2025-12-04 07:45:42
The Department of Transportation under President Donald Trump is moving to reverse more of the climate policies that had been enacted by President Joe Biden. Under a proposed rulemaking by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks in model year 2031 will be reduced to an average of 34.5 miles per gallon, down from the standard of 50.4 miles per gallon that was part of Biden's plans to encourage more adoption of electric vehicles among US drivers.
The move was expected since Trump re-took office. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy ordered the NHTSA to review fuel efficiency standards in January a day after he assumed the title. The current administration also ended a tax credit for buying electric vehicles over the summer. In the meantime, international manufacturers are racing ahead in their progress on building better EVs, offering other markets more exciting models that won’t arrive in the US thanks to tariffs.
While Trump's announcement today claimed that the change would reduce the average cost of a new car by $1,000 and offer a savings of $109 billion over five years, gas prices are on track to increase if the Environmental Protection Agency does successfully repeal the finding that climate change causes human harm. Plus there's the incalculable financial and human cost of a growing number of catastrophic weather events that have been predicted if the planet continues to get warmer.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/us-department-of-transportation-doubles-down-on-gas-cuts-fuel-efficiency-standards-234542939.html?src=rss2025-12-04 07:30:35
It's time for the annual Rockefeller Christmas tree lighting! The Christmas in Rockefeller Center tree lighting special will air tonight, Dec. 3 from 8-10 PM ET — though coverage will start an hour prior, at 7 PM ET. The Voice and Happy's Place star Reba McEntire will host and perform at the Rockefeller Tree lighting, which will also feature performances from Halle Bailey, Michael Bublé, Kristin Chenoweth, Laufey, the Radio City Rockettes and more. Here’s how to tune into the 2025 Rockefeller Tree lighting.
The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree will be lit on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025.
Coverage of the 2025 Rockefeller Tree lighting will start at 7 p.m. ET. The official Christmas in Rockefeller Center tree lighting special will air from 8-10 p.m ET.
The Christmas in Rockefeller Center special will air on NBC and stream on Peacock.
Reba McEntire will host NBC's annual holiday special, and perform throughout the evening.
Alongside Reba McEntire, the tree lighting ceremony special will feature performances from Marc Anthony, Halle Bailey, Michael Bublé, Kristin Chenoweth, Laufey, New Edition, Brad Paisley, Carly Pearce, Gwen Stefani and the Radio City Rockettes, who are celebrating their 100th anniversary this year.
2025-12-04 06:54:30
Alan Dye, Apple's Vice President of Human Interface Design, has been poached by Meta, Bloomberg reports. The designer played a pivotal role in the look and feel of Apple's products since Jony Ive left the company in 2019, and now he’ll be taking his talents to Meta.
Dye will reportedly work under Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth as the head of a new studio that will oversee the design of hardware, software and AI products. The studio will also include former Apple designer Billy Sorrentino, Meta’s interface design lead Joshua To, an industrial design team led by Pete Bristol, and metaverse design and art teams led by Jason Rubin, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Threads.
“The new studio will bring together design, fashion, and technology to define the next generation of our products and experiences,” Zuckerberg shared in the post. “Our idea is to treat intelligence as a new design material and imagine what becomes possible when it is abundant, capable and human-centered.”
Apple, meanwhile, is replacing Dye with Stephen Lemay, Bloomberg reports, a senior designer at the company who's worked on all of the company’s interfaces since 1999. Considering the secrecy of Apple as a company, it's hard to credit individual breakthroughs to individual designers, but Dye worked on several of Apple's major new platforms and design changes, including things like the interface of visionOS and its new Liquid Glass design language.
Meta has had success with its Quest virtual reality headsets and more recently, its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, but the company clearly hopes to release many more consumer hardware products with Dye and its new design studio’s help. Those will likely include future versions of the Meta Ray-Ban Display and its Neural Band accessory.
Dye isn't the first designer Apple has lost to a competitor. Evans Hankey, the company’s former head of industrial design, left Apple in 2022 to work with Ive. Hankey is now one of several former Apple employees building OpenAI's upcoming hardware device. Dye joining Meta is particularly interesting in this case because Apple is rumored to be working on products that will bring the company in even closer competition to the social media giant. The Vision Pro could be considered to be a high-end competitor in VR, but Apple is reportedly working on its own pair of smart glasses, too.
Update, December 3, 5:54PM ET: Added information from Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads post on hiring Alan Dye and Meta’s new design studio.
2025-12-04 06:39:01
Bungie and Sony Interactive Entertainment appear to have settled the plagiarism scandal that rocked Marathon before the game was indefinitely delayed in June 2025. Fern Hook, an artist who goes by the name “Antireal” online, posted on X that her issues with Bungie using her work without credit in Marathon have been resolved to her "satisfaction."
