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Twitter and Adidas are bringing back their high school football series
Friday Night Stripes, the livestreaming series of high school football games on Twitter, is coming back for a second season later this month. The show, which was created by Adidas, Intersport and Twitter, debuted in 2018 and focused on broadcasting eight football games from high schools across the US. And it turned out to be quite a success. According to Twitter, Friday Night Stripes generated more than 32.6 million total views and had over 15.6 million live viewers tuning into the series, which are great figures for what was essentially a social media experiment.
Lyft just started experimenting with car rentals in San Francisco
Between offering on-demand rides and peppering cities with electric scooters, Lyft has been pushing hard to minimize the need to actually own a car. Now, the company is exploring yet another way to further those ambitions (and boost its bottom line after a turbulent IPO in the process). Engadget has learned that, as of this week, Lyft has begun to experiment with longer-term car rentals, offering them to a small group of customers in San Francisco.
YouTube will exclusively stream 13 MLB games this season
YouTube has just made another major push with its sports broadcasting agenda, announcing a deal with Major League Baseball (MLB) that will give it exclusive rights to 13 games during the 2019 season. The games will be livestreamed for viewers in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico for free on MLB's official YouTube channel, and on a forthcoming dedicated channel on YouTube TV.
Huawei is ‘open’ to selling its 5G modems, but only to Apple
For years, Huawei has been developing its own high-powered processors and modems, all to power its big portfolio of mobile devices. And so far, the company has almost completely refused to sell any of those to its competitors. We've learned, however, that the company might be softening that stance. A source with knowledge of the situation has confirmed to Engadget that Huawei is now "open" to selling its 5G Balong 5000 chipsets, but only to one company: Apple.
Motorola confirms its foldable phone is coming
By now, it's not much of a secret that Motorola is working on a folding phone of its own: A patent for such a device surfaced late last year, and a subsequent report in The Wall Street Journal basically confirmed the company's plans. Despite the ensuing hype, Motorola has mostly kept quiet about its progress, but in an interview with Engadget this week, Motorola VP of Global Product Dan Dery shed some additional light on the company's ambitions.
Kanye West settles lawsuit over 'The Life of Pablo' Tidal exclusivity
Kanye West has settled a lawsuit with fan Justin Baker-Rhett, who sued the artist over claims that West's album The Life of Pablo would be available exclusively through Tidal. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed but all charges filed in the case have been dismissed, including a potential class-action lawsuit that will no longer move forward.
Puma wants to let you try its new Fi self-lacing shoes
With the upcoming release of Nike's $350 Adapt BB, self-lacing shoes are set to become more commonplace, and Puma isn't about to let its rival take all the credit. After all, the German company showed off its own self-lacing sneaker, the Autodisc, back in 2015 -- around the same time as Nike's iconic (and ultra rare) Mag before it evolved into the HyperAdapt. The only problem was the Autodisc just wasn't practical enough to enter retail -- it was too expensive, too heavy and could have been more comfortable. But that's about to change with Puma's latest creation, the Fi (pronounced as "F-I" aka "Fit Intelligence").
Korg Minilogue XD synthesizer review
When Korg introduced the Minilogue in 2016 it was a game-changer. It's a true analog polyphonic synth for around $500, and frankly, there isn't much else like it on the market. And even three years later it's still one of the best values out there in analog synthesizers. But the market is moving fast, and Korg isn't about to let the competition lap it. So it's introducing the four-voice Minilogue XD, which takes the best parts of the entire 'logue lineup -- Microtunings and the sequencer from the Monologue, the MULTIdigital Oscillator from the flagship Prologue -- and combines them in one stunningly affordable package.
National Inventors Hall of Fame honors creators of Unix, power drills and more
The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) joined Engadget on stage today at CES to announce its 2019 class of inductees. While the official induction ceremony won't actually happen until May 2nd at the National Building Museum in DC, we can tell you that 19 separate innovators representing 12 different inventions will be honored. The group ranges from relatively obscure creators of a programming language used by engineers and scientists, to house hold names like S. Duncan Black and Alonzo G. Decker -- or Black & Decker -- the inventors of the first portable handheld drill. The festivities will be hosted by Danica McKellar, best known as Winnie Cooper from the Wonder Years, but also an accomplished academic and mathematician.
BMW's iNext mixed reality concept entertains as your car drives itself
BMW's iNext concept vehicle continues to reveal new tricks after its official introduction at the LA Auto Show last November. Ahead of CES 2019 in Las Vegas on Sunday, the company showed off its latest futuristic feature, mixed reality holographic display.
'Pokémon Go' gets a little bigger with 'Diamond' and 'Pearl' monsters
The Pokémon Company has announced that monsters from the Sinnoh region -- the Diamond and Pearl games -- are now available in Pokémon Go. Players will now be able to capture favorites like Turtwig, Chimchar and Piplup as they make their debut in the still-popular mobile AR game.
