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.”
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.
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.
Image: 뻘짓연구소The device is shown in what looks like near-final retail packaging.
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.
Image: 뻘짓연구소A 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
The Nvidia RTX 6000 ADA professional GPU isn’t your run-of-the-mill gaming card. | Image: Nvidia
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.
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.
Microsoft Surface rumors heat up ahead of rumored October event
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.
Twitch to ban Stake.com streams and other unlicensed gambling content
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
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.
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 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 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.
Emoji statuses and ‘infinite’ reactions are among Telegram’s latest features
A new menu allows you to quickly select most used reactions. | Image: Telegram
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.
Image: Telegram
Emoji status can be added by tapping the premium badge in your profile.
Image: Telegram
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
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.
Rockstar owner issues takedowns after Grand Theft Auto VI leak
Video and images posted online as hacker also threatens to leak source code for Grand Theft Auto V and VI
More than 90 videos and images of Grand Theft Auto VI, the long-awaited follow-up to 2013’s Grand Theft Auto V, one of the best-selling video games of all time – leaked online over the weekend, in one of the biggest confidential data breaches in gaming history.
The footage was posted to the GTAForums website by a user going by teapotuberhacker, who claims to have accessed it by hacking Rockstar’s internal company Slack feed and gaining access to their servers.
Student tech: the best gadgets to help you make the most of university
With students’ finances overstretched, it’s important to get the right tech at the right price. Here are some of the best deals
The end of the summer is here, and with it the start of a new semester at university. The landscape of learning certainly looks brighter than it has for the last couple of years but the need to have the right gear is just as big, with many universities offering a mix of in-person and online learning.
From laptops and phones to headphones and note-taking tools, here’s a guide to some of the tech that will help make the most of the student experience at a time of stretched finances.
Food Supply Disruption Is Another Front for Russian Falsehoods As the war in Ukraine has put pressure on the global markets for food, Russia has spread conspiracy theories that blame the West.
Google’s Nest Wifi Pro pricing leaks early
The 2019 version of the Google Nest Wifi which will likely stick around. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Google’s big hardware event isn’t until next month but the leaks have already begun, this time showing pricing for a new “Google Nest Wifi Pro 6E Router” courtesy of B&H Photo (via 9to5Google). The online store lists a variety of colors and combo packs starting at $199.99, each labeled as “new item — coming soon.” In other words, coming as early as October 6th when this pro version of the Nest Wifi is expected to be announced at the Made By Google event.
Unfortunately, the listings don’t include any photos or specs, but we’re not totally in the dark here. We previously saw details for what we expect to be called the “Nest Wifi Pro” in an FCC listing that mentioned Bluetooth Low Energy and Thread mesh networking radios (for Matter), in addition to 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E support for reduced signal interference and faster speeds.
The premature B&H listings mention a $299.99 2-pack bundle, $399.99 3-pack bundle, and colors that mimic other Nest products including “Snow” (white), “Fog” (pale blue), “Linen” (beige), and “Lemongrass” (yellowish green). We expect this Pro model to co-exist with the current Nest Wifi which lists for $169 but can often be had for less.
‘Gifs are cringe’: how Giphy’s multimillion-dollar business fell out of fashion
Generational divide threatens future of tech firm as it seeks approval for $400m takeover by Facebook owner Meta
It is rare for a multimillion-dollar company to explicitly state that its business is dying because it is simply too uncool to live.
But that is the bold strategy that the gif search engine Giphy has adopted with the UK’s competition regulator, which is trying to block a $400m (£352m) takeover attempt by Facebook’s owner, Meta.
Tom Brady just chucked another Microsoft Surface tablet
Touchdown!
Tom Brady might as well have been practicing his touchdown spike when he whipped a Microsoft Surface tablet into the ground during the Tampa Bay Buccaneers game against the Saints on Sunday night. The quarterback was visibly frustrated following an incomplete pass, tossed his helmet onto the field, and stormed back to the sidelines where he chucked the tablet.
The Buccs were losing when Brady threw the tablet, but they ended up coming back and defeating the Saints 20-10. This isn’t Brady’s first documented case of tablet abuse — he threw the thing so hard against the bench after losing a Saints game last year that it actually bounced.
