You're not alone if you're unable to check your Instagram feeds. Instagram has confirmed that some users are "having issues" accessing their accounts. The social network hasn't identified a cause as of this writing, but some users have received notices that their accounts were suspended, while others have seen their follower counts drop.
We've asked Instagram for further comment on the outage and will let you know if we hear more. Reports of failures started spiking on Downdetector shortly before 9AM Eastern. They're not consistent, however, as many users (including here at Engadget) aren't running into problems.
We're aware that some of you are having issues accessing your Instagram account. We're looking into it and apologize for the inconvenience. #instagramdown
This isn't the first significant outage in the past year. Parent company Meta's social networks suffered a major outage roughly a year ago after a bug disconnected key parts of the company's backbone network. More recently, Instagram fixed a bug in early October that prevented iOS users from accessing the service. An instant crash bug in September didn't help, either. These hiccups aren't frequent, but they suggest Instagram still has teething troubles.
Nonetheless, this latest failure comes at a bad time. Although Instagram's audience is continuing to grow and just topped 2 billion active users, Meta is bleeding cash as it invests in metaverse technologies like virtual reality hardware and its Horizon Worlds platform. The firm isn't in immediate danger, but it needs reliability if it's to keep growing its social media empire and offset mounting costs.
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Robot vacuums have come a long way over the past few years. They’re smarter, more powerful and (marginally) better at avoiding chair legs than they ever were before, and you don’t have to shell out as much money to get one either. There are also many more robo-vacs available now than there once were, so deciding which to buy isn’t as simple as choosing the latest model from the biggest brand. We tested out many of the newest robot vacuums available now to see how they stack up against each other.
We tackled this question in our budget robot vacuum guide and the answer is yes, especially if vacuuming is one of your least favorite chores. Robots take the hard work out of cleaning your floors – just turn the thing on and watch it go. Any robot vacuum worth buying is semi-autonomous in that it will suck up dirt around your home until its battery is low and then make its way back to its charging dock. You should only have to interact with it to turn it on, empty its dustbin and untangle it if it were to get stuck somewhere.
That’s not to say robot vacuums are perfect. They’re almost always less powerful and less flexible than standard vacuums. Since most robo-vacs are much smaller than traditional models, they often don’t have the same level of suction you’ll get in an upright machine. Plus, their dustbins are smaller, so they will need to be emptied more frequently. While WiFi-connected robot vacuums give you the flexibility to start a cleaning job from anywhere using an app, targeting a small area of your home can be more complicated. Some robo-vacs have spot-cleaning features that focus the machine’s attention on a specific area, which almost – but not quite – mimics the spot-cleaning you’d be able to do yourself with a regular vacuum.
What to look for in a robot vacuum
iRobt / 1996-2001 AccuSoft Co., All rights reserved
As we explained in our budget guide, WiFi is a key feature for most robot vacuums. Some of the cheapest devices aren’t WiFi connected, though, so if you’re looking at the most affordable devices, it’s best to check for that feature before you buy. WiFi connectivity allows a robot vacuum to do things like communicate with a mobile app, which then allows you to control the device from your phone.
Suction power is another important factor to consider. Unfortunately, there isn’t a standard power scale that all robo-vacs adhere to, so it’s difficult to compare suction power among a bunch of devices. Some companies provide Pascal (Pa) levels and generally the higher the Pa, the stronger the vacuum will be. But other companies don’t rely on Pa levels and simply say their robots have X-times more suction than other robots.
Ultimately, we recommend thinking first about the floors in your home: Do you have carpet throughout, or tile and hardwood, or a mix? Robots with stronger suction power will do a better job cleaning carpets as they can get into the nooks and crannies more easily. Some machines have “max” modes as well, which ups the suction power but also typically eats at battery life faster than the “normal” cleaning mode.
Past a certain price threshold, you’ll find advanced features like home mapping, improved object detection and automatic dustbin disposal. Home mapping is exactly what it sounds like: The vacuum uses sensors to map your home’s layout as it cleans, allowing you to send it to particular rooms or areas in later cleaning jobs. Most robo-vacs have some version of object detection, but some will be better than others at actually avoiding things like chair legs and children’s toys. Some, like iRobot’s j7 series, even go so far as to promise to avoid things like pet poop that can potentially ruin your machine.
Finally, for peak convenience, consider a robot vacuum that comes with a clean base. These are basically garbage bins that are attached to the machine’s charging base. At the end of each job, the robo-vac automatically empties its small dustbin into the large clean base – that means you won’t have to empty the dustbin yourself and you’ll only have to tend to the base once every few weeks. Just keep in mind that most clean bases require proprietary garbage bags – another long-term expense you’ll have to factor into the cost of owning one of these devices.
Best mid-range robot vacuum: Shark AI Robot Vacuum with Base
Shark
Shark’s $650 RV2502AE AI robot vacuum with Base ticks all of the boxes that a mid-range machine should. It offers reliable performance, its mobile app is easy to use and it produces accurate home maps. On top of that, its base is bagless, which means you won’t have to spend money every few months on garbage bags for your robot vacuum.
Setting up the Shark is as simple as taking it and its base out of the box, plugging the base in and downloading the companion mobile app to finish things up. The machine connects to WiFi, allowing you to control it via the app when you’re not at home, or using Google Assistant and Alexa voice commands. The first journey the Shark makes is an “Explore Run,” during which it produces a map of your home that you can then edit from the mobile app.
The Shark produced a pretty accurate floorplan of my two-bedroom apartment, and I was happy to see a “re-explore” option that I could use if the map wasn’t up to my standards. With a completed map, you’re then asked to label rooms in your home. That way, you can send the Shark to only the bedroom for more direct cleaning jobs, select “no-go” zones and more.
The first few times I ran the Shark robot, I had it clean my whole apartment. I was impressed by how quiet it was – or rather, how much quieter it was compared to other robo-vacs I’ve tried. You’ll have to turn up the volume on your TV if it’s cleaning in the same room, but it’ll be hard to hear when it’s sucking up debris down the hallway. It also did a decent job maneuvering its way around the cat toys I left out on the floor. The device’s object detection feature claims it can avoid things as small as four inches, but I found that it was much better at sensing and moving around the three-foot-long cat tunnel on my floor than the many tiny mouse toys.
But even if Mr. Mouse caught the edge of the Shark’s wheels now and then, the robo-vac took it all in stride. One thing I look for when testing robot vacuums is how much attention they need from me during cleanings. The best ones require no extra attention at all – once they start a job, they’re smart enough to putter around your home, move around objects and return to their base when they’re finished. With Shark’s robo-vac, I never had to tend to it when it was cleaning. Now, I did my due diligence and picked up pieces of clothing and charging cables off the ground before running the Shark (ditto for every other robot vacuum I tested), so those things were never in the way. Most companion apps will actually remind you to do this before starting a cleaning job.
