Facebook adds live college basketball games to its Watch tab

Facebook has been getting more and more interesting content in efforts to build out its Watch tab, and now it’s added college basketball to the mix. The social network has partnered with Stadium, a multiplatform network for sports, to exclusively show 47 live college basketball games on Facebook Watch. It kicks off tonight, with Belmont at Middle Tennessee starting at 7:30 PM ET.

The games will be from conferences such as the West Coast Conference, Atlantic 10, Conference USA and Mountain West. Teams include Dayton, Saint Mary’s, Middle Tennessee State, Nevada, Florida Gulf Coast and Wake Forest. To add these games to your watchlist, you can visit the Live: Stadium College Basketball page under the Facebook Watch tab.

Facebook and Stadium teamed up this fall to show college football exclusively on Watch. The success of that partnership ensured that the two would partner again for basketball. But it’s not just games that are available on Facebook Watch. Stadium is producing a live weekly show about college basketball that will air exclusively on the Watch tab. This 30-minute show will air every Wednesday starting November 29th at 6:30 PM ET; it’s hosted by Dave Ross and Tim Dole, and will feature an ongoing dialogue with college basketball fans.

Apple Seeds Fourth macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 Beta to Developers

Apple today seeded the fourth beta of an upcoming macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 update to developers, less than one week after seeding the third beta and just over two weeks after releasing the macOS High Sierra 10.13.1 update.

The new macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 beta can be downloaded from the Apple Developer Center or through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store with the proper profile installed.

It’s not yet clear what improvements the second major update to macOS High Sierra will bring, but it’s likely to include bug fixes and performance improvements for issues that weren’t addressed in macOS High Sierra 10.13.1.

No significant new features were discovered in the first three betas of macOS High Sierra 10.13.2, but we’ll update this post should notable changes be found in the fourth beta.

The previous update, 10.13.1, introduced fixes for some serious security flaws and brought new emoji to the macOS operating system.

Related Roundup: macOS High Sierra
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The best Nintendo Switch games

The Nintendo Switch is an excellent game console. If you don’t want to quit collecting Power Moons in Super Mario Odyssey but need a change of scenery from your living room, that’s entirely doable. Simply take the tablet out of its dock, slide your Joy-cons back on and you can pick up right where you left off, regardless of venue. But there’s so much more to play on Switch. The problem is, aside from the games you can buy at retail, they can be hard to find, because Nintendo’s digital storefront isn’t very well organized. Which is what our list of the best Switch games is for. Simply search for these games by name in the eShop and you’re guaranteed to have some fun.

AAA blockbusters versus indie darlings

At the end of the day, games are games are games, regardless of whether you downloaded them onto your device or bought them at a brick-and-mortar store. While The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 have name recognition, indie games are chock-full of ideas and themes that might be too risky or experimental for a studio with millions of dollars on the line. And for now, at least, indies outnumber everything else on Nintendo’s latest console. The biggest difference is price. Splatoon 2 costs $60, while Stardew Valley will set you back only $15.

The Best Switch games

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Yes, Mario Kart 8 was great on the Wii U, and on the Switch it’s even better. Why? Because no matter where you are, so long as you have your Switch, you’re moments away from ruining someone’s day with a well-timed blue shell. Sure, you might’ve just handed them the Joy-con a few minutes earlier, but we could all use a few more frenemies in our lives. In addition to the portability, the Deluxe Switch version also packs in a smattering of new characters, karts and gameplay tweaks that weren’t in the original. All that is to say, yes, even if you owned it prior, it’s worth picking up again.

Splatoon 2

If you want an online multiplayer game on Switch, your best bet is Splatoon 2. It’s a brighter, better version of the shooter Nintendo created for the Wii U. Basically, it’s every squirt-gun war you had as a kid in video game form, except it stars mutant squid creatures (Inklings) that are at once terrifying and adorable. Unlike in other shooters, victory isn’t predicated on how many opponents you’ve killed. Instead, it’s all about how much of the arena you can cover in your team’s ink. If you’re used to playing a support role in games like Battlefield, you should be able to adapt pretty smoothly here, focusing on spreading your team’s colors while others train their sights on the opposing team.

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Nintendo wasn’t joking when it said that for Zelda to survive as a franchise it needed to change, radically. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the first game to alter the tried-and-true formula established by the franchise’s jump to 3D with Ocarina of Time in 1998. It borrows open-world and crafting elements from Western role-playing games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and blends them with something all too uncommon in modern games: respect for the player’s intelligence.

