The uber-luxe Premire Sound Watch is here to join the cheapo wired buds revolution, despite being the very opposite.

A Massachusetts professor has filed a lawsuit against Meta using a novel interpretation of Section 230, a law known primarily for shielding social media companies from liability.

MacworldA new report from AppleInsider purports to have all the details on the camera upgrades we can expect in the iPhone 16 line when it is introduced in less than a month. It looks like all phones are getting a few hardware upgrades, but there are some new software tricks in store, too.iPhone 16 and 16 Plus get these improvementsThe main Wide lens will remain as it is on the iPhone 15 (48MP, f/1.6), but the Ultra Wide will have a wider f/2.2 aperture (from f/2.4). It sounds like its probably the same as the Ultra Wide on the iPhone 15 Pro.The standard iPhones will support Macro photography for the first time.iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max get these improvementsThe main Wide camera will be unchanged (48MP, f/1.78). The Telephoto camera will be the same 12MP, f/2.8 camera as on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, with its 5x zoom. But the iPhone 16 Pro will get that as well; it wont be exclusive to the Max model this year.The Ultra Wide will move to a 48MP camera that can either shoot full-resolution or use the same 12MP pixel binning feature as the Wide camera to get better sensitivity and performance in low light. Apple is likely to support ProRAW format for this camera for the first time.Apple will improve Dolby Vision recording to support up to 3K video at 120 frames per second. Current devices max out at 1080P at 120 or 240 fps and 4K at 60fps. So this new extra option gives you a better balance of high resolution and frame rate.JPEG-XLApple is said to be introducing the JPEG-XL format to its camera capture this year. It will not replace other formats: youll still have JPEG, HEIF, and ProRAW. JPEG-XL is an existing standard royalty-free image format that was formally standardized about three years ago. It offers better compression than JPEG with fewer artifacts, and can support both lossy or lossless compressed images.It supports massive images, high bit depth, HDR, and animation. And its very fast to encode and decode. Its a suitable replacement in almost every way for old JPEG format, HEIC, WebP, and PNG, offering comparable-or-better quality, same-or-better features, and comparable-or-better compression in most use cases.JPEG-XL hasnt been very popular yet, but Apples inclusion of the format in the latest iPhone should give it a real boost, especially if Apple makes this format the new default.Capture buttonAll four iPhone 16 models will get a new Capture button, located in the lower-right side so that it is placed like a camera shutter, right under your index finger, when your iPhone is held in landscape orientation.It will be a capacitive button that uses haptics to mimic the feel of clicks. Its meant to be used only with camera apps, and you can choose to have it open Apples camera app or a third-party one. In addition to a full press to take a photo or start recording video, you will be able to half-press the button, which will have different functions in different appsdevelopers can use an API to detect the half-press and decide what to do. In most professional cameras a half-press locks focus and exposure, and its likely this is how the default Apple Camera app will work. Youll also be able to slide your finger along the button, which developers can use how they wish via an API. (Our guess is that this will have a haptic feeling as well, like the detents on a DSLRs dials.) It can be used to adjust zoom, exposure, cycle through filters, or really whatever a developer decides to do with it.iPhone 16 is the next iPhone to arrive in September 2024, and will be followed in 2025 by the iPhone 17 and iPhone SE 4. The new iPhone will arrive at a September launch event find out how to watch the Apple September event live stream. For iPhone SE 4 and other new Apple products, see when is the next Apple event. You might also like our iPhone buying guide, best iPhone deals, and comparison of every iPhone that is available to buy today.

Teams users can now access work, education, and personal accounts in the same app, Microsoft announced on Tuesday.Microsoft introduced the original Teams app for workplace collaboration in 2017, with a separate app for conversations with friends and family appearing in 2020. Users had to install two different Teams apps on their PCs if they wanted to use the platform for both work and personal text chats and video calls.Now users can access both their personal and work accounts from a single Teams app for Windows 11, Windows 10, and macOS, Microsoft said in a blog post. The unified app feature has been in development for several months in response to feedback that users want an easier way to switch between their accounts.The new Teams unified app lets you access both work and personal accounts.MicrosoftTo add a personal account, users just select their profile picture in the upper right corner of the Teams app and log in.To help avoid confusion, Teams notifications display which account they relate to, Microsoft said in a March blog post announcing the feature in testing.When joining a Teams meeting, users are presented with the choice of accounts to sign in with. In addition, Microsoft has added an option to join a Teams meeting as a guest, with no requirement to sign in to an account.If you already have the Teams desktop app, theres no need to download the new version, as the app will automatically update with the new features. Otherwise, you can download the new version on Microsofts website.

