Technology

mardi 21 février 2023

Microsoft and Sony square off in EU showdown over Activision and Call of Duty

Illustration: The Verge

Microsoft and Sony’s gaming chiefs are both preparing to meet with EU regulators today in a showdown over Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The closed-door hearing in Brussels will see Xbox chief Phil Spencer and other senior Microsoft executives argue the case for the $68.7 billion deal to proceed, with PlayStation chief Jim Ryan attending to voice Sony’s concerns over the deal.

It’s a pivotal moment for Microsoft’s proposed acquisition, which has already seen opposition from regulators in the UK and US. The FTC is suing Microsoft to block its Activision Blizzard purchase, while the CMA published its provisional findings of its investigation earlier this month, warning that the deal could harm UK gamers. The CMA has offered up possible remedies that include Microsoft being forced to sell off Activision Blizzard’s business associated with Call of Duty.

Today’s closed-door meeting will feature a stack of executives from Microsoft including president Brad Smith, alongside Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. Reuters reports that representatives from Google, Nvidia, Valve, Electronic Arts, and the European Games Developer Federation will all be present, alongside half a dozen different national competition watchdogs.

Microsoft’s Smith revealed earlier today that the company has now signed a legally binding contract with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty — and potentially other Xbox games — to Nintendo consoles. Smith tweeted the announcement this morning, before a meeting with reporters where he said Microsoft is willing to accept regulatory undertakings to get the deal approved in Europe.

We’ve now signed a binding 10-year contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo’s gamers. This is just part of our commitment to bring Xbox games and Activision titles like Call of Duty to more players on more platforms. pic.twitter.com/JmO0hzw1BO
— Brad Smith (@BradSmi) February 21, 2023

“We’re more than willing, given our strategy, to address the concerns that others have, whether it’s by contracts, like we did with Nintendo this morning, or whether it’s by regulatory undertakings, as we’ve consistently been open to addressing,” said Smith, in a meeting attended by Bloomberg.

Notably absent in Smith’s tweet is any mention of Sony. While Microsoft has offered Sony a similar 10-year commitment on new Call of Duty games, it so far hasn’t accepted the deal. “We are in contact with Microsoft and have no further comment regarding our private negotiations,” said a Sony spokesperson in a statement to the Financial Times earlier this month.

It’s clear the negotiations between Microsoft and Sony have been fraught, particularly after Microsoft’s initial offer to keep Call of Duty on Sony’s consoles for “several more years” beyond an existing marketing deal was described as “inadequate on many levels” by PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan. Sony was planning on keeping details of its negotiations private, according to Ryan. “I hadn’t intended to comment on what I understood to be a private business discussion, but I feel the need to set the record straight because Phil Spencer brought this into the public forum,” said Ryan in a statement in September last year.

In December, Smith claimed that “Sony has emerged as the loudest objector” to the Activision acquisition, and any potential deal on Call of Duty between Microsoft and Sony would only strengthen Microsoft’s case with regulators. Microsoft has also accused Sony of paying developers to keep their content off of its Xbox Game Pass service, while Sony has argued that Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition could “hurt developers and lead to price rises.”

The European Commission will now need to decide how it handles objections to Microsoft’s deal. It reportedly sent its statement of objections to Microsoft earlier this month, issuing a formal antitrust warning against the software giant. The EU hasn’t published those objections publicly yet, and onlookers are waiting to see if lawmakers in Europe take a similar stance to the UK, with concerns around cloud competition and game exclusivity.

While the CMA is open to behavioral remedies that could involve deals for Call of Duty, it seems to favor structural ones — including a suggestion that involves a partial divestiture of Activision Blizzard in the form of selling off the Call of Duty business. Today’s meeting will highlight the European Commission’s main concerns and any potential remedies Microsoft may need to consider ahead of an April 11th deadline for a final decision.

Microsoft’s defense is bound to single out Sony, and perhaps even Google, as the opposition to this deal, with Microsoft’s allies including Nintendo, Valve, and even the Communications Workers of America union and UNI Global Union. The CWA called on the EU to “seriously consider the positive impact the Microsoft-Activision merger could have on the video game labor market,” and UNI made a similar plea on the eve of this crucial meeting.

