Technology

dimanche 22 janvier 2023

The third-party apps Twitter just killed made the site what it is today

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The age of great third-party Twitter clients may be over. After Twitter cut off their API access and changed its rules to bar apps that compete with its own, The Iconfactory has announced that it’s discontinuing Twitterific, Fenix has been pulled from app stores, and Tapbots has posted a memorial for Tweetbot. It’s a loss for all the people who used the apps and, almost certainly, a loss for Twitter itself.

As many people have pointed out over the past week, third-party clients helped make Twitter the platform it is today, innovating parts of Twitter we take for granted and, in the early days, helping form the company’s very identity. They’ve also acted as a safe haven from unwanted changes, helping to keep people tweeting when they were ready to give up on the platform.

Image: The Iconfactory

Twitter didn’t put a bird in its logo until 2010. Here’s a screenshot from Twitterific’s site in 2007, with the bird explaining how to install the Mac app. The iPhone’s App Store wouldn’t come along until over a year later.

Take, for example, that word I just used — tweeting. The idea that a “tweet” would be what we call a Twitter post didn’t actually come from the company itself, according to a blog post from Twitterific developer Craig Hockenberry. Instead, it was suggested by Blaine Cook, a QA tester for The Iconfactory’s third-party client, and immediately adopted. It wasn’t until at least a year later that Twitter the company started using the phrase too. (Originally, Twitter preferred “twittering.”) Twitterific also led the way in using a bird logo.

Third-party apps have had a massive impact on how we use smartphone apps in general, not just Twitter. A client called Tweetie is widely credited for inventing the pull-to-refresh interaction that’s become almost ubiquitous throughout iOS and Android for refreshing all sorts of feeds. Even if you haven’t heard of Tweetie before, you may have used it; in 2010, Twitter acquired it and made it the official iPhone client. In 2015, the company also hired a developer of a different third-party client to improve its Android app.

Screenshot of Tweetie 2 compared to Twitter for iPhone. — *Left: Tweetie 2 in 2010. Right: Twitter for iPhone in 2011.*

It’s also not the only time Twitter acquired a popular third-party client outright. TweetDeck, a part of The Verge’s newsroom to this day, was an independent app for years until the company bought it.

Third-party client users, who numbered in the millions in 2018, often enjoyed features years before they came to the official app. Echofon added the ability to mute unwanted users and hashtags in 2011, a feature the official versions didn’t get until 2014.

Screenshot of the Echofon Twitter app displaying the timeline view. — *An Echofon screenshot from 2011.*

The apps have also acted as safe havens from Twitter’s changes; they didn’t have the flood of recommended and out-of-order tweets that the official app did, and they gave us options for using a Twitter app for Macs after the official one was discontinued for a year. And, yes, people have used third-party clients to get an ad-free Twitter experience, not because they purposefully stripped out ads but because Twitter didn’t serve them through the API. (Side note: it’s hard to believe that Twitter couldn’t have made alternative apps serve ads if it wanted or needed to.)

At times, Twitter has seemingly recognized the value outside developers added. “3rd party clients have had a notable impact on the Twitter service and the products we built,” read a 2018 memo from Rob Johnson, who was the company’s developer platform lead at the time. “Independent developers built the first Twitter client for Mac and the first native app for iPhone. These clients pioneered product features we all know and love.” And in a 2010 blog post, Twitter said people who used third-party clients were “some of the most active and frequent users, noting that “a disproportionate amount of the traffic from Twitter runs through such tools.”

Despite the praise, the relationship between Twitter and outside developers was often fraught. The company’s developer agreement has had an off-and-on rule barring alternative apps that competed with its official clients, and for years the company introduced new features that it didn’t support in its API, meaning that third-party clients couldn’t have them.

Before Musk took over, however, the company appeared to be making amends. It clarified its rules with the express intent of making things easier for third-party clients, started communicating more, and its API v2 finally gave developers access to features like polls and group DMs. In late 2021, Tapbots co-founder Paul Haddad told me, “the pace of development and open-ness have been significantly improved compared to some of the darker days.” And in 2022, he called the company releasing a v2 version of its home timeline API “an indication that they’re going to continue to allow and even encourage alternative clients.”

It’s not just third-party clients that have made the Twitter experience better. There are several other outside tools that have improved the experience, such as Thread Reader, Block Party or Twitlonger. (Historically, Twitter users relied on a third-party tool called TwitPic to post pictures to the site before that feature was built-in.) Most of those apps appear to still be working, but as we’ve seen, that could change at any time, and Twitter has the ability to prevent you from posting links to them.

Of course, doing so would likely result in massive user backlash and would make the service worse. But based on Twitter’s recent actions, that wouldn’t make it out of the question.

I’m not trying to argue that Twitter has never come up with features on its own, or picked up user suggestions on its own, because it has. (The retweet, hashtag, and @ mention were famously invented by users, sometimes with the help of third-party apps, but Twitter implemented them effectively.) My point is that an ecosystem of third-party apps competing with each other and the official client is going to produce more good ideas than a single company could on its own.

Elon Musk just decided to throw all of that away. Twitter has abruptly cut itself off from that stream of ideas — the stream that produced its apps, some of its most popular features, and much of its core identity. Even if he backtracks, why would developers spend their best ideas on a company that’s burned them so badly?

The next MacBook Air and iMac could come with a 3nm M3 chip

Best Laptop 2022: Apple MacBook Air — Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Apple’s working on a MacBook Air and iMac with an M3 chip built using the more efficient 3-nanometer fabrication process, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. While it’s not clear when the two upgraded devices might launch, Gurman expects the M3 chip to arrive later this year or early next year.

Gurman first hinted at this in June of last year, noting that Apple’s working on an M3-equipped 13-inch MacBook Air, 15-inch MacBook Air, and a new iMac. At the time, he added that the M3 chip could appear as early as this year, but that hasn’t happened.

Instead, Apple included the new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips with the lineup of MacBook Pros it announced earlier this month, and also added an M2 Pro chip to the Mac Mini. These chips are based on a second-generation 5nm process, which is still an upgrade from the standard 5nm process Apple uses to fabricate its M1 chips.

The upcoming M3 chip, however, is expected to take things a step further. According to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the company that makes Apple’s chips, the 3nm process can improve speed by up to 15 percent and reduce power consumption by 30 percent when compared to the 5nm process. TSMC began mass-producing 3nm chips at its Taiwan-based facilities last year, but this technology isn’t set to arrive at the manufacturer’s new Arizona fab until 2026.

The MacBook Air and iMac aren’t the only devices that could soon get an M3 upgrade. On the same day Apple announced its new MacBook Pros, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that Apple could launch another round of MacBook Pro models with new 3nm M3 Pro and M3 Max processors in the first half of 2024. We’ll have to wait a bit longer to see if this rumor pans out, along with Gurman’s prediction that Apple could release a touchscreen Mac in 2025.

samedi 21 janvier 2023

TikTok is overrun by amateur sleuths – so which clues should I leave in case I go missing? | Michael Sun

Everyone from awkward boyfriends to supposedly nefarious fiances are being held to account. The jurors? A million deranged zoomers

If I was a more dedicated podcast listener, I am certain I would be a nutter for true crime, a genre with which I share many core values: a zeal for prying into the lives of total strangers, a generally melodramatic way of talking, an overactive imagination which crafts grand, paranoid narratives from the most quotidian of events. (These are also the traits of anyone who did theatre in high school.)

