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After more than two months of tests and discussions, NASA has decided that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will come home in February 2025 on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, and the Boeing Starliner they flew to the International Space Station on in June will return uncrewed. In a press conference on Saturday, Steve Stich, the program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said “there was too much uncertainty” around the predictions for Starliner’s thrusters to move forward with a crewed return flight. 
“The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Developing…This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/starliner-astronauts-will-come-home-in-february-on-a-spacex-crew-dragon-173008021.html?src=rss

After more than two months of tests and discussions, NASA has decided that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will come home in February 2025 on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, and the Boeing Starliner they flew to the International Space Station on in June will return uncrewed. In a press conference on Saturday, Steve Stich, the program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said “there was too much uncertainty” around the predictions for Starliner’s thrusters to move forward with a crewed return flight. 

“The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

Developing…

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/starliner-astronauts-will-come-home-in-february-on-a-spacex-crew-dragon-173008021.html?src=rss

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It’s seemed like everyone this summer has been talking about Valve’s in-development MOBA shooter, Deadlock, except Valve itself. Thousands of people have reportedly played it, some of whom have leaked screenshots and gameplay footage. But Valve has remained silent on the subject. Now, the company has finally confirmed the game’s existence with an official Steam page, which notes that Deadlock “is in early development” and in the hands of playtesters. Unfortunately, that’s about it for the details.
Deadlock is still only available to play via invitation. There’s no release date or even release window on the page, and the 22-second teaser it includes isn’t particularly enlightening. But now that Valve is finally acknowledging this thing publicly, we could see more about it soon. Back in May, YouTuber Tyler McVicker, who has long reported on Valve, described Deadlock as what’s “meant to be Valve’s next major competitive game. The next Counter-Strike. The next Dota.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/valve-finally-confirms-its-next-game-deadlock-with-a-bare-bones-steam-page-162836953.html?src=rss

It’s seemed like everyone this summer has been talking about Valve’s in-development MOBA shooter, Deadlock, except Valve itself. Thousands of people have reportedly played it, some of whom have leaked screenshots and gameplay footage. But Valve has remained silent on the subject. Now, the company has finally confirmed the game’s existence with an official Steam page, which notes that Deadlock “is in early development” and in the hands of playtesters. Unfortunately, that’s about it for the details.

Deadlock is still only available to play via invitation. There’s no release date or even release window on the page, and the 22-second teaser it includes isn’t particularly enlightening. But now that Valve is finally acknowledging this thing publicly, we could see more about it soon. Back in May, YouTuber Tyler McVicker, who has long reported on Valve, described Deadlock as what’s “meant to be Valve’s next major competitive game. The next Counter-Strike. The next Dota.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/valve-finally-confirms-its-next-game-deadlock-with-a-bare-bones-steam-page-162836953.html?src=rss

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Meta has blocked WhatsApp accounts involved in “a small cluster of likely social engineering activity” on the service. In its report, it has revealed that it traced the activity to APT42 (also called UNC788 and Mint Sandstorm), which the FBI previously linked to a phishing campaign that targeted members of the Trump and Harris camps. The company said that the suspicious activity on WhatsApp “attempted to target individuals in Israel, Palestine, Iran, the United States and the UK.” It also seemed to have focused on political and diplomatic officials, which included people associated with both presidential candidates. 
The bad actors on WhatsApp pretended to be technical support representatives from AOL, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, though Meta didn’t say how they tried to compromise their targets’ accounts. Some of those targets reported the activity to the company, which compelled it to start an investigation. Meta said it believes the perpetrators’ efforts were unsuccessful and that it has not seen any evidence that the targets’ accounts had been compromised. It still reported the malicious activity to law enforcement, though, and shared information with both presidential campaigns. 
Earlier this month, Google also published a report detailing how APT42 has been targeting high-profile users in Israel and the US for years. The company said it observed “unsuccessful attempts” to compromise the “accounts of individuals affiliated with President Biden, Vice President Harris and former President Trump.” While Google described APT42’s attacks as “unsuccessful,” the group had successfully infiltrated the account of at least one high-profile victim: Roger Stone, who is a close political confidante of Trump. The FBI previously reported that he had fallen victim to the phishing emails sent by the Iranian hackers, who then used his account to send more phishing emails to his contacts. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/meta-took-down-whatsapp-accounts-connected-to-iranian-hackers-targeting-the-us-election-140039124.html?src=rss

Meta has blocked WhatsApp accounts involved in “a small cluster of likely social engineering activity” on the service. In its report, it has revealed that it traced the activity to APT42 (also called UNC788 and Mint Sandstorm), which the FBI previously linked to a phishing campaign that targeted members of the Trump and Harris camps. The company said that the suspicious activity on WhatsApp “attempted to target individuals in Israel, Palestine, Iran, the United States and the UK.” It also seemed to have focused on political and diplomatic officials, which included people associated with both presidential candidates. 

