Xbox launches Netflix-like Game Pass subscription with over 100 games.
$10 dollars a month lets you play any of over 100 Xbox One and Xbox 360 games, and the game list will constantly change over time. A key difference from other subscription services is that you can actually download the games to your console without worrying about latency, lag spikes, or bandwidth issues. @TNW Amazon AWS S3 outage breaks large parts of the internet. The S3 outage is due to “high error rates with S3 in US-EAST-1”. Affected websites and services include Quora, Engadget, Business Insider, image hosting at a number of publisher websites, filesharing in Slack, and many more. Connected lightbulbs, thermostats and other IoT hardware is also being impacted. @TechCrunch Walmart's updated app helps you skip store lines for both prescription pickups and money transfers. Once you've filled in a medicine or money transfer order on your phone, you just have to waltz up to the appropriate store counter, scan a QR code with the app and complete your business. They'll start rolling out to stores in March, but the deployment will only finish sometime in the fall. @Engadget Raspberry Pi Zero W is a $10 computer with WiFi and Bluetooth. It boasts exactly the same specifications as its predecessor but the Zero W adds both 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 to the existing Zero design. The Zero, which came out in Oct 2015, will stay at $5 (£4), while the Zero W is priced at $10 (£9.60) plus tax. @Engadget Google has no plans to produce any more Pixel Chromebooks. The versions that are already out in the market have totally sold out and that there are no plans to make any more of those, either. The Pixel brand these days is now being used for Google’s new line of smartphones. The Pixel laptop is Google’s premium Chromebook and the original product bearing the Pixel name. @TechCrunch YouTube announced its entry into streaming live TV. YouTube TV will let you access live and recorded content from major networks both broadcast and on cable. All of this will be coupled alongside YouTube's existing content on any screen that YouTube is available on. It'll be available later this spring for $35 a month with no contract; that'll let up to six users access content whenever they want. @Engadget Ford wants to launch drones from self-driving vans to deliver all your packages. The automaker said the idea fits into its self-styled “City of Tomorrow,” a high concept vision of the future involving autonomous vehicles, ride-sharing and so on. It has said it plans to manufacture a completely autonomous car, without steering wheel or pedals, by 2021. @TheVerge Google Play starts to consider user engagement, not just downloads, in ranking games. This shift could have a serious impact on how games are marketed, as many publishers often focus on ad campaigns aimed solely at getting games onto users’ devices as a means of getting their titles ranked higher in Google Play’s charts. The changes were announced alongside the launch of strike-through pricing for running promotions, as well as the new editorial pages. @TechCrunch Amazon is prepping ‘Lily’, a commercial version of Alexa, for fielding questions from phone calls and text messages. Baked into Lily's suite of products are Lex and Polly -- two AWS developer services that use the same natural language processing as Alexa to power third-party apps as well as voice and text chatbots. Lily is expected to be formally announced around the middle of March. @Engadget A female Tesla engineer is suing the electric carmaker for “unwanted and pervasive harassment”. AJ Vandermeyden alleges that she and several other female employees were denied promotions, paid less than their male peers, and retaliated against after making their concerns known to human resources. She filed her lawsuit against Tesla last fall, but only spoke out publicly this week in an article published in The Guardian. @TheVerge
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Google assistant comes to recent Android phones. As of this week, Google's AI helper will start rolling out to Android phones running Marshmallow or Nougat, as long as your phone has Google Play Services and meets some basic specs (at least 1.5GB of RAM and a 720p screen). The initial rollout will focus on English-speaking users in the US. @Engadget Huawei unveils its Leica-branded P10, P10 Plus flagships, and the Watch 2. The P10 is sporting what Huawei calls a "Leica Dual-Camera 2.0 Pro Edition" setup, which Huawei claims to deliver best-in-class landscape, portrait and macro shots. Huawei has also teamed up with Pantone for some exclusive color options: "Dazzling Blue" and "Greenery." The Watch 2 adds 4G connectivity with some design tweaks to its original model. @Engadget HP's Pro x2 hybrid comes with a Wacom pen with military specs. The Windows 10-equipped Pro x2 612 G2 weighs just 2.65 pounds with a travel keyboard, lasts up to 11 hours and can be charged to 50 percent within a half hour. This top-end model packs Gorilla Glass and a MIL-STD 810G rating for drops, dust, humidity, temperature changes and functional shock. It's now available at $979+. @TheVerge LG launches G6 with unique 18:9 "FullVision" display. The 5.7-inch IPS screen packs a resolution of 2,880 x 1,440, along with a pixel density of 564 ppi plus support for