TikTok, apparently, agrees. When Serial exploded the genre in 2014, the power of amateur sleuths – and the sway they possessed over the real-world results of justice – was still a novelty. Now, nearly a decade on, new mysteries sweep through TikTok at dizzying pace. Everyone from awkward boyfriends to supposedly nefarious fiances are held to account on the platform by users conducting their own frenzied investigations, hoping to catch their suspects cheating, philandering and premeditating. The jurors: a million deranged zoomers. The tone: nothing short of fever pitch – the type that accompanies all good conspiracy theories.

Marvel’s Avengers development is coming to an end

An image showing the heroes from Marvel’s Avengers — Image: Square Enix

The development of Marvel’s Avengers is coming to a close. In a blog post, developer Crystal Dynamics announced that the game won’t receive any new updates after March 31st, with support ending on September 30th (via IGN).

While you’ll still be able to play the game in both single-player and multiplayer mode, Crystal Dynamics says it “can’t guarantee that we will be able to address issues that occur” after support ends.

The last — and final — balance update will take place in March, and from then on, all cosmetics, including “every Outfit, Takedown, and Nameplate” will be available for free and without the purchase of credits. Any remaining credits “will be converted into in-game resources,” Crystal Dynamics says. It also provides a chart for the types and number of resources you’ll get based on the credits you have, which you can see below.

Released a little over two years ago by Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics, Marvel’s Avengers dealt with technical issues and lackluster reviews, with some critics saying the game failed to meet expectations. In 2021, Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda admitted the game “produced a disappointing outcome,” and later sold Crystal Dynamics to the Embrace Group last May. The studio has since scored a deal with Amazon to work on a new addition to the Tomb Raider franchise.

Over the years, Crystal Dynamics added more characters to its lineup, including Black Panther, The Mighty Thor, and Kate Bishop. Marvel’s Avengers’ last update took place in November and saw the addition of the Cloning Lab Omega-Level Threat mission and the Winter Soldier. Unfortunately, Crystal Dynamics says Spider-Man will remain a PlayStation exclusive.

“We know this is disappointing news as everyone in our community has such a connection to these characters and their stories,” Crystal Dynamics’ post reads. “We’re so, so grateful that you came on this adventure with us.”

While users will still be able to purchase used physical copies of Marvel’s Avengers for the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC after September 30th, the game will no longer be available for purchase online.

First industrial action at Amazon UK hopes to strike at firm’s union hostility

In Coventry, 300 GMB members plan to down tools over long hours, bad management and a 50p-an-hour pay rise

Amazon workers at a vast depot in Coventry will stage a historic strike on Wednesday – the first time the delivery giant’s UK operations have ever been hit by industrial action.

The immediate cause of the dispute was a 50p-an-hour pay rise offered to warehouse staff in the summer, which many felt was insulting – particularly after they had worked throughout the Covid pandemic.

Motorola’s viva magenta Edge 30 Fusion is fun, and fun is good

Viva magenta Motorola phone on a black counter with screen facing down. — *The special-edition phone celebrates Pantone’s vibrant color of the year.*

There’s really no sensible argument for the viva magenta Motorola Edge 30 Fusion. It’s $799 and doesn’t include wireless charging, an IP68 rating, or a telephoto camera. You should get, like, at least two of those things for $800 in 2023. But here’s the thing: it’s fun, and fun is seriously underrated when it comes to smartphones.

A lot of that fun factor has to do with the Edge 30 Fusion’s best and most obvious feature: its color. I think it’s pink, but my sources (a lot of people on Twitter) tell me that it is, in fact, red. And not just any red: viva magenta, the official 2023 Pantone Color of the Year.

Pantone employs some forced alliteration when it says it “vibrates with vim and vigor.” It also apparently “galvanizes our spirit, helping us to build our inner strength.” I’ve been using the phone for a few days, and I can’t say my spirit feels any more or less galvanized, but I did recently muster up the courage to deep clean the inside of my refrigerator. Did my exposure to viva magenta help? Who can say?

In any case, this pink phone stands out from most other modern smartphones, whether or not it builds inner strength. At any point in time, there’s a small pile of phones on my desk, and roughly four out of five of them are black. Sometimes a forest green or a midnight blue will enter the mix, but never something as attention-grabbing as viva magenta. It’s a welcome change from the muted rectangles.

Motorola Edge 30 Fusion with screen facing up on a background of yellow circle and blue sky with white clouds. — *Fun! What a concept!*

The magenta edition Edge 30 Fusion also comes with a pair of color-coordinated wireless earbuds. When’s the last time you bought a phone that came with wireless earbuds right in the box? Probably never, that’s when. They’re not exactly top-notch, but they’re surprisingly good.

Noise cancellation is serviceable, and both the phone and buds support Dolby Atmos sound, which claims to provide “clearer dialog, crisper detail, and more engaging sound.” That sounds like some marketing gibberish, but you know what? It is pretty engaging. The sound on an episode of White Lotus felt richer and more immersive as I watched the rich people get immersed in their own problems. Color me impressed.

Viva Magenta Motorola phone and burgundy-colored earbuds on a black countertop — *The Viva Magenta version of the Edge 30 Fusion comes with a color-coordinated pair of wireless earbuds. And they’re not bad!*

To sweeten the deal, the back of the Edge 30 Fusion has a leather-like finish, which not only looks nice but also makes the phone easier to hold in one hand. One drawback: the porous surface seems to hang onto strong scents more willingly than an all-glass device. The loaner unit I’ve been using picked up a strong perfume smell somewhere along its path, and it took a few days of airing out to dissipate. I don’t believe that’s a multi-sensory feature of viva magenta; it’s certainly not spirit-galvanizing. Anyway, I asked Motorola about this, and the company hasn’t gotten back to me.

Outside of all the cosmetic stuff, the Edge 30 Fusion is a nice phone, too. It has a Snapdragon 888 Plus processor with snappy performance, a fancy 6.55-inch OLED with 144Hz refresh rate, and fast 68W wired charging (cable and charging brick included). There’s a 50-megapixel stabilized main camera, a 32-megapixel selfie camera with heavy face-smoothing on by default, and a 13-megapixel ultrawide. It’s all very nice, if not the best you can do for the money.

I can say with absolute certainty, though, that it is the viva magenta-est phone you can buy at any price. Carrying around a pink phone for a little while was a lot of fun, and judging from the response when I posted about it on Twitter, a lot of you thought it might be, too. And if you’re not sold on magenta, well, there’s always next year.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

More details come out on which departments saw layoffs at Google, Microsoft, and Amazon

*Amazon’s hexagonal MK27-2 delivery drone* | Image: Amazon

Google’s decision to let go of 12,000 employees was only just announced on Friday, but it extended the recent trend of the “Big Tech” companies cutting jobs in previously unheard-of numbers, and now we’ve seen more reports about where those cuts happened.

