Tech

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Disney+ gets HDR10+ via “over 1,000” Hulu titles

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Disney+ has started streaming movies and shows in the HDR10+ format.

Support is somewhat limited for now. Only certain content from Hulu, which The Walt Disney Company acquired in June, is available in HDR10+. In an announcement today, Samsung said that “over 1,000” Hulu titles are available in HDR10+ and that “additional Disney+” content will support HDR10+ “in the future.” Previously, Disney+ only supported the HDR10 and Dolby Vision HDR formats.

Samsung TVs are the first devices to gain the ability to stream HDR10+ content from Disney+, according to an announcement from Samsung today. The electronics company said that its Samsung Crystal UHD TVs and above from 2018 onward, including its OLED TVs, The Frame TVs, QLED TVs, and Micro RGB TV, support HDR10+.

The Disney+ app on Apple’s tvOS also lists HDR10+, site FlatpanelsHD pointed out.

Hulu started offering some content in HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision in 2021. Now that Disney owns Hulu and has created a unified app with both Disney+ and Hulu content, Disney+ is also able to offer a restricted number of titles in HDR10+.

Today’s announcement also caters to Samsung TV users, since Samsung TVs don’t support Dolby Vision. By offering HDR10+, Disney+ can make itself more appealing to the many home theater enthusiasts who own a TV from Samsung, which is the world’s top-selling TV brand.

Disney+ gets HDR10+ via “over 1,000” Hulu titles Read More »

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TV-focused YouTube update brings AI upscaling, shopping QR codes

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YouTube has been streaming for 20 years, but it was only in the last couple that it came to dominate TV streaming. Google’s video platform attracts more TV viewers than Netflix, Disney+, and all the other apps, and Google is looking to further beef up its big-screen appeal with a new raft of features, including shopping, immersive channel surfing, and an official version of the AI upscaling that had creators miffed a few months back.

According to Google, YouTube’s growth has translated into higher payouts. The number of channels earning more than $100,000 annually is up 45 percent in 2025 versus 2024. YouTube is now giving creators some tools to boost their appeal (and hopefully their income) on TV screens. Those elaborate video thumbnails featuring surprised, angry, smiley hosts are about to get even prettier with the new 50MB file size limit. That’s up from a measly 2MB.

Video upscaling is also coming to YouTube, and creators will be opted in automatically. To start, YouTube will be upscaling lower-quality videos to 1080p. In the near future, Google plans to support “super resolution” up to 4K.

The site stresses that it’s not modifying original files—creators will have access to both the original and upscaled files, and they can opt out of upscaling. In addition, super resolution videos will be clearly labeled on the user side, allowing viewers to select the original upload if they prefer. The lack of transparency was a sticking point for creators, some of whom complained about the sudden artificial look of their videos during YouTube’s testing earlier this year.

TV-focused YouTube update brings AI upscaling, shopping QR codes Read More »

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Samsung makes ads on $3,499 smart fridges official with upcoming software update

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After kicking off an unpopular pilot test last month, Samsung made the practice of having its expensive smart fridges display ads official this week.

The ads will be shown on Samsung’s 2024 Family Hub smart fridges. As of this writing, Samsung’s Family Hub fridges have MSRPs ranging from $1,899 to $3,499. The ads will arrive through a software update that Samsung will start issuing this month and display on the fridge’s integrated 21.5- or 32-inch (depending on the model) screen. The ads will show when the fridges are idle and display what Samsung calls Cover Screens.

As part of the Family Hub software update, we are piloting a new widget for select Cover Screens themes of Family Hub refrigerators. The widget will display useful day-to-day information such as news, calendar and weather forecasts, along with curated advertisements.

Samsung also said that its fridges will only show contextualized ads, instead of personalized ads, which rely on collecting data on users.

The Verge reported that the widget will appear as a rectangular box at the bottom of the screens. The box will change what it displays “every 10 seconds,” the publication said.

The software update will also introduce “a Daily Board theme that offers a new way to see useful information at a glance,” Samsung said. The Verge reported that this feature will also include ads, something that Samsung’s announcement neglected to state. The Daily Board theme will show five tiles with information such as appointments and the weather, and one with ads.

Samsung makes ads on $3,499 smart fridges official with upcoming software update Read More »

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With new acquisition, OpenAI signals plans to integrate deeper into the OS

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OpenAI has acquired Software Applications Incorporated (SAI), perhaps best known for the core team that produced what became Shortcuts on Apple platforms. More recently, the team has been working on Sky, a context-aware AI interface layer on top of macOS. The financial terms of the acquisition have not been publicly disclosed.

