Technology

dimanche 25 septembre 2022

Acer Predator Triton 500 SE review: I expected more

The Triton 500 SE is an expensive gaming laptop that doesn’t flex its hardware enough

Spending a grip on a gaming laptop isn’t difficult; a cursory search on gaming laptops will net you several options that cost more than $4,000. But finding a laptop that’s giving you the greatest return on your investment is more of a challenge. If you’re spending around $3,000 on a gaming laptop like the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE, you want it to bury the competition, not just scrape by. Unfortunately, the Triton 500 SE is a bit disappointing and doesn’t flex its hardware enough to set it apart in a crowded market.

Housed in its all-silver chassis, the $2,999.99 configuration of the Triton 500 SE we tested includes a 12th Gen Core i9-12900H processor, RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of PCIe NVME storage. This hardware is more than enough to take full advantage of its 16-inch 240Hz 2560 x 1600 display. Acer has less expensive models of the Triton 500 SE available, too; the base model, with an Intel Core i7-12700H CPU, RTX 3070 Ti, and 16GB of RAM, costs $2,099.99, about as much as a Lenovo Legion 5i Pro with twice the RAM and storage.

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The Triton 500 SE has enough ports that it doesn’t need an external dock or a mess of dongles. Along the left side, you’ll find an ethernet port, DC connector, a 3.5mm audio jack, a single USB-A port, and a USB-C / Thunderbolt 4 hookup. The right side features another Thunderbolt port and USB-A port plus an HDMI output and SDXC card reader.

A left-side photo of the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE displaying a USB-A port, USB-C port, HDMI port and SD Card slot. — *On the right side: an SDXC card reader, USB-A, USB-C / Thunderbolt 4, and HDMI 2.1 ports.*

A right side photo of the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE with the AC power outlet, ethernet port, USB-A port, USB-C port and 3.5mm audio jack — *And on the left, DC-IN, ethernet, USB-A, USB-C / Thunderbolt 4, and combo audio jacks.*

If you’re sticking to the area around the WASD keys, the keyboard is fine, but trying to get actual work done on the keyboard can be a challenge. The switches have good tactile feedback and a small amount of travel, and they don’t feel mushy, but they’re smaller than average, and the gaps between them make me wish this space were used a little more efficiently. Too often, I missed a key or had to pause what I was doing to search for a function that had been relocated. In a few cases, I hit the key that summons the Acer Predator software instead of the backspace key. I made far fewer errors with the keyboard on the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 thanks to its slightly larger keys and more familiar layout.

The trackpad is sizable, at roughly 5 x 3 inches, and has a satisfying tactile response with a nice click. It’s accurate and responsive and didn’t randomly register my palms when using it. It’ll get you by if you’re playing Civilization 6, but you’re going to want a dedicated mouse for your Valorant ladder matches. It’s a bit disappointing that the fingerprint sensor takes up part of the upper-left portion of the trackpad. It doesn’t get in the way very often, but I’d rather have a bigger trackpad surface with a fingerprint sensor on another part of the chassis.

At just over five pounds, it might be tempting to call the Triton portable, but the battery life prevents it from going far without an available outlet. The Triton lasts a couple of hours when gaming on battery power, which isn’t spectacular but is slightly more impressive when you consider that it offers roughly the same gaming experience you would get when it’s plugged in. The motherboard is equipped with a multiplexer, or MUX switch, that boosts battery life by dynamically switching between the integrated and dedicated GPUs depending on the task. By leaning on the integrated GPU instead of the RTX 3080 Ti, it managed to get almost three hours of YouTube streaming / working. You can’t expect too much from a laptop this size that uses such a demanding graphics card, but if you need longevity from your gaming laptop, the MSI GS77 Stealth lasts about as long as the Triton but charges you less for the privilege.

The hinge on the display is firm and won’t wobble as long as you use the laptop on a flat surface. However, I would’ve appreciated a material on the lid and chassis that did a better job of resisting fingerprints and other visible markings. One of our big complaints from the previous Triton model has resurfaced: the slim lid has a surprising amount of flex. Just about any amount of pressure causes the display to bow, which isn’t something I want to see in a laptop that costs over $3,000.

The speakers, housed between the hinge and the keyboard, are uncommonly good for a laptop — at least, I didn’t immediately want to reach for the closest pair of headphones. They’re not far enough apart to provide the spatial audio you’d get from a pair of headphones, but they’re competent enough to provide a high and low end that doesn’t sound tinny or washed-out. The Acer software has a few different EQ presets that are intended to provide a better listening experience for different game genres, but “Music” provided the most balanced sound of the bunch.

A photo detailing a quarter-inch gap between the display and keyboard on the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE — *The hinge produces a noticeable gap between the keyboard and screen.*

The 2650 x 1600 IPS display has a 16:10 aspect ratio, and Acer says it can hit 500 nits of brightness. It also supports G-Sync, with a maximum refresh rate of 240Hz. The hardware in the Triton 500 SE is remarkably powerful, but even an RTX 3080 Ti can’t hit 240fps in modern titles. Only Counter-Strike: Global Offensive got close, maintaining around 200fps at max settings and up to 333fps when I dropped the resolution to 1080p. It’s nice to have a screen with plenty of overhead, but the fact that it has adaptive sync is more important to most people than the refresh rate.

A photo of the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE with its lid partially closed, on a blue background — *The lid doesn’t have much wobble but can flex under too much pressure.*

It wasn’t easy to challenge the Triton 500 SE with our current benchmarks. The Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti in our review unit is the current top-of-the-line gaming GPU, and it’s powerful — it hit around 60fps or better at native resolution with ultra settings and ultra ray tracing in almost every game we tested it with.

In our Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark with ultra presets, ray tracing enabled, and DLSS off, it averaged 79fps. The $4,000 Razer Blade 17, another RTX 3080 Ti laptop with a 2560 x 1600 screen, got 70fps at the same settings, while the $2,800 MSI GS77 Stealth, with an RTX 3070 Ti, only managed 58fps.

The Triton 500 SE also hit 67fps in Red Dead Redemption 2 at ultra settings with DLSS off, compared to 72fps for the Razer Blade 17 and 59 for the GS77 Stealth.

In the more demanding Cyberpunk 2077, the Predator Triton 500 SE hit 61fps at ultra settings with ray tracing set to ultra and 48fps with ray tracing set to “psycho,” both with DLSS off. Even games like Doom Eternal put out a relatively steady 60fps with ultra presets and ray tracing enabled and hit a consistent 120fps when using DLSS performance mode.

Like the other laptops we’ve tested with RTX 3080 Ti GPUs, it blazed through our video export test, managing to complete the run in two minutes and 20 seconds.

The Predator logo is the only branding on the Triton.

