Sony’s upcoming live-action adaptation of Twisted Metalhas found a home. NBCUniversal announced on Monday it will stream the series on Peacock. News that Sony’s PlayStation Productions unit was developing an adaptation of the Twisted Metal franchise came at the start of last year.
In September, we learned Altered Carbon and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier star Anthony Mackie would play the role of series protagonist John Doe, a smart-talking milkman with no memory of his past but a penchant for driving as fast as he talks. PlayStation Productions is billing the show as an action-comedy, with Cobra Kai scribeMichael Jonathan Smith serving as showrunner, writer and executive producer on the show.
NBCUniversal didn’t say when Twisted Metal would premiere on Peacock. However, the show is just one of several properties Sony is in the process of adapting for television and film. It’s also working on a Ghost of Tsushima movie that John Wick’s Chad Stahelski will direct, and then there’s The Last of Us. HBO Programming President Casey Bloys recently told The Hollywood Reporter the series wouldn’t premiere in 2022.
Although it's one of the most important franchises for the fighting game crowd, Super Smash Bros. won't make an appearance at the community's biggest event of the year. "Since 2007, we’ve seen historic Super Smash Bros. moments created at Evo’s events," Evo, which Sony bought last year, said. "We are saddened that Nintendo has chosen not to continue that legacy with us this year.”
Evo 2022 will be the first full edition of the event since 2019, which featured a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament in place of Super Smash Bros. Melee. The 2020 event was canceled following accusations of abuse that were leveled against Evo co-founder and then-CEO Joey Cuellar. Evo 2021 took place as an online-only affair due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Evo has a long history with the Super Smash Bros. series. Super Smash Bros. Melee, in particular, was a popular part of the event for several years. As Kotaku notes, Nintendo (which tries to control how other organizations use its games) failed in its attempt to prevent Evo organizers from livestreaming the 2013 Melee tournament. Melee was added to that year's event following a charity drive.
This doesn't exactly mean the end of Nintendo-backed Super Smash Bros. esports, though. In November, Nintendo and Panda Global announced plans to run their own competitive Smash series. The company also has a partnership with PlayVS, which runs Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Splatoon 2 high school varsity esports leagues.
As for what games will actually be present at Evo 2022, we won't need to wait long to find out. Evo will host a Twitch livestream on March 8th to reveal more details about this year's event, which will take place in Las Vegas in August.
FromSoftware’s Elden Ringlaunched last week to overwhelmingly positive reviews but a few issues have prevented some players from enjoying the game to its fullest. Over the weekend, one of those was resolved. If you’ve been playing through the title on Xbox, you likely saw that you couldn’t play Elden Ring online due to an error message that said “Network status check failed.” On Saturday, Microsoft’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb said the issue had been resolved.
Neither FromSoftware nor publisher Bandai Namco said what caused the problem, but it prevented people from doing things like summoning other players to help them with boss fights. At its core, Elden Ring is a single-player game, but those elements add a lot to the experience.
As for some of Elden Ring’s other issues, particularly those involving the PC version of the game, FromSoftware and Bandai are still working to resolve those. If you’re waiting to play the game on Steam Deck, the good news there is that Valve said it was working on optimizing the game for its new handheld and would update Proton this week to improve performance.
The graphics team has been hard at work on optimizing ELDEN RING for Steam Deck. Fixes for heavy stutter during background streaming of assets will be available in a Proton release next week, but are available to test now on the bleeding-edge branch of Experimental. pic.twitter.com/5oSnXtF2OG
Twitter is adding prominent labels to tweets from Russian state media outlets as it tries to limit the publications' reach on its platform.
“Today, we’re adding labels to Tweets that share links to Russian state-affiliated media websites and are taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter,” Yoel Roth, the company’s head fo site integrity tweeted. “Our product should make it easy to understand who’s behind the content you see, and what their motivations and intentions are.”
Roth added that since the invasion, links to Russian state media outlets have been shared more than 45,000 times a day. He said Twitter was also working to “significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter.” The company announced last week that it was pausing ads and recommendation features in Ukraine and Russia.
