Technology

dimanche 10 septembre 2023

Let the robot vacuum wars begin: the newest Roombas tackle the competition’s biggest issues

*Surprise! More robot vacuums. iRobot launches its new j9 Plus robot vacuum line, featuring a new auto-empty dock that can refill the robot’s water tank.* | Image: iRobot

iRobot’s newest robot vacuums are smarter and more powerful, and the mopping bot can scrub your floors more deeply. At least, that’s what the company is claiming as it launches its newest flagships: the $1,399 Roomba Combo j9 Plus vacuum / mop and the $899 j9 Plus vacuum. Both models are available to pre-order now at irobot.com in the US and Canada. iRobot also launched two midrange robot vacuums that can mop last week.

iRobot is clearly feeling the pressure from its many, many competitors. These latest models focus on bringing more smarts, power, and scrubbing action to keep up with the likes of Ecovacs, Roborock, and Dreame, who are launching ever more fantastical home cleaning bots.

The new Roomba Combo j9 Plus is the first robot vacuum mop from iRobot with a dock that can refill the robot’s water tank.

Let’s start with the Combo j9 Plus. It has the same retractable mop system as the Combo j7, which ingeniously lifts the robot mop up and over the vacuum so it won’t touch your carpets. Most of the competition deals with the problem of dragging dirty mops over the carpet by lifting up their mop pads a few millimeters, which can be an issue with higher-pile rugs.

I loved the retractable mop when I tested the Combo j7, but the actual mopping was only so-so — it didn’t really scrub, and it was easily outclassed by the oscillating mop pads and spinning mop heads of combo vacs from Roborock and others.

iRobot’s answer to the competition, which it calls SmartScrub, is actually quite smart. Rather than redesign the mopping apparatus, iRobot has the entire robot move back and forth, mimicking the way you scrub the floor with a manual mop.

It doesn’t do this in every room; SmartScrub combines with another new software feature called Dirt Detective (more on this later) to target rooms likely to need it, such as kitchens and entryways. You can also choose to enable it on a room-by-room basis in the app. Best of all, SmartScrub is also coming to the Combo j7 Plus via a software update.

*The Roomba Combo j9 Plus is iRobot’s newest flagship robot and features higher suction power and an auto-empty, charging dock that refills its mopping tank reservoir and doubles as a side table.*

The Combo j9’s other new feature is a redesigned auto-empty / charging dock that now automatically refills the mop’s water tank. This is something I felt was missing when I reviewed the Combo j7 Plus; you have to refill that mop reservoir manually.

The lower-priced $899 j9 Plus is a vacuum-only version of the Combo j9 Plus and comes with the same dock as the j7. Both new models have the same AI obstacle avoidance that arrived on the Roomba line with the j7 — so will skirt common household clutter and the dog poop that robot vac companies think is all over our homes. It's important to note this feature uses a camera that’s on the vacuum.

The company also says that the j9 Plus models are Roomba’s most powerful to date. iRobot doesn’t release Pa numbers but says it’s 100 percent more powerful than the i series. (That said, iRobot’s suction power claims sometimes feel deliberately obtuse — its website says both the j series and i series are 10 times as powerful as the 600 series, while the s9 is 40 times more powerful. Assuming the j9 is twice as powerful as the i series, that’s still only half as powerful as the s9. We’ve reached out to iRobot for clarification.)

Both new models ship with Version 7.0 of iRobot OS, which introduces an intriguing feature called Dirt Detective. This learns which rooms in your home are the dirtiest and cleans those first. iRobot says this “analyzes past cleaning preferences, patterns, and timing to automatically prioritize rooms that need the most attention.”

Dirt Detective works with a feature introduced in iRobot OS 6.0 that automatically identifies room types using its onboard camera. So it guesses a room with a fridge and an oven may be the kitchen (you can adjust these names in the app). It is also smart enough to know to clean the bathroom last, avoiding the possibility of smearing any bathroom debris over your rugs.

*The Combo j9 dock adds a water tank (top) and a larger storage area for bags and spare mop pads, plus a wood accent table on top.*

*The j9 Plus has the same dock as the j7 Plus. It charges the robot and automatically empties its bin.*

Interestingly, the new dock for the Combo j9 doesn’t have a dirty water tank — a feature on competitor docks from Roborock and Ecovacs. This is because it doesn’t clean the mop pad; instead, you’re expected to remove it and wash it. This does away with the potential for gunky grungy docks, a real hazard with the new multifunction docks if you don't keep them clean. However, the Roomba’s mop pad is thinner and smaller than the competition's, so I'm skeptical as to how effective it will be.

Roomba’s current auto-empty dock, which remains for j9 Plus, is the best-designed of the current crop of docks, looking more like a piece of furniture than others. A fun twist is that the new Combo j9 dock can also be a piece of furniture; they’ve designed the top to be a side table.

iRobot also says its new dock is much quieter than the previous version when auto-emptying — a process that on the current dock sounds a lot like a jet engine taking off in your living room.

Speaking of quiet, iRobot is finally bringing suction-level options to its vacuums. On the j9 models only, you can now choose between low, medium, and high suction levels in the app. An option on every other robot vacuum cleaner out there, iRobot hasn’t let users have this type of control before. The main benefit is being able to let your vacuum run on low when you’re home without it annoying you or your family members.

*The Dirt Detective feature on the Roomba j9 line will customize settings like suction power and the number of cleaning passes room by room.*

I spoke to Colin Angle, iRobot’s CEO, ahead of the launch, and he explained that the strategy with these new robots is to get back to basics with robot vacuums. “The features you’re ‘supposed’ to want are spinning pads, lasers [lidar navigation], and long battery life,” he said. “But what you really need are cleaning, ease of use, and will it get back to the dock.”

He’s not wrong here — it doesn’t matter how many fancy features a bot has; if it gets stuck, it’s not going to clean your house. In my testing of bots with spinning mops, I’ve noticed they are more prone to getting stuck; big flappy mops sticking out the side are a definite trip hazard. However, they do a good job of scrubbing your floors. We'll have to see whether the Combo j9’s new scrubbing action will make up for that once I get these new models in for testing.

Meta sets GPT-4 as the bar for its next AI model, says a new report

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta has been snapping up AI training chips and building out data centers in order to create a more powerful new chatbot it hopes will be as sophisticated as OpenAI’s GPT-4, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company reportedly plans to begin training the new large language model early in 2024, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg evidently pushing for it to once again be free for companies to create AI tools with.

The Journal writes that Meta has been buying more Nvidia H100 AI-training chips and is beefing up its infrastructure so that, this time around, it won’t need to rely on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to train the new chatbot. The company reportedly assembled a group earlier this year to build the model, with the goal of speeding up the creation of AI tools that can emulate human expressions.

That goal feels like a natural extension of rumored generative AI features Meta has already been working on. A June leak claimed there was an Instagram chatbot with 30 personalities being tested, which sounds a lot like the unannounced AI “personas” the company is said to be launching this month.