The Information reports that at Google, layoffs spread through nearly every group, including projects like Chrome, Search, Android, and Google Cloud. Its sources said they affected people who’d previously received “high performance reviews” and some managers making anywhere from $500K to $1 million.

One area of the search and advertising giant that was “relatively unaffected,” however, was the Google Brain division run by Jeff Dean, the senior vice president of research and artificial intelligence. That’s the team developing the machine learning tech Google is already using in many areas. According to the New York Times, its work will also be applied to a number of products we’ll reportedly see at its I/O event in May, including tools to generate images, a YouTube green screen feature, and at some point this year, a chatbot version of its search engine.

Google confirmed to Bloomberg that it decided “to wind down the majority of the Area 120 team.” That incubator, named for Google’s famed but long-dormant policy of allowing employees 20 percent of their time to chase side projects, had already seen large cuts affecting half of its projects late last year. The company said three projects will be folded into Google while the rest appear to be gone.

It sounds like 343's Halo Infinite campaign team got hit hard. In an email to staff, studio head Pierre Hintze wrote that "we've made the difficult decision to restructure elements of our team, which means some roles are being eliminated." https://t.co/GhjZLz6m7V
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) January 18, 2023

At Microsoft, where 10,000 people are being laid off, Polygon points out reports of the effects on several game development studios and the responses from some former employees. According to Bloomberg, there were cuts at Starfield developer Bethesda, and reporter Jason Schreier said in a tweet that its Halo studio 343 Industries was reportedly “hit hard.” At the same time, Kotaku noted that The Coalition, which works on the Gears of War games, was also affected.

Amazon confirmed to us months ago that its layoffs included jobs in the devices and services division. Then, in early January, hardware chief Dave Limp said on CNBC’s TechCheck that the cuts affected nearly 2,000 people in his division, which is home to products like Alexa and its Echo smart home devices. Projects confirmed dropped included its video-calling device for kids and telehealth service.

This week, CNBC reports the layoffs also include a “significant number” of employees working on the Prime Air drone delivery project at multiple sites, including its headquarters, and, according to a since-deleted LinkedIn post, as much as half the team at its Pendleton, Oregon test site. Originally announced by Jeff Bezos in 2013, the program is seeing those cuts just as it starts to roll out testing in a few cities and prepares to launch the next-generation MK30 drone that will follow up the earlier MK27-2 unit shown above.

Amazon declined to say to CNBC how many people in the division had been laid off.

Drop Sense75 review: a $350 keyboard without $350 of quality

Sanding down those rough edges doesn’t come cheap.

Drop has become a popular retailer of keyboard components like keycaps, but it also has a lineup of fully assembled models for anyone who wants something that’ll just work out of the box. These include the $99 ENTR, $200 CTRL, and $250 SHIFT. Its latest model, the Sense75, is a little different.

With its gasket-mount design, thick double-shot DCX keycaps, and compatibility with the VIA keymapping software, the Sense75 hits all the latest buzzwords to be a premium keyboard for discerning enthusiasts. And its starting price — $349 for the fully assembled version in black — leaves little doubt about the kind of customer that Drop is targeting here.

That’s a lot to spend on a keyboard, and it gives you the right to scrutinize every last detail of the Sense75. But it’s scrutiny that the keyboard is never quite able to withstand.

HOW WE RATE AND REVIEW PRODUCTS

With its subdued colors, the Sense75 could almost pass for an office keyboard when you disable its RGB, but that’s only really half true. After all, the Sense75 offers a familiar combination of current mechanical keyboard design trends, including a 75 percent layout, gasket-mount design, and of course, the increasingly standard issue volume knob. Feature parity is no bad thing, but it also means Drop has its work cut out if it wants to distinguish itself from competing keyboards like the GMMK Pro and Keychron Q1.

I’ve been using the fully assembled black model of the Sense75, which Drop sells for $349, but there are a couple of different versions available. The keyboard’s fully assembled white variant sells for $399, and it’s also available as a bare-bones model without switches or keycaps for $249 in black or $299 in white.

That’s expensive, considering that the Keychron Q1 has an identical layout and nearly identical features — including a gasket mounting system, RGB lighting, and hot-swap sockets — but costs just shy of $180 with keycaps and switches (it’s our current recommendation for the best premium keyboard). There’s an argument that Drop’s keyboard includes as standard the kinds of premium aftermarket components that you might use to upgrade Keychron’s keyboard, though admittedly only if you want the specific components that Drop is offering.

Two Holy Panda switches on a desk. — *There’s only one choice of switch here — Holy Panda X.*

Close up of the Sense75’s volume dial. — *Obviously the keyboard includes a volume dial.*

Visually, the Sense75 compares well to the Keychron Q1. Its appearance is crisp and well-considered, and like the Keychron, there’s no distracting branding on the top of the keyboard. Around the volume dial, there’s no awkward square like you see on most of Keychron’s Q-series boards. At a little over 3.1 pounds (1.42kg), the keyboard feels weighty and solid, and I struggle to point out a single rough edge. I’m a big fan of this clean look.

This understated design extends to the Sense75’s RGB lighting. Most mechanical keyboards offer some kind of RGB lighting at this point, which normally shines upwards around (and often through) their keycaps. But while the Sense75 has both per-key RGB lighting as well as an external light strip, its keycaps are entirely opaque, and its external lighting points downwards, meaning that you can’t see evidence of either when they’re turned off. Great news for RGB haters.

As standard, the keyboard comes with a set of Drop’s DCX keycaps, which retail for $99 as a standalone set. I wrote about Drop’s keycap design last year, but the short version is that they represent the company’s attempt to compete with GMK, which produces what many enthusiasts believe to be the gold standard of aftermarket keycaps. That means Drop’s keycaps use thick, high-quality ABS plastic and a double-shot construction with fantastically crisp lettering. The keen-eyed will spot small inconsistencies (my editor Nathan Edwards immediately clocked that the lettering on the left Shift key almost reads “Shif t”), but they’re far better than Keychron’s stock keycaps and are among the best you’ll find on an off-the-shelf keyboard.

Sense75 keyboard. — *The keyboard’s DCX keycaps are among the best around.*

While Keychron’s boards (even its affordable sub-$100 K-series models) come with both Mac and Windows keycaps in the box, the Sense75 ships with just Windows keycaps. If you’d like the keyboard to have Command and Option keys rather than Alt and “Super” (Drop’s version of the Windows key), you can spend an additional $25 for the Mac keycaps addon. The process of actually flipping the keyboard between its Windows and Mac compatibility modes is handled with a keyboard shortcut rather than the simple hardware toggle Keychron uses. But unless you need to switch between the two operating systems on a regular basis, it’s a fiddle you’ll rarely encounter.

A big advantage the more affordable fully assembled Keychron Q1 has over the Sense75 is that it’s available with three different switch types. The Sense75 has just one switch option: Drop’s Holy Panda X switches. There’s no option for linear or clicky red or blue switches or less tactile browns. Arguably that’s the point of the Sense75’s barebones version. But if you were to buy the barebones version of the keyboard in black ($249) plus a set of white-on-black DCX keycaps ($99), you’d be spending the same amount as the fully assembled model with no cash left over for switches. It doesn’t look like a great deal.