Wild expects you to learn by doing, not by its developers telling you how to do every last thing. The game world is absolutely gigantic, and around every corner there’s another mystery to explore, be it a challenge shrine to conquer or a pink-maned horse to tame. Yes, it’s also available on the Wii U, but that console is effectively dead, and besides, you can’t play it on your commute.

Super Mario Odyssey

Super Mario Odyssey sells the Switch within the game’s opening hour. Princess Peach has been kidnapped by Bowser once again and Mario has to travel across a multitude of diverse kingdoms to stop the unlawful union. He gets a new hat that allows him to possess enemies and use them to solve various platforming puzzles along the way. Moments later you’re controlling a T. rex, smashing through obstacles to unlock your first of many Power Moons.

Collect enough of those and you can move to the next kingdom and start the process over again. It’s a simple concept to grasp; coupled with Nintendo’s trademark charm and smart nods toward the series’ past, it immediately justifies buying the console. That Nintendo released this and Breath of the Wild in the Switch’s first year is impressive too — usually the company puts a few years between its big franchises; both of these games deserve to be in your library.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

Getting strategy games right on a console can be tricky, but Ubisoft somehow married its adorable Rabbids franchise with Nintendo’s Mushroom Kingdom to great success. The result is the very X-com-ish Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. Developing a plan of attack always feels satisfying, as does seeing how each party member’s (Mario, Luigi, Peach, etc.) disparate abilities work together. Seriously, watching an enemy get stuck in place on the battlefield because they crossed paths with Mario’s sticky-honey ability never gets old. The puzzle sections that bookend each battle level aren’t nearly as exciting as the main event, but the game is an otherwise perfect example of what can happen when two of gaming’s most recognizable universes mash up.

Thumper

“Rhythm violence” is an odd descriptor to throw around, but it really couldn’t describe Thumper any better. The trippy rhythm game has you coasting down a track as a scarab, banking off corners, jumping over spikes and “attacking” enemies by tapping the Switch’s face buttons in time with the music. It’s an awesome game when you’re on the go, but make sure you pack headphones and that you aren’t jostling around too much. One false move can send you back to the last checkpoint and reset your hard-won progress. Perhaps most impressive is that the game didn’t lose much going from VR headsets to Switch’s decidedly 2D version.

Super Beat Sports

As great as Rock Band is at parties, you aren’t going to want to whip out a plastic guitar on an airplane to kill time on your flight. Super Beat Sports takes developer Harmonix’s unrivaled beat-matching gameplay from its rock star simulator franchise, strips away the licensed music and replaces banging on plastic drums with clever and charming twists on stick-and-ball sports. Each of the five mini-games features local multiplayer for at least two people, and up to four people can play “Rhythm Racket” and “BuddyBall.” It’s a game that plays to the Switch’s core strengths as a fun, social platform, and proves addictive local multiplayer on the system doesn’t always have to involve go-karts and Italian plumbers.

Fast RMX

Describing Nintendo’s speed at releasing updates to its core franchises as “deliberate” is pretty generous. There hasn’t been a new entry in the futuristic racing series F-Zero since 2004, and even then, that was a Gameboy Advance title exclusive to Japan. Maybe that’s why the company has been keen to push Fast RMX, which is more or less F-Zero without Captain Falcon. The series got its start on the Wii U with Fast Racing Neo, and Fast RMX follows Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in that it’s an updated version of the original game with a boatload of additions. The first game’s downloadable add-on tracks are in tow, and a recent, free update added six new ones. Of course, four-player split-screen multiplayer is available, and racing online with up to seven other adversaries is an option too.

Stardew Valley

Of all the games on this list, Stardew Valley might be the most relaxing. Developer Chucklefish’s Zenlike farming simulator is a perfect chill-out game, offering the chance to plant crops, water them, take part in seasonal festivals, solve supernatural mysteries and even do a bit of spelunking if you’re feeling particularly adventurous. There’s something therapeutic about managing a virtual farm, getting your tract of land ready for spring after the long winter, picking vegetables, raising livestock and furthering relationships with fellow villagers. If Stardew sounds simple, that’s because it is. But not everything needs to have complex mechanics or crushing difficulty to prove its worth. No, sometimes all you need to unwind after a long day at the office is for Grandpa to hand you the keys to the family farm so you can rebuild it in your own image.

Spire’s health tracker sticks on clothes and never needs charging

Wearable fitness monitors promise a lot but research shows that nearly a third are abandoned in junk drawers because they’re too fiddly, require too much maintenance or users are simply forgetting to put them on. Health monitoring company Spire thinks it’s found the answer to these woes with the Spire Health Tag, the smallest ever fitness tracker that doesn’t need to be charged and never has to be taken off.