Meta has reportedly dealt with heavy AI researcher turnover over computing resources split between multiple LLM projects this year. It also faces heavy competition in the generative AI space. OpenAI said in April that it wasn’t training a GPT-5 and “won’t for some time,” but Apple has reportedly been dumping millions of dollars daily into its own “Ajax” AI model that it apparently thinks is more powerful than even GPT-4. Google and Microsoft have each been expanding the use of AI in their productivity tools and Google wants to use generative AI in Google Assistant. Amazon also has generative AI initiatives underway across its organization that could yield a chatbot-powered Alexa.

WhatsApp is working on cross-platform messaging

Illustration: The Verge

A WhatsApp for Android beta update (version 2.23.19.8) that came out today contains a new screen called Third-party chats, reports WABetaInfo. For now, the screen is neither functional nor accessible by users, according to WABetaInfo. But its title is a strong clue that this is likely the first step to opening Meta’s encrypted messages app to cross-platform compatibility.

The beta comes just days after the European Commission confirmed that WhatsApp owner Meta meets the definition of a “gatekeeper” under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which requires communication software like WhatsApp to interoperate with third-party messaging apps by March 2024. WABetaInfo tweeted a screenshot of the screen:

WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.19.8: what's new?

WhatsApp is working on complying with new EU regulations by developing support for chat interoperability, and it will be available in a future update of the app!https://t.co/XI6zMoOD5P pic.twitter.com/Jpd9Leh2Ki
— WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) September 10, 2023

The DMA’s goal, per the European Commission’s FAQ about the law, is to keep gatekeepers “from imposing unfair conditions” and to “ensure the openness of important digital services.” Beyond dictating that messaging apps must interoperate, the DMA requires that gatekeepers, among other things, let users remove pre-installed apps or shop alternative app stores.

Both Meta and Microsoft are planning their own mobile app stores in response to the DMA. The European Commission is investigating whether Apple’s iMessage and Microsoft’s Bing search engine, Edge browser, and advertising service meet the bar for the new regulation.

Disney is releasing a very expensive 100-movie Blu-ray collection

The Verge

Disney is releasing a 100-film Blu-ray collection on November 14th called the Disney Legacy Animated Film Collection (via The Wrap). Preorders will start on September 18th at Walmart.com, and we regret to inform you it will cost $1,500, according to The Wrap.

The collection includes movies from both Disney and Pixar, all crammed into three volumes of discs that span Disney’s entire feature film history from 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to this year’s Elemental.

What’s really impressive is how little filler this package seems to have. Scrolling through the list that The Wrap published, it has every single movie I’d have wanted to see, like all of the Toy Story movies, both of The Incredibles, The Black Cauldron, Frankenweenie, and Robin Hood, but very few of the mediocre direct-to-video snoozers the company produced so many of over the years.

Each volume folds out into a storybook-style presentation, with pages showing poster art for the movies, their release years, and a character quote from each. The collection also comes with digital codes for each movie. (“Sorry, everyone,” you’ll say, “I can’t come out tonight because I’m claiming Disney digital copies.”)

There’s also a lithograph poster for Disney’s upcoming Wish, a numbered certificate of authenticity, and a fancy crystal Mickey Mouse ears cap. According to the certificate shown in the video, the set has “18 Blu-ray discs with bonus content from Pixar.”

We’ve reached out to Disney for more details and will update here if we get a response.

Dynamic Island isn’t such an exciting destination after all — and that’s okay

Photo of iPhone 14 Pro showing music playback in Dynamic Island. — *The iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island is expected to land on all iPhone 15 models this year.*

Exciting is overrated, anyway.

Last fall, Apple introduced us to the Dynamic Island with all of the usual hyperbole.

The new free-floating, pill-shaped notch on the iPhone 14 Pro was described as “magical.” It would enable “an entirely new iPhone experience.” And while we take everything with a grain of salt from the company that pitched the Digital Crown as the eighth wonder of the world, the Dynamic Island did seem promising at the time.

It looks good, for starters. In the right light, it really does look like the notch is stretching and shrinking. It wasn’t widely featured in the leaks or rumors leading up to the event, either, so it took us by surprise. But after our first week with the Dynamic Island, it was hard to know what to make of it. Sure, it did a fine job of telling you how long you’ve been on the phone or whether your AirDrop was successful. But the other stuff — the bold new way to interact with your phone stuff — depended on third-party app makers adopting Live Activities and putting time-sensitive information in the Dynamic Island, and that wouldn’t happen until later in the year.

Halfway through the year, the concept was still promising, but its limitations were more evident, too. Sure, watching your timer count down on the top of your screen as you do other things on your phone is helpful. Keeping an eye on your Uber’s arrival is handy, too. But it’s becoming more obvious that despite Apple’s claims, the Dynamic Island was never really meant to be a destination in itself.

For one thing, it’s often overshadowed by another feature introduced on the 14 Pro: the always-on display. When you have a timer or a game score displayed in the Dynamic Island and lock your phone, that info is handed off to the main display. More often than not, if I’m following a game or keeping an eye on a timer, that’s where I see it — not on the Island.

Based on nothing but anecdotal evidence gathered by talking to friends and co-workers, the always-on display has been the more notable feature by far. People either hate it and disable it or find it distracting for a few days and then get used to it. But they all noticed it in a way that they didn’t see the Dynamic Island, which they mostly noticed the first few times they connected their Airpods or scanned for Face ID. Then, it faded right into the background.

I don’t think we’ve seen everything that the Dynamic Island can do. More apps will start using it, especially if the whole iPhone 15 lineup adopts the feature like the rumors suggest. But it’s definitely not an exciting new way to interact with your phone — it’s just a handy tool alongside some other new features that make your phone a little less annoying to use. And that’s fine.

Photo of iPhone 14 Pro showing Verge homepage in web browser and timer in Dynamic Island — *Browse the web and keep an eye on your timer — neat! Not life-changing.*

On balance, it’s a step in the right direction. Apple has occasionally been known to sacrifice usability for aesthetics, but the Dynamic Island manages both: it looks nice and it’s helpful. It would just be nice for Apple to remember the other, less attention-grabbing things that we want, too. You know, a battery that doesn’t degrade to 90 percent after a year. Or adopting a messaging protocol that would let me send videos to my mom that don’t look like dogshit. Or a little more help managing the nine thousand app notifications I get every day.

Dazzling new UI features are the stuff that keynotes are made of, but the real magic is in the less exciting details. I’m hoping for plenty of those in the iPhone 15 — exciting is overrated, anyway.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

I never want to be apart from my home espresso machine

Photo of Breville espresso machine on a counter. — *There are many like it, but this Breville Barista Express is mine.*

Zen and the art of espresso machine maintenance.

Maybe it’s a hazard of the job, but I’m not one to get too emotionally attached to any gadget I own — I’ve seen too many come and go. It’s just not worth getting your emotions tangled up in something that could be rendered obsolete by a sudden malfunction or put on a list for “sunsetting.” That said, I love — and I mean love — my espresso machine.

