challenges.” Embodied said it would offer customers age appropriate guidance to help discuss the shutdown, but no matter how you spin it, it’ll be a tough (and possibly traumatizing) conversation for your youngin. Perhaps it’s good to learn early though that all of your smart devices will die. (Not our pets though, they are immortal.) — Devindra Hardawar, senior editor
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/techs-biggest-losers-in-2024-140039822.html?src=rss

The tricky thing about naming the year’s biggest losers in tech is that in 2024, it once again felt like everyone lost. Amid the depressing spiral that is social media, the will-they-or-won’t-they dance of banning TikTok in the US and the neverending edited and deepfaked content that has everyone questioning what’s real, the world lost. And it is lost.

But a few areas this year stood out as particularly troubling. Specifically, AI and dedicated AI gadgets proliferated more than ever, spreading not only to our digital assistants and search engines but to our wearables as well. We also saw more deterioration in Intel’s standing and bid farewell to a robot maker, as well as Lightning cables. I’m pretty happy about that last one, though.

Our annual collection of the worst tech developments each year is shorter than usual, but that might be because we’re all exhausted. And also because most of the bad things can be attributed to AI, social media or misinformation. Still, we journey down this nightmarish memory lane, hopefully so we can avoid similar pitfalls in future.

Generative AI in every possible crevice

2024 was a year in which consumer-facing AI tools became harder and harder to ignore. That’s thanks to the tech giants Google, Meta and finally Apple baking AI tools into some of the most-used software on the planet. And in this push to get AI in front of everyone, I cannot help but stop and wonder who exactly is asking for this, and is anyone actually using it?

In the past few months, I’ve been testing a Samsung Chromebook with a host of AI tools built-in as well as trying the various Apple Intelligence features that have rolled out through the autumn. It all came to a head in one of Engadget’s Slack channels in early December, just after Apple launched its generative emoji and Image Playground features. Getting Image Playground to spit out AI-created pictures was easy enough, and Genmoji does feel like the logical next step after Apple introduced its personalized Memoji back in 2018. But across the board, the results felt uninspired, off-putting and -— perhaps worst of all -— extremely lame.

Since I take so many pictures on my iPhone, there are tons of images categorized under my name in the Photos app (it will group together similar faces for years, if you let it). With hundreds of images to pick from, Image Playground should have no problem making a convincing facsimile of me… playing the guitar on the moon, right? Well, yes and no.

In this image, as well as ones created of my colleagues Cherlynn Low, Valentina Palladino and Sam Rutherford, there are a few facial characteristics that made me feel that the AI-generated cartoon I was looking at was at the very least inspired by these people. But they all gave off serious uncanny valley vibes; rather than being a cute digital cartoon like we all built with Bitmoji back in the day, these results are soulless representations with no charm and mangled fingers.

In a totally different vein, I just had occasion to try out Google’s “help me read” summarization features on a 250-page government report. I knew I did not have time to read the entire document and was just curious what AI could do for me here. Turns out, not much. The summary was so brief that it was essentially meaningless — not unreasonable, as it tried to parse 250 pages into about 100 words. I tried this trick on a review I was writing recently, and it did a much better job of capturing the gist of the article, and it also accurately answered follow-up questions. But given that the final product amounted to maybe four pages, my impression is that AI does a decent job of summarizing things that most people can probably read themselves in the span of five minutes. If you have something more complex, forget it.

I could go on — I’ve been having a blast laughing at the ridiculous notification summaries I get from Apple Intelligence with my co-workers — but I think I’ve made my point. We’re in the middle of an AI arms race, where massive companies are desperate to get out ahead of the curve with these products well before they’re ready for primetime or even all that useful. And to what end? I don’t think any AI company is meaningfully answering a consumer need or finding a way to make people’s lives better or easier. They’re releasing this stuff because AI is the buzzword of the decade, and to ignore it is to disappoint shareholders. — Nathan Ingraham, deputy editor

Humane AI Pin and other AI gadgets

This year, no two devices arrived with more manufactured hype than the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1. And no two devices were more disappointing either. Both Humane and Rabbit made the argument that people were ready to drop their phones for something smarter and more personal, but neither of their devices were actually good or useful.