This Shark machine comes with a clean base, so it will empty its dustin after every job – and also during a job if its bin gets full before it’s done. In the latter situation, the Shark will go back to cleaning automatically after it’s freed up its bin. That’s a great feature, but I found the best thing about the base to be its bagless design. Shark’s device is unlike most other robot vacuum clean bases because you don’t have to keep buying proprietary garbage bags to outfit the interior of the base. When you want to empty the base, part of it snaps off and opens to eject debris, and it easily locks back in place when you return it. Not only is this quite convenient, but it also brings the lifetime cost of ownership down since you won’t be buying special bags every few months.
Its worth noting that Shark has a couple of models that are similar to the RV2502AE that just have a different color scheme, a 30- versus 60-day clean base capacity and other minor differences. The biggest feature that would impact how you use the machine is the clean base capacity: we recommend springing for the 60-day models if you want to interact as little as possible with your robo-vac.
Runner up: Roomba j7
Valentina Palladino / Engadget
Not much has changed since Amazon bought iRobot a few months back – the Roomba j7 remains a great option if you want the latest obstacle avoidance technology from the company in an attractive package. The $600 j7 doesn’t come with a clean base, but you can get the same vacuum with one for $200 extra.
The biggest selling point of the Roomba j7 series is its upgraded AI-driven computer vision which helps it detect and move around objects. This includes pet poop – a robot vacuum’s arch nemesis – and iRobot even promises that it will replace your j7 machine if it runs into pet poop within the first year of ownership.
That’s one feature I was happy I never got to test, as my cat kept all of her activity to her litter box. Otherwise, the Roomba j7 did a good job sucking up dirt and debris around my apartment and it didn’t make too much noise while doing so. All of the robo-vacs I tested at this mid-range level had roughly the same level of suction, so there wasn’t a big difference between them when it came to cleaning power.
Like other robot vacuums, you can set cleaning schedules in the iRobot mobile app so you never have to start a cleaning job on the fly. The app also has a “favorites” section, which lets you create profiles that you’ll use all the time like “clean the living room and the entryway.” And if you prefer to use voice commands, the robot supports Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant.
The Roomba j7 has Imprint Smart Mapping, but unlike the Shark, it took more than one runthrough of my home for it to create a complete map. iRobot’s app distinguishes between a regular cleaning job and a “mapping run,” so make sure you’re choosing the latter the first few times you run the machine.
I tested the j7+, which means I was treated to the roaring sounds of the machine emptying its dustbin into its clean base. The emptying process isn’t as simple as an automatically opening flat that shakes dirt from one garbage can to another – the base actually sucks the dirt from vacuum. This was the case for all of the machines I tried that came with clean bases; they’re all quite loud, but the Roomba j7+ was the loudest of them all. The whooshing sounds last for only five to 10 seconds, but it was shocking the first time it happened. Just keep that in mind if you ever decide to run the robot at night when others are sleeping.
Honorable mention: Anker Eufy RoboVac X8 Hybrid
Anker
You may be unfamiliar with Anker’s robot vacuums, but they’re often more affordable alternatives to the iRobots and Sharks of the world. The $649 Eufy RoboVac X8 Hybrid isn’t a budget machine by any means, but it’s a solid robot vacuum that offers a few key features that many competitors don’t have. Plus, you can often find it on sale for $549 or even $449.
Unlike our other midrange picks, the X8 Hybrid doesn’t come with a clean base, nor is there one you can purchase separately. It’s just a standalone robot vacuum, but the “hybrid” indicates that it’s also a mop. It has both a dustbin for collecting debris and a 250-milliliter water tank that you can fill whenever you want to run a mopping cycle. Plenty of other robot vacuums have this feature, and it could be even more useful than a clean base if you have lots of tile or hardwood floors throughout your home.
Besides that, I was impressed with how easy it was to set up the X8 Hybrid, how accurate its mapping technology was and how many extra features it supports. It has four cleaning modes – auto, room, zone and spot – and four suction levels starting with Pure at the low end and topping out at Max. These features give you a lot of control over where the machine cleans and how powerfully it will do so. The X8 Hybrid was in Pure mode the first time I ran it, and I was surprised by not only how quiet it was but also how thoroughly it cleaned considering it was on the lowest suction setting.
There’s also a “tap and go” feature that lets you pinpoint any spot on your home map in the EufyHome app, sending the robot there to clean. Manual controls are also available, which isn’t something you see on a ton of robo-vacs. This option lets you control the machine almost like a slow and slightly clumsy RC car, giving you more control over where it cleans.
It may not have the name recognition that iRobot or Shark do, but the Eufy RoboVac X8 Hybrid is a solid choice nonetheless, especially if you don’t care to add a clean base into the mix. It’s an even more tempting choice if you can snag it when it’s discounted.
Best high-end robot vacuum: iRobot Roomba s9+
Valentina Palladino / Engadget
The Roomba s9+ is admittedly overkill for most people – but it’s nothing if not one of the best robot vacuums out there. You’ll notice its premium features as soon as you unbox it. The s9+ is the biggest but also the most attractive robo-vac I tried, with a corner-friendly design, copper accents and a 1.5-foot tall clean base. The setup was quick and easy, with the machine taking only a few minutes to connect to my home’s WiFi and the iRobot app.
While the s9+ doesn’t have the Precision Navigation feature that the newer j7 does, it has something called “Careful Driver” that uses a 3D sensor to detect and clean around objects. It seems that the main difference is that the s9+ isn’t specifically wired to avoid pet poop, so keep that in mind if you have furry friends around the house. However, with 40x the suction power of a standard Roomba, the s9+ does a great job cleaning up pet hair.
It’s aso louder than the j7 when it’s cleaning, but not irritatingly so, and I noticed a deeper clean in my carpets thanks to the extra suction. And it changes its cleaning mode automatically when transitioning from, say, a carpeted floor to tile.
Even this $1,000 robot vacuum bumped into a few table legs while cleaning, but it was noticeably better than other machines at navigating around my furniture and correcting itself when it got stuck. It also moves faster than the j7, so it was able to cover a bit more of my apartment before it had to return to the base for charging after about one hour of cleaning. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the s9+ wasn’t nearly as loud as the j7 vacuum when emptying its dustbin into the clean base.
With the iRobot app experience being the same across all Roombas, the s9+ stands out for its subtle premium features like its elegant design, elegant-looking clean base, superior cleaning intelligence and top-of-the-line suction power. Aside from the extra suction, those are all nice-to-haves rather than must-haves, so most people – including you! – probably don’t need the Roomba s9+. It’s the fanciest robot vacuum iRobot has to offer, but you’ll get a similar level of quality with the Roomba j7 while spending a couple hundred bucks less.
Honorable mention: Roborock S7+
Valentina Palladino / Engadget
Roborock’s high-end S7+ deserves a mention for its cleaning power and number of additional features that many other competitors don’t have. First, the S7+ is a vac-and-mop combo, and its mopping map automatically lifts itself out of the way when the machine reaches the carpet. That means you can have it clean your whole home, vacuuming and mopping in the right spots, without you giving it any extra attention (besides filling its 300ml water tank at the start).