Meanwhile, if you were to buy the barebones version of the Keychron Q1 and then add the same Holy Panda X switches and Drop DCX keycaps included as standard with the Sense75, you’d be looking at around $365: $161 for the keyboard, $99 for the keycaps, and $105 for the switches. (That last number is a bit misleading, though: Drop is the only vendor for Holy Panda X switches, which it sells for $1 each and only in packs of 35, which means you have to buy three packs to cover a 75 percent board. This is almost comically user-hostile, but there are plenty of nice switches out there for much less money.) This setup gets you a very similar keyboard for not that much more money, plus a complete set of switches and keycaps that could always be repurposed for a future board.

Keyboard with two keycaps and one switch removed. — *Drop includes a good quality keycap and switch puller in the box.*

Sense75 keyboard with RGB lighting on. — *Underglow RGB lighting mean light strips aren’t visible when it’s turned off.*

In fairness to Drop, if you had to choose just one set of switches to ship with a keyboard, you could do a lot worse than the Holy Panda X, and their larger tactile bump feels great here. There’s a thunk to them that you don’t get with brown or linear switches, and combined with the aluminum case and plate, the keyboard feels chunky and solid to type on without any of the high-pitched pinging sounds you can sometimes get from metal cases, thanks to gratuitous use of dampening foam.

And yet, side by side with a Keychron keyboard, I far prefer the Keychron Q1. Although both are gasket-mounted, meaning their switch plates are suspended between strips of squishy foam to give it a little bit of give and bounce as you type, Drop’s keyboard doesn’t have nearly the same amount of flex. It gives the Sense75 a stiffer feel compared to the Keychron that doesn’t exactly scream “gasket mount.”

Drop’s PCB-mounted stabilizers (the mechanism that sits under long keys to stop them rattling) are also far more rattly than Keychron’s out of the box. While the space bar on the Q1 has a nice pop sound to it, the Sense75 rattles in a way that doesn’t exactly scream “$349 keyboard.” Overall, it means the typing experience only ever ends up feeling “okay” rather than “great,” and I prefer the feel of Keychron’s sub-$200 Q1.

The Sense75’s case is weighty and thick.

As well as a lack of switch choices, there’s also no option to get the keyboard with a European ISO layout. This is an ANSI- (read: US-) only board. The Sense75’s switches are south-facing for better compatibility with aftermarket keycaps, and the PCB’s sockets are 5-pin for maximum compatibility. Opening up the keyboard is relatively easy, with just six screws on the underside of the case to unscrew.

The Sense75 also supports remapping, but it’s a bit of a weird thing to get set up. The good news is that you can use the excellent VIA software to remap the keyboard’s keys, set up macros, and adjust the keyboard’s lighting. The bad news is that you’ll need to flash special VIA-enabled firmware onto the keyboard before it’ll support the VIA app. That’s because the keyboard’s stock firmware is designed for use with Drop’s own configurator tool, which isn’t currently compatible with the Sense75. Support is due to go live next month, but I wasn’t able to test the functionality as part of my review.

A final note on accessories: In the Sense75’s box, you get a keycap puller, switch puller, and USB-C cable alongside the keyboard. The pullers are nice. The switch puller has a far larger grip than Keychron’s, which should make it easier on the hands if you ever want to remove the Sense75’s dozens of switches. But the keyboard’s detachable USB-C cable is a bizarrely short 100cm (around 40in) in length, and I had to use an extension cable to get it to look tidy with my desk setup. For comparison, the cable included with my Keychron Q2 was a much more comfortable 180cm (around 70in) in length.

Underside of Sense75 keyboard. — *Any Drop branding is kept to the underside of the keyboard.*

RGB underglow lighting on the Sense75. — *The Sense75 is available in white as well as black.*

The Drop Sense75 sits in a bit of an awkward part of the mechanical keyboard market. It’s not that it’s the most expensive keyboard ever sold. But with a starting price of $349, it’s mainly competing against DIY models that you assemble yourself at home, where there’s an expectation that most people will do a certain amount of tinkering and modding to get the exact sound and feel they want.

Meanwhile, Keychron’s Q1 offers very similar specs to the Sense75 for under $200, and I think it’s a nicer typing experience to book. Admittedly the Q1’s stock keycaps are nowhere near as nice as the Sense75’s, but with the money saved, you could buy a set of Drop DCX keycaps — or GMK or MT3 or really any aftermarket keycap set — and still have money left over. Or if you’re prepared to sacrifice build quality but still want VIA programmability, you can spend under $100 on Keychron’s V1 (our current pick for the best keyboard available for most people). Or you could get a wireless keyboard from Epomaker or Ajazz for under $200.

With its fantastically clean design, high-quality stock keycaps, and tasteful underglow RGB lighting, the Sense75 looks every bit as nice as its price point suggests it should. But a combination of rattly stabilizers and stiff gasket means it never quite ends up feeling it, and hobbyists will likely still have some tinkering to do to get the exact feel they want. The Sense75 works out of the box, but I wouldn’t say it feels or behaves like a $350 keyboard out of the box.

Photography by Jon Porter / The Verge

vendredi 20 janvier 2023

Twitter hit by 40% revenue drop amid ad squeeze, say reports

More than 500 advertising clients have reportedly paused spending since Elon Musk’s takeover in October

Twitter remains in the grip of an advertising squeeze, with the social media platform hit by a 40% drop in revenue after more than 500 clients paused their spending, according to reports.

The company’s daily revenue was down 40% year-over-year, the tech newsletter the Platformer reported, while the news site the Information said staff were told more than 500 of Twitter’s top advertisers had halted spending since Elon Musk bought it in October.

Twitter will stop forcing you onto its ‘For You’ timeline

Screenshot of the current Twitter UI with a pinned list selected. — *Soon you may be able to more-or-less set one of the tabs as default.*

Twitter’s next update should make it less insistent that you use the “For You” algorithmic timeline, according to a tweet from Elon Musk. He says the app will “stop switching you back to recommended tweets,” and remember if you left it on the reverse-chronological “Following” timeline or a pinned list.

Musk’s promises should be taken with a grain of salt, but I hope the company delivers on this one. Until last month, Twitter had a button that let you set a preference on which version of the timeline you wanted to use. That option went away when the company rolled out a UI that let you swipe between the two timelines, with the app defaulting to opening on the algorithmic one.

Next Twitter update will remember whether you were on For You (ie recommended), Following or list you made & stop switching you back to recommended tweets
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2023

Musk also says users will get the ability to arrange the top bar at some point, creating a custom order for the “For You” and “Following” tabs, as well as any pinned lists you have.

TikTok confirms that its own employees can decide what goes viral

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

TikTok has confirmed to Forbes that some of its US employees have the ability to boost videos in order to “introduce celebrities and emerging creators to the TikTok community.” The statement comes as part of a report about TikTok’s “Heating” button, which Forbes says can be used to put selected videos onto users’ For You pages, helping boost views by sidestepping the algorithm that supposedly drives the TikTok experience.

