Ubisoft will reveal updated ‘Skull and Bones’ gameplay this week

After years of delays, Ubisoft is finally ready to offer a fresh look at Skull and Bones. The publisher announced on Tuesday it plans to host a showcase dedicated to the open-world multiplayer pirate game on July 7th at 2PM ET. Ubisoft will livestream the event on YouTube and Twitch.

The company is widely expected to announce a new release date then. If you haven’t kept track of Skull and Bones’ troubled development, we don’t blame you. Ubisoft first announced the title at E3 2017, with an original release window planned for 2018. It then pushed the game back to 2019, mid-2020, 2021 and then finally its fiscal 2022-2023 year.

In 2020, Elisabeth Pellen, the game’s creative director, attributed the delays to a change of vision. The original premise of Skull and Bones was simple. It was supposed to adapt the sailing mechanics from 2013’s Assassin’s Creed IV:Black Flag and strip all the narrative threads and stealth mechanics that made that game unapproachable for some.

“The answer is that we simply needed more time. We dreamt something bigger for Skull and Bones, and these ambitions naturally came with bigger challenges,” Pellen said at the time. “As Skull and Bones evolved from its original idea to what it is now, it was also necessary to have some fresh eyes join the team.” Ubisoft also announced today it plans to hold a separate event on September 10th that will feature multiple games and projects from the company’s teams.

Early Prime Day deals knock the Echo Show 5 down to $35

Amazon has announced good deals on more devices ahead of Prime Day. This time around, some smart displays are getting deep discounts. The Echo Show 5, for instance, has dropped to just $35 for Prime members. That’s $10 less than the previous all-time low and $50 below the list price.

Buy Echo Show 5 (Prime exclusive) at Amazon – $35

The second-gen Echo Show 5 emerged last summer. We gave the smart display, which has a 5.5-inch screen, a score of 85 in our review.

It’s a solid choice for a bedside table device, particularly given that there’s a tap-to-snooze function. The decent audio quality doesn’t hurt either. On the flip side, we found the interface less intuitive than it perhaps ought to be. The webcam, meanwhile, is only 2MP, though that’s still an improvement over the one Amazon used in the first-gen Echo Show 5.

Amazon has slashed the price of the Echo Show 8 as well. It’s down from $110 to $55. However, it’s worth noting the deal is for the first-gen version of the device, which was released in 2019. An updated model followed in 2021.

Buy Echo Show 8 (Prime exclusive) at Amazon – $55

The eight-inch smart display has a camera shutter (as does the Echo Show 5) and stereo sound. It’s Alexa-powered and supports video calls, but it only has a 1MP webcam — the second-gen Echo Show 8 has a 13MP webcam. Still, $55 is not a bad price if you’re looking to pick up an inexpensive smart display with a larger, higher-resolution screen than Echo Show 5.

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Amazon’s Echo Dot drops to $20 ahead of Prime Day

Prime Day is still a week away, but Amazon is getting the jump on one of its biggest events of the year by putting a bunch of its own products on sale a little early. One of those is the fourth-gen Echo Dot. The company has slashed the price of the Alexa-powered smart speaker by 60 percent for Prime members. It’s down to $20, which is $30 off the regular price. That’s the best price we’ve seen to date.

Buy Echo Dot (Prime exclusive) at Amazon – $20

We gave the Echo Dot a score of 88 in our review, lauding it for the decent audio quality, a 3.5mm audio out jack and the option to tap it to snooze the alarm. We also liked the spherical design. It’s worth bearing in mind that it’s been almost two years since Amazon released the fourth-gen Echo Dot. Dropping the price to just $20 is an indicator that the company is clearing out stock ahead of a possible new model this fall.

In addition, there’s a decent deal on the regular fourth-gen Echo. That’s down from $100 to $60. The larger version of the Alexa smart speaker also has a 3.5mm audio out jack. We gave it a score of 89 in our review, largely because of the great sound quality.

Buy Echo (Prime exclusive) at Amazon – $60

If you were already considering buying an Echo, note that you can pair two of the smart speakers together for stereo audio. Paying an extra $20 on top of the regular price will net you two of the speakers at the minute. Again, though, the fourth-gen Echo was announced in September 2020, so it’s due for a refresh.

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Suda51’s ‘Lollipop Chainsaw’ is getting a remake

Publisher Dragami Games has announced a remake of Lollipop Chainsaw, which will arrive next year. The 2012 original was a cult hit. It’s a hack-and-slash title from the minds of producer Yoshimi Yasuda, creative director Goichi “Suda51” Suda (of No More Heroes fame) and Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, who was a writer on the game.

Lollipop Chainsaw focuses on Juliet Starling, a cheerleader who battles zombies in a California high school. Surprisingly enough, Juliet wields a chainsaw that she can use in various ways (including ranged attacks). She can also collect lollipops to restore her health. Juliet is accompanied on her quest by the disembodied head of her boyfriend. A serious game this is not. 

