Engadget

Meta’s Threads app now has more than 150 million monthly users, an increase of about 20 million new users since February . Mark Zuckerberg shared the latest user numbers during Meta’’s first-quarter earnings call, saying that the app “continues to be on the trajectory that I hope to see.” The update suggests Threads is continuing to grow steadily, though at a slower rate than its initial explosiv…

The EU has effectively vanquished a TikTok feature that Europe’s digital commissioner described as “toxic” and “addictive as cigarettes.” Owner ByteDance said on Wednesday that TikTok Lite’s reward-to-watch feature would be suspended. It’s been a brutal day for TikTok as President Biden signed a bill (also on Wednesday) forcing ByteDance to sell the platform’s US operations or face a ban. TikTok …

PUBG: Battlegrounds is somehow old enough to evoke nostalgia. The pioneering battle royale game, which entered Steam Early Access in 2017 , will borrow a page from Fortnite ’s playbook and honor its first map. Erangel Classic will recreate the old-school battlefield from the game’s inception for a limited two-week run in May and June. Developer and publisher Krafton says the Erangel Classic map w…

JetBlue is revamping its in-flight entertainment system , complete with a new branding. It’s now called Blueprint and brings several features that should make your next flight just a teensy-bit less grueling. The biggest news here is a watch party feature that lets customers view the same TV show or film with up to five other people. This is actually pretty cool, as watching stuff with friends an…

Threads users may soon have a new way to clean up their timelines. The app is testing a new archive feature that can be used to manually archive individual posts or automatically hide posts after a set period of time, Adam Mosseri shared . As on Instagram, archiving a post on Threads will hide it from public view, though the post will be available to the original author to view or undo. The Insta…

Several months after Meta brought WhatsApp passkey logins to Android , it’s doing the same on iOS. The company is rolling out the feature now, and it will be available to all users in the coming weeks. Passkeys are seen as a more secure login method as (for one thing) it mitigates the risk of scammers convincing users to share their SMS passcode. Instead, you can log in by verifying a passkey usi…

The Biden administration is tackling the monumental task of making America’s industrial freight system more environmentally friendly. The White House said on Wednesday that it aims to have 30 percent of industrial truck sales produce zero emissions by 2030 and 100 percent by 2040. In addition to those non-binding targets, the White House is meeting on Wednesday with stakeholders from the commerci…

Parents throughout the country just breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of allowing more screen time for their kids that doesn’t revolve around some really loud and annoying YouTube dude. PBS just launched a new free ad-supported channel called PBS Retro, as reported by The Wrap . As the name suggests, this is a repository for all of your favorite edutainment classics from the 1980s, 1990s …

At CES this January, startup Rabbit unveiled its first device , just in time for the end of the year of the rabbit according to the lunar calendar. It’s a cute little orange square that was positioned as a “pocket companion that moves AI from words to action.” In other words, it’s basically a dedicated AI machine that acts kind of like a walkie talkie to a virtual assistant. Sound familiar? You’r…

Google keeps promising to phase out third-party cookies on Chrome but not actually doing it. The company vowed to deprecate cookies back in 2020 , pushing the date back to 2023 and then 2024. We did get some traction earlier this year , when Google disabled cookies for one percent of Chrome users , but those efforts have stalled. Now, the company says it won’t happen until next year . It’s easy t…

The bill that will force a sale or ban of TikTok in the United States is now law. President Joe Biden signed a package of foreign aid bills that included the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” one day after the legislation was approved by the Senate . In a statement , TikTok said it would challenge the law in court, which could delay an eventual sale or ban…

Valve has closed a loophole in Steam's refund policy that effectively allowed players to beat a game before its official release date and get their money back. The company has long had a policy in place whereby users could refund a game, no questions asked, as long as they haven’t played for more than two hours within 14 days. Until now, the refund policy was far more lenient for games in early a…

Last fall, Qualcomm revealed a major upgrade for its laptop chips with the Snapdragon X Elite. And while we’re still waiting for those processors to make their way into retail devices, today Qualcomm is expanding the line with the Snapdragon X Plus, which I had a chance to test out ahead of its arrival on gadgets later this year. Similar to the X Elite, the X Plus is based on the same 4nm process…

It used to be that you could pay for a retail version of Windows 11 and expect it to be ad-free, but those days are apparently finito . The latest update to Windows 11 ( KB5036980 ) comes out this week and includes ads for apps in the "recommended" section of the Start Menu, one of the most oft-used parts of the OS. "The Recommended section of the Start menu will show some Microsoft Store apps," …

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has banned noncompete clauses in a move to "drive innovation" and protect workers' rights and wages, the regulator said in a press release . The new rule will free most new and current employees from such agreements, with the exception of "policy-making" executives earning more than $151,164 per year. "Noncompete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, an…