Sure, there’s the obvious reason to love it: it makes coffee, and coffee is sweet, beautiful manna from heaven. That’s a fact; you can look it up. But my relationship with my espresso machine isn’t simply transactional. I’ve discovered that I actually enjoy using it and taking care of it, not just the thing it makes. It’s the perfect kind of gadget: complex enough to require some hands-on routine maintenance but not so intimidating that I feel like I need to call in a professional. It fosters the kind of relationship that your TV or toaster could only dream of.

My espresso machine isn’t the most elegant gadget I own. At $700, it’s far from the cheapest, but also not the most expensive discretionary item I’ve paid for. And you can spend a whole lot more on a fancier machine. But the Breville Barista Express is just right for me, and it’s the thing I miss most from my daily routine when I’m traveling. Nothing says “welcome home” quite like its mechanical rumble when I press the power button after a week away.

Photo of a coffee cup next to sink and espresso machine. — *Latte art remains a work in progress.*

I’m not the kind of person who gets into hands-on projects; replacing the cabinet pulls in my kitchen is probably the handiest bit of home improvement I’ve managed. But there’s something I find deeply satisfying about espresso machine maintenance. The weekly and monthly cleanings aren’t hard — the most I usually need to do is pop a cleaning tablet into the portafilter, press a few buttons, and let it work its self-cleaning magic.

I got by with these surface-level cleanings for a long time but, after a while, realized I should probably get in there and really scrub it. I’m too embarrassed to admit how long it took me to remove the shower screen from the machine’s group head to give it a good scrub, but I did it recently and let me tell you what — A little Cafiza soak and it was shining like new. It’s magical and also kind of disgusting when you realize your latte tastes better because you were previously getting notes of old coffee residue in your cup.

One of the things that makes maintaining this machine feel approachable even to the DIY-averse like me is that Breville includes most of the tools you’ll need for deep cleaning right in the box. They even sit in a special little tray until you need them, so you’re never hunting for the right Allen key when it’s time to get into that group head.

The Barista Express is also extremely popular, so there are plenty of videos and Reddit threads to help walk you through the finer points. Breville readily sells replacement parts for just about everything on the machine, from the steam wand assembly to the special felt washer that goes inside the burr grinder. A damaged water tank or a cracked drip tray isn’t a death sentence for your machine.

Somewhere in the middle of all this is the secret to the Barista Express’ likeability. It’s simple enough to use on a daily basis with minimal maintenance, but when you do get your hands dirty for some deep cleaning, it’s a rewarding exercise. And even for the more intimidating projects like disassembling the burr grinder (those tiny washers!), there’s someone on YouTube with the exact same model there to hold your hand along the way.

Is this the best home espresso machine? I have absolutely no idea, and I do not care. It’s the one I love, and I plan to keep it running as long as I can.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

How to use the new web-based editing tools in Google Photos

Chrome page showing The Verge, with tab groups on top, surrounded by artistic illustrations. — Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Google Photos isn’t just a place for storing and sorting your photos and videos — both the web interface and the mobile apps come with a slew of image editing tools so you can spruce up and enhance your pictures before sharing them with the wider world.

Google regularly updates these editing tools, and a significant upgrade just arrived on the web. There are new features here (some of which were previously available only on the Android app), including preset color profiles and more granular control over existing features such as brightness and contrast adjustment.

All you need to do to try them out is open your browser and navigate to Google Photos. Open an image, click the edit button in the top-right corner (it looks like a series of sliders), and you’ll be in the editing interface, which will appear as a sidebar on the right side of the screen.

There are four (five, if you are a Google One subscriber) different editing panels to work through, and we’re going to tell you what each one is about. (And yes, some of the editing options are exclusive to Google One subscribers; those options will be marked on your screen by a 1 in a circle.)

First tab: Suggestions

Photo of stage lit at night with column at right labeled Suggestions and several choices beneath, the one called Warm is highlighted. — *Google Photos will have some suggestions about how to enhance your pictures.*

Suggestions (the star icon) is a new feature similar to that which has been part of the Android Photos app. It lists tweaks that Google Photos thinks will improve your image. Different suggestions will appear for different images depending on their content. For example, Enhance applies a range of optimizations, while Warm and Cool adjust the overall temperature of a picture.

If you’re a Google One subscriber, your selection of choices will be wider. Some of those features include Blur, which blurs the background; Color pop, which highlights foreground colors; and Dynamic, which applies HDR processing to bring out details in darker and lighter areas.

You just click on any of these suggested options to see how they change the look of the image and click again to remove the processing and go back to the original look. It’s a useful way of letting Google’s analysis algorithms make the decision about how to get your photos looking their best.

Second tab: Crop

Photo of tents with column labeled Aspect ratio on side with various aspect ratios beneath. — *The Crop feature can help you put your photo in a better aspect ratio.*

The Crop tab (the corner markers and arrows icon) is where you can crop an image and rotate it. Crop was previously available in the editing interface, but what’s new are preset aspect ratios you can pick from — which means you can get to the image shape and size you need more quickly.

Select any of the aspect ratios. If it’s not quite right, then use the handles at the corners of the selection to adjust it.
Click and drag inside the crop selection window (the cursor changes to a hand icon) to alter which part of the image the crop focuses on.
Click and drag along the bar underneath the image, marked with a series of angles, to change the rotation of the image.
Click the rotate button to the left of the bar to rotate the image by 90 degrees in an anti-clockwise direction.
Click Reset to undo all of the changes that you’ve made on this tab and go back to the original framing and rotation.

Third tab: Tools

Landscape photo with an icon labeled Sky at right. — *One of the options in the Tools tab lets you change the look of the sky. The small rainbow circle at the bottom right of the option’s icon shows it’s only available for Google One members.*

The center tab, Tools (the hammer and wrench icon), only appears if you’re a Google One subscriber and if Google Photos deems that these tools are relevant and useful for the picture that you’ve opened up. It’s new and really adds to the editing power of the Google Photos web app.

You’ll see different tools for different pictures: a portrait shot of a face may offer a tool called Portrait Light, for example, which lets you introduce an artificial light source, while a photo of a landscape may provide you with a Sky tool where you can add a “style” like Radiant or Storm.

Just click the tool you want to use. A slider under the photo will usually appear that allows you to change the strength of the effect.

Note that there may be some crossover with the Suggestions tab as well, so you could see some of the same options on both tabs.

Fourth tab: Adjust

Landscape photo with a variety of icons and slider controls at right. — *You can use the Adjust tab to fine-tune your image in all kinds of ways.*

Over on the Adjust tab, you get a long series of sliders that let you change a host of different image characteristics, from its brightness to how skin tones show up.

This tab isn’t new, but it has had a bit of a redesign, and some new features have been added. They include HDR (for keeping very dark and very bright areas of a picture visible — unfortunately, it’s for Google One users only) and White point (for adjusting the white balance in the photo). Again, it adds to the range of edits you can make right in your browser.

Click and drag on any of the sliders to make adjustments — the blue line shows where you’ve got above or below the original settings.
Any changes you make are instantly previewed in the image to the left.
Once an adjustment is made, the icon next to the slider turns blue. Click this icon to undo the changes and set the value back to its default.

For example, you can use Highlights to reduce the brightness of the lighter areas in the image or Shadow to brighten up the darker spots.

