Facebook says that it won’t send Mark Zuckerberg to the UK to appear before a Parliamentary committee that threatened to force him to testify the next time he entered the country if he wouldn’t come willingly. In a letter, Facebook’s head of public policy, Rebecca Stimson, wrote that Zuckerberg “has no plans to meet with the committee or travel to the UK at the present time.” She also sent her letter three days after the deadline Facebook was given to respond.

While Zuckerberg appeared before US Congress and has plans to meet with EU lawmakers, he declined to meet with the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Instead, Facebook sent Mike Schroepfer, its chief technical officer, to answer their questions. But the committee was unhappy with his answers — often, with the lack of them — if not also the snub. And so it sent Facebook a followup letter on May 1st saying that it would like Zuckerberg to appear to provide satisfactory responses.

“We hope that he will respond positively to our request, but if not the committee will resolve to issue a formal summons for him to appear when he is next in the UK,” committee chairman Damian Collins wrote at the time.

In a statement today, Collins said he is “disappointed” with Facebook’s response and lack of transparency. But he seems to be backing off of the summons threat and offers to accept testimony from Zuckerberg through a video call.

Still, by declining to appear, Zuckerberg risks being forced to testify the next time he has a connecting flight through Heathrow and potentially facing arrest if he doesn’t go along. And at a bare minimum, he’s guaranteed to have further pissed off UK lawmakers.

Facebook essentially says that it sees the request to see Zuckerberg as unreasonable. In her letter, Stimson writes that “Facebook has now held lengthy meetings or evidence sessions around the world.” That included providing written answers and five hours of testimony from a senior official to the UK committee. “We are disappointed after providing a very significant amount of information ... that the committee declared our response insufficient.”

Stimson’s letter also includes about 17 pages of answers to questions that Schroepfer didn’t give responses to during his testimony last month. One answer reveals that Facebook’s Like button, which sends data back to Facebook even if it isn’t clicked, is present on 8.4 million websites. Facebook’s tracking pixel, which also monitors users, is installed on 2.2 million websites.

Collins says these answers still aren’t good enough. “Given that these were follow up questions to questions Mr. Schroepfer previously failed to answer, we expected both detail and data, and in a number of cases got excuses,” he writes.

Facebook may want to avoid putting Zuckerberg in front of the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee for a number of reasons. Aside from prolonging the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the committee has also shown itself to be substantially more technologically savvy than many lawmakers elsewhere and has thrown much tougher questions as the company.

The committee plans to follow up with Facebook to “address significant gaps” in the company’s answers as it continues to investigate its data privacy practices, as well as issues around propaganda, election ads, and content moderation.

Stephen Hawking’s biggest accomplishment shone through both his physics work and his outreach to the public, bridging gaps between things that once seemed incompatible. Whether he was demonstrating that black holes did indeed radiate material or that popular culture could embrace the mysteries of the Universe, he had a way of making seemingly impossible things connect.

Before Hawking, black holes were considered the Universe’s most mysterious garbage collectors. It was once believed that nothing could escape the immense gravitational pull of one of these objects; they’re so dense that they even pull in light. But Hawking found that, in fact, something does escape a black hole: radiation. Thanks to his work, we now know that black holes aren’t even totally black. (They actually have a faint glow about them from the small amount of energy they radiate.) The equation Hawking came up with to explain how this phenomenon works became his most notable achievement, one that’s named for him: Hawking radiation. “He came up with the idea that black holes have a temperature,” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tells The Verge.

Though his work upended what was thought to be a fundamental truth of black holes, Hawking radiation actually did some reconciliation. His work connected two conflicting concepts in theoretical physics: quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. “Those are the two pillars on which physics now rests, but they’re really quite incompatible to one another,” Raphael Bousso, a theoretical physicist at UC Berkely who was once a student of Hawking’s, tells The Verge.

Quantum mechanics is all about how the Universe works at the smallest level — how teeny particles like electrons and positrons move and connect. If you want to know how atoms stick together, for instance, quantum mechanics has your back. On the other side of the scale is general relativity, which explains how gravity works. It’s the idea that large objects of the Universe — like planets, stars, and galaxies — actually bend the space and time around them. And that dictates how these objects interact with one another in space.