The $950 machine has a longer setup process because its clean base comes in two pieces. You must attach the bottom of the base, where the robo-vac charges, to the garbage-bin upper portion using a few screws and a tool that attaches to the bottom of the base. Roborock provides everything you need to do this in the box, so while it takes a bit more time, it’s still an easy process.
What wasn’t so easy for me at first was connecting the S7+ to the Roborock app. The vacuum had trouble connecting to my home’s WiFi network, but I was able to connect it to the Mi Home app, which is Xiaomi’s main smart home companion app (Xiaomi is an investor in Roborock). There aren’t a ton of differences between the two apps when it comes to robo-vac controls, but the S7+ is designed to work with Roborock’s program. After troubleshooting with a Roborock representative, I was able to fix the problem by factory resetting the vacuum and that allowed me to connect it to the Roborock app properly.
That said, the Roborock app isn’t nearly as polished as those from iRobot, Shark and others. The main page shows your home’s map along with the battery level, cleaning time, cleaning area in feet, and buttons that let you quickly start a cleaning job and empty the dustbin. You’re also able to select specific rooms or zones to clean, but the rest of the control options live in the menu accessible by the three-dot icon at the top-right corner of the app. Things are a little buried, and that might make the S7+ harder for robot-vacuum newbies to use.
When it comes to cleaning, the Roborock S7+ did a great job sucking up dirt around my home. In addition to the usual features like cleaning schedules, zone targeting and others, the vacuum also has things like child lock, which will disable the physical buttons on the machine; different auto-emptying settings to choose from; “pin and go,” which lets you tap on your home map to send the robot to a specific location; and manual direction controls so you can move the machine like a toy car. This isn’t the robot vacuum to get if you want the most polished experience – and you may very well want that if you’re dropping $1,000 on one – but it remains a powerful vac-and-mop machine with a handful of extra perks.
Best budget: Roomba 694
Valentina Palladino / Engadget
iRobot’s $279 Roomba 694 is a great option for most people thanks to its good cleaning power and easy-to-use mobile app. We won’t get too deep into it here since we have a whole guide to affordable robot vacuums with additional recommendations. But suffice to say, the 694 gives you all the essentials you’d expect from a robot vacuum, along with all of the convenience that comes with iRobot’s mobile app.
Currently, few things make people's eyes roll harder than the metaverse. As someone who grew up reading sci-fi novels and dreaming about what virtual worlds might look like in the future, that's kind of sad, but I get it. Mark Zuckerberg is so thirsty to make those dreams a reality that he’s betting billions of dollars and the survival of his company on the metaverse being The Next Big Thing. Meanwhile, the average person is still wondering what the point of having a VR headset really is, aside from maybe smashing some polygons in Superhot or Beat Saber.
However, even though it feels like VR headsets have been around forever, we're still very much in the early days of virtual reality. It was only a couple of years ago when the company previously known as Facebook brought VR to the masses with the Quest 2. And now with the Quest Pro, Meta is trying to foster a new baseline level of tech designed to make digital worlds feel more lifelike, intuitive and immersive. And honestly, I think Meta has done it, because while its $1,500 price is hard to justify, it’s easy to see the potential of what this hardware can support.
Hardware and optics
Packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ chip, 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, the Quest Pro delivers 50 percent more performance than the Quest 2, according to Meta. However, the real challenge in designing this headset was blending its standalone design with something that's simple and comfortable to wear, and I think Meta has struck an almost ideal balance.
By switching to new pancake lenses, the company was able to reduce the thickness of the headset while still delivering a relatively high resolution of 1,800 x 1,920 pixels per eye. For comparison, that's higher than what you get from the Valve Index (1,440 x 1,600 per eye) but a bit less than the Vive Pro 2 (2,448 × 2,448 per eye). Though topping out with a 90Hz refresh rate, the Quest Pro’s visuals aren’t quite as fast as most of its high-end PC-based rivals. For me, that hasn't been a huge deal, as graphics and gameplay have been smooth and stutter-free. But I should mention I've never really had problems with VR-related motion sickness, so your experience may vary.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
My one nitpick is that I wish the Quest Pro's 96-degree vertical field of view was a little bit taller. I've found that due to the headset's visor-like design and its FOV, you tend to always have a bit of the real world peeking in across the bottom of your eye line. Thankfully, its 106-degree horizontal FOV is pretty much as good or better than all of its rivals except for the Vive Pro 2's 116 degrees.
Elsewhere, the Quest Pro features 10 sensors on the interior and exterior of the device. The five outward-facing cameras support full-color passthrough, hand-tracking and stuff like scene understanding without the need for additional external sensors. Meanwhile, the five inward-facing sensors track eyes and face movements for features like foveated rendering and enhanced avatar animations, but more on that later.
Design and fit
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
To balance the trade-off between power and fit, Meta cleverly used a curved battery built into the back of the headset, so there's no need for wires or a belt-mounted power cell. And when combined with a soft forehead cushion and a handy dial for adjusting the headband, you get a headset that's extremely easy to put on and wear. Further adjustments are provided via a small dial in front that changes lens distance, while IPD (interpupillary distance) adjustment is handled by simply moving each eyepiece left and right as needed. All told, it's an incredibly straightforward setup, and thanks to the Quest Pro's fit calibration feature, the headset can remind you to adjust your settings if it notices things aren't quite right. And when it comes to sound, you get speakers that support spatial audio built into the arms of the headset, though if you prefer to use your own headphones, there’s a 3.5mm jack too.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
That said, even with all the attention Meta paid toward creating a comfortable and balanced headset, the Quest Pro's heft can still be a bit of an issue. If you're hopping in and out of VR, you might not notice much. But with a weight of just over a pound and a half, in longer sessions, I noticed my forehead sometimes got a bit sore. Usually fiddling around with how the Quest Pro sat on my head was enough to relieve excess pressure. But I also wouldn't be surprised if this setup gave some people a low-grade headache during extended use. And I'd also be remiss not to mention the sweat factor, as the leather forehead pad can get damp depending on your activity, and sometimes I wonder if having active cooling on a VR headset is what we need. Heck, developers could even use fans to mimic a breeze in a game or movie, which could be kind of nice.
Controllers
The other big part of the headset's kit is the new Touch Pro Controllers. Meta is using the same basic design as what we got on the Quest 2. The big difference this time is that instead of relying on a big light ring with LEDs, the controllers now have their own built-in sensors for both hand and finger tracking. Not only does this help streamline their design, but I also found a noticeable upgrade in accuracy and responsiveness.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
The controllers also have much-improved haptics that adds an extra level of immersion, especially in apps where you can flip the controllers over to use as a stylus. For example in Painting VR, brushes use a variety of rumbles and vibrations to convey a sense of size and weight. The overall effect feels much like HD Rumble on the Nintendo Switch's Joy-Con, but with even better fidelity for force feedback.
