Engadget - No, Google isn’t shutting down Stadia

It's Monday, August 01, 2022.

Google has responded to last week’s rumors that it may sunset its Stadia gaming service this year: “Stadia is not shutting down,” the official Stadia Twitter account told a concerned fan in a tweet spotted by PC Gamer. “Rest assured we’re always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro.”

I mentioned in my story about Xbox’s streaming adventures into Samsung TVs that it’s all been a little too quiet on the Stadia front when rival game streaming options have upped their game. Hopefully, Google has some exciting plans to reveal sooner rather than later.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Dell XPS 13 Plus review: Beauty vs. usability

• Hitting the Books: How Moderna dialed in its vaccine to fight COVID's variants

• Recommended Reading: What's next for DALL-E 2?

• Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols has died

• Cellular service is coming to New York's subway tunnels, but it's going to take a while

• BioLite adds portable power stations and a solar array to its charging lineup

Samsung's Repair Mode keeps your data hidden from technicians

But it's only available on Galaxy S21 phones in Korea for now.

With horror stories of hackers selling personal information, it can be stressful to send your smartphone for repair. Yes, you could wipe your phone, but then you have to go through the hassle of restoring it afterward. Now, Samsung has introduced a solution with its own Repair Mode.

According to a Korean announcement spotted by SamMobile, you can activate the new mode under Battery and Device Care in Settings. Samsung didn't explain the technology behind the feature, but when activated, it’ll hide your personal information, photos, messages and linked accounts. Only the device's pre-installed apps will be visible to the technician.

Continue reading.

Some former ‘Witcher 3’ developers are making an online action game set in Japan

The project doesn’t have a release date yet.

A group of former CD Projekt Red developers is working on a new online action game set in feudal Japan. This week, Dark Passenger co-founders, Jakub Ben and Marcin Michalski, announced the formation of their studio and put out a call for talent in a series of tweets. Ben and Michalski were part of the art team on The Witcher 3 and did contract work on Cyberpunk 2077.

Continue reading.

Free AI tool restores old photos by creating slightly new loved ones

There's a risk of a 'slight change of identity.'

Wang, X. et. al

A free tool developed by Tencent researchers, GFP-GAN (Generative Facial Prior-Generative Adversarial Network) can restore damaged and low-resolution portraits. The technology merges info from two AI models to fill in a photo's missing details with realistic detail in a few seconds. However, it's making educated guesses about missing content, so you might see a "slight change of identity." That’s not grandma. You can test it out right here.

Continue reading.

This is probably what Samsung's new foldables will look like

These look like official press images of the Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Fold 4.

Evan Blass

Samsung is set to unveil its next foldable phones in just a few days, but these marketing photos leaked by Evan Blass give the game away a little. He posted images of the Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Z Fold 4 in different colors, suggesting hardware design that doesn’t differ too much from Samsung’s last foldables. The company’s Unpacked event is scheduled to take place on August 10th.

Continue reading.