Sonos Ace review: was it worth it? - Technology news - NewsLocker (2024)

The first headphones from Sonos deliver on comfort, sound, and more — with a unique TV Audio Swap feature that’s very convenient (when it works). But the ongoing app fiasco casts a cloud over the company’s big moment.Continue reading…

Roku TV owners complain that motion smoothing is stuck ‘on’ after an update

Illustration: The Verge Somebody, call Tom Cruise — several Roku TV owners say that motion smoothing is suddenly enabled on their TVs with no way to turn it off.
Contributors on Reddit and in Roku’s community forum reported seeing the change on TCL TVs running on Roku OS 13, as did a few staffers on The Verge. However, for others who have access to “Expert” picture settings, the same update is in place without a change, and the settings to control it are still available.

The Windows on Arm chip race heats up with a challenger to Qualcomm

Photo by Walid Berrazeg / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm are the household names in chips — but in 2025, the popular but lesser known MediaTek might make a play to join them. Reuters reports that the Taiwanese chip company is now preparing an AI PC chipset to launch in late 2025 specifically for Windows PCs. Currently, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite is the alleged MacBook Air-beating talk of the town, and MediaTek wants a piece of that action.Accordin

Sony buys Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

An Alamo Drafthouse theater. | Image: Sony and Alamo Drafthouse Sony Pictures Entertainment has acquired the popular movie theater chain Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, the two companies announced on Wednesday.
Sony, which will oversee the theaters under a new Sony Pictures Experiences division, says it “will preserve Alamo Drafthouse’s distinctive movie-dining experience,” according to a press release. Alamo will continue to operate “all 35 of its cinemas across 25 metro areas

Advertisem*nt

Tesla’s $50 billion question comes down to the wire

Illustration: Lille Allen / The Verge On Thursday, Tesla shareholders will face a stark choice: approve Elon Musk’s enormous pay package, the largest ever awarded to a chief executive, or risk him picking up his ball and going home.The shareholder meeting on Thursday is a referendum on Musk’s tumultuous leadership, in which he took a relatively niche startup, wrested it away from its founders, and turned it into what is arguably one of the most consequential car companies in modern h

Fired SpaceX workers sue Elon Musk for sexual harassment and retaliation

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by STR / NurPhoto, Getty Images Eight former SpaceX engineers filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk on Wednesday alleging sexual harassment and retaliation.
Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002, “knowingly and purposefully created an unwelcome hostile work environment based upon his conduct of interjecting into the workplace vile sexual photographs, memes, and commentary that demeaned women and/or the LGBTQ+ community,” says the employees’ compl

A growing number of Americans are getting their news from TikTok

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge As TikTok becomes a more popular news source for Americans, young adults increasingly believe the platform exposes them to information they’re unlikely to see elsewhere, according to a new survey of Americans’ news habits.The survey, released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, looks at the role major social media platforms — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X — play in Americans’ news diets. According to the survey, TikTok

Xbox June update adds better backgrounds and saves more than one Wi-Fi network

Image: Xbox Microsoft is rolling out an Xbox update that lets you view game art with any Xbox Home background. That means you’ll continue to see your dynamic or regular background when you’re not scrolling through different games.
Previously, Microsoft only let you view game art with the default Xbox Home background. Now, you can keep your background and view game art without having to decide between the two. Microsoft first started testing this feature in April, and you can see how

Advertisem*nt

Zack Snyder’s animated series Twilight of the Gods hits Netflix in September

Image: Netflix It’s going to be a busy few weeks for Zack Snyder on Netflix. Just a day after Netflix announced the director’s cut of Rebel Moon would start streaming on August 2nd comes the news that another Snyder project will hit the service soon after. Twilight of the Gods, an animated series based on Norse mythology, will start streaming on September 19th. You can get a first glimpse at the show in action in the brief new teaser trailer above.
The animation is being handled by S

Amazon’s note-taking Kindle Scribe has returned to its best price to date

If you’re looking for an e-reader you take notes with, the Scribe is a good option for those embedded in Amazon’s ecosystem. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge With the ability to solve math equations and convert typed text into your own handwriting, Apple’s iPads are going to become a lot more student-friendly when iPadOS 18 launches in the fall. However, if you want something dedicated to studying or reading, I personally think an e-reader with note-taking capabili

The best small updates Apple didn’t mention at WWDC

As usual, Apple left plenty of things out while presenting its next big software updates. | Image: Apple Apple left out a lot of small updates at its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote this year. It makes sense: the company had a lot to talk about, with a third of its presentation entirely devoted to new AI features. But that doesn’t make the features that didn’t get airtime any less worth talking about.
From new bezel animations to better ways to manage widgets, there is plenty

Databricks bolsters Mosaic AI with tools to build and evaluate compound AI systems

Databricks has added tools to fine-tune models as well as deploy them across applications with full confidence in response quality.Read More

Startup spotlight: Hard Skill Exchange and FINQ transformation in business and tech

CONTRIBUTOR CONTENT: Disney CEO Bob Iger once said, “You can’t allow tradition to get in the way of innovation.” Conventional systems and structures often jail the potential for groundbreaking progress and creative evolution. The same ideology couldn’t be truer in business and technology where the strict adherence to the status quo can…Read More