I also appreciate the controller’s subtly textured rubberized grips that make things feel secure even in the heat of virtual battle. However, I kind of miss the hand straps Valve uses on the Index controllers which allow you to quickly switch between buttons and finger or hand gestures without needing to set the controllers down.
General performance and apps
Of course the real magic happens when hardware meets software, and at least out of the gate, the Quest Pro offers some pretty impressive performance. The headset’s optics are sharp while eliminating nearly any hint of the screen door effect. Text is also very legible and I had no trouble writing part of this review in VR. Next, when my colleague Cherlynn Low visited my virtual office in Horizon Workrooms, I think the combination of Quest Pro’s eye and facial tracking to deliver more lifelike expressions on my avatar might have been convincing enough to get her to spend more time in VR. And on my end, support for spatial audio makes working in VR feel less like floating in a simulation and more like actually working in an office with someone else.So even though Cherlynn was sick that day, we were able to collaborate without me risking catching what she had, and it felt kind of heartwarming in a weird, nerdy way.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
On top of that, a lot of tent-pole features like Meta's scene understanding just kind of work, at least most of the time. I found that the Quest Pro was pretty good at automatically detecting the position of floors and walls, so I didn't have to constantly redraw the boundaries for my room-scale guardian. It even automatically detected some objects like my desk (and remembered them in subsequent sessions), which makes it easier to set up a virtual workspace that mimics what I have IRL. Though I did notice in rooms that were more cluttered, things didn't always work quite as smoothly.
The Quest Pro's full-color passthrough is also really impressive. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still not as good as using your eyes to navigate meatspace. But it's more than accurate enough to let me walk from room to room to grab a glass of water without taking off the Quest Pro or bumping into anything.
In apps like Cubism, I had a blast positioning blocks to solve puzzles in three dimensions and in I Expect you to Die I got to live out my childhood fantasy of being a secret agent. And in Tribe XR, I was able to enjoy the basics of mixing and beat-matching while using the same equipment pro DJs use, at least virtually. The improved three-window multitasking in the Quest Pro’s desktop mode even makes it easier to switch between apps and stay connected while you're in VR. Or, well, it would be if there was a wider availability of 2D apps.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
And that kind of brings me to the big issue with the Quest Pro: there just aren't a lot of optimized apps that really take advantage of its upgraded capabilities. For traditional 2D apps, while important stuff like Slack is supposedly on the way, there isn't even support for messaging software like WhatsApp. So if you're like me and aren't a frequent user of Instagram or Facebook Messenger, things can still feel a bit disconnected.
But perhaps the more telling thing is currently how few apps there are in the Quest Pro section of the store. Titles like Nanome, which lets you view molecules in VR are really neat and interesting, but rather niche. I don't know about you, but I don’t really spend a ton of time staring at various compounds and conformations in my free time – and I was a bio major in college.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
This is sort of to be expected, as it's going to take a while for developers to take advantage of the Quest Pro's new features. This headset kind of feels like the Nintendo Switch at launch but without a tentpole game or app like Breath of the Wild to pair with it. Sure, you can go back and enjoy all the old Quest apps, as the Pro is fully backward compatible with existing software. But when you're spending $1,500 on a VR headset, you kind of want something you can lose yourself in for the next month or more.
My other gripe is that, while a lot of the big-ticket features work surprisingly well, a lot of the finer details seem half-baked. For example, it took almost an hour for Cherlynn to successfully visit my office in Horizon Workrooms. Because this is VR, you can't just send a link to a meeting like you would in Zoom, which meant she had to bounce back and forth between her headset, phone and laptop just to find where to accept my invite. And when I wanted to upload an image to pin on my virtual whiteboard, first I had to go back to my fake chair at my fake desk just to upload something, before needing to move back to the whiteboard again to post it. That's just convoluted, and that’s even with my having already set up Meta’s Remote Desktop app. And while Meta says it's working on it, there are other little frustrations like being limited to a single virtual desktop (which you can’t even move by the way, at least not right now) when connected to a Windows PC while Mac users get three.
Charging and accessories
While Meta doesn't provide official battery life claims for the Quest Pro, I've found that you're looking at between two and a half and three and a half hours on a charge, depending on the use case. This is typically longer than I want to be in VR in a single sitting, but if you need to be jacked in for extended periods, the Quest Pro also comes with a six-foot USB-C cable you can use to keep it running.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Other bundled accessories include a protective silicone cover and two light blockers that attach magnetically to the side of the headset, which helps cut down on potential distractions from the physical realm. But if you really want that complete VR-dive experience, you'll have to shell out $50 for Meta's Full Light Blocker. Or you opt for the low-tech solution and just move to a dark room. You also get two Quest Touch Pro controllers along with two wrist straps and stylus nibs that can be attached to the bottom of the gamepads to suit your needs.
When it comes to keeping everything juiced up, there's a really handy wireless charging dock that holds both the headset and the controllers. Admittedly, getting the controllers to sit properly in the dock is a bit tricky at first. But the secret is holding them as if you're using them, before twisting your wrists inwards and then dropping them on the dock. If you did it right, you'll feel a little rumble and see the tiny indicator lights fire up. There's also a dedicated cable for charging the controllers, but you only get one. So if you're traveling with the Quest Pro and you leave the dock at home, you'll need to charge the controllers one at a time.
Wrap-up
Look, trying to review a next-gen VR headset feels kind of like evaluating a Mars colony based on the spaceship that takes you there: Ultimately the Quest Pro is a vessel to experience fancy new software that doesn’t exist yet. And right now, there just aren't enough apps to really say if that colony is a utopia or Autobot city after Megatron attacks – burned down and wasted.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
But if we can ignore that issue for a minute, at least on a hardware level, there's a lot to like about the Quest Pro. It offers similar or, in some situations, better performance than other high-end consumer headsets — all without the need for wires or a beefy PC. You can switch between controllers and hand gestures at a whim, while the plethora of sensors makes the headset a really great standalone device. You get sharp visuals, a streamlined design and surprisingly good battery life — not to mention a really handy charging dock.
But for now, we're going to have to wait for the headset’s software and experiences to catch up, which is a lot to ask when it costs this much to strap on the goggles. Purchasing a Quest Pro, at least for now, is something you do on faith, because you believe in the promise of VR and where it might go in the not-too-distant future. So while the Quest 2 can handle basic VR, the Quest Pro adds power and finesse in a way that could unlock how people explore virtual worlds. The tech is there but are you willing to fork over big money to try it?
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/cfsaxXy
Twitter started verifying public figures to prevent scammers from distributing fake news. New owner Elon Musk, however, thinks the blue check is just a status symbol, and one people should pay for. The platform’s new owner has reportedly decided users will need to sign up for Twitter Blue to maintain verification, which will increase to $20 a month. It’s also reported Musk has given Twitter employees until November 7th to implement the changes, or he’ll start firing people.