The bad actors on WhatsApp pretended to be technical support representatives from AOL, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, though Meta didn’t say how they tried to compromise their targets’ accounts. Some of those targets reported the activity to the company, which compelled it to start an investigation. Meta said it believes the perpetrators’ efforts were unsuccessful and that it has not seen any evidence that the targets’ accounts had been compromised. It still reported the malicious activity to law enforcement, though, and shared information with both presidential campaigns. 

Earlier this month, Google also published a report detailing how APT42 has been targeting high-profile users in Israel and the US for years. The company said it observed “unsuccessful attempts” to compromise the “accounts of individuals affiliated with President Biden, Vice President Harris and former President Trump.” While Google described APT42’s attacks as “unsuccessful,” the group had successfully infiltrated the account of at least one high-profile victim: Roger Stone, who is a close political confidante of Trump. The FBI previously reported that he had fallen victim to the phishing emails sent by the Iranian hackers, who then used his account to send more phishing emails to his contacts. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/meta-took-down-whatsapp-accounts-connected-to-iranian-hackers-targeting-the-us-election-140039124.html?src=rss

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One Btn Bosses does exactly what it says in the tin, but there’s more to this tongue-in-cheek bullet-hell boss rush than you initially might suspect. You play as a small ship that moves along tracks and battles a string of bosses (quite literally, as you’re fighting your way through the ranks of a peculiar corporation). The only real control you have at your disposal is a single button.
While the visual language draws from Asteroids, it plays a bit like Vampire Survivors, in that your weapon auto fires at your enemy but your agency is even more limited as you can’t move wherever you want. At first, pressing the button will reverse your ship’s direction as you try to avoid attacks (generally, you can take damage three times before you lose a fight). But going the other way means slowing down both your movement and the firing rate. That adds a fun wrinkle to figuring out your approach: play it as safe as possible and take longer to defeat an enemy, or go high risk and try to win as quickly as possible so you can soar up the leaderboard.

As you progress, you’ll unlock different weapons and movement abilities, as well as different color schemes. You can choose your loadout for each round. On the movement front, you might opt to hold the button to dash through enemy attacks without incurring damage or keep it pressed down to build up speed and accelerate in the other direction. In terms of dealing damage, you might opt for a laser that grows more powerful as you pick up sparks or a pickup weapon that only fires when you run across an item on the track. Experiment to figure out works best for you.
Along with the campaign, there’s a separate roguelite mode called Rifts & Developments that randomizes enemy attacks and layouts (it’s possible to memorize the attacks in campaign levels). Here, you have a total of three lives and they aren’t replenished between rounds unless you choose an upgrade that lets you do so. Nothing carries back over from the roguelite mode to the campaign except for XP, so if you’re stuck on a boss and you’re close to unlocking a new weapon, you can switch over to earn some juicy experience to expand your arsenal.
One Btn Bosses is tough, but it never feels unfair. The enemy attacks are as clear as day thanks to the clean art direction. I haven’t felt that I’ve been boxed in between enemy attacks so that losing a life was inevitable — to my eye, all the damage I’ve sustained was my own fault.
In a weird way, One Btn Bosses kind of reminds me of the early days of Twitter, in that one could only be creative on that platform within the confines of a single 140-character message. The limitation that the studio, Midnight Munchies, placed on itself here forced the developers to come up with inventive ways of keeping One Btn Bosses engaging throughout its duration.
Oneside note: this is one of the first batch of games that received backing from Outersloth, a side project of Among Us developer Innersloth. The whole idea behind Outersloth is to offer indie developers an alternative funding model and to help “fun, original and clever games get made.” One Btn Bosses definitely fits the brief.
One Btn Bosses is out on Steam now.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/one-btn-bosses-gets-a-ton-of-mileage-from-single-button-gameplay-140025604.html?src=rss

One Btn Bosses does exactly what it says in the tin, but there’s more to this tongue-in-cheek bullet-hell boss rush than you initially might suspect. You play as a small ship that moves along tracks and battles a string of bosses (quite literally, as you’re fighting your way through the ranks of a peculiar corporation). The only real control you have at your disposal is a single button.

While the visual language draws from Asteroids, it plays a bit like Vampire Survivors, in that your weapon auto fires at your enemy but your agency is even more limited as you can’t move wherever you want. At first, pressing the button will reverse your ship’s direction as you try to avoid attacks (generally, you can take damage three times before you lose a fight). But going the other way means slowing down both your movement and the firing rate. That adds a fun wrinkle to figuring out your approach: play it as safe as possible and take longer to defeat an enemy, or go high risk and try to win as quickly as possible so you can soar up the leaderboard.