Fifth tab: Filters

Photo of table with glass of bear and buildings at night in background; at right, different versions of the same photo. — *The Filters tab offers several different looks for your picture.*

The tab on the far right is Filters (a small star inside a rectangle), and this is carried over from the old interface. These filters transform the look of your image with a single click — they’re similar to the filters you may have played around with on Instagram.

Filters come with a thumbnail image previewing their effects. Click on any filter to see how it changes the look of the picture.
Click and drag the slider underneath the image to change the strength of the selected filter.
Click None to remove the filter and restore the image back to its original look.

When you’re done with all your editing, click Save (top right) to save your changes. If you want to save the updated image as a new file, leaving the original in place, click the three dots next to the Save button and then Save copy.

A new-old camera, Clubhouse pivots, and smart home apps galore

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 5, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, first of all, hi, hello, welcome, and second of all, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been reading about the remarkable pettiness of Disney CEOs and the crypto world’s most obvious scams, watching a whole lot of US Open tennis and this wild home-renovation show that’s all about VR, drafting fantasy football teams, nodding vigorously at this story about the scourge that is Rotten Tomatoes, trying to figure out how to keep my car off the internet after reading this new Mozilla study, shouting from the rooftops that everyone needs to stop using LastPass and change all their passwords, and throwing my life away for a few more minutes to play Ridiculous Fishing EX.

This week, I also have a new camera, some new speakers, the smart home controller all others should copy, the next big AI music track, some thoroughly modern football-watching tips, and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy’s homescreen. Let’s go.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)

The Drop

Polaroid I-2. Kudos to Polaroid for refusing to let the instant camera dream die. Less kudos for the $599.99 price of the I-2 and the nearly $2 a shot you’ll pay for prints. (The Verge’s Becca Farsace made a super fun video if you want to see how it all works.) But still, I love the idea that not only are instant cameras worth making but they’re also worth making better.
Inside Elon Musk’s struggle for the future of AI. Walter Isaacson’s book about Elon Musk, cleverly titled Elon Musk, is coming out on Tuesday, and we’ve gotten a couple of excerpts so far. This one, from Time, is about Musk’s work with DeepMind and OpenAI; The Wall Street Journal had one about his Twitter acquisition; CNBC ran one about Tesla’s self-driving efforts. Not much groundbreaking news so far, but this book should be an interesting read.
Taste Bud. This is a charming little AI recipe chatbot — plug in “what’s a good twist on cold brew coffee,” and it’ll pop up a recipe. Don’t like it? Click “try again” and get another. It’s also a fun tool for typing in all the ingredients you have on hand and seeing what comes back. The “pepperoni penne pasta” I made yesterday was a bit odd but pretty good!
The UE Epicboom. For my money, the UE Booms are the best Bluetooth speakers on the market. The new one, the Epicboom, is big and expensive ($350!) but is rugged and lasts for hours. The new Sonos Move 2 fits in the same category. I’ll be sticking with my house full of Wonderbooms, personally, but these both look pretty good.
Spy Ops on Netflix. A fun fact about me is that I can never get enough of spy stuff. Spy novels? James Bond movies? Movies that try to be Bond-like but instead just kind of suck? Voice-changed interviews with former spies? I’ll take them all, please and thank you. This new series on Netflix is like a true-crime doc crossed with a spy thriller, and I’m going to watch every single episode this weekend.
The Lutron Caséta Pico Paddle Remote. This is the smart home controller I’ve been waiting for. It looks like a light switch (as all smart home controllers should), it only costs $20, and it can control most smart objects in your house. You’ll need an existing Caséta setup to use it, but Lutron’s stuff is generally pretty good, so I suspect I’m going to end up with a bunch of these.
“Whiplash” by Ghostwriter977. The mysterious creator behind the AI Drake song that set the internet on fire is back, y’all. Kind of? There’s like a 40 percent chance that link won’t work because, once again, an AI-generated song has created a fascinating copyright battle around the internet. And just like the last time, the song’s a jam.
Clubhouse. I am forever fascinated by Clubhouse, the social-audio app that got hugely popular for like 10 minutes and then promptly disappeared off the radar forever. But the company has totally redesigned the app and is embracing voice messaging in a big way. No idea if it’ll work, but it’s a cool concept.

Pro tips

Happy football season to all who celebrate! This weekend is the beginning of the NFL season, and a lot of people are going to be watching games in a new place: YouTube. The company paid a reported $2 billion for Sunday Ticket this year and has some fun plans for how people can watch games.

I asked Christian Oestlien, YouTube’s vice president of product management, to give us some tips and tricks for how to get the most out of YouTube’s football programming. (Did I do this just so I can watch football all Sunday and call it work? Who’s to say.) Here’s what he came back with:

Toggle between YouTube and YouTube TV with the same account. Whether you subscribed to NFL Sunday Ticket through YouTube or YouTube TV, you’ll be able to connect your account on both platforms to unlock more features, such as live chat and polling on YouTube and unlimited DVR and the live guide on YouTube TV.
Catch replays of all NFL Sunday afternoon games. Subscribers will be able to watch condensed on-demand replays of all local and out-of-market NFL Sunday afternoon games, available as early as midnight after the games air to Wednesday night.
Avoid spoilers with spoiler mode. On YouTube TV, hide scores for specific sports teams and leagues so you can avoid information such as final scores or live previews from appearing before you’re ready to start watching.
Connect your NFL fantasy accounts. Link your NFL.com fantasy accounts to YouTube TV so you can keep up in real time with your team and league performance while watching your games.
Filter your multiviews. If you want to browse multiview combinations that include a specific game, start playing the single game and click down to find the “multiview” section in the player. You’ll then see multiviews that only include the currently playing game.

Screen share

I sometimes wonder how anything in Jennifer Pattison Tuohy’s house actually works. Luckily, she’s better at it than I am. She’s The Verge’s expert on all things smart home, which means she’s constantly rigging up new systems, installing new sensors, and trying to do things like set her smart oven to automatically bake a turkey every time she opens the garage three times in four hours. Or something, I don’t know.

I asked Jen to share her homescreen with us, hoping it would reveal the true chaos that comes with all her smart home testing and reporting. It’s even better than I hoped. Here’s Jen’s homescreen, plus some information on the apps she uses and why:

The phone: iPhone 14. I like small phones and small iPads (preferably in purple), so I find a standard-size phone with an iPad Mini that can fit in my purse the best combo.

The apps: I currently have 364 apps on my phone. I didn’t realize how unusual that was until an informal survey of The Verge crew put me at about 150 apps more than most of my colleagues (only one other person was even close… David). But it’s the price I pay for a life as a smart home reviewer, where every gadget I test generally requires downloading a new app.

I manage this chaos by using the swipe down and search function 90 percent of the time, but the top two rows of apps on my homescreen are surfaced by the Siri Suggestions widget. This is surprisingly effective in offering up the right app at the right time. I use two mail apps (work and home), Life360 is how my family keeps track of each other (Apple‘s Find My is just… bad), and the ATP WTA Live app is for the US Open. I’m currently testing robot vacuums and security cameras, hence Roborock, Tapo, and Eufy Security.

