Blog

AMD CEO Lisa Su just put an end to all speculation about the release date of AMD’s upcoming graphics cards, while also revealing more about their performance.

In 2016, I dragged my Engadget colleagues to preview Star Trek: Bridge Crew, a VR title letting you live out your fantasies of sitting on the bridge of a starship. Sadly, despite having two fans in the team, we failed miserably at the game, a wound I’ve been nursing ever since. When Bridge Command, London’s latest attraction, asked me if I wanted to try out its real world equivalent, I leapt at the chance. After all, this wasn’t just me testing out a new sci-fi themed event, it was a shot at redemption.

Bridge Command sits in the space between an escape room, team-building exercise, live-action roleplay and immersive theater. It’s essentially a paid-for LARP taking place on a custom-built starship set which cost £3 million (around $4 million) to play space captain. In order to survive and succeed, each player must work with their team, communicate and solve problems on the fly for the better part of two hours.

ASIDE: There’s plenty of existing bridge simulator roleplaying games and a small, but vibrant community that supports it. Digital platforms like Thorium Nova, Artemis and EmptyEpsilon are all platforms that enable folks to gather around to play in teams. Bridge Command itself is built on top of EmptyEpsilon’s platform, albeit with some degree of customization on top.

Effort has been taken to ensure Bridge Command isn’t a one-and-done experience, and creator Parabolic Theatre hopes to build a base of recurring fans. There are two different “ships” players can crew, the smaller UCS Havock and the far larger UCS Takanami, which do two different jobs in the fleet. In terms of capacity, both vessels can take up to 14 players at a time but the ideal figure is around nine. There are four different mission types, too:

• Exploration: Involving discovery and adversity.

• Military: Space dogfighting.

• Intrigue: Espionage and more subtle action.

• Diplomacy: Making nice with alien races.

With two ships and four missions, you can play the game eight times and theoretically get a new experience every time. But creators Parabolic Theatre will look to develop the game’s running story over time, like a long-running D&D campaign. The game even tracks your performance as your career progresses, and can receive promotions after a particularly successful mission.

I dragged a Trek-loving friend along to one of the previews, which set us on a Military mission on the UCS Havock. We were tasked with escorting a resupply mission to a large warship on assignment, a rather mundane assignment. It’s not much of a spoiler to suggest our gang of plucky underdogs might wind up in over their heads on a far grander mission. Or that they’ll need to take the under-equipped ship to go toe-to-toe with the baddies and win out against impossible odds.

Both “ships” are fully-realized starship sets, which are probably better-assembled than what you’ll see on most sci-fi series. They’re designed to withstand the regular punishment that can only occur when crews of friends come to play spaceships. But once you’re onboard, you’re essentially in a self-contained environment for the duration of the mission. And it’s a pretty impressive piece of set design.

The vibe is distinctly Star Voyage (Not Infringing Any Copyright, Promise!), with the Havock laid out like the USS Defiant, but with the paint job from Red Dwarf’s first two seasons. A trio of terminals line each side wall, with the captain’s chair on a raised dais in the middle. There’s a helm console up front that’s pointed directly at the imposing viewscreen that dominates the room. There’s a ready room off to one side of the bridge and a toilet on the other, while the corridor behind the bridge is the ship’s engineering bay, bunkroom and brig.

Everything from the terminals and the set is linked up, so if a subsystem takes damage you’ll not just have it grayed out on your screen. Built-in dry ice machines will emit “smoke” when something goes wrong or you take a nasty hit from an enemy vessel. If the lights had flashed at the same time, I’d have been tempted to start jostling myself around in my seat to add to the immersion.

Alex Brenner / Bridge Command

There were seven of us in the party, including some other journalists and some regular players who were coming for a regular session. Your humble narrator took the helm, figuring that I’d played enough Star Trek: Tactical Assault and Star Trek: Bridge Commander to be useful. We had an acting captain, and folks manning the radar, communications, engineering, laser and torpedo stations.

If you’ve ever used a touchscreen in your life then you won’t feel too unmoored from the role you’ve got to do here. Not to mention the first half hour of the game is little more than a tutorial to ensure that everyone is fluent with what they’ve got to do.

My helm station, for instance, offers you a picture of the ship with a 360-degree coordinate ring around it. There are two sliders, one for impulse power and one for warp, and a small square that lets you make some small evasive maneuvers. This is fine when the ocean-going liners you find in Star Trek are just heading from waypoint to waypoint, but pretty rubbish for combat. And I’m still annoyed you’re locked to a flat plain when space offers so much room for verticality.