Microsoft is still hoping to get this deal closed by the summer with its allies helping to sway regulators. But the European Commission, FTC, and CMA will dictate the timelines now. That doesn’t mean Microsoft isn’t willing to fight this all the way, though. Microsoft’s Brad Smith has already responded to the FTC warning of court action in the US. “While we believe in giving peace a chance, we have complete confidence in our case and welcome the opportunity to present it in court,” said Smith last year.

The outcome of today’s meeting and the EU’s decisions in the coming weeks will undoubtedly shape whether Microsoft will head to court to defend its deal in Europe and beyond.

Tuesday’s top tech news: A new era (or two) for Sonos

A marketing image of a white Sonos Era 300 speaker. — *The Sonos Era 300.*

Plus an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, and more lobbying from Microsoft.

We’ve been reporting for months on Sonos’ upcoming speakers, but yesterday my colleague Chris Welch published some pretty final-looking marketing images of the Era 100 and Era 300 smart speakers. Expect both to offer USB-C line-in and support for Bluetooth streaming, while the Era 300 will additionally support spatial audio and Dolby Atmos. An official announcement is apparently just a few short weeks away.

Next up, my colleague Andrew Webster got to visit the new Super Nintendo World attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood recently and chat with legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto himself.

Finally, Microsoft is continuing to work hard to close its deal to acquire Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard. It’s reiterated the ten-year deal it’s signed with Nintendo to bring the first-person shooter franchise to the company’s console as senior Microsoft execs reportedly prepare to meet with EU regulators in an attempt to allay their competition concerns.

And now, here’s a silly tweet to start your day:

This is what it’s like to post here pic.twitter.com/yAlubcxVqr
— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) February 2, 2023

Stay tuned, as we continue to update this list with the most important news of today: Tuesday, February 21st, 2023.

‘It took over my life!’ How one man made his dream 90s video game on his own

Computer programmer Cassius John-Adams explains how he mashed up Crazy Taxi and The Fifth Element during an obsessive three-year period, single-handedly creating the game he’d always dreamed of

Over lunch one day at work, Cassius John-Adams, a computer programmer for a Canadian TV network, was moaning to his co-workers that things aren’t as good as they used to be. “We got on to how everything, from video games to science-fiction films, was better in the late 90s and early 00s when we were all much younger,” explains the 45-year-old from his house in Toronto. Someone mentioned The Fifth Element, Luc Besson’s wildly inventive 1997 sci-fi film. John-Adams brought up Crazy Taxi, Sega’s cartoonishly energetic driving game. And then, “I was like: ‘Man, I wish there was a mix between the two.’ Everyone around the table went, ‘Yeah, that would be the perfect mix.’”

It was the spark for one of the great passion projects in recent video-gaming history. Doing nearly all of the work himself, fitting it around his day job, John-Adams has made that very hybrid, a new game called Mile High Taxi that splices the vibe of Besson’s movie and the hurtling mayhem of Crazy Taxi into a heady compound of millennial nostalgia.

Microsoft signs binding Call of Duty deal with Nintendo ahead of EU Activision hearing

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Call of Duty will be available to Nintendo players on the same day as Xbox with “full feature and content parity” under a 10-year agreement between the two platforms, Microsoft’s Brad Smith announced. The deal was announced in early December, but Smith is offering more details today ahead of a hearing in which Microsoft will argue its case with EU regulators to allow its $69 billion acquisition of Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard to proceed, Reuters reports.

As my colleague Tom Warren wrote back in December, the Nintendo deal is almost certainly part of Microsoft’s attempt to pressure Sony into accepting a similar offer and allay regulatory competition concerns. The PlayStation maker has emerged as one of the chief opponents of Microsoft’s proposed acquisition, saying it risks reducing competition by locking key franchises like Call of Duty to Xbox consoles and Microsoft services like Game Pass.