The second two rows are my constant go-tos — Slack for work, Evernote for throwing my life and work into quickly, and Todoist for the same but in a slightly more organized fashion. I’ve been using Evernote for over a decade, and while it has its flaws, it also is my life, literally. Citymapper is the best app for navigating any city in the world, and having just been in Berlin for IFA and London, Bruges, and Paris for fun, it earned itself a spot on my homepage (for now).

Then, the main three smart home platform apps I use for testing — Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, and Google Home — are always on my homescreen. (I also use SmartThings but test that on a Galaxy S22). Untappd is on my homescreen as my neighborhood hangout spot uses it for their daily tap menu. And in the dock, Phone, Safari, Messages, and WhatsApp.

The wallpaper: Pets and kids would be on my wallpaper if I could, but as I take so many screenshots that I publish in my articles, I prefer something less personal. I love the “Earth” live wallpaper that updates based on where you are. (I’ve been traveling so much recently that it’s actually been helpful in reminding me where I am when I wake up bleary-eyed and jet-lagged.)

The widgets: World Clock, essential for keeping track of deadlines when you’re in a different timezone from your boss, and the Apple Podcasts app. I’m a huge podcast addict and am never without one chattering away at me.

I also asked Jen to share a few things she’s into right now. Here’s what she came back with:

The US Open. There’s always tennis on somewhere, and I am always watching it. Right now, it’s the US Open, the last Grand Slam of the season, and it’s been a corker of a tournament, which wraps up with the women’s final this Saturday and the men’s on Sunday. About a year ago, the Association of Tennis Professionals launched the ATP WTA Live app, and it’s the best place to easily access every current tournament’s draws, scores, and schedules in one spot. It gets heavy use by me from January through mid-September, when college football takes over.
Ed Sheeran’s Subtract. His latest album really hit home for me, and I even added it to my smart home “morning work” routine (a high honor for an album). I’m eagerly anticipating Autumn Variations, which comes out later this month.
Trust by Hernan Diaz. My book club roped me into this, and it’s been a fascinating read so far. I’m only halfway through, but Diaz’s portrayal of a brilliant mind slowly descending into madness is fascinating and chilling.

Crowdsourced

Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week.

“One of my favorite websites is Deku Deals. It brings together the PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo stores and allows you to track games that are on sale really easily. You can sign up for email alerts whenever a game is discounted. They also have an iOS and Android app in development. The beta is available through their Patreon and has cemented a homepage space on my phone. – Jon

“Omni Crosswords fetches daily crosswords from major outlets without you having to subscribe to any of them. The only con of this app is that it does not have a hint system. If you like playing tennis games, Australian Open Game is a decent game to kill some time.” – Shivam

“The bookmarking app I never see but highly recommend is Pinboard, which markets itself as ‘Social Bookmarking for Introverts.’ It’s blazing fast because there are no images or lazy loading; it’s just webpages with text links you can add notes and tags to — that’s it. The extensions are great, you can sync to Instapaper and Pocket to extend its ‘Read Later’ functionality, and it’s only $22 a year and promises no tracking or ads. Have I mentioned it’s fast? That’s what did it for me. Every page loads instantly.” – Ethan

“Regarding link buckets: I was a longtime faithful user of del.icio.us (and then Pinboard) for many years, but maintenance on Pinboard has slowed to a halt in spite of its subscription pricing. This led me to seek out alternatives, and I eventually settled on linkding. This is a bookmark bucket service that you must host yourself, which may be an impediment to the majority of your readers, but I love it.” – Josh

“I want to recommend an app I am obsessed with these days: it’s called Yuka. It allows you to scan food items, and it rates food about how good / bad that food is and why.” – Shubham

“I’m really enjoying Read.cv and their little social network app Posts.cv — mostly centered around designers, but it’s fun seeing all the apps and web design all these people are coming up with.” – Christopher

“New World on Netflix. A Korean reality show on a ‘utopian island,’ sort of like a video game turned TV show. They’re gaining virtual currency, and then one of the contestants finds out he can rewind time and undo all the gambling. Fun, inventive, weird show.” – Glenn

“Came across Finalist on Threads, a really slick to-do app that works well for my brain. Focused on daily lists that are easy to carry over, just recently released.” – Rigel

“Who Is Erin Carter? Netflix. Brilliant.” – Faisal

Signing off

After literally a year of having it pinned on my to-read list, I finally sat down and plowed through The Wrap’s huge retrospective on what happened with the movie John Carter. It’s a really interesting read and made me wonder how many more movies might have gone through the same chaos. And there’s a surprisingly rich genre of YouTube devoted to this exact topic! I’ve been plowing through the channel “It Was a Sh*t Show,” which chronicles all the mess behind everything from Mad Max: Fury Road to Cats to Arrested Development. The stories are wild, the videos are great, and I’m now completely convinced that it’s a minor miracle that anything good ever gets made at all. But I’m glad it does.

See you next week!

samedi 9 septembre 2023

Takeaways From a New Elon Musk Biography: Ukraine, Trump and More

Takeaways From a New Elon Musk Biography: Ukraine, Trump and More The biography, by Walter Isaacson, portrays Mr. Musk as a complex, tortured figure.

‘I’m Not Trump’s Fan’ and Other Takeaways From a New Book on Elon Musk

‘I’m Not Trump’s Fan’ and Other Takeaways From a New Book on Elon Musk The biography, by Walter Isaacson, portrays Mr. Musk as a complex, tortured figure.

Can you guess how many apps we have on our phones?

Woman wearing Amazfit GTR 4 at a pier while looking at her phone — Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

As you can imagine, there are a lot of interesting — and occasionally off-the-wall — conversations that take place on The Verge’s Slack channels, especially when the weekend is on its way. One of them occurred recently, when reviewer Jennifer Pattison Tuohy happened to ask how many apps people had on their phones. The reaction was immediate — and actually rather telling. It turns out you can find a lot about a person when you talk to them about their phone — and their apps.

If you’re at all curious about how many apps some of The Verge’s staffers have on their phones (and their excuses for that number) — read on.

I currently have 31 apps on my iPhone 12 Mini. I’m pretty aggressive about only keeping apps that I actually use on a regular basis. If I don’t, I’ll spend all of my free time thumbing around different apps on my phone. (It also means my apps don’t use too much storage.)