Microsoft Surface chief Panos Panay responded to the incident on his Instagram story this time around, saying “Rest assured the Surface should be just fine.” I’m not so sure about that, Panos. The last tablet we saw Brady throw was destroyed, and we didn’t get to see how it fared after this temper tantrum.
NFL’s website says Microsoft designed the Surface tablets specifically for football games, ensuring they can “stand up to the occasional drop.” Maybe Microsoft should make sure they withstand a throw from a quarterback’s throwing arm, too.
Correction September 18th, 6:16PM ET:A previous version of the article stated Bill Belichick was the former coach of the Patriots, when he is the current coach. We regret the error.
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?
US charges Iran trio with orchestrating vast hacking and extortion scheme
Men allegedly tried to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from groups in US including domestic violence shelter
Three Iranians have been charged with trying to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from organizations in the United States, Europe, Iran and Israel, including a domestic violence shelter, by hacking in to their computer systems, US officials said on Wednesday.
Other targets included local US governments, regional utilities in Mississippi and Indiana, accounting firms and a state lawyers’ association, according to charges filed by the justice department.
How Russian Trolls Helped Keep the Women’s March Out of Lock Step As American feminists came together in 2017 to protest Donald Trump, Russia’s disinformation machine set about deepening the divides among them.
Will Smith’s ‘Emancipation’: What Will Apple Do? The Civil War drama “Emancipation” finished filming early this year. Now, Apple faces a quandary on what to do with the movie.
South Korean founder of failed cryptocurrency Terra denies he is ‘on the run’
Do Kwon’s whereabouts are still unknown since a South Korean court issued an arrest warrant earlier this week
Do Kwon, the South Korean founder of the failed cryptocurrency Terra wanted by police, has denied he was on the run after Singapore investigators said he was not in the city-state as had been believed.
Kwon’s whereabouts have been thrown into question after a statement from Singapore police late on Saturday, and his tweets did not reveal where he was.
Fortnite’s new season adds Spider-Gwen and goopy chrome
Spider-Gwen in Fortnite. | Image: Epic Games
A new season of Fortnite is upon us, and it’s dripping with chrome. Today sees the launch of Chapter 3: Season 4 for the battle royale game, dubbed “Paradise,” and the big change this time around is a mysterious new substance. It’s called chrome, and it appears to be able to change just about everything it touches: you can splash it on walls to go right through them or splash it on yourself for temporary fire immunity and faster sprinting.
Other additions this season including new locations, like a floating condo, and other points of interest that have, naturally, been infested with chrome. Sniper rifles have received a big buff, increasing both damage and headshot multipliers. There’s also a new kind of vault, which can be opened by finding various keys located across the island, giving players access to high-level loot.
And a new season means a new battle pass, with lots of characters to unlock. Highlighting this season’s battle pass is Spider-Gwen, and players who purchase the pass will immediately get access to a new skin called Paradigm. Other additions include a hipster cat, a strange bear creature, a werewolf (?), and yet another very cool anime skin. Here’s the full battle pass lineup in trailer form:
TP-Link’s latest smart light strip goes with everything
The Tapo L930 has gradient RGB and tunable white light, and works with Apple Home, Google, and Alexa for under $50
TP-Link’s newest light strip, the Tapo L930-5, is a great addition to any smart lighting setup. The full-color gradient LED strip has almost everything you could want in a lighting strip — from tunable white light and dimming to music sync and some neat lighting effects, all for under $50. It’s the first lighting product from TP-Link to work with Apple Home, it also works with Alexa and Google Home, and it uses Wi-Fi, so it doesn’t need a hub.
Smart LED light strips are an easy, plug-and-play way to shed some light on a troublesome dark spot in your home or add some cool lighting effects under your cabinets, counters, or even around your bed — if you’re into that kind of thing.
The Tapo L930-5 is an RGBWIC LED strip — that alphabet soup means it has both RGB (with up to 16 million colors) and tunable white LEDs (up to 1,000 lumens). The separate white LEDs give it brighter and higher-quality white light than strips that only have RGB LEDs. The IC part means it uses an integrated chip, so it can display different colors along its 50 different lighting zones instead of a single color at a time. Very few LED light strips have both tunable white LEDs and addressable lighting, fewer still have all that and Apple Home support, and all of those are far more expensive than the Tapo L930-5.