As you progress, you’ll unlock different weapons and movement abilities, as well as different color schemes. You can choose your loadout for each round. On the movement front, you might opt to hold the button to dash through enemy attacks without incurring damage or keep it pressed down to build up speed and accelerate in the other direction. In terms of dealing damage, you might opt for a laser that grows more powerful as you pick up sparks or a pickup weapon that only fires when you run across an item on the track. Experiment to figure out works best for you.

Along with the campaign, there’s a separate roguelite mode called Rifts & Developments that randomizes enemy attacks and layouts (it’s possible to memorize the attacks in campaign levels). Here, you have a total of three lives and they aren’t replenished between rounds unless you choose an upgrade that lets you do so. Nothing carries back over from the roguelite mode to the campaign except for XP, so if you’re stuck on a boss and you’re close to unlocking a new weapon, you can switch over to earn some juicy experience to expand your arsenal.

One Btn Bosses is tough, but it never feels unfair. The enemy attacks are as clear as day thanks to the clean art direction. I haven’t felt that I’ve been boxed in between enemy attacks so that losing a life was inevitable — to my eye, all the damage I’ve sustained was my own fault.

In a weird way, One Btn Bosses kind of reminds me of the early days of Twitter, in that one could only be creative on that platform within the confines of a single 140-character message. The limitation that the studio, Midnight Munchies, placed on itself here forced the developers to come up with inventive ways of keeping One Btn Bosses engaging throughout its duration.

Oneside note: this is one of the first batch of games that received backing from Outersloth, a side project of Among Us developer Innersloth. The whole idea behind Outersloth is to offer indie developers an alternative funding model and to help “fun, original and clever games get made.” One Btn Bosses definitely fits the brief.

One Btn Bosses is out on Steam now.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/one-btn-bosses-gets-a-ton-of-mileage-from-single-button-gameplay-140025604.html?src=rss

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If you own an Amazon Echo Show 8 Photos edition, be prepared for your device to start showing ads. According to emails posted by customers on Reddit and Threads and first reported by The Verge, Amazon will discontinue its PhotosPlus subscription feature that let people upload and display their own pictures on the Echo Show 8.
Reddit/amazonecho

PhotosPlus subscriptions will end on September 12 and Amazon will end support for the photo feature on September 23. Instead, affected customers will have to upload their photos to Amazon Photos with 25 GB of storage and learn to live with the ads on their home screen.
The feature, which costs $2 a month, let users upload their own photos for display on the Echo Show 8’s home screen turning the voice and touch controlled screen device into a digital picture frame. The screen would rotate the owners’ photos every 30 seconds, a feature that could be left on indefinitely (or as long as it could last on its chargeable battery).
Any mention of the PhotosPlus subscription has been removed from Amazon’s website. The Amazon Echo Show 8 Photos Edition is also no longer for sale.
Amazon has seen some major struggles with Alexa devices. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Alexa lost Amazon more than $25 billion from 2017 to 2021. Amazon has tried to recoup some of those losses by eliminating bonuses to Alexa developers. The tech giant is also reportedly working on an advanced version of Alexa known as “Remarkable Alexa” that could come with a monthly subscription fee.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/amazon-will-discontinue-the-echo-show-8-photos-editions-main-reason-for-existing-210045966.html?src=rss

If you own an Amazon Echo Show 8 Photos edition, be prepared for your device to start showing ads. According to emails posted by customers on Reddit and Threads and first reported by The Verge, Amazon will discontinue its PhotosPlus subscription feature that let people upload and display their own pictures on the Echo Show 8.

PhotosPlus subscriptions will end on September 12 and Amazon will end support for the photo feature on September 23. Instead, affected customers will have to upload their photos to Amazon Photos with 25 GB of storage and learn to live with the ads on their home screen.

The feature, which costs $2 a month, let users upload their own photos for display on the Echo Show 8’s home screen turning the voice and touch controlled screen device into a digital picture frame. The screen would rotate the owners’ photos every 30 seconds, a feature that could be left on indefinitely (or as long as it could last on its chargeable battery).

Any mention of the PhotosPlus subscription has been removed from Amazon’s website. The Amazon Echo Show 8 Photos Edition is also no longer for sale.

