Engadget

We may be a bit technology-obsessed here, but the Engadget team does occasionally get around to low-tech activities, like reading. Well, some of us read on ereaders or our smartphones, but you get the point — books are great, and we read some exceptional ones this year that each deserve a shoutout. These are some of the best books we read in 2024. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/our-favorite-books-we-read-in-2024-151514842.html?src=rss

A federal judge in California has agreed with WhatsApp that the NSO Group, the Israeli cybersurveillance firm behind the Pegasus spyware, had hacked into its systems by sending malware through its servers to thousands of its users' phones. WhatsApp and its parent company, Meta, sued the NSO Group back in 2019 and accused it of spreading malware to 1,400 mobile devices across 20 countries with surveillance as its purpose. They revealed back then some of the targeted phones were owned by journalists, human rights activists, prominent female leaders and political dissidents.

Another day, another Tesla recall. This time, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) informed the owners of almost 700,000 Tesla vehicles warning them of a problem with a warning light for the tire pressure monitoring system as reported by the Associated Press. The recall affects the 2024 Cybertruck, 2017-2025 Model 3 and 2020-2025 Model Y Vehicles. The NHTSA says the warning light for the tire pressure monitoring system may not stay illuminated between drives. Tesla says it will send out an over-the-road (OTR) update to vehicles affected by the warning light issue. Owner notification letters are expected to be mailed on Feb. 15, 2025. The past year has seen more than a

Movie icon and super spy James Bond seemed to be on another rise to the top of the box office just a few years ago, but things have been almost as quiet as a shot from a Walther PPK with a silencer ever since then. Daniel Craig took on the role in 2006 with Casino Royale and passed the baton with 2021’s No Time to Die in one of the most heart-wrenching endings in Bond’s cinematic history (you cried, just admit it). The only thing sadder is the reason why we haven’t seen a new Bond movie since then.

A little more than a week after announcing Gemini Deep Research, Google is making the tool available to more people. As of today, the feature, part of the company’s paid Gemini Advanced suite, is available in every country and language where Google offers Gemini. In practice, that means Gemini Advanced users in more than 100 countries globally can start using Deep Research right now. Previously, it was only available in English. As a refresher, Deep Research takes advantage of

Instagram is still thought of as a feed of algorithmically-suggested photos first and foremost, but the app is also pretty popular for messaging, too. If you want to take some of the stress out of remembering to send a birthday message to a friend, as part of a recent update, you can now schedule Instagram messages in advance. Scheduled messages can't contain media like GIFs, photos or videos, but you can schedule them up to 29 days in advance on both the Android and iOS versions of the app. What are Instagram DMs? If you've stuck to using Instagram

When Intel debuted its first Arc video cards two years ago, I was more than a little skeptical. Could a company that famously gave up on its last major desktop GPU project in 2009 actually make a dent in a market dominated by NVIDIA and AMD? Well, when I reviewed them in 2022, the Arc A750 and A770 turned out better than I thought, though they were also held back by Intel's poor drivers. But it seems Intel has learned from its mistakes. The new $250 Arc B580 performs better than AMD's low-end Radeon 7600, and it can even tangle a bit with NVIDIA when it comes to budget ray tracing. The only question is if it's worth investing in an Intel video card given its

Hisense has officially unveiled its new HT Saturn audio system just ahead of CES, and it's a doozy. This five-piece surround system includes four identical satellite units and a single 6.5-inch subwoofer. All told, it ships with 13 speakers spread across the five units, each of them wireless. The company says this system has been “purpose-built to complement” extra-large screens, with Hisense announcing its the perfect companion to its own TVs that are 85-inches or bigger. The HT Saturn is especially feature-rich, as it’s compatible with both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X technology.

Hey, gamers! Do you like Rayman? Do you like Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon? Do you wish they’d make a new Rayman or Blood Dragon game? Well, you got your wish (sort of) if you’re willing to give your wish a lot of leeway and a bit of money. Journalist Stephen Totilo’s Game File newsletter reported that Ubisoft secretly released a new Web3 game with NFTs featuring Captain Laserhawk from the Blood Dragon animated series spinoff on Netflix and Rayman (who hasn’t appeared in a proper new adventure in years). Captain Laserhawk: The G.A.M.E. looks like a generic top down shooter set in the bright neon futureworld of the Blood Dragon universe. You compete in an arena-style bloodsport where getting the most

After nearly two weeks of announcements, OpenAI capped off its 12 Days of OpenAI livestream series with a preview of its next-generation frontier model. “Out of respect for friends at Telefónica (owner of the O2 cellular network in Europe), and in the grand tradition of OpenAI being really, truly bad at names, it’s called o3,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told those watching the announcement on YouTube. The new model isn’t ready for public use just yet. Instead, OpenAI is first making o3 available to researchers who want help with safety testing. OpenAI also announced the existence of o3-mini. Altman said the company plans to launch that model “around the end of January,” with o3 following “shortly after that.” As you might expect,