《要塞英雄》增添 Xbox Cloud Gaming 的管道回到 iOS 平台上

繼 NVIDIA 的 GeForce Now 之後，《要塞英雄》（Fortnite）現在又多了 Xbox Cloud Gaming 這個管道，回到 iOS 平台上。Epic Games 與微軟合作，將《要塞英雄》免費帶到 Xbox Cloud Gaming 上，並且可以透過 iPhone、iPad、Android 裝置及 PC 等平台的網頁瀏覽器遊玩。…

The Morning After: ‘Fortnite’ is back on iOS, kind of

Microsoft has partnered with Epic Games to make Fortnite playable, for free, on Xbox Cloud Gaming. No subscription required. So long as you have a Microsoft account in one of 26 streaming-enabled countries, you can play the battle royale title through the web browser on an iPhone, iPad, Android device or Windows PC.

The streaming version supports both controllers and touch. Creative mode is also free although you’ll need to pay if you want to fight AI villains in the Save the World campaign. Microsoft also said it would “look to bring” other free-to-play titles to Xbox Cloud Gaming.

It’s not the first workaround — NVIDIA has also allowed its cloud gaming subscribers to stream Fortnite on Apple devices. Microsoft, however, has a bigger audience of casual gamers, making this a bigger deal. It also sided with Epic when the company went toe-to-toe with Apple over App Store restrictions and costs.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

The maker of TurboTax owes customers $141 million

It ‘cheated’ them out of free tax services.

TurboTax maker Intuit will pay $141 million “for deceiving millions of low-income Americans into paying for tax services that should have been free,” the New York Attorney General’s office wrote in a press release.

The company must refund nearly 4.4 million consumers who used TurboTax’s Free Edition between 2016 and 2018, then discovered they had to pay to file. Many didn’t realize they could have used the IRS Free File program available in a separate product, which costs nothing. Intuit released a statement expressing no regret and said the required ad changes would have little impact on its business.

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‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ says the quiet part out loud

It’s done with being subtle.

The long-awaited third live-action Star Trek series in recent years makes its debut on Paramount+. But, while Discovery carried the burden of being the first Star Trek show in 12 years and Picard saw the return of a beloved character after 17 years, Strange New Worlds appears to pitch itself, in many ways, as a return to the Star Trek of the past, beyond just more episodic storytelling.

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Lenovo’s new Slim series laptops feature updated AMD or Intel processors

There’s also a laptop that Lenovo claims is carbon neutral.

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Engadget

Lenovo’s big spring laptop refresh includes a new generation of Slim clamshell laptops in the US (which confusingly share the Slim branding with older, unrelated models). These include the Slim 9i, the Slim 7i and Slim7i Pro X, the Slim 7i Carbon and the Slim 7. The last of those come with an AMD Ryzen 6000 Series processor rather than the Intel chips inside its sisters, while the Slim 9i claims to be carbon neutral.

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Starlink users can now take their internet terminal on the road

That connected ‘vanlife.’

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Starlink

A new Starlink feature called Portability allows users to temporarily use Starlink when they’re away from home. In the US, Portability will cost $25 per month. That’s on top of the regular service fee, which SpaceX recently bumped up to $110 per month. The hardware now costs $599 for those without a pre-order.

There are some caveats: It’s not worth taking a terminal on a transatlantic trip. Starlink says the feature is only available when users are on the same continent as their registered service address. They’d also have to ship it…

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Lucid is hiking the prices of its luxury Air EVs

In its earnings report, Lucid has announced that it’s boosting the prices of its luxury Air EV lineup as much as 13 percent, TechCrunch reported. The Air Grand Touring model will rise $15,000 to $154,000, the Air touring will jump $12,400 to $107,400 and the cheapest Air Pure model will go up $10,000 to $87,400. The new prices will not affect the 30,000 current reservation holders.

