Last week, a number of Apple Watch owners noticed that their batteries were draining much quicker than normal after they installed the latest watchOS version 10.1. Now, Apple has acknowledged the issue in an internal memo seen by MacRumors, and promised that a fix will arrive in an upcoming update.
The issue is affecting multiple models including older ones like Watch SE and Watch Series 5, up to brand new versions like Apple Watch Ultra 2, according to Reddit, Apple's Support Community, X and other sources. The issue appears to be fairly serious, with one user noting that "watchOS 10.1 is killing the battery on my Apple Watch," draining it from 100 to 50 percent in less than 60 minutes.
Apple appeared to address the issue partly with its iOS 17.1 update, noting that it resolved a problem involving "increased power consumption" when a Watch running watchOS 10.1 is paired with an iPhone using iOS 17, as MacRumors noted. That doesn't seem to have fully resolved the issue, though.
Apple said in the memo that the issue will be fixed in a watchOS update "coming soon," without providing a more specific date, specific models affected and reason for the problem. Given the nature of it, however, we'd hope it's a high-priority item. Apple is reportedly set to release iOS 17.1.1 for iPhone, and will hopefully also release watchOS 10.1.1 with a fix.
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Discord is changing its approach to file hosting in an effort to crack down on malware. The platform will begin using temporary file links that will expire after 24 hours for user content shared outside of Discord, BleepingComputer reported. The change is expected to go into effect by the end of the year.
While the stated intention of the move is to crack down on malware, it’ll also curb the wider use of Discord as an unofficial file hosting service. It’s not uncommon for users to upload images and other content to their own servers and then post those links elsewhere. You won’t be able to do that as smoothly anymore once it makes the move away from permanent file links, because the links will go dead after a day. Nothing will change for content posted and shared within Discord itself.
Switching to temporary file links “will help our safety team restrict access to flagged content, and generally reduce the amount of malware distributed using our CDN [content delivery network],” a spokesperson for Discord told BleepingComputer. Discord also noted, “If users are using Discord to host files, we'd recommend they find a more suitable service.”
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Fortnite players are definitely here for the new throwback season. Since the release of “Fortnite OG” at the end of last week, public player counts have reached new all-time highs, according to trackers like Fortnite.gg — peaking on Saturday with over 6.1 million concurrent players. With Chapter 4 Season 5, or “Fortnite OG,” Fortnite is dipping back into its Chapter 1 glory days to bring players back to the original 2018 island map and reintroduce gear and other elements from its past.
The season started with an update designed around Chapter 1 Season 5, and subsequent updates will pull from other phases of the game’s history. But, it’s only expected to run for about a month, and players aren’t wasting any time getting in on the battle royale action. The number of concurrent players has been rising all weekend, continually breaking the previous record highs. Within hours of the update’s release, the player count had spiked to over 3.9 million. Already today, there were 5.5 million players on Fortnite as of 11AM.
The number of concurrent plays for a single day nearly doubled on Friday, after the update was announced, from those seen earlier in the week, to hit nearly 1.5 million. Saturday logged over 1.8 million concurrent plays. It’s been years since Fortnite has seen numbers like this, but there’s no telling whether it’ll be able to keep it up.
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At the start of the 1980s, video games were mostly relegated to coin-gobbling arcade machines, but their surging popularity prompted a Time Magazine cover story in January 1982 with a cringeworthy warning: “GRONK! FLASH! ZAP! Video Games are Blitzing the World!”