Valve Corp. is giving a little nudge to its Steam user reviews that it hopes will make it easier to find games that play well with its Steam Deck handheld console.The feature took effect on Steam yesterday. In essence, if a user played a game primarily on Steam Deck, that will be called out with an icon to the upper right of the review text. (The icon is a representation of the Deck itself, not the circular Steam Deck logo.)Good morning! Weve just shipped a new feature on Steam that shows when a customer review was written by someone who played primarily on Steam Deck. Keep an eye out for the Deck icon to see how these players reviewed the game, and let us know what you think! pic.twitter.com/RYVa9wVGYi Steam Deck (@OnDeck) August 22, 2024Supplemented with Valves own labeling conventions for Steam Deck where a game is Verified, Playable, or Unsupported (or simply Unknown) it should help fans steer their Deck catalogs toward games that are enjoyable on a small screen.Some good games still have trouble on Steam DeckSteam Deck is essentially a handheld representation of a gaming PC, capable of running the same games that a desktop or a laptop with a full-size monitor does even Baldurs Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2077. But shrunken to Decks 7-inch, 1280-by-800 pixels monitor, text-heavy games become unplayable squintfests. Thats the most common obstruction to enjoying a game that wasnt specifically made for Steam Deck or handheld gaming.It extends to controls, too; though the twin analog sticks have the same range of motion as any gamepads, it can be hard to make precise motions or gestures when dealing with a much smaller screen, held at chest or lap height. Games that dont depend on those movements are assumed to be more suited for Steam Deck.In any case, its good to see Valve giving Steam Deck users more information, to help them curate their libraries for that platform. And if youre looking for a good starter list of games great for the Steam Deck, we have information to share, too.Featured image via SteamThe post Steam reviews will highlight Steam Deck play, helping users find recommendations appeared first on ReadWrite.

Join producer, musician and DJ, Zedd, as he delves back into World of Warcraft. Literally. World of Warcraft: The War Within's new feature, Delves, are bite-sized adventures for up to five players plus a customizable NPC companion that can be completed in 10 to 15 minutes and payout some serious rewards. Will lapsed player Zedd and his team of World of Warcraft vets be able to overcome all obstacles and walk away with a treasure trove of fresh loot? Watch now and find out.

Turns out that running a kingdom is hard. Players simply can't just sit on their thrones eating roast chicken and cherry tomatoes while someone sings for them. There has to be some form of ruling involved. That's what Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord demands from its players.

Theres nothing subtle about the eat-the-rich message at play in Blink Twice, the horror-thriller that adds director to the list of hyphenates for actor-producer-writer-model Zo Kravitz (The Batman, Kimi). This is the kind of movie where people talk in declaratory speeches, or let silent tears and brandished knives do the talking for them. Its statements about gender, violence, trauma, and entitlement are blaring and blatant, with little room for ambiguity or interpretation. And that absolutely seems to be the movies primary point.Blink Twice is a story designed to make people angry, then give them a focus for their rage. Kravitz and co-writer E.T. Feigenbaum are aiming to provoke recognition and righteous fury, and they rarely pull their punches. But theyre working in a mode thats become so familiar with other recent movies that its hard for Kravitz and Feigenbaum to find distinctive ground of their own.Actor Naomi Ackie is their primary weapon in that particular war. Ackie makes a compelling, empathy-inducing lead as Frida, a catering-company wage-slave facing a choice between making rent, or making a move on her unlikely crush object, ultra-wealthy tech mogul Slater King (Channing Tatum). Slater has recently been embroiled in some kind of scandal, and hes on a standard-issue media-assisted image-rehabilitation tour that includes public apologies, the promise Im working on myself, and some envy-evoking references to getting back to nature on his private island, where hes growing his own crops and raising his own chickens.Hes also partying hard with his inner circle. Frida manages to catch Slaters appreciative eye while shes supposed to be working at his companys glitzy annual gala, and soon she and her roommate and best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) are on a luxe private plane to that private island. Theyre joined by a handful of Slaters own besties, mostly played by familiar faces Christian Slater and Haley Joel Osment as two of his work buds; Kyle MacLachlan as his therapist; Geena Davis as his eager-to-please assistant. And then there are the other women on board, Hot Survivor Babes champion Sarah (Adria Arjona) and giggly party girls Camilla (Liz Caribel) and Heather (Trew Mullen).As soon as they get to the island, the champagne, pot, and designer drugs start flowing, between rounds of gourmet food, daily pool parties, and hedonistic lounging. Except while Frida tries to signal her interest in hooking up with Slater, and Sarah keeps glowering competitively as if she wants him for herself, somehow the nights keep blurring by, and sex never enters the picture. Theres more to it. Fridas housekeeper is behaving oddly. Poisonous snakes keep turning up. Frida doesnt know how she keeps getting clotted dirt under her custom animal-design nails. Somethings terribly wrong, Jess suggests, and they dont know what. The answer is dark enough that Amazon MGM Studios issued an official trigger warning, not wanting audiences to get caught by surprise.Approaching Blink Twice as a Big Twist movie will just leave viewers disappointed: The Big Twist is fairly obvious, heavily telegraphed, and not really the point. The point is what women do in a situation where men appear to have all the status, power, and leverage and the question of why so many men throughout history have wielded those things in such predictable ways.Its certainly no coincidence that most of Slaters tech-bro buds are white-presenting rich dudes, while Frida and the other women are all lower class, women of color, or both. The power inequity of class, gender, and race is painted all over Blink Twice in the vivid reds and stark black-and-whites that also define Slater Kings dcor aesthetic at that annual company gala.And yet the movie doesnt approach any of these things with nuance or careful craft. Theres certainly potential to the setup, but Kravitz and Feigenbaum are working in the shadow of many similar recent movies, including The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story, and the disastrously mishandled Dont Worry Darling. Like all those movies, Blink Twice first revels in the privileged, glamorous lives of the super-rich, then indulges in the fantasy of interrupting those lives with well-justified violence. But in an era of constantly growing wealth inequality, where roughly every third thriller villain is some form of tech bro, it takes more than a basic dudes bad, wealth bad, power corrupts message to make a movie stand out.Kravitz and Feigenbaum get a long way on striking images and style, and on tapping into relatable frustrations. Frida and Jess situation is certainly understandable: They just want to escape rent concerns, their skeevy boss, and their dead-end jobs for a while. The movies entire engine runs on anger about how easily those things come into the hands of certain kinds of smug, self-justifying, endlessly entitled men, while women (and particularly women of color) have to pay a heavy toll to attain the same goals. Tatums amused, warm charisma, set against Ackies convincing welter of emotions at the situation shes in, gives that anger a focus and a face.But it doesnt give it much depth. In the last 10 minutes or so, Blink Twice suddenly comes into focus, with a too-brief moment of clarity and creativity that steps outside all the similar movies from the last few years. Suddenly, it feels like the movie has a more specific point of view, and a much sharper and more incisive edge. If that kind of intentionality and specificity stretched throughout more of the movie, Blink Twice would be a real conversation piece. As it is, its just the latest film to tell a familiar story about men vs. women, haves vs. have-nots, and how cathartic it can be to imagine a bloody response to societal problems that rarely come within knifing range.Blink Twice is in theaters now.

