Category: Technologies

The wait is nearly over for Prime Video’s TV take on Fallout, with the live-action drama based on Bethesda’s iconic video game series hitting the streaming service worldwide tonight.

Helmed by Westworld’s Jonathan Nolan (brother of recent Oscar winner Christopher) and his wife Lisa Joy, the show is set 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse has wiped out much of civilization, leaving the wealthy who were able to head to bunkers as the few — but not only — survivors.

Among those left among the living is Lucy (Yellowjackets star Ella Purnell), an optimistic “vault dweller” who leaves the safe confines of her shelter and heads to the surface to save her father (Twin Peaks legend Kyle MacLachlan). A dangerous wasteland warped by atomic fallout awaits Lucy, with factions clashing and mutants roaming as she tries to navigate the post-nuclear chaos.

Nicely filling the gap while we wait for season 2 of that other post-apocalyptic game adaptation, The Last of Us, Amazon will be hoping it has a similar hit on their hands — but will it live up to the expectation? Find out for yourself by following our guide to watching Fallout from anywhere in the world.

Read more: Sorry, April Streaming Is Kinda Heavy. You Should Keep All These Services

When is Fallout released?

The show makes its debut on Prime Video on Wednesday, April 10, at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT in the US and Canada, at 2 a.m. BST in the UK, and at 12 p.m. AEDT in Australia, with all eight episodes set to become available to watch on demand at that time. The series will stream globally on this date in over 240 countries and territories.

How to stream Fallout in the US, UK and worldwide

Prime Video is the exclusive home of Fallout, and you can access the streaming service with a standalone subscription or via an Amazon Prime membership. If you prefer to use Prime Video without a Prime membership, the service starts at $9 per month to stream with ads, and $12 per month to watch the ad-free version in the US. UK customers can pay 6 a month for a Prime Video subscription, while it’s CA$8 monthly for Canadian subscribers. Check your country’s local pricing for a standalone Prime Video account.

See details below on how to sign up for an Amazon Prime membership, which includes access to Prime Video and grants a free 30-day trial for new subscribers.

Sometimes a group chat takes on a life of its own, whether friends and family decided to get chatty while you’re busy working or you needed to mute the thread for a day to get some space from a busy conversation. For these situations, the Rakuten Viber chat app unveiled a new AI Chat Summary tool Wednesday that can summarize those messages down to a few essential points.

The chat app’s feature leverages OpenAI to do this and can scan up to 100 unread messages when building its summary. When opening a conversation with unread messages, the app will offer to build a summary, and if requested, the app will then scan for any key decisions or actions in order to create reference points. When the AI Summary is used, the app will mark the group chat as read, but you can still scroll back through the conversation if you’d like.

Viber says these summaries won’t be saved on the chat app’s servers, nor will it include any identifiers beyond usernames. The feature is gradually rolling out now in the US, the Philippines, Ukraine, Japan, Bulgaria and Poland to start. Other regions will follow after that, and it’s coming to both the iOS and Android versions of the chat app.

Viber’s AI Chat Summary tool arrives as other texting apps are also including AI functions in different ways. For instance Meta AI can be accessed as a chatbot from within WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, but at this time a similar chat summary tool is available only through various external tools. Google Messages has been leveraging AI primarily for text composition features like Magic Compose, but Android Auto is set to provide AI summaries of long texts and group chats for drivers. And Apple is not yet currently including AI features inside of iMessage, but iOS 18 rumors are indicating that AI features could be on their way to the iPhone later this year.

Roku released its latest TV Wednesday, saying it’ll deliver the company’s best picture quality yet. Called the Roku Pro Series, it starts at $900 for the 55-inch model and also includes 65- and 75-inch sizes.

Judging by its features, the Roku Pro Series will compete with models from Hisense and TCL that we’ve really liked for the money, namely the TCL QM8 and Hisense U8K, and their upcoming 2024 successors. Like those TVs the Roku Pro Series has mini-LED display technology, which should produce a brighter image with better contrast than Roku’s less-expensive Plus Series and Select Series, which were the company’s first branded TVs.

This Roku Pro Series includes a remote finder feature. When you press a button on the side of the TV, ask “Hey Roku, where’s the remote?” or trigger the feature from Roku’s app, the remote will make noise from wherever it is to help you find it. The same remote-finding feature is also available on some of Roku’s streaming devices, as well as on the Roku Voice Remote Pro, which can be added to any Roku device or TV. This is the first Roku TV to include a finder button, however.