Jamie Favazza, a spokesperson for TikTok, told Forbes that increasing views to particular videos isn’t the only reason for heating. TikTok will also “promote some videos to help diversify the content experience” (read: make sure your feed isn’t entirely made up of one or two trends), he said. Favazza also suggests TikTok doesn’t do it that often, claiming only “.002% of videos in For You feeds” are heated. According to an internal document obtained by Forbes, however, heated videos reportedly make up “around 1-2 percent” of “total daily video views.”

Heated videos don’t come with a label to show that they’ve been boosted by TikTok like ads or sponsored posts do, according to the report. Instead, they appear like any other videos that the algorithm would’ve selected for you.

The news isn’t necessarily a surprise. There have been reports for years that TikTok used promises of promoted content to convince politicians and businesses to use its platform, and companies, especially in the music industry, have made no secret of using the platform to promote their brands.

TikTok would also be far from the only social media company to boost videos unnaturally. Facebook allegedly knew it was showing inflated view counts and didn’t fix it right away to help entice advertisers and media companies to its platform. (It ended up paying $40 million to settle a lawsuit over the issue.) While that’s not exactly the same scenario — TikTok videos do actually seem to get genuine views, even if they’re not going viral organically — the effect could be similar; people end up thinking that they’ll do better on TikTok than they actually will.

It also means that TikTok is picking winners and losers: creators and brands may lose a spot on someone’s For You page to someone that has a tighter relationship with the company. According to Forbes, there have been incidents where employees heated content they shouldn’t have, promoting videos from friends, partners, and even their own accounts.

Creators might also lose interest in the platform if their videos underperform compared to ones that are being boosted, as TikTok’s lack of transparency around heating makes it hard to tell which videos got to the top organically.

The report comes as TikTok is facing heavy competition from platforms like YouTube, which has recently started enticing creators by giving them a cut of ad revenue made off Shorts, and Instagram’s push to pay creators for Reels (though the latter admitted on Friday that it’s recently been pushing video too hard). Meanwhile, TikTok has a selective creators fund and a very limited ad-sharing model, which could give its competitors a leg up.

Elon Musk Testifies That His Tweets Did Not Drive Tesla’s Stock Price

Elon Musk Testifies That His Tweets Did Not Drive Tesla’s Stock Price The chief executive of Tesla testified in a federal civil trial about a 2018 plan to take the automaker private that fizzled out.

Dating burnout: meet the people who ditched the apps – and found love offline

Internet dating can feel soul-destroying, unnerving and transactional. Couples explain how their love lives were transformed when they finally stopped swiping

When Georgie Thorogood’s date made a sleazy joke about “horsey girls carrying whips”, she knew it was time to make a hasty exit. After meeting Tom through a dating app in the summer of 2021, she had been hoping for some polite conversation over a few drinks, maybe some romantic chemistry if she was lucky. What she got was a two-hour rant about his ex-wife and some creepy innuendo. “I knew straight away he wasn’t for me. I politely told him I didn’t want to see him again, but he took the rejection really badly. I work in music communications and at the time I was setting up a festival. He started getting aggressive and telling me that I was destined to fail,” she says. “I don’t know how he could possibly know that, as he didn’t ask me a single question about myself all night.”

Her bad experience, which came after months of mindless swiping, was the final straw for Georgie, 40. “Not only did I find dating apps soul-destroying, I was also happy with my single life, so I decided to quit them completely and focus on that instead,” she says. “I found so many of the men on apps had serious issues, too. Another guy became abusive when I turned down an offer to meet for a walk in a remote location because it didn’t feel safe. You never know who people are online.” While Georgie acknowledges that people with emotional baggage aren’t exclusive to dating sites, she feels the apps give them a chance to hide their bad behaviour. “The problem is that you don’t have to reflect or make changes when something goes wrong – you can just swipe to the next person.”

jeudi 19 janvier 2023

Apple has hiked HomePod Mini and iMac prices in some countries

Top-down picture of a black HomePod Mini — Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Depending on where you live, the HomePod Mini and the iMac may have just gotten more expensive. The Apple Post noted that the company’s small smart speaker went from £89 to £99 in the UK, and outlets like MacRumors and 9to5Mac have reported a similar €99 to €109 jump in other European countries like Austria, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

In the UK, each pre-made iMac configuration also went up in price by £150. In France, iMac prices went up by €100 for the base model and €110 for the other models, though they stayed the same in Germany and Ireland.

It’s hard to find a pattern in the increases. In New Zealand, the HomePod Mini’s price went from NZ$159.00 to NZ$179.00, while it stayed the same in neighboring Australia. Meanwhile, people in the Netherlands have been paying the “increased” €109 price since it became available in the country in March, 2022.

Apple didn’t immediately reply to The Verge’s request for comment on why the price hikes were happening in certain locations. In the US, the HomePod Mini is still $99, the same price it launched at.

It’s relatively rare for already-released Apple hardware to get a price bump; the company will typically raise the price when it introduces a new generation instead, like it’s done with MacBooks and iPhones. (While it announced on stage that the iPhone 14 would have the same starting price as its predecessor, that wasn’t true in the UK and several European countries, many of which are also affected by the HomePod Mini increase.)

While Apple did technically add new software features to its smart speakers this week, giving them the ability to sense temperature and humidity, it’d be hard to argue that justifies raising the price, given that the hardware was already included. If you bought a HomePod Mini the day it launched for €99, you’re getting this feature too via a software update.

T-Mobile Says Hacker Got Data From 37 Million Customer Accounts

T-Mobile Says Hacker Got Data From 37 Million Customer Accounts The breach exposed information like names, addresses and phone numbers and lasted more than a month, the company reported in a securities filing.

BP makes an order for EV charging stations from US-based Tritium

Two charging stations are in a production facility with people working in the background. The chargers have Tritium logos on the top and BP Pulse logos on the center, and each have two charging plugs. — *BP Pulse branded charging stations built by Tritium.* | Image: Tritium

BP Pulse, the EV branch of oil and gas conglomerate BP, placed a new order for DC fast chargers from electric vehicle power supply maker Tritium. The companies have not specified how many chargers are in the new order, but Tritium calls it its “largest ever order from a single customer.” The transaction means there will soon be even more available chargers as EV adoption grows and government-mandated deadlines to eliminate combustion cars looms closer.

“We’re looking forward to putting these chargers to work across three continents,” BP Pulse CEO Richard Bartlett states in a press release. BP Pulse currently operates about 60 charging locations in the UK based on its online map and is working to expand in Australia, Europe, and the United States.

BP and Tritium entered a multiyear contract in April last year with a goal of growing BP Pulse’s network of fleet and public-accessible fast charging stations. Tritium recently partnered with DC-America in October to help build a nationwide fast charging network in the US. The American-based company also sells chargers to other customers like Osprey in the UK.

Tritium builds its DC chargers, ones that are capable of 50 and 150 kWh speeds, largely in its plant in Lebanon, Tennessee, that opened in August. It also has a plant in Brisbane, Australia, where it plans to build chargers for BP Pulse deployments that land down under. The company’s US plant is said to be capable of 30,000 units per year “at full maturity,” while the Australian one is capable of 5,000. Tritium did not specify when its plants would reach production capacities.