When your homes value rises, you have more equity, which is a good thing. When it sinks, you have less equityand it might be an indication that the housing market and the economy in general is headed for choppy waters, which is a bad thing. Both of those scenarios assume that home values will change steadily over timebut what happens if your homes value drops or rises sharply and suddenly? Right now property values are pretty high, and have been rising steadily for years. But as anyone who was alive in 2008 can tell you, home prices can plummet overnight. If your homes value goes up or down very rapidly, there are a few steps you should take to protect your investment and your property.What to do if your property value goes up sharplyIf you wake up one morning and find that your house has jumped in value, you automatically have a huge benefit: more equity. You literally own more of your house than you did a short time ago, just because the ratio between what you owe on your mortgage and what you could get if you sold the place has gotten bigger.But dont just take the wintheres more you can do to really take advantage of the situation:Have the house appraised. When you took out your loan to buy the house, everything was based on the appraised value of the place. If the house is now worth dramatically more, you have an opportunity to get rid of private mortgage insurance (PMI) if you have it, or refinance to a better rate (if rates are, in fact, lower than when you initially took out the loan). To do either of those things, youll need to have the place appraised to make the increase in value officialnot a self-appraisal, but paying for a real appraisal. That relatively small cost might be well worth it if you save yourself thousands (or more) in PMI and interest.Consider selling. A house isnt just an investment, its where you livebut people sell their homes every eight years or so, on average, so if your home is suddenly worth a lot more, its worth asking yourself if the time is right. Selling your house can give you a nice payout by liquidating all that equity, after all.Consider a HELOC. A home equity line of credit (HELOC) is a loan made against your homes equity, so waking up with more of that equity means you can get a larger HELOC to work with. You can use that HELOC money to make improvements to the house at a relatively low cost in terms of interest, which can lead to even higher home value and even more equity, so this could be a golden opportunity to renovate, repair, and refresh your property.What to do if your property value goes down sharply The opposite scenario is waking up one day to discover your home is worth considerably less than it was yesterday. This is not the time to panic, howeverits the time to consider some thoughtful moves that can protect your finances and your home:Appeal your property tax assessment. Your local government assesses the value of your home in order to set the amount of tax you have to pay on the property. If your property was last assessed at the high tide of its value, it might be worth it to file an appeal to get your assessment, and thus your tax bill, lowered. The procedure will vary depending on where you live, but it could mean significant savings.Contact your insurance. Another reason to get a fresh appraisal on your home is your homeowners insurance, which is based in part on your homes value and the estimated rebuilding costs. If that value has dropped, you might be able to lower the amount of coverage, and thus the premiums that youre paying for that coverage.Prepare for HELOC changes. If you already have a home equity line of credit on your house, it was based on your homes old valuation. If your lender notices that your house is now worth significantly less, they might freeze or reduce your HELOC. You still have to repay anything youve borrowed from the HELOC, but you might lose access to any remaining funds. It might make sense to move some money out of your HELOC if you know youre going to need it soon.Consider refinancing. If the shift in your homes value has pushed you into negative equity territory (meaning you owe more on your mortgage than the house is currently worth), you can consider a refinance to balance things out. This can be tricky depending on current interest rates and your lenders willingness to work something out, but its something worth considering the moment you notice the sudden change in your homes valueand its certainly worth a call to your lender to see what makes sense.