Epic Games database leak hints at a trove of unannounced games

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge An unofficial site tracking titles in the Epic Games library may have just leaked a ton of upcoming games, as reported earlier by Wccftech. The site, called EpicDB, was taken offline shortly after it posted information scraped from the Epic Games Store catalog on Monday, but that didn’t stop people from scanning the list and posting their findings.
You can see the list of games from publishers like Bethesda, Sega, Sony, Square Enix, and others in a s

Life360 confirms a hacker stole Tile tracker IDs and customer info

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge A hacker breached the systems behind Tile device trackers and stole customer data, including names, addresses, emails, and phone numbers. According to reporting from 404 Media, which was contacted by the hacker, the collected information came from a database that indicated it was intended for law enforcement to identify owners of specific Tile trackers. The stolen information did not include precise Tile location data.
Life360, which owns Tile, published a st

Thoughtly announces seed round to revolutionize contact centers with human-like AI agents

CONTRIBUTOR CONTENT: As venture capitalist and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen famously said, “Software is eating the world.” Now, software is coming for call center agents. Thoughtly, a New York-based startup, announced today on LinkedIn their seed funding initiative with participation from various companies. This investment underscores the trans…Read More

Parallel digital trading card game debuts on Epic Games Store

Parallel Studios is launching its digital trading card game Parallel on the Epic Games Store today.Read More

Jabra’s earbuds are going away, but the impact they made isn’t

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The company’s Elite earbuds hit at the right time and had their moment, but the end was inevitable. Thanks for pushing multipoint until it became the norm, Jabra.Continue reading…

Warner Bros. is beefing up its animation slate with even more Adventure Time

Image: Cartoon Network As part of Warner Bros. Discovery’s big plan to double down on previously established IP, the studio has ordered a slate of new projects spun off from the worlds of Adventure Time, Regular Show, and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.
Timed to Warner Bros.’ presentation at this year’s Annecy Festival, Cartoon Network Studios announced today that it has greenlit a number of new projects including an Adventure Time film as well as series spun off fro

Moment Warehouse Sale: Deals on Cameras, Lenses, and Accessories

Moment's Warehouse Sale has deals on Wandrd camera bags, mobile lenses, and Instax cameras.

Game Changers top game startup list returns with Lightspeed, GamesBeat and Nasdaq

Game leaders have teamed up again with Lightspeed and GamesBeat to accelerate extraordinary gaming startups.Read More

Metallica is headlining Fortnite’s next concert

Image: Epic Games It’s sad but true: Metallica is coming to Fortnite. Epic just announced that the group will be featured in the game’s next concert. The news is part of a larger musical collaboration between Fortnite and the heavy metal band.
First up, the concert itself. It’s called “Metallica: Fuel Fire Fury,” and players can check it out during a few windows later this month: June 22nd at 2PM, 5PM, and 11PM ET and June 23rd at 10AM, 2PM, and 5PM ET. There aren&r

MLPerf 4.0 training results show up to 80% in AI performance gains

MLPerf 4.0 benchmark demonstrate that it takes more than hardware to improve AI training.Read More

AI and the future of storytelling | Inworld AI

Kylan Gibbs gave a talk recently at the TED 2024 conference, where he delivered a vision for the future of AI and storytelling in games.Read More

Google Gemini, explained

Image: The Verge Artificial intelligence has become this year’s wonder technology. But because it comes in a lot of different flavors from a lot of different companies, it can be really confusing. You’ve not only got the ChatGPT bot created by OpenAI, but you’ve got the big three — Google, Apple, and Microsoft — cooking up their own versions.Google’s latest attempt is called Gemini, and it’s no less confusing than the others.
When I first started researc

This macOS Sequoia wallpaper pays tribute to classic Macintosh icons

This ones for you, retro Apple enthusiasts. | Image: Basic Apple Guy Apple is introducing a new dynamic screensaver and wallpaper combo in macOS Sequoia that respectfully eulogizes retro Macintosh iconography. Simply dubbed “Macintosh,” MacRumors reports that the animated wallpaper shifts through graphics designed by Susan Kare, the artist and early Apple employee responsible for many of the typefaces and interface elements on the first Macintosh personal computer.
Users can’t

The EU slaps additional tariffs on Chinese EV imports

BYD is just one of the Chinese automakers facing increased tariffs in the EU. | Image: Getty The European Union will place an additional tariff on vehicles imported from China starting next month, the commission announced on Wednesday. The extra tariffs go as high as 38 percent, adding to the existing 10 percent duty the EU imposes on foreign vehicles.
The move comes after a monthslong investigation concluded that Chinese EV makers benefit from unfair state-backed subsidization, allowing them to

As the gen AI revolution gains momentum, it’s an especially critical year to recognize and celebrate the women impacting the technology.Read More

Spreadsheet Superstars

It’s happy hour in Las Vegas, and the MGM Grand casino is crawling with people. The National Finals Rodeo is in town, the NBA’s inaugural in-season tournament is underway, the Raiders play on Sunday, and the U2 residency is going strong at the giant Sphere, so it seems everyone in every bar and at every slot machine is looking forward to something. (And wearing a cowboy hat.) Even for a town built on nonstop buzz, this qualifies as a uniquely eventful weekend.
But I’d wager th

How to Use Your Smartphone to Cope With Hearing Loss (2024): Tips for iPhone, Android

From live transcriptions to sound filtering, here’s how you can benefit from features on Android and Apple devices.