The tag — available in packs of three, eight or 15 — simply sticks onto the clothes you wear most often. It’s waterproof, so running it through the laundry is no problem, and its battery will last nearly two years. Just stick it on your gear and get on with your life. It measures all the usual metrics to provide personalized, real-time guidance for sleep and daily activity. For example, instead of simply telling you how many calories you burned at the gym, it’ll tell you how much quicker you’ll fall asleep as a result of that workout. And it monitors stress levels, thanks to respiratory sensors that measure breathing.

The tags are so discrete no-one will know you’re wearing them, which is great for people looking to work on their fitness without fanfare. Of course, this could be a downside for the people who enjoy bringing up their metrics at every possible opportunity (you know who you are). Prices range from $99 for a three-pack to $299 for a 15-pack.

OnePlus 5T packs a tall screen and upgraded dual cameras for $499

After more than a few leaks and not-so-subtle teasers, the OnePlus 5T is official — and it’s at once everything you expected and a bit more. The centerpiece, as you’ve no doubt guessed, is the 6-inch, 18:9 ratio 2,160 x 1,080 AMOLED display. The fingerprint reader is now on the back as a result of the taller screen, but it means a larger canvas for your apps and videos in a device that’s roughly the same size as its predecessor. It can auto-adapt to bright sunlight and other harsh conditions, and you can tune the display’s colors for accuracy (such as DCI-P3 or sRGB) or vividness. And thankfully, the trendy tall display isn’t the only improvement.

Most notably, the secondary rear camera packs a wider-aperture (f/1.7 versus the old f/2.6) secondary rear camera that should let in much more light. That tackles a core complaint about the OnePlus 5’s dual camera system — you no longer have to sacrifice photo quality at night just to zoom into your subject. This sensor combines pixels to improve low-light pictures, too. The other cameras haven’t changed, but this update still makes the 5T considerably more competitive if you’re a shutterbug.

The rest of the hardware is largely similar. You’re looking at a Snapdragon 835 processor, up to 8GB of RAM, 64GB or 128GB of storage and a Dash Charge feature that promises a day’s worth of battery in half an hour. OnePlus’ custom OxygenOS has received a facelift, though. In addition to tweaking the interface for the new screen, there’s a face unlock option (albeit not as sophisticated as an infrared system like Apple’s Face ID) and some behind-the-scenes improvements that should lead to faster updates.

Now for the big question: how much are you going to pay when the OnePlus 5T goes on sale November 21st? Unfortunately, there is a slight premium. The handset will start at $499 (£449) for a 64GB model with 6GB of RAM, or $20 more than the ‘plain’ 5. With that said, the recent surge of extra-expensive phones like the Galaxy Note 8 and iPhone X makes the 5T seem like a relative bargain. Yes, it’s ultimately a higher-end version of an existing phone (the Oppo R11s), but you might not complain given that you’re getting many high-end features for hundreds of dollars less than a typical flagship phone.

Source: OnePlus

OnePlus 5T hands-on: A slightly bigger, slightly better flagship

The OnePlus 5 isn’t that old, but it’s already been replaced. The company just unveiled its new flagship smartphone at a launch event in Brooklyn, and it’s understandably pumped about its new, almost-all-screen design. I’ve been playing with the 5T for a few days already, and it’s a shaping up to be a powerful, pretty machine that’s sure to make existing OnePlus 5 owners feel a little envious. If that’s you, well, you don’t need to feel too left out: In many ways, the 5T is still the same phone from earlier this year.

Frankly, it’s a little strange that the OnePlus 5T exists at all. The company set a precedent last year when it released the OnePlus 3 in June, and quickly followed up with the improved OnePlus 3T just months later. That’s essentially what happened here, but company representatives were quick to point out in conversation that the original plan was to focus solely on one phone — the OnePlus 5 — this year. You know what they say about best-laid plans. Note that this doesn’t mean OnePlus is committed to a two-phones-per-year strategy — it has never publicly committed to that. In this case, it just seemed like the company found the right big screen for the right price and said, “Eh, why not?”

