Video game speedruns are always impressive feats of memorization, skill and flawless gameplay -- but twice a year they're also a conduit for altruism. Next week is one of those times. Starting on July 26th, Summer Games Done Quick will kick off seven full days of Twitch-streamed speedrunning. The goal? Raise as much cash as possible for Doctors Without Borders and have a ridiculously good time.
Today marks two years since Google debuted Chromecast, the small and affordable streaming device. To celebrate its second birthday, the company's letting owners get in on a couple promotional offers: a free movie rental and access to 90 days of Play Music. Google did something similar last year, but back then it only included the complimentary subscription to its audio-streaming service. For those of you don't have a Chromecast yet, the deal will be available until December 31st, so you still have some time to take advantage of this deal.
Remember Nintendo TVii, Nintendo's weird television hub for the Wii U? Don't worry, most people don't -- and in a few weeks you'll never have to think about it again. Nintendo just announced that the service is shutting down on August 11th.
While the past few years have been tough for many TV makers (Panasonic, Pioneer, Toshiba, Sony, just to name a few), Vizio has continued to grow its business, and now it's ready to go public. Vizio has made its name with impressive value-priced TVs that don't skimp on features (it's also a leader in the soundbar market, and has made attempts at selling tablets and phones too). According to the filing, Vizio has sold more than 15 million smart TVs, with about 61 percent of them connected as of the end of June. While viewers are benefiting from those connections, streaming over 3 billion hours of content, Vizio says it's watching them too, with Inscape software embedded in the screens that can track anything you're playing on it -- even if it's from cable TV, videogame systems and streaming devices.
The Gogoro scooter is ready for the streets of Taipei. The company will starts shipping its electric Smartscooter to customers that preordered the bike today. The brainchild of former HTC executives, Gogoro became one of the darlings of CES 2015 with its swappable battery solution for its electric vehicle. Instead of plugging the electric scooter into an outlet at home or at charging stations, riders use the company's GoStation battery kiosks in their city and swap out the two batteries that reside under the seat. Gogoro has been working with Taipei businesses and the government to implement the battery swapping infrastructure it needs to sell its bike. The scooter sells for $128,000 NT (New Taiwan Dollar) which is about $4,066 US and initially includes two years of free battery swapping. Subscriptions will start at $299 NT ($9.50 US) and go up to $899 NT ($28.50 US). Launching in scooter-centric Taipei is a bit of a no brainer. And while the company hasn't shared any future launch plans, we should expect more cities in Asia to get the bike with motorcycle and scooter-friendly North American cities like San Francisco somewhere on the horizon.
You know how everyone completely loses it every time Facebook pushes a redesign live? It's happening again -- except this time it's happening on Miiverse, Nintendo's quirky social network. On July 29th Miiverse will be given its first major overhaul: a total redesign that adds new features, changes how game-specific communities work and, weirdly, imposes a daily post limit on all users. Why all the changes? According to Nintendo, the community has been using Miiverse, well, wrong.
Fallout Shelter is a nifty little mobile game that puts you in charge of your very own post-apocalyptic Vault in the Fallout universe. It's your job to make sure the Vault Dwellers are as happy, healthy and protected as possible -- which is sometimes trickier than it sounds. Fallout Shelter launched for iOS on June 14th directly after Bethesda's E3 2015 conference, and now we know when it's coming to Android devices: August 13th.
Bad news, power-users: if you habitually root every smartphone you put in your pocket, you won't be able to use Samsung Pay. Users participating in the South Korean trial program have learned that devices with unrestricted access to the file system have been blocked from using the service. "Access denied," reads the app's error message. "Samsung Pay has been locked due to an unauthorized modification."
Medical cannabis, recreational cannabis; it's getting hard to tell the two apart -- even in states where only the former is allowed. Just look at your local dispensary. If it's anything like my local weed shop, your cannabis choices are governed more by the brand name and relative THC content than they are the other active cannabinoids -- you know, the ones with the actual medical benefits. This is great for your average stoner recuperating from a backiatomy, but for patients who really do need these complementary cannabinoid effects, guessing whether Blue Dream or Vallejo Sour Diesel will best help alleviate the effects of their chemo simply won't do. That's why the Bay Area startup PotBotics is working to put some real science -- from a curation of existing scholarly articles and independent studies -- behind cannabis recommendations.
Computers can sing. There's no Mariah Carey of machines just yet. But there is a fully automated machine that can sing like a diva. Martin Backes, a German visual and sound artist, has a new installation called „What Do Machines Sing Of?" He's programmed a machine with SuperCollider, an open-source algorithmic composition tool used by musicians and scientists who work with sound, to sing ballads from the heartbreak-music era of the '90s.