The two theories are both strong, backed up by lots of science and observation. But they seem to be in conflict, never truly fitting no matter how hard people try. And that’s a problem for physicists because they’re all about simplicity. “We want to be able to describe more and more phenomena with fewer fundamental ingredients,” Bousso says.

But Hawking found a way to bring big and small together. He looked at what happens around a really massive object — one with lots of gravity — on a very small scale. Specifically, he analyzed how particles are interacting at the edge of a black hole, known as the event horizon. This boundary is often referred to as the “point of no return.” Once you cross this line, you’re going into the black hole no matter what — unless you’ve figured out a way to travel faster than the speed of light. (Spoiler: you can’t.)

Here’s where we get small: according to quantum mechanics, the vacuum of space isn’t really empty. Instead, virtual particles are popping in and out of existence in the vacuum all the time. These particles pop up tangled together as opposite pairs: one particle with positive energy and one negative, a yin and a yang. What happens to one affects the other. Typically, the pair will come together quickly and cancel each other out. But if they form on the event horizon, that’s not what happens. Things start to get weird.A particle pair that straddles the event horizon will be wrenched apart. The black hole sucks in the one particle with negative energy while the positive particle is flung away from the black hole. That escaping particle becomes the Hawking radiation, heated up by its escape. The doomed particle becomes part of the black hole. But since it has negative energy, it actually makes the black hole slightly smaller.If you left a black hole alone, this process would go on for billions and billions of years. Eventually, the black hole would waste away — and then, because black holes are weird, explode. How big is the explosion? “Fairly small by astronomical standards,” Hawking wrote. But it’s still pretty damn big: about the size of 1 million one-megaton hydrogen bombs.Of course, many black holes are usually surrounded by material that is constantly falling into them. But Hawking showed it was theoretically possible for a black hole to disappear over time in the right conditions. “Black holes won’t last forever,” says McDowell. “Long after all the other stars have died out, the black holes will be glowing and eventually blow up.”

This idea upended physics when it was published in 1974. But it also solved a huge puzzle: if nothing ever escapes from a black hole, that means they’re the Universe’s clean-up crew, eating material that never comes back. But that just didn’t make sense with other physics. There’s a law of thermodynamics that says that the randomness and chaos of a system — known as entropy — cannot decrease over time; our messy Universe can’t get cleaner. So how was it possible that black holes were vacuuming up the trash? Hawking’s discovery demonstrated that black holes don’t violate that law of thermodynamics: by emitting radiation, they are also keeping things chaotic. “[He] wasn’t trying to address this puzzle with thermodynamics. It just turned out to be exactly what was needed,” says Ted Jacobson, a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland.

Hawking radiation didn’t completely solve everything, though. (What does?) It provided an important first step in bridging quantum mechanics and gravity. There are still a lot of things about big and small physics that have yet to be reconciled. Hawking radiation was just one way the ideas could work together.

Hawking radiation opened up some major questions, too. In quantum physics, a particle recipe — the orientation, mass, spin, and other traits of particles — is called information. That information sticks around. When you burn a piece of paper, for instance, the information of what was in that paper is contained in fire, smoke, and ash. If you wanted, you could put the paper back together because you had all the information from it. But Hawking radiation introduced a new conundrum: if black holes are losing mass, where does all their information go?

A black hole’s information is slowly disappearing when it wastes away — and that’s just not supposed to happen! The radiation that the black hole emits doesn’t actually contain information from the black hole, so it seems like all the details are disappearing along the way. “The information should not be completely lost, but in this process, it would be,” Katie Mack, a theoretical astrophysicist at North Carolina State University who is working on a book about the end of the Universe, tells The Verge. It’s called the black hole information paradox, and people have come up with tentative solutions for it, including Hawking himself. But it’s still not completely solved.