I’ve tested several smart light strips, from high-end Eve and Philips Hue versions to budget strips from Feit, and the Tapo feels like it should cost more than it does. Even if you don’t need Apple Home support, it’s still better than anything else in its price range.
I installed the L930-5 along the underside of my kitchen breakfast bar, where I could use blue light to highlight the blue cabinets and make the bar an architectural focal point or switch to white light to brighten up my dark living room.
The Tapo light strip installed under a breakfast counter.
The 16.4-foot (5-meter) LED strip comes with a small controller with an on/off button and an AC adapter. I connected them, positioned the strip, and stuck it to the underside of my counter (literally stuck; it uses 3M tape). The biggest challenge was finding a spot with an outlet nearby, and I had a bit of trouble getting a smooth fit when going around a tight corner. I ended up cutting the strip instead (the strips are trimmable but can’t be re-connected).
The whole process took less than five minutes, and the end result was wow-worthy. I say that confidently: my teenagers said, “Wow, that’s cool,” when they came home from school, and they are very hard to impress.
The Tapo app, which I’ll come back to, is better than most. But the real power of smart lighting comes from connecting it to a smart home platform like Apple Home (previously known as HomeKit), Google Home, or Amazon Alexa, and Tapo supports all three.
In my kitchen, I have smart light switches from Lutron Caseta and Aqara and smart bulbs from Philips Hue. Using Apple Home, I added the Tapo light strip to a Scene with all those other lights, linked that to a Philips Hue motion sensor, and had them all turn on when someone walked into the kitchen. You can also set up an Alexa Routine to do this. Google Home doesn’t let sensors trigger routines but does support voice control, as do the other two.
TP-Link recently announced the Tapo line will support Matter when the new smart home standard launches later this year. It’s unclear whether existing devices like the L930-5 will be upgraded or whether it will launch new Matter-compatible products, but as Tapo products use Wi-Fi there’s a clear upgrade path. A new version of the Tapo app is coming later this year that Tapo says can “integrate all Matter-supported devices within one ecosystem.”
The Tapo bopping along to some tunes.
Unlike most smart lighting control apps, the Tapo app is well laid out, easy to use, and offers lots of features. I could set the lights on a schedule, create six preset light scenes, choose from 17 effects (as well as create my own), and sync with music. The app also monitors energy usage, has an Away Mode (to turn lights on and off randomly to mimic someone being at home), and a timer that will turn the lights on or off after a set period.
The Tapo app’s lighting effects take advantage of the light strip’s fifty individually addressable lighting zones. My favorites were the Rainbow effect for some vivid pops of color and the Aurora for a more soothing light show. I did try to create some of my own effects, which was easy to do in the app, but the presets looked a lot better than anything I came up with. I’m definitely going to be using the Bubbling Cauldron and Haunted Mansion options for my Halloween setup this year.
The Tapo light strip installed under a kitchen countertop.
The Tapo also includes an Auto White mode, which sets the light to white and automatically adjusts the brightness based on available light — though I’m not sure how it does it as I can’t find an ambient light sensor anywhere on it. This is a nice feature, though, and means you don’t end up with a bright light shining at you when you dim other lights in your house. Unfortunately, while it did dim automatically, it stayed at one color temperature, despite the app saying it should adjust from cool to warm. In my testing, the light strip also didn’t work with Apple Home’s adaptive lighting feature. I’ve reached out to TP-Link about both features.
The Tapo light strip can sync to music or ambient sound, which it did relatively well, if a bit more robotically and less smoothly than Philips Hue’s music sync feature. However, it uses the microphone on your smartphone or tablet, not a built-in microphone, as Nanoleaf lights and some Govee strips have. This was annoying, especially as you need to keep the app open on your phone for it to work, and it kept disconnecting. But that might be for the best if you’re not keen on your light strips having a microphone.
If you have multiple Tapo products, you can link them together in the Tapo app with Smart Actions. These are Scenes that let you control multiple devices at once by tapping a tile in the app or Automations that can run based on time of day or when triggered by another Tapo device. The Tapo app only works with Tapo products, not TP-Link’s other smart home line, Kasa. The Tapo line also has an Apple Home-compatible smart plug, and earlier this year, TP-Link announced an Apple Home-compatible power strip, dimmer switch, and color bulbs are coming soon.
The Tapo light strip produced rich, bright colors.
