Engadget : Business

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.

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Paramount Pictures is hoping to spin-dash to success for a fourth time. The studio has confirmed that it is working on Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and is targeting a theatrical release of spring 2027 for the movie.

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There are some things you just don’t do in certain parts of the US. You don’t use inferior salsa during a cattle drive in Texas. You don’t eat pizza with a knife and fork in New York City. You don’t yell “Belichick is a big, fat cheater!” in a crowded Boston bar (even if it happens to be true).

And if you’re in New Jersey or just America in general, you NEVER take the holy name of Bruce Springsteen in vain in ANY manner. So it’s bewildering why one New Jersey representative would even think about faking his listening habits when it comes to The Boss.

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The Academy Awards ceremony is streaming live for the very first time in its 97-year history. The Oscars will stream on Hulu at the same time as it airs on traditional network TV via ABC. The ceremony starts on March 2 at 7PM ET, though there’s a live red carpet show that kicks off a half hour before that.

Engadget : Style

"If Shakespeare lived today, what would he write about?" Philipp Stollenmayer asked the audience during this week's Day of the Devs 2024: Game Awards stream. According to Stollenmayer, Shakespeare would write about the invention of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich from the perspective of a rebellious strawberry and a disillusioned peanut. Also, it would be a musical.

Engadget : Style

Blue Prince has been making the rounds at physical and virtual conventions like EGX, Gamescom and the PC Gaming Show, and it’s already high on the puzzle community’s figurative list of most anticipated titles for 2025. It was just featured in the Day of the Devs showcase before The Game Awards, one of its highest-profile debuts yet.

Engadget : Technology

Update, December 9, 2024, 5:45PM ET: X today formally announced its Aurora image generator. "Grok's new capabilities are now available on the X platform in select countries and will roll out to all users within a week," the company said in a blog post. The original story, previously headlined "X adds, then quickly removes, Grok’s new ‘Aurora’ image generator," follows unedited below:

Engadget : Style

A new image generator called Aurora briefly opened for testing for some Grok users, and the tool’s results shared on X appeared far more realistic than X’s previous image generators. It was a brief debut, though. By Sunday afternoon, Aurora was gone. For a short time, there was a Grok 2 + Aurora (beta) option in Grok’s model selection menu, which is now replaced by Grok 2 + Flux (beta).

Engadget : Style, Technology

Is your weekend a bit bare-bones? Here’s something that could entertain you for a minute or two. The chatbot Grok-2 is now free for everyone to fool around with on X. We knew this was coming and, well, now it’s here. Grok it up baby.

Engadget : Style

Google DeepMind has just revealed Genie 2, a world-modelling AI capable of creating 3D worlds and sustaining those environments for significantly longer. Genie 2 isn’t a game engine. It’s a diffusion model that generates images as the player (either a human being or another AI agent) moves through the world the software is simulating. All it needs to start is a single image prompt either generated by AI or from a real-world photo.