We’ve now signed a binding 10-year contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo’s gamers. This is just part of our commitment to bring Xbox games and Activision titles like Call of Duty to more players on more platforms. pic.twitter.com/JmO0hzw1BO
— Brad Smith (@BradSmi) February 21, 2023

As well as Call of Duty, Smith’s tweet alludes to “Xbox games” more generally, though it doesn’t offer specifics on what franchises these may come from.

Smith has said that a similar 10-year deal is on the table if Sony wants to sign. But PlayStation chief Jim Ryan previously called a Microsoft offer to keep Call of Duty on Sony’s consoles for “several more years” beyond an existing marketing deal “inadequate on many levels.”

News of the deal comes as Microsoft is preparing to plead its case to EU regulators today. The closed hearing is expected to be attended by representatives from Microsoft including Brad Smith and Xbox head Phil Spencer, as well as Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, and Sony’s Jim Ryan. Representatives from Google, Nvidia, Valve, Electronic Arts, the European Games Developer Federation, and over half a dozen different national competition watchdogs are also expected to take part, per Reuters.

The EU reportedly issued a formal antitrust warning to Microsoft over the deal earlier this month, in which it’s believed to have expressed concerns over the deal’s impact on fair competition in the video game market. In response, Microsoft spokesperson David Cuddy said that the company is “committed to solutions and finding a path forward for this deal” and that it is “listening carefully to the [European Commission’s] concerns and are confident we can address them.”

Outside of the European Union, Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition has also faced opposition from UK and US regulators. The USA’s Federal Trade Commission filed a legal challenge to block the acquisition in early December 2022, arguing that it would “enable Microsoft to suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business.” Meanwhile, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority said the deal “could result in higher prices, fewer choices, or less innovation for UK gamers,” in provisional filings announced earlier this month.

Today’s statement from Microsoft says that the deal is to bring Call of Duty games to “Nintendo players,” without mentioning specific hardware like the Nintendo Switch. As it approaches its sixth year on the market, the portable Switch console is increasingly showing its age and relatively low processing power compared to the latest consoles from Sony and Microsoft, as well as the modern gaming PCs, where gamers typically play the latest Call of Duty releases. The last Call of Duty game to release on a Nintendo console was 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts on the Wii U.

Twitter is ending free SMS two-factor authentication. So what can you use instead?

Receiving login codes via text message is much easier to compromise. Using authenticator apps or even a USB are preferred alternatives

On the weekend, Twitter announced that from 20 March, people who haven’t subscribed to Twitter Blue will have two-factor authentication via SMS disabled.

Twitter has recommended people use third-party apps or a security key instead, but for the overwhelming majority (74.4%) of the 2.6% of active Twitter users who use SMS as their method of authentication, it will mean they have a month to switch or potentially lose protection.

‘It’s a long-term journey we’re on’: taking a ride towards self-driving cars

Nissan’s ServCity project shows how far autonomous vehicles have come and difficulties they still face

The journey in a self-driving Nissan across Woolwich in south-east London begins smoothly enough: fitted with cameras and sensors, the electric car confidently handles pedestrian crossings, vans cutting into its lane without warning and even scurrying jaywalkers.

Then comes an unexpected obstacle: a football-sized rock, fallen from the back of a lorry on to the middle of the road. The specially trained safety driver hastily grabs the steering wheel, taking back control to avoid a nasty crunch.

lundi 20 février 2023

Monday’s top tech news: Paid verification comes to Meta

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

While Twitter removes a key security feature for non-paying users.

Meta is testing letting users on Instagram and Facebook pay to be officially verified, after Twitter rolled out a similar feature under Elon Musk’s ownership last year. Meta’s implementation will only be available in Australia and New Zealand to start, and will require people to submit a government ID to get their blue badges. Let’s hope it doesn’t face the same impersonation problems that Twitter encountered when its service originally launched last year.

That’s not to say that Twitter’s paid subscription offering isn’t facing controversies of its own. Over the weekend it emerged that Musk’s social media network is removing the option of using SMS for two-factor authentication for non-paying users. Yes, SMS is considered to be the less secure way of using 2FA, but it’s convenient and better than no 2FA at all, so it’s sad to see it disappear behind a paywall.