At $49.99 for 16.4 feet of addressable lighting zones, RGB, and tunable white LEDs, the Tapo L930-5 is by far the best, least expensive light strip that works with Apple Home. But if any one of those features is negotiable, or you really want the Adaptive Lighting feature, you have other options to consider — though most still cost much more.
One thing to note is that the L930-5 only comes in one length right now: 16.4 feet (or 5 meters). That’s much longer than most smart light strips, which usually start around six feet, or two meters, though many can be extended up to 32 feet (10 meters) or even longer. TP-Link doesn’t sell extension kits for the L930, but it says a 32-foot version of the L930 is launching next month.
Even if you don’t want Apple Home support, the L930-5 is compelling. Most light strips in this price range can’t produce high-quality white light because they don’t have separate white LEDs. Losing the white LEDs is not worth the $10 or $15 you’d save by getting the Tapo L920-5, Govee, or Kasa smart light strips.
Unless you’re dead set on Adaptive Lighting or holding out for a light strip that’s guaranteed to work with Matter and Thread, this is the best, most affordable addressable light strip option right now.
The PS Vita’s time is now, again
The 2013 PS Vita still looks and feels surprisingly modern.
Every couple of weeks, I exhume my gadget graveyard from underneath my bed. I look at my iPods, old phones, and some other stuff. Most of it doesn’t stir me anymore, but the PS Vita is another story. It’s the device that I pull out most frequently, charging it up to, well, just to feel like it’s a part of the modern world.
I keep mine in a svelte Waterfield Designs soft case that cleans off fingerprints when it goes in so that it’s smudge-free when I pull it out, revealing design details that I apparently have an unshakable affinity to seeing over and over: gorgeous translucent shoulder buttons; the big (but not too big) display; and the sturdy yet elegant build quality. Almost everything going on with the look and feel of the Vita is still serviceable today, even if it’s daringly tiny compared to the size of, say, the Nintendo Switch.
You’ve probably heard this a million times, but the Vita, announced in mid-2011, was Sony’s compete-with-everything device, unenviably poised to take on mobile phones and Nintendo’s 3DS with console-like controls and graphics as well as forward-thinking (though, ultimately ill-advised) features like 3G support, apps of its own, and a rear touchpad meant to be a playground for innovation in gameplay.
Yep, there was a first-gen version of the Vita that supported 3G via AT&T.
Ten years later, the Vita is very dead outside of a vibrant homebrew scene that I’m continuously impressed by. It only took a fraction of those 10 years to seal its fate, and it deserved it. Or rather, parts of Sony’s vision for the Vita did. Remember its godforsaken proprietary memory card that cost a fortune and its Micro USB port? Yeah, goodbye. But there’s plenty about the Vita that can be reimagined for 2022; I just like to pretend that the concept of a handheld isn’t so dead to Sony.
I have, um, specific desires.
A new Vita shouldn’t have a brand-new ecosystem for exclusive games and apps built up around it, nor does it need to deliver high-end performance. Really, I would just like a modernized Vita with USB-C charging and a lightweight OS that’s built to supplement Sony’s PlayStation Plus plans, with cloud streaming and all of that. Remove some of the frills of the hardware and ship it. Just give me a reason to stop obsessing over this dead gadget.
Photography by Sam Byford / The Verge
Tell me a new Vita with USB-C, microSD, and Android wouldn’t be the hottest device of 2022.
What else do I want in a next-gen PS Vita? I’m so glad that you asked. Using the late 2013 Vita revision as my reference, I’d be willing to accept a slightly wider and taller handheld to accommodate more buttons (just to reflect what’s on the PS5’s DualSense controller). I really like this Vita’s thickness, which is about as thick as a deck of cards, though I’d be cool with it taking on a few extra millimeters to incorporate a proper set of L2 and R2 triggers. Otherwise, just leave the rest of the design alone — I still love it.
As for the OS, slap Android on it for all that I care. Keep the bubbly user interface, or just make it stock Android. The latter would make it more practical for me to use it for other forms of entertainment, and I’m sure a relatively midrange Snapdragon chipset could get the job done. You can take or leave the game cartridge slot, but a microSD card slot, a headphone jack, and an OLED screen would be nice. I mean, it’s gotta be modern, right? Even the debut Vita model had an OLED. Sony switched it to LCD in the second iteration.
Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge
Traces of Vita DNA exist in Backbone’s Sony-approved iPhone controller.
The last five years in tech have supplied more handhelds than I (and apparently Sony, too) could have ever predicted. Several products have capitalized on the Switch’s dominance in their own way, including multiflavored Aya Neo consoles, the Steam Deck, the Analogue Pocket, and soon (if the rumors are true), Logitech’s own handheld. Some reimagining of the Vita seems like an obvious idea. It belongs in the here and now with all of the other portable consoles, even if Sony doesn’t see it that way.
Dutch town takes Twitter to court over unfounded satanic paedophile claims
Bodegraven-Reeuwijk has been plagued by a conspiracy theory and wants tweets spreading it removed
A small Dutch town took Twitter to court on Friday to demand the social media company take down all messages relating to a supposed ring of Satan-worshipping paedophiles alleged to have been active in the town in the 1980s.
Bodegraven-Reeuwijk, a town of about 35,000 inhabitants in the middle of the Netherlands, has been the focus of conspiracy theories on social media since 2020, when three men started spreading unfounded stories about the abuse and murder of children they said took place in the town in the 1980s.
‘So many people tell me they wish they could get out!’ Can we escape the tyranny of WhatsApp groups?
Group chats were a lifeline during lockdown – but for many, the constant messages have become an oppressive distraction. Leaving, however, is not so simple
As I write, I have 101 unread WhatsApp messages, 254 unread iPhone messages and 46,252 unread emails across three separate accounts. For me, Inbox Zero is a faraway goal, as unachievable as mastering the perfect cat’s-eye flick, or learning how to cook.
But it is the WhatsApp messages, specifically the WhatsApp group chats, that terrorise me the most. If I were a woman of courage, I would simply exit these chats as soon as I am added to them; but I feel the weight of social obligation, and so I remain.
US scientists to test advanced, real-time algae sensor at water treatment plant As danger looms in bodies of water globally where toxic algae blooms, a small plastic storage tub in Toledo sealed to protect against splashes, spiders and bird stool may contain a game-changing technology in the fight against the growing environmental problem.
Biden talks up electric vehicle revolution – but is America ready to give up gas?
President appears at Detroit auto show, where EVs are this year’s stars – but the road to electrification promises to be a bumpy one
Fresh off signing legislation aimed at propelling the nation’s electric vehicle (EV) transition, Joe Biden was in Detroit last week to reaffirm his support for electrification ahead of the opening of the US’s largest annual car show.
“The great American road trip is going to be fully electrified, whether you’re driving along the coast, or on I-75 here in Michigan,” he declared as the first North American International Auto Show since 2019 prepared to open its doors.
Splatoon 3 review – Nintendo’s new squid game is ink-redible fun
Nintendo Switch; Nintendo Never mind the spectacularly colourful paint battles, this is quietly one of the best and most inventive action-puzzle games around
Nintendo’s offbeat hit Splatoon has been around since 2015, but the idea is still so charmingly bizarre that it feels fresh: human-cephalopod hybrids splatter each other and their surroundings with colourful paint on ink-splashed battlefields. You transform back and forth between human and squid (or octopus), swimming through ink, emerging to chuck paint out of a bucket or shoot it from a squirt-gun or spread it with a roller, claiming territory with your own team’s colour. The arenas are city alleyways, abandoned factories, warehouses and urban landscapes – they have the feel of real-life underground skate spots, derelict yet cool.
Splatoon 3 does not change much about this premise, but it’s irresistibly stylish and gives you absolutely loads to do, from those chaotic trademark team battles to co-operative sorties on to industrial islands where you shoot at goggle-eyed fish to steal their shiny golden eggs. The more you play, the more you want to play, as new modes and weapons open up. A triple bow with exploding paint arrows, a transforming sword, an umbrella … they all beg to be toyed with, and they’re all gently hilarious.
Uber apparently hacked by teen, employees thought it was a joke
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Uber says it’s investigating a “cybersecurity incident” amidst reports that the company’s internal systems have been breached. The alleged hacker, who claims to be an 18-year old, says they have administrator access to company tools including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. The New York Times reports that the ride-hailing business has taken multiple internal systems, including Slack, offline while it investigates the breach.
When contacted for comment by The Verge, a spokesperson for the company declined to answer additional questions, and pointed to its statement on Twitter. “We are currently responding to a cybersecurity incident. We are in touch with law enforcement and will post additional updates here as they become available,” the statement reads.