And what a lovely screen it is. OnePlus went with a 6-inch, Samsung-made AMOLED panel surrounded by narrow bezels below it and on the sides. The amount of empty space around the panel is roughly the same as on the LG V30, so it’s no surprise that both are easy to grip. More importantly, the screen is bright and vivid enough that it’s easy to forget it runs at 1080p — for those keeping count, that works out to a 401-ppi pixel density. That’s a lower pixel density than what you’d get out of, say, a Galaxy S8 Plus, but the screen’s still crisp enough that you can’t spot individual pixels so the trade-off hasn’t left me wanting. Still, OnePlus says the decision to stay at 1080p mostly came down to power and performance considerations, though it’s worth noting devices like the S8 Plus handled the jump to 2K just fine. Maybe next year.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

The screen is definitely the biggest change to the OnePlus formula, but the tweaks don’t end there. Since there’s no longer room for a fingerprint sensor under the screen, OnePlus moved it to the back. This won’t sit well with some people, but I actually prefer this setup even if it requires you to pick up the phone to unlock it. (It helps that the fingerprint sensor is still super fast.) To mitigate some of the potential blowback surrounding this decision, OnePlus also whipped up a handy “Face Unlock” feature.

Just to make it absolutely clear, this is a much less secure way to unlock the 5T. There’s no clever technical trickery here, and no iPhone X-style infrared camera. Instead, the setup process has you staring at the screen while the phone uses its front-facing camera to spot “over 100” facial points it’ll use to identify you going forward. I haven’t been able to fool the feature with a picture of myself (yet), but it’s at least theoretically possible. And beyond that, the lack of any additional hardware to power Face Unlock means the feature doesn’t really work in the dark.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

This isn’t exactly an ideal solution, but it is a very fast one. Unlocking the 5T with my face was essentially instantaneous; most of the time, it felt like I was unlocking a phone with no security measures at all. Face Unlock’s performance is as impressive as it is convenient, and that’s exactly what the company was going for. You can’t use your face to authenticate Play Store purchases or anything; situations like that still require you to use the more secure fingerprint sensor.

OnePlus also made some tweaks to its dual camera, though it’s sometimes hard to tell. Once again, the 5T combines a 16-megapixel main camera and a 20-megapixel secondary camera, and that latter sensor got most of the attention. It now has an f/1.7 aperture to match the main shooter and is meant mainly to improve the phone’s low-light camera performance. When things around you get dark, the phone switches into that second camera that combines multiple pixels into one, all in an attempt to make pictures look brighter than they otherwise would have. The difference is noticeable, but I wouldn’t call it a game-changer.

So far, the photos I’ve taken with the 5T have been pretty good — I’m especially fond of some of the blurry-background portraits I’ve shot — but many shots are soundly outclassed by those captured with rival smartphones. Don’t get me wrong, improved low-light performance is always a good thing and the 5T is occasionally capable of excellent photos. It’s just that we’ve seen some truly incredible smartphone cameras this year. I’ll need a little more time with the phone to see how well it stacks up against the competition.

Other than that, the 5T is almost identical to the phone it replaces. It’s just a hair thicker, longer and wider than the 5, but these gains are so incremental they’re completely unnoticeable. And yes, those eagle-eyed phone fiends were right: The 5T bears a striking resemblance to other devices, especially Oppo’s R11S. OnePlus admits that it “leverages” the Oppo supply chain when it benefits the company, but insists that any similarities are purely coincidental. I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

Unlike last year’s 3T, which boasted a faster chipset than the 3, the OnePlus 5T uses the same Snapdragon 835 chipset as its predecessor. It’s available in the exact same configurations, too: 6GB of RAM with 64GB of storage, or 8GB of RAM with 128GB of storage. I’ve been working with the latter, and there’s no difference in performance between the OnePlus 5 and 5T. That’s mostly a good thing since the original 5 was already super-snappy, and the reliably clean version of OxygenOS (based on Android 7.1.1) definitely helps keep everything moving remarkably smoothly. While it’s sort of a bummer that a phone launching this late in the year doesn’t run Android 8.0 Oreo, OnePlus says a beta build of OxygenOS running on Oreo will be available by the end of 2017. (We’ll see about that.)

Also unchanged is the 5T’s battery — it’s the same 3,300mAh cell that was used in the 5, and in general I’ve easily been getting more than a full day’s use out of it before needing a recharge. That the 5T’s battery life is seemingly very close to the 5 is a pleasant surprise; I thought for sure I’d see the runtime take a bigger hit thanks to that bigger screen. That said, I haven’t put the phone through the full review wringer yet, so it’ll be a little while before the real differences in power consumption become apparent. If nothing else, OnePlus’s Dash Charging system still works well. Ten minutes of charging typically netted me an extra 15 and 20 percent of battery life, while fully charging a bone-dry 5T took about an hour.