And finally, for those keeping track, today is the day that Nothing, Forever’s Twitch suspension is set to lift. The AI-generated Seinfeld spoof was in the process of going viral before being taken down after one of its characters made a transphobic remark, but its creators hope to bring it back with more safeguards against inappropriate content in place.

Now, here’s a silly tweet to start your day:

There is a profound, generational transformation happening on LinkedIn right now: pic.twitter.com/BwKfpAHQth
— Orthy @ DICE (@adam_orth) February 7, 2023

Stay tuned, as we continue to update this list with the most important news of today: Monday, February 20th, 2023.

On my radar: Gabrielle Zevin’s cultural highlights

The American writer on her film of the moment, a fantastic young novelist and an animated series that’s wonderfully human

The novelist Gabrielle Zevin, whose Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow appeared on many of 2022’s books of the year lists, was born in New York in 1977. She studied English at Harvard, where she met her partner, the film director Hans Canosa. Zevin wrote the screenplay for Canosa’s 2005 film, Conversations With Other Women, and the pair adapted two of Zevin’s novels for the screen, most recently The Storied Life of AJ Fikry. She is working on a film version of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which follows two childhood friends as they reunite in adulthood to create video games. She lives in Los Angeles.

Revolut: can the chancellor’s fintech favourite fix its image problem?

The UK’s would-be ‘Amazon of banking’ run by Nikolay Storonsky has raised alarm over delayed accounts, EU regulatory fines, its co-founder’s Russian ties and issues with staff

Minutes after Jeremy Hunt had finished speaking, Nikolay Storonsky collared the chancellor backstage. The 38-year-old co-founder of British financial technology company Revolut, wearing a tech bro’s uniform of jeans and a sweater, had been listening to Hunt set out his vision of the UK as “the world’s next Silicon Valley”, in a speech last month at the media group Bloomberg’s London headquarters.

The chancellor had praised Revolut as a “shining” success, saying the government was willing to back innovative companies “to the hilt”. After a quick introduction, the pair posed for a photo – which was swiftly posted by Storonsky’s team to one of Revolut’s Twitter accounts.

Supreme Court to Hear Case That Targets a Legal Shield of Tech Giants

Supreme Court to Hear Case That Targets a Legal Shield of Tech Giants The justices are set to hear a case challenging Section 230, a law that protects Google, Facebook and others from lawsuits over what their users post online.

A second Hellboy reboot is officially on the way

Hellboy runs down a corridor. — *David Harbour as Hellboy in the 2019 reboot.* | Image: Lionsgate

Almost two decades after the release of the Guillermo del Toro-directed Hellboy, the character is getting yet another reboot. Millennium Media has confirmed that Hellboy: The Crooked Man will enter production next month in Bulgaria, Deadline reports. Casting for the titular character (originally played by Ron Perlman and then David Harbour) is yet to be announced, but the new film will be directed by Brian Taylor, best known for the Jason Statham action movie Crank.

Perhaps most interesting is that the comics’ original creator Mike Mignola has written the script for the upcoming film alongside Chris Golden. Both were reported to have worked on the script for the 2019 reboot by The Hollywood Reporter, though Andrew Cosby ultimately ended up with sole credit for writing the screenplay. The 2019 reboot is widely considered to have been both a commercial and critical failure, bringing in roughly $55 million at the box office on a budget of $50 million.

Deadline’s report doesn’t explicitly say what form the film will take but Discussing Film — which originally reported news of The Crooked Man’s production — says it’ll be live-action. The Crooked Man was originally used as the title of a Hellboy comic from 2008. Here’s a plot synopsis of the upcoming film from Deadline:

“The new film will see Hellboy and a rookie BPRD agent stranded in 1950s rural Appalachia. There, they discover a small community haunted by witches, led by a local devil with a troubling connection to Hellboy’s past: the Crooked Man.”

“The Crooked Man is a departure from all previous Hellboy films where Mike Mignola and the creator of the comics will finally shepherd an authentic version of his stories and characters in film form,” said Millennium Media president Jeffrey Greenstein. “This is the first in the series of films that will captivate audiences in familiar (and new) ways.”