All of the benchmarks were performed while using the highest performance presets available through the Acer control software, which yielded excellent results, but I did most of my gaming in the aptly named “whisper mode,” which thankfully lives up to its name. I’m not sure you’d be able to market the Triton 500 SE without this feature, as the fans can be loud enough to be distracting if the system is under even a modest level of strain. This mode has the fans operating at their minimum, so some throttling would be expected here, but in testing, the 500SE still managed to provide solid performance when placed under these constraints. Playing Doom Eternal with the same settings, for instance, didn’t change much, still managing up to 120fps when using DLSS performance mode. However, the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark took some pretty serious hits, managing an average of just 50fps using the same settings.

Switching between performance profiles is done through the Acer control software, which is simple and unobtrusive. You can summon this software via the desktop or by using its own dedicated macro key. The software lets you adjust fan speeds, performance profiles, and RGB lighting. But unlike some other gaming laptops, like the Asus ROG Zephyrus series, you can only change the performance profile while the laptop is plugged into an outlet. Even while at a nearly full charge, I found that unplugging the laptop causes the hardware profile to revert to its default balanced power state.

The Predator Triton 500 SE is in a tough spot. On one hand, it’s the least expensive gaming laptop we’ve tested with specs like these. Of the RTX 3080 Ti models we’ve tested, the Razer Blade 17 has better build quality but a less powerful CPU and costs $1,000 more. The MSI GE76 Raider costs more and has a lower-resolution screen. But the Gigabyte Aero 16, which cost $5,000 when we reviewed it, is now only a few hundred bucks more than the Triton 500 SE. It’s hot and loud and has bad battery life, too, but it also has a 4K AMOLED screen.

The RTX 3080 Ti is Nvidia’s current top-of-the-line mobile graphics card (for now, at least), and 2560 x 1600 seems like the right resolution for it right now. You’ll have to drop ray tracing and quality settings to hit 60fps on a 4K display, and 1080p is just too low-resolution for a 16-inch screen. Springing for a 3080 Ti instead of a 3070 Ti means you’ll have playable frame rates for longer, which means you’ll get more life out of your laptop before you have to upgrade.

On the other hand, the fans on my test unit were so loud that I spent most of my gaming time in quiet mode and got lower frame rates than a 3070 Ti. So why spend the extra money unless you have really good noise-canceling headphones?

A close-up photo of the back vents of the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE — *With a 3080Ti under the hood, the Triton 500 SE needs some seriously loud fans to compensate.*

That’s the RTX 3080 Ti. But the sweet spot GPU in Nvidia’s lineup right now is the RTX 3070 Ti, which can still hit close to 60fps at ultra settings in many games, though usually not with ray tracing all the way up. And it costs a lot less. The Triton 500 SE has a $2,099.99 model with a Core i7-12700H CPU, RTX 3070 TI, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. That’s much more compelling, especially because you can easily upgrade the RAM. We haven’t reviewed that model, but unless its performance is wildly different from laptops with similar specs we’ve tested, you’ll still get most of the performance of the $3,000 model for around $800 less.

But for the same price or even less, you can get a Lenovo Legion 5i Pro on sale with the same CPU, GPU, and RAM, virtually the same port selection, and a similar 2560 x 1600 G-Sync panel. (Though it tops out at 165Hz instead of 240Hz.) In his review, my colleague Cam Faulkner found that the Legion 5i Pro had better build quality and quieter fans than the Triton 500 SE I tested. Even if you can’t get the exact same RAM and SSD configuration, both of those are easily user upgradeable, unlike build quality and fan noise.

The Acer Predator Triton 500 SE isn’t a bad gaming laptop, and the RTX 3080 Ti model I tested has powerful hardware for the price. But it’s still not worth the price premium, especially with how loud the fans are, especially with new graphics cards coming soon, and especially when the RTX 3070 Ti laptops get you 80 percent of the performance for almost $1,000 less. However, with Nvidia’s new 40-series GPUs on the horizon, the pricing for many gaming laptops equipped with 30-series GPUs may cool down significantly.

Yes, you should monitor your remote workers – but not because you don’t trust them

Cybercrime attacks are increasing. That’s one good reason to keep track of employees who work from home

Should you be monitoring your work-from-home employees? Yes, but not for the reasons you might suspect.

According to a recent report in the New York Times, eight of the 10 largest private US employers are using software and other technologies to track the productivity of their employees in the office and at home.

Adobe can’t Photoshop out the fact its $20bn purchase of Figma is a land grab | John Naughtom

The software giant paying vastly over the odds for a small but strategically threatening company should alarm US regulators

The big tech news in a slow week was that the software giant Adobe is planning to pay the unconscionable sum of $20bn (£18bn) to acquire a small company called Figma. Why is this news? Well, first of all, there’s the price – way above any rational valuation of Figma. Second, there’s the question that we have finally learned to ask about tech mergers and acquisitions: is there a competition or antitrust issue here somewhere?

We’ll come to the price later, but at first sight, the answer to the second question would seem to be no: the two companies are not direct competitors. Adobe dominates the market in software for creating and publishing digital and printed material – graphics, photography, illustration, animation, multimedia/video, motion pictures and print. If you’ve ever used Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat Reader or opened a pdf (portable document format), then you’ve used an Adobe product.

TikTok tightens policies around political issues in run-up to US midterms

Politicians will be banned from using social media platform for campaign fundraising

Politicians on TikTok will no longer be able to use the app tipping tools, nor access advertising features on the social network, as the company tightens its policies around political issues in the run-up to the US midterm elections in six weeks’ time.

Political advertising is already banned on the platform, alongside “harmful misinformation”, but as TikTok has grown over the past two years, new features such as gifting, tipping and ecommerce have been embraced by some politicians on the site.

samedi 24 septembre 2022

‘I would rather eat an actual burger’: why plant-based meat’s sizzle fizzled

McDonald’s has shelved its meat-free burger trial and stock in one of the major manufacturers has dipped nearly 70%

At the start of the year, McDonald’s launched a plant-based burger “sizzled on a flat-iron grill, then topped with slivered onions, tangy pickles, crisp shredded lettuce, Roma tomato slices, ketchup, mustard, mayo and a slice of melty American cheese”. For a while, it looked like a glimpse of the future.

The US test run of the McPlant burger was quietly shelved last month (it is still available in some markets, including the UK) in one of a series of setbacks for a meatless-meat industry that only a year ago was claiming it could change the great American menu for ever.

Runners and Cyclists Use GPS Mapping to Make Art

Runners and Cyclists Use GPS Mapping to Make Art Fitness apps and the power of live satellite tracking have allowed runners, cyclists and others to draw hearts, animals, birthday wishes — and even homages to Vermeer — across their local landscapes.

‘It’s only their silhouettes, but you can see how bored they were’: Sarah Lee’s best phone picture

The photographer was on holiday with friends and their twin boys when she spotted a chance to capture teenage ennui

Identical twin teenagers Joe and Duke were fed up. Walking to a local supermarket in the midday sun with their parents and photographer Sarah Lee, a family friend, was not their preferred choice of activity while on holiday in Ibiza, yet here they were.