BP established its footing in the EV charging business through the acquisition of California-based Amply power in 2021, which was then renamed to BP Pulse. Thanks to the former company’s fleet and charging management platform, the new BP Pulse then secured a partnership with Hertz to help build out its EV charging fleet network.

BP’s deals with Hertz and Tritium highlight a growing interest for legacy fossil fuel companies to pivot harder toward supporting EV growth. Just this week, big oil company Shell acquired EV charging network Volta. Both of these transactions just might set a tone for 2023 that electric cars are gaining steam — though some states could get in the way of that.

Samsung Display shows off a new folding phone hinge that can rotate 360 degrees

Samsung Display prototype folded outwards being held in somebody’s hands. — *Samsung Display prototype.* | Image: Samsung Display

Samsung has a new prototype display that could send its folding phones in a new direction: 360 degrees.

Samsung Display, the subsidiary that makes the company’s screens, showed off the new prototype display and hinge at CES 2023. The “Flex In & Out” display can rotate 360 degrees, meaning it can be folded inward and outward, company spokesperson John Lucas told The Verge in an email.

In addition, the display comes with a different hinge design that supposedly creates a significantly less visible crease. That’s because the “water-drop hinge” could allow the display to form a looser shape — like a waterdrop — when folded inward. This subtler hinge would also put less stress on the display.

Samsung Display prototype folded inwards and on with a less visible crease. — *Samsung Display prototype.*

It’s not the first time Samsung Display has shown off a “Flex In & Out” prototype embracing the fold-in-all-directions design. In 2021, a “Flex In & Out” display also made an appearance at South Korea’s International Meeting for Information Displays (IMID), reports Tom’s Guide. However, the approach was different, and the display folded like an “S” with multiple segments. As of the Galaxy Z Fold 4, which was released in August 2022, Samsung’s Fold line is still using displays that only fold flat in one direction.

It’s possible the new screen could show up in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, though. Rumors have suggested the device could feature a less visible crease thanks to a similar hinge design.

*The new hinge (on the bottom) and a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold phone on top.*

The design would fix what some see as the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4’s flawed “U”-shaped hinge, which creates a prominent crease. It would also make the Galaxy Z Fold 5 more similar to foldable smartphone rivals with less prominent creases, like the Oppo Find N2 and the third-gen Motorola Razr.

It’s not known yet when Samsung will release the Z Fold 5, though we expect the company to release it alongside the Galaxy Z Flip 5 in August. In the meantime, all eyes are on the new Samsung Galaxy S23 series, which Samsung will launch during its upcoming Galaxy Unpacked event on February 1st.

Twitter officially bans third-party clients with new developer rules

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter has updated its developer rules to ban third-party clients, almost a week after it unceremoniously blocked the apps’ access to its platform, offering almost no explanation to what was going on (via Engadget). The new rules state that you can’t use Twitter’s API or content to “create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.”

The rules, updated on Thursday, make it clear what that means: “Twitter Applications” refers to the company’s “consumer facing products, services, applications, websites, web pages, platforms, and other offerings, including without limitation, those offered via https://twitter.com and Twitter’s mobile applications.” The clause banning alternative services was added to the rules with the most recent update, according to the Wayback Machine.

The rule change comes after Twitter silently broke several popular third-party Twitter clients like Tweetbot and Twitterific starting on January 12th. At the time, the developers behind the apps (many of which have historically shaped the entire Twitter user experience) said they had received no communication whatsoever from the company about what was happening. Then, on January 17th, the company’s developer account tweeted that it was “enforcing its long-standing API rules,” which “may result in some apps not working.”

The statement was not positively received. Several commentators and developers pointed out the lack of clarity about what rules were actually being broken and the fact that the apps had been running for years before Elon Musk purchased Twitter and started espousing plans to turn it into an “everything app.” In 2021, former Twitter developer platform lead Amir Shevat told me that the company was specifically trying to make it easier for developers to compete with Twitter’s first-party apps with a recent rule change.

“We have been respectful of their API rules, as published, for the past 16 years,” wrote Ged Maheux, a co-founder of Twitterific developer The Iconfactory, in a blog post about the app being down. “We have no knowledge that these rules have changed recently or what those changes might be.”

Craig Hockenberry, principal at Iconfactory, put it more bluntly on his personal blog: “There was no advance notice for its creators, customers just got a weird error, and no one is explaining what’s going on. We had no chance to thank customers who have been with us for over a decade. Instead, it’s just another scene in their ongoing shit show.”

Money is likely one of the reasons behind the rule change and third-party client ban. Twitter has been struggling financially since Musk took over, saddling it with billions in debt, and third-party clients don’t earn it any money. The company doesn’t serve ads via its API, and people using third-party clients may not be as interested in the Twitter Blue subscription service, which mainly adds features to the official Twitter app.

There seemingly hasn’t been any official announcement of the rule change, either from Twitter Dev or Elon Musk. Twitter doesn’t have a communications department to contact.

James Dyson attacks Rishi Sunak’s ‘shortsighted, stupid’ tax policies

UK entrepreneur says economic strategy has left Britain in a ‘Covid inertia’ and calls for growth plan

Sir James Dyson, the billionaire businessperson, has launched a withering attack on Rishi Sunak’s government, saying its “shortsighted” and “stupid” economic policies have left the country in a state of “Covid inertia”.

The founder of the eponymous vacuum cleaner firm said “growth has become a dirty word” under the current leadership and that on current trends, the average British family will be poorer than their Polish counterpart by 2030.

mercredi 18 janvier 2023

TikTok is overrun by amateur sleuths – so which clues should I leave in case I go missing? | Michael Sun

Everyone from awkward boyfriends to supposedly nefarious fiances are being held to account. The jurors? A million deranged zoomers

Amazon’s OSHA fine for warehouse safety violations could be about $60K

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, has issued a citation against Amazon, alleging that the company violated safety laws and failed to keep workers in three warehouses safe. The regulator has also proposed $60,269 in penalties related to the violations — a drop in the bucket for a company that recorded over $127 billion in sales during the third quarter of 2022 alone but a relatively high penalty compared to many of the ones it faced from OSHA before.

According to a press release, the citation stems from inspections at three warehouses located in Deltona, Florida, Waukegan, Illinois, and New Windsor, New York. OSHA says that Amazon “exposed workers to ergonomic, struck-by hazards” in the location, putting them at “high risk for lower back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders.”

Doug Parker, assistant secretary for Occupational Safety and Health, laid part of the blame on the pace that Amazon sets for its warehouse employees. “Each of these inspections found work processes that were designed for speed but not safety,” he said, pointing out that the system at the warehouses seemed geared toward getting packages shipped out rather than worker safety.

It’s a criticism Amazon has faced for years, including from OSHA itself. Last year, advocacy group The Strategic Organizing Center released a report saying that Amazon workers make up a disproportionately high percentage of all warehouse industry injuries in the US. Outside of the warehouse, a 2019 report from Buzzfeed and ProPublica accused the company of trading safety for speed in its delivery network, and that point was reiterated last year by the SOC.