Amazon has seen some major struggles with Alexa devices. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Alexa lost Amazon more than $25 billion from 2017 to 2021. Amazon has tried to recoup some of those losses by eliminating bonuses to Alexa developers. The tech giant is also reportedly working on an advanced version of Alexa known as “Remarkable Alexa” that could come with a monthly subscription fee.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/amazon-will-discontinue-the-echo-show-8-photos-editions-main-reason-for-existing-210045966.html?src=rss

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A new Zombies mode is headed to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. A new cinematic trailer released on Friday shows that the DLC will take players to a small town called Liberty Falls infested with the running dead.
The trailer starts in a picturesque piece of America with an old-timey song setting the tone. Then everything goes to hell and our unnamed hero wakes up in a post-apocalyptic world from what was just a nightmare all along. He receives a bulletin that the running dead are on their way so he picks up a shock rifle to start popping off some zombies’ tops. The big reveal at the end features some kind of menacing villain that feels like a cross between ZAX from Fallout 76 and GLaDOS from the Portal games.

This is just a premature judgment based on the trailer but it looks and sounds a lot like Fallout, another game that takes place in a world where humanity ends and mutant humans roam the landscape.
There’s no official wide release date for Black Ops 6’s Zombies DLC or any indication that it will or won’t be available when the game launches on October 25. The first gameplay footage of the Liberty Falls maps and story mode will premiere on August 28 at Call of Duty NEXT in Washington DC. Open beta access will start on August 30. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will also be available on Xbox Game Pass on launch day.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-trailer-for-call-of-duty-black-ops-6s-zombies-dlc-has-risen-191550462.html?src=rss

A new Zombies mode is headed to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. A new cinematic trailer released on Friday shows that the DLC will take players to a small town called Liberty Falls infested with the running dead.

The trailer starts in a picturesque piece of America with an old-timey song setting the tone. Then everything goes to hell and our unnamed hero wakes up in a post-apocalyptic world from what was just a nightmare all along. He receives a bulletin that the running dead are on their way so he picks up a shock rifle to start popping off some zombies’ tops. The big reveal at the end features some kind of menacing villain that feels like a cross between ZAX from Fallout 76 and GLaDOS from the Portal games.

This is just a premature judgment based on the trailer but it looks and sounds a lot like Fallout, another game that takes place in a world where humanity ends and mutant humans roam the landscape.

There’s no official wide release date for Black Ops 6’s Zombies DLC or any indication that it will or won’t be available when the game launches on October 25. The first gameplay footage of the Liberty Falls maps and story mode will premiere on August 28 at Call of Duty NEXT in Washington DC. Open beta access will start on August 30. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will also be available on Xbox Game Pass on launch day.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-trailer-for-call-of-duty-black-ops-6s-zombies-dlc-has-risen-191550462.html?src=rss

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Meta has canceled its plans for a long-rumored mixed-reality headset that was intended to compete with the Apple Vision Pro, according to reporting by The Information. The company told employees at Reality Labs to stop working on the device after a product review meeting attended by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as cited by Meta staffers.
The headset was internally referred to as La Jolla and was reportedly supposed to release in 2027. This mixed-reality device was allegedly heads and shoulders above the Quest 3, with ultra-crisp micro OLED displays. This is the same display technology used in the Apple Vision Pro.
Reporting indicates that a major sticking point was cost. The team wanted to get the device under $1,000, but those micro OLED panels don’t come cheap. The Vision Pro, after all, is $3,500.
Another likely reason the premium device got canned is that, well, there might not be that much hunger for expensive headsets. The Vision Pro’s sales have been sluggish and Meta’s own pre-existing high-end headset, the Quest Pro, was widely ridiculed for coming in with a $1,500 price tag.
It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean Meta is abandoning VR and MR devices. It’s just putting the kibosh on one expensive, high-end headset. There are plenty of rumors out there that a Quest 4 is coming, alongside a more budget-friendly version of the Quest 3. Meta is also reportedly prepping some new AR glasses that will likely be shown off at the next Connect event on September 25.
The CTO of Meta, Andrew Bosworth, echoed the above sentiment. He wrote on Threads that the company has “many prototypes in development at all times” and that “decisions like this happen all the time.” 

The company is, however, shifting its strategy a little bit. Beyond canceling the aforementioned headset, Meta’s been trying to license its XR software to third-party hardware makers. The platform, which is called Horizon OS, might be licensed to Indian tech giant Jio as an opening move in this gambit. A deal with LG, however, fell through.
It’s always possible that the company will revive the concept of a high-end headset in the future, once the space gets more consumer traction. In the meantime, the Quest 4 will reportedly hit store shelves in 2026.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-has-reportedly-killed-its-apple-vision-pro-competitor-184446962.html?src=rss

Meta has canceled its plans for a long-rumored mixed-reality headset that was intended to compete with the Apple Vision Pro, according to reporting by The Information. The company told employees at Reality Labs to stop working on the device after a product review meeting attended by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as cited by Meta staffers.

The headset was internally referred to as La Jolla and was reportedly supposed to release in 2027. This mixed-reality device was allegedly heads and shoulders above the Quest 3, with ultra-crisp micro OLED displays. This is the same display technology used in the Apple Vision Pro.