Marathon's distinct art style is one of its charms, but as Hook claimed on X and Bungie later confirmed, a portion of the assets and textures featured in the game's alpha were lifted from Hook's work. At the time, Bungie announced that it was conducting an investigation and hoped to discuss the issue with Hook. It's not clear what kind of agreement Bungie, Sony and Hook came to, but it appears to have solved any outstanding issues.
The Marathon art issue has been resolved with Bungie and Sony Interactive Entertainment to my satisfaction.
— N² (@4nt1r34l) December 2, 2025
Bungie delayed Marathon from its original September 2025 launch date in June, and more recently ran closed playtests of an updated version of the game in October. As of Sony's November earnings report, the company now says Marathon will launch by March 2026. Marathon is a reimagining of an older Bungie franchise, but more importantly, it's also the developer's first new game since Destiny 2 was released in 2017. Considering Sony's increased scrutiny of Bungie's performance, settling this issue and hopefully setting up Marathon for a smoother launch is definitely a good thing.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/artist-bungie-plagiarized-for-marathon-alpha-says-the-issue-has-been-resolved-223901094.html?src=rss2025-12-04 06:15:59
In a lot of social media use, the algorithm is an intangible entity, silent and all-powerful in controlling what we see in our feeds. And like supplicants to a deity, sometimes we may find ourselves calling into the void, hoping to receive aid from that mighty being. Seems that for Threads users, at least, those prayers have been heard.
Many people on the Threads platform have taken to writing posts with the phrase "dear algo," politely asking the network algorithm to show them more of what they want or less of what they don't. According to a post today from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Threads will try out a feature where that's exactly what happens. Connor Hayes, head of Threads, also posted about this limited test, adding that it will be an AI-powered feature. "When people add “Dear Algo” to a post, it will tell your feed what you want to see more or less of for up to three days," he wrote. "If your profile is public, people can see your request, connect with you about it, or repost it."
There is something satisfying about having users' feedback taken seriously, even if it started as a bit of a joke. Threads has seen rapid growth since its debut in 2023. It had 400 million monthly active users as of August 2025 and in October it reached 150 million daily active users.
Update, December 3, 2025, 5:15PM ET: Added more detail from Connor Hayes about the tests.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/your-dear-algo-threads-posts-might-actually-do-something-soon-215448062.html?src=rss2025-12-04 05:22:31
Earlier this year, Apple launched a new tool that makes it easier to read anything on your device’s screen. Designed for people with visual disabilities, Accessibility Reader provides a full-screen view of any on-screen text. (It’s a bit like Safari’s Reader Mode, only for any app.) The feature also lets you listen to your text read aloud.
Accessibility Reader is available for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro. Your device will need to be on iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26 Tahoe or visionOS 26.
It’s a fairly straightforward experience. But since it offers several launch and customization options, here’s a quick breakdown on getting started and tweaking it to your liking.
Activating the feature is the same on any Apple device. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak, and turn on Accessibility Reader. (It’s at the very top.) Once you’ve done that, there are several ways to launch the tool.
Triple-click the lock button. That’s the side button on iPhone and the top button on iPad and Vision Pro. (On older iPads, triple-click the Home Button.) This brings up the Accessibility Shortcut, which includes a quick-launch item for Accessibility Reader.
If you don’t need the other items in this menu, you can remove them at Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut. Then, using the shortcut will immediately launch Accessibility Reader.
You can add a Control Center shortcut for the tool. Swipe down from the top-right to launch Control Center. Then, hold your finger on an empty part of the screen. Choose “Add a control” (bottom), and find the Accessibility Reader shortcut. You can now tap that Control Center icon whenever you want to launch it.
The default Accessibility Reader shortcut on Mac is Cmd-Esc. Or, customize it in Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Reader by clicking the “i” next to the menu item.
The tool is also available as part of the Mac’s Accessibility Shortcut. You can launch this menu using a keyboard shortcut (Opt-Cmd-F5), by quickly pressing Touch ID three times or with a Control Center shortcut. (However, the above Cmd-Esc shortcut should be the simplest for most people.)
The tool also includes a text-to-speech (TTS) option. Once you’ve launched Accessibility Reader, listening is as simple as pressing the play button (▶). You can then use the pause (⏸) shortcut to take a break.
Other options include skipping backward or forward using the rewind or fast-forward symbols. There’s also a speed adjustment, which you can change by choosing the 1x button.
If you want the Reader to speak text automatically when it opens, you can do that, too. That option is found under Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Reader. (On Mac, select the “i” symbol next to the menu entry to find this option.)
It’s easy to adjust the font size, color, theme and more. Once you’ve launched Accessibility Reader, tap the customization (AA) button. There, you can change the theme, colors, font, line spacing and much more.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/how-to-use-accessibility-reader-on-apple-devices-212231319.html?src=rss