Still, what Hawking did was to take a huge step toward a unified theory of physics — a theory of everything, as the recent movie based on his life is titled. We still aren’t totally to that point, but Hawking started building the bridge. And he continued to work on that bridge up until he died. “He gave us problems to work on and directions to go with them... If we solve those problems, we’ll have a better understanding of which fundamental laws truly govern reality,” says Mack.

Hawking’s knack for connection extended beyond just physics. Black holes seem abstract, but he found ways to bring them to everyone. He made people excited about what’s out there. He was media savvy, appearing on The Simpsons, Star Trek, and more. He also wrote popular books about his work. So, in the same way that he connected the big and the small, he also brought people into the cosmological fold, inspiring new generations of scientists to continue learning more about the weirdness of space.

Microsoft shipped its first video game in 1981, appropriately named Microsoft Adventure. It was an MS-DOS game that booted directly from a floppy disk, and set the stage for Microsoft’s adventures in gaming. A lot has changed over the past 37 years, and when you think of Microsoft’s efforts in gaming these days you’ll immediately think of Xbox. It’s fair to say a lot is about to change over the next few decades too, and Microsoft is getting ready. Today, the software giant is unveiling a new gaming cloud division that’s ready for a future where consoles and gaming itself are very different to today.

Microsoft has been building up to this move for a while. The company has been mysteriously acquiring gaming-related companies over the past few years. From Havok in 2015, Simplygon in 2017, to PlayFab earlier this year, you’ve probably never heard of any of them, but they’re important for Microsoft’s bold cloud gaming ambitions. While these acquisitions have been taking place, Microsoft has been reshuffling its gaming teams as the company prepares to launch its own cloud gaming services. Phil Spencer is now Microsoft’s head of gaming, and reports directly to CEO Satya Nadella. Microsoft’s new gaming cloud division is headed up by Kareem Choudhry, a 20-year Microsoft veteran that has worked on Outlook, DirectX, and Xbox engineering.

“Phil really wanted a dedicated team focused exclusively on the gaming cloud, says Choudhry, in an interview with The Verge. “Those were conversations that started happening last summer, and we really started creating the structure of the organization at the end of last year.” The new division is designed to entice developers and game publishers to use Microsoft’s cloud services. Ubisoft has been using Microsoft’s Azure cloud services across PC, Xbox, and PS4 with Rainbow Six: Siege recently, and even the mobile game Black Desert uses Azure virtual machines and databases. Microsoft wants more and more game developers to use its cloud, especially as games become more connected across devices for their multiplayer experiences.

“Phil really wanted a dedicated team focused exclusively on the gaming cloud, says Choudhry, in an interview with The Verge. “Those were conversations that started happening last summer, and we really started creating the structure of the organization at the end of last year.” The new division is designed to entice developers and game publishers to use Microsoft’s cloud services. Ubisoft has been using Microsoft’s Azure cloud services across PC, Xbox, and PS4 with Rainbow Six: Siege recently, and even the mobile game Black Desert uses Azure virtual machines and databases. Microsoft wants more and more game developers to use its cloud, especially as games become more connected across devices for their multiplayer experiences.

“We believe there is going to be 2 billion gamers in the world, and our goal is to reach every one of them,” explains Choudhry. Part of the way Microsoft will get there with its new gaming cloud focus is with subscription services. Xbox Game Pass has been available over the past year, and recently Microsoft decided all of its first-party games would come to the subscription service at launch. Sea of Thieves is the first big title, but future Haloand Gears of War games will also be available. “We’re really pleased with the success that’s happening [with Game Pass],” says Choudhry. “We continue to believe in user choice, and we also believe there’s room in the industry for a gaming subscription and that’s what we’re going to build.”

A “Netflix for video games” would be an important service for any company with cloud gaming aspirations, but it’s going to be a difficult task for Microsoft on rival platforms like the PlayStation 4 or Nintendo’s Switch. Despite the challenge, Choudhry hints that Microsoft could achieve this by streaming games to devices. “We’re looking at ways to make that content available to anyone no matter what device they’re on,” says Choudhry.

