Eve’s HomeKit-only Outdoor Cam is now available for $250

After missing its originally planned April 3rd release date, Eve’s Outdoor Cam is available to buy starting today. Announced at CES 2022, the company claims its latest product is the only HomeKit-exclusive floodlight camera on the market. The device works with Apple’s Secure Video framework to safely store any footage it captures on iCloud. End-to-end encryption ensures only the owner of the camera can see live video and recordings. However, that does mean you need an iPhone, iPad or Mac to use the Outdoor Cam in your home.

Outside of HomeKit exclusivity and a minimalist design, Eve’s latest camera includes all the usual features you might expect in a modern security camera. Its 157-degree field of view lens and sensor can record 1080p footage at 24 frames per second. Additionally, the Outdoor Cam includes support for two-way voice communication, and it can detect motion from up to 30 feet away with the help of infrared night vision.

You can purchase the Outdoor Cam from Eve’s website for $249.95.

Ford’s Argo AI begins driverless vehicle operations in Austin and Miami

Ford’s self-driving Argo AI unit has hit a major milestone. On Tuesday, it began driverless operations in Austin and Miami. The company’s cars aren’t carrying paying customers just yet, but they’re now allowed to ferry Argo AI employees without a safet…

Plant-based ‘whole’ eggs could be served in US restaurants this year

If you’re a vegan or eco-conscious consumer, there are plenty of options when you want a burger or chicken nuggets. But there aren’t many plant-based eggs. Sure, you can find powdered substitutes, but a “whole” egg with a runny yolk is a different matter. A startup wants to change that.

Yo! Egg claims to have developed the first plant-based poached and sunny-side-up eggs. Following a limited rollout in its native Israel, the company is bringing its products to the US, starting with a debut at the National Restaurant Association Show later this month. Yo! told TechCrunch it expects to have its eggs in restaurants across the Los Angeles area by the end of the year.

The company’s pitch is similar to that of other plant-based substitutes for animal products. Since its eggs are made from soy, sunflower oil, water and flour, they’re more sustainable to make. With 1 gram of protein, they’re not a one-for-one replacement for chicken eggs in terms of nutritional value, but they also don’t have any cholesterol. We’ll also note Yo!’s fried and poached eggs are separate products.

The company told TechCrunch it recently secured $5 million in seed funding and that it plans to use that money to scale production and start working on hard-boiled and scrambled egg products. “Our vision is to create the world’s largest egg company, not egg alternative company, and not the largest plant-based egg company, but the largest egg company without using chickens,” Yo! Egg CEO Eran Groner told the outlet.

ASUS’ Flow X16 2-in-1 gaming laptop features a 165Hz mini-LED display

ASUS has refreshed its gaming laptop lineup to add the latest components from AMD, Intel and NVIDIA. Of the two computers it announced today, the more intriguing one is the ROG Flow X16. It builds on the company’s previous gaming 2-in-1s by adding an e…

Final former eBay employee involved in bizarre EcommerceBytes harassment case pleads guilty

Earlier this week, David Harville, one of seven former eBay employees involved in a 2020 campaign to harass the creators of a newsletter critical of the e-commerce company, pleaded guilty to five federal felony charges, ending one of the most bizarre e…

Buffalo gunman clips proliferate on social media following Twitch removal

Following Saturday’s horrific mass shooting in Buffalo, online platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Twitter are seemingly struggling to prevent various versions of the gunman’s livestream from proliferating on their platforms. The shooter, an 18-year-old white male, attempted to broadcast the entire attack on Twitch using a GoPro Hero 7 Black. The company told Engadget it took his channel down within two minutes of the violence starting.

“Twitch has a zero-tolerance policy against violence of any kind and works swiftly to respond to all incidents,” a Twitch spokesperson said. “The user has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts rebroadcasting this content.”

Despite Twitch’s response, that hasn’t stopped the video from proliferating online. According to New York Times reporter Ryan Mac, one link to a version of the livestream someone used a screen recorder to preserve saw 43,000 interactions. Another Twitter user said they found a Facebook post linking to the video that had been viewed more than 1.8 million times, with an accompanying screenshot suggesting the post did not trigger Facebook’s automated safeguards. 

A Meta spokesperson told Engadget the company has designated the shooting as a terrorist attack and added the gunman’s footage to a database it says will help it automatically detect and remove copies before they’re uploaded again. The spokesperson added the company’s moderation teams are working to catch bad actors who attempt to circumvent the blocks it has put in place.       

Responding to Mac’s Twitter thread, Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz said she found TikTok videos that share accounts and terms Twitter users can search for to view the full video. “Clear the vid is all over Twitter,” she said. We’ve reached out to the company for comment.

“We believe the hateful and discriminatory views promoted in content produced by perpetrators are harmful for society and their dissemination should be limited in order to prevent perpetrators from publicizing their message,” a Twitter spokesperson told Engadget. They added the company was “proactively” working to identify and take action against tweets that violate its guidelines.   

Preventing terrorists and violent extremists from disseminating their content online is one of the things Facebook, Twitter and a handful of other tech companies said they would do following the 2019 shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand. In the first 24 hours after that attack, Meta said it removed 1.5 million videos, but clips of the shooting continued to circulate on the platform for more than a month after the event. The company blamed its automated moderation tools for the failure, noting they had a hard time detecting the footage because of the way in which it was filmed. “This was a first-person shooter video, one where we have someone using a GoPro helmet with a camera focused from their perspective of shooting,” Neil Potts, Facebook’s public policy director, told British lawmakers at the time.

Update 6:39PM ET: Added comment and additional information from Meta and Twitter.

A USB-C iPhone could be part of a broader move away from Lightning for Apple

Apple may be planning a broader move away from its proprietary Lightning port than was initially suggested in reports earlier in the week. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the company is working on accessories, including AirPods as well as mouse and keyboard peripherals, that charge via USB-C.

Kuo shared the forecast in response to a tweet he posted on May 11th. In that earlier message, he said Apple would redesign the iPhone to feature the more universal port standard by the second half of 2023. Bloomberg later corroborated Kuo’s prediction.

Exactly when Apple could move its accessories to USB-C is unclear. Kuo only said the transition would happen “in the foreseeable future.” According to the report Bloomberg published on Friday, Apple won’t release a USB-C iPhone until next year at the earliest. It would make the most sense for the company to complete the move all at once, but there’s no guarantee it will do things that way.

As with a potential USB-C iPhone, Apple’s motivation for moving its accessories away from Lightning may have more to do with avoiding regulatory scrutiny than creating a better user experience. In an effort to cut down on electronic waste, the European Union has spent years pushing for a universal charging port and last month moved one step closer to mandating USB-C on all small and medium-sized electronics.