Hulu will be the streaming home for Lollapalooza through 2023

If you want to catch any live performances from Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo or Austin City Limits Music Festival from the comfort of your own home, Hulu will be the place to do that for the next couple of years. The platform has signed a deal with Live Nation to be the official streaming home for all three festivals through 2023. Lollapalooza was available to YouTube viewers for several years, but it moved to Hulu in 2021.

You’ll need to be a Hulu subscriber to catch livestreams from the festivals this year and next, though you won’t have to be on the Live TV plan. Two feeds will be available for each event Friday through Sunday. There will be one livestream for Thursday programming from Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza (ACL is held over two weekends but doesn’t run on Thursdays). Hulu will also offer special footage and behind-the-scenes vignettes.

The livestream schedules will be announced in the leadup to each festival. Gryffin, J. Cole, Tool and Stevie Nicks top the bill at Bonnaroo, which runs from June 16th to 19th. Lollapalooza takes place over the last weekend in July and this year’s headliners are Metallica, Dua Lipa, J. Cole and Green Day. As for ACL, you’ll be able to check out performances from the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lil Nas X, Pink, Kacey Musgraves, Paramore, The Chicks, SZA and Flume across the first two weekends of October.

Twitter’s CEO fires top product exec as company cuts costs

There’s a new shakeup happening at the top of Twitter. CEO Parag Agrawal has fired the company’s general manager of consumer products Kayvon Beykpour in order to “take the team in a different direction.” Bruce Falck, the company’s general manager for revenue, is also leaving, the company confirmed. Beykpour, who had been with the company for seven years, was on paternity leave at the time. 

The shakeup comes alongside a companywide pause on hiring as Twitter tries to cut costs. A spokesperson said the company is “pausing most hiring” and “pulling back on non-labor costs.” It will likely fuel more uncertainty at Twitter, which has been reeling since the company accepted Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company. Agrawal has reportedly told employees the company’s current execs don’t know what direction Musk will take the platform. Musk has said he has no confidence in Twitter’s current management, and that he has a new CEO in mind for when the deal closes.

Despite all that, Agrawal is making big changes of his own. Most notably, by firing Beykpour, a longtime product executive who is well-liked in and outside of Twitter. “The truth is that this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and this wasn’t my decision,” he wrote in a thread about his departure. “Parag asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction.”

In a memo, Agrawal cited the company’s failure to hit goals for revenue and user growth, The New York Timesreported. Musk has made clear he has even more aggressive goals for the platform. He recently stated that he intends to grow Twitter’s user base to nearly a billion users by 2028.

Twitter isn’t the only major platform looking to cut costs. Meta has also said it intends to pull back on its hiring plans, and has ended some projects in its Reality Labs division. 

Rivian recalls 502 R1T trucks due to an airbag sensor issue

Rivian is recalling some of its R1T electric trucks because of an issue with airbag sensors. The vehicle may not disable an airbag when a child is sitting up front, according to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration filing spotted by The Verge. This is Rivian’s first recall and it covers 502 R1T vehicles that were built between September 2021 and April 2022.

Although the NHTSA recommends that children aged under 13 should be in the back seat, that’s not always possible for various reasons. Airbags, which can deploy even in a minor accident, can injure or kill children who are sitting in the front seat. 

Rivian said the recalled vehicles “fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 208, ‘Occupant Crash Protection.'” The company said no injuries have been associated with the issue. 

The front passenger seats in the recalled EVs will be replaced for free at Rivian service centers — it currently has 20 of those in the US. The company said it will inform affected customers by phone, email, text and in-vehicle messaging as soon as possible. It will also mail notices to them by July 1st.

A Rivian spokesperson sent Engadget the following statement:

Rivian has determined that on certain R1T vehicles, the front passenger seat may not deactivate the front passenger airbag as required if a child seat or child is in that seat. In the event of a crash which deploys the front passenger airbag, a seat with this improper calibration may increase the risk of injury for any child or child seat occupant sitting in the seat. We are contacting those with affected Rivian vehicles, and they will receive a passenger seat replacement free of charge at a Rivian service center. In the meantime, infants and children should not be placed in the front passenger seat of affected Rivian vehicles until a front passenger seat replacement is complete.