“AI progress isn’t only about advancing intelligence—it’s about unlocking it through interfaces that understand context, adapt to your intent, and work seamlessly,” an OpenAI rep wrote in the company’s blog post about the acquisition. The post goes on to specify that OpenAI plans to “bring Sky’s deep macOS integration and product craft into ChatGPT, and all members of the team will join OpenAI.”

That includes SAI co-founders Ari Weinstein (CEO), Conrad Kramer (CTO), and Kim Beverett (Product Lead)—all of whom worked together for several years at Apple after Apple acquired Weinstein and Kramer’s previous company, which produced an automation tool called Workflows, to integrate Shortcuts across Apple’s software platforms.

The three SAI founders left Apple to work on Sky, which leverages Apple APIs and accessibility features to provide context about what’s on screen to a large language model; the LLM takes plain language user commands and executes them across multiple applications. At its best, the tool aimed to be a bit like Shortcuts, but with no setup, generating workflows on the fly based on user prompts.

With new acquisition, OpenAI signals plans to integrate deeper into the OS Read More »

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A single point of failure triggered the Amazon outage affecting millions

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In turn, the delay in network state propagations spilled over to a network load balancer that AWS services rely on for stability. As a result, AWS customers experienced connection errors from the US-East-1 region. AWS network functions affected included the creating and modifying Redshift clusters, Lambda invocations, and Fargate task launches such as Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow, Outposts lifecycle operations, and the AWS Support Center.

For the time being, Amazon has disabled the DynamoDB DNS Planner and the DNS Enactor automation worldwide while it works to fix the race condition and add protections to prevent the application of incorrect DNS plans. Engineers are also making changes to EC2 and its network load balancer.

A cautionary tale

Ookla outlined a contributing factor not mentioned by Amazon: a concentration of customers who route their connectivity through the US-East-1 endpoint and an inability to route around the region. Ookla explained:

The affected US‑EAST‑1 is AWS’s oldest and most heavily used hub. Regional concentration means even global apps often anchor identity, state or metadata flows there. When a regional dependency fails as was the case in this event, impacts propagate worldwide because many “global” stacks route through Virginia at some point.

Modern apps chain together managed services like storage, queues, and serverless functions. If DNS cannot reliably resolve a critical endpoint (for example, the DynamoDB API involved here), errors cascade through upstream APIs and cause visible failures in apps users do not associate with AWS. That is precisely what Downdetector recorded across Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, Ring, HMRC, and others.

The event serves as a cautionary tale for all cloud services: More important than preventing race conditions and similar bugs is eliminating single points of failure in network design.

“The way forward,” Ookla said, “is not zero failure but contained failure, achieved through multi-region designs, dependency diversity, and disciplined incident readiness, with regulatory oversight that moves toward treating the cloud as systemic components of national and economic resilience.”

A single point of failure triggered the Amazon outage affecting millions Read More »

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The Android-powered Boox Palma 2 Pro fits in your pocket, but it’s not a phone

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Softly talking about the Boox Palma 2 Pro

For years, color E Ink was seen as a desirable feature, which would make it easier to read magazines and comics on low-power devices—Boox even has an E Ink monitor. However, the quality of the displays has been lacking. These screens do show colors, but they’re not as vibrant as what you get on an LCD or OLED. In the case of the Palma 2 Pro, the screen is also less sharp in color mode. The touchscreen display is 824 × 1648 in monochrome, but turning on color cuts that in half to 412 × 824.

In addition to the new screen, the second-gen Palma adds a SIM card slot. It’s not for phone calls, though. The SIM slot allows the device to get 5G mobile data in addition to Wi-Fi.

Credit: Boox

The Palma 2 Pro runs Android 15 out of the box. That’s a solid showing for Boox, which often uses much older builds of Google’s mobile OS. Upgrades aren’t guaranteed, and there’s no official support for Google services. However, Boox has a workaround for its devices so the Play Store can be installed.

The new Boox pocket reader is available for pre-order now at $400. It’s expected to ship around November 14.

The Android-powered Boox Palma 2 Pro fits in your pocket, but it’s not a phone Read More »

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Microsoft makes Copilot “human-centered” with a ‘90s-style animated assistant

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Microsoft said earlier this month that it wanted to add better voice controls to Copilot, Windows 11’s built-in chatbot-slash-virtual assistant. As described, this new version of Copilot sounds an awful lot like another stab at Cortana, the voice assistant that Microsoft tried (and failed) to get people to use in Windows 10 in the mid-to-late 2010s.