Reporting indicates that a major sticking point was cost. The team wanted to get the device under $1,000, but those micro OLED panels don’t come cheap. The Vision Pro, after all, is $3,500.

Another likely reason the premium device got canned is that, well, there might not be that much hunger for expensive headsets. The Vision Pro’s sales have been sluggish and Meta’s own pre-existing high-end headset, the Quest Pro, was widely ridiculed for coming in with a $1,500 price tag.

It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean Meta is abandoning VR and MR devices. It’s just putting the kibosh on one expensive, high-end headset. There are plenty of rumors out there that a Quest 4 is coming, alongside a more budget-friendly version of the Quest 3. Meta is also reportedly prepping some new AR glasses that will likely be shown off at the next Connect event on September 25.

The CTO of Meta, Andrew Bosworth, echoed the above sentiment. He wrote on Threads that the company has “many prototypes in development at all times” and that “decisions like this happen all the time.” 

The company is, however, shifting its strategy a little bit. Beyond canceling the aforementioned headset, Meta’s been trying to license its XR software to third-party hardware makers. The platform, which is called Horizon OS, might be licensed to Indian tech giant Jio as an opening move in this gambit. A deal with LG, however, fell through.

It’s always possible that the company will revive the concept of a high-end headset in the future, once the space gets more consumer traction. In the meantime, the Quest 4 will reportedly hit store shelves in 2026.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-has-reportedly-killed-its-apple-vision-pro-competitor-184446962.html?src=rss

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Microsoft announced it will host a special conference in September to discuss the lessons and security measures the industry can take away from the CrowdStrike computer shutdown in July. The Windows Endpoint Security Ecosystem Summit is scheduled for September 10 at Microsoft’s Redmond, WA headquarters.
The event will feature representatives from Microsoft, CrowdStrike and other cyber and computer security companies. The participants will explore changes in industry practices and the use of applications that can prevent future computer shutdowns.
An executive who spoke to CNBC anonymously says one of the talking points of the conference will address the use of applications that rely more on Windows’ user mode instead of kernel mode. The July outage occurred because Crowdstrike’s agent operated in kernel mode in which the central processing unit gives software total access to a system’s resources and hardware. Applications in user mode are more isolated so they can’t bring down other systems.
The attendees will also discuss implementing eBPF technology into systems to check programs without triggering system wide crashes. The conference will also feature discussions on the use of safer programming languages such as Rust, an alternative to programming languages such as C or C++.
CrowdStrike blamed faulty testing software included in an update as the cause of the crash that shut down 8.5 million Windows machines starting on July 19. The shutdown causes blue screens of death for systems for banks, airlines and businesses around the world.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/microsoft-will-host-a-security-conference-after-the-crowdstrike-shutdown-172119101.html?src=rss

Microsoft announced it will host a special conference in September to discuss the lessons and security measures the industry can take away from the CrowdStrike computer shutdown in July. The Windows Endpoint Security Ecosystem Summit is scheduled for September 10 at Microsoft’s Redmond, WA headquarters.

The event will feature representatives from Microsoft, CrowdStrike and other cyber and computer security companies. The participants will explore changes in industry practices and the use of applications that can prevent future computer shutdowns.

An executive who spoke to CNBC anonymously says one of the talking points of the conference will address the use of applications that rely more on Windows’ user mode instead of kernel mode. The July outage occurred because Crowdstrike’s agent operated in kernel mode in which the central processing unit gives software total access to a system’s resources and hardware. Applications in user mode are more isolated so they can’t bring down other systems.

The attendees will also discuss implementing eBPF technology into systems to check programs without triggering system wide crashes. The conference will also feature discussions on the use of safer programming languages such as Rust, an alternative to programming languages such as C or C++.

CrowdStrike blamed faulty testing software included in an update as the cause of the crash that shut down 8.5 million Windows machines starting on July 19. The shutdown causes blue screens of death for systems for banks, airlines and businesses around the world.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/microsoft-will-host-a-security-conference-after-the-crowdstrike-shutdown-172119101.html?src=rss

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Even if you’re not a student, you can still take advantage of the many back to school sales out there. As we do each Friday, we searched around to see if any of the tech we’ve previously covered and recommend is currently on sale. We spotted the lowest price yet on the 9th-generation iPad — it may be discontinued, but $200 for a capable Apple tablet is still a sweet deal. Our current favorite wireless headphones, the Sony WH-1000XM5 are back down to their July Prime Day price. And Amazon is throwing in a free smart bulb on top of discounted prices for a number of its Echo speakers and displays. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-9th-gen-ipad-is-cheaper-than-ever-at-199-plus-the-rest-of-this-weeks-best-tech-deals-170600479.html?src=rss

