Thursday’s top tech news: leaving, on an @ElonJet plane

Maryland was one of the first states to make state IDs available on Apple’s Wallet app for iPhones, and now Google is beta testing support for the “Digital Driver’s License” in the Wallet app on Android phones. The Apple Wallet integration can already be used to get through TSA at airports like the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport that allow the use of digital state IDs, which should be similar on Android.

According to Google’s updated support page: users running Android 8.0 (or later) who are in the Google Play Services beta program (specifically, version 48.22) are eligible. After enabling Bluetooth and Nearby Devices, and also making sure your phone has a screen lock, you should now see a new option for “ID Card (beta)” when adding a new card to the Google Wallet app.

Tammy Ma was about to board a plane at the San Francisco International Airport when she got the call of a lifetime. She’s a plasma physicist at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world’s largest and most energetic laser. An experiment at the facility had just accomplished a breakthrough in nuclear fusion that scientists have been trying to achieve for decades. 

“I burst into tears, and I was jumping up and down in the waiting area,” Ma told reporters at a technical briefing on the achievement in Washington, DC, this week.

The Death Stranding cinematic universe is getting a little bigger. Not long after a sequel to the 2019 video game was announced, now comes news that a film is also in the works.

The project will be a joint collaboration between developer Kojima Productions and Hammerstone Studios, led by Alex Lebovici, who served as a producer on the horror film Barbarian. According to a press release, the plot for the film is being kept quiet for now, but it will “introduce new elements and characters within the Death Stranding universe.”

Apple is building on the success of its Apple TV Plus comedy about game development, Mythic Quest, with a new spinoff series titled Mere Mortals. The eight-episode series will be more like the excellent episodes in the main show that focus on a time and place outside of the primary settings and characters, Variety reports. “Mere Mortals will explore the lives of employees, players and fans who are impacted by the game,” according to Apple in a press release.

Ashly Burch, who plays Rachel in Mythic Quest, is part of the team writing Mere Mortals alongside John Howell Harris and Katie McElhenney. Megan Ganz, Rob McElhenney (Ian on Mythic Quest), David Hornsby (David Brittlesbee on Mythic Quest), and Charlie Day will be executive producers.

The Echo Show 15 now comes with the Fire TV interface, thanks to a software update that started rolling out last week. Amazon’s largest smart display already offered a few streaming apps, but the update brings more streaming services, more live TV options, and a native YouTube app on an Echo device for the first time since 2017. It makes the Echo Show 15 a better television but a slightly worse smart display.

If your main beef with the Show 15 was the limited video options, this is a great update. But it does remove some touch functionality from the Show 15 and makes it more reliant on either voice control through Alexa, a new physical remote option, or a truly baffling on-screen remote. 

The Peacock original show Bel-Air doesn’t actually have anything to do with flying, but you may be able to watch it next time you’re in the air. JetBlue has announced that it’s partnered with NBC’s streaming service to bring some of its content to the seatback screens on its planes — including the Fresh Prince spinoff, Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin, and Rian Johnson’s comedy caper show Poker Face.

You’ll also be able to stream anything from Peacock’s catalog using your own device and the in-flight Wi-Fi, according to the airline’s Thursday press release, though you’ll need an active Peacock subscription to do so, according to JetBlue spokesperson Emily Martin.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 from PlayStation’s Insomniac Games will officially be launching on PS5 in fall 2023, Sony announced on Thursday. While we don’t have any more specific timing than that launch window, it means that there will be one more major game for next year that you might want to add to your list of things to look forward to.

Sony also shared a brief and vague synopsis. “Following the events of Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the Spider-duo of Peter Parker and Miles Morales are back in the next blockbuster action chapter of the Marvel’s Spider-Man series,” Sony’s De’Angelo Epps wrote. Sony debuted a brief teaser trailer for the game last year that revealed Venom will be featured as a villain.

When Apple acquired classical music streaming service Primephonic back in 2021, the company revealed plans to launch a standalone app with many of Primephonic’s best features by the end of this year. But we’re now in mid-December. iOS 16.2 was just released without any sign of the app — believed to be called Apple Classical — and it’s not present in the latest iOS 16.3 betas, either.