It feels like every couple of years a new service springs to life, promising game streaming from powerful servers. Sony acquired streaming games service OnLive only to shut it down, and previously acquired Gaikai which eventually became part of its PlayStation Now game streaming service. Sony discontinued game streaming to the PlayStation 3, PS Vista, PlayStation TV, and smart TVs and Blu-ray players last year, deciding to focus on PS4 and Windows PCs instead. Game streaming is a challenging service to get right, and even Nvidia is trying its hand for PC games.

Microsoft has teased Xbox game streaming within three years, and it’s clearly going to be big part of the new cloud gaming division. “We’re spending a lot of time thinking about that space,” explains Choudhry. He says a “bunch of things” need to come together, including making a business model that’s attractive to third parties. “What we’re doing with game pass and creating a subscription-based product, where over half the content is third-party content. I would say we’re getting started from a subscription product perspective.”

Microsoft’s new cloud gaming division is only just getting started on a number of these efforts, and the real test will be whether developers and game publishers are interested in using the company’s tools, distribution methods, and ultimately a game streaming service. Reaching 2 billion gamers is an ambitious target even for a new Microsoft that’s focusing aggressively on the cloud.

 

 Tomorrow is a big day for Elon Musk: his company SpaceX will be launching the new Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, seven years after the vehicle was first announced. It will be a demonstration mission, meant to test if the rocket can send a payload into orbit. And that payload will be Musk’s red Tesla Roadster... driven by a dummy, perhaps.

Musk, being the teasing entrepreneur that he is, just posted three photos to Instagram showing that very Roadster with a noteworthy passenger behind the wheel: a dummy wearing the new SpaceX space suit. The images show the dummy sitting in the car that’s mounted on a dome structure with what looks like cameras attached to the front section. 

It’s not clear if the dummy is actually going up inside the car on Tuesday, but seeing as how SpaceX is launching a car in the first place, anything seems possible. Musk initially teased photos of those space suits last year. They’re designed for people traveling inside the Crew Dragon, a vehicle SpaceX is building to transport NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station. If the spacecraft experiences sudden depressurizing, the suits will keep the astronauts alive until they’re able to reach safety.

We’ll be covering the Falcon Heavy launch and posting a piece about what you need to know shortly, so make sure you check back here for all of our updates.

 

 

The latest research note from KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, as obtained and reported on by MacRumors and 9to5Mac, indicates that Apple’s next iteration of the iPhone will have Intel as its sole supplier of cellular modems. This would eliminate Apple’s longstanding reliance on Qualcomm modems for the iPhone, and it’s likely to escalate tensions in the ongoing dispute between Apple and Qualcomm. One of the lawsuits between the two companies, launched by Qualcomm, alleges that Apple improperly shared proprietary code with Intel, and Kuo’s present expectations would align with this idea of Apple and Intel being extremely fond of one another.

Intel’s anticipated exclusivity might be short-lived, however, as Apple could still send some orders Qualcomm’s way as a negotiating concession in trying to end the legal quarrel between the two. Apple is also famously reluctant to rely on any individual supplier too heavily, with its history showing a diversified supply chain for displays and other components. Where it can, the company also prefers to build and design its own parts, as it most recently did by switching to making its own GPU.

As to what all of this behind-the-scenes jockeying means to the end user of Apple’s iPhone X successor family, the answer is “not much.” We can anticipate faster LTE in the next iPhone, no matter if the chip supplier is Intel or Qualcomm. That will be a necessary step to keep pace with the upcoming Galaxy S9 and its Exynos 9 chip, which also promises accelerated cellular connectivity.

 

As addiction rates for illicit drugs has skyrocketed in the United States, many turned to Google to try and find places where they can find help — only to run into new issues. An entire industry has emerged online to advertise addiction treatment centers through the search engine, sometimes using deceptive tactics. Now, TechCrunch is reporting that Google is putting its global rehab advertising efforts on hold.

Last year, a Verge report examined some companies used Google to take advantage of the its business listings to deceive addicts looking for care. Following that report, Google pulled ads against a number of rehab-related terms.

Last week, London’s Sunday Times reported (via TechCrunch) that Google profited from similar lead generation companies in the UK, paying the search giant “as much as £200 each time someone accesses their website with a single click on the advertised link at the top of a Google search page.” As it had in the US, Google pulled ads in the UK following the report, saying in a statement that it was extending the US suspension to the UK while it consults with experts.