Roku’s smart TV system remains our favorite, thanks to its simplicity and ease of use. New for this year, the Roku Pro Series will offer Backdrops, which are customizable images that appear on the screen when not in use. It’s like wallpaper or a screen saver on your computer, but for your TV. Backdrops will be available on other Roku TVs and streaming devices in the coming months as well.

Also, Roku City, the moving home screen backdrop on Roku TVs, will soon include cars (such as an ice cream truck).

As far as pricing is concerned, the $900, 55-inch Roku Pro Series sits somewhat higher than our favorite TV of that size for the money, the 55-inch Hisense U8K at $700. The 65-inch Pro Series will cost $1,000, which is more comparable to the TCL QM8 and Hisense U8K in the 65-inch sizes. The 75-inch Roku Pro Series, the largest size available, comes in at $1,700. As usual, we expect prices on 2024 TVs to fall throughout the year.

Other features include:

• 120Hz 4K panel

• Dolby Vision IQ

• HDR10 Plus

• Side-firing Dolby Atmos speakers

• IMDB ratings and trailers available with content

The Roku Pro Series is available now.

You might assume you have to choose the iPhone or something with a Samsung logo on the back to get a great phone, but you’d be wrong in that assumption. Nothing is a company that’s trying to change perceptions in the tech space, and the Nothing Phone 2 is the company’s first real foray into the US market. And it’s impressive. It’s even better when you can get it at a discount, and Amazon has obliged with the Nothing Phone 2 now yours for just $649. That’s a $50 saving although you should note this special price is only available for the black version. Thankfully, that’s probably the best one.

There’s a lot to like about the Nothing Phone 2. It has a 6.7-inch OLED display that also supports a variable refresh rate. That ensures a buttery smooth experience while saving battery life where possible. The phone is also water-resistant and sports a 50-megapixel main camera, while 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM round out the main specs.

Nothing’s latest phone is designed with sustainability in mind, which is always worth a mention. It has a 100% recycled aluminum midframe and uses 100% recycled tin across nine circuit boards. Other efforts include the phone being entirely plastic-free, among other things.

Not sold on the Nothing Phone 2? Our list of the best phone deals is sure to have something to pique your interest.

There are a lot of integrated development environments, or IDEs, out there, but possibly one of the most well known ones on the market is Microsoft Visual Studio. If you get a subscription, it would normally run you about $45 a month. But right now at StackSocial, you can snag a lifetime copy of Microsoft Visual Studio Pro 2022 for just $36. That’s more than a 90% discount on the standard $499 price. Be sure to use coupon code ENJOY20 to receive the full discount. This offer ends April 14.

When you’re writing and editing code on a large scale, basic rich text editors probably aren’t going to cut it. Having an IDE, or integrated development environment, will allow you to not only write and edit but also run your code so you can debug it all in one platform. Microsoft Visual Studio is a 64-bit IDE with advanced tools and built-in integrations that can make it much easier to handle a sizable workload or a particularly large project.

Visual Studio Pro will allow you to build across languages and platforms, and with IntelliCode to help you complete lines or blocks of code, you should be able to increase your speed and accuracy on the whole. CodeLens is another great feature that allows you to see recent changes, tests, authors and more. Perhaps most importantly, you’ll be able to collaborate in real time and make sure your team’s code stays consistent.

There are a couple of caveats when it comes to choosing this deal over paying for the full subscription version. First, the code provided can only be used once, meaning you will have access to Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 on only one device and will not be able to install it on multiple machines or transfer it if your current device crashes. You also won’t get the Azure access and credit that the Microsoft subscription includes. The good news is that updates are included with your purchase, so this should serve you well for as long as you have your current device. Just be sure to check the system requirements to ensure your device is compatible with this program before you checkout.

Tiger Woods is set to play in the 2024 Masters Tournament. On a reconstructed leg and balky back, the 48-year-old legend on Thursday will begin his 26th Masters, a tournament he has won five times. Only Jack Nicklaus, with six green jackets, has more titles.

Woods is scheduled to tee off at 1:24 p.m. ET Thursday with Jason Day and Max Homa. Defending champion Jon Rahm is grouped with Matt Fitzpatrick and Nick Dunlap, and will start at 10:30 a.m. ET.