Lee had known the boys since they were very small. In 2019 they were 17, right on the brink of adulthood. “They weren’t able to get into the clubs at night; they were still being cajoled into doing something dull in the day. It’s only their silhouettes, but you can see how bored they were. The epitome of pissed-off teenagers!”

LinkedIn Ran Social Experiments On 20 Million Users Over Five Years

LinkedIn Ran Social Experiments On 20 Million Users Over Five Years A study that looked back at those tests found that relatively weak social connections were more helpful in finding jobs than stronger social ties.

TechScape: AI’s dark arts come into their own

Advanced AI is moving from the lab into the mainstream – offering a glimpse of the dangers ahead. Plus, What3Words loses its direction

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Programming a computer is, if you squint, a bit like magic. You have to learn the words to the spell to convince a carefully crafted lump of sand to do what you want. If you understand the rules deeply enough, you can chain together the spells to force the sand to do ever more complicated tasks. If your spell is long and well-crafted enough, you can even give the sand the illusion of sentience.

That illusion of sentience is nowhere more strong than in the world of machine learning, where text generation engines like GPT-3 and LaMDA are able to hold convincing conversations, answer detailed questions, and perform moderately complex tasks based on just a written request.

vendredi 23 septembre 2022

NY AG tries to explain how Apple’s free Yankees stream is worse than cable TV

Boston Red Sox v New York Yankees — Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images

Yankees star Aaron Judge could break a home run record at Friday’s game against the Boston Red Sox, and you’ll be able to watch the game for free through Apple TV’s Friday Night Baseball broadcast. But in tweets ahead of the game, New York Attorney General Letitia James confusingly called for the game to be brought over to New York’s local Yankee Entertainment and Sports (YES) cable network, and after slightly walking that back, called the steps to watch Apple’s broadcast “burdens.”

The whole saga started with a tweet from James at 3:04PM ET.

Millions of New Yorkers paid their cable bills expecting to see live sports programming. Denying them the chance to watch Aaron Judge step up to the plate to make history tonight is wrong and unfair.

I'm calling on @MLB and @Apple to open up tonight's game to the @YESNetwork.
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) September 23, 2022

The replies to this tweet are pretty rough, with people rightly pointing out that James is advocating for paid cable when Apple is streaming the game for free inside the Apple TV app or via a browser on most any device as long as you have an Apple ID.

Nearly two hours later, James took a softer tone, though still stood some ground.

Earlier, I expressed concerns about how New Yorkers could watch tonight’s potentially historic Yankees game.

While there is a way to watch the game without paying more, it creates requirements including an Apple ID, a smart TV or streaming device, or Wi-Fi or cellular service.
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) September 23, 2022

In 2022, when cell phones are ubiquitous, and everyone is watching video via Netflix, YouTube, or TikTok, those “requirements” don’t seem especially hard to meet. While there are edge cases, and not every viewer has plugged their TV into the network (or maybe their local sports bar can’t work out how to plug in a dongle and change the input), the game should be viewable to people on screens they have around them.

She followed with this:

Consumers should be able to watch this game without having to take on these burdens.

I urge @Apple and @MLB to let this game be shown on YES, where New Yorkers are used to seeing their Yankees play.

My updated statement:https://t.co/eeszfelQwh
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) September 23, 2022

With free access via a web browser, it just doesn’t seem like there are significant “burdens” to being able to watch the game. Neither Apple nor the MLB replied to requests for comments from The Verge.

Unfortunately, this probably won’t be the last time we see policymakers frustrated about where they can watch a sports game. As big tech companies like Apple and Amazon continue to invest more in sports broadcasting rights, knowing exactly where you can see the next big game is going to become as confusing as figuring out where you can stream Harry Potter. And this is all happening before we know where the lucrative NFL Sunday Ticket package will end up next — for which Apple is reportedly a frontrunner.

The New York Yankees’ game against the Boston Red Sox begins at 7:05PM ET.

You be the judge: should my friend stop disappearing without telling us?

Fred’s known for bailing out of nights out and not saying goodbye. Now he’s turned off his WhatsApp receipts. Is he too flaky? You decide

Fred bails out of plans or leaves without a goodbye – and now we can’t even tell if he’s read a message

jeudi 22 septembre 2022

Google’s new adventure game takes a top-down trip through ancient Mesoamerica

In a screenshot from The Descent of the Serpent, a character disguised as a wolf is standing in a mountain environment. — *I love the cute characters in the game.* | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

Google’s Arts & Culture division has released a charming new educational game all about ancient Mesoamerica. The game, The Descent of the Serpent, is available to play right now in your browser or via the Google Arts & Culture iOS and Android apps.

There’s a light plot to Descent of the Serpent, shown in a short video that plays at the beginning of the game. While exploring a museum, a large artifact is stolen by Tezcatlipoca, the Lord of the Smoking Mirror, and a living statue asks for your help to recover 20 icons included on the artifact to prevent floods from taking over the world. You, naturally, agree, and the statue says they’ll send you back in time to ancient Mesoamerica.

You’ll be able to pick from one of four adorable animal “disguises” for your characters that all have roots in Mesoamerican culture. I picked Huitzilopochtli, represented by the wolf, but you can also play as Xolotl (the dog), Xbalanque (the jaguar), and Mictlantecuhtli (the owl).

The four playable characters in Google’s Descent of the Serpent. A cartoon character is in a disguise of each animal — a wolf, a dog, a jaguar, and an owl. — *It’s tough to pick which is the best one, but it’s definitely the wolf.*

The game, which was made in partnership with Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology, plays kind of like a simplified top-down The Legend of Zelda title. You’ll roam lush (though small) environments to collect the missing icons, which show up as gold coins. When you pick up one of the icons, the game will present a little bit of history about what it is and point you to an exhibit on the Google Arts & Culture website if you want to learn more.

While exploring the world in Descent of the Serpent, you’ll also have to dodge simple obstacles like roaming crocodiles and monkeys throwing things at you. On the game’s easier difficulty, getting hit just stuns you for a short while. But on the “challenge” mode, you’re on a timer and get sent back to the beginning of the level after taking five hits, so you’ll have to be careful. I’d recommend most people just stick with the standard difficulty — I don’t know if this is a game that is much better by being any tougher.

Descent of the Serpent is just the latest educational web experience from Google’s Arts & Culture group, which has already made things like a collaborative jigsaw puzzle app and the awe-inspiring blob opera. And Descent of the Serpent is also part of a trend of games being used to teach history, like Ubisoft’s educational versions of Assassin’s Creed and Take Two’s CivilizationEDU.

I’m only partway through The Descent of the Serpent, but I very well may finish the game on my own sometime soon. It’s been a fun way to learn more about a culture I’m not very familiar with, and I really want to spend some more time with my wolf buddy. After I’m done, I might have to play a round of Google’s pétanque — or make a song with the blob opera.

Valve overhauls Steam’s stats page with new real-time charts

Valve’s stats page for its Steam storefront now has real-time charts showing both the top-selling and most played games at any given moment. You can look at the new stats page right here.