I’ll often redownload an app to test something for an article or if I need to use it for a day or two for some reason. But as soon as I don’t need it anymore, away it goes! – Jay Peters, news writer

I have 109 apps on my iPhone 14 Pro, which is both more than I thought and way less than a lot of my co-workers. I suspect a good chunk of these are random Apple Arcade games that I stock up on every time I’m about to go on a trip, assuring myself that I’m definitely not going to neglect them all in favor of Marvel Snap again. I have made peace with the many invasive permissions these apps undoubtedly require to sit idle on my phone. Maybe more accurately, I have made peace with the psychic block I have in my brain that tells me not to think about it. – Tristan Cooper, social media manager

I apparently have 128 apps on my Pixel 7A, including system apps, and I think that’s as low as I can cull it (although now I’m trying to take off a few more). I don’t love having things on my phone that I’m not actively engaged with or don’t know what they’re up to, so I’m hesitant to add new ones, and I’m pretty quick to remove old ones. Although my “Road,” “Rail,” and “Air” folders have definitely all rapidly expanded with new apps again since travel came back to being a thing this year. – Kate Cox, senior producer, Decoder

I have 138 apps on my iPhone 14 Pro, which looks to be the middle ground among Verge staff but is also fewer than I thought. Before switching to my current phone, I deleted and offloaded so many apps to save on space and somehow never bothered to reinstall them. Most of the apps that are on my phone or still installed but offloaded are airline apps (I have nine) that I don’t really need because I put my tickets on Apple Wallet anyway. There’s also a bunch of random apps I needed to download to get into a concert, bar, or a random karaoke place that I should probably delete. My favorite part, though, is that I have four authentication apps because no one can agree on having just one app for 2FA. – Emilia David, reporter

I have 234 apps on my Pixel 6, and part of it is because I will try out apps and never get rid of them. For example, I put a bunch of Mastodon apps on a couple of months ago, and even though I only use one of those apps, I still have the others. I also have some games that I thought I’d play and never got around to and some apps that I haven’t used in years but don’t want to remove from the phone “just in case.”

I think I was traumatized when one of my favorite apps, Carrr Matey (which helped you track where you had parked and all its instructions were in pirate jargon) was finally abandoned and pulled out of Android’s Play Store, and when I tried to move it to my next phone, it never worked again. (Follow-up note: while editing this article, I found that there was actually a version of Carrr Matey available from Amazon. But it’s been so long — I’m afraid I may be over this particular crush.) – Barbara Krasnoff, reviews editor

iPhone: 167. Android: 292. Android’s Settings app appears to count a lot of system apps in this, which inflates the number. For example, I scrolled through the list, and it’s counting language packs as apps. A good 20 percent of the apps I have installed are stupid smart home device apps. – Dan Seifert, deputy editor, reviews

339 apps on my iPhone 14 Pro. Do I use them all? Absolutely not. Do I even know what, like, Meeting Owl is or how it ended up on my phone? Nope! But ever since Apple made it easy to punt an app off your homescreen without deleting it altogether, I’ve basically stopped deleting apps. (This is probably a bad idea.) I also have a definite surplus of productivity tools, which I keep around just so I can refresh my App Store updates tab 10 times a day to see if one of them finally added the feature I need that will change my life and make me better at everything. It’s totally going to happen one of these days. – David Pierce, editor-at-large

Android: 444. I’m sick. It takes me five thumb swipes to get through my Android drawer. – Chris Welch, reviewer

Android: 170. This is a little inflated from how many apps I’ve installed just for work — there are probably 10 defunct social apps in there. – Jacob Kastrenakes, deputy editor

I have 365 apps on my iPhone, the vast majority of which are smart home apps (along with about 50 weird games my 12-year-old daughter has kindly added to my phone — I don’t recall ever playing Fashion Battle). I long for the day when I don’t need to download a new app every time I test a new smart home gadget, but we’re just not there yet. In the meantime, the iPhone’s swipe and search for an app function is my best friend. – Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, reviewer

I’ve got 171 apps installed on my iPhone 12 Pro Max, and a quick tally of my homescreens tells me I only use about 38 of them with regularity (including preinstalled iOS apps like Messages). I culled a bunch a few months ago, so I estimate it was slightly over 200, but my app usage rotation has probably stayed around 40. I have lots of streaming, shopping, and utility apps that I don’t interact with frequently, but I have them for whenever needed. Though, to be fair, those same streaming apps are used nearly every day on my TV.

I banish lots of apps to the App Library (it’s like App Purgatory in my eyes) to keep my homescreen somewhat organized, and I do a quick search to call them up when it’s their time to shine in the spotlight. The Library was actually a small feature that helped convince me I’d be okay with switching to iOS after over a decade of using Android phones. The Android app drawer is still better though — damn, I miss it sometimes. – Antonio G. Di Benedetto, writer, commerce

iPhone: 165. Believe it or not, I regularly and ruthlessly cull the apps on my phone so the vast majority of these are ones I use at least on a monthly basis. Most of these apps are for official services like my banks, health insurance, the six apps my apartment building requires us to have, and work-related apps like Slack. The exceptions are a handful of fitness and gadget apps because of all the testing I do as a reviewer — and I definitely do not use them all. However, it also doesn’t make sense to delete them, especially if it’s a company like Fitbit or Withings. I know I’ll eventually have to redownload the app whenever a new product launches or if I have to write about them for a story.

What I would like to cut down on is the number of would-be Twitter successors like Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, etc. And chat apps! I have so many because all my disparate friend groups insist on using different apps like Telegram, Signal, Line, KakaoTalk, and WhatsApp. – Victoria Song, senior reviewer

I have 335 apps on my iPhone. I do not use most of them! Some of them I should probably delete, like the app for the amusement park in the Netherlands I went to one time four years ago. – Nathan Edwards, senior reviews editor

iPhone: 22. I try to delete anything I don’t use regularly. Now I’m down to 16 — thanks for the reminder. – Graham MacAree, senior editorial engineer

Why is it so hard to find a good PopSocket alternative?

Phone with magnetic grip leaned up against a plant pot — *This one that I got off Amazon for $20 is alright. But it doesn’t do everything I need it to.* | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

I like big phones, but I cannot lie. They come with tradeoffs. Namely, despite having large hands and piano fingers, my iPhone 14 Pro Max doesn’t always feel secure in my grasp. That’s fine when I’m in bed, surrounded by soft blankets and pillows. It’s less fine when I’m trying to text one-handed on public transit or running errands.

I first encountered this problem with my first Big Phone, the iPhone XS Max. Get a PopSocket, everyone said. So I did. I had to begrudgingly admit it worked, even if they were ugly as sin. I even upgraded to a PopWallet Plus. But like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun. I’d thought because my original PopSocket had never fallen off, the PopWallet Plus was safe.

It was not.

Person holding a popsocket magsafe — *I refuse PopSocket’s hegemony in the phone grip world.*

I don’t know how it happened, but one day, the wallet part was gone. I looked everywhere. Under the bed, in drawers, cabinets, under my desk, in pockets, my dog’s bed, my cat’s hoard of bread ties, and even the fridge. (I once left my phone in there for two hours; it was a valid place to look.) Alas, it — and my driver’s license, three credit cards, and MetroCard — had disappeared. To this day, I don’t know where it is.

The experience soured me on PopSockets as a brand and began what is now a three-year search for an alternative. I thought it’d be easy. Instead, everything I bought eventually fell off because the adhesive was weaksauce, and my poor phone skittered across floors, cement, asphalt, and other surfaces. (I now have a deep appreciation for tempered glass screen protectors.)