Of the two, Humane was easily the biggest loser of 2024. The company achieved the ignominious honor of reaching net negative sales because former buyers began returning the AI Pin faster than new units could be sold. I wish I could say its troubles stopped there, but they didn’t. After Humane first warned customers that the AI Pin’s charging case was a fire risk, it issued a formal recall in October. In the intervening months, the company has reportedly tried to find a buyer without success.

Rabbit has certainly faced its own share of troubles, too. After being roundly panned by reviewers in May, a hacker group announced in June that the R1 had huge security holes. In July, it came to light that user chats with the R1 were logged with no option for deleting.

Last I checked, Humane has since pivoted to making an operating system that it expects other companies will want to add to their devices, but here’s the thing: poor software was a big part of what made the AI Pin bad in the first place. You have to give the company points for trying, but at this point, I would be surprised if Humane is still in business by this time next year. — Igor Bonifacic, senior reporter

Google Search and AI Overviews

This observation has been making the rounds all year long, but if you compare Google from 10 years ago to what it is now, the difference is stark. With the introduction of AI Overviews this year, it felt like Google finally made search results utterly impossible to use without scrolling. Forget sponsored results, newsboxes and discovery panels and all the different modules taking up the top half of the results page for any given query — in 2024, Google decided to add yet another section above everything, pushing the actual list of websites even further down.

Since its initial release in the US in March, AI Overviews told people it was okay to put glue on pizzas or to eat rocks. In spite of the general tendency for AI to get facts wrong, Google continued to expand the feature to more countries, while admitting that the overviews could be “odd, inaccurate or unhelpful.”

Not only that, it also began to add ads to Overviews, meaning that in addition to the unreliable AI-generated results at the top, people could pay to put what they want to promote in that precious real estate, too. Throw in the fact that the actual results boxes and rankings are all susceptible to SEO gaming by websites trying everything they can to garner a higher spot on the list, and you’ll find that Google’s search results are basically pay-for-play at this point. And while that will continue to earn the company billions of dollars, it makes finding actually good, high-quality results much more arduous for the discerning user.

It gets worse when you consider the priority Google’s search engine has on iPhones and Android devices. This year, the US government declared Google a search monopoly, saying the company paid the likes of Apple, Samsung and Mozilla billions of dollars a year to be the default search engine on their devices and browsers. Then there’s Chrome, which is the world’s most popular browser with its own dubious history around tracking users in Incognito mode. Can we even trust what we see on Google Search any more?

People have begun to quit using Google Search altogether, with the rise of alternatives like DuckDuckGo and Kagi, a search engine you’d pay $10 a month to use, as well as OpenAI’s SearchGPT, which launched this year. But I’m not convinced that the vast majority of users will switch to these options, especially since one of them costs money and another involves more AI. I can understand that it’s hard to make a product that adapts to your users’ needs while also keeping your shareholders happy. If only Google (or any big company, really) could re-rank its priorities and bring back a search engine that simply connects people to the best that the internet has to offer. — Cherlynn Low, deputy editor

Intel

The road to every great tragedy is paved with people making the most self-serving decisions at the worst possible times. Which brings us neatly to Intel as it burns through its last remaining chances to avoid becoming a business school case study in failure.

Earlier this month, it fired CEO Pat Gelsinger halfway through his ambitious plan to save the chip giant from its own worst instincts. Gelsinger was an engineer, brought in to fix a culture too beholdened to finance types who can’t see beyond the next quarter.

Sadly, despite telling everyone that fixing two decades’ worth of corporate fuck-ups would take a while and cost money, it came as a surprise to Intel’s board. It ditched Gelsinger, likely because he was trying to take a longer-term view on how to restore the storied manufacturer’s success.