With many Apple employees nearing holiday vacation, it seems increasingly unlikely that Apple Classical will be a year-end surprise.

You’re either on team flat or team curved when it comes to how you prefer your gaming monitors to look. Corsair’s new $1,999 Xeneon Flex, a new 45-inch OLED option that’s shipping early next year, doesn’t make you pick sides. It can morph between the two modes — sadly, not by pressing a button — but by primitively squeezing the screen together with its two handles. It requires a surprising amount of force to pull it into a curve and to push it back into a flat panel, letting out faint clicks when each side has reached its destination. 

After testing a non-final version of the Xeneon Flex for several days, my fear of breaking it has nearly subsided, but my fun with switching its modes hasn’t. Using HDR with its 240Hz refresh rate and 21:9 aspect ratio looks great when connected to the M1 MacBook Pro that I use for work. And I experienced pure joy while gaming on it with a 2022 Razer Blade 15 laptop. 

Amazon’s latest foray into video game publishing will star Lara Croft. The company announced a new deal with developer Crystal Dynamics, which will see it publish the next entry in the long-running Tomb Raider series. Crystal Dynamics will handle development, with Amazon “providing full support and publishing the game globally.”

The studio revealed it was working on a new Tomb Raider earlier this year as part of a showcase for Epic’s Unreal Engine game-making tools. Very few details are available at the moment, but it’s described as “a single-player, narrative-driven adventure that continues  Lara Croft’s story in the Tomb Raider series.” Amazon says the game, which will utilize Unreal Engine 5, will be multiplatform and is currently in “early development.” No word yet on when it might be released.

Instagram users who are victims of hacking now have a new way to try to claw back their account. The company announced Instagram.com/hacked today, a new feature for reporting and trying to resolve account access problems.

The new platform is an all-in-one account support page. Users can ask for help recovering hacked accounts, report impersonation accounts, or get help if they’ve forgotten their passwords. The most pressing issue for many is likely getting help when an account has been hacked — something that users have struggled to get in the past.

Nothing’s Android 13 update for the Nothing Phone 1 has started rolling out in open beta, the company announced today. The update is version 1.5 of the company’s Nothing OS Android skin and contains unique additions like an all-new Nothing-themed weather app alongside Android 13 features like the ability to set language options on a per-app basis and a new QR code scanner in quick settings. Its official release is scheduled for early next year.

In an interview with Android Authority, Nothing CEO Carl Pei shed some light on why its Android 13 update has taken so long to release. Apparently, the Phone 1 originally launched with software developed by an outsourced team from another Android phone manufacturer of around 400 engineers. But in the months since, Nothing has staffed up its internal team to around 100 engineers, who’ve updated Nothing OS to use the company’s in-house code for its version 1.5 release. 

Microsoft has long supported real-time video calls using Microsoft Teams on HoloLens 2 headsets, but now the company is bringing full Teams integration to its mixed reality headset. HoloLens 2 users will now be able to freely call people directly, browse and add Teams contacts to calls, and even view calendars and join group meetings.

Microsoft is also allowing HoloLens 2 users to see what people are sharing in meetings, too. A new live video stream of shared screens will appear as a hologram that can be moved and resized.

The reality that Apple wants to win more Oscars with director Antoine Fuqua’s historical action drama Emancipation is as obvious as the fact that the Academy probably isn’t going to award the film because of how largely Will Smith — the lead — features in its story. Post-slap, the cards were immediately stacked against Emancipation to make all that much of a splash during this year’s awards season. But over the past few weeks, in the buildup to the movie’s debut last Friday, it’s repeatedly felt like Emancipation’s creative team has been actively working against whatever chances the project had of following in Coda’s footsteps to snag Apple even more Oscar statues.