This became less of an issue when covid-19 struck and we were all cooped up at home. It became an issue again once restrictions eased and I had to go outside again. By then, I’d upgraded to the iPhone 12 Pro Max and had MagSafe. Surely, I thought, some intrepid accessory maker had come up with a convenient, cool, and aesthetically pleasing option that didn’t impede wireless or MagSafe charging and would let me lay my phone flat. But these were the early days of MagSafe’s return — the pickings were slim, and PopSockets’ MagSafe options did not inspire confidence.

The Sense 2 draped over an iPhone 14 Pro Max — *Ignore the Fitbit. You can see the purple Sinjimoru strap I used for close to a year on my phone.*

The first thing I bought was this Sinjimoru strap. It was $10, discreet, and easily removable. All you had to do was slip the strap through your case and hook the looped end on a tiny clasp. What I liked most was how comfortable it was. You hold your phone naturally, and the strap provides passive support, so you don’t have to grip as hard. People asked me about it all the time, and for a whole year, I thought I’d found the answer to my problems. The only issue was that, thin as it was, it still impeded wireless charging. There was a workaround — I could unclip the strap and lay the phone flat on the charger.

Except doing that so often led to the strap slipping off the clasp at inopportune moments. At the same time, I got tired of propping up my phone whenever I wanted to watch a video while cooking or doing other chores around the house.

It was right around then that I started seeing an Instagram ad for the Ohsnap Snap 3 Pro. I balked at the $29.99 price tag, but to be fair, this thing claimed to do a lot. It had a similar grip to the PopSocket but was rotatable and could double as a kickstand. It was much thinner at 2.5mm — about the thickness of a nickel. It also had magnets in the outer ring, so you could slap it on your fridge or any other metal. The best part was I didn’t have to remove it to use my MagSafe chargers.

For about three weeks, it worked fine. The thinness was nice and all, but the plastic wasn’t that comfortable in my fingers. It felt flimsy, even though it was weirdly durable. And then, one day, a tiny plastic bit broke off while I was switching it into kickstand mode. Then, the super-thin plastic got wonky. It got harder to snap the grippy part back in place — and soon, it wouldn’t snap back at all. It just sort of... hung out slightly extended like an accordion. So back to the drawing board I went.

What I’ve got now is a sparkly $20 magnetic phone ring I found on Amazon. Unlike the Snap 3 Pro or PopSockets, the grip is a metal ring that hinges outward. It’s rotatable, so you can adjust the grip as needed, and doubles as a kickstand. This particular grip has a secondary ring that pops out from the original, which gives you so many options for kickstand angles. I love that. I like how sturdy it feels, and there’s no budging the magnets on this thing. But I don’t love how uncomfortable the metal grip is. I’ve tried holding it every which way, and none of them feel particularly natural. Plus, I have to take it off to use MagSafe chargers. That means I’ve already misplaced it several times because my cats like to bat objects off nightstands.

Magnetic ring phone grip in kickstand mode on a desk — *The metal ring folds out multiple times, so you have a lot of options for kickstand angles.*

I am tired. All I want is to hold my big silly phone more comfortably, have a kickstand, and be able to use MagSafe chargers without having to remove anything. Is that really so much to ask for in one product? Would it be pure, unadulterated greed to ask for one that’s also thin, not too expensive, or hideous?

I never thought this would be such a Herculean task, especially since Amazon is littered with third-party options. But what I’ve found is that very few options manage to get everything right. Some, like the Snap 3 Pro, tick off all the boxes but then fail to execute on long-term durability. Others, like the Sinjimoru strap, just do one or two things well. Perhaps there are more utilitarian options I simply haven’t found yet — but I have a hunch those options may also be ugly as sin. That may feel like a superficial complaint, but it’s also not a crime to want your phone (and its accessories) to express your own style.

Hopefully, this $20 grip that I just bought will be the answer. It’s thin, has a ring that you can use as a kickstand, a loop for your finger, and lets you use it with a MagSafe charger. My colleague Dan Seifert demonstrated it on a video call, and I have high hopes. Otherwise, I may have to concede that The Verge’s resident phone reviewer Allison Johnson was right, and 6.1 inches may be the perfect phone size. And I’m just not ready to do that yet.

VPNs, Verizon, and Instagram Reels: how students are getting around the TikTok ban

Accumulated snow is seen in a street amid heavy snow fall near University of Oklahoma at Norman, Oklahoma. — *The University of Oklahoma blocked TikTok on its devices and networks in December 2022.* | Photo by Tharaka Basnayaka / NurPhoto via Getty Images

When he first read the email announcing that public universities in Texas had been asked to ban the use of TikTok on their campuses, UT Dallas student Eric Aaberg feared the worst. As a full-time content creator with over 10,000 followers on the platform, the app was central to his life. Would he be forced to delete it? Would he be punished if he were caught using it?

“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, are you serious?’” Aaberg recalls. “That’s so BS. There’s no way.”

Then he learned the reality. UTD was making TikTok inaccessible on its campus-provided networks. For him, that was the extent of the ban.

Aaberg immediately relaxed. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s nothing,’” he says.

Texas is one of over thirty US states that have enacted restrictions on the use of TikTok. The complaints, broadly, have to do with the app’s alleged ties to China. “Owned by a Chinese company that employs Chinese Communist Party members, TikTok harvests significant amounts of data from a user’s device, including details about a user’s internet activity,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said when announcing the ban.

Some of the restrictions, such as the one Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed a few months ago, are far-reaching, stipulating broadly that TikTok may not operate within the state. That law is set to take effect next year.

But for most — Texas included — the restrictions extend merely to government entities. Agencies have been tasked with eliminating the use of the platform on state-issued devices (as well as personal devices used for state business) and Wi-Fi networks. Those agencies include state universities.

Bans like those of Montana and Texas have been met with major opposition online and in court. “The law creates a prior restraint on expression that violates the First Amendment, depriving Montanans of access to a forum that for many is a principal source for knowing current events,” reads one such lawsuit, which also argues that TikTok users, were the ban to move forward, would suffer “irreparable harm.”

And for faculty at universities like UTD, the bans can be disruptive and career-damaging. The Knight First Amendment Institute recently filed to expedite a suit against the Texas law, which it says has hurt professors’ ability to conduct research on a social media juggernaut — including on some of the very topics that have lawmakers worried, like disinformation. Faculty in Texas are expected to keep TikTok off any device they use for university business, including school-issued laptops and phones. That makes it difficult to conduct large-scale research of the platform or cite individual videos in class. “The TikTok ban has imposed profound burdens on my teaching and research,” wrote University of North Texas professor Jacqueline Vickery, whose work covers online media literacy, in a supporting brief.

TikTok has sued. Users have sued. The ACLU and other free speech advocates have filed briefs. In many ways, the laws stand at the forefront of rising geopolitical tensions between China and the West and at the center of evolving domestic debates around the balancing of liberty and national security.

But among college students — by far the demographic who use the app the most — the reaction has been much more subdued. It’s best summed up, students say, as a collective eye roll and a quick jump into the Settings app.

Thomas Pablo, a sophomore at the University of Oklahoma, describes the day his school announced a TikTok ban as an utter non-event.

“It was just another Monday,” he recalls.