It’s likely the accursed MBA-types will now get their way, flogging off the company’s foundry arm, kneecapping its design team in the process. It’ll take Intel a decade or more to actually feel the consequences of ignoring Gelsinger’s Cassandra-like warnings. But when TSMC reigns alone and we’re all paying more for chips, it’ll be easy to point to this moment and say this was Intel’s last chance to steer out of its own skid. — Daniel Cooper, senior editor

Fans of Apple’s Lightning connectors

We knew the writing was on the wall when the iPhone 15 debuted with USB-C in 2023, but this year put Lightning’s shambling corpse in the grave. The Apple-only connector was a revelation when it debuted in 2012’s iPhone 5, replacing the gigantic iPod-era 30-pin connector. Unlike the then-ascendant micro-USB port that dominated Android phones and other small devices in the early 2010s, Lightning was thinner and — this was key — reversible, so there was no wrong way to plug it in.

It eventually made its way to a large swath of devices in the Apple universe, including AirPods, iPads, Mac accessories and even a Beats product or two. But even Apple relented and started flipping new products to the similarly sized (and likewise reversible) USB-C, albeit years after it had become the dominant standard for data and power connections worldwide. With even holdouts like the AirPods Max and the Mac input devices getting USB-C retrofits in 2024, only a handful of legacy Lightning devices — the iPhone SE, iPhone 14 and old Apple Pencil — are left on Apple’s virtual shelves, and all will doubtless be gone by this time next year. That’s OK: Lightning served us well, but its time has passed. All hail our universal Type-C overlords.

So while the death of Lightning is a flat-out win for cross-device charging for the whole world going forward, anyone whose home is still bristling with soon-to-be-replaced Lightning charging stations can be forgiven for feeling a pang of nostalgia in the meantime. — John Falcone, executive editor

Moxie the robot dies

When I wrote about Moxie, the child-friendly robot from Embodied, I was charmed by its adorable design and chatty demeanor. It was meant to serve as a companion to children, something that could help them read or simply have conversations. I was less charmed by its $1,499 to $1,699 price, alongside an eventual $60 a month subscription. And now Moxie is officially dead, as Embodied announced it’s shutting down operations due to “financial challenges” after a failed funding round.

Dead home robots aren’t exactly a new phenomenon (remember Jibo?), but Moxie’s demise feels particularly rough, since it was a device mainly meant to help kids. Imagine having to tell your child that their robot friend had to shut down because of “financial challenges.” Embodied said it would offer customers age appropriate guidance to help discuss the shutdown, but no matter how you spin it, it’ll be a tough (and possibly traumatizing) conversation for your youngin. Perhaps it’s good to learn early though that all of your smart devices will die. (Not our pets though, they are immortal.) — Devindra Hardawar, senior editor

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/techs-biggest-losers-in-2024-140039822.html?src=rss

Read More 

We’re wrapping up 2024, so why not do it with some frivolous CES announcements? Like this premium (it has to be premium!) microwave from LG, with a touchscreen bigger than your iPad. I’m not sure what you’ll watch in the three-and-a-half minutes it takes to heat that butter chicken curry, but you can do it in glorious full HD resolution. 
LG
The touchscreen integrates with LG’s ThinQ Smart Home Dashboard if you think it’s the right time to change channels on your TV or tinker with compatible Matter and Thread devices, like smart lights and er, and other things. It can also pair with the company’s induction range oven to display cooking progress if you struggle to crane your neck from your microwave to your kitchen burners. It’s no washing machine inside a washing machine, but still, you gotta love CES.
LG is on a trip this year.
– Mat Smith
Get this delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!
The biggest tech stories you missed

YouTube copies Netflix’s old ‘Play Something’ button in new test
Donald Trump asks the Supreme Court to delay the TikTok ban
CES 2025: What we’re expecting to see in Las Vegas

The US Treasury says it was hacked in a China-linked cyberattack
The breach was first reported on December 8.

Documents and workstations at the US Treasury Department were accessed during a cyberattack linked to a “China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat actor.” The attack was pretty bad, and it’s been cited as “a major cybersecurity incident.” The Treasury Department said it has worked with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI to understand the full scope of the breach but hasn’t shared how long files and workstations were accessible or what was accessed. Beijing has denied any involvement.
Continue reading.