Other notable tee times for Thursday (all times ET):

• Phil Mickelson, Sepp Straka and Tony Finau at 9:36 a.m.
• Hideki Matsuyama, Will Zalatoris and Justin Thomas at 10:18 a.m.
• Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele at 10:42 a.m.
• Wyndham Clark, Viktor Hovland and Cam Smith at 10:54 a.m.
• Jordan Spieth, Ludvig Aberg and Sahith Theegala at 1:48 p.m.
• Dustin Johnson, Collin Morikawa and Tommy Fleetwood at 2 p.m.

You can see all starting times and groupings here.

With or without a cable TV subscription, golf fans have plenty of ways to watch the world’s best golfers compete at the world’s best golf course this week. Here’s what you need to know.

• What: The 2024 Masters Tournament

• When: April 11-14

• Where: Augusta National Golf Club, Augusta, Georgia

• Channels: ESPN and CBS
• Streaming: ESPN Plus and Paramount Plus

Who are the favorites to win the 2024 Masters?

According to the latest odds on Fanduel, Scottie Scheffler (+500), Rory McIlroy (+950) and Jon Rahm (+1,200) are the three favorites.

Behind this trio are Brooks Koepka (+1,700), Xander Schauffele (+1,900), Viktor Hovland (+2,100), Patrick Cantlay (+2,400), Ludvig Aberg (+2,400), Collin Morikawa (+2,800), Justin Thomas (+2,800) and Jordan Spieth (+2,800).

Who are the LIV golfers I should root against this week?

Defending champion Jon Rahm and 12 other golfers who left the PGA Tour for the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league are set to compete in the Masters Tournament this year. Here’s the list:

• Bryson DeChambeau
• Sergio García
• Tyrell Hatton
• Dustin Johnson
• Brooks Koepka
• Adrian Meronk
• Phil Mickelson
• Joaquín Niemann
• Jon Rahm
• Patrick Reed
• Charl Schwartzel
• Cameron Smith
• Bubba Watson

What is the TV schedule for the Masters?

The first two rounds will be broadcast on ESPN and stream on ESPN Plus. The final two rounds over the weekend will air on CBS and stream on Paramount Plus.

Thursday and Friday

• 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. ET (12 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. PT) on ESPN and ESPN Plus.

Saturday

• 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on ET (12 p.m. to 4 p.m. PT) on CBS and Paramount Plus.

Sunday

• 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. ET (11 a.m. to 4 p.m. PT) on CBS and Paramount Plus.

Can I livestream the Masters online for free?

On the Masters website or mobile app, you can stream live without having to sign in with a pay TV provider. You can also watch a livestream of the Masters on CBSSports.com or the CBS Sports app, also without needing pay TV credentials. The Masters site will have the TV simulcast livestream each day, and both the Masters site and CBS Sports will offer an additional five livestreams each of the four days of the tournament:

• You can follow featured groups at the Masters throughout each day.
• You can watch golfers navigate holes 4, 5 and 6.
• You can watch the action as it passes through Amen Corner, Augusta National’s most famous sequence of holes: the treacherous par-4 11th, the short par-3 12th and the long par-5 13th.
• You can watch golfers navigate holes 15 and 16.
• You can select your favorite golfers and watch all of their shots with the My Group feature.

Live TV streaming options

If you don’t have a cable or satellite TV subscription, you can watch the Masters with a live TV streaming service. All five of the major services offer ESPN, and four of the five (all but Sling TV) offer CBS. If you’re only interested in watching the final two rounds of the tournament over the weekend, you can use Paramount Plus. The catch is that not every service carries every local network, so check each one using the links below to make sure it carries CBS in your area.

In addition to the ESPN broadcast of the first two rounds, ESPN Plus will also show portions of the tournament each of the four days of the tournament.

Stream all four rounds on ESPN and CBS

Stream only the weekend rounds from CBS

Stream only the first two rounds from ESPN

Stream only selected holes and groups with ESPN Plus

All of the live TV streaming services above offer free trials, allow you to cancel anytime and require a solid internet connection. Looking for more information? Check out our massive streaming services guide.

If you’re planning on going on vacation any time soon, you might be tempted to buy an AirTag to keep track of your belongings. If a friend or family member has an extra AirTag they aren’t using, you can borrow it and save yourself the money. When Apple released iOS 17 in September, one of the helpful new features it introduced was the ability to share AirTags with up to five people.

Apple released AirTags in 2021 as a way to keep track of valuable items, like your keys when your couch eats them. AirTags could be attached to only one user at a time. Until now, you couldn’t lend someone an AirTag, and if you traveled with someone who had an AirTag, you’d be notified that you were traveling with an unidentified AirTag. That changed with iOS 17.

Here’s how to share AirTags with others.