Turns out that the company isn’t done trying to reformulate and revive ideas it has already tried before. As part of a push toward what it calls “human-centered AI,” Microsoft is now putting a face on Copilot. Literally, a face: “Mico” is an “expressive, customizable, and warm” blob with a face that dynamically “listens, reacts, and even changes colors to reflect your interactions” as you interact with Copilot. (Another important adjective for Mico: “optional.”)

Mico (rhymes with “pico”) recalls old digital assistants like Clippy, Microsoft Bob, and Rover, ideas that Microsoft tried in the ’90s and early 2000s before mostly abandoning them.

Microsoft clearly thinks that backing these ideas with language and/or reasoning models will help Copilot succeed where both Cortana and Clippy failed. Part of the reason these assistants were viewed as annoying rather than helpful is that they could respond to a finite number of possible inputs or situations, and they didn’t even help in those situations most of the time because they could only respond to a small number of context clues. I don’t have hard evidence for this, but I’d bet that the experience of dismissing Clippy’s “It looks like you’re writing a letter!” prompts is near-universal among PC users of a certain age.

Microsoft makes Copilot “human-centered” with a ‘90s-style animated assistant Read More »

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Reports suggest Apple is already pulling back on the iPhone Air

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Apple’s iPhone Air was the company’s most interesting new iPhone this year, at least insofar as it was the one most different from previous iPhones. We came away impressed by its size and weight in our review. But early reports suggest that its novelty might not be translating into sales success.

A note from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, whose supply chain sources are often accurate about Apple’s future plans, said yesterday that demand for the iPhone Air “has fallen short of expectations” and that “both shipments and production capacity” were being scaled back to account for the lower-than-expected demand.

Kuo’s note is backed up by reports from other analysts at Mizuho Securities (via MacRumors) and Nikkei Asia. Both of these reports say that demand for the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro models remains strong, indicating that this is just a problem for the iPhone Air and not a wider slowdown caused by tariffs or other external factors.

The standard iPhone, the regular-sized iPhone Pro, and the big iPhone Pro have all been mainstays in Apple’s lineup, but the company has had a harder time coming up with a fourth phone that sells well enough to stick around. The small-screened iPhone mini and the large-screened iPhone Plus were each discontinued after two generations.

Reports suggest Apple is already pulling back on the iPhone Air Read More »

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Samsung Galaxy XR is the first Android XR headset, now on sale for $1,800

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Android-XR

Credit: Google

Android XR is Google’s most ambitious take on Android as a virtual environment. The company calls it an “infinite screen” that lets you organize floating apps to create a custom workspace. The software includes 3D versions of popular Google apps like Google Maps, Google Photos, and YouTube, along with streaming apps, games, and custom XR experiences from the likes of Calm and Adobe.

Google says that its support of open standards for immersive experiences means more content is coming. However, more than anything else, Android XR is a vehicle for Gemini. The Gemini Live feature from phones is available in Android XR, and it’s more aware of your surroundings thanks to all the cameras and orientation sensors in Galaxy XR. For example, you can ask Gemini questions about what’s on the screen—that includes app content or real objects that appear in passthrough video when you look around. Gemini can also help organize your floating windows

While more Android XR hardware is planned, Galaxy XR is the only way to experience it right now, and it’s not cheap. Samsung’s headset is available for purchase at $1,800. If hand gesture control isn’t enough, you’ll have to pay another $175 for wireless controllers (discounted from the $250 retail price). Galaxy XR also supports corrective lenses if you need them, but that’s another $99.

Buyers get a collection of freebies to help justify the price. It comes with a full year of Google AI Pro, YouTube Premium, and Google Play Pass. Collectively, that would usually cost $370. Owners can also get three months of YouTube TV for $3, and everyone with Galaxy XR will get access to the 2025–2026 season of NBA League Pass in the US.

Samsung Galaxy XR is the first Android XR headset, now on sale for $1,800 Read More »

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AWS outage reminds us why $2,449 Internet-dependent beds are a bad idea

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Some users complained that malfunctioning devices kept them awake for hours. Others bemoaned waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat.

Even more basic features, such as alarms, failed to work when Eight Sleep’s servers went down.