Even if you’re not a student, you can still take advantage of the many back to school sales out there. As we do each Friday, we searched around to see if any of the tech we’ve previously covered and recommend is currently on sale. We spotted the lowest price yet on the 9th-generation iPad — it may be discontinued, but $200 for a capable Apple tablet is still a sweet deal. Our current favorite wireless headphones, the Sony WH-1000XM5 are back down to their July Prime Day price. And Amazon is throwing in a free smart bulb on top of discounted prices for a number of its Echo speakers and displays. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-9th-gen-ipad-is-cheaper-than-ever-at-199-plus-the-rest-of-this-weeks-best-tech-deals-170600479.html?src=rss

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TollBit
The 28-year-old founders of TollBit, a New York-based startup that is all of six months old, think we’re living in the “Napster days” of AI. Just like people of a certain generation downloaded digital music, companies are ripping off vast swaths of the internet without paying the rights holders. They want TollBit to be the iTunes of the AI world.
“It’s kind of the Wild West right now,” Olivia Joslin, the company’s co-founder and chief operating officer, told Engadget in an interview. “We want to make it easier for AI companies to pay for the data they need.” Their idea is simple: create a marketplace that connects AI companies that need access to fresh, high-quality data to the publishers who actually spend money creating it.
AI companies have, indeed, only recently started paying for (some of) the data they need from news publishers. OpenAI kicked off an arms race at the end of 2022, but it was only a year ago that the company signed the first of its many licensing deals with the Associated Press. Later that year, OpenAI announced a partnership with German publisher Axel Springer, which operates Business Insider and Politico in the US. Multiple publishers including Vox, the Financial Times, News Corp and TIME, have since signed deals with OpenAI and Google.
But that still leaves countless other publishers and creators out in the cold — without the option to strike this Faustian Bargain even if they want to. This is the “long tail” of publishers that TollBit wants to target.
“Powerful AI models already exist and they have already been trained,” Toshit Panigrahi, TollBit’s co-founder and CEO told Engadget. “And right now, there are thousands of applications just taking these existing models off the shelves. What they need is fresh content. But right now, there’s no infrastructure — neither for them to buy it, nor for content-makers to sell it in a way that is seamless.”
Both Joslin and Panigrahi weren’t particularly knowledgeable about the media industry. But they both knew how online marketplaces and platforms operated – they were colleagues at Toast, a platform that lets restaurants manage billing and reservations. Panigrahi watched both the deals — and the lawsuits — pile up in the AI sector, then called on Joslin.
Their early conversations were about RAG, which stands for Retrieval-Augmented Generation in the AI world. With RAG, AI models first look up information from specific databases (like the scrapable portions of the internet) and use that information to synthesize a response instead of simply relying on training data. Services like ChatGPT don’t know current home prices, or the latest news. Instead, they fetch that data, typically by looking at websites. That absence of fresh data is why AI chatbots are often stumped by queries about breaking news events — if they don’t scrape the latest data, they simply can’t keep up.
“We thought that using content for RAG was something fundamentally different than using it for training,” said Panigrahi.
TollBit
By some estimations, RAG is the future of search engines. More and more, people are asking questions on the internet and expecting complete answers in return instead of a list of blue links. In just over a year, startups like Perplexity, backed by Jess Bezos and NVIDIA among others, have burst onto the scene with ambitions of taking on Google. Even OpenAI has plans to someday let ChatGPT become your search engine. In response, Google has sprung into action — it now culls relevant information from search results and presents it as a coherent answer at the top of the results page, a feature it calls AI Overviews. (It doesn’t always work well, but is seemingly here to stay).
The rise of RAG-based search engines has publishers shaking in their boots. After all, who would make money if AI reads the internet for us? After Google rolled out AI Overviews earlier this year, at least one report estimated that publishers would lose more than $2 billion in ad revenue because fewer people would have a reason to visit their websites. “AI companies need continuous access to high quality content and data too,” said Joslin, “but if you don’t figure out some economic model here, there will be no incentive for anyone to create content, and that’ll be the end of AI applications too.”
Instead of cutting one-off checks, TollBit’s model aims to compensate publishers on an ongoing basis. Hypothetically, if someone’s content was used in a thousand AI-generated answers, they would get paid a thousand times at a price that they set and which they can change on the fly.
Each time an AI company accesses fresh data from a publisher through TollBit, it can pay a small fee set by the publisher that Panigrahi and Joslin think should be roughly equivalent to whatever a traditional page view would have made the publisher. And the platform can also block AI companies who haven’t signed up from accessing publishers’ data.
So far, the founders claim to have onboarded a hundred publishers and are in pilots with three AI companies since TollBit launched in February. They refused to reveal which publishers or AI companies had signed on so far, citing confidentiality clauses, but did not deny speaking with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta. So far, they say that no money has changed hands between AI companies and publishers on their platform.
TollBit
Until that happens, their model is still a giant hypothetical — although one that investors have so far poured $7 million into. TollBit’s investors include Sunflower Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Operator Collective, AIX and Liquid 2 Ventures, and more investors are currently “pounding down their door,” Joslin claimed. In April, TollBit also brought on Campbell Brown as a senior adviser, a former television anchor who previously acted as Meta’s head of news partnerships for the better part of a decade.
In spite of some high-profile lawsuits, AI companies are still scraping the internet for free and largely getting away with it. Why would they have any incentive to actually pay publishers for this data? There are three big reasons, the founders say: more websites are taking steps to prevent their content from being scraped ever since generative AI went mainstream, which means that scraping the web is getting harder and more expensive; no one wants to deal with ongoing copyright lawsuits; and, crucially, being able to easily pay for content on an as-needed basis lets AI companies tap into smaller and more niche publications because it isn’t possible to strike individual licensing deals with every single website. Joslin also pointed out that multiple TollBit investors have also invested in AI companies which they worry might face litigation for using content without permission.
Getting AI companies to pay for content could provide a recurring revenue stream for not just large publishers but to potentially anyone who publishes anything online. Last month, Perplexity — which was accused of illegally scraping content from Forbes, Wired and Condé Nast — launched a Publishers’ Program under which it plans to share a cut of any revenue it earns with publishers if it uses their content to generate answers with AI. The success of the program, however, hinges on how much money Perplexity makes when it introduces ads in the app later this year. Like Tollbit, it’s another complete hypothetical.
“Our thesis with TollBit is that if you lose a page view today, you should be compensated for it immediately rather than a few years after when a tech company figures out its ads program,” said Panigrahi about Perplexity’s initiative.
Despite all the existing licensing deals and technical advances, AI-powered chatbots still make for terrible news sources. They still make up facts and confidently conjure up entire links to stories that don’t actually exist. But technology companies are now stuffing AI chatbots in every crevice they can, which means that many people will still get their news from one of these products in the not-so-distant future.
A more cynical take on TollBit’s premise is that the startup is effectively offering hush money to publishers whose work is more likely than not to be sausaged into misinformation. Its founders, naturally, don’t agree with the characterization. “We are careful about the AI partners we onboard,” Panigrahi said. “These companies are very mindful about the quality of input material and correctness of responses. We’re seeing that paying for content – even nominal amounts – creates incentive to respect the raw inputs into their systems instead of treating it as a free, replaceable commodity.”This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/this-startup-wants-to-be-the-itunes-of-ai-content-licensing-162942714.html?src=rss

