Info-Stuff

It's been around three and a half years since season four of Stranger Things premiered. We finally have an actual trailer for the fifth and final season of Netflix's retro-soaked adventure series. It's a good thing, as the first batch of episodes drop on November 26. As previously mentioned, this is a real trailer with tons of footage and not a teaser. It's over two minutes of Hawkins-based goodness. This is an action-packed affair that's heavy on emotion and light on the type of 1980s-style humor the show has become known for. That seems right, given the stakes are higher than ever. If you just clicked on this and don't plan on actually watching the trailer, this is when I go into some light spoilers. It looks like the gang is trapped in Hawkins following the events of season four. There's a military enclosure around the city and, surprise, Vecna is back and looking for vengeance. There's a very scary scene in which the entity looks to be control...

Pinterest is adding a new way to find clothes, furniture and other sources of aesthetic inspiration through its app. It's called Pinterest Assistant, and it's an AI-powered search and recommendation tool that uses knowledge of your Pinterest activity to tailor its responses. Whereas other search features work best when you have a specific thing you're looking for in mind, Pinterest says the Pinterest Assistant is meant to handle more open-ended requests. Asking for pillows that match your "living room decor" is supposed to be enough for the AI to surface interesting results. To do that, the Pinterest Assistant looks at the items you've saved and the boards you've created (for example, a board full of living room decor inspiration), compares it with the things Pinterest users with similar taste have saved and displays visual results tailored to you. You start a search with Pinterest Assistant by tapping on the mic icon. Pinterest Pinterest appears to ...

Social media conversations can be vastly more enjoyable when you pick and choose who you're talking with. Today, Threads is adding more controls that let users determine who can reply to their posts.  One new feature is Reply Approvals, where the user will get a first look at responses before allowing them to appear publicly. The approval option can be turned on for individual posts rather than as a blanket policy for more granular control over replies. Threads is also adding new filters for viewing post replies. Now you can look at replies just from other Threads users you follow or sort them by mentions. Threads has already had a busy week. Earlier this week, the social network introduced its take on ephemeral "ghost" posts , akin to the limited-time visibility features on Instagram Stories and many other platforms. According to parent company Meta's third-quarter earnings call, Threads has grown to 150 million daily active users. This article originally appear...

YouTube is rolling out some updates aimed at making visuals look better on its TV apps, including automatic AI video upscaling. To begin with, YouTube plans to upscale videos that were uploaded in under 1080p to an HD resolution. It aims to support 4K upscaling in the future. The platform will still retain the original files and video resolution options. Creators can opt-out of the AI upscaling feature, which it's calling Super Resolution, as well as automated audio adjustments. The platform says it's also working with select creators to test larger video uploads to allow for higher-quality footage. Creators will soon be able to upload thumbnails in higher quality too. YouTube will increase the thumbnail file limit from 2MB to 50MB.  As for viewers, it seems like YouTube saw those annoying automatic previews Netflix has had for the last decade and decided to copy that playbook. "Viewers will be able to see and flip through their favorite YouTube channels with immersi...

It looks like a hundred thousand people fell for a fake NVIDIA livestream featuring an AI-generated version of CEO Jensen Huang, as reported by PC Gamer . Perhaps the scariest part is that the fake stream ran at the same time as an actual NVIDIA event and dwarfed the live viewership numbers. The actual keynote speech of NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) garnered around 20,000 live views, while the fake stream maxed out at 100,000 live views. Even weirder? The fake Huang was talking about some crazy stuff mostly involving bogus crypto investments. The deepfake spoke of "a crypto mass adoption event that ties directly into NVIDIA's mission to accelerate human progress." The avatar urged viewers to scan a QR code to, uh, send in cryptocurrencies. It's unclear if any of the 100,000 viewers fell for this obvious scam that asked people to send the world's richest company money to "accelerate human progress." The fake video has since been delet...