As people look for credible information on Twitter regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we understand and take our role seriously. Our product should make it easy to understand who’s behind the content you see, and what their motivations and intentions are.
The company has labeled state media outlets at the account level since August 2020, but those labels only appeared on the account profiles. The new labels will be displayed much more prominently, appearing alongside tweets from these accounts, much like how the company has labeled election and COVID-19 misinformation. The labels will appear on tweets from state run media in other countries in the “coming weeks.”
Twitter isn’t the only platform trying to tamp down the reach of Russian state media outlets following the invasion of Ukraine. Facebook barred Russian state media from accessing ads and other monetization features, and has blocked some outlets’ ability to post within Ukraine.
The new coronavirus that struck the world two years ago has changed a lot of things and processes in the medical and health care fields. Although they have been around long before that, digital thermometers, especially those with no-contact features, have surged in popularity and sales during that period. Many of these thermometers have moved away from the traditional and iconic mercury-based thermometers, but THERM°C tries to bring a familiar design to the modern world in a much safer way.
Although some are still in use these days, thermometers that use mercury have long been deemed risky and unsafe for the environment. Their small sizes made them more favorable compared to digital thermometers, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for safer methods to get a temperature reading has pushed these analog tools out of the picture. Since then, different designs for digital thermometers have come up, and this one tries to give a nod to its predecessor.
Digital thermometers naturally have more freedom when it comes to design precisely because they’re no longer limited by the material properties of mercury or even alcohol. We’ve even recently seen one that didn’t require batteries, powered only by kinetic energy and built from sustainable materials. This concept isn’t as ambitious, but it is nostalgic.
THERM°C is designed like almost all digital thermometers, held upright with the IR light and sensors at the top to take the measurement. What makes it unique, however, is the graduated ticks on the back of the device, mimicking the same method of measuring temperatures with analog tools, just without the liquid component. Instead of rising mercury or alcohol, LEDs light up that meter.
As with most digital thermometers, the design of the THERM°C is meant to be simple to use and doesn’t require a manual. Curiously, there is a switch to change from Celsius to Fahrenheit readings, though it isn’t clear in the concept how these figures will change accordingly. There are also buttons for “Set” and “Lock,” though their exact function isn’t explained.
The digital thermometer charges over USB-C, so this concept won’t be scoring points for sustainability. Then again, this design was envisioned to be nostalgic rather than practical. It might actually take a second or two longer to read off the actual temperature, but the familiar feeling of having a certain margin of error might actually be a bit more appealing and humanizing than typical digital displays.
Etsy is joining the ranks of tech companies offering support to Ukraine following the Russian invasion. The craft-oriented marketplace is writing off all outstanding fees for Ukraine-based sellers. The move is worth about $4 million and is meant to offset "tremendous financial hardship" for creators affected by the conflict.
The gesture comes amid a flurry of help for Ukraine. Airbnb has offered free housing for up to 100,000 Ukranian refugees. Elon Musk's companies, meanwhile, have offered free EV charging and Starlink terminals. That's not including initiatives to protect residents and limit misinformation.
Etsy's fee waiver isn't large compared to some of these relief efforts. It's not compensating sellers for lost business or waiving future fees, for instance. Still, this could be welcome for Ukranians who had to deal with outstanding Etsy bills on top of Russia's military campaign.
TikTok is once again increasing the maximum length of videos on the platform, this time from three minutes to 10 minutes. "Today, we're excited to start rolling out the ability to upload videos that are up to 10 minutes, which we hope would unleash even more creative possibilities for our creators around the world," a TikTok spokesperson told Engadget.
The service tested the longer time limit over the last few months, as TechCrunch notes. TikTok bumped up the maximum video length from 60 seconds to three minutes last July.
The increased time limit could make TikTok a bigger competitor to YouTube (which countered TikTok with a competing feature called Shorts). The move should benefit creators who focus on makeup tutorials, cooking and other types of content that perhaps work better in a longer-form format. There also will be less need for users to split their more in-depth content across multiple videos.
