New Gadgets

Apple announced a bunch of new features for Maps at WWDC, from multistop routing to transit fares.
iOS 16, the next version of Apple's mobile operating system includes several improvements for the Maps app coming to your iPhone soon. We'll take a look at every one. With the new OS, Maps users can check out new features like multistop routing and more transit information.

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Apple showed off every major new iOS 16 feature earlier this week at WWDC, its annual developer's conference. We're going to go through every feature you should know about in anticipation of the public beta coming in July and the full release in September.

• iOS 16 lets you edit and 'unsend' messages
• Your iPhone gets a new customizable lock screen
• Notifications and live activities
• Wallet and Apple Pay Later
• Visual Lookup's tap and drag for photos
• SharePlay comes to Messages
• Safety Check aims to help people in abusive relationships
• Focus mode updates and Focus filters

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Your iPhone or Android phone is about to become even more tightly woven into the nondigital aspects of your life. That's one of the main takeaways from iOS 16 and Android 13, the latest mobile software updates from Apple and Google, coming later this year. Both tech giants want to turn your phone into an electronic wallet for storing your legal ID, pushing your phone closer to your identity than ever before. The companies also continue to improve the way phones communicate with cars, smart home gadgets and other everyday devices.

Both iOS 16 and Android 13 are filled with tweaks and new features, some of which are more important than digital wallets and speedier connections (like Apple's Safety Check tool for protecting domestic abuse victims, and Google's new privacy updates). But the overlap between the two operating systems underscores the phone's changing role in our lives. Based on Apple's and Google's latest announcements, what's happening around your phone will be just as important as what's happening on your phone.

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Remember that Sesame Street song One of These Things (Is Not Like the Others)? NASA's Perseverance rover spotted something that was not like the others on Mars. On June 13, Percy snapped a photo of a rock that had a strange-looking object stuck on it.

The object is a piece of foil with dots visible all across it. "My team has spotted something unexpected: It's a piece of a thermal blanket that they think may have come from my descent stage, the rocket-powered jet pack that set me down on landing day back in 2021," the rover team tweeted on Wednesday.

NASA JPL spokesperson Andrew Good told CNET the piece is definitely from a thermal blanket. "Less definite is which part of the spacecraft it came from – the team thinks the descent stage is a good possibility – or how exactly it got here (descent stage crashed two kilometers away; whether it landed here after that crash or was blown by the wind isn't something we know)," Good said in an email.
A closer look at the piece of foil shows the regular dots across its surface.

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This week Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off several prototypes of head-mounted displays (HMDs) the company is currently developing. Each is a proof-of-concept for various features that comprise the virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality experience. For example, there’s a headset with a super-bright display, one with high-resolution optics, one that’s very thin, and so on. If you could combine all of the features in the various devices, you’d have a true next-generation product.Sadly, all of them feature experimental technology, and none are even close to being available. Zuckerberg said they’re part of the company’s work on a “visual Turing test.” The goal is a headset that produces visuals so realistic that nobody could tell if they’re real or virtual.

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Valve has fiddled with its own gaming hardware over the years, but neither the Steam Boxes, nor the Steam Controller, nor the Index VR headset have garnered the same praise as the Steam Deck. Even in the era of the Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck is back-ordered into next year. One of the oft-cited advantages of the Deck is its high repairability and modding potential. However, one of its designers is now warning against a newly popular mod, saying it could cause the console to overheat.
The Steam Deck is essentially a compact Linux computer that (more or less) fits in your hands. Valve designed the hardware to be easily repaired, and it plans to make all the parts available for purchase. That’s a pleasant departure from the standard 2022 approach of making disposable hardware that’ll go in the trash in a few years. Whereas the interior of the average smartphone is little more than metal spaghetti, the Steam Deck has modding potential.

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The name 3dfx certainly warms a lot of, um, mature gamers’ hearts. For a lot of us, the Voodoo 2 was our first actual 3D graphics card. And it was glorious. Even though we were gaming at 800 x 600, we loved it. Going from software rendering to hardware rendering for the first time was absolutely incredible. For the younger readers, it was similar to going from a hard drive to an SSD for the first time. The difference in performance left us speechless. Since then a lot of hobbyists have recreated a similar retro gaming environment to bask in the nostalgia. The only problem is to truly experience old school gaming, you need a CRT monitor. Those are very hard to find, and until now, 3dfx drivers didn’t support widescreen displays like we use today. Now a 3dfx forum user has uploaded a new driver that allows widescreen gaming, finally.It’s called the 3dfx Wide Driver, and if you’re into this sort of thing you have to grab it now.

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Valve has quietly changed the Steam Deck’s specs, unbeknownst to most who have put in an order in recent weeks. Steam Decks ordered at the time of the console’s release came with either a 256 or 512GB SSD, which were connected using an x4 PCIe connection. SSDs in more recently ordered consoles, however, are connected using just two lanes, according to the German tech blog HardwareLuxx. PC Gamer spotted the blog post Wednesday.

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Some apps ask for invasive permissions they don't need. Here's how to set app permissions on your Android device.
If you're concerned about the permissions granted to a certain app on your Android device, you can manage permissions on a per-app basis. Here's what to do:
1. Tap Settings
2. Tap Apps
3. Scroll down and tap on the app in question (or you can search for the app by tapping the magnifying glass icon)
4. Tap Permissions
5. Tap on a permission to allow or not allow
You can also access the Permissions menu from any app by tapping and holding the app's icon on your phone's screen.

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With a blood oxygen monitor, the ability to record an ECG from your wrist and plenty of exercise logging options, the Apple Watch Series 7 is already a capable health tracker. But Apple might expand its wellness ambitions by adding a temperature sensor to the Series 8, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal report.
However, I'm much more excited about the idea of a new Apple Watch SE, which Bloomberg says could be coming in 2022. Apple's simpler and cheaper device has everything most people want in a smartwatch, from tracking workouts to enabling Apple Pay transactions and displaying iPhone alerts.

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