Dolby Vision and HDR10 content. The display's corners have also been rounded off, evoking the softer edges of the device itself, although the curves don't match exactly. It's also LG's first G-series phone to be water- and dust-resistant, rated at IP68. @TheVerge The KEYone is a return to classic BlackBerry form with a full physical keyboard. The physical keyboard, which sits below the 4.5-inch LCD screen, is touch-sensitive and has several useful functions, like scrolling without touching the screen, or assigning each key a shortcut. There’s also a fingerprint sensor on the space bar. It ships in April at $549. @TechCrunch DJI looks to enterprise applications with the Matrice 200. Matrice 200 is a customized version of the movie-focused Inspire 2 model DJI announced in late 2016, sporting mounts compatible with the early model’s cameras, including the 30x optical zoom Zenmuse Z30 and the XT thermal imager. The new model is also weatherproofed. Pricing is still TBD. @Engadget Security error leaves NY airport servers unprotected for a year. New York's Stewart International Airport, located 60 miles north of Manhattan, left its server backup drives exposed to the internet since April 2016. The 760 GB of exposed data included TSA letters of investigation, SSNs, internal airport schematics and emails. No information was believed to have been compromised during the near year-long exposure. @Engadget Mr. Carton just became the first cartoon TV series made with Unity Game Engine. Six episodes have aired thus far, and are available on YouTube. The two-minute adventures follow the titular hero, a cardboard man in a cardboard world. Disney's use of the game engine in the live action remake of The Jungle Book is just one sign that Unity's mainstream appeal is real. @Engadget FCC CHAIRMAN TO HALT PRIVACY RULES THAT SHIELD CUSTOMERS' PERSONAL DATA FROM ISPSThe privacy rules were approved by the FCC under former Chairman Tom Wheeler back in October and would have required an ISP to ask for a user's explicit permission before collecting data on browsing habits, app usage and location or financial information. They were set to take effect on March 2nd, but Chairman Pai has effectively put a stop to them by until another vote can be held. @TechCrunch ONLINE LENDER STARTUP SOFI RAISES $500 MILLION ADDITIONAL FUNDINGSoFi raised an additional $500 million in a financing round led by Silver Lake, which brings Sofi's total investment to $1.9 billion. It plans to use the funds for international expansion of its online lending business and development of new financial products. SoFi got its start refinancing student loans but gradually expanded into personal loans, mortgages, wealth management, life insurance and other areas. @Engadget 'ROLLERCOASTER TYCOON' FINALLY GOES 3D ON MOBILERollerCoaster Tycoon Touch is now available for free on both iOS and Android. Beyond the graphics, not much is changing gameplay-wise compared with RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile and RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic, a rehash of the series' first two games released in 2014 December. @TechCrunch VR SOCIAL PRODUCTIIVITY APP 'BIGSCREEN' RAISES $3MBigscreen just raised $3 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowits. Its beta application, which has use cases like collaborating in virtual meeting rooms to playing online games in the same room as avatars, currently boasts 150,000 users, an impressive number for the high-end VR community it exists within. @Engadget GOOGLE SHUTS DOWN GROUP-SHARING NETWORK 'SPACES'Spaces will lock down in read-only mode on March 3rd, then completely shut down on April 17th. It was launched in 2016 May to help small groups work together with shared images, links, videos and text. @TheVerge TWITTER IS LOCKING ACCOUNTS THAT SWEAR AT FAMOUS PEOPLEWhen Twitter determines that an account is being abusive — using criteria that the company has declined to describe in any detail — it hides the account's tweets from anyone who isn't following it. The restrictions last for a set period of time, typically 12 hours for a first offense. @Engadget T-MOBILE TO BEGIN OFFERING LTE-U SUPPORT LATER THIS SPRINGLTE-U was originally proposed by Qualcomm as a component of the new LTE Advanced standard to improve cellular data speeds and coverage. T-Mobile notes that its LTE-U implementation will smartly use the available spectrum, increasing when Wi-Fi demand is low and decreasing when there’s greater Wi-Fi usage. @TheVerge ZENIMAX IS TRYING TO STOP OCULUS FROM SELLING RIFT HEADSETS AND VR GAMESZeniMax, the parent company of game developers id Software and Bethesda Softworks, filed the request in federal court on Feb 23. The same Dallas court found Oculus guilty of copyright infringement and its executives guilty of violating a non-disclosure agreement and committing false designation last month. @TheVerge UBER CALLS WAYMO’S LAWSUIT ALLEGING STOLEN SELF-DRIVING TECH ‘BASELESS’ Waymo filed the explosive lawsuit on the evening of Feb 23, claiming that Anthony Levandowski, a former Google engineer and current top executive at Uber, had stolen 14,000 confidential documents before leaving Google, which he then used to help build Uber’s autonomous vehicles. Uber vows on Feb 24 to "vigorously" defend itself in court.
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