However, some concerns have been raised about the timing of the move, given TikTok is being used to share misinformation related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"We continue to closely monitor the situation, with increased resources to respond to emerging trends and remove violative content, including harmful misinformation and promotion of violence," the TikTok spokesperson said. "We also partner with independent fact-checking organizations to further aid our efforts to help TikTok remain a safe and authentic place."
Update 2/28 2:11PM ET: Added a comment from TikTok about how it's handling the Ukraine situation.
It's been two years since I reviewed the first ASUS Zephyrus G14, but my fondness for it hasn't waned. It's colored my view of every gaming laptop since: Why can't they all pack in great performance in a compact 3.5-pound case for under $1,500? Now, with its latest edition, ASUS is fixing the G14's major flaw: It's finally adding a webcam. Together with AMD's latest Ryzen 6000 chips and Radeon GPUs, the 2022 G14 sounds like a dream machine on paper. But, thanks to significantly higher configuration prices, it's no longer a value-oriented machine. And that’s a shame.
Aside from the pricing change, though, the new Zephyrus G14 builds on everything we loved about the original. The sturdy magnesium alloy case returns, and select models feature more of ASUS's "AniMe Matrix" LEDs, which can display images and text on the back of the screen. You can choose between 14-inch 144Hz 1080p and 120Hz 1440p screens, which offer 400 and 500 nits of brightness, respectively. That's a huge leap from last year's 300-nit screen, and it makes the displays much better suited for Dolby Vision HDR (another helpful addition).
And then there's the webcam. That's not something we'd usually highlight, but it's notable for the Zephyrus G14. The 2020 model was one of the first modern gaming notebooks that didn't feature any sort of camera, a move that helped ASUS achieve some impressively thin screen bezels. Given that many gamers already have better external cameras for streaming, it didn't seem like a huge deal at the time. But of course, now that many of us need to be ready to hop on a Zoom at the drop of a hat, that calculus has shifted a bit. The G14's IR camera also supports Windows Hello, so it can securely log you in without much fuss.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
With a webcam in tow, the Zephyrus G14 has just about all of the features we'd want in a gaming laptop. And it's bolstered by impressive new hardware under the hood: the Ryzen 9 6900HS, AMD's latest eight-core powerhouse chip, as well as either Radeon RX 6700S or 6800S graphics. Those GPUs are meant for thin and light notebooks like the G14, with better performance-per-watt ratings than the previous NVIDIA RTX 3060. ASUS also ramped up cooling significantly this time around, thanks to a vapor chamber cooler and liquid metal thermal paste for both the CPU and GPU.
All of this new gear amounts to a bit more heft than the original 3.5-pound G14, unfortunately. It starts at 3.6 pounds without the AniMe Matrix LED display, and it scales up to 3.8 pounds with the LEDs. That's still relatively light compared to the competition, though. The Razer Blade 14 weighs 4.1 pounds, and the Alienware x14 comes in just under four pounds.
Once I saw the Zephyrus G14 in action, I didn't mind that it was slightly heavier. Our review unit was one of the most premium options: a $2,499 configuration with the Ryzen 9 6900HS, Radeon 6800S, 32GB of DDR5 RAM and the AniME Matrix. Not surprisingly, it was a significant upgrade from the 2020-era G14 I tested, though that was also a $1,499 build with an RTX 2060. The new G14 held its own against the Razer Blade 14 and Alienware x14 in PCMark 10, Geekbench and 3DMark's TimeSpy Extreme benchmark. If you're particularly interested in multi-threaded performance, though, it's worth noting that the hybrid 12th-gen Intel CPU in the Alienware x14 practically blew away the G14.