'PUBG' could be en route to PlayStation 4 this year
Since 2017, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been exclusive to PC and Xbox. That could be changing. The battle royale game may appear on PlayStation 4 soon if a Korean ratings board slip-up (spotted by Eurogamer) is to be believed. Each time I've spoken with PUBG Corp over the past year, whoever I've talked to said that a PlayStation 4 version wasn't in the cards because the team wanted to get the Xbox version up to par with the PC first. It looks like that time may have come.
BlizzCon 2018's feature-packed virtual tickets are on sale now
There's still two months to go before BlizzCon, but fans can start getting involved now with the launch of the BlizzCon 2018 Virtual Ticket. Pick one up from the Blizzard Shop for $50 and you'll get two months of exclusive video and new content, and when the event gets going you can enjoy comprehensive livestreams covering all the major news, events and panels at the show. Handy if you can't get to the convention itself.
I tried to beat an overclocking robot and failed
Extreme overclocking is hard. I had my first taste of this delicate hobby at last year's Computex, in which, with a lot of back and forth between pouring liquid nitrogen and torching, I managed to push Intel's 4.2GHz Core i7-7700K processor to an epic 7GHz. Still, I had it easy. Professional overclockers from G.SKILL and HWBOT had set everything up in the first place. Even the pros can find this all a little mundane. EVGA's Vince "Kingpin" Lucido and Illya "Tin" Tsemenko are well-known for their GPU-overclocking records over the years, but they, too, grew tired of the tedious "monkey work," to the point where they decided to build a rig that could overclock itself. The result is the Roboclocker, a PC that can intelligently and efficiently pump liquid nitrogen to both its CPU and GPU. While this may not be the first automatic liquid-nitrogen-overclocking rig, it's the first of its kind to actually break records.
PicoBrew moves beyond beer to tackle coffee, kombucha and more
You've got to hand it to PicoBrew: The company is ambitious, if nothing else. After years of trying to perfect an automated, counter-top beer brewing machine, it's branching out to other beverages. In fact, it's basically branching out into all beverages -- at least all the ones you would call "brewed." The Pico U is what the company is calling a "universal" brewing machine, capable of making beer, coffee, tea, kombucha, horchata and a host of other drinks.
PS4 zombie survival game ‘Days Gone’ delayed until 2019
Kotaku UK has confirmed that Days Gone, the PS4-exclusive peripatetic post-apocalypse game from SIE Bend Studio, has been delayed until 2019. The title was announced in mid-2016 but we first got our hands on it at E3 2017, where a gameplay demo showcased a bit of the the not-zombie (they're "freakers") game's open world and sneaky survival action. It's unclear how far into 2019 Days Gone's release window has shifted, as its website simply lists its launch date as next year.
Hulu's latest exclusive is an indie-horror anthology series
Recently, Hulu's efforts to bolster its stable of exclusive programming (original and otherwise) has been in high gear. That trend continues with an as-of-now untitled horror anthology series from the macabre-centric Blumhouse Productions according to Variety. Rather than release an episode a week or all at once, they'll be released once a month for 12 months, starting this October. From the sounds of it, Hulu might be interested in targeting horror fans beyond this series.
This wireless VR tech could make it easier to play with others
The next big hurdle for virtual reality is obvious to anyone who's put on a headset: Getting rid of all of those wires. We've seen cordless solutions from TPCast and Intel, but now Amimon, a company best known for developing wireless video technology, is getting into the ring. Its spin on wireless VR uses the 5GHz spectrum, instead of the 60GHz band used by competitors. That allows it to work through walls and without direct line of sight, something the 60GHz frequency range can't do. Most importantly, Amimon promises a lag-free experience. According to the company, it could even support up to 10 VR or AR headsets in the same room (either with their own computers, or a souped-up gaming server).
Teenage Engineering and Raven's 'H' and 'R' aren't typical smart speakers
Most people still don't know who or what Teenage Engineering is. But, those that do probably think of them as a music company — the iconic OP-1 synthesizer, OD-11 speaker and line of tiny Pocket Operator synths have earned Teenage Engineering that reputation. But more than that, the company is made of of people who love getting weird with hardware design; pushing the boundaries of what can be created is in Teenage Engineering's DNA. Two new products Teenage Engineering designed in partnership with Raven were just unveiled at the Baidu World conference in Beijing, China, and they most definitely fit with that ethos. Simply referred to by the single letters "H" and "R," the easiest way to identify devices is to call them smart speakers. But they don't in any way resemble what Amazon and Google have trained us to think of when we think of speakers that you talk to.
A mirror exposes AI’s inherent flaws in ‘Untrained Eyes’
In July 2015, Google's public-relations machine was in full-on crisis mode. Earlier that year, the search giant announced Photos, an AI-driven app that used machine-learning to automatically tag and organize your pictures based on the people, places and things depicted in them. It was an exciting step forward, but Photos wasn't perfect. While the app was capable of recognizing some faces, it mistook others. It would have been easy to pass this off as a routine software bug if it weren't for the nature of the failure.