Update 5/12 2:29PM ET: Added Rivian’s statement.

Netflix’s live-action ‘Resident Evil’ trailer shows a zombie apocalypse, obviously

A live-action Resident Evil series is coming to Netflix this summer, and a teaser offers a first look at what’s in store. The story takes place across two timelines and locations: a seemingly pristine New Raccoon City in the present day and a ruined version of London in 2036.

In 2022, we see Albert Wesker (Lance Reddick) bringing his daughters Jade and Billie to New Raccoon City. Albert works for the Umbrella Corporation, which unleashes the devastating T-virus on humanity. Fast forward 14 years and Jade is one of the last 15 million or so people on Earth. She tries to survive the zombie apocalypse while reckoning with her family’s dark secrets.

The show will build on existing lore from the Resident Evil games but will have an original narrative. The teaser makes it pretty clear this is primarily a horror series with some action weaved in. There are nods to the games as well, including a quick flash of a zombie dog at the end.

This show follows on from the anime Resident Evil:Infinite Darkness, which hit Netflix last year. The first eight-episode season of Resident Evil will arrive on July 14th.

Android TV’s next big update will improve picture-in-picture viewing

Google isn’t just showering affection on Android phones and tablets at I/O 2022. The company has detailed updates for Android 13 on TV, including one for living room multitaskers. On top of already announced plans to support casting from Android to Google TV, Google has revealed that Android TV will expand picture-in-picture viewing to show group call videos, add a docked mode and prevent chats from hiding content in other apps. You could catch up with family on a camera-equipped TV without blocking your web browser.

The future Android TV release will also support different keyboard layouts. That could be helpful for game developers who need to map input to non-QWERTY physical keyboards, Google said. You should also expect performance and quality boosts thanks to improved audio routing and HDMI responses.

Developers can grab Android 13 TV beta 2 today for either Google’s ADT-3 kit or a computer-based emulator. You’ll likely have to wait until later in the year for the finished Android TV update to arrive. As with Android 13 on mobile devices, this isn’t a major overhaul — it’s more of a refinement to help keep up with modern expectations.

Sony WH-1000XM5 review: In a league of their own

The rumors were (mostly) true. Sony did indeed have a follow-up to its stellar WH-1000XM4 ready for a proper debut. Today the company announced the WH-1000XM5 ($400), its latest flagship noise-canceling headphones equipped with all of the things we’ve …

Android Auto is getting a major UI update

After all the big hardware and software announcements during the I/O 2022 keynote presentation, today Google is sharing some updates for cars with Android Auto and vehicles with infotainment systems based on Android Automotive. 

Detailed as part of Google’s “What’s New with Android for Cars” session, the most important upcoming change is a refreshed UI for Android Auto focused on making it easier to navigate, control media and communicate with others while driving. To accommodate the larger displays in new cars, the company is making split screen view standard across all devices so that you can see directions, music and texts all at the same time. That means you’ll be able to quickly pause a song or see a new message without having to navigate through a bunch of menus and settings. 

To better support the wide varieyty of screen sizes in new vehicles, Google is adding mor
Google

On top of that, Google is also improving support for adaptive layouts that can more easily adjust to the growing variety of displays in new cars. So regardless of if you have a sweeping extra-wide display on your dash or a tall portrait-orientated screen, the Android Auto UI can still show all your pertinent info. Meanwhile, to improve hands-free controls, the Google Assistant is better contextual suggestions for things like returning missed calls, texting arrival times and more. 

At I/O 2022, Google announced that Android Auto is getting support for more streaming video apps with the addition of Tubi TV and Epix Now.
Google

Finally, for owners of cars with systems based on Android Automotive (such as new vehicles from Ford, Volvo and others), Google is expanding your in-car entertainment options with wider support for video streaming apps. Earlier this year at CES, Google announced the ability to stream clips from YouTube, and now the Tubi TV and Epix Now apps will be added soon. Just remember, you can only watch videos while the car is parked, so don’t try to stream and drive. And in the future, the company says it also has plans to let passengers stream content from their phones to their vehicle’s built-in display, though there isn’t a concrete timeline for when that will be available yet. 