I have a lot more testing to do before rendering a final verdict on the OnePlus 5T, but it feels like this is the device OnePlus 5 should’ve been in the first place. There’s nothing to be done about the past, though, and the 5T feels like a worthy successor to the 5 in just about every way that matters. Basically, your holiday smartphone shopping decision just got a little harder. That said, OnePlus still has its work cut out for it: There’s some lingering distrust among some users from when the company seemingly meddled with benchmark results, not to mention recent concerns about software snooping. We’ll soon see if the OnePlus 5T is enough to get smartphone fans feeling the faith again.

Create Instagram stories in your phone’s web browser

You don’t have to install Instagram’s app to create stories on your phone. The photo-centric social network is adding support for posting stories directly from your browser. You have to be content with still photos and text overlays (no video or clever filters here), but this gives you a way to join in the action when you don’t have room for the app or just don’t care to use it.

Also, the Pinterest-like ability to save posts is coming to your phone’s browser. If there’s a travel destination or savory meal you want to remember for late, you can bookmark posts and visit all your saved examples.

These features will take a few weeks to reach everyone, so don’t be disheartened if they aren’t available right away. When they do, though, the mobile web version of Instagram will be considerably closer to its native app version. There are still clear reasons to download the app if you can (receiving notifications and posting video in particular), but there isn’t as much of a rush as there was in the past.

Source: Instagram

Tidal is the latest music service to add direct control for Sonos

Sonos’s direct integration with Spotify is an incredibly convenient feature for subscribers to the streaming service. Rather than having to control music through the (somewhat clunky) Sonos app, users are able to stream to their Sonos speakers directly through the Spotify app. That same integration arrived for Pandora this week, and now, Tidal has announced that it now supports direct control with Sonos.

Music lovers can now enjoy the 51 million songs, 195,000 videos and more via TIDAL direct control with @Sonos. Learn more on https://t.co/4B5472I4tw pic.twitter.com/cfO4vZ1ODI

— TIDAL (@TIDAL) November 16, 2017

It’s great news for anyone who subscribes to Tidal and also has Sonos speakers in their home. The addition of direct control for Tidal leaves Apple Music subscribers in the cold, but when support for Airplay 2 arrives in 2018, it seems that the most popular music streaming services will be on relatively even footing with Sonos’ hardware.

Source: Twitter

FCC adopts new rules aimed at stopping robocalls

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a new set of rules today aimed at shutting down irritating robocalls. The commission says that it receives over 200,000 complaints per year concerning unwanted calls, including robocalls, most of which were banned by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2009.

The new rules specifically target robocalls that spoof caller ID information, such as those that display numbers that are either not actually in use or numbers that don’t make outgoing calls. Voice service providers are now expressly authorized to block robocalls that use those spoofing strategies as well as those that appear to be from area codes that don’t exist or from numbers that haven’t been assigned to a provider.

However, while providers will be allowed to block these numbers, it doesn’t mean they will. In 2015, the FCC passed regulations that allowed telecommunication companies to block robocalls and spam messages at the request of customers. But in 2016, reports surfaced that companies like AT&T were still telling customers that they couldn’t block robocalls, which led the FCC to send letters to those companies asking them to provide call-blocking services to their customers. As part of its fight against robocalls, the FTC has held multiple contests that awarded cash prizes to people who came up with promising, robocall-stopping technology.

Hopefully the new rules adopted today by the FCC will help cut down on pesky robocalls, but because their effectiveness will depend on whether communications companies actually take advantage of them, that’s far from guaranteed. Additionally, there’s nothing in the new rules that prohibits companies from charging customers to block the calls, which is where FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel believes the proposal fell short. She voted to approve it regardless but said, “So this is the kicker: the FCC takes action to ostensibly reduce robocalls but then makes sure you can pay for the privilege. If you ask me, that’s ridiculous.”

Source: FCC

Nintendo Switch’s ‘Arms’ adds a fighter with robotic scorpion fists

Nintendo seems keen to address Arms’ overall thin initial offerings in terms of stages, characters and modes. Since launch the game has been updated a handful of times to add more, and today brings another. Arms 4.0 adds Misango, a man with robotic scorpions for fists. Yes, really. He also has a mask that can help guard against facial damage. There’s also a new stage that Misango calls home, and you can see that in the trailer embedded below. Nintendo hasn’t updated the fighter overview page online just yet — or the patch notes — so it isn’t clear what else Misango will bring with him.

Last month’s 3.2 update added badges for completing milestones within the game and a replay feature along with a slew of balance adjustments for the entire roster of fighters. And before that, the 3.0 update added several fighters in addition to gameplay tweaks. Rest assured, it’s incredibly likely that Mr. Scorpion Fists isn’t the only new bit that’s out today.

Via: Kotaku (UK)

Source: Nintendo (YouTube)