Magic Leap is once again trying to make a name for itself in augmented reality. The company revealed an Android XR smart glasses prototype and it extended an existing partnership with Google. It said it built the glasses "as a reference design for the Android XR ecosystem ." They look similar to other modern smart glasses, with thick frames to house all of the electronics and what appears to be a camera lens on the left side. Magic Leap hasn't revealed too much more about the glasses, other than to say that, "by combining Magic Leap’s waveguides and optics with Google’s Raxium microLED light engine, the two companies are developing display technologies that make all-day, wearable AR more achievable." The glasses, of course, use Google's Android XR operating system. Samsung's Galaxy XR headset , the first device that runs on the operating system, arrived last week. Although it has been through the wringer over the last several years, Magic Leap is st...

Chalk this one up under "The most clever (alleged) legal sidesteps this side of Tony Soprano." On Wednesday, The Guardian published a report about a so-called "winking mechanism" regarding Israeli cloud computing contracts with Amazon and Google. The stipulation from 2021's Project Nimbus is said to require the US companies to send coded messages to Israel. According to the report, whenever Google or Amazon secretly complies with an overseas legal request for Israeli data, they're required to send money to Israel. The dollar amount indicates which country issued the request. The coding system reportedly involves country dialing prefixes. For example, if Google or Amazon hand over Israeli data to the US (dialing code +1), they would send Israel 1,000 shekels. For Italy (code +39), they would send 3,900 shekels. (Out of morbid curiosity, I discovered that the highest dialing code is Uzbekistan's +998.) There's reportedly even a failsafe: If a gag or...

Toyota battery electric vehicles (BEV) owners can now have Apple Maps help them plan charging stops along their route via CarPlay. Alongside an announcement that the Toyota bZ is now on sale, the automaker says all 2023 and newer battery-electric vehicles can now integrate real-time battery information to help drivers with iPhones find compatible chargers. In the US this would simply mean the bZ4X, which is being replaced by the bZ.  Apple Maps will take into account factors like battery performance and elevation changes when estimating battery percentages on arrival and charging times. CarPlay is Apple's in-car infotainment system offering maps, music, calendar tools, Siri and more. While it's currently compatible with over 800 car models, EV-charger routing requires access to the car's battery info, which means automakers must work with Apple to enable the feature. The integration's rollout remains pretty limited, and before today's announcement the only co...

Simogo is celebrating its 15th anniversary with some retrospective projects, which include bringing its games to more platforms. The studio has put together the Simogo Legacy Collection for Steam , Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. This includes all seven of the mobile games that the developer released between 2010 and 2015, including Year Walk and Device 6 . The collection will be available on December 2 — the 15th anniversary of the release of Simogo’s first game, Kosmo Spin — and it costs $15. Co-founder Simon Flesser noted that the studio's mobile games were in "constant danger of disappearing or ending up being unplayable." ( Year Walk was ported to Wii U but we all know what happened with that console.) The idea behind Simogo Legacy Collection is to preserve them and “keep the experience as close as possible to the original games," Flesser said. As such, the team has made as few changes as possible while still making sure the games work on PC and Nintendo...

Oppo’s latest flagship phone, like the sleek (but hard to buy) Find N5 foldable , goes hard on the tech specifications. In fact, the Find X9 Pro’s specs read like a wishlist of what many want to see in their phones, with a huge 7,500mAh battery, a 200-megapixel telephoto camera and a bright 6.78-inch screen with tiny, almost one-millimeter bezels, all while still measuring in at 8.25mm in thickness. Oh, and an optional telephoto lens add-on that boosts camera zoom to 10x. The Find X9 Pro will be priced at £1,099 (roughly $1,459). The biggest drawback may be that, despite the Find X9 series being Oppo’s biggest phone launch yet, it won’t be available in the US. Still, with everything that’s crammed into this phone, I had to try it out. Do I really want a thinner smartphone? Or one that lasts multiple days before it needs recharging? And man, this telephoto lens is certainly eye-catching. Display and design Image by Mat Smith for Engadget The Find X9 Pro has a 6.78-inch display, w...