As I write this, the top-selling title is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II — which perhaps isn’t too shocking given that preordering the game gets you early access to the open beta — but the next best-selling game is, to my surprise, Slime Rancher 2.

According to a blog post from Valve, the top-selling lists are ranked based on total revenue, including DLC and in-game purchases, which is intended to provide a “more complete picture of which games players are excited about getting into and continuing to play.” And Valve has added metrics like number of weeks on the chart and weekly change in rank to give you a more granular idea of how games might be trending.

these updated Steam charts are so much neater, especially on mobile https://t.co/ootcSrpl1z pic.twitter.com/IUToFk4DUy
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) September 22, 2022

The most-played games list is topped by some perennially popular free-to-play games like CS:GO, Dota 2, and Apex Legends, but this chart also shows that Cyberpunk 2077 is in the top 10, likely buoyed by a new update and the Netflix anime. You can sort the most played list by current players, which will show you what’s being played the most right at that moment, and daily players, which ranks games based on peak daily players.

This new stats page is already a robust source of information, and I think it will be an interesting one to keep an eye on, especially as we enter the holiday buying season. I also think I’ll also be using it to discover games that a lot of people are paying attention to — like Slime Rancher 2, apparently.

This new turntable can play music directly to a Sonos system

An image of the Victrola Stream Carbon turntable on a shelf with a Sonos Five speaker at each side. — *No wires necessary to get this turntable on your Sonos system.* | Image: Victrola

Getting your vinyl playing on a Sonos system has never been necessarily hard; it just takes the right gear. You can plug a turntable into something like the Sonos Five, Amp, or Connect. Or if you’ve got a Bluetooth-enabled turntable, the Sonos Roam can beam that audio to the rest of your system. But obviously the ideal solution would be a turntable that transmits audio directly to a Sonos system with no extra hardware required. That’s exactly what the new Victrola Stream Carbon turntable offers.

Priced at $799, the Stream Carbon “requires no additional equipment for connecting to a Sonos ecosystem, allowing effortless setup and easy control with the Sonos app,” according to Victrola’s press release. Initial setup is done through the company’s mobile app, and after that, listeners will be able to “send (and control the volume of) the music from a record to any Sonos speaker in their home.” The illuminated control knob on the turntable can also control volume for your Sonos system.

An image of Victrola’s Stream Carbon turntable with a black background. — *That’s a sleek piece of kit.*

The Stream Carbon turntable has official Works With Sonos certification. Victrola CEO Scott Hagen said his team has collaborated with Sonos on a “multi-year journey” that’s resulted in the new product being announced today. “We are proud of how easy to set up and use the Victrola Stream Carbon is, but we are even more proud of the reaction we see when someone listens to records with friends or family through their Sonos system.”

As for the turntable hardware itself, it sounds like quite a step up from the all-in-one turntable/speaker combos that Victrola is mostly known for these days. The Stream Carbon is now the most expensive turntable that the company makes, and it’s described as such:

Carbon utilizes the highest quality materials that include a low-resonance veneer plinth with premium metal turntable components, and a carbon fiber tonearm with a custom-designed removable headshell. To further elevate the wireless vinyl listening experience, Victrola Stream Carbon will ship with a premium Ortofon Red 2M moving magnetic cartridge that will deliver optimized sound reproduction and a high level of sonic accuracy through listeners’ Sonos speaker systems.

The Stream Carbon goes up for preorder starting today from Victrola, Best Buy’s Magnolia brand, Crutchfield, and other retailers. It’s expected to ship in late October.

How to use Focus modes in iOS 16

iPhone on a colorful illustrated background showing people using iPhones — *iOS 16 makes programming Focus modes less tedious.* | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Apple added Focus modes last year in iOS 15 to help you stay on task. The idea was to keep you “in the moment” by filtering out apps or notifications that you don’t want popping up during specific times. In iOS 16, Apple has also added some new options to streamline the process. That includes the ability to silence notifications from specific apps or people, as well as link Focus modes with lock screens and watchfaces.

When you first start to set Focus up, it can seem a little daunting. There are a lot of choices and a lot of ways you can tweak it. In fact, it may take a while before you get the combination of settings that works best for your lifestyle. But in the end, it will be worth it — it will mean that you won’t be sidelined during times you need to concentrate, and you won’t be bothered by irrelevant notifications when you’ve got other activities in hand.

*You’ll find your new Focus button in the Control Center.*

*Tap on Focus, and you’ll see all your various profiles.*

Begin to focus

You access Focus mode via your Control Center (swipe down from the upper right corner). You’ll see the Focus button with an icon next to it. By default, it’ll be the moon icon. When tapped, it’ll activate your primary Do Not Disturb profile. If you tap anywhere else in the button, you’ll see a selection of other profiles that you can activate. Once you start using Focus modes more often, the displayed icon will default to the last Focus mode you’ve used.

Tap on the three dots to the right of each button, and you can set the length of time you want that Focus profile to be active. Or you can tap the Settings button to tweak the settings for that Focus.

But perhaps the best way to start is to go to Settings > Focus, where you can set up all the various Focus profiles you are planning to use.

Screenshot of list of Focus modes screen — *You can choose from a list of presets or create your own custom Focus modes.*

Set up your profiles

When you first open the Focus page in your settings, you’ll see a list of several profiles, starting with the basic Do Not Disturb and then going on to others, such as Personal, Sleep, and Work. If you tap on the plus sign in the upper right corner of the screen, you’ll find more, including Driving, Fitness, Gaming, Mindfulness, and Reading. If none of those suits you, you can create a custom profile.

In addition, there is a toggle that lets you can share the profiles across your various Apple devices.

Setting up Focus modes can seem a little confusing, but it’s really not once you get into it. Let’s start by tapping on Do Not Disturb — which was the first Focus mode that Apple ever made — and using it as an example in order to explain how these work. After that, we’ll take a look at a couple of the modes that work a little differently.

Do Not Disturb

The first thing you see atop the Do Not Disturb focus page are several submenus designed to help you figure out the people and apps allowed to send notifications when the mode is enabled. After that, you’ll see options to customize screens, an option to automatically turn the mode on and off at certain times, and Focus Filters that let you customize how apps work in a specific Focus.

Second part of the Do not disturb focus mode options — *The new options also include Focus filters.*

Allow notifications

Focus lets you specify people or apps that can continue to notify you even if you have Do Not Disturb active. For example, you may want to allow calls to come in from family members or notifications from your work Slack. In iOS 16, you also now have the option to silence notifications from specific people or apps. Keep in mind: if you want to use this method across all your devices, they’ll all need to be running the most recent software.

To make these exceptions, tap on the People or Apps boxes to get to the Notifications page. Unlike in iOS 15, this will bring you to two separate menus. That’s because you can now mix and match. For example, you could choose to allow notifications from people but silence notifications from apps. (Note that the Notifications page could differ slightly depending on your phone.)