Now, Google has opted to extend that suspension further, pulling ads globally, according to a statement provided to TechCrunch:

Japanese startup Xenoma might just have cracked the secret to making successful smart clothing, and it involves a ludicrous skin-tight Spider-Man-style shirt, 14 sensors, and a running mini-game that’s as goofy as it is fun. The company’s “E-Skin” technology, which it debuted at last year’s CES, basically turns your torso into a motion controller, so your body movements act as software inputs for games and other motion-based apps. It uses a Bluetooth module that plugs into the center of your chest to transmit the data from the sensors to a nearby PC or smartphone running Xenoma’s custom software.

This year at CES, Xenoma is back with its signature smart shirt more refined than its previous model, in addition to two new prototype products in the fitness and healthcare realms. It being both silly and wildly fun makes Xenoma’s E-Skin product more fascinating than any piece of smart clothing I’ve seen before, and far more useful than, say, Google’s Project Jacquard jean jacket.

For one, the mini-game, even though it was very basic and very much a proof-of-concept, didn’t have to blow me away with realistic graphics, a virtual reality component, or some other showy conference gimmick. It was about as sophisticated as a mobile game, and yet the E-Skin input mechanism made the experience of playing it as fun as a round of Dance Dance Revolution

Even if I was embarrassing myself in front of scores of Las Vegas CES attendees — one of whom happened to photograph me for the Associated Press, much to my dismay — the tech felt immediately useful. The fitness element is abundantly clear, but Xenoma imagines future smart shirts that will track how you run, or monitor your vitals via EKG sensors and track your respiratory system by analyzing the contractions of your chest. Those are the functions it says its two prototype products are designed to tackle, but those products are a ways away from becoming a reality.

As an optional add-on, the company is also looking into letting developers pair its E-Skin products with VR headsets. That would give Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream, and other smartphone-powered units a full-body motion controller without the use of external cameras or more expensive, inside-out motion tracking modules.

Right now, however, you can only get your hands on Xenoma’s general-purpose E-Skin product only if you plunk down $5,000 for access to a developer kit, due out starting in March, with the purpose of designing apps for the company’s gaming and fitness platform. (A successful Kickstarter campaign last year sold the shirt for as little as $499). Xenoma is planning on launching an official consumer version some time later this year. But if my brief time with this E-Skin shirt, I can say that the smart clothes market has a bright future ahead of it, so long as companies like Xenoma can figure out how to turn these prototype shirts and clunky gaming demos into finished products.

Future Motion is spending another CES improving its one-wheeled self-balancing electric skateboard, which is (perhaps obviously) called the Onewheel. The new version, called the Onewheel+ XR, is an advancement of last year’s Onewheel+, which was faster, quieter, and easier ride than the original version from 2015.

The big gain this year is range. Future Motion has reworked the battery architecture to double the distance this rideable can travel on a single charge. Instead of a modest 6-8 miles, the new version can travel between 12-18 miles.

It’s a nice bump that puts it in genuine “commuter vehicle” territory, and should make it easier to pull off round trips without requiring the rider to bring the charger along. The company says the new board will be a bit more powerful, too. Customers will have to pay for this luxury, though, because the Onewheel+ XR costs $1,799. It’s a shame — rideables have been around for a few years now, but the cost of the best ones still hasn’t come down. In some situations, like this, they’re going up.

   

Otherwise The Onewheel+ XR is, unsurprisingly, not a radical departure from its predecessors. Future Motion has refined the design over the years, but the board still operates the same way as always — you straddle your feet around a fat wheel in the middle of the board, and lean left or right to go forward or backward. It has tail lights

The curious design means the Onewheel has never been as popular as something like the Boosted electric skateboard. But it stands out, and I’ve seen enough people whipping around on these in cities like New York, Los Angeles, an San Francisco to know that the extra range will be welcomed by a few folks with deep pockets.