I’m sure the blue check is, for some, little more than a bragging right, but it’s also Twitter’s fix to a fairly knotty problem. Back in the day, it was easy enough to create an account posing as a respected newswire to pump out fake stock information. The speed of Twitter’s platform means people can retweet something controversial about a stock price to their followers before they’ve clocked it came from the Well Street Jourral. Although, given Twitter’s new owner was responsible for the Funding Secured tweet, maybe that’s just allowed now.
If you were hoping to snag a 14- or -16-inch M2 MacBook Pro before the holiday season, brace yourself. A new report suggests while Apple had planned to launch the high-end machines this fall, the company has kicked things back. Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman now believes we won’t see those models until March at the earliest. Hopefully, nobody is losing too much sleep over it, especially given just how much power the existing models are still throwing around.
Netflix’s popular adaptation of The Witcher is getting a fourth season, but without the star power of its original leading man. Henry Cavill, who played Geralt of Rivia for the show’s first three seasons, is (reportedly) freeing up his schedule to once again play Superman. Taking his place on the show is Liam Hemsworth, the youngest member of the Hemsworth acting clan, with a jaw that’s only marginally less square than his predecessor.
If Bob Ross were alive today, this is the sort of news that, I’m sure, would put a big ol’ smile on his big ol’ face. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has captured an image of the sun where it looks like it’s smiling. The cause of this is little more than the coincidental clustering of coronal holes, but it’s sufficiently cute that we imagine it’ll be everyone’s desktop background for the next month at least.
The Call of Duty franchise is an industry behemoth, which up until this year was an annual series. This year, it’s Infinity Ward’s turn, and they have released Modern Warfare 2, a reimagining of sorts that shows us what this veteran developer would have done with the modern-day combat scenarios it made famous over a decade ago. But is MW2 a sequel that will keep players motivated to keep playing over the next two years, or would this holiday season be better spent with some other shooter?
Visuals to die for
The Infinity Ward engine boasts some of the best visuals in the genre, and this time around it features improvements to lighting, a new decal rendering method, and other technical processes that coalesce into one great-looking game. Most character models are hyper-realistic, and it’s easy to believe you’re watching a live-action movie or television show in certain cutscenes. Not all character models are quite so believable, though, so overall things look great but not perfect.
120 Hz is supported on the PS5, alongside DualSense controller support including the speaker for voice chat and adaptive triggers for firing weapons. Competitive players will likely want to disable that latter feature, as it introduces a touch of input lag since you must now use slightly more force with your fingers before your weapon will fire. On the other hand, it adds a visceral feeling to the gunplay, which some will get a kick out of.
Crossplay is available and enabled at launch, with indicators in the lobby to indicate what platform every player is on, as well as their chosen input device – keyboard and mouse is supported on the PS5. Though, there seems to be a healthy population of PlayStation gamers as despite having played dozens of online matches, I did not see a single player from another platform. But at least the option is there, perhaps for some of the lesser-played game modes in a few months’ time when most players are set in what they’ll play.
The single-player campaign sees the return of fan-favorite operators, such as Ghost, Price, Soap, and others. The story pits your group of elite special forces against a Mid-Eastern terrorist known as Hassan Zyani, who has somehow gotten his hands on American-made missiles and is hell-bent on using them against the United States. There’s Russian interference, corruption within friendly ranks, and a couple of plot twists that combine to make a fun, yet familiar experience. It kind of feels like a “greatest hits” album from a band in that they run you through what they know how to do quite well, but there’s not too much to surprise you.
Typical Blockbuster Fare
In this campaign, you’ll control various operators from a few different countries, with a substantial amount of the adventure taking place in Mexico. In fact, one of the most interesting portions tasks you with surviving by collecting materials and crafting the items you’ll need to stand a chance against a ruthless military enemy who far outgun you. The only problem is, your character is badly injured and can’t really move around like usual. Just as this segment gets interesting, it finishes. For a brief half hour or so, it feels like you’re playing a different game entirely. The crafting mechanic using a backpack is only used in this particular section, and then once more for just a few minutes during the game’s closing moments. This shows us Infinity Ward still has a few tricks up its sleeves, and was a refreshing change of pace in an otherwise familiar romp through foreign places.
The bread and butter for any Call of Duty game is its multiplayer, and Modern Warfare 2 has that available in spades. From classic 6v6 team deathmatch to 32v32 Ground War game modes, you’re sure to find a mode that suits your mood and/or playstyle. The third-person moshpit playlist, as the name implies, allows players to fight in third-person, with all the pros and cons that such an angle provides you – seeing what’s directly in front of you isn’t always so easy, however, you are able to peek around corners, as can the enemy. Though the pacing is wildly different, this mode almost made Modern Warfare 2 feel like a SOCOM game.
There are 15 maps as of this writing, with more likely to come. Most of these are dedicated to the more typical 6v6 matches, while seven are designed with the larger game modes in mind. There is a decent amount of verticality design work to reward exploration with ideal perches from which to rain down hell upon your unsuspecting enemies. While you may have a streak of kills, for which you’re rewarded with the usual smattering of killstreak benefits, death is typically around the corner because just a few shots from most weapons are enough to kill anyone.
Twiddly Bits and Knobs
Weapons customization is a strong feature in Modern Warfare 2. The vast majority of weapons and kit are locked behind objectives, such as reaching a certain player rank or leveling up a specific weapon. Dozens to hundreds of skins are also available for unlocking, again with certain conditions that must be met first. MW2 is one massive drip-feed of unlockable rewards, and though sometimes you might feel like a hamster on a wheel when it comes to overall progress, many of the later unlocks are worth the effort.
A firing range lets you test out your current weapon’s configuration any time you’re within the multiplayer menus, and if you’re at a high enough level you can tweak most lethal weapons on-the-fly and adjust various parts. For instance, shortening or lengthening a rifle’s barrel can reduce aiming down sight speed or increase range, respectively, while adding weight towards the front or the rear can decrease recoil effects or increase aim while walking. There are pros and cons to each setup, and players will be rewarded for experimenting until they find the perfect setup for each of their weapons.
Mods are also front and center of any custom loadout, and up to five can be applied to most weapons once they are earned. Naturally, there are more than five mod types for many guns, so once again a balance must be considered and obtained in order to find the perfect mod set. Just blindly applying the latest earned modification will not make for a good time. The gun options here are thoughtful and nuanced, something that will require time to reap the greatest benefit from.
Your multiplayer experience is going to depend upon your internet connection, but in our testing things were mostly smooth sailing. The Quick Play option has a preset list of match types, which can be customized, and its default setting allowed for finding and joining a match to occur within a matter of seconds. The PS5’s SSD allows for very quick load times, though if any of the cross-platform players are on PC or an older console, then you are dropped into the level with a countdown timer and allowed to choose your loadout and contemplate what you’re going to do when the timer hits zero. There is also split-screen support! Though, both players must have an active PS+ subscription in order to take the combat online.