The hacker appears to have made themselves known to Uber’s employees by posting a message on the company’s internal Slack system. “I announce I am a hacker and Uber has suffered a data breach,” screenshots of the message circulating on Twitter read. The claimed hacker then listed confidential company information they said they’d accessed, and posted a hashtag saying that Uber underpays its drivers.
The Slack message from the alleged hacker was so brazen that many Uber employees appear to have initially thought it was a joke, the Washington Post reports. Employee responses to the post included lighthearted emoji like sirens and popcorn, as well as the “it’s happening” GIF. One unnamed Uber employee told Yuga Labs security engineer Sam Curry that staff were interacting with the hacker thinking they were playing a joke.
“Sorry to be a stick in the mud, but I think IT would appreciate less memes while they handle the breach,” one employee’s response read, according to The Post.
Apparently there was an internal network share that contained powershell scripts...
"One of the powershell scripts contained the username and password for a admin user in Thycotic (PAM) Using this i was able to extract secrets for all services, DA, DUO, Onelogin, AWS, GSuite" pic.twitter.com/FhszpxxUEW
The hacker claimed to the NYT to be 18 years old, and told The Post that they breached Uber for fun and is considering leaking the company’s source code. In a conversation with cybersecurity researcher Corben Leo, they also claimed to have gained access to Uber’s systems through login credentials obtained from an employee via social engineering, which allowed them to access an internal company VPN. From there, they found PowerShell scripts on Uber’s intranet containing access management credentials that allowed them to allegedly breach Uber’s AWS and G Suite accounts.
“This is a total compromise, from what it looks like,” Curry told the NYT. “It seems like maybe they’re this kid who got into Uber and doesn’t know what to do with it, and is having the time of his life.”
As Driverless Cars Falter, Are ‘Driver Assistance’ Systems in Closer Reach? With investigations and lawsuits over accidents adding skepticism toward fully driverless technology, car companies are betting on systems that take some, but not all, control.
WiZ’s smart lights can now be motion sensors
SpaceSense will turn WiZ light bulbs into motion sensors. | Image: Signify
Motion-triggered smart lighting is pretty magical. Figuring out how to set up little white motion sensors all over your house to make it work is not. With its new SpaceSense feature, Signify may have come up with the perfect solution: let the light bulbs do the work.
SpaceSense is a software feature coming to Signify’s Wi-Fi smart lighting line WiZ later this month. It uses Wi-Fi sensing technology that detects changes in Wi-Fi signal strength caused by movement to turn lights on when someone walks into a room and off when motion stops. Wi-Fi sensing is already being used in some routers and security systems, and it was only a matter of time until a lighting company figured out how to apply it to their tech.
With WiZ, the sensing technology is embedded directly in the light bulb; you only need two or more WiZ bulbs in a room to get started. Wiz has a wide range of Wi-Fi-powered smart light bulbs starting at $11, so the barrier to entry is low. The company also recently released several new products, including a floor lamp and portable lamp as well as new color-changing outdoor string lights that are coming next month.
Image: Signify
WiZ has a wide range of smart light bulbs and light fixtures that work over Wi-Fi and don’t require a hub. You need two in a room to use SpaceSense.
SpaceSense will be set up and controlled using the new WiZ V2 app, which launches this month. The app also allows a user to adjust the sensitivity of the motion detection and set a delay to keep lights on for a set period of time, even if no motion is detected.
The technology is opt-in and doesn’t detect or record a person's exact location or recognize faces. WiZ says all the detection data is processed locally on the light bulb.
According to WiZ, SpaceSense will work on most WiZ-branded products released since September 2021. It's working on compatibility with older models. Those brands include WiZ lights, Philips Smart LED lights, and any brand with the Connected by WiZ logo. It won’t work with Signify’s Philips Hue lighting products, as Hue uses Zigbee, not Wi-Fi.
YouTube Opens More Pathways for Creators to Make Money on the Platform The video platform will let more creators earn payments and place ads in Shorts, its TikTok competitor, according to audio from an internal meeting.
A hacker apparently compromised an employee’s Slack messaging app and was able to gain access to other internal company systems
Uber said on Thursday it is responding to a cybersecurity incident, after the New York Times reported that a hack had breached the company’s network and forced it to take several internal communications and engineering systems offline.