It happened suddenly — one day, TikToks loaded in the app and in mobile browsers, and the next day, they didn’t. But Pablo and all of his friends knew instinctively what to do: turn off the Wi-Fi and use data. For the past several months since the ban, he’s been switching his phone’s internet on and off around four times per day. Others he knows do it much more often.

Pablo never discussed or brainstormed methods with other students, nor did he hear any outcry about the new restriction. The student body, quietly, in unison, added Wi-Fi toggling to their daily routine. “Everyone was so nonchalant about it,” Pablo says. “They really just did not care.”

“There wasn’t a whole lot of pushback, aside from a lot of grumbling and groans,” says Ana Renfroe, a sophomore at Texas A&M. Some of her professors are still showing TikToks in class. They’ll just ask students to download the videos at home she explains, or will upload them to another platform like Instagram Reels.

Ethan Walker, a senior at East Tennessee State University, feels the same way. “I just turn off my Wi-Fi, and it just loads right off the bat,” Walker says. “It’s a really easy workaround.”

Walker understands, to an extent, where the state of Tennessee is coming from. He did a lot of research when the ban was first announced, and he admits that the app’s data collection scares him. Nevertheless, TikTok is so central to his campus’s culture that he doesn’t feel that he can leave. “To be involved in social life, you have to be at least versed in some of the TikTok trends,” he says.

Walker now turns his Wi-Fi on and off around five times a day. It was a routine that took some adjusting; he’d sometimes forget that his Wi-Fi was off and end up using data all day. But he’s used to it now. If he wants to open TikTok, his fingers navigate to Wi-Fi settings automatically. “It’s honestly just part of my routine,” he says.

This experience is a common one at ETSU — Walker doesn’t know a single person who has given up the app. “It’s like trying to ban meth,” he explains. “Of course people are going to find meth.”

The influx of students rushing to data networks may be having some impact on their speeds. Virginia banned TikTok over the summer. Jackson Moyer, a senior at Virginia Tech, doesn’t use TikTok himself but has found the university’s data network to be abysmally slow since he returned to campus for the fall semester. New students couldn’t figure out the bus system because the navigation app wouldn’t load. GroupMe messages wouldn’t go through. He recently tried to open a PDF during a class change when crowds of students were streaming between buildings and found that he couldn’t. He asked a friend to try — the friend couldn’t load it either.

“It was a pretty high-resolution PDF, but like, I expect to be able to load a PDF on my phone,” Moyer complains.

Cellular data is notoriously slow in crowded areas. That’s why carriers often install extra network-boosting equipment at major sporting events, and it was a big reason behind the push for 5G at large gatherings like the NFL Draft, which see tens of thousands of fans trying to stream on such networks at once. The extent to which campus TikTok streaming might impact such speeds is difficult to prove; Virginia Tech has around thirty-seven thousand attendees, which may not provide comparable demand to the audience of a large stadium.

Still, other students have also reported seeing congestion, particularly in the early days of their campuses’ TikTok bans. For a while, Pablo had trouble getting Spotify tracks to play. “I do remember it noticeably being slower,” he says. “It was just kind of a mild nuisance.”

“In the library, it’s getting bad,” Walker says. “The data has gotten noticeably worse there.” (Reached for comment, representatives from OU and ETSU said they were not aware of the issue. Virginia Tech did not respond to a request for comment by press time.)

Still, the only time where the TikTok bans present a true obstacle is in areas with no cell service. Renfroe is an editor for her school’s student newspaper, which means she has to spend quite a bit of time working in a basement office where she doesn’t get signal. There, she has to employ an absolute last resort to entertain herself: Instagram Reels.

It’s not the same. “I wouldn’t describe Instagram Reels as containing peak comedy,” she explains ruefully — jokes and trends that originate on TikTok will often take “like, three months” to make their way over. “It’s just something to watch.”

Other students have turned to VPNs. The cellular networks on UT Dallas’s campus are too slow for Aaberg’s purposes. He’s been using Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 VPN to access TikTok, and he loves it. He’s trying to convince his friends, many of whom have made jumped to Instagram Reels, to do the same. It’s been a tough sell. “I’m like, girl, just download a VPN, it’s not that hard,” he says. But, he concedes, “most of my friends don’t even know what VPN stands for.”

The future of TikTok bans is uncertain. The numerous suits against them argue that the rules constitute an overly broad and unjustified First Amendment limit; in 2020, a series of court rulings blocked former President Donald Trump’s early attempts to ban the app nationwide.

The Knight First Amendment Institute has asked a judge to immediately exempt Texas faculty from the restrictions while a larger legal challenge is ongoing. “These bans are impeding vital research about one of the most important communications platforms today,” staff attorney Ramya Krishnan tells The Verge. If states want to prevent potential privacy harms, Krishnan says, they should consider tightening the rules on domestic data brokers — who quietly sell much of the same information TikTok hawks fear might leak to China, no ByteDance app required.

At this point, however, many students have been living without TikTok on Wi-Fi for weeks to months. If switching to data and braving slow speeds was annoying, it’s now become routine. “I definitely miss it,” Renfroe says of the TikTok-on-Wi-Fi days. But, “we’ve already settled into it. We’ve kind of been living with it now for two semesters. It’s not exactly at the forefront of my mind.”

vendredi 8 septembre 2023

Your Wyze webcam might have let other owners peek into your house

A white camera on a fence pole. — Image: Wyze

Some Wyze security camera owners reported Friday that they were unexpectedly able to see webcam feeds that weren’t theirs, meaning that they were unintentionally able to see inside of other people’s houses. A Wyze customer support agent confirmed to The Verge that this was indeed happening.

“Went to check on my cameras and they are all gone be replaced with a new one... and this isn’t mine!” wrote one user. “Apologies if this is your house / dog... I don’t want it showing up as much as you don’t want it!”

“I am able to click the events tab and see ALL the events on this random person’s camera INSIDE their house,” wrote another.

“I don’t know why, but I can see someone else’s camera,” wrote another.

Each thread has comments from other Reddit users reporting similar issues. Shockingly, I even saw some instances of people claiming they saw the same cameras that other people did.

It appears that people were seeing the other feeds through Wyze’s web viewer at view.wyze.com. A Wyze employee told a user on Reddit that the page is “currently under maintenance” and that “we are working on this and will update when it’s available again.” Wyze’s status page posted a similar message on Friday at 5:44PM ET.

A Wyze customer support agent confirmed to me that the company has an issue with its online camera portal — one where people were actually able to see other customers’ camera feeds. “While we work to get this resolved, Wyze Web View functionality may be limited or unavailable,” they told me. The agent was not able to provide an estimate for when the issue would be fixed.

“We and our team are already working to improve our security and to investigate the root cause of this,” the agent said. When I asked if they could share what those improvements might be, the agent responded: “I cannot disclose any further information.”

Wyze’s PR team didn’t immediately reply to an emailed request for comment. While it seems that Wyze is taking steps to fix the issue, you may want to turn off your Wyze cameras until it addresses the problems.

In March 2022, Wyze revealed that it had been aware of a security vulnerability for three years that could have let bad actors access WyzeCam v1 cameras, but quietly discontinued the camera rather than telling customers about it.