How to share AirTags

1. Open the Find My app.
2. Tap Items across the bottom of your screen.
3. Tap the AirTag you want to share with others.
4. Tap Add Person under Share This AirTag.

Your iPhone will show you a prompt that says once you’ve shared an AirTag, the people you’ve shared it with will be able to locate it, and they won’t receive unidentified tracking notifications. Tap Continue to choose who will share your AirTag.

Once you’ve shared the AirTag, the other person will receive a notification to add it. All they need to do is tap the notification’s Add button, which adds the tag to their Find My app.

If you’re going through this process and receive a notification for a shared AirTag you don’t recognize, you can tap Don’t Add.

How to stop sharing AirTags

After a family member or friend returns your AirTag, you can stop sharing it with them. Here’s how.

1. Open the Find My app.
2. Tap Items across the bottom of your screen.
3. Tap the AirTag you want to stop sharing.
4. Tap the name of the person with whom you want to stop sharing.
5. Tap Remove.

Your iPhone will show another prompt saying that the person won’t be able to locate your item and they will receive unidentified tracking notifications. Tap Stop Sharing and you’re set.

For more iOS news, here are the features that could be included in iOS 17.5 and the latest features in iOS 17.4. You can also check out our iOS 17 cheat sheet.

If you’re taking a road trip this spring, you might plan on using your iPhone’s Maps app for directions. But using the app for extended periods of time could eat up your monthly data. Thankfully, when Apple released iOS 17 in September, the tech giant brought offline maps to your iPhone. With offline maps, you designate which areas you want to download from your Maps app onto your iPhone to use in case of an emergency, or so the Maps app doesn’t use your cellular data. Before you start using the feature, you may be wondering how well it works.

To find out, I downloaded a map of my hometown and used it to get around for a couple of days. My wife and I went to get coffee downtown before walking to an outdoor market, we drove back to our home and went back downtown for dinner after an NFL game ended. I also used offline maps to drive to and from my gym, as well as to walk my dog around the neighborhood.

Here’s how you can access offline maps, and what to know about them before you set foot out the door.

How to download a map to use offline

It can be a good idea to have a map of an unfamiliar area, like a new town or hiking path, in case you don’t have Wi-Fi access or a cell signal. Here’s how you can download a map to use offline.

1. Open the Maps app.
2. Find the area you want to download a map for and long-press on the area. A pin should drop on your screen.
3. Tap Download at the bottom of your screen.

An outline will then appear over your map, which represents the area which you will download a map for. You can resize this outline until you’re satisfied and then tap Download. A banner will announce when your map has finished downloading.

Here’s how you can access your offline maps settings page after you’ve downloaded them.

1. Open the Maps app.
2. Tap your profile picture near the Search Maps bar.
3. Tap Offline Maps.
4. Tap the map you want to use.

From here, you can access settings like updating the map and a Only Use Offline Maps switch near the bottom of the page. If you toggle this switch on, you’ll see Using Offline Maps across the top of your map when you use it. You can then tap this banner to get back to the offline maps settings page, too.

Offline maps will get you to your destination, but expect a few issues

Using offline maps was similar to using the Maps app when online. You open your Maps app, type in where you want to go and hit Go. You can also select your mode of transportation and whether you want to add any stops along the way.

When you’re on the road, offline maps act similarly to online maps. The map follows you and shows nearby restaurants and businesses. If you’re driving, offline maps will also show you the speed limit for the street you’re on. Siri will read out directions the whole way, telling you when to turn and where your destination is on the street.

There are a few differences between offline and online maps. The biggest issue is it won’t know exactly when you’ll get to your destination. When you look up directions, offline maps will display an estimated time of arrival, but they can’t take into account real-time traffic patterns since it’s offline.

When I used offline maps to find my way to a downtown restaurant after an NFL game, for example, offline maps told me it would take me about 15 minutes to get to my destination. In reality, it ended up taking me about 40 minutes to fight through traffic and get to dinner.

That leads to my second issue with offline maps: If you veer off its path, it takes a while to recalibrate and find you again. When getting through the traffic mentioned above, I took a few impromptu turns down side streets and offline maps still showed me where I turned off the path for a minute or so.

Otherwise, offline maps take things back to the days of physical maps. You may not be able to predict how much traffic will delay your drive, and if you take a wrong turn it might take you a second to figure out how to get back, but you can get to your destination — eventually. Pack some snacks just in case.

For more on iOS, check out what features could be coming to your iPhone with iOS 17.5 and what was included in iOS 17.4. You can also check out our iOS 17 cheat sheet.