A statement from the activist group Athena Coalition quotes Daniel Olayiwola, an Amazon warehouse worker in San Antonio: “OSHA’s findings are a reflection of the experience of Amazon workers like me in warehouses all over the country.” Olayiwola says that workers have been “speaking out for years about the grueling pace of work and exploitative policies that directly cause burnout, severe stress on our bodies, and unsafe situations.”

For its part, Amazon doesn’t agree with OSHA’s latest allegations. “We take the safety and health of our employees very seriously, and we strongly disagree with these allegations and intend to appeal,” reads a statement from spokesperson Kelly Nantel. “We’ve cooperated fully, and the government’s allegations don’t reflect the reality of safety at our sites.” Nantel also cites an improvement in the company’s injury rates between 2019 and 2021 (a claim similar to one Amazon made in response to the 2022 SOC report) and says that “We look forward to sharing more during our appeal about the numerous safety innovations, process improvements, and investments we’re making to further reduce injuries.”

According to OSHA, Amazon received citations for 14 record-keeping violations last year for “failing to record injuries and illnesses, misclassifying injuries and illnesses, not recording injuries and illnesses within the required time, and not providing OSHA with timely injury and illness records.” Those came with proposed fines of around $29,008 and were part of the same investigation as the citations announced Wednesday.

The regulator dinging Amazon is rare but not unheard of. The company received a citation in 2015 for failing to properly record work-related injuries and illnesses, as well as a handful of covid-related citations in 2020.

OSHA says that it’s also conducting investigations at three other Amazon warehouses in Aurora, Colorado, Nampa, Idaho, and Castleton, New York, after the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York referred it to do so last summer.

Cyber-attacks have tripled in past year, says Ukraine’s cybersecurity agency

UK security minister Tom Tugendhat warns of ‘persistent threat’ of Russian attacks on country’s infrastructure

Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Ukraine has suffered a threefold growth in cyber-attacks over the past year, with Russian hacking at times deployed in combination with missile strikes, according to a senior figure in the country’s cybersecurity agency.

The attacks from Russia have often taken the form of destructive, disk-erasing wiper malware, said Viktor Zhora, a leading figure in the country’s SSSCIP agency, with “in some cases, cyber-attacks supportive to kinetic effects”.

Apple is reportedly working on an iPad-like smart display

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Apple is working on a brand-new slew of smart home devices, at least according to a report by Bloomberg.

In addition to the very similar but Matter-equipped relaunch of the original HomePod, Apple appears to be pushing deeper into the home space with a smaller display akin to a Google Nest Hub or Amazon’s Echo Show. According to sources close to the discussions, the device would be similar to an iPad but less expensive, oriented toward home use, and would include a magnet for mounting. The device would appear to be more limited in scope than an iPad and would mainly be used for FaceTime chats, as well as controlling other smart home devices. Here’s hoping it can solve the multi-user problem that makes current iPads unpleasant for home control use. There have also been talks about larger smart home displays down the line.

An image of a Google Nest Hub. — *Apple’s new display seems to be aimed squarely at offerings by Google and Amazon*

In addition, Apple appears to be exploring a refresh of the Apple TV with a faster processor for the first half of 2024, but the device will not support 8k. The combination HomePod / Apple TV project also appears to have suffered setbacks but is still in the works, according to the source. The smart displays are still a long way away and will not launch until early next year or possibly later.

Hey, maybe with those magnets in the back, I could snap it to the fridge and make it a smart fridge.

A Space for the Unbound review – Indonesian school adventure has a fantastical twist

PC, Mac, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch (version played); Mojiken Studio/Toge Productions
The story of Atma and his reality-warping girlfriend Raya demonstrates a flair for the dramatic and will keep you guessing right up to the end

The video game charts tend to be dominated by titles from US, European and Japanese studios, and as such the games we play are awash with those cultural influences. So it’s a welcome treat to play something from an Indonesian developer, infused with less familiar references. For example, I now know that keroncong is a genre of music based around a ukulele-like instrument.

A Space for the Unbound tells the tale of Atma and Raya, two high-school students growing up in late-90s Indonesia. In many ways it’s similar to Attack of the Friday Monsters!, a much-loved, nostalgia-heavy 2013 Nintendo DS title about children exploring their Japanese home town in the 1970s. Like that game, A Space for the Unbound’s beautiful anime art style captures the spirit of idyllic childhood memories, where it’s always summer and the sky is forever cerulean blue. It also shares a penchant for the fantastical, blurring the line between the imaginary and real.

Logitech’s new $69.99 webcam is a stylish alternative to its aging C920s

Logitech Brio 300 webcam mounted to a monitor. — *Logitech’s new Brio 300 webcam.* | Image: Logitech

Logitech is adding a new webcam to its Brio lineup in the form of the Brio 300. At $69.99 (£74.99), it’s at the low end of Logitech’s Brio lineup and only offers up to 1080p / 30fps capture rather than 4K / 30fps or 1080 / 60fps like the $199.99 Brio 4K Pro. It has a single microphone built in and is available in a choice of gray, off-white, or pink. Alongside the Brio 300, Logitech has also announced a business-focused variant, the Brio 305.

The Brio 300’s price and specs put it in the same ballpark as Logitech’s ubiquitous C920s Pro HD webcam, which also has an MSRP of $69.99. But the Brio 300 benefits from a sleeker, more modern design and a neatly integrated privacy shutter that can be manually swiveled around to cover its camera when not in use. The C920s Pro HD still has a privacy shutter, but its design is nowhere near as neat.

Animation of Brio 300 privacy shutter. — *There’s a built-in privacy shutter for when you’re not using the webcam.*

The Brio 300 connects via USB-C, which is something to bear in mind if your computer only has USB-A ports available. But based on people’s experiences with Logitech’s other USB-C webcams, you should be able to use a USB-C to USB-A adaptor as a workaround. (Just remember to factor in the price of buying an adaptor.) We’ve followed up with Logitech to confirm this will work.

Versus the $129.99 Brio 500, the Brio 300 lacks stereo microphones, has a narrower 70-degree field of view (versus 90 degrees on the Brio 500), and there’s no mention of support for Logitech’s auto-framing feature. But at nearly half the price of the Brio 500, these could be tradeoffs worth making if you’re on a tighter budget.

The Brio 300 is on sale now.

mardi 17 janvier 2023

Samsung will unveil two ‘premium’ mobile devices at Unpacked, says TM Roh

Samsung S22 Ultra on a chess board with rear facing upward. — *The Galaxy S22 Ultra marked a turn in the product line’s evolution as it gobbled up the Note series.* | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Samsung has just published a blog post by TM Roh setting the stage for February 1st, when the company will hold its first in-person launch event since the start of the pandemic. Roh doesn’t offer many concrete details but specifically mentions improvements to its smartphone camera system and tells us to expect two new devices that “set the new premium standard for innovation.”

Reading between the lines, it looks like that means two new Ultra devices — a lot like last year when we got the Note-esque S22 Ultra and massive Tab S8 Ultra tablet.