Silence notifications screen in Focus modes — *iOS 16 now lets you silence notifications from apps and people, too.*

Silence or allow notifications from people

Tap on the People box. You should see two options up top: Silence Notifications From or Allow Notifications From.

To add people to the list, tap the plus button. From there, you should see your contacts list. Check off the contacts you want to add to your list, and when you go back to the Notifications page, they’ll appear in the box. If you want to remove someone, you can tap the minus button in the top left of their contact photo.

You can also choose who you want to allow calls from in the Phone Calls box (which is just below the box showing your contacts). Tap the drop-down box to select Everybody, Allowed People Only, Favorites, or Contacts Only. If you’ve set up specific contact groups, those should appear here as well.

Silence or allow notifications from apps

If you’re choosing one or more apps in Do Not Disturb, then tap the Apps tab and then the plus button.

You’ll get a list of your installed apps. Check off those you want to add to the Allowed Notifications From or the Silence Notifications From list, and select Done at the top right of the page. You’ll now see your chosen apps listed in the box next to the plus sign.

If you change your mind about any of your apps, you can just tap the minus sign next to each icon.

You can also allow Time Sensitive notifications to come through by toggling it on. Time Sensitive notifications are from apps you’ve individually tagged as important enough to break through any filter, no matter what. To select which apps are that important to you, you have to leave Focus and go to Settings > Notifications; select the app or apps you want to qualify — say, Calendar — and make sure Time Sensitive notifications is toggled on for that app.

Customize screens

In iOS 16, you can do more than just customize which homescreens show up in a specific Focus mode. You can also link a Focus to a specific lock screen — and to a watchface if you have an Apple Watch.

To do this, just scroll down to the Customize Screens menu for Do Not Disturb (or whatever profile you’re setting up). You should see two or three icons: a lock screen, a homescreen, and (if you have a Watch) a watchface. Tap the blue Choose link under each to select from your existing lock screens, homescreens, and watchfaces.

If you’re feeling creative, you can also create new lock screens, homescreens, or watchfaces for each mode. This is a bit more time-consuming but probably offers you the greatest customization.

When you’re selecting homescreen pages, Apple now offers suggestions based on the Focus you’re programming. You also can also create your own Focus homescreens, but it’s more time-consuming. It entails creating your own homescreens and hiding them when you’re not in a Focus. Apple’s suggestions are pretty good, but this is a viable workaround if you don’t like any of them.

Turn on automatically

Focus modes work best when they’re seamless. Some Focus modes you’ll want to turn on manually. But for others, Apple gives you the option to program when they’ll activate.

You can automate Focus modes to activate at a set time or location or when you open a particular app. Under the Turn On Automatically menu in the Do Not Disturb (or other profile) page, hit Add Schedule to access one of these options. You’re not locked into any one setting, either. For example, you can have the Do Not Disturb focus activate at a set time, when you arrive at the office, and whenever you open the Netflix app.

And if this is something that happens often — for example, when you go to read in the evenings — activate Smart Activation, which will (hopefully) learn your habits and turn on Do Not Disturb when you need it. (If it gets things wrong, you can always turn it off.)

Screenshot of the automation options for Focus modes — *You can automate when a Focus mode activates.*

Focus filters

iOS 16 also adds the ability to apply app or system filters with a specific mode. You’re a bit limited in choices as of this moment, but the ones that are available are helpful. To find these filters, scroll down on the main Do Not Disturb page.

For example, you can set a Calendar Filter so that only a specific calendar shows up. Or you can filter Messages so that you only see messages from people you want to. In Safari, you can choose to limit yourself to viewing a specific tab group. As far as system filters go, you can opt to switch to Dark or Light mode or turn on Low Power mode.

It may not be apparent why you should opt for a filter. And not every mode will need them. But, for example, you may decide that in your Sleep focus, you want to switch to Dark Mode automatically. Or, if you’re in Fitness mode and worried about battery life on a five-hour hike, you can flip on Low Power Mode.

Other options

There are also a variety of other options.

In the Options menu under the Allowed/Silenced People and Apps, you can choose whether to show Silenced Notifications on your lock screen, dim your lock screen, or hide notification badges.
You can choose to share your focus status — so if somebody texts you, they will get a display saying that you have notifications silenced. On the main Focus page, scroll down until you see the Focus Status menu. Then toggle on Share Focus Status. You can also customize from which modes you share your status. For example, you can toggle it on for Driving and turn it off for Sleep.

Focus profiles

One of the reasons that Focus modes can be a little confusing to set up is that some of them can be very different from each other. Let’s look at two more: Personal and Driving.

When you tap on a profile that has not yet been set up, you are presented with a set of screens that walk you through the initial processing, including which people and apps should be allowed to notify you when the Focus is active.

Screenshot of Driving Focus — *The Driving Focus profile has different options.*

Screenshot of Driving focus automation options — *Your automation options also differ.*

After that, you are dropped into the Focus page for that profile, which will be similar to the Do Not Disturb setup described above. In Personal, you can not only tweak the allowed notifications but decide whether you want to share your Focus status, choose how you want to customize your screens or create an automation that will turn it on and off at a certain time, in a certain place, or with a certain app.

Some of the other presets are more specific. For example, when I created a Focus for driving, the opening page of the wizard told me that it was silencing alerts and notifications while I was driving, that it would turn on automatically when I was driving, and that it would arrange auto-reply to let people know why I wasn’t responding to notifications.

And the Driving Focus page had a few differences as well. Allowed notifications include people but not apps (under the assumption that you’re not playing with apps while you’re at the wheel). There is an auto-reply option that lets you edit the message that will be sent to people who try to contact you while the Focus is on. In the Customize Screens menu, you won’t have the option to select homescreens as... you shouldn’t be looking at your phone! And you can choose how the app will know you’re driving: automatically (based on detected motion), if the CarPlay app is activated, if the phone is connected to a car’s Bluetooth, or when you turn it on manually.

iPhone showing “This is Fine” Focus mode atop a desk. — *You can always create a custom Focus mode, like a “This is Fine” mode for when the internet news is too much.*

If none of the presets work for you, you can create a custom profile by tapping on the plus sign in the upper right corner of the main Focus screen and choosing Custom. You will be asked to name your new profile and to choose a color and icon to represent it. After that, the process is pretty much the same as for Personal, except that you can also tweak the name and appearance of the Focus in the profile’s screen.

So what next?

Now, when you tap the Focus icon in your Control Center, it will activate all the various features you’ve created for your profile. Note that the last profile that was active will be the one that is featured: for example, if you last used your Driving profile, the Focus button will have the car icon. Touch the icon to activate it, or touch the word Focus to switch to a different profile.

The Focus app can be very useful by helping you concentrate when you need to by letting you relax when you want to, keeping unwanted calls and texts from waking you at night, and keeping you safe from distractions when driving. It may take a while to figure out which profiles you want to set up and to discover what combination of factors works for you. But once you’ve got it working, Focus can really make things easier for you.