In Halo Infinite, my current multiplayer addiction, the Zephyrus G14 hovered between 80 and 100 fps in 1440p with all of the graphics settings cranked to the max. That's perfectly playable, though it's unfortunate that such an expensive machine can't completely fill the monitor's 120Hz refresh rate. I didn't notice any tearing or stuttering though, thanks to the display's FreeSync Premium support. Older titles like Destiny 2 and Overwatch surpassed 120 fps in 1440p easily, as you'd expect. Still, the cost of our review unit never left my mind. For $2,500, I'd expect something a bit more future-proof.
As for ray tracing performance, I was pleased to see that the G14 was only slightly behind the RTX 3060-equipped Alienware x14 in 3DMark's Port Royal benchmark. Unfortunately, it's still not powerful enough to keep Control above 60 fps in 1440p with medium ray tracing settings. NVIDIA's GPUs can hit that mark by relying on its DLSS AI upscaling technology, but Control doesn't yet support's AMD's alternative, FidelityFX Super Resolution.
Thanks to its improved cooling system, the Zephyrus G14 ran far quieter than the 2020 model, even when I was in a prolonged Halo Infinite Big Team Battle session. The CPU never surpassed 85 celsius, while the GPU typically stayed around 75 celsius under load. Most importantly, the "Silent" fan mode lived up to its name, which is a big deal if you ever need to bring your gaming laptop into a quiet coffee house or meeting room.
While I was gaming, watching videos or just bumming around the web, I genuinely appreciated the G14's revamped "ROG Nebula Display." In addition to the faster refresh rates and Dolby Vision support, it's also a 16-by-10 aspect ratio now, which gives you a bit more vertical space for scrolling documents. Halo Infinite's war-torn maps looked vibrant and detailed on the G14, and I appreciated having Dolby Vision while I watched a few Netflix shows. The computer's HDR support is a bit confounding, though. Windows 11 doesn't detect it as an HDR capable display, and I couldn't view any HDR YouTube videos. And yet somehow, I was still able to watch Netflix with Dolby Vision HDR enabled. I've asked ASUS for clarification on those issues, and will update this review as I learn more.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
As much as I love the idea of 14-inch gaming laptops, their cramped keyboards often leave me underwhelmed. Uncomfortable fingers could easily mean the difference between winning or losing a multiplayer match. Thankfully, the G14's keyboard, while small, handled my fast-moving digits just fine. There's a satisfying amount of travel too, which helps both during gaming and general typing. While I certainly wouldn't mind a larger keyboard, the G14's felt kinder to my gaming-battered digits than the Alienware x14 or Blade 14. But seriously, folks, if these companies can make luxuriously wide keyboards for their 13-inch ultraportables, why can’t they do the same for gaming hardware?
I'm more impressed with the Zephyrus G14's new trackpad, which is 50 percent larger than it was last year. I'm of the mind that you can never really have a trackpad that's too big, so I appreciated having more space to swipe around and use finger gestures. I never once mistakenly hit the wrist pad by accident, which is really all I'm asking for in a notebook these days.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
Unlike other slim machines, the G14 is equipped with all of the ports you'd need: two USB 3.2 Type-C ports, two USB 3.2 Type-A connections, a full-sized HDMI 2.0 socket, a combination audio jack and a microSD card reader. The laptop's 240-watt power supply also pushes more juice than last year's, which means you'll see a faster charge than before. (You can also charge over USB-C in a pinch, but that won't deliver enough power while gaming.)
During our battery test, which involves looping an HD video, the G14 lasted nine hours and 46 minutes. That's almost two hours longer than the Alienware x14 lasted. And during my typical workflow of juggling dozens of browser tabs, editing photos, and hopping on Zoom calls, the G14 usually kept going for over seven hours. That's not impressive when ultraportables are well into double-digit battery life, but that's the price you pay for having a slim-yet-powerful machine.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
Pricing is where things get sticky with the Zephyrus G14. It technically starts at $1,600, according to ASUS. But the cheapest model you can currently snag at Best Buy goes for $1,650 with a quad HD display, Ryzen 9 CPU, 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD and a Radeon RX 6700 GPU. You can also bump up to a Radeon RX 6800 GPU for $1,900. While those prices aren’t unreasonable when it comes to gaming laptops, they’re significantly more than the $1,050 starting price of the 2020-era model. Our original review unit came in at just $1,450 with an RTX 2060, Ryzen 9 4900HS, and 16GB of RAM.
