“This is a facet of the larger AI story — which is to say it’s about automation,” writes John Herrman “But it’s also a story of a large platform deciding to compete more aggressively in the marketplace it controls.”

It’s unclear whether this is what users want. But there is a dark new future forming, one that might suggest fun new antitrust laws!

This was probably inevitable after Kitty Hawk, the ambitious “flying car” startup funded by Google co-founder Larry Page, shut down last year. Wisk was formed in 2019 as a joint venture with Kitty Hawk and aerospace giant Boeing, so without Kitty Hawk, Boeing had the choice to either cut off funding for Wisk completely or acquire the startup. It went with option B.

The game just came out on Mac, already supports VR, and he tweeted about a surprise in the “VERY near future” and what appears to be a picture of the game’s Steam page with the Windows logo, Apple logo, and the words “VR Supported.”

With Apple’s WWDC keynote in the very near future, it looks like we might see No Man’s Sky as a featured game during the show.

At Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s LA premiere this week, producer Amy Pascal teased that Miles Morales is definitely making his live-action debut in the near future, and Sony’s already working on another Spider-Man starring Tom Holland:

“We’re in the process, but the writers strike, nobody is working during the strike. We’re all being supporters and whenever they get themselves together, we’ll get started.”

Leaker @OnLeaks has unearthed new trailers for Motorola’s upcoming, and so far officially unannounced, foldable Razr 40 and Razr 40 Ultra. We can see a pretty sizable cover display on the Ultra with an onscreen keyboard, and a color variant seemingly based on Pantone’s 2023 Color of the Year.

The new trailer has leaked a week after a full spec sheet and 44-second trailer emerged.

You’ll have to verify your profile with a selfie if you sign up for the app.

Nvidia’s researchers say Neuralangelo can be used to speed up creation of textured 3D assets for video games, art, robotics, and more.

It sounds like a more powerful version of Epic’s RealityScan app, or Nvidia’s own work with Instant NeRF, which use photos, rather than video. Here’s a video of it in action:

A new report from Bloomberg has dug into what went wrong with Arkane Studios’ Redfall, which is currently one of the worst-reviewed games of the year. It’s a significant failure after Microsoft acquired Arkane’s parent company for $7.5 billion.

“To the makers of Redfall, the mediocre reception was no big surprise,” Bloomberg writes. “The project suffered from unclear direction, frequent attrition and a perennial lack of staff.”

This is the Asus ROG Rapture GT-BE98 on display at Computex, and it’s the world’s first quad-band Wi-Fi 7 gaming router, boosting speeds of up to 25,000Mbps. It is also the largest and scariest-looking router I have ever seen in my life.

(Asus representatives confirmed to me that there is no technical reason it needs to look like a giant RGB spider. That was just a design choice.)

Yuji Naka, a former Sega and Square Enix developer best known for co-creating Sonic the Hedgehog, could be sentenced to over two years in prison following his arrest for insider trading.

Prosecutors in Tokyo District Court also want to fine Naka ¥170 million (around $1.2 million). I doubt they’ll accept gold rings as payment.

Swiss tennis player Roger Federer is the latest celebrity to cameo in Google’s navigation app Waze, and he’s doing so in not one, not two, but three languages: English, French, and German.

Plenty of celebrities including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terry Crews, and Stephen Colbert have leant their voice to Waze over the years, but Federer is the first to do it in this many languages.

Ever the fan of trickle releasing details of its devices in the run up to launch, Nothing has announced a couple of new specs for its forthcoming Phone 2.

First, it’ll be supported with three years of Android updates and four years of security updates. Second, its screen will be 0.15 inches bigger than the Phone 1’s 6.55-inch display, making it 6.7 inches in size.

Meet the Baojun Yep EV with a stated range of 303km (188 miles). It’s made by the GM joint venture SGMW for the Chinese market and features a “car watch” screen on the tailgate that can display different designs.

It’s proof that SUVs don’t, in fact, need to be giant child killers priced over $30k and powered by dinosaur juice.

The original $80 Leap gesture controller debuted so long ago that we compared it to the Kinect. However, unlike Microsoft’s Xbox accessory, Leap is still kicking.

Now known as Ultraleap after a 2019 merger, it’s showing off the Leap Motion Control 2 (via RoadtoVR) and retiring the old device. The new $139 unit will begin shipping this summer, and new Gemini software for it is coming to macOS — and with its positioning as a VR accessory, you can probably guess why that’s suddenly a priority.

Ultraleap:

Key improvements over the original Leap Motion Controller include higher resolution cameras, an increased field of view, and 25% lower power consumption, all in a 30% smaller package for optimum placement and convenience.

It is the most flexible camera ever developed by Ultraleap and is compatible across platforms and complimentary hardware including VR/MR/AR headsets, PCs, and holographic displays.

If the bill goes through, big tech companies would have pay a “journalism usage fee” to when they distribute local news content on their platforms. Meta, unsurprisingly, isn’t a fan of that idea.

A new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says that Apple is testing new computers with M2 Max and M2 Ultra chips. Given that the Mac Studio is now more than a year old and runs on the M1 Max and M1 Ultra chips... I’ll let you connect the dots.

Next Monday is going to be a really big show, isn’t it?

My phone just ran out of storage, which is perfect timing as I’ll be flying out on vacation tomorrow. Thankfully, I was able to quickly free up storage by backing up my photos to iCloud and removing them from my phone. You might want to learn how to do this, too, if you’re planning on traveling this summer!

The Zuck posted a teaser image to his Instagram story with a countdown to 11AM ET on Thursday obscuring... something (courtesy of Voices of VR podcast host Kent Bye and presented here with some light editing).

What’s he holding? It’s surely not a Meta Quest 3. Is it a philly cheesesteak? A tennis ball? Did he get his fingers stuck in one of those finger traps? If it’s the last one, don’t worry, Mark, that thing confounded Data once, too.

The Chinese phonemaker Oppo took the wraps off of its dev-focused Oppo MR Glass Developer Edition headset today, which comes with a Snapdragon XR2 Plus chip and allows for both mixed reality and augmented reality experiences.

This announcement comes at a busy time in the VR space: less than one day before Meta’s expected Quest 3 reveal and less than a week before we could see Apple’s long-rumored mixed reality headset.

While Kim Cattrall might still be on the outs with some of her former Sex and the City cast mates, Variety reports that she’s reprising her role as Samantha Jones for Max’s And Just Like That...:

“According to sources, Cattrall shot her dialogue on March 22 in New York City, without seeing or speaking with the stars of the series, including Sarah Jessica Parker, or with “And Just Like That” showrunner Michael Patrick King.”

The British automaker issued a recall for 6,400 electric I-PACE vehicles due to fire risks from an over-heated battery. Included in that recall is an undisclosed number of driverless Waymo vehicles. A spokesperson for the company said it was working with Jaguar on a software update that should fix the issue.

You can sign up for daily emails on tornado, hail, wind, and heavy rain risk in your area. But since forecasts might change quickly, you can also find maps with more updated information on the NYT’s website or from the National Weather Service.

The artistry of watchmaking is pretty obvious with luxury brands like Rolex, Audemars Piguet, and Omega. But in exploring the Apple Watch’s band release buttons — our latest Button of the Month — we learned from ex-Apple engineers just how much went into its strap system and how Apple bought up the same CNC machines used by Rolex to do it.