It keeps happening. HBO Max just raised prices again , around 16 months after the last price increase . If your debit card is feeling the pain, or if you're just not excited about that weird Harry Potter remake nobody asked for, you may decide to take a break from the perpetually renamed platform . Here's everything you need to know about canceling your HBO Max subscription, so you can streamline those entertainment options . How to cancel via web The simplest way to end your HBO Max subscription is if you're being billed directly by the company. You can follow these steps in a web or mobile browser to say goodbye to the house that Tony Soprano built. Go to max.com/subscription in a web browser. Sign in to your account. Click on your profile picture. Select Subscription. Click Cancel Your Subscription. This should be at the bottom of the page. Follow the prompts to confirm. That was pretty dang easy, but things get a bit more complicated if you ori...

Federal investigators who are looking into Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) tech have requested information from the company about the Mad Max mode it added to the system. The company has claimed that Mad Max offers “higher speeds and more frequent lane changes” than its Hurry speed profile . "NHTSA is in contact with the manufacturer to gather additional information," the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told Reuters . "The human behind the wheel is fully responsible for driving the vehicle and complying with all traffic safety laws." When it opened a fresh probe into FSD earlier this month, the NHTSA said the tech had "induced vehicle behavior that violated traffic safety laws.” Some Tesla vehicles with FSD engaged are said to have run red lights and driven against the flow of traffic. Tesla initially offered a Mad Max mode in 2018, before FSD was available. The company revived Mad Max this month and it didn’t take long before there...

Google’s long-awaited AI health coach is nearly upon us, as a preview version is launching tomorrow for some Fitbit Premium users in the US. This will only be for Android devices at first, but the company promises an iOS version is in the works. This is a Public Preview version of the software, so think of it like a beta release. Google says it'll incorporate user feedback to "add, change or improve features and capabilities." The company warns users that this is a "new experience, so initially, there will be some gaps." For the uninitiated, Google's AI health coach is exactly what it sounds like. This is an AI chatbot intended to help users reach fitness and health goals. The company boasts that the tech is "secure, personalized and grounded in science." Everything starts with a five to ten minute conversation with the coach to assess health and fitness goals. The coach can be a sounding board for personal health, fitness and sleep goals, but...

Meta's Threads is getting its own version of ephemeral posting with a new feature the company is calling "ghost posts." The temporary posts will be published within Threads' main feed like any other post, but will disappear after 24 hours. And while other users can interact with ghost posts, only the original poster will be able to view likes and replies.  Instead of typical public-facing replies, replies to ghost posts will be routed directly to users' inboxes, where they can opt to respond privately. In some cases, this could also mean that replies for ghost posts are more limited than replies to normal posts, as Meta's default messaging settings limit DMs to followed accounts only (these settings can be tweaked in the Threads app). In some ways, it's not surprising Meta would add temporary posts to Threads as a way to encourage users there to share more. On Instagram, Stories are used far more than permanent grid posts. In a blog post, Meta describes ...

According to a report from The Information , OpenAI is interested in developing a tool that could generate music from text and audio prompts, and has been working with students from The Juilliard School to help with creating training data. The company envisions something that could be used to generate guitar accompaniment for a vocal track, for example, or to add music to videos, sources with knowledge of the project told the publication.  There's no word on how far into these efforts OpenAI is. According to one source that spoke to The Information , OpenAI enlisted the Juilliard students to annotate music scores, which could be used to train the AI. It wouldn't be the first time the company has explored music-generating AI , and it's something we're seeing more and more of elsewhere with other startups, like Suno and ElevenLabs , launching their own versions. AI spam is already cluttering up streaming platforms and, lest we forget, there was the whole The Velvet S...

The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) submitted a new measure that allows it to photograph any non-US citizen who enters or exits the country for facial recognition purposes . According to a filing with the government's Federal Register, CBP and the Department of Homeland Security are looking to crack down on threats of terrorism, fraudulent use of travel documents and anyone who overstays their authorized stay. The filing detailed that CBP will "implement an integrated, automated entry and exit data system to match records, including biographic data and biometrics, of aliens entering and departing the United States." The government agency already has the ability to request photos and fingerprints from anyone entering the country, but this new rule change would allow for requiring photos of anyone exiting as well. These photos would "create galleries of images associated with individuals, including photos taken by border agents, and from passports or other tr...