While netcode seemed solid, some visual glitches were noticed during our time with Modern Warfare 2. Occasionally character models would load in between matches not holding any weapon, with the humorous effect of the operator unintentionally miming like they had a gun in their hands. Sometimes the character’s left arm would also go crazy, particularly while wielding a combat knife. There was even one time when grass or foliage of some kind rendered at least a meter off the ground, and would pop into and out of existence as the player’s view panned, which made for some trippy and distracting visuals. None of these are gamebreaking bugs, and will likely get patched out in due time. But the most annoying issue consistently occurred after a match ended.
No matter the result of a battle, the player earns XP for their character as well as each weapon that affected the enemies. Once those screens are viewed or skipped, the game would always struggle to return to a fluid state, becoming so choppy that it appeared it was frozen. Yet, the countdown sound effect indicating the imminent start of a new match would also play. Most of the time, the game would finally catch up to whatever was causing the delay to give you one, maybe two seconds to cancel out of the next auto-loading match, but sometimes the countdown would have expired and you’d be forced into a new round of fighting whether you wanted to or not. It’s not an ideal experience at all, and is a more pressing issue that Infinity Ward should fix sooner rather than later.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 subtly improves on a winning formula. It’s no real surprise that the multiplayer gunplay is the best in the series to date, but considering this is coming from the team that started this craze to begin with it’s to be expected. While the campaign may play it mostly safe, it features an enjoyable challenge, with a couple of interesting survival-type sections that almost turn it into another game entirely. There’s little doubt most Call of Duty players will feel right at home playing Modern Warfare II as it’s a solid entry and seemingly the shooter to play this holiday season and beyond.
Asobo Studio’sA Plague Tale: Innocence captivated players in 2019 with a surprisingly deep, dark storyline that no one expected out of a brand-new IP. Its gloomy, gritty atmosphere paired well with the grim tale of Amicia de Rune and her little brother Hugo, both struggling against overwhelming odds to escape the Black Plague, known as the Bite. It’s a bleak yarn steeped in terrifying moments as two young children struggle to survive in the rat-infested French countryside. Now, it’s been given a sequel in the form of A Plague Tale: Requiem, a follow-up that’s every bit as great (and in some ways better) than the original game. Amicia and Hugo return for a gripping, macabre adventure that sees them looking for a way out – from the plague and the lot life has given them.
Bound for the Red City
In A Plague Tale: Requiem, the story picks up where Innocence left off. Amicia and Hugo are doggedly making their way toward the Red City in Southern France, where they believe a peaceful life awaits them. All the while, they’re outrunning the Prima Macula, a curse that affects certain families of specific bloodlines. As if dealing with the plague wasn’t bad enough, there are tons of human enemies that the siblings must face off against, too, as well as the ravenous rats swarming the city.
This time around, instead of going on the defensive and just trying to survive, Amicia and Hugo are focused on a singular goal: getting through the predicament, they find themselves in. Amicia is especially determined, and she’ll let nothing get in her way to ensure her little brother is cured of the ailments that plague him. Despite the bleak circumstances, Amicia is a positive force who won’t let anything get in the way of her goal.
Putting out the fires
Much of your time in Requiem is spent collecting items, seeking out shelter, and exploring a gorgeous world. While Innocence had the de Rune siblings eking out a depressing existence, the world of Requiem is a much brighter, lush affair. The environments you’re able to traverse are much lighter, more colorful, and teeming with life. It’s a gorgeous game that’s well-acted, overflowing with personality, and beautiful assets from top to bottom.
That makes making your way through all the ground you have to cover a much more pleasant experience, because this is a beautiful game – there’s no shortage of eye candy, no matter how grim the situation may actually be under the verdant exterior.
But it’s not all about gazing at the countryside. For Amicia and Hugo to accomplish their goals, they have to be able to defend themselves on their way to the Red City, too. Luckily, Amicia has a variety of additional tools at her disposal, many more than she initially had in Innocence, and can now utilize a crossbow that she’s absolutely deadly with. Additionally, she can mix a glut of chemical compounds to devastate enemies.
Amicia isn’t your only defense against the outside world, though. She and Hugo will meet travelers and allies who can use their own unique abilities to make the journey a bit simpler, as you’ll see while you make your way through. Some can use buff-like abilities to assist you, and others can fell enemies like nobody’s business. They’re an indispensable part of Amicia and Hugo’s journey.
Older and wiser
While the combat in Requiem sings, it’s matched only by the useful upgrade system that helps Amicia grow ever more powerful as the game goes on. Amicia is already a force to be reckoned with and can dole out damage on a seemingly endless basis, even when she’s up against insurmountable odds. You can make her even stronger, improve her stealth mechanics, and make her an alchemical savant.
The upgrade system lets you level Amicia’s abilities as you see fit, tailored to your playstyle. If you favor more physical encounters than stealth mechanics, you’ll grow her aggressive traits. If you use more items, you’ll improve her ability to utilize and mix chemical compounds, etc. All of these changes improve Amicia’s overall constitution, damage-dealing capabilities, and a plenty of other stats. You can make her your own character, nearly as much as if you were customizing your own star of an RPG, and it makes Requiem feel much more like Amicia taking the reins of her own destiny.
Unfortunately, there are occasions later on in the game where all of this character-building does tend to feel a bit useless. Some of the late-game encounters can become quite grueling out of nowhere and saddle you with instant death in some instances. In those cases, it can feel frustrating to have molded Amicia to your liking but then find yourself met with deaths that come swiftly and, quite frankly, unfairly. These segments are few and far between and won’t generally come up until you’ve progressed quite a ways through the game. However, it’s still something that dampened the experience a bit for me.
A Plague Tale: Requiem Review: The Final Verdict
A Plague Tale: Requiem is a triumph of a sequel that ticks all the boxes fans will be expecting and then some. Not only does it look and feel great, but it backs up its eye candy and abundant atmosphere with an interesting narrative and a stalwart protagonist who won’t quit. It’s everything a follow-up should be and more from an IP that’s grown precious to players over the years, and a fine adventure that even newcomers will find value in tackling.
Use of live facial recognition (LFR) by UK police forces "fail[s] to meet the minimum ethical and legal standards," according to a study from the University of Cambridge. After analyzing LFR use by the Metropolitan (Met) and South Wales police, researchers concluded that the technology should be banned for use in "all public spaces."
LFR pairs faces captured by security cameras to database photos to find matches. China and other non-democratic regimes have used the technology to as part of their state surveillance tools.
UK police have been testing its use in multiple situations to fight crime and terrorism. In two cases, LFR was used by MET and South Wales police to scan crowds and compare faces to those on a criminal “watch list." In another, officers used FRT smartphone apps to scan crowds and identify "wanted individuals in real time," according to the paper.