As we enter into the first day of CES, headphone brands like House of Marley and Sol Republic are releasing a whole bunch of wireless headphones and portable wireless speakers.

House of Marley is coming out with the No Bounds speaker that it claims are dust and water-proof speakers with an IP67 rating. It also claims the headphone batteries can last for ten hours on a single charge. It’s made with recyclable cork and it can pair with a dual speaker. It’s available in April for $69.99.

There’s also a sports version of the No Bounds speaker that House of Marley claims has a 12 hour battery life and water-proof 360-degree sound. It has storage space available at the base of the speaker and it’s also made from cork and recycled fabric. It’s available in May for $119.99.

House of Marley is also coming out with the Uprise wireless, in-ear headphones that it claims are sweat and weather resistant. The headphones are made of recycled silicone and wood and they’re available in June for $99.99.

Then from Sol Republic, there are the first on-ear and over-ear Bluetooth headphones from the brand. There’s a pair of headphones called Shadow Fusion, which is an addition to the Shadow Wireless headphones lineup. Sol Republic claims it’s rain and sweat resistant. It has magnetic ear buds. The release date for these headphones is more vague, for sometime in Q2 this year, at $149.99.

There’s also the Soundtrack Wireless headphones that are foldable. Sol Republic claims these headphones have 20 plus hours of battery life. They have a microphone, on-board controls, and will cost $169.99 when they arrive in Q2. A Soundtrack Pro Wireless option increases the battery life to over 24 hours and bumps the drivers to 50mm with memory foam over-ear cushions. For this more premium option, it’s going to cost $249.99.

GoPro has announced that it’s exiting the drone business citing the challenges of turning a profit in an “extremely competitive” market. The company revealed during its most recent earnings report today that its Karma drone would be the last it would make. The company is also laying off hundreds of staff and reducing the pay of CEO Nicholas Woodman to $1 as it struggles with dismal financials.

News of the layoffs were first reported late last week, and will be the company’s fourth round of job cuts since 2016. In its earnings report today, the company said that its headcount of 1,254 employees worldwide would be reduced to “fewer than 1,000.”

Developing...

Canary is introducing a new indoor security camera — the Canary View — that's essentially the same as its original, self-titled device. The only differences between the two cameras are their price tags and the fact that the View doesn't support HomeHealth, which monitors your home's temperature, humidity, and air quality. (HomeHealth is also not available on the weatherproof indoor / outdoor Canary Flex.) The View records footage in 1080p Full HD and is available through Canary's website today. It costs $99, making it the company's cheapest. For comparison, a Nest Cam Indoor costs $199, and an Amazon Cloud Cam Indoor Security Camera runs $119.99.

Meanwhile, the company's also announcing a new software feature called "package detection," and a partnership with Amazon Alexa. Like you would expect from the name, package detection alerts users when it determines that a package is sitting outside. This feature is only available on the Flex, and will roll out during the fist half of 2018 to paying members. It won’t be useful to you if you already have a smart doorbell, but if not, it can provide an easy way to see when a package has been delivered.

The new Alexa skill lets Echo Spot, Echo Show, and certain Fire TV devices stream video live from their Canary camera. The skill will come to customers in the "coming months," and will be available for all Canary devices, regardless of whether users pay for a membership. The company already has a third-party integration with Google Assistant and Wink.

Asus is bringing its new ZenFone Max Plus (M1) smartphone line to North America, where it joins the ZenFone Max line known for its high-capacity batteries. The Plus has a 5.7-inch display with an ultra-wide 18:9 display ratio, but curiously doesn’t have as much battery power as the Max, which comes in a 5.5-inch screen size; the Plus has a 4130mAh battery that gives up to 26 days standby, while the Max’s 5000mAh battery boasts that it can hold a charge for 38 days. Either way, they’re basically both huge powerbanks that can be used to charge other devices.

In terms of cameras, it’s got a 16MP front camera with an F2.0 aperture for selfies, and a 16MP, 120 degree wide-view dual rear cameras to fit more scenery. It’s an upgrade over the Max, which had an 8MP front camera and a 13 MP rear camera.