Dragami Games is led by Yasuda. who will also produce the remake. The development team includes some other folks who previously worked on Lollipop Chainsaw. As IGN notes, some aspects will be different in the remake. Yasuda said the new version will take advantage of current-gen console hardware to deliver “a more realistic approach to the graphics.” It will have new music as well, due to licensing issues.

Dragami acquired the intellectual property of Lollipop Chainsaw and other titles from original publisher Kadokawa Games (Dragami recently split off from the latter). “Unfortunately, various factors resulted in things making it so that fans can no longer easily play Lollipop Chainsaw, and it has been some time since players have not been able to access the game on current consoles,” Yasuda wrote in a statement on Twitter. “We, the original development staff on Lollipop Chainsaw, think of the game as very precious to us, and did not want to leave it in limbo, where players who want to play it cannot.”

Jabra’s Elite 7 Pro earbuds drop to a record low of $140

Amazon has been busy dropping prices on its own products ahead of Prime Day and several other manufacturers are getting in on the action too. One of them is audio brand Jabra. Its Elite 7 Pro noise-canceling earbuds have dropped to $140 on Amazon. That’s 30 percent off the regular price of $200. It’s also the lowest price we’ve seen to date for the titanium black model.

Buy Jabra Elite Pro 7 at Amazon – $140

Jabra announced the true wireless earbuds last August. They were pegged as a successor to the Elite 85t (which were previously the brand’s smallest earbuds), with a smaller, retooled design. The company says the earbuds use bone conduction in concert with microphones and algorithms to improve voice performance. The idea is that Jabra’s algorithms detect when the microphones pick up certain kinds of background audio and activate the bone conduction function when necessary.

The Elite 7 Pro’s active noise cancellation (ANC) levels are adjustable. Jabra says you’ll get up to nine hours of use on a single charge if ANC is switched on and up to 11 hours without that feature. The case (which can be charged wirelessly) can provide another three charges. 

In addition, you can configure the on-device controls via Jabra’s Sound+ app. Earlier this year, Jabra rolled out support for multipoint Bluetooth connectivity, allowing you to connect the earbuds to two devices at the same time — a handy feature for those who often take calls during their workday when they’re usually listening to their computer’s audio.

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European Union passes landmark laws to rein in big tech

Today, after months of negotiations and procedural hurdles, the European Union has passed a pair of landmark bills designed to rein in Big Tech’s power. The Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act are intended to promote fairer competition, improve privacy protection, as well as banning both the use of some of the more egregious forms of targeted advertising and misleading practices.

The Digital Services Act, for instance, focuses on online platforms like Facebook, Amazon and Google. They will be tasked with being more proactive both with content moderation and also to prevent the sale of illegal or unsafe goods being sold on their platforms. Users will also be able to learn how and why an algorithm recommended them a certain piece of content, and to challenge any moderation decision that was made algorithmically. Finally, companies will no longer be able to use sensitive personal data for ad-targeting, sell ads to children, or use dark patterns — deceptive page design that can manipulate you into saying yes to something even when you’d much rather say no, such as joining a service or preventing you from leaving one you no longer wish to use.

These obligations operate on a sliding scale, and so the largest platforms will have the greatest obligations placed upon them. Platforms with 45 million or more monthly users will be subject to independent auditing to ensure they are preventing fake news and illegal content. Those platforms will also have to open up their algorithms and data to (approved) researchers to enable them to study the effects, and potential harm, the systems can cause.

The Digital Markets Act, meanwhile, is more focused on preventing dominant platform holders, like Google, Microsoft and Apple, from abusing their scale. This includes offering better interoperability with smaller, rival services, ensuring files can be sent between systems. There is also a large carve-out for app storefronts, with developers now entitled to contact their customers about deals without going via the platform holder in question. And platform holders will no longer be able to give their systems favorable treatment, such as when Google promoted its own shopping service over that of rivals.

The EU has given both bills plenty of teeth, and can dole out a maximum penalty of 10 percent of its total worldwide turnover from the previous year, should regulators find non-compliance. This figure will, however, jump to 20 percent of worldwide turnover if officials find “repeated non-compliance.” That’s a hefty figure big enough that not even Apple would be able to stomach losing on a regular basis. Although, as with GDPR regulation, the EU still has questions to answer about how much effort, time and money it’s prepared to put behind a body to monitor big tech.

Now that they have been passed, the Digital Services Act will come into force by 1st January 2024 (unless some procedural stuff delays it) while the Digital Markets Act will come into force at some point soon after, and major platforms — dubbed “Gatekeepers” will have a further six months to get their houses in order before the new rules apply to them.

The ASUS ROG Phone 6 has a ‘wireless’ thermoelectric cooler add-on

Following the ROG Phone 5 and 5s, ASUS decided to skip Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in favor of the more efficient 8+ Gen 1, which brings us to the new ROG Phone 6 series today — almost a year after the 5s. In a nutshell, this beastly gaming phone is …

England’s health service will use drones to deliver vital chemotherapy drugs

The UK’s National Health Service has announced that it will test delivering vital chemotherapy drugs via drone to the Isle of Wight. The body has partnered with Apian, a drone technology startup founded by former NHS doctors and former Google employees…