PlayStation has made its first acquisition following Activision Blizzard’s merger with Microsoft, but it isn’t a video game company. Based in the U.K., iSIZE is an AI video solutions company that specializes in deep learning for video delivery.
iSIZE acquisition gives PlayStation “significant expertise” in machine learning for videos
In a press release, Sony Interactive Entertainment said that iSIZE has expertise in bitrate savings and quality improvements within the media and entertainment industry. The acquisition will result in Sony obtaining “significant expertise in applying machine learning to video processing, which will benefit a range of our R&D efforts as well as our video and streaming services.”
iSIZE was founded in 2016 and is based in London. Sony didn’t disclose the acquisition cost or the terms of the transaction due to “contractual obligations.” “iSIZE has a team of talented engineers and technical experts who have developed a suite of software solutions to optimize video,” the press release reads. “For example, the company built an AI-based perceptual preprocessing solution that allows conventional, third-party encoders to produce higher quality video at a significantly lower bitrate.”
If you ask Psync Labs, it’ll tell you the problem with smart security cameras is that they don’t know what they’re seeing. Those motion pings you get with other products? Defined by how light shifts in front of its sensor, treating an approaching figure or low-flying bird with equal alarm. So, Psync’s focus is to improve machine vision, but to also go one step further and pair this vision with GPT-enabled generative AI to help it, and you, understand what it can see. Its first product, the Genie S, is a security camera that’ll send you a written description of what (it thinks) is going on.
On paper, the Genie S has a similar feature set to plenty of other affordable home security units I could mention. There’s a powered pan-tilt base, five megapixel camera (outputting 2K Video), four LEDs, a microphone and speaker. But there are differences, like the fact it’s in the shape of a cube that, when it’s not activated, points the lens toward the base. Psync says it’s the most compact camera in its class, but probably not by as big a margin as the company hopes. Setup is easy enough – put it on a table, or use the screw mount to place it somewhere more esoteric, plug in the six foot long USB-C cable, and you’re on your way.
Psync says that a smarter camera will be better-equipped to capture what’s going on at home, but that’s not its best use case. VP of marketing Echo Wong says that the hardware is able to record those “memorable moments that fly by quicker than we can pull out our phones.” But I don’t think you would want to buy this on the off-chance it catches junior’s first word or steps. The more prosaic sales line, the one that probably wouldn’t fly as well, is that it’s a security camera with the added promise of not bugging you with needless pings because of the promise of AI smarts.
Buy one of these, and you’ll get the choice of a unit with 32GB built-in storage for $35 or 64GB for $40. I mention this up-front because we’re very much in “you get what you pay for” territory in terms of the picture and sound quality. It shoots vertically-oriented 2K video but the clips are pretty fuzzy, even if you can zoom in to get some halfway useful detail if required. It doesn’t like too much light, so if it’s pointed at a window (and/or anything reflective) then chunks of the image will get blown out. Similarly, the sound quality is something of a throwback to an earlier age of crunchy, over-compressed streams. You’ll get similarly crunchy audio using the talk feature, which has similarly “walkie-talkie” vibes that you won’t find on pricier hardware.
Psync Labs
Of course, that’s not what anyone is here for, but to see what this new company — of which little is known —has cooked up with AI. ViewSay is Psync's transcription tool which uses GPT, a form of generative AI, to essentially let the camera describe in text what it's seeing. ViewSay, which currently costs 99 cents a month, promises to identify objects, sort events that triggered the recording in a visual timeline, let you search through the clips with text and, of course, the aforementioned written pings. Pay, your fee, set this up, and your phone will ping when it spots something interesting, and give you the best description of what is going on that it can manage. Users can also set specific categories, like "Person," "Vehicle," "Pet" and will eventually be able to craft tailored alerts, like "a dog jumps on the couch" for alerts.
Oh, but there is a catch — because that fairly reasonable 99 cents a month is just a limited-time trial, before leaping up to $7 a month. Which, we can all agree, is more than a little bit too much to spend on a product like this, especially in this economic climate.
ViewSay is currently in beta, and while the app splash to get you to sign up promises plenty, the company is keen to keep expectations low. My impression so far is that while Psync has the bones of a workable idea here in theory, the nitty-gritty of practice isn’t. I pointed the camera at a neutral corner in my office and play-acted in front of it to see what it would do. My fake phone-call, where I learned that my (fictional) wife had discovered the secret to perpetual motion, went unremarked upon and undocumented. Well, kinda – the camera pinged my phone to say that “A man is sitting in a chair in a room, looking at his reflection in a mirror.”