Spoiler warning: The following three paragraphs outline my mission in greater detail.

The story begins while you’re putting on your military-issue space boilersuit, with a fictional newsreel playing in the background setting the scene. Once you’ve “transported” from the entrance to the space station, you’re then given a mission briefing and a send-off from the Earth president. Our mission, as outlined, was to escort a freighter on a resupply mission to a battle fleet which was dealing with pirates on the edge of the system.

A member of the Bridge Command team starts as our captain, giving us a tour of the ship and assigning roles for us to play. After we all get used to the basics in what might as well be called the tutorial stage, the captain then departs to help elsewhere. We’re then sent off to scout for incoming threats in nearby nebulas that, quelle surprise, are full of pirates. Naturally, the closer we get to the battle group, the harder the attacks we have to repel, forcing our chief engineer to race around repairing and repowering systems.

We limped to the battle group, repairing and re-armoring before we hatched a plan to play Possum to lure out the pirates. That plan worked spectacularly well, and with our hull integrity at just three percent, we were able to take out the pirates command and control vessel. After being congratulated by the top brass we were escorted back to the space station for a debrief and a drink in the bar.

End of Spoiler Warning: The following paragraphs do not contain any spoiler material.

It’s important to be aware of one’s own privilege and preferences when reviewing something like this. I found Bridge Command to be enormous fun, and if I lived in London, I suspect it would quickly become a hobby I indulged in with like-minded friends on a monthly basis. At £40 ($50) a session, the cost is a little steep but, even so, you could easily make this a long-running roleplaying game. And I’m sorely tempted to go a few more times when I can just to try and gain those promotions.

If there’s a downside (and it’s not even really a downside per-se), it’s that there are phases of play where you’re not doing anything. Or, at least, you’re a present and useful member of the team waiting for your colleagues to fulfill their parts of the mission. I found, given the need for clear oral communication and cooperation, that there were plenty of times where the best thing I could do to help my team was shut up and wait.

Given that focus on communication, I suspect it might be a turn-off if you’re a little shy or quiet of voice. The game doesn’t work unless everyone’s talking to share information between consoles and so it’s nearly-impossible to sit quietly in the corner. That’s not to say you need to bring any Big Theater Kid energy along, but I can imagine how this would feel like mandatory fun if you were dragged along by your friends or on a work team-building exercise. It’s a damn sight more fun and less painful than paintball, so maybe count your blessings there.

Bridge Command is located at St. George’s Wharf which is next to Vauxhall tube station in London. It is open for most of each day through to late evening, with ticket prices starting at £40 (around $50) at off-peak times for a single session.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/bridge-command-lets-you-live-out-your-starship-fantasies-140046532.html?src=rss

The US presidential election is in its final stretch. Before election day on November 5, Engadget is looking at where the candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, stand on the most consequential tech issues of our day.

While it might not garner the headlines that immigration, abortion or inflation do, AI is quietly one of the more consequential issues this election season. What regulations are put in place and how forcefully those rules are enforced will have wide ranging impacts on consumer privacy, intellectual property, the media industry and national security.

Normally, politicians lack clear or coherent policies on emerging technologies. But somewhat shockingly, both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have at least some track record handling artificial intelligence. VP Harris, in particular, has been very hands-on in shaping the current administration’s approach. And Donald Trump was the first president to sign an executive order regarding AI.

That being said, neither has made AI a central component of their campaign, and we’re making some educated guesses here about how either would approach it once in the White House.

Kamala Harris

With Harris’ considerable involvement in the Biden administration’s AI efforts, it’s safe to assume she would move forward with many of those policies. While the White House started laying the groundwork for its AI initiatives in early 2021, it wasn’t until late 2023 that they kicked into high gear, and Harris has often been the public face of those efforts, including holding numerous press calls on the issue and appearing at the Global Summit on AI Safety in London. She has used these venues to draw attention to the potential pitfalls, both large and small, of AI ranging from “cyberattacks at a scale beyond anything we have seen before” to seniors being “kicked off [their] healthcare plan because of a faulty AI algorithm.”