The 28-year-old founders of TollBit, a New York-based startup that is all of six months old, think we’re living in the “Napster days” of AI. Just like people of a certain generation downloaded digital music, companies are ripping off vast swaths of the internet without paying the rights holders. They want TollBit to be the iTunes of the AI world.

“It’s kind of the Wild West right now,” Olivia Joslin, the company’s co-founder and chief operating officer, told Engadget in an interview. “We want to make it easier for AI companies to pay for the data they need.” Their idea is simple: create a marketplace that connects AI companies that need access to fresh, high-quality data to the publishers who actually spend money creating it.

AI companies have, indeed, only recently started paying for (some of) the data they need from news publishers. OpenAI kicked off an arms race at the end of 2022, but it was only a year ago that the company signed the first of its many licensing deals with the Associated Press. Later that year, OpenAI announced a partnership with German publisher Axel Springer, which operates Business Insider and Politico in the US. Multiple publishers including Vox, the Financial Times, News Corp and TIME, have since signed deals with OpenAI and Google.

But that still leaves countless other publishers and creators out in the cold — without the option to strike this Faustian Bargain even if they want to. This is the “long tail” of publishers that TollBit wants to target.

“Powerful AI models already exist and they have already been trained,” Toshit Panigrahi, TollBit’s co-founder and CEO told Engadget. “And right now, there are thousands of applications just taking these existing models off the shelves. What they need is fresh content. But right now, there’s no infrastructure — neither for them to buy it, nor for content-makers to sell it in a way that is seamless.”

Both Joslin and Panigrahi weren’t particularly knowledgeable about the media industry. But they both knew how online marketplaces and platforms operated – they were colleagues at Toast, a platform that lets restaurants manage billing and reservations. Panigrahi watched both the deals — and the lawsuits — pile up in the AI sector, then called on Joslin.