Though much of Emancipation’s story is fictional, its plot is loosely based on the life of a Black man named Gordon who escaped enslavement in 1863, joined the Union Army, and became a symbol for the inhumane, tortuous treatment Black people endured under slavery. As is too often the case when it comes to the narratives belonging to Black people who survived through the late 19th century, many details about who Gordon was have been lost to history. But Gordon became well-known in many Civil War-era abolitionist circles after photos of his heavily scarred back were published in Harper’s Weekly as a rebuttal to the common defense of slavery arguing that enslaved people were treated well by the people who owned them.

Nine months ago, I wrote that the Steam Deck wasn’t ready. Many of you clearly disagreed: the handheld gaming PC has been the top-selling item on Steam for 30 of the past 41 weeks.

Being the “early access game console” didn’t keep this affordable, portable gaming computer down. Frankly, it’s my gadget of the year, thanks in no small part to the 90-plus updates Valve has shipped since its debut. But the pace of updates and reliance on Linux can make it a volatile platform, too: Valve itself has occasionally introduced nasty new bugs, and game publishers have occasionally broken compatibility with their own updates.

Winter is here, and once again, warnings are going up about the spread of the covid-19 virus — along with the flu and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus. To try to minimize the upsurge, the US government is restarting a program that it canceled on September 2nd, 2022, and is once again offering free home rapid antigen tests to each US household. This is the fourth round of free tests that’s been made available; according to the government website, orders will start shipping the week of December 19th.

As before, it’s extremely simple to put in your order. You will not need to submit a credit card or any other financial information.

Uber is expanding its use of autonomous delivery vehicles with the announcement that it will soon deploy sidewalk robots developed in Miami, Florida.

The six-wheeled delivery robots will come from Cartken, an Oakland-based AI company founded by a team of ex-Google engineers known mostly for deploying its vehicles on college campuses.

Google announced today that it has completed the initial rollout of Matter to its Google Nest products and Android OS. This means the Matter smart home standard, first developed by Google, Apple, Samsung, Amazon, and others, now has the foundation in place to start delivering on its ambitious promises: interoperability, simplicity, security, and a smart home that just works.

Over the past few weeks, Google has updated millions of Google Nest smart speakers, displays, and Wi-Fi routers as well as billions of Android phones and tablets to Matter. The company says the transition will be completed today, December 15th. Android devices need to run Android 8.1 and up and Google Play Services 22.48.14, while Google Nest devices need the latest firmware updates. The update means that Android and Google Home users can now connect Google devices with Matter devices from other manufacturers.

Soon, you’ll be able to pick up a pair of Sony’s OTC (over-the-counter) hearing aids at one of HearUSA’s 350 hearing centers or through its online store. Founded in 1987, HearUSA operates a network of retail stores that help consumers directly buy prescription — and now OTC — hearing aids.

Both Sony’s CRE-C10 and CRE-E10 models will be available starting in early 2023, though no firm date was provided. Sony, which has long been a leading headphone maker, first announced it was entering the OTC hearing aid market back in September.

Almost a year ago today, Dell announced the “Concept Luna”, a fully repairable and upgradable laptop incorporating sustainable materials. With everything removable and replaceable, from the memory and SSD to the keyboard and the screen, it looked to be a similar concept to the groundbreaking Framework Laptop — and potentially a huge win for both sustainability and right-to-repair advocates. The problem: it was not anywhere close to a real thing you could buy.

Well, it’s been a year. Concept Luna is still not on shelves. Dell still has no concrete plans to put it on shelves.

Oppo has announced a pair of new foldables in China today, and the smaller of the two is actually getting a release outside of its domestic market. The Find N2 Flip has a clamshell design similar to the Galaxy Z Flip 4 and starts at ¥6,000 (around $861) while the Find N2, its larger sibling, has a larger tablet-style form factor that’s closer to the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and starts at ¥8,000 (around $1,148). 

XDA Developers reports that the Flip will see an international launch but that the regular Find N2 is sticking to China for now, just like its predecessor, the Find N, did. Expect to see the Find N2 Flip appear in European markets in the first quarter of next year, but it’s unlikely to get an official US release given Oppo historically hasn’t sold phones in North America.