October 2023 saw the issuance of an executive order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. This order noted the potential for AI to solve broad societal issues as well as its ability to “exacerbate societal harms, such as fraud, discrimination, bias and disinformation; displace and disempower workers; stifle competition and pose risks to national security.” It laid out eight guiding principles focused on creating standardized evaluations for AI systems, protecting workers, consumer privacy and combating inherent bias.

It also called for agencies to name a chief AI officer (CAIO) and directed the federal government to develop policies and strategies using and regulating AI. This included developing technologies for identifying and labeling AI-generated content and building guardrails to prevent the creation of images depicting sexual abuse and deepfake pornography.

Harris helped secure commitments from Apple, Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, Adobe, Cohere, IBM, NVIDIA, Palantir, Salesforce, Scale AI, Stability and OpenAI to work towards the administration’s goals. She also worked to obtain endorsements from 31 nations of a declaration regarding the responsible creation and use of military AI. At this stage, the latter is merely a commitment to work together to establish rules and guidelines. But there are many absences on that list, most notably Russia, China and Israel.

Because the technology is so new, however, there are still a lot of questions about the specifics of how a Harris administration would handle AI. Besides, without an act of Congress, the White House would be limited in how it could regulate the industry or punish those that run afoul of its policies.

On the campaign trail, Harris hasn’t said much new about the issue, outside of a brief mention at a Wall Street fundraiser, during which she said, “We will encourage innovative technologies, like AI and digital assets, while protecting our consumers and investors.” Harris does have strong ties to Silicon Valley, so it remains to be seen just how much she would try to rein in the industry. But as of now, most of her statements have focused on protecting consumers and workers.

Donald Trump

Donald Trump holds the distinction of being the first president to sign an executive order regarding AI, but his actual public statements on the matter have been limited. In February 2019, he established the American AI Initiative, which created the first national AI research institutes, called for doubling the funding of AI research and set forth broad regulatory guidance. It also called for the creation of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office, which would serve as a central hub for coordinating research and policy across the government.

Unsurprisingly, the executive order signed by former President Trump and the policies set forth by his allies have focused more on encouraging private sector growth and limited government oversight. The official Republican party platform adopted at the RNC in July called for repealing Biden’s October 2023 executive order claiming it “hinders AI Innovation and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.” It goes on to call for the development of AI “rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.”

Unfortunately the RNC platform and Trump don’t get much more specific than that. So we’ll have to look at what the former president’s allies at the America First Policy Institute and Heritage Foundation have put forth to get a better idea of how a second Trump presidency might handle AI.

America First began drafting a document earlier this year that called for launching Manhattan Projects for military AI and for reducing regulations. (Currently, there are limited regulations in place regarding AI, as the government is largely in the information-gathering stage of policy development. Congress has yet to pass any meaningful AI legislation.)

It also called for the creation of industry-led agencies tasked with evaluating and securing American artificial intelligence technologies. This is in contrast with the Biden administration’s executive order, which put responsibility for those efforts firmly in the hands of the federal government.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (PDF) gets into more specifics, though it is worth noting Trump has tried to distance himself somewhat from that document. Much of the discourse around AI in the 922-page tome is dedicated to China: countering its technological advancements, limiting its access to American technology and preventing it from backing joint research projects with American interests, especially on college campuses. It calls for increasing the use of AI and machine learning in intelligence gathering and analysis, while simultaneously calling for a heavier reliance on the private sector to develop and manage the technology.

The document also spends significant time discussing AI’s potential to “reduce waste, fraud and abuse,” particularly with regards to Medicare and Medicaid. However, it makes almost no mention of protecting consumer privacy, ensuring the accuracy and fairness of algorithms, or identifying abusive or misleading uses of AI, beyond combating Chinese propaganda.

Predictable broad strokes

While both candidates’ platforms lack specifics regarding the regulation of artificial intelligence, they do lay out two clearly different approaches. Kamala Harris has made consumer protections and building guardrails against abuse a cornerstone of her AI policy proposals; Donald Trump has predictably focused on reducing regulation. Neither has suggested they would try to put the proverbial AI genie back in the bottle, not that such a thing would be feasible.