“Similar to many companies in our industry, we continue to face global supply chain and logistics challenges, including Covid-related factory shutdowns in China. We are working closely with our suppliers to mitigate the impact of disruptions,” said Lucid CFO Sherry House in a statement. “While any extended disruptions could result in an impact to our production forecast, today we are reiterating our 12,000-14,000 vehicle production forecast for 2022 based on the information we have at this point combined with our mitigation plans.”

Lucid still expects to start deliveries of the $179,000 Air Grand Touring Performance model in June (the price of that model remains the same), with the Air Touring and Air Pure models following later this year. Production on the Project Gravity SUV will commence in Q1 2024, said Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson. 

Rising prices for EVs are an industry-wide issue at the moment due to the Ukraine war, COVID-related factory shutdowns and more. Tesla recently raised prices on all models, with the base Model 3 rising $2,000 to $46,990. Rivian also hiked prices on its electric pickups, with the R1T rising $12,000 — but it backed off on applying them to pre-orders as it had planned, following an outcry. 

Lucid also announced that it made $57.7 million revenue last quarter thanks to deliveries of 360 vehicles, the most it’s made so far. The company expects to keep losing money while it builds out its manufacturing plants in Arizona and Saudi Arabia, but it has $5.4 billion in cash as a buffer. 

SpaceX Dragon capsule safely returns Crew-3 astronauts back to Earth

The astronauts that flew to the ISS as part of the SpaceX Crew-3 mission are back on Earth after almost six months on the orbiting lab. They splashed down safely in the Gulf of Mexico aboard the Crew Dragon Endurance, which made its debut flight with the same astronauts back in November 2021, on May 6th at 12:43am ET — and NASA has captured a pretty spectacular night video of the event.

As you can see, the Endurance capsule looks particularly glowy in infrared, most likely because it reached a temperature of around 3500 degrees Fahrenheit upon entering the atmosphere. The recovery team pulled out NASA astronauts Kayla Barron, Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn, as well as ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer from the capsule shortly after splashdown. Marshburn is the only veteran astronaut out of the four, and he completed his fifth spacewalk during the mission. It was the first ISS mission for the other three, with Maurer being only the second ESA astronaut to fly aboard a Dragon capsule.

The Crew-3 astronauts spent 177 days in orbit and started their stay with a bang. Shortly after they arrived on the station, all the astronauts onboard had to seek safety on their transport craft when the ISS passed dangerously close to a field of orbital debris. The US State Department later said that the debris came from a Russian missile test that destroyed one of the country’s own satellites.

SpaceX’s next manned mission to the ISS is scheduled to launch in September with two NASA astronauts, one JAXA astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut. It will be the fifth crewed NASA Commercial Crew flight so far after Crew-4 launched to the station back in April.

WhatsApp’s emoji reactions begin rolling out to everyone

After teasing the feature last month, WhatsApp has starting rolling out emoji reactions to all users around the world, it announced. In the coming days, you’ll be able to react with one of six emojis: Thumbs Up 👍, Red Heart ❤️, Face with Tears of Joy 😂, Face with Open Mouth 😮, Crying Face 😢, and Folded Hands 🙏. The messaging app also introduced two more features — 2GB file sharing and an increase in group members to 512 people. 

On top of the message reactions, WhatsApp will now allow you to send files a whopping 2GB in size, up 20 times from the previous 100MB limitation. That seems designed to support video files in particular “and we think [it] will be helpful for collaboration among small businesses and school groups,” the company said. It also introduced the ability to create group chats with up to 512 people, double the previous limit.  

The features will be rolling out over the next week across iOS, Android, macOS and Windows, so you many not see them tout de suite. That should be just the beginning as well, because WhatsApp has previously said that it plans to support reactions with all emoji and skin tones down the road.

Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 3 評測：音質依然，體驗提升

Momentum True Wireless 3， 展示著他們仍能保持初心之餘，還能再進一步的改進。小編在這回的評測體驗中，都能感覺到過去 MTW 系列的一些不足都已經被修正了，使其在高階市場的其他對手面前也有著更大競爭力。…