Most notably, it’s the first Asus phone to get Face Unlock technology, which after the launch of the iPhone X, is increasingly becoming a widely advertised feature for Android phones like the OnePlus 5 and Samsung Galaxy S8. (Though the feature was made available on Android in Ice Cream Sandwich in 2012, it was quietly removed, probably because it was terrible and Google wanted to push people toward fingerprint sensors). However reliable Asus’ Face Unlock may be, it’s another security option in addition to the rear fingerprint sensor.

The phone will be available in February in a 3GB/32GB configuration for $229 in two colors for North America: Azure Silver and Deepsea Black. Depending on what region you live in, you can also get the Sunlight Gold model pictured above, which is obviously the best color.

HP has a pair of new laptops at CES 2018 this year, although the word new is kind of a stretch. That’s because, like many other laptop companies at the show this year, what HP means by “new” is “updated versions of our models from last year”, because truly there is nothing new under the sun.

So, there’s a “new” version of the HP Spectre x360 15, which is one of the first laptops to offer Intel’s new 8th generation Core processors with Radeon RX Vega M GPUs that the company announced yesterday, and adds a full number pad to the right of the keyboard, but otherwise is pretty reminiscent of last year’s model. Prices for the updated computer will start at $1,369.99 when it ships on March 18th.

Oh, and remember the HP Envy x2? HP’s ARM-powered laptop with the promised 20 hours of battery life and LTE that the company announced in December? HP has an Intel version, too, with last year’s 7th generation Intel processors, optional LTE, and less battery life. The hinge is a little different too, with a focus more on using it with a keyboard on ones lap or a desk then for multimedia purposes. The Intel-based Envy x2 is set to release sometime in the spring, although pricing, exact release dates, and details regarding cellular carrier partners have yet to be announced.

On the software side of things, HP has its new Omen Game Stream software, which lets you stream games from your Omen gaming PC to a less powerful computer on your network, similar to Nvidia’s GameStream technology on the Shield.

And last but not least, HP has a new “Spectre Tote Bag”, made from full grain leather with a dedicated “tech pocket” designed to carry all your devices, and an optional battery pack that can charge multiple devices at once on the go. Spectre Tech Tote is set to cost $199.99 when it releases on March 1st.

Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant is seemingly everywhere these days, and now it’s arriving on Windows 10 PCs to challenge Microsoft’s built-in Cortana assistant. HP, Lenovo, Asus, and Acer all plan to integrate Alexa into a range of Windows 10 laptops and desktops being released this year. It’s the next logical step that will see Alexa appear on thousands of machines.

The integration requires a special Alexa app for Windows that will be available in the spring, and most PC makers appear to be integrating Alexa on devices that are capable of far-field voice recognition to ensure there’s a good experience for the assistant. HP is bringing Alexa to its Pavillion Wave PC, a sleek desktop PC that looks more like a speaker than a computer. Lenovo is also bringing Alexa to laptops, and we’ll have more details to share on those soon.

This separate integration is different to the partnership that Microsoft and Amazon announced last year. Both companies promised to integrate Alexa and Cortana together by the end of 2017, but they both missed the cross-platform integration target date. Amazon is now pushing ahead with this separate app, which includes a basic way to access the type of information you’d find in the online Alexa web interface or mobile apps. The app will also listen for the Alexa wake word, or you can use a keyboard shortcut to trigger the assistant.

Amazon and its PC maker partners are unveiling this new partnership at CES this week, a fitting venue for such an announcement. Google is at the show in a big way this year, with lots of “Hey, Google” signage around the Las Vegas convention center. 2018 looks to be another year of intense competition between the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, and now Cortana has competition on the Windows side thanks to Alexa.

Lock maker Schlage today announced at CES that it’s added Google Assistant support to its Sense Smart Deadbolt door lock, which pairs with the company’s Wi-Fi adapter for wireless connectivity and remote access. Now, Google Home and Android users will be able to use Assistant to lock their door or ask whether the door is unlocked or not via voice, either by accessing the software through a smart speaker or on a smartphone.