The big question marks are just how much of the America First Policy Institute or Project 2025 proposals a Trump administration would adopt. His own official platform mirrors many policy positions of Project 2025. While it may not reflect any of its AI proposals specifically, there’s little reason to believe his approach would differ dramatically on this specific issue.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/election-2024-how-will-the-candidates-regulate-ai-133045610.html?src=rss

Well, it finally happened. After years of waiting and requests, Amazon debuted the $280 Kindle Colorsoft, its first ereader with a color display. The company’s ereaders have dominated this space since the original Kindle came out 17 years ago, but in this case, it feels like Amazon is playing catch-up. Color E Ink displays aren’t novel: we’ve tested and reviewed a number of color ereaders and E Ink tablets from Kobo, Boox and reMarkable in recent years. But Amazon is essentially trying to pull an Apple with the Colorsoft: with claims that color E Ink technology just wasn’t good enough to put into a Kindle until now, Amazon’s promising the Colorsoft gets this implementation right thanks in part to the custom tweaks it made to the display. And, unsurprisingly, Amazon’s ready to charge you a premium for it. So is it all it’s cracked up to be? As you might suspect, the answer isn’t as simple as yes or no.

Screen technology and comparisons

Let’s get the tech details squared away first. The Kindle Colorsoft’s seven-inch screen is based on E Ink Kaleido 3 technology, but a representative from the Kindle team explained to me that they developed a custom display stack for this device. That means they made quite a few changes to the tech in order to achieve things like higher-contrast pigments and improved speeds overall. The Colorsoft’s custom oxide backplane uses 24 driving volts to move pigments around more quickly and it helps those pigments appear with better contrast. Nitride LEDs enhance colors and brightness, and a custom coating in between the display’s layers helps focus light through each pigment so there’s less color mixing. Some of the same tech helps make page-turns quicker and supposedly reduces excessively noticeable screen refreshing when you go from one color page to another, or pinch-and-zoom on an image.

That’s all to say that Amazon would like you to believe that this E Ink Kaleido 3 screen is not like the other girls in this space, and while I do not doubt the Kindle team’s efforts, the differences are not as dramatic as the story would suggest. Until Kobo updates the Sage with color, the closest competitor to the $280 Kindle Colorsoft is the $220 Kobo Libra Colour (in size, platform and overall experience), so I did a lot of side-by-side comparisons of the two.

The biggest difference I saw was that the Kobo’s screen skews warmer than the Kindle’s; I kicked the brightness up to the maximum and turned all warm/natural light settings down to zero on both devices and the difference was noticeable, regardless of if the displays were showing color images, black-and-white text or a mix of the two. This would suggest that the Kindle will show more accurate colors more often since there’s less of a warm lean to its display.

But on the flip side, the Kindle screen’s blue tint was just as noticeable, particularly in low-light situations (like a dark office or a dimly lit living room). At max brightness with warmth down to zero, the Kindle’s screen was borderline uncomfortable to read in those environments — but all it took was a slight adjustment to warmth level four (out of 24) to get it to match the Kobo’s display in warmth almost exactly (at least to my eyes). That made it more comfortable to stare at in dark spaces. I also compared the Colorsoft’s screen to my personal Kindle Paperwhite (previous generation) and the blue skew was noticeable there too.

Ultimately, how much warm or cool light you prefer while reading is up to personal taste. My preferences would lead me to adjust the warmth on the Kindle to be a bit higher than zero, mimicking that of the Kobo. In an unscientific poll of the Engadget staff, both in person and with device photos, everybody preferred the screen on the Kobo. I think the slight added warmth in Kobo’s screen makes colors appear a bit more saturated and more inviting overall. It also gets close to mimicking the look of actual physical pages (as much as one of these devices could, at least), and that’s the experience I’m going for when I read pretty much anything. But I could understand why some hardcore comic fans would want to start off with the most color-accurate baseline as possible, and then adjust from there to fit their preferences.

In addition to adjusting the warm light, the Kindle Colorsoft has vivid mode, which “enhances color in less saturated images.” For the sake of efficacy, most of my time was spent in standard mode when testing the Colorsoft. But in trying out vivid mode, I noticed that its enhanced saturation was most noticeable in warm-toned images: reds appeared ever-so-slightly more striking, while oranges and yellows had a more bronze effect and the like. But I had to turn vivid mode on and off a few times to clock the effect because it’s quite subtle.

Then there’s the question of actually reading words on the Colorsoft. Even the Kindle team representative I spoke with acknowledged that, due to the extra physical layer in the screen that enables color, one might notice a bit less sharpness and contrast in black-and-white text on the Colorsoft’s screen. That’s not unique to this particular Kindle — every color ereader will have this issue to some degree.