Few things in life are better than videos and GIFs about cats -- they bring joy to people. If you feel that way, then you'll probably want to download this new iOS app called Cat Shake. As its name suggests, the application requires you to, well, shake your device to fulfill its purpose. Once you do so, your reward will be too-cute-to-handle cat videos, "classic" cat GIFs and, because why not, adorable cat sounds. For those of you who don't have an iPhone or iPad, don't worry -- you can always go to Tumblr TV, type in what cat you're in the mood for (we'd recommend "funny cat") and problem solved. Or, you know, there's YouTube too.
Ready for another dose of Pluto news? Of course you are! During an event today, NASA shared its latest discoveries in regards to the icy dwarf planet. First, detailed imagery from New Horizon's Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) shows "geologic activity" on the surface that includes flowing ice on a plain known as Sputnik Planum. That area lies in the western part of that massive heart-shaped region you've likely noticed in photos. NASA says the ice there flowed, and may still be flowing now, in a way that resembles the movement of glaciers on Earth. In the southern portion of Sputnik Planum, researchers discovered a range of icy mountains that rise about a mile and can be compared to the Appalachian Mountains here in the States. In fact, the peaks have been informally named Hillary Montes and are located near another range named Norgay Montes. The names are in honor of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay -- explorers who first reached the summit of Mount Everest in the 1950s.
Just a couple of days after the DoJ said the deal could go through and FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler recommend its approval, the FCC voted to make the $49 billion AT&T / DirecTV combo official -- with a few conditions. As we'd heard, the approval comes with strings (in place for four years) including a requirement AT&T expand its fiber network, hook up gigabit internet to eligible schools and libraries and provide affordable standalone internet for low-income customers in its service areas. Another requirement is aimed at AT&T's data usage caps, saying it can't use them to discriminate against other video services. The other net neutrality requirement says AT&T will have to disclose any interconnect agreements -- the ones Netflix is so concerned about -- to the FCC so it can monitor the terms. Are those requirements enough to make the deal worth it? Consumer advocate like the Free Press say no, but with the FCC's blessing the deal should be done soon.
Update: And it's done. AT&T has announced the completion of the acquisition, and has an FAQ for current customers of either service with any questions. TL;DR version: No Sunday Ticket for U-verse, your current plans, channels and pricing won't change, but new cross-bundles are coming soon.
Engadget Live Boston 2015 was... sort of a blur. Sure, I remember the broad strokes -- our first live meetup of the year saw 1,500 people checking out great gadgets and downing drinks in the Royale once more, and the complimentary selfie sticks floating around kept us all from taking ourselves too seriously.
Have a question for one of the smartest men on the planet? Mark your calendar: on Monday July 27th at 8am ET, Stephen Hawking will be taking questions from the public in his first ever Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything). If you can't make it Monday, don't worry about it, he'll be answering questions for over a week -- a first for the forum's Q&A community.
Adult Swim has added one more weird experience to its warehouse of silly yet generally entertaining video games based on its television shows: Rick and Morty Rickstaverse, a hidden-object game that takes place entirely on Instagram. This is a true point-and-click game -- In Ricktaverse, players click on photos of the literal Rick and Morty universe (the starting point is in space with a naked Santa) and tap the tags that pop up on each photo to be transported to a new area. There are secrets, collectibles and mini-games to find, each played out by tapping photos on Instagram. Find and follow the accounts of five Garblovian Bootleggers, for example, and they may post exclusive Rick and Morty clips in the future. Welcome to the golden age of user-driven advertising.
Sometimes things are way harder than they should be. If you're a LinkedIn user, the networking site is now making it more difficult to download your contact list and other personal information. Instead of being an instant process, as is the case with Facebook or Google's products, LinkedIn (quietly) announced you'll have to wait up to three days to get that data from its service. The change, which took effect yesterday, also applies to additional account info -- like your LinkedIn updates, daily activity, IP records and searches. So plan ahead, folks, because you're going to be waiting and waiting.
This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a list of the best technology to buy. Read the full article here.
If you're looking for the best in-ear headphones on a budget, get the Brainwavz Delta With In-Line Microphone. After 32 hours of research on hundreds of in-ear headphones priced at $40 or under, seriously considering 179 models, and testing 68 with our panel of audio experts, we found the Brainwavz Deltas are the best for the money. Our panel unanimously voted them the best-sounding of all those tested in this category, plus they fit comfortably in most ears and are a steal at $22. They sound better than the Apple EarPods, so if you're looking to upgrade or replace those or want something decent and inexpensive, these are your best bet.
Turns out IBM's Watson can not only critique your writing, but use it to assess your personality, too. The supercomputer has a service called "Personality Insights" that can analyze your traits from written text. It needs at least 100 words of your own writing in either English or Spanish to generate a report, as well as guess your needs and values. For instance, I plugged in a diary entry into the service's demo website, and the service declared me "social, generous and imperturbable," assertive and with little regard for tradition. As you might have guessed, though, results change depending on the piece you use: Watson declared me as "inner-directed and skeptical" when I plugged in one of my Engadget pieces.