A hacker compromised an employee’s workplace messaging Slack app and then used it to send a message to Uber employees announcing that it had suffered a data breach, the Times reported citing an Uber spokesperson.
Crypto’s Long-Awaited ‘Merge’ Reaches the Finish Line Ethereum, the most popular cryptocurrency platform, completed its much-anticipated switch to a more energy-efficient infrastructure.
Scientists try to teach robot to laugh at the right time
Research team hopes system could improve natural conversations between humans and AI systems
Laughter comes in many forms, from a polite chuckle to a contagious howl of mirth. Scientists are now developing an AI system that aims to recreate these nuances of humour by laughing in the right way at the right time.
The team behind the laughing robot, which is called Erica, say that the system could improve natural conversations between people and AI systems.
EA’s CEO is following the money to more games with player-created content
The new Skate is expected to offer lots of ways to be creative. | Image: EA
EA sees a big opportunity in games that let players create their own content, CEO Andrew Wilson said at a Goldman Sachs conference on Tuesday, as reported by Axios. Games like Minecraft and Roblox with extensive player creation tools have become huge hits with enduring popularity, and it sounds like EA wants to find more ways to let players create content in its own titles.
He highlighted a few EA franchises he feels have notable creative aspects already, like The Sims (which will soon be free to play), FIFA, and Battlefield, and talked about how the upcoming live service Skate title will offer many opportunities for player creation.
“Just like the real world, where skateboarding leans into fashion and music and automotive and building and brands, we think that franchise can do that as well,” Wilson said. “So you’ll see us lean more into really engaging and investing in creation.” The Skate team has already teased some of the tools they’re working on, such as in-game “CollaboZones” that can be built collaboratively and appear in others players’ worlds in real time.
Wilson expects that down the line, “there will be the creation of new worlds that sit right next to the worlds that we create, and people will move frictionlessly between those two things,” he said. This sounds somewhat similar to what you can see in Fortnite today — expansive player-made worlds are served up right next to Epic’s own modes in the game’s discovery tools.
Wilson indicated that there’s a significant business opportunity in encouraging players to create content. The correlation of “minutes engaged” (aka, how long somebody might be playing a game) to money spent is almost one to one, he said, so whether players or EA creates the content, there’s “an extraordinary opportunity for [EA].”
While EA is going to invest in gaming creation tools, Wilson discussed how the company doesn’t plan to pour money into gaming-adjacent entertainment opportunities like film, like some other companies have. “I’m not going to go out and buy a movie studio just because I think there will be a convergence between linear and interactive,” he said. “I think there are different ways we can do that.”
And despite the popularity of EA’s sports franchises, he’s not looking at expensive sports broadcast rights, either. “I’m not going to go out and spend billions of dollars on linear broadcast sports rights, because I think there’s a way we can deliver and fulfill the needs and motivations of our sports fans inside of our ecosystem in a far more deliberate way that is far more aligned with how they want to consume that content.”
He also addressed the state of the Battlefield franchise, which is trying to recover from the widely-criticized launch of Battlefield 2042 last year, and acknowledged that EA didn’t live up to expectations. “I don’t think we delivered in the last two iterations in the way that we should have,” he said. “There’s a lot of work we’ve got to do there.” EA has “an extraordinary creative team involved in Battlefield now,” he says, and I do think there’s a good chance it’s now on the right path. Vince Zampella, who heads up Apex Legends and Titanfall developer Respawn, is now in charge of the franchise, and there are new Battlefield experiences in the works like a new “narrative campaign” and a mobile game.
Wilson believes Battlefield could fill any potential vacuum left by Call of Dutyfollowing Microsoft’s pending Activision acquisition. “In a world where there may be questions over the future of Call of Duty and what platform that might be on or might not be on, being platform agnostic and completely cross platform with Battlefield is a tremendous opportunity,” Wilson said.
And while Wilson is on guard for disruption from tech giants that have stepped into gaming (some more successfullythan others), he believes EA will endure. “I tell our teams: Never underestimate these giant companies that have innovative DNA, monopolistic tendencies, and deep pockets,” he said. “We always have to ask ourselves what happens if they get it right. But as of today, we have this very, very unique and special opportunity to deliver the future of entertainment.”
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