When comparing the text-only experience of the Kindle Colorsoft to that of the Kobo Libra Colour, I found both to be quite good and comparable to one another. Where there’s a bigger possibility for discrepancies is in a comparison of the Colorsoft to, say, the new Kindle Paperwhite. I did not have the latter device to compare to, but I did have my personal, previous-generation Paperwhite, and the difference was ever so slight, with the standard Paperwhite having the (small) upper hand in the contrast and sharpness departments.

Reading experience

Photo by Valentina Palladino / Engadget

The color screen is the most consequential thing about the Kindle Colorsoft, and chances are if you’ve had a Kindle in the past, the reading experience on this new device will feel quite familiar. The Kindle UI hasn’t changed much, still dividing the main screen into Home and Library options. The former is basically a space for Amazon to serve you personalized book recommendations and promote new Kindle releases, while the latter shows your entire digital library including books, documents, Audible audiobooks and library loans. The Library page is striking in color and there is something undeniably satisfying about seeing all of your title covers in full-color glory.

While reading a book, you can still customize and save different themes with fonts, font sizes and page layouts that best suit your preferences. You still have the option to quickly navigate within a title by page, location, chapter and even popular highlights. Page turns are speedy and will likely be an improvement for anyone coming from an older Kindle or other ereader.

Annotations and your own highlights are collected in the same place for easy reference, and with the latter, you can filter by highlight color as well. You have four colors to choose from on the Colorsoft — orange, yellow, blue and pink — so if you use the yellow highlighter to mark favorite quotes, you can then filter by just that color. Note that all highlighting and note-taking must be done with your fingers because, unlike the Kindle Scribe, the Colorsoft has no stylus support.

The pinch-to-zoom feature on the Colorsoft is good for those who read a lot of graphic novels and comics. Amazon developed a custom algorithm to make this motion as smooth as possible, and it’s a pretty good experience, albeit not a unique one. You can also pinch to zoom on the Kobo Libra Colour, which mostly helps get in closer to comic panels to read small text or better see minute details.

On both devices, there are full-screen refreshes when you pinch to zoom on color images and the speed of completion is roughly the same. I also found image quality to be quite similar as well, and it’s worth noting that art style can skew your impression of an image’s quality. A comic that employs clean, distinct lines compared to one that’s more grungy and watercolor-like will always come off more crisp.

The Colorsoft, like the regular Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, also has an auto-adjusting front light that promises to illuminate the display just right depending on if you’re reading outside on a sunny day, in the dark cabin of an airplane or anywhere else. It’s a nice hardware perk to have and, with the feature turned on, removes much of manual fiddling that some might find annoying to do when they take their Kindle into different environments.

The competition

Photo by Valentina Palladino / Engadget

While we already went through the screen comparisons for the $280 Kindle Colorsoft and the $220 Kobo Libra Colour, there are plenty of other differences between the two that you should consider when picking your next ereader. I’ve added a spec list below to break down the basics, and the most consequential to me are the fact that the Kobo has page-turn buttons and stylus support.

The former is really a matter of preference — you either love physical buttons or you find no use for them — but the latter is pure added value even if you do have to purchase the $70 Kobo stylus separately. It essentially allows you to turn the Libra Colour into a makeshift Kobo Sage or Kindle Scribe, which could be useful for anyone in academia (students and educators alike) or anyone who just loves the feeling of putting pen to “paper.” Meanwhile, the Kindle has the upper hand in its wireless charging capabilities and its slightly cleaner flush-front design.

When it comes to actual content available on Kindle and Kobo devices, the libraries you can purchase from on both are vast: both have ebooks and audiobooks available, and both the Colorsoft and Libra Colour support Bluetooth, so you can listen to audiobooks directly from the device with your wireless headphones. At the time of writing this review, all of the top five New York Times bestseller titles were available on both platforms at the same prices, with the only discrepancies being one that was on sale as a Kindle ebook and one that was available to read for free for Kindle Unlimited and Kobo Plus subscribers. Both of those monthly subscriptions give you unlimited reading access to thousands of titles, but I would give the advantage to Amazon on this one since Kindle Unlimited has been around for much longer. Amazon also has Prime Reading and Kids+ subscriptions that work with Kindle devices and provide even more content to paying subscribers.