Inside Russia’s Vast Surveillance State: ‘They Are Watching’

Inside Russia’s Vast Surveillance State: ‘They Are Watching’ A cache of nearly 160,000 files from Russia’s powerful internet regulator provides a rare glimpse inside Vladimir V. Putin’s digital crackdown.

Meta ordered to pay Voxer $175 million for violating live-streaming patents

Meta has been ordered to pay almost $175 million in fines to app developer Voxer for violating live-streaming patents | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Meta has been ordered to pay Voxer — creator of the Walkie Talkie messaging app — over $174 million in damages after a jury in Texas federal court found the social media giant guilty of violating two live-streaming patents with Facebook Live and Instagram Live.

The patents in question were developed by Voxer co-founder Tom Katis, a US Army veteran seeking to fix the shortcomings he experienced in battlefield communications after his combat unit was ambushed in Kunar Province in 2003. Katis and his team began developing communications solutions in 2006, resulting in new technology that enabled the transmission of live voice and video communications. Voxer was then formed in 2007, and the Walkie Talkie app was launched in 2011.

Court filings state that Meta (then known as Facebook) approached Voxer soon after the app’s launch looking to collaborate and that by February 2012, Voxer had disclosed its patent portfolio and proprietary technology to Meta. When the two companies failed to reach an agreement to work together, Meta identified Voxer as a competitor, according to Voxer’s complaint, despite having no live video or voice product of its own at the time. Meta then revoked Voxer’s access to key components of the Facebook platform, behavior The Verge described as bullying at the time. Facebook Live launched in 2015 followed by Instagram Live in 2016.

Katis says he raised the issue of patent infringement during a “chance meeting” with a senior product manager of Facebook Live in 2016, but according to court documents, Meta declined to enter any agreement regarding its continued use of Voxer’s technology.

The jury’s unanimous decision in the case awards Voxer a total sum of $174,530,785, which is to be paid out via a running royalty. Meta says it will appeal the decision. “We believe the evidence at trial demonstrated that Meta did not infringe Voxer’s patents,” a company spokesperson said in response to an AFP inquiry. “We intend to seek further relief, including filing an appeal.”

mercredi 21 septembre 2022

Researchers Find Consumer Satisfaction Remains High for PCs and TVs

PCs and TVs received high marks from consumers in a new report by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. The Household Appliance and Electronics Study for 2021-2022 is based on interviews with more than 9,000 consumers. The post Researchers Find Consumer Satisfaction Remains High for PCs and TVs appeared first on TechNewsWorld.

Watch LG’s tragically-canceled rollable get put through its paces

LG’s unreleased rollable smartphone — *LG’s unreleased rollable.* | Image: 뻘짓연구소

More than a year after LG unceremoniously exited the smartphone business and abandoned plans to release a rollable smartphone, a lengthy hands-on video has given us a comprehensive look at the unreleased device. LG’s rollable cropped up in a short clip earlier this year, but this new video is far more comprehensive, showing off the phone’s design and features from every angle.

What I find most surprising is just how finished the device looks. Although LG had said it wanted to release it before the end of 2021, I’d always assumed this was an ambition rather than a concrete plan. But this hands-on video appears to show a device that’s almost ready to be shipped to stores, complete with final-looking retail packaging and a case accessory. XDA Developers notes that LG is thought to have sold its remaining rollable prototypes to its employees, which might explain where this device came from.

LG Rollable’s box. — The device is shown in what looks like near-final retail packaging.

LG rollable, front, rolled. — *The front of the device while rolled.*

Of course, the main draw here is that screen, which measures 7.4 inches corner-to-corner while fulled extended, and shrinks down to 6.8 inches when rolled. The unrolling mechanism looks similar to the Oppo X 2021 concept phone I got to try out last year, with the frame of LG’s phone gradually expanding to unfurl its flexible OLED screen. But in the case of the LG, there’s also a visible display on the back of the device, which looks like it can show notifications.

LG’s phone seems to use a relatively powerful motor to unfurl its screen, with this hands-on video showing how it’s strong enough to push a small pile of books across a desk. But it’s not perfect — there are some visible wrinkles on the right side of the phone’s screen while unrolled. It’s also unclear how durable the display is, or how many rolls and unrolls it’s able to withstand. Rival smartphone manufacturer Oppo told me it wanted to reach a rating of 200,000 rolls before it turned its prototype into a consumer device, and it’s unclear how close LG got before canceling the project.

LG Display’s rear notification display. — *A notification display on the rear of the device.*

The video also reveals that the circle on its back that some previously thought was a third camera sensor is actually a fingerprint reader, which sits beneath a 64-megapixel main camera and 12-megapixel ultrawide. Another fun detail is that the phone’s SIM card slot is hidden on the back of the phone, and gets revealed when the phone unrolls. Internally the device is reportedly powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 processor (its flagship the year the device would have released), with 12GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 4,500mAh battery.

Although LG’s smartphone division is no more, enough companies are working on rollable devices that there’s a good chance of one of them making it to market eventually. As well as the Oppo prototype mentioned above, TCL and Samsung Display have also expressed an interest in the technology. Actual handheld consumer devices with rollable screens are yet to be announced, but it feels like only a matter of time before one of them cracks it.

Why gender is at the heart of the matter for cardiac illness

Studies show that women with heart disease are more likely to be misdiagnosed than men, and will have worse outcomes for surgery. What is behind this bias and how can how it be fixed?

Heart diseases are still chronically misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed in women. With depressing regularity, we see stories of women failed by the health system when they come to hospitals with the symptoms of a heart attack. As a professor of cardiac science with 40 years’ experience, for me it has been a frustrating journey to get to the real cause of this problem: a combination of professional, systemic and technical biases. The experiences of individual patients are complex to analyse and interpret, but now we can view these effects on a much bigger scale.

Women are 50% more likely to receive a wrong initial diagnosis; when they are having a heart attack, such mistakes can be fatal. People who are initially misdiagnosed have a 70% higher risk of dying. The latest studies have similarly shown that women have worse outcomes for heart operations such as valve replacements and peripheral revascularisation. As well as being misdiagnosed, women are less likely to be treated quickly, less likely to get the best surgical treatment and less likely to be discharged with the optimum set of drugs. None of this is excusable, but is it understandable?

Nvidia’s RTX 6000 ADA professional GPU can create worlds and destroy wallets

Nvidia has announced the RTX 6000 48GB graphics card, the latest model to join its family of workstation-focused GPUs designed for content creators and enterprise-grade graphics. Nvidia describes the RTX 6000 as the perfect tool for creating content for the metaverse alongside Nvidia Omniverse Enterprise, thanks to its Ada Lovelace generation AI, massively increased raytracing and CUDA cores, and programmable shader technology.