In those cases, the team found that police "kept from view" information about how they use the data and information about demographics. That has in turn made it difficult to determine whether the tools are promoting racial profiling, while raising questions about accountability. "Police forces are not necessarily answerable or held responsible for harms caused by facial recognition technology," said lead author Evani Radiya-Dixit.
The Met has claimed that the latest algorithms have improved LRF accuracy, with false alerts less than .08 percent, according to The Guardian. They boasted of a 70 percent success rate up to 2020, but an expert from the University of Essex hired by the police force found it was actually just 19 percent. "That the court of appeal explicitly stated in 2020 that South Wales police use of this technology was 'unlawful' makes it difficult to argue this technology should be used," he said.
However, the Met said its work was supported by law. "LFR is regulated by a number of sources of law. These sources of law combine to provide a multilayered legal structure to use, regulate and oversee the use of LFR by law enforcement bodies," it told The Guardian. UK's parliament has yet to weigh in, even though it's created legislation around internet privacy.
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/UNirvZu
Ever since it was first announced in 2020, Chromecast with Google TV has been a solid and affordable purchase for those looking to add more smarts and streaming options to their existing setup. If you’ve been patiently waiting to buy one, now is a good time to do so. Amazon has discounted the 4K version. After a 20 percent discount, the device is $40, matching its previous all-time low price. The retailer has also cut the cost of the recently announced HD variant. At the moment, you can buy the device for $20. That’s $10 less than its usual $30 asking price.
As mentioned above, both versions of Chromecast with Google TV are excellent options if you’re on a budget or prefer Google’s approach over competitors like Apple, Amazon or Roku. Engadget awarded the 4K version a score of 86 in 2020, praising the device for its excellent Google Assistant integration, comfortable and easy-to-use remote, as well as Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support. The more affordable HD version is similarly excellent, offering much the same experience at a lower price point for those who don’t own a 4K TV. If there was a reason to buy a competing streaming stick over the Chromecast with Google TV, it was because the dongle could sometimes be slow. That has since changed, with Google releasing a performance update this past summer.
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Women have faced gender-based discrimination in the workforce throughout history, denied employment in all but a handful of subservient roles, regularly ignored for promotions and pay raises — and rarely ever compensated at the same rates as their male peers. This long and storied socioeconomic tradition of financially screwing over half the population continues largely unabated into the 21st century where women still make 84 cents on the dollar that men do. In her new book, The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future, Professor of Law and founding member of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Markets at the University of San Diego, Dr. Orly Lobel, explores how digital technologies, often maligned for their roles in exacerbating societal ills, can be harnessed to undo the damage they've caused.
For years, the double standard was glaring: employers demanded secrecy about salaries while asking prospective employees for their salary histories. Now, we can tackle both ends of this asymmetry. Just as digitization is helping to reverse information flows to foster more transparency in the market about employees’ worth, new laws are also directing employers to not rely as much on past pay levels, which can be tainted by systemic inequality. In 2016, Massachusetts became the first state to pass a law prohibiting employers from asking job candidates about their salary histories. Since then, more than a dozen states have followed suit.
Barring employers from asking prospective job candidates about their salary histories has two goals. The first is breaking the vicious pay gap cycle, which emerges when women are paid less at a previous job and that gap is then replicated by the next employer. The second is addressing gender differences in the negotiation process Salary figures are plagued by gender disparity, and they can perpetuate and further exacerbate existing market disparities. When a woman discloses that she currently earns less than a man, she could be harming her salary trajectory — both in the applied-for position and for the rest of her career. Each time she discloses her current salary to a potential employer, that gap is likely to grow, as recruitment efforts and promotions are often offered as a percentage increase in relation to current base salary. Rather than relying on biased figures, bans on salary history inquiry induce employers to use other ways to determine a potential employee’s worth, including a shift to automated computation. Employers using market and internal data can consider merit-related characteristics when determining pay, such as experience, training, education, skill, and past performance.
And yet, as we have seen, human bias can creep into our algorithms, and an algorithm that is fed data tainted by salary bias is likely to perpetuate that bias itself. Feedback loops are digital vicious cycles that can result in self-fulfilling outcomes. Once again: bias in, bias out. The risk is that an algorithm will learn that certain types or categories of employees are on average underpaid, and then calculate that into salary offers. This is the wrong that recent policy has been designed to eliminate — and that we can program AI to avoid. Removing the anchored numerical figure encourages employers to proactively assess pay based on the company’s needs and the candidate’s fit rather than on a tainted number. At the same time, having pay scale information for a job but not having a salary history on the table can embolden women to ask for more.
What’s more, AI can also help in the future — maybe not even the distant future — by replacing some of the negotiation that takes place in unequal settings. Empirical studies on negotiation differences between men and women have repeatedly shown that women on average negotiate less, and that when they do, employers react negatively. Women don’t ask for higher salaries, better terms, promotions, or opportunities nearly as frequently as men do. In my research, I’ve called this the negotiation deficit. In one study at Carnegie Mellon University, 93 percent of female MBA students accepted an initial salary offer, while only 43 percent of men did. In another study, female participants simulating salary negotiations asked for an average of $7,000 less than male participants. Economists Andreas Leibbrandt and John List have also found that while women are much less likely to negotiate with employers over salary, this difference disappears when all job seekers are explicitly told that pay is negotiable, mitigating the pay gap. My own experimental research with behavioral psychologist and law professor Yuval Feldman, my longtime collaborator, has found that women in some work environments act less as “homo economicus” — that is, as rational economic actors — and more as altruistic social actors, such that women do not demand for themselves as much as men, and are more likely to value non-monetary benefits, such as good corporate culture.
Can these research insights offer us clues for developing new software tools that will spur women to negotiate? Digital platforms can serve employees by providing advice and information on asking for a raise or preparing for an interview. Information on pay—and especially an explicit expectation that pay can and should be negotiated—can empower applicants to negotiate higher salaries before accepting job offers. The digital platform PayScale conducts annual surveys asking thousands of job seekers whether they disclosed their pay at previous jobs during the interview process. PayScale’s 2018 survey found that women who were asked about their salary histories and refused to disclose were offered positions 1.8 percent less often than women who were asked and disclosed. By contrast, men who refused to disclose when asked about salary history received offers 1.2 percent more often than men who did disclose.
Even when women do negotiate, they are treated differently. In my research, I call this phenomenon the negotiation penalty. Women are told to “lean in” and make demands, but the reality is that for centuries, women have been universally viewed as weaker negotiators than their male counterparts. In one series of experiments, participants evaluated written accounts of candidates who did or did not initiate negotiations for higher salaries. The results in each experiment showed that participants penalized female candidates more than male candidates for initiating negotiations, deeming women who asked for more not “nice” or too “demanding.” While qualities such as assertiveness, strength, and competitiveness culturally benefit male negotiators, women who display such characteristics are often considered too aggressive. Another study looked at data from a group of Swedish job seekers and found not only that women ended up with lower salaries than equally qualified male peers, but also that they were often penalized for negotiating like them. Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson have shown that attractive avatars lead to more intimate behavior with a confederate in terms of self-disclosure and interpersonal distance. In a second study, they also observed that tall avatars lead to more confident behavior than short avatars in a negotiation task. They term it the Proteus Effect (the Greek god Proteus was known to have the ability to take on many self-representations). The Proteus Effect suggests that the visual characteristics and traits of an avatar are associated with correlating behavioral stereotypes and expectations, including those that affect the way we negotiate.