As far as borrowing ebooks from your local library goes, it might be a draw. Kobo integrates elegantly with Overdrive, making it nearly seamless to get borrowed books on your ereader. Simply connect your Overdrive account and library card in the settings menu and you can then either browse your library’s offerings directly on device, or use the Libby mobile app to borrow titles and those will appear automatically on your Kobo. My only gripe with this system is that it works best if you have just one library card, since you can only connect one at a time. I’m a unique case where I have at least three library cards and I switch among them in Libby depending on which has the title I’m looking for.

Those like me might prefer the “send to Kindle” option in Libby, which just takes a couple more clicks to get any book from any library network to your Kindle device. The biggest downside here is that my Colorsoft review unit did not show all of my library book covers in full-color glory on the lock screen. After troubleshooting with a representative from Amazon, it was determined to be a title-specific issue. According to Amazon: “For library books, the lock screen is taken from the designated marketing cover for the book used by the library, which may not be the same as the actual book cover.” So just know that if you get most of your reading material from your local library, there’s a chance some of the covers may not display properly on the Colorsoft.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the $250 Boox Go Color 7, which earned a spot in our best ereaders guide after my colleague Amy Skorheim tested it. First, it’s imperative to know that Boox devices require a bit more tech-savvy than a Kindle or a Kobo, as well as a willingness to experiment. They are full-blown Android tablets after all, and that might be exactly what you’re looking for if you get your reading material from many different sources, since it offers access to the Google Play Store and all of its apps. As for specs, the Go Color 7 has a seven-inch Kaleido 3 display with 300 ppi in black and white and 150 ppi in color (similar to the Colorsoft), along with a warm light, page-turn buttons, a splash-resistant design and 64GB of storage (and a microSD card slot for more space!). It’s even more similar to the Kobo Libra Colour in feature set and price, so it’s another option for anyone willing to think a bit outside the standard ereader box.

The decision between Kindle, Kobo and Boox is infinitely more complicated than choosing between the Colorsoft or the standard Kindle Paperwhite — and that’s precisely because of the stark price difference. The Colorsoft is $120 more than the regular Kindle Paperwhite ($100 more if you pay to remove the lock screen ads from the Paperwhite, and $80 more than the Signature Edition) and aside from the color panel, it only adds wireless charging, the auto-adjusting front light sensor and doubles the storage. Remove color from the equation, and arguably the most useful of all of those is the extra storage but, make no mistake, 16GB of space on the Kindle Paperwhite is nothing to scoff at and will be just fine for most people. Unless you’re 100-percent certain that color will make a huge difference in your day-to-day reading experience, the standard Paperwhite is the better value.

Wrap-up

Photo by Valentina Palladino / Engadget

While it’s very late to the color E Ink party, the Kindle Colorsoft is a solid premium ereader that provides an excellent experience both in color and black and white. I focused a lot on comparisons in this review because most people will not have the opportunity to have the Colorsoft and any of its contemporaries side by side (unless you’re my dad, who buys almost every ereader and small tablet under the sun). But to be clear, the Colorsoft is a good Kindle, and in many ways, Amazon did pull an Apple here. If you’re already heavily entrenched in the Kindle ecosystem and have been holding out for a color ereader, this is the device to get — just be prepared to pay a premium for it.

Also, like Apple and its various operating systems, there’s something to be said about the convenience and ubiquity of the Kindle ecosystem. The library is seemingly endless (with discounts galore), supplemented by Prime Reading and Kindle Unlimited, so it’s easy to get sucked in when you’re already shopping on Amazon for household goods and holiday gifts. But when it comes to value for your money (and a pure spec breakdown), you can get more from Kobo and Boox devices. Kindle isn’t the only name in town anymore for ereaders, and it hasn’t been for a long time, and that seems to be a more pronounced fact now with the introduction of the Colorsoft. If nothing else, Amazon has finally filled a glaring hole in its ereader lineup with this device.