While it started out as a surprisingly affordable 14-inch gaming laptop, the G14 is now firmly in mid-range or even premium notebook territory. Chalk it up to the global chip crunch, price inflation (which, admittedly, is affecting all PC makers) and all of the other supply chain issues we’re facing in 2022. If you’re looking for pure power, the Blade 14 starts at $2,000 with the Ryzen 9 6900HX, an RTX 3060, and a 144Hz 1080p screen. The Alienware x14, meanwhile, starts at $1,600 with a Core i7-12700H and RTX 3050 GPU (go up to $1,900 and you can add the RTX 3060). ASUS is still your best option if you absolutely need a quad HD display, but if you just care about high frame rates, you’ve got better options.
And when it comes to our review model, you’re basically just paying a huge premium to get decent hardware in a slim case. Personally, I’d opt for the heavier $2,500 Razer Blade 15 Advanced, which has an RTX 3070, Core i7-12800H and a 15-inch 240Hz quad HD screen. But that’s admittedly an unfair comparison – I realize some people don’t mind paying more for portability.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
The Zephyrus G14 is still an incredibly compelling 14-inch notebook, especially if you’re aiming for one of the cheaper models. It’s powerful, slim and it finally has a webcam. But it’s also lost much of what made the 2020 model so special. I suppose that’s progress, though. ASUS kicked off a trend, but now it’s racing to keep up with the competition.
Fans of the fab four, take note. Apple has uploaded a new version of the band’s 1 compilation album that includes support for spatial audio with Dolby Atmos. First released in 2000, 1 brings together nearly every number-one single the Beatles released between 1962 and their breakup in 1970. Among the songs you’ll find on the album are “She Loves You,” “We Can Work It Out” and “Get Back.” Giles Martin, the son of legendary Beatles collaborator George Martin, produced the new spatial mix. And as before, the tracks are sequenced according to release order, so it provides some sense of the band’s musical evolution.
To get the most out of the mix, you’ll want to listen with a pair of AirPods or Beats earbuds or headphones with an H1 or W1 chip. The effect is most noticeable when you enable head tracking. You can do that by pulling down the Control Center shade in iOS, long pressing on the volume slider that appears and then tapping the spatial audio icon. The mix isn’t revelatory, but if nothing else, it’s an excuse to revisit some of the most influential songs in rock history.
LG is once again updating its CineBeam 4K projectors, and the upgrades are good news if you tend to watch during the day. Both the HU715Q Ultra Short Throw laser projector (above) and the HU710P laser-LED hybrid promise better daytime viewing through key upgrades. The HU715Q touts auto brightness, while the HU710P's move to a wheel-free hybrid offers brighter overall pictures than its predecessor. The two also provide high 2,000,000:1 contrast ratios to provide more details in bright and dark video scenes
The HU710P peaks at 2,000 lumens of brightness and is built for back-of-the-room projection at distances between 9.5 feet and 15 feet. It offers the most flexibility for image sizes, though, ranging between 40 inches to 300 inches. The HU715Q is limited to images 80 inches to 120 inches in size, but it can produce a 100-inch picture from just 8.5 inches away and delivers a brighter 2,500-lumen output (if slightly dimmer than the HU810P). It's also your pick if you can't justify external speakers, as it packs a 40W stereo setup and Bluetooth-enabled surround versus the 10W of the HU710P.
Both CineBeam 4K projectors include three HDMI ports (including eARC), two USB 2.0 ports and support for AirPlay 2, HomeKit and screen sharing. Their lamps are good for 20,000 hours of use.
LG is already shipping the two CineBeam projectors, starting at $2,499 for the HU710P and $2,999 for the HU715Q. Those aren't trivial prices, but their brightness upgrades might make them easier to justify as replacements for some premium large-screen TVs.