The eleventh annual competition for artificial intelligence that has been trained to negotiate — the Hagglebot Olympics, as it’s been termed in the popular media — was held in January 2021. Universities from Turkey and Japan won this time. In some experiments involving negotiations with bots, most people did not even realize they were talking to a bot rather than another person — the bots had learned to hold fluent conversations that completely mimicked humans. Using game theory, researchers are increasingly improving the ways bots can negotiate on behalf of humans, eliminating some of the aspects in which we humans are fallible, like trying to factor in and weigh many different aspects of the deal. AI can now predict the other side’s preferences quite fast. For example, an AI listening by microphone to the first five minutes of negotiation is learning to predict much of the eventual deal just from the negotiators’ voices. Following these speech patterns through machine learning, it turns out that when the voice of a negotiator varies a lot in volume and pitch, they are being a weak player at the negotiation table. When the negotiating sides mirror each other, it means they are closer to reaching an agreement. Using AI also has helped uncover the ways in which women are penalized at the negotiation table. A new study out of the University of Southern California used a chatbot that didn’t know the gender identities of participants to evaluate negotiation skills. The study showed that most of us — both men and women — do quite badly at negotiating salaries. Over 40 percent of participants didn’t negotiate at all, and most people left money on the table they could have received. Women valued stock options less than men did as part of their compensation package, affecting women’s likelihood to accumulate wealth over time. These advances can also help with negotiation disparities across different identities. A group of Israeli and American researchers looked at how a smart computer can negotiate with humans from different cultural backgrounds. Without telling the machine anything about the characteristics of people from three countries — Israel, Lebanon, and the United States — they let the AI learn about the patterns of cultural negotiation differences by engaging in negotiation games. They found that the computer was able to outperform people in all countries. These developments are promising. We can envision bots learning about negotiation differences and ultimately countering such differences to create more equitable exchanges, level the playing field, and achieve fair outcomes. They can be designed to tackle the specific distributive goals we have.
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PlayStation has been bringing us some of the best horror games for five generations. The selection of terrifying tales is so wide that it’s tough narrowing down what the scariest games on PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, and PS5 are. Our picks below all had us sleeping with the lights on at one point, and we’d love to hear your choices in the comments below.
Scariest PS1 Game: Silent Hill
Video game horror came into bloom with the fifth generation of consoles, and the PS1 is filled with experiences meant to terrify unsuspecting players. Konami’s Silent Hill remains chilling to this day, but upon its 1999 release, it delivered an unprecedented psychological horror experience.
Harry Mason’s search for his lost daughter continues to be a masterwork of lighting and sound. Dark corridors and oblique camera angles obscure and disorient players as the screeching of a broken radio crescendos, heralding the appearance of the next creepy entity in our path. It’s a game that is still worth playing today, though it’s challenging to get ahold of since Sony changed how the PS3 Store works last year.
Runner-up: Planet Laika
There’s a point where the surreal and bizarre blend to become a unique form of scary. Planet Laika exemplifies this with its odd but compelling story of a team of astronauts sent to investigate issues with a Martian colony. The weird part is that all the “humans” have dog heads because of some war against the Martians. Also, the main character, Laika, has Dissociative Identity Disorder, and you’ll have to use their three personalities, Ernest, Yolanda, and Spacer, to solve puzzles and try to survive the absolute wackiness you’ll encounter in this game.
Planet Laika is one of the hundreds of wonderfully imaginative, unique games for the PS1 that never made it outside of Japan. Fortunately, a team of fans came together to produce an English patch which was released earlier this year.
Scariest PS2 Game: Silent Hill 4: The Room
Silent Hill 4: The Room deviated from the formula seen in the first three by making a single room the game’s focal point. Sure, you’ll visit quite a few locations through the strange hole in your bathroom, but Henry’s apartment is the beating heart of this game. Team Silent deserves praise in managing to keep such a small space unnerving over multiple hours.
Runner-up: Resident Evil Outbreak (and File #2)
It’s strange that Capcom is struggling to make a decent Resident Evil multiplayer game because it got it right way back in 2004 with Resident Evil Outbreak. This game and its standalone expansion, File #2, perfectly translated the classic RE experience into a multiplayer setting that up to four players can enjoy.
Outbreak is exhilarating because everyone is free to do what they want. You can group up, or each player can go it alone, and you’re not forced to work together. That means every playthrough is a different experience. You might find zombies are the least of your worries if one of the survivors is only out for themselves.
Scariest PS3 Game: Dead Space
We don’t have long to wait for the Dead Space remake, but the original is still worth playing. It’s the perfect blend of action and puzzle-solving and is one of the few games that manages to be scary while still giving the player plenty of tools to defend themselves.
Runner-up: The Evil Within
Though it was directed by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, The Evil Within is more reminiscent of Silent Hill. The unreal world of the asylum is foreboding and oppressive, and formidable enemies frequently give you a feeling of helplessness. This was one of the PS3’s swansongs and gave a great taste of survival horror during a time that the genre had an identity crisis.
Scariest PS4 Game: P.T.
The Playable Teaser for Silent Hills is scarier than most full games. It tells a self-contained story of the murder of a pregnant woman by her husband, which unravels through a surreal trip through the same hallway over and over.
When Konami canceled Silent Hills, it also delisted P.T. Fortunately, if you downloaded it before, there is a workaround to reacquire it. Otherwise, you’ll have to experience it through YouTube or a fan remake.
Runner-up: The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan
The Dark Pictures Anthology has been a mixed bag, but the first entry was horror gold. Exploring the abandoned freighter, Man of Medan, you’ll find many a ghastly sight, and no character is safe from the reaper. The many possible permutations of the story give this a lot more replayability than most horror games. It even has multiplayer so that you can enjoy the spooks with a loved one.
Scariest PS5 Game: Visage
P.T. inspired many developers, and one of the most successful spiritual successors is Visage. It also takes cues from Eternal Darkness with its sanity meter. The main rule in the game is to avoid the dark. Staying in the dark too long will lower your sanity, triggering supernatural events. Lose too much sanity, and an entity may gain enough power to manifest and kill you. It’s a constant fight to replace light bulbs and find lighters and candles to keep the darkness at bay.
Runner-up: Observer: System Redux
The thing that makes Observer so chilling isn’t the murders you’re investigating but the environment itself. Krakow, Poland, in 2084, is a bleak place, and the rundown tenement building you explore is filled to the brim with sad stories. Body horror abounds here, and you’ll feel a constant dread as you trudge from apartment to apartment, trying to find your missing son.