Amazon Kindle Colorsoft vs. the competition

	Amazon Kindle Colorsoft	Kobo Libra Colour	Boox Go Color 7
Price	$280	$220	$250
Display size	7-inch color E Ink Kalaido 3 (with custom display stack)	7-inch color E Ink Kalaido 3	7-inch color E Ink Kalaido 3
Pixel density	300 ppi (black-and-white), 150 ppi (color content)	300 ppi (black-and-white), 150 ppi (color content)	300 ppi (black-and-white), 150 ppi (color content)
Storage	32GB	32GB	64GB
Battery life	Up to 8 weeks	Up to 6 weeks	2,300 mAh capacity; “long-lasting” battery life
Page-turn buttons	No	Yes	Yes
Adjustable warm light	Yes	Yes	Yes
Auto brightness adjustments	Yes	No	No
Auto warm light adjustments	No	Yes	No
Waterproof rating	IPX8	IPX8	Not provided
Pinch-to-zoom support	Yes	Yes	Not provided
Stylus support	No	Yes	No
Audiobook support	Yes, Audible audiobooks	Yes, Kobo audiobooks	Yes, via Android apps
Library support	Yes, via Overdrive’s “Send to Kindle” option	Yes, via built-in Overdrive integration	Yes, via Android apps
Wireless charging	Yes	No	No
USB-C charging	Yes	Yes	Yes
Wi-Fi	Yes	Yes	Yes
Bluetooth	Yes	Yes	Yes

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/kindle-colorsoft-review-the-missing-link-in-amazons-ereader-lineup-131529685.html?src=rss

While cooking things like chicken, potatoes or veggies, I am often simultaneously waxing poetic about the brief period in my life that I owned an air fryer. It just makes everything easier while still creating really good quality food. Now I’m tempted to get back on the air fryer train thanks to a big sale on Ninja’s DZ550​ Air Fryer. The model is currently available in an early Black Friday deal for $130, down from $250 — a 48 percent discount. 

The DZ550 is a version of one of our top picks for air fryers — with the extra perk of including a thermometer. The thermometer should provide you with the exact level of cooked you’re looking for across the two independent five-quart air fryer baskets — yes, you can cook two separate things simultaneously. You can also use two different options of the six cooking settings: air fryer, air broil, roast, bake, dehydrate and reheat. 

The main issue with this air fryer is size. You do not want to get the Ninja DZ550​ Air Fryer if your counter and storage spaces are limited. It has a depth of 17.1 inches and a width of 13.9 inches so it’s going to take up some real estate. But, hey, it’s that size that lets you cook two things at once so only you can decide if the trade-off is worth it. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/one-of-our-favorite-ninja-air-fryers-is-nearly-half-off-ahead-of-black-friday-130146753.html?src=rss

Sennheiser has launched a new all-in-one microphone system that can transform according to your needs. The new Profile Wireless set comes with two clip-on microphones, which are pre-paired with a charging bar. While you can easily clip those mics to wherever you wish, you can also use the included magnetic mounts if you have to attach them to delicate clothing.

If you’re interviewing people in your video or shooting more traditional reporting-style content, you can turn one of the clip-on mics into a handheld mic by inserting it into the charging bar. You can also add the big foam windshield Sennheiser included in the package to block out environmental noise. Finally, the mic can also turn into a desktop mic by mounting it onto the included table stands.

Sennheiser

Profile Wireless’ charging bar has an OLED touch display that shows the audio levels for the clip-on mics. It can connect to cameras, phones and laptops with the included adapters, so you can film with different devices. If you connect it to a phone using the Lightning or the USB-C adaptor included in the package, the receiver can automatically rotate to make sure its OLED display remains legible and visible to you. 

Each clip-on mic has a 24-bit recording capability and comes with 16 GB memory for internal recording. If you switch on Backup Recording Mode, it will only use the mic’s internal storage if its wireless signal becomes too weak to transmit audio to the recording device. The mics have a range of 245 meters (804 feet) within line of sight, and up to 150 meters within line of sight (492 feet) when taking body blocking into account. ​

The Profile Wireless system is now available for pre-order in the US ($299), Europe (€299) and the UK (£259), making it cheaper than DJI’s comparable microphone set. That said, Sennheiser’s mic doesn’t have Bluetooth connectivity, while DJI’s does. It doesn’t have a solid shipping date yet, but it will be released either sometime in the fourth quarter of 2024 or the first quarter of 2025. 

Sennheiser

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/sennheisers-profile-wireless-is-a-clip-on-tabletop-and-handheld-mic-all-in-one-123008296.html?src=rss

Microsoft has issued a warning about an ongoing spear-phishing campaign by a threat actor called Midnight Blizzard, which US and UK authorities previously linked to Russia’s intelligence agency. The company said it discovered that the bad actor has been sending out “highly targeted spear-phishing emails” since at least October 22 and that it believes the operation’s goal is to collect intelligence. Based on its observations, the group has been sending emails to individuals linked to various sectors, but it’s known for targeting both government and non-government organizations, IT service providers, academia and defense. In addition, while it mostly focuses on organizations in the US and in Europe, this campaign also targeted individuals in Australia and Japan.