Eight Sleep will offer local control

Eight Sleep co-founder and CEO Matteo Franceschetti addressed the problems via X on Monday:

The AWS outage has impacted some of our users since last night, disrupting their sleep. That is not the experience we want to provide and I want to apologize for it.

We are taking two main actions:

1) We are restoring all the features as AWS comes back. All devices are currently working, with some experiencing data processing delays.

2) We are currently outage-proofing your Pod experience and we will be working tonight-24/7 until that is done.

On Monday evening, Franceschetti said that “all the features should be working.” On Tuesday, the company started making an offline mode available that works over Bluetooth when Eight Sleep’s servers are down, The Verge reported today.

“During an outage, you’ll still be able to open the app, turn the Pod on/off, change temperature levels, and flatten the base,” Eight Sleep co-founder Alexandra Zatarain told the publication.

Eight Sleep users will be relieved to hear that the company is making their products usable during Internet outages. But many are also questioning why Eight Sleep didn’t implement local control sooner. This isn’t Eight Sleep’s first outage, and users can also experience personal Wi-Fi problems. And there’s an obvious user benefit to being able to control their bed’s elevation and temperature without the Internet or if Eight Sleep ever goes out of business.

For Eight Sleep, though, making flagship features available without its app while still making enough money isn’t easy. Without forcing people to put their Eight Sleep devices online, it would be harder for Eight Sleep to convince people that Autopilot subscriptions should be mandatory. Pod hardware’s high prices will deter people from multiple or frequent purchases, making alternative, more frequent revenue streams key for the 11-year-old company’s survival.

After a June outage, an Eight Sleep user claimed that the company told him that it was working on an offline mode. This week’s AWS problems seem to have hastened efforts, so users don’t lose sleep during the next outage.

AWS outage reminds us why $2,449 Internet-dependent beds are a bad idea Read More »

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Upcoming iOS and macOS 26.1 update will let you fog up your Liquid Glass

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Apple’s new Liquid Glass user interface design was one of the most noticeable and divisive features of its major software updates this year. It added additional fluidity and translucency throughout iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Apple’s other operating systems, and as we noted in our reviews, the default settings weren’t always great for readability.

The upcoming 26.1 update for all of those OSes is taking a step toward addressing some of the complaints, though not by changing things about the default look of Liquid Glass. Rather, the update is adding a new toggle that will let users choose between a Clear and Tinted look for Liquid Glass, with Clear representing the default look and Tinted cranking up the opacity and contrast.

The new toggle adds a half-step between the default visual settings and the “reduce transparency” setting, which, aside from changing a bunch of other things about the look and feel of the operating system, is buried further down inside the Accessibility options. The Tinted toggle does make colors and vague shapes visible beneath the glass panes, preserving the general look of Liquid Glass while also erring on the side of contrast and visibility, where the “reduce transparency” setting is more of an all-or-nothing blunt instrument.

Upcoming iOS and macOS 26.1 update will let you fog up your Liquid Glass Read More »

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YouTube’s likeness detection has arrived to help stop AI doppelgängers

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AI content has proliferated across the Internet over the past few years, but those early confabulations with mutated hands have evolved into synthetic images and videos that can be hard to differentiate from reality. Having helped to create this problem, Google has some responsibility to keep AI video in check on YouTube. To that end, the company has started rolling out its promised likeness detection system for creators.

Google’s powerful and freely available AI models have helped fuel the rise of AI content, some of which is aimed at spreading misinformation and harassing individuals. Creators and influencers fear their brands could be tainted by a flood of AI videos that show them saying and doing things that never happened—even lawmakers are fretting about this. Google has placed a large bet on the value of AI content, so banning AI from YouTube, as many want, simply isn’t happening.

Earlier this year, YouTube promised tools that would flag face-stealing AI content on the platform. The likeness detection tool, which is similar to the site’s copyright detection system, has now expanded beyond the initial small group of testers. YouTube says the first batch of eligible creators have been notified that they can use likeness detection, but interested parties will need to hand Google even more personal information to get protection from AI fakes.

Sneak Peek: Likeness Detection on YouTube.

Currently, likeness detection is a beta feature in limited testing, so not all creators will see it as an option in YouTube Studio. When it does appear, it will be tucked into the existing “Content detection” menu. In YouTube’s demo video, the setup flow appears to assume the channel has only a single host whose likeness needs protection. That person must verify their identity, which requires a photo of a government ID and a video of their face. It’s unclear why YouTube needs this data in addition to the videos people have already posted with their oh-so stealable faces, but rules are rules.

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