In 2024, the camera of the year was a drone
DJI’s Neo made aerial video accessible for everyone.
Engadget
Honesty? 2024 was a dull year for cameras, with new devices offering small tweaks and minor improvements. But drones? Specifically, entry-level ones? DJI made it an intriguing year, spitting out multiple models, including the versatile, easy-to-use Neo, all while fending off the US government’s plans to ban sales from the company.
Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-121536994.html?src=rss

We’re wrapping up 2024, so why not do it with some frivolous CES announcements? Like this premium (it has to be premium!) microwave from LG, with a touchscreen bigger than your iPad. I’m not sure what you’ll watch in the three-and-a-half minutes it takes to heat that butter chicken curry, but you can do it in glorious full HD resolution. 

The touchscreen integrates with LG’s ThinQ Smart Home Dashboard if you think it’s the right time to change channels on your TV or tinker with compatible Matter and Thread devices, like smart lights and er, and other things. It can also pair with the company’s induction range oven to display cooking progress if you struggle to crane your neck from your microwave to your kitchen burners. It’s no washing machine inside a washing machine, but still, you gotta love CES.

LG is on a trip this year.

– Mat Smith

Get this delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!

The biggest tech stories you missed

YouTube copies Netflix’s old ‘Play Something’ button in new test

Donald Trump asks the Supreme Court to delay the TikTok ban

CES 2025: What we’re expecting to see in Las Vegas

The US Treasury says it was hacked in a China-linked cyberattack

The breach was first reported on December 8.

Documents and workstations at the US Treasury Department were accessed during a cyberattack linked to a “China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat actor.” The attack was pretty bad, and it’s been cited as “a major cybersecurity incident.” The Treasury Department said it has worked with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI to understand the full scope of the breach but hasn’t shared how long files and workstations were accessible or what was accessed. Beijing has denied any involvement.

Continue reading.

In 2024, the camera of the year was a drone

DJI’s Neo made aerial video accessible for everyone.

Honesty? 2024 was a dull year for cameras, with new devices offering small tweaks and minor improvements. But drones? Specifically, entry-level ones? DJI made it an intriguing year, spitting out multiple models, including the versatile, easy-to-use Neo, all while fending off the US government’s plans to ban sales from the company.

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-121536994.html?src=rss

Read More 

LG’s Gram laptops are back for another round of updates ahead of CES 2025. A decade into the thin and light lineup’s existence in LG’s portfolio, the latest models load up on AI (surprise!) and boost performance while maintaining their trademark portability.
Four new models are launching at CES: two variants of the Gram Pro, a new Gram Pro 2-in-1 and the entry-level Gram Book. The first version of the Gram Pro has an Intel Core H-series (Arrow Lake) processor under the hood for more traditional laptop tasks (including some gaming). A second model uses an Intel Core Ultra V-series (Lunar Lake) chip for AI tasks. The latter is a Microsoft Copilot+ PC with all the AI goodies expected from that line, including Recall, Live Captions, Cocreator and Windows Studio Effects.
Even if you don’t opt for the Copilot+ variant, you’ll still get LG’s AI features in most of the new models (all but the Gram Book). These are split into two camps: on-device and cloud-processed AI tasks. On-device features include a scaled-down chatbot derived from LG’s EXAONE large language model. It also adds LG’s Time Travel, a feature similar to Microsoft’s Recall that can call up web pages, documents, videos and audio files you’ve visited or used. It’s unclear if or how LG’s version will avoid the privacy pitfalls Microsoft ran into with Recall.
The cloud-based AI features include Gram Chat Cloud, a more robust chatbot (powered by GPT-4o) that can integrate with your calendar and email services.
The Gram Pro has a 17-inch (Arrow Lake) or 16-inch (Lunar Lake) screen with a 2,560 x 1,600 LCD screen. Its variable refresh rate maxes out at 144Hz. Both variants have up to 32GB (LPDDR5X Max 8,400MHz, Dual Channel) of RAM and 2TB of storage.
The Arrow Lake model should make for a solid gaming laptop with RTX 4050 graphics. The AI / Lunar Lake model only has integrated Intel graphics. But at least the latter is lighter and thinner, weighing 2.73 pounds. compared to the Arrow Lake model’s 3.26 pounds.
LG
LG snagged a CES 2025 Innovation Award for the latest Gram Pro 2-in-1. The top-line configuration has a 16-inch screen with a 2,880 x 1,800 OLED display (120Hz variable refresh rate); cheaper variants are limited to a 2,560 x 1,600 LCD (144Hz VRR). The 2-in-1 ships with a wirelessly rechargeable stylus and — as its name suggests — can be folded back into tablet mode.
Finally, the Gram Book is an entry-level model LG is launching “to expand its US market presence.” Its screen is a more compromised 1,920 x 1,080 15.6-inch LCD at a mere 60Hz. Its Intel Core i5 CPU with integrated Intel graphics and a maximum of 16GB of RAM combine to make it the most underpowered of the bunch. It’s also the heaviest at 3.75 pounds.
Unfortunately, we don’t know how “entry-level” it is: LG hasn’t yet announced pricing information (or release dates) for any of the new laptops.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/lg-updates-its-gram-laptop-line-ahead-of-ces-2025-090049429.html?src=rss