Their early conversations were about RAG, which stands for Retrieval-Augmented Generation in the AI world. With RAG, AI models first look up information from specific databases (like the scrapable portions of the internet) and use that information to synthesize a response instead of simply relying on training data. Services like ChatGPT don’t know current home prices, or the latest news. Instead, they fetch that data, typically by looking at websites. That absence of fresh data is why AI chatbots are often stumped by queries about breaking news events — if they don’t scrape the latest data, they simply can’t keep up.

“We thought that using content for RAG was something fundamentally different than using it for training,” said Panigrahi.

By some estimations, RAG is the future of search engines. More and more, people are asking questions on the internet and expecting complete answers in return instead of a list of blue links. In just over a year, startups like Perplexity, backed by Jess Bezos and NVIDIA among others, have burst onto the scene with ambitions of taking on Google. Even OpenAI has plans to someday let ChatGPT become your search engine. In response, Google has sprung into action — it now culls relevant information from search results and presents it as a coherent answer at the top of the results page, a feature it calls AI Overviews. (It doesn’t always work well, but is seemingly here to stay).

The rise of RAG-based search engines has publishers shaking in their boots. After all, who would make money if AI reads the internet for us? After Google rolled out AI Overviews earlier this year, at least one report estimated that publishers would lose more than $2 billion in ad revenue because fewer people would have a reason to visit their websites. “AI companies need continuous access to high quality content and data too,” said Joslin, “but if you don’t figure out some economic model here, there will be no incentive for anyone to create content, and that’ll be the end of AI applications too.”

Instead of cutting one-off checks, TollBit’s model aims to compensate publishers on an ongoing basis. Hypothetically, if someone’s content was used in a thousand AI-generated answers, they would get paid a thousand times at a price that they set and which they can change on the fly.

Each time an AI company accesses fresh data from a publisher through TollBit, it can pay a small fee set by the publisher that Panigrahi and Joslin think should be roughly equivalent to whatever a traditional page view would have made the publisher. And the platform can also block AI companies who haven’t signed up from accessing publishers’ data.

So far, the founders claim to have onboarded a hundred publishers and are in pilots with three AI companies since TollBit launched in February. They refused to reveal which publishers or AI companies had signed on so far, citing confidentiality clauses, but did not deny speaking with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta. So far, they say that no money has changed hands between AI companies and publishers on their platform.

Until that happens, their model is still a giant hypothetical — although one that investors have so far poured $7 million into. TollBit’s investors include Sunflower Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Operator Collective, AIX and Liquid 2 Ventures, and more investors are currently “pounding down their door,” Joslin claimed. In April, TollBit also brought on Campbell Brown as a senior adviser, a former television anchor who previously acted as Meta’s head of news partnerships for the better part of a decade.

In spite of some high-profile lawsuits, AI companies are still scraping the internet for free and largely getting away with it. Why would they have any incentive to actually pay publishers for this data? There are three big reasons, the founders say: more websites are taking steps to prevent their content from being scraped ever since generative AI went mainstream, which means that scraping the web is getting harder and more expensive; no one wants to deal with ongoing copyright lawsuits; and, crucially, being able to easily pay for content on an as-needed basis lets AI companies tap into smaller and more niche publications because it isn’t possible to strike individual licensing deals with every single website. Joslin also pointed out that multiple TollBit investors have also invested in AI companies which they worry might face litigation for using content without permission.

Getting AI companies to pay for content could provide a recurring revenue stream for not just large publishers but to potentially anyone who publishes anything online. Last month, Perplexity — which was accused of illegally scraping content from Forbes, Wired and Condé Nast — launched a Publishers’ Program under which it plans to share a cut of any revenue it earns with publishers if it uses their content to generate answers with AI. The success of the program, however, hinges on how much money Perplexity makes when it introduces ads in the app later this year. Like Tollbit, it’s another complete hypothetical.

“Our thesis with TollBit is that if you lose a page view today, you should be compensated for it immediately rather than a few years after when a tech company figures out its ads program,” said Panigrahi about Perplexity’s initiative.

Despite all the existing licensing deals and technical advances, AI-powered chatbots still make for terrible news sources. They still make up facts and confidently conjure up entire links to stories that don’t actually exist. But technology companies are now stuffing AI chatbots in every crevice they can, which means that many people will still get their news from one of these products in the not-so-distant future.

A more cynical take on TollBit’s premise is that the startup is effectively offering hush money to publishers whose work is more likely than not to be sausaged into misinformation. Its founders, naturally, don’t agree with the characterization. “We are careful about the AI partners we onboard,” Panigrahi said. “These companies are very mindful about the quality of input material and correctness of responses. We’re seeing that paying for content – even nominal amounts – creates incentive to respect the raw inputs into their systems instead of treating it as a free, replaceable commodity.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/this-startup-wants-to-be-the-itunes-of-ai-content-licensing-162942714.html?src=rss

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