Apple’s AirPods Pro earbuds are pretty great, but at their usual $249 asking price they’re definitely not the cheapest option on the market. But right now they’re available at a $60 discount if you buy at Amazon, dropping them down to just $189. That’s just $9 above their all-time low price there, so well worth nabbing.

Even with a refreshed AirPods lineup potentially on the horizon, Apple’s second-gen AirPods Pro are still among the best noise-canceling earbuds you’re likely to find. They also sport Apple’s transparency mode for when you need to be more aware of your surroundings, and they can automatically optimize their volume based on your environment. In use, the earbuds promise an impressive battery life of up to 30 hours on a single charge (including the battery life stored in the charging case). They also instantly pair and switch between Apple devices, making these wireless earbuds a joy to use for those in the Apple ecosystem.

If you plan on buying these to use with your Apple Vision Pro headset, you’ll enjoy support for 20-bit/48 kHz lossless audio with ultralow latency. The Apple Vision Pro has its own built-in speakers so AirPods aren’t an essential add-on, but they do allow for a more immersive — and private — viewing experience if you want to lose yourself in a movie.

Not into Apple’s buds or looking for headphones instead? There are tons of headphone and earbud deals available right now.

Today’s Wordle answer isn’t especially tricky. It’s a common word, with some popular letters in it. But if it’s tripping you up, read on.

Every day, we’ll post hints and then the answer for the current day’s Wordle, just in case you need it.

Today’s Wordle hints

Warning: If you keep reading, you’ll see the Wordle answer for Wednesday April 10, puzzle #1026. That could be a devastating spoiler for some players. But if you just need the answer — maybe you’re on your last guess and just don’t want to see an 800-game streak go poof — keep reading.

Wordle hint No. 1: One vowel

There’s only one vowel in today’s answer, so if you’ve correctly found it, focus on consonants.

Wordle hint No. 2: Double consonants

Often, words start with a consonant and move on to a vowel, but this answer leads off with two consonants.

Wordle hint No. 3: For foodies

The answer is a food term.

Wordle hint No. 4: First letter

The answer starts with B.

Wordle hint No. 5: Menu meaning

This food can be eaten plain, but it’s often an ingredient in recipes.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Here comes the spoiler: Today’s Wordle answer is BROTH. Now I want French onion soup.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, #1025, was MERGE.

Past Wordle answers

April 4, #1020, CLIMB

April 5, #1021, WRIST

April 6, #1022, FINCH

April 7, #1023, LASER

April 8, #1024, BREED

Everyday Wordle tips

I’ve written a lot about Wordle — from covering its 1,000th word to my list of the best starter words to a helpful two-step strategy to controversial word changes. I’ve even rounded up what I learned playing the hit online word puzzle for a full year. So if you’re rethinking your need for the actual answer, you might try tips from one of those stories.

Still need a starter word? One person told me they just look around and choose a five-letter object that they’ve spotted to use as their starter word — such as COUCH or CHAIR. I tend to stick to starter words that have the most popular letters used in English words. I like TRAIN as a starter, though I have a friend who uses TRAIL. I’ve read that people use the financial term ROATE, but I like to use words I actually know.

What is Wordle?

If you read this far, you know how to play. You have six chances to guess a five-letter word, and the game gives you feedback as to whether the letters you’ve guessed are in the puzzle, and if they are in the same spot where you guessed them to be. The Times bought the game from creator Josh Wardle for seven figures in 2022. Wardle famously created the game for his partner, and let them narrow down the 12,000 five-letter words in the English language to just 2,500, creating the database of answers. It was convenient of him to have a name that plays off “word” too.

A Times spokesperson told me it lists the very first Wordle as appearing on June 19, 2021, and the paper celebrated the game’s 1000th word on March 15. Spoiler: That 1000th word was ERUPT. As in, Dad will ERUPT if the Wordle is so tough he loses his streak.

There are other fun games in the Times Games stable. My latest addiction is Connections, which I think is trickier than Wordle. This is the game where you look at a grid of 16 words and try to put them into four groups of related words. Sometimes the relationships between the words are pretty out there — like the time when it was four words that all began with rock bands, such as RUSHMORE and JOURNEYMAN. (Connections got a little sassy on April Fool’s Day with an all-emoji puzzle. Some gamers did NOT find that funny.)

Spelling Bee is a popular Times game too. And there’s a new game that’s still in beta, Strands, which I’m trying to master.