While the recently announced GeForce RTX 4090 is the top-end Ada Lovelace generation card for most consumers, the Lovelace-powered RTX 6000 dominates it in regards to raw power. It has 18,176 CUDA cores compared to the RTX 4090’s 16,384, and will ship with 48GB of GDDR6 ECC memory — double that of the RTX 4090’s 24GB GDDR6X. The RTX 4090 does have a higher TDP rating of up to 450W against the 300W used by the RTX 6000 48GB, however, this is likely intentional as Nvidia has a tendency to lower the power consumption of its workstation-grade graphics cards to extend their lifespan.

The RTX 6000 GPU can provide up to 2X – 4X the performance of the previous-generation RTX A6000 workstation card, with 568 Tensor cores and 142 RT cores, up from the 336 Tensor cores and 84 RT cores used by the RTX A6000. You can also expect 3x the video encoding performance of the previous generation, and virtualization to support Nvidia virtual GPU (vGPU) software, enabling multiple remote users to share resources and drive high-end design, AI and high-performance compute workloads.

You certainly won’t want to add this to your basket if you’re in the market for a new gaming GPU however as all that power comes at an eye-watering cost. We don’t have the official pricing for the Nvidia RTX 6000 at the time of writing, but previous workstation graphics cards such as the Ampere-powered RTX A6000 still retail for almost $5,000. Given the price increases across both the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 compared to previous generation releases, it’s safe to assume the Nvidia RTX 6000 will also follow suit.

So, who uses Nvidia’s workstation GPUs? Broadcasters are one example, in need of Nvidia’s latest RTX 6000 to help power TV stations. “The new workstation GPUs are truly game changing, providing us with over 300 percent performance increases — allowing us to improve the quality of video and the value of our products,” says Andrew Cross, CEO of Grass Valley, maker of television and broadcasting equipment.

Other industries stand to gain from the specialized drivers and longevity within workstation cards. The RTX 6000 will likely be used within environments such as scientific computation workloads and creating CGI for the movie industry, and Nvidia’s mention of pairing the card with Omniverse (its own real-time graphics collaboration platform) is no coincidence as we steadily march towards Web 3.0.

“The NVIDIA RTX 6000 is ready to power this new era for engineers, designers and scientists to meet the need for demanding content-creation, rendering, AI and simulation workloads that are required to build worlds in the metaverse” said Bob Pette, vice president of professional visualization at NVIDIA.

The Nvidia RTX 6000 workstation GPU will be available from December via global distribution partners and manufacturers.

TechScape: AI’s dark arts come into their own

Advanced AI is moving from the lab into the mainstream – offering a glimpse of the dangers ahead. Plus, What3Words loses its direction

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Microsoft Surface rumors heat up ahead of rumored October event

The Surface Pro 8 — *Last year’s Surface Pro 8.* | Image by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Microsoft is widely expected to launch its next generation of Surface devices at an event next month, and over the past week an increasing number of rumors have shed light on what form they could take. Top of the list is a new 2-in-1 device — the Surface Pro 9 — as well as the latest Surface Laptop 5.

WinFuture reports that both are expected to be available with 12th Gen Intel CPUs, up from the 11th Gen models seen in last year’s Surface Pro 8 and Surface Laptop 4. Specifically, it expects to see an Intel Core i5-1235U in the entry level models and a Core i7-1255U at the higher end, which should offer single-core performance increases of up to 22 percent and 12 percent respectively. Storage is expected to top out at 1TB, while up to 16GB of RAM should be available.

In addition to the Intel chips, the Surface Pro 9 could also be offered with an Arm-based processor. WinFuture reports that this will be branded as the Microsoft SQ3, and will be based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 platform. The good news is the laptop should actually support 5G this time around, which is more than can be said for last year’s Arm-powered Surface Pro X. If Microsoft is offering the Surface Pro 9 in both Intel and Arm flavors, that could mean we see an updated design and the end of the Surface Pro X line.

Over on the Surface Laptop 5 side, WinFuture reports that it’s yet to see any evidence of a version powered by an AMD processor. That’s in contrast to the Surface Laptop 4, which offered a choice of Intel and AMD. However, given that Surface chief Panos Panay posed for a selfie with AMD CEO Lisa Su just days ago, it would be surprising to see a Surface Laptop 5 without an AMD option. AMD refreshed its laptop processor lineup with the Ryzen 6000 series back at CES 2022, and announced new processors for low-power laptops just days ago.

Away from specs, the Surface Pro 9 might be available in new color options, with green (aka, “Forest”) and light blue (“Sapphire”) joining the standard black and silver variants. The screen size is expected to be 13.5-inches once again, while the Laptop 5 is expected to also be available in a larger 15-inch variant.

As for price, WinFuture reports that the Surface Pro 9 should start at €1,300 (around $1,288 and roughly €100 more than the starting price of last year’s Pro 8). Meanwhile the Laptop 5 should start at €1,200 for its 13.5-inch model (around $1,189 and roughly €50 more than last year) and €1,500 for the 15-inch version (around $1,487 and the same as last year).

According to leaker WalkingCat, Microsoft’s event is currently scheduled for October 11th at 12pm ET, although this timing is yet to be officially confirmed by the company itself.

mardi 20 septembre 2022

Twitch to ban Stake.com streams and other unlicensed gambling content

As the conversation concerning Twitch and the platform’s allowance of gambling streams continues to swirl, the platform has struck its first blow. In a tweet on Tuesday evening, Twitch stated that it will ban “streaming of gambling sites that include slots, roulette, or dice games” in a policy update effective October 18th.

An update on gambling on Twitch. pic.twitter.com/lckNTY9Edo
— Twitch (@Twitch) September 20, 2022

Critically, Twitch is not banning all gambling, nor even all streaming of the gambling forms mentioned above. There will be a carveout permitting sports betting, fantasy sports, and poker, while the streaming of slots, roulette, and dice is only prohibited if the websites streamed aren’t “licensed in the U.S. or other jurisdictions that provide sufficient consumer protection.”

The gambling sites that will be swept up in the ban include Stake.com, which is one of the most popular slot gambling sites streamed on Twitch. Big streamers like xQc and Trainwreckstv frequently feature it on their streams.

Gambling on Twitch has become a hot-button topic as wealthy streamers seemingly promote their services, ostensibly to minors, and potentially feeding gambling addictions. Earlier this week, ItsSliker came forward admitting he bilked hundreds of thousands of dollars from fellow streamers to support his sports betting habit.

From that event, big-name streamers like DevinNash, Pokimane, and Mizkif, who is currently embroiled in a separate but tangentially related incident, proposed or supported a potential boycott of Twitch if the platform didn’t ban gambling from the site. Now, that action may no longer be necessary. However, sports betting, the form of gambling that started this recent conversation, is one that will be spared when the ban takes effect.

In its tweet, Twitch stated it will share more about its gambling policies ahead of their implementation on October 18th.

YouTube’s ‘dislike’ and ‘not interested’ buttons barely work, study finds

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Even when users tell YouTube they aren’t interested in certain types of videos, similar recommendations keep coming, a new study by Mozilla found.