Actually, I’m being unfair – since the system can also make fairly accurate guesses at other times. Like, while I was setting the hardware up late one evening, I got a ping to tell me that “a man is sitting on the floor, holding a cell phone in his hand.” A few days later, I pointed the camera at a TV which was turned off, and the Echo Show that was in front of it. I then turned back to use my laptop – which I think was only really visible in the reflection on the TV’s screen. Not long after, the app pinged to say it could see a “A man is sitting in front of a laptop, looking at the screen, and possibly using it for work or entertainment purposes.” Now, this was either a massively-lucky guess, a false positive or a sign of how accurate this will be in future.
Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget.
When it detects something going on in this manner, the system records a 12-second clip to its local storage. These clips are retained for at least 14 days, and when you’ve looked at them in the app, you’re also able to save them to your phone. I understand you’ll also be able to take longer clips when motion is detected but that feature doesn’t yet appear to be available. You’ll also be able to share a live feed of your camera, using WebRTC, to up to four viewers – through a browser – for up to 30 minutes at a time. You might be wondering about how secure all of this is, and what exactly is happening to your data. Psync told me that its AI model is based on an AWS instance, and the footage is protected using 256-bit AES encryption. The footage recorded will be stored on the device locally, but the initial frame of the video is sent to the cloud for further analysis.
As something of an AI skeptic, and someone who isn’t thrilled at wiring up every corner of my home with a camera, I’m by default hostile to Psync’s plan here. But I can at least see where Psync is looking to add value to the standard security camera proposition. If you’re out and about, and you get a ping saying there’s a person in your living room, when there shouldn’t be, then that’s pretty helpful. Especially if you can just tune into the live feed and see for yourself what’s going on and if you need to do something about it. As much as the macro story is scary, I can understand the logic someone would apply to buy one or two of these.
But it’s worth saying too that what I just described isn’t yet what Psync is selling, only what it is gesturing toward. The system will require more training, and plenty more data from a broader user base, until it can start offering you more concrete descriptions. Now, I’m sure that in a year or two that will be the case, but until then, you’re essentially buying into an ecosystem where you’re paying for the privilege of being a beta tester.
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LinkedIn is adding a new, AI-powered perk for its premium subscribers: a built-in job coach that uses AI and LinkedIn data to help job seekers find, research and apply for roles. The new feature arrives as the company announced its user base has grown to 1 billion members as it looks to ramp up its investment in AI-driven features.
The Microsoft-owned company has increasingly been experimenting with AI features for its paying members. Earlier this year, it introduced the ability to use generative AI to write better profile descriptions and messages to hiring managers. But the latest AI perks aim to provide an even more personalized experience.
For now, the most prominent feature for job seekers will be AI-generated insights alongside each job posting. The tool can help summarize lengthy job descriptions and weigh in on whether the role is a good fit for a user based on the contents of their LinkedIn profile. For example, it can highlight specific work experiences users’ may want to emphasize in their application and provide tips on how to improve their LinkedIn profile to look more attractive to hiring managers.
LinkedIn
Because LinkedIn is able to draw on its vast trove of career data, the tips it’s able to provide are much more personalized than what you’d likely get if you were to ask other generative AI services for tips, says LinkedIn product manager Rohan Rajiv. “This is made possible by generative AI, but also the datasets that bring all of this together,” Rajiv tells Engadget. “It's your profile, your connections, and all of this that essentially can help you move your job search forward.”
For now, it’s still early days for the feature which is launching in beta to a limited set of LinkedIn Premium subscribers. But the company has signaled it intends to make AI a central part of its service going forward. “Today marks the beginning of a new journey, one where the power of AI is your ally in every career question and decision,” LinkedIn’s Chief Product Officer, Tomer Cohen, wrote in a blog post.
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