Midnight Blizzard has already sent out thousands of spear-phishing emails to over 100 organizations for this campaign, Microsoft said, explaining that those emails contain a signed Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connected to a server the bad actor controls. The group used email addresses belonging to real organizations stolen during its previous activities, making targets think that they’re opening legitimate emails. It also used social engineering techniques to make it look like the emails were sent by employees from Microsoft or Amazon Web Services. 

If someone clicks and opens the RDP attachment, a connection is established to the server Midnight Blizzard controls. It then gives the bad actor access to the target’s files, any network drives or peripherals (such as microphones and printers) connected to their computer, as well as their passkeys, security keys and other web authentication information. It could also install malware in the target’s computer and network, including remote-access trojans that it could use to remain in the victim’s system even after the initial connection has been cut off. 

The group is known by many other names, such as Cozy Bear and APT29, but you might remember it as the threat actor behind the 2020 SolarWinds attacks, wherein it had managed to infiltrate hundreds of organizations around the world. It also broke into the emails of several senior Microsoft executives and other employees earlier this year, accessing communication between the company and its customers. Microsoft didn’t say whether this campaign has anything to do with the US Presidential Elections, but it’s advising potential targets to be more proactive in protecting their systems. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/microsoft-issues-warning-for-ongoing-russia-affiliated-spear-phishing-campaign-120003125.html?src=rss

Over the last four years, the Biden administration’s antitrust efforts have been notable by their sheer number, with ongoing cases against Apple, Meta, Google and Amazon — as well as sparring with tech-adjacent players like Ticketmaster. Biden’s team has pushed to prevent giant mergers, increase competition and punish companies (however lightly) for unfair business practices.

So how about your next president? We compare Kamala Harris (who seems less aggressive on antitrust than her predecessor) to Donald Trump, whose stint in the White House was also pretty active in the antitrust space. Trump already has strong opinions on some of the biggest players in the tech space too.

— Mat Smith

The biggest tech stories you missed

• Canon’s new lens makes it easier and cheaper to shoot 3D VR content

• Apple’s AirPods Pro hearing health tools could normalize wearing earbuds everywhere

• Apple introduces the M4 Pro chip, which finally brings Thunderbolt 5 support

• Instagram reduces video quality for posts that aren’t raking in views

Get this delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!

Apple gives the Mac mini a tiny redesign

And, with M4 and M4 Pro chips, a lot of power.

Apple

Apple’s refreshed Mac mini is a five-inch by five-inch box, two inches tall, that could be a serious workhorse. Sure, you can equip it with Apple’s M4 chip, but it can also be configured with an even more powerful M4 Pro model, announced alongside the new mini.

So yes, it’s smaller than what came before it (the M2 iteration was a shorter 7.75-inch square). In fact, it’s getting down to almost Apple TV sizes. Apple has also finally given us a few front ports: two USB-C ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack. And if you go for the M4 Pro version, which delivers Thunderbolt 5 connectivity for the first time on a Mac, with up to three times the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 3, as well as up to 64GB of RAM.

That bandwidth will cost you, though. The new M4 Mac mini is on pre-order now, starting at $599 ($499 for education customers), and it’ll be available in stores on November 9. The M4 Pro model, meanwhile, starts at $1,399.

Continue reading.

Sony pulls the plug on Concord and shuts down Firewalk Studios

That’s how poorly the team shooter was received.

Sony has officially killed off Concord and is shuttering the studio behind the game. Concord‘s servers were taken down just two weeks after the launch of the competitive team shooter from Firewalk Studios, after poor sales. Sony bought the studio only last spring.

Continue reading.

Watch the trailer for Netflix’s Senna biopic

The six-parter stars Gabriel Leone.

Netflix

After the success of docuseries Drive to Survive, Netflix is spotlighting a motorsport great. Senna will show the roots, drive and tragic passing of Ayrton Senna (Gabriel Leone) as he goes from racing go-karts in São Paulo, Brazil, to international superstardom and 41-time Grands Prix winner.

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-how-will-the-next-us-president-deal-with-big-tech-111712080.html?src=rss

Google’s developers are now reviewing and accepting AI-generated code as the company commits to “building great products.”

We adhere to these markings because trust in data handling is crucial, the US gov says.