Follow all of the news from Google I/O 2022 right here!

Mark Zuckerberg shows off what Meta’s next headset can do

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has provided a first proper look at the company’s next mixed-reality headset, codenamed Project Cambria, in action. The “high-end headset” is scheduled for release later this year and it will support a new augmented reality experience called The World Beyond.

We see Zuckerberg playing with and petting a virtual creature that’s superimposed onto the real world. The clip also shows a user in front of a virtual workstation before looking down at a notepad and writing on it. Reports suggested that Cambria’s image quality would allow users to clearly read text, and that seems to be the case.

In addition, the demo shows a virtual workout instructor who appears to be in the same space as the headset wearer. The World Beyond was built with Meta’s Presence Platform, which is designed to help developers create mixed-reality experiences.

Project Cambria will support full-color passthrough. Its onboard cameras can seemingly provide wearers with a higher fidelity view of their surroundings for mixed-reality purposes than existing Quest headsets can offer. The World Beyond will be available on Quest soon through App Lab, though you won’t be able to access the full-color passthrough experience just yet.

The new headset itself was blurred in the clip. However, it’s not that hard to imagine roughly what it will look like, especially given the teaser Meta released last year. Project Cambria (or whatever it will actually be called) will reportedly cost over $799.

A recent report noted that Meta employees likened Project Cambria to a “laptop for the face,” given that it’s said to have similar specs to a Chromebook. It’s believed Meta is planning to release a more advanced version of the Cambria headset in 2024 as well as two new Quest models over the next few years.

However, it seems Meta is scaling back some of its metaverse ambitions. On Wednesday, it was reported that the company is shutting down some projects at Reality Labs, the hardware and metaverse division that lost $10 billion last year, and putting others on hold. Meta is said to be hiring fewer staff than usual this year to reduce costs amid slowing revenue growth. Meanwhile, the company this week opened its first physical store for Reality Labs products.

Ocasio-Cortez, Warren blast Amazon for ‘wholly inadequate’ warehouse safety

Amazon’s handling of the deadly Edwardsville, Illinois warehouse collapse in December is drawing criticism from key figures in Congress. Motherboardreports that Senator Elizabeth Warren and representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush have sent a follow-up letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and chairman Jeff Bezos criticizing the company’s “disappointing” response to an initial series of questions about the Illinois warehouse’s safety. They said OSHA’s findings described a “wholly inadequate safety culture” that may have played a role in the deaths of six facility workers.

The data pointed to “serious concerns” about safety training at the Edwardsville location, the politicians wrote. While OSHA didn’t fine or otherwise punish Amazon, its investigation contradicted the company’s statements about preparedness. Staff didn’t participate in emergency drills that might have protected them from the tornado, and some didn’t even know the location of the designated shelter area. And while Amazon claimed the warehouse had an Emergency Action Plan, OSHA said the company neither customized it for the area nor followed it properly.

The investigation and Amazon’s response suggested the firm only did the “bare minimum” or less to protect workers, according to the politicians. They added that there was evidence of injuries and exploitation elsewhere, and urged Amazon to honor the House Oversight Committee’s request for documents as part of its own inquiry.

We’ve asked Amazon for comment. The tech giant said in its response letter that safety was its “top priority” and defended its practices at the Edwardsville warehouse. Bezos told shareholders roughly a year ago that Amazon needed to improve its treatment of employees, but his focus was on reducing repetitive strain injuries and general safety projects, not disaster preparedness. The retailer acknowledged some of the calls for reform by permanently allowing cellphones on-site.

Whatever Amazon’s answer to this latest letter, it’s likely to face considerably more scrutiny. On top of the House probe, Amazon is dealing with multiple lawsuits accusing the company of negligence that led to deaths and injuries at the Illinois hub. There’s still plenty of pressure to change, and Amazon might not succeed in resisting political demands.