Opening Apple's Maps app just for directions may look a little different in the near future. According to Bloomberg 's Mark Gurman, Apple is planning to introduce ads to Maps as soon as next year. While it won't be as annoying as unskippable YouTube ads, Apple wants to offer better visibility on Maps to restaurants and businesses that are willing to pay. When looking for a new restaurant or relevant business, you may already be used to seeing ads on Google Maps or Yelp that highlight certain establishments. However, Gurman said that Apple is planning to lean on AI for better search results and offer a better interface than Google Maps. The introduction of ads across Apple's iOS ecosystem shouldn't be surprising since Gurman previously reported Apple's interest back in 2022. On top of that, Apple already offers ad slots within the App Store where developers can pay to appear in a more visible position for user searches. Beyond Maps, Apple could be looking at ...

The iterative upgrades for iPads may not be enticing enough to warrant a new purchase every year, but Apple may have a particularly cool upgrade to convince users to shell out for the next iPad Pro. According to Bloomberg 's Mark Gurman, Apple is planning to include a vapor chamber for the upcoming iPad Pro that's due to ship with the M6 chip. We've already seen the vapor chamber included in the iPhone 17 Pro models, helping to boost cooling and performance. While an iPad's larger surface area makes for greater heat dissipation than an iPhone, this cooling system should make the tablet more capable when it comes to demanding tasks, like gaming, video editing or AI apps. Gurman also predicts that Apple could market the vapor chamber cooling as another way to differentiate between the iPad models.  Apple previously improved the cooling performance of iPad Pros with the M4 generation , which included a new copper heat sink. With the vapor chamber, Apple is borrowing a...

The Commodore 64 is back in black, sort of. Retro Games and Plaion Replai released a limited edition redesign of the best-selling computer, called THEC64 - Black Edition . Like its name suggests, the console is a modernized version of the classic Commodore 64 in an all-black shell. THEC64 - Black Edition will come with 25 pre-installed games, but unlike the company's previous consoles, this one will feature "neo-retro" games from C64 developers who have designed new games on the old-school architecture. Once you finish all the new titles like Sam's Journey , A Pig Quest and Hessian , you can plug in your own USB drive to play custom games. According to Retro Games, the updated redesign comes with four save slots per game, plug-and-play HDMI compatibility and a USB joystick. If you want THEC64 - Black Edition to feel more like the original Commodore 64, you can plug in a keyboard through the USB port. However, Retro Games also designed a non-mini THEC64 that has a...

For roughly the same price as a flagship smartphone , you could instead buy an affordable humanoid robot that's meant for consumer and educational use. Noetix Robotics, a Beijing-based startup, revealed its Bumi robot that's priced at nearly 10,000 yuan, or around $1,400. Unlike higher-end robots, the inexpensive Bumi stands at around three feet tall and weighs about 26 lbs. You won't find Noetix's latest robot on assembly lines or in research labs, especially since early demos only show Bumi walking around and dancing. According to a TechNode report , Bumi will offer a programming interface that allows for learning or creative tasks. The report also noted that Noetix is planning to put the Bumi up for preorders later this year. Before the Bumi, Noetix Robotics showed off its expertise by competing in the world's first half-marathon for robots with its N2 model, which was one of four robotic competitors that completed the race. At such a low price point, Bumi ...

Starting soon, Neato robovac owners will no longer be able to control their devices using the app. Neato Robotics, which shut down in 2023 due to declining sales, has notified customers that "cloud services are being phased out during Q4 2025," according to an email obtained by The Verge .  While Neato's parent company Vorwerk Group initially said cloud support would continue for at least five years following its closure, the email now says "cybersecurity standards, compliance obligations, and regulations have advanced in ways that make it no longer possible to safely and sustainably operate these legacy systems." This doesn't mean existing Neato products will be completely bricked — there's still the option to start them manually by pressing a button — but they won't offer all the smart home conveniences expected from a robovac that cost hundreds of dollars. Without use of the app, customers won't be able to set cleaning schedules, remotely st...