Adding Assistant rounds out Schlage’s smart home support for the big three players, including Amazon’s Alexa / Echo platform and Apple’s Siri (via HomeKit). The Sense Smart Deadbolt costs about $200, depending on which model you get and in what color, and the Wi-Fi adapter is sold separately for $69.99.

MSI has announced two new gaming monitors that are the first to work with Steelseries’ GameSense lighting system. What does that mean? It means a lot of colored LEDs on the bottom edge and rear. GameSense lets you program these RGB lights to flash in sync with in-game things like cooldown timers, or for notifications in apps like Discord.

Otherwise, the Optic MPG27CQ and MPG27CQ are pretty standard gaming monitors. Both are curved 27-inch VA panels with a 144Hz refresh rate, and the only difference is that the former is 1080p and the latter is 1440p. Pricing and release info isn’t yet available.

Nvidia’s big push into the world of autonomous vehicles has attracted a vast amount of customers for what is still early stage technology — over 320, by the company’s count. This week at CES the company announced that it’s finally making Xavier, an AI chip made for self-driving vehicles that Nvidia announced in 2016, available to customers. And the company’s also adding a few marquee names to its list of self-driving technology customers, including Uber and VW.

Volkswagen announced that it will use Nvidia’s Drive IX platform in some of its upcoming vehicles, including the I.D. Buzz electric bus. Drive IX is a software developer kit that Nvidia created to tap into the power of Xavier, and Volkswagen will use it to build in features like facial recognition, gesture control, natural language processing, and more. Volkswagen will also work with Drive AR, a new augmented reality-based SDK that works off the same Nvidia technology platform.

Basically, whatever futuristic interactions you might have with your Volkswagen car are probably going to be powered by this AI architecture on the car, and without requiring help from the cloud.

Meanwhile, Uber has been using Nvidia’s self-driving technology in its autonomous test cars for a while, though the companies are only just starting to talk about it this week. Uber plans to use Nvidia’s tech in its eventual self-driving fleets of Volvos as well as the company’s autonomous trucks. But the two sides won’t say how much of Nvidia’s platform Uber is using, though, other than that the ride-hailing company is leveraging the onboard GPU for some artificial intelligence work.

Here’s the thing, though. You don’t order a combo meal just to eat the fries. What the two companies are getting at by making this announcement this week is that Uber’s at the table, and it has within arms reach all the things Nvidia is promising to offer with Xavier and Pegasus. Don’t be surprised if we hear more from these two companies soon.

Why does this matter? Nvidia is locked in a mad race with Intel across a number of different segments of the computing market, and so these companies like to boast whenever they attract major companies as customers. Uber and VW are big gets as customers when, just months ago, Intel shelled out $15 billion to acquire self-driving technology company Mobileye in an attempt to level the playing field. Nvidia announcing this on the eve of CES — and one night before Intel’s keynote address — sets up this year’s show as another venue for the two companies to trade blows. Las Vegas is known for hosting fights, after all.

The world is another step closer to a single unified wireless charging standard, with news that Powermat has joined the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC), developers of Qi wireless charging. Powermat is best known for developing the PMA/Airfuel standard — the only major outstanding rival to the dominant Qi brand. However, after Apple signed on to use Qi wireless charging for its iPhones last year, the battle has been pretty much over. Powermat joining the WPC is just signing the peace treaty.

Powermat says it will contribute its technology to the WPC’s work and continue to develop wireless charging tech which maintains backwards compatibility with Qi. In a press statement, Powermat CEO Elad Dubzinski said: “Qi has become the dominant wireless charging standard on the market and the recently launched Apple iPhone lineup is evidence of this success. Powermat will share technology innovation to further unlock wireless charging potential, and will expedite the growth of the wireless charging infrastructure.”

The writing has been on the wall for Powermat for a while. In September last year, Starbucks had to update its Powermat wireless chargers to support the iPhone X and iPhone 8, and by one estimate, the Airfuel Alliance — the industry group competing with Qi which Powermat spearheaded — has only 10 percent of wireless devices signed up to its brand. What’s bad news for Powermat, though, is good for consumers, as wireless charging becomes simpler and more straightforward.