TM Roh:

For Samsung, Ultra means big. Ultra means bold. Ultra means the best of the best in performance.

To take everyday experiences further, we redefine the essentials.

The upcoming Galaxy is all about camera, performance and sustainability. That’s why our pro-grade camera system is getting smarter. Our performance is getting more powerful.

And our connectivity is getting more seamless.

Our upcoming Galaxy redefines performance and quality, which is how we build on your trust.

Between this blog post, previous leaks, and an earlier hint from Samsung, it seems highly likely that we’ll see the company’s new 200-megapixel sensor in the S23 Ultra. Leaks and rumors also point to a brighter display, a second periscope telephoto lens, and a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 at the center of it all (at least in the US). The S22 Ultra already has one of our favorite mobile cameras of the past year, so we’ll be very interested to see what these camera updates look like.

As for the other Ultra, it’s very likely to be a Galaxy Book; Samsung’s preorder reservation site lists Galaxy Smartphone and Galaxy Book options (or both if you’re an overachiever).

Roh breaks down Samsung’s definition of Ultra like this: “For Samsung, Ultra means big. Ultra means bold. Ultra means the best of the best in performance.” But maybe in this next generation, Ultra will take on another informal definition: “has a stylus.” The S22 Ultra absorbed the Note and its S Pen integration, and it would make sense for a Galaxy Book with the Ultra name to carry the stylus integration through. All will be revealed soon enough: on February 1st, it’ll be pencils down as we find out exactly what Samsung has to offer.

Want a Giant Neon Twitter Bird? It’s One of Many Items Up for Auction.

Want a Giant Neon Twitter Bird? It’s One of Many Items Up for Auction. The company’s artwork, high-end furniture and espresso machines are for sale in an online auction that evoked a more flush era when its tastes reflected its status as a hot tech-world employer.

Google reportedly working on AirTag-like location trackers

Leaks suggest Google is working on its own first-party tracking tags to use alongside its in-development Finder Network. | Illustration: The Verge

Google is reportedly working on a location tracking tag to compete with the likes of Apple’s AirTags and Tile trackers, according to developer (and reliable leaker) Kuba Wojciechowski. Wojciechowski discovered references that indicate Google is working on support for locator tags in Fast Pair — Google’s method for quickly pairing nearby Bluetooth devices — and claims in a Twitter thread that Google is developing its own first-party tracker to use with the feature (seen via Sammobile).

The tracker, according to Wojciechowski, is codenamed “Grogu” (the name of the baby Yoda character from the Star Wars series The Mandalorian) alongside the alternate names “GR10” and “Groguaudio,” and is currently being developed by the Google Nest team. That doesn’t mean it’ll launch as a Nest-branded product, but Wojciechowski suggests the tracker might be released in multiple color options and include an onboard speaker to help users locate a missing device via sound, similar to that of an Apple AirTag.

I have recently found references that show that Google's working on support for locator tags in Fast Pair - see the linked thread for more info. https://t.co/8tvlWaHQpv

Now it turns out Google's working on a first party tracker too!
— Kuba Wojciechowski⚡ (@Za_Raczke) January 16, 2023

Wojciechowski also claims that the “Grogu” trackers could support Bluetooth LE and ultra-wideband (UWB). Google’s flagship Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 7 Pro mobile devices both support UWB connectivity, but its application so far has been limited to features like Nearby Share. While UWB offers far greater precision than Bluetooth for locating lost items, providing the ability to show both distance estimations and directions to a tag, Wojciechowski claims that “Even though Google’s tracker most likely has UWB, it’s not a requirement for the “Finder Network” they’re working on — BLE is enough.”

Wojciechowski estimates that Google may announce the product during the Google I/O Developer Conference sometime in May 2023 and that the trackers could be released alongside new Pixel devices during a Google event in the fall.

The Last of Us review – one of the finest TV shows you will see this year

This desperately moving drama set in a zombie-ravaged US is a phenomenal blend of horror and heart, with a cast that could not be more perfect

• The Last of Us recap episode one – welcome to the mushroom apocalypse!

What if it wasn’t a flu-like virus that threatened the existence of humankind, but a parasitic fungus that used rising temperatures to evolve and switch hosts, from ants to humans? That is the terrifying premise of The Last of Us, another post-apocalyptic prestige drama in a TV landscape that, for understandable reasons, is stuffed with game-over scenarios. While its zombie skeleton brings immediate comparisons to The Walking Dead, its beating heart is more in line with last year’s Station Eleven, with which it shares a surprisingly steady and meditative pace.

Much has been made of its origins as a video game, in part because the source material looked as if it might offer the best chance yet of a convincing transition from console to screen. The series was adapted by the game’s creator, Neil Druckmann, and Chernobyl’s showrunner, Craig Mazin, a combination that suggested it might buck the trend of video games reworked into another format. (Thirty years on, the Super Mario Bros film is still cited as a cautionary tale.)

The Last of Us is on Sky Atlantic and Now in the UK, HBO in the US and Binge and Foxtel in Australia.

Elon Musk Faces Trial Over His 2018 Plan to Take Tesla Private

Elon Musk Faces Trial Over His 2018 Plan to Take Tesla Private Investors are seeking billions of dollars in damages for their losses after Mr. Musk posted a proposal on Twitter that never materialized.

Samsung new 200-megapixel camera sensor is almost certainly inside the new Galaxy S23 Ultra

An illustration of the new camera sensor. — *Samsung’s new sensor, the ISOCELL HP2.* | Image: Samsung

The Samsung ISOCELL HP2 is a new 200-megapixel camera sensor whose specs precisely match what’s rumored to be in the Galaxy S23 Ultra. These include a size of 1/1.3” and 0.6-micrometer (μm) pixels. It’s been announced just weeks before the Galaxy S23 Ultra is widely expected to be unveiled on February 9th.

Samsung has been producing 200-megapixel sensors for years, but so far it’s yet to include such a high resolution sensor on its own flagship smartphones. Last year’s Galaxy S22 Ultra, for example, included a 108-megapixel sensor for its main camera, but its new sensor almost doubles the resolution. Here’s my colleague Allison Johnson on why this matters:

It’s not all about big numbers; moving to higher-pixel-count sensors has real image quality benefits. In this chapter of the megapixel race, it’s all about pixel binning. Samsung already employs this with its 108-megapixel sensor, and taking a super high-res photo isn’t the point — rather, combining individual pixels into four-by-four or two-by-two configurations is.

Binning pixels like this increases their effective size, allowing them to gather more light and detail. So the ISOCELL HP2 can bin every four pixels to effectively make them 1.2μm in size and produce 50-megapixel images, or bin 16 for even larger 2.4μm pixels and 12.5-megapixel images. This 1.2μm mode is used to record 8K video at 30fps, and the sensor also supports filming in 4K HDR at 60fps.

Away from raw specs, the sensor uses a new technology Samsung is calling “Dual Vertical Transfer Gate” which it says helps the sensor reduce overexposure and produce better colors in bright conditions. Meanwhile in low light it’s equipped with “Super QPD” for faster auto-focusing.

Samsung says the new sensor has already entered mass production — just in time for the launch of its upcoming flagship smartphone.