Using video recommendations data from more than 20,000 YouTube users, Mozilla researchers found that buttons like “not interested,” “dislike,” “stop recommending channel,” and “remove from watch history” are largely ineffective at preventing similar content from being recommended. Even at their best, these buttons still allow through more than half the recommendations similar to what a user said they weren’t interested in, the report found. At their worst, the buttons barely made a dent in blocking similar videos.

To collect data from real videos and users, Mozilla researchers enlisted volunteers who used the foundation’s RegretsReporter, a browser extension that overlays a general “stop recommending” button to YouTube videos viewed by participants. On the back end, users were randomly assigned a group, so different signals were sent to YouTube each time they clicked the button placed by Mozilla — dislike, not interested, don’t recommend channel, remove from history, and a control group for whom no feedback was sent to the platform.

Using data collected from over 500 million recommended videos, research assistants created over 44,000 pairs of videos — one “rejected” video, plus a video subsequently recommended by YouTube. Researchers then assessed pairs themselves or used machine learning to decide whether the recommendation was too similar to the video a user rejected.

Compared to the baseline control group, sending the “dislike” and “not interested” signals were only “marginally effective” at preventing bad recommendations, preventing 12 percent of 11 percent of bad recommendations, respectively. “Don’t recommend channel” and “remove from history” buttons were slightly more effective — they prevented 43 percent and 29 percent of bad recommendations — but researchers say the tools offered by the platform are still inadequate for steering away unwanted content.

“YouTube should respect the feedback users share about their experience, treating them as meaningful signals about how people want to spend their time on the platform,” researchers write.

YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez says these behaviors are intentional because the platform doesn’t try to block all content related to a topic. But Hernandez criticized the report, saying it doesn’t consider how YouTube’s controls are designed.

“Importantly, our controls do not filter out entire topics or viewpoints, as this could have negative effects for viewers, like creating echo chambers,” Hernandez told The Verge. “We welcome academic research on our platform, which is why we recently expanded Data API access through our YouTube Researcher Program. Mozilla’s report doesn’t take into account how our systems actually work, and therefore it’s difficult for us to glean many insights.”

Hernandez says Mozilla’s definition of “similar” fails to consider how YouTube’s recommendation system works. The “not interested” option removes a specific video, and the “don’t recommend channel” button prevents the channel from being recommended in the future, Hernandez says. The company says it doesn’t seek to stop recommendations of all content related to a topic, opinion, or speaker.

Besides YouTube, other platforms like TikTok and Instagram have introduced more and more feedback tools for users to train the algorithm, supposedly, to show them relevant content. But users often complain that even when flagging that they don’t want to see something, similar recommendations persist. It’s not always clear what different controls actually do, Mozilla researcher Becca Ricks says, and platforms aren’t transparent about how feedback is taken into account.

“I think that in the case of YouTube, the platform is balancing user engagement with user satisfaction, which is ultimately a tradeoff between recommending content that leads people to spend more time on the site and content the algorithm thinks people will like,” Ricks told The Verge via email. “The platform has the power to tweak which of these signals get the most weight in its algorithm, but our study suggests that user feedback may not always be the most important one.”

Uber responding to ‘cybersecurity incident’ after hack

Ride-hailing company confirms attack after hacker compromises Slack app and messages employees

Uber has been hacked in an attack that appears to have breached the ride-hailing company’s internal systems.

The California-based company confirmed it was responding to a “cybersecurity incident”, after the New York Times reported that a hack had accessed the company’s network and forced it to take several internal communications and engineering systems offline. The hacker claimed to be 18 years old, according to the report.

YouTube’s Dislike Button Rarely Shifts Video Recommendations, Researchers Say

YouTube’s Dislike Button Rarely Shifts Video Recommendations, Researchers Say New research from Mozilla shows YouTube users have little control over what is recommended to them.

How a Quebec Lithium Mine May Help Make Electric Cars Affordable

How a Quebec Lithium Mine May Help Make Electric Cars Affordable The project also illustrates how difficult it is to get lithium out of the ground and break China’s dominance in processing the metal and turning it into batteries.

lundi 19 septembre 2022

Emoji statuses and ‘infinite’ reactions are among Telegram’s latest features

Screenshot of a variety of emoji reaction options in Telegram. — *A new menu allows you to quickly select most used reactions.* | Image: Telegram

Telegram’s throwing a bone to its non-premium users this month by extending them access to more emoji reactions. The feature now lets all users choose from “dozens” of emoji that they can drop onto message bubbles as an alternative way to contribute to the conversation. And if you’re paying the $4.99 a month for Premium, don’t worry, you’re now getting an endless supply of reaction options by way of the custom animated emoji packs released last month, as well as other new features.

Paying Telegram Premium subscribers can now use all animated emoji as a status, in addition to the default seven that can change colors based on the theme. For instance, you can choose a rotating controller emoji to indicate you’re busy fragging on your Xbox. It’ll appear in friends’ chat lists, groups, and on your profile page in place of the normal Premium badge, which is also where you would tap to apply the status.

There’s also a better login system now for “users who log out and log back in frequently” that can send a temporary code to your email address or can utilize Sign In with Apple or Google. Users on iOS will notice that the user interface for logging in has improved and includes the “fun animations” that Android users have already been enjoying.

Screenshot of many emoji options that can be selected for the status indicator, in this case a game controller is selected. — *Emoji status can be added by tapping the premium badge in your profile.*

screenshot of android Telegram app in the downloads section and showing a drag-able icon that can move an active download lower or higher. — *The Android app now allows for download prioritization.*

Speaking of Android users, the app will now have smother animations when handling media in the app, and also the app icon will match Android’s color and dark mode settings. And the downloads section, like the iOS version, can now have items prioritized so you can download those huge uncompressed astrophotography images before your friend’s kid’s dance recital video.

Finally, there’s now a better link format for sharing your Telegram user profile. Instead of the old t.me/username, you can now do username.t.me, which is easier to share audibly and is better for accessibility.

Telegram has been on a roll lately, adding more Premium features for subscribers, but the process has had some bumps. Founder Pavel Durov had hinted at upcoming features in June before launch, like removing ads, along with power user-targeted features like large file support and these emoji reactions.

He said that the new animated emoji feature, which includes an open custom platform to make your own versions, will “revolutionize how people express themselves.” Apple blocked an earlier update with “Telemoji” that apparently came too close to Apple’s custom designs, but Telegram eventually added “hundreds of vector-based emoji with smooth animations.”

Intel and How Autonomous Driving Will Fix the Electric Car Problem

passenger reading a book in an autonomous self-driving car

At Intel’s Mobileye facility in Israel I saw a future that suggests that a combination of electric cars and autonomous driving will lead to a far better personal transportation future. Let’s talk about that this week. The post Intel and How Autonomous Driving Will Fix the Electric Car Problem appeared first on TechNewsWorld.