Just like a minor upgrade in specs, Apple's latest M5 MacBook Pro gets the slightest improvement when it comes to repairability. According to iFixit's teardown , the M5 MacBook Pro is the first of its kind that lets you replace the battery without having to remove the trackpad. However, Apple's official method of replacing the battery still requires navigating an arduous process that may steer most users away. For anyone willing to tackle the DIY repair, Apple's Self Service Repair Store only offers a Top Case with Battery and Keyboard in its product parts catalog. Since the only option to replace the battery is buying this main chassis part with both the keyboard and battery pre-installed, MacBook Pro owners will also have to disassemble an irritating number of unrelated screws and hardware — except for the trackpad — just to replace a battery. However, iFixit confirmed that Apple included a slightly upgraded 72.6Wh battery with the latest MacBook Pro compared t...

Rivian has agreed to settle a 2022 shareholder lawsuit. The automaker will pay out $250 million to qualifying investors if the agreement is approved. The lawsuit stemmed from alleged deception surrounding a March 2022 price hike for the R1S SUV and R1T truck . The class-action lawsuit alleges that Rivian misled investors around the time of its 2021 IPO. The core accusation is that the automaker failed to disclose that the R1s and R1T were initially priced lower than their production costs. Shareholders claim this made the eventual price increases inevitable, something they (understandably) believe Rivian should have shared. Rivian raised the base price of the R1S and R1T by $12,000 in March 2022. That initially included most reservations. However, the company quickly reversed course on the last bit: Following a backlash, it allowed customers who pre-ordered before the announcement to pay the original price after all. Rivian framed the settlement as a chance to move forward. ...

The federal government has released a list of all of the entities helping to pay for President Trump's lavish White House ballroom, according to reporting by Business Insider . Big tech is all over this thing, with companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft all shelling out cash to fund the 90,000-square-foot ballroom. It's not just big tech. Defense firms are also helping to pony the bill here. Companies like Lockheed Martin and Palintir are sending some cash, as are random billionaires like the Winklevoss twins and Domino Sugar magnate José Fanjul. The list reads like a who's who of the ultra wealthy and connected.  As we all know, giant corporations and billionaires are kind and selfless, but what if just this one time they want something in return for their largesse? Columbia professor of law Richard Briffault told Time that most of these donors have done "significant" business with the federal government, raising ethical concerns. "I...

Stop me if you've heard this one before: YouTube TV may lose a provider's content because a deadline is approaching without a deal in place. This time, the media company is Disney. It's warning (via Variety ) that its networks could soon go dark on Google's streaming service. The two sides are negotiating ahead of an October 30 midnight ET deadline. If they can't agree by then, all Disney content will disappear from YouTube TV. That includes (among others) all ESPN channels, local ABC stations, ABC News, FX, NatGeo, Disney Channel and Freeform. A YouTube spokesperson told Variety that if that should happen for "an extended period of time," subscribers will receive a $20 credit. One aspect of these battles is finger-pointing as each side tries to leverage public perception. Disney says YouTube is trying to muscle the mouse into paying below market value. Meanwhile, YouTube claims Disney is "proposing costly economic terms" that could lead to e...

Tim Bontemps and Brian Windhorst take the pulse of the league after a thrilling first few nights of 2025-26. https://ift.tt/XF4aGkm

 For 10 years, Felix Larson poured his soul into Savorelle, transforming a dusty diner into a culinary empire 🍳🏆. But greed bites back: Boss Ken Zeller slashes his worth to $3k/month… then fires him via lies fed to his childhood friends Sofia and Zoe 💸💔. Now, with New Year’s Eve looming, Felix’s knives are sharpened—for justice or vengeance?