LG’s Gram laptops are back for another round of updates ahead of CES 2025. A decade into the thin and light lineup’s existence in LG’s portfolio, the latest models load up on AI (surprise!) and boost performance while maintaining their trademark portability.

Four new models are launching at CES: two variants of the Gram Pro, a new Gram Pro 2-in-1 and the entry-level Gram Book. The first version of the Gram Pro has an Intel Core H-series (Arrow Lake) processor under the hood for more traditional laptop tasks (including some gaming). A second model uses an Intel Core Ultra V-series (Lunar Lake) chip for AI tasks. The latter is a Microsoft Copilot+ PC with all the AI goodies expected from that line, including Recall, Live Captions, Cocreator and Windows Studio Effects.

Even if you don’t opt for the Copilot+ variant, you’ll still get LG’s AI features in most of the new models (all but the Gram Book). These are split into two camps: on-device and cloud-processed AI tasks. On-device features include a scaled-down chatbot derived from LG’s EXAONE large language model. It also adds LG’s Time Travel, a feature similar to Microsoft’s Recall that can call up web pages, documents, videos and audio files you’ve visited or used. It’s unclear if or how LG’s version will avoid the privacy pitfalls Microsoft ran into with Recall.

The cloud-based AI features include Gram Chat Cloud, a more robust chatbot (powered by GPT-4o) that can integrate with your calendar and email services.

The Gram Pro has a 17-inch (Arrow Lake) or 16-inch (Lunar Lake) screen with a 2,560 x 1,600 LCD screen. Its variable refresh rate maxes out at 144Hz. Both variants have up to 32GB (LPDDR5X Max 8,400MHz, Dual Channel) of RAM and 2TB of storage.

The Arrow Lake model should make for a solid gaming laptop with RTX 4050 graphics. The AI / Lunar Lake model only has integrated Intel graphics. But at least the latter is lighter and thinner, weighing 2.73 pounds. compared to the Arrow Lake model’s 3.26 pounds.

LG snagged a CES 2025 Innovation Award for the latest Gram Pro 2-in-1. The top-line configuration has a 16-inch screen with a 2,880 x 1,800 OLED display (120Hz variable refresh rate); cheaper variants are limited to a 2,560 x 1,600 LCD (144Hz VRR). The 2-in-1 ships with a wirelessly rechargeable stylus and — as its name suggests — can be folded back into tablet mode.

Finally, the Gram Book is an entry-level model LG is launching “to expand its US market presence.” Its screen is a more compromised 1,920 x 1,080 15.6-inch LCD at a mere 60Hz. Its Intel Core i5 CPU with integrated Intel graphics and a maximum of 16GB of RAM combine to make it the most underpowered of the bunch. It’s also the heaviest at 3.75 pounds.

Unfortunately, we don’t know how “entry-level” it is: LG hasn’t yet announced pricing information (or release dates) for any of the new laptops.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/lg-updates-its-gram-laptop-line-ahead-of-ces-2025-090049429.html?src=rss

Read More