A release date for Hellboy: The Crooked Man is yet to be announced.

Tesla fires more than 30 workers after union drive announcement

Workers at the Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo, New York, allege employees were fired in response to a union organizing drive

Tesla workers at the Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo, New York, allege over 30 workers were fired on 14 February in response to the announcement of a union organizing drive at the 1,000-worker facility.

The Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, has fought union drives in the past. The campaign, Tesla Workers United, is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) affiliate Workers United and has filed an injunction with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) seeking to halt the firings.

dimanche 19 février 2023

The Steam Deck now supports game transfers from PCs

An image showing someone holding a Steam Deck — Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Steam Deck now supports game transfers on your local network, allowing you to copy installed games from your PC to the Steam Deck without having to redownload them over the internet. This feature, which comes bundled with the Steam Deck beta update released last week, should help reduce the amount of internet data you use, especially if you find yourself frequently redownloading hefty games to your handheld.

To gain access to the feature, you first have to enable Steam’s beta on both the Steam Deck and the Steam client on your PC. From there, select the game you want to install on your Steam Deck, and Steam will automatically check to see if any PC on your network already has the game. If it finds one, Steam will begin the game transfer process.

It’s worth noting that this feature applies to PCs on the same network as well, so you’re free to transfer already-installed Steam games to your PC from any other PCs in your household. Steam goes into more detail about how it all works on its support page, and notes if the devices lose connection during the transfer process “or no more content is available,” Steam will download the rest of the game from its servers instead.

You can also adjust settings that dictate which PCs your Steam Deck (or PC) can download from. While Steam sets it to “Only my own devices by default,” which means you can only transfer games from the devices you’re logged into Steam with, you can also set it to “Only my friends” and “Any user” if you want to get games from a friend or family member’s PC. Unfortunately, Steam doesn’t support game transfers originating from the Steam Deck or PCs in Big Picture mode just yet.

I don’t have a Steam Deck (yet), but I certainly wish I had this feature when I downloaded Elden Ring from my partner’s shared Steam library. Either way, I’m happy it’s here now, as it’s nice to have something that helps me stay below my internet data cap for the month, even if it does make just a slight impact.

Meta’s testing $12 per month paid verification on Instagram and Facebook

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta’s testing paid verification for Instagram and Facebook for $11.99 per month on web and $14.99 per month on mobile. In an update on Instagram, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced having a “Meta Verified” account will grant users a verified badge, increased visibility, prioritized customer support, and more. The feature’s rolling out to Australia and New Zealand this week and will arrive in more countries “soon.”

“This week we’re starting to roll out Meta Verified — a subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you, and get direct access to customer support,” Zuckerberg writes. “This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services.”

In order to sign up to become Meta Verified, you’ll need to meet minimum activity requirements, be at least 18 years of age or older, and submit a government ID that matches the name and photo you have on Facebook or Instagram. The new offering sounds a lot like Elon Musk’s $8 per month version of Twitter Blue, but Meta notes that it won’t make any changes to accounts that have been verified using the company’s previous requirements, including notability and authenticity.

Additionally, users who sign up for the service will get exclusive stickers for Stories and Reels posted to Instagram and Facebook. It’ll also provide users with 100 free stars per month, or the digital currency you can use to tip creators on Facebook. Meta notes that businesses can’t yet apply for a Meta Verified badge and that you can’t change your “profile name, username, date of birth, or photo on your profile without going through the Meta Verified subscription and verifications application process again.”

Developing...

Cómo funcionan los chatbots y más dudas de inteligencia artificial

Cómo funcionan los chatbots y más dudas de inteligencia artificial Los softwares que simulan conversaciones no tienen conciencia. Te explicamos cómo funciona la tecnología que hay detrás.

samedi 18 février 2023

Google Meet rolls out 360-degree virtual backgrounds for video calls

Illustration: The Verge

Google Meet’s launching new 360-degree virtual backgrounds for video calls on mobile. While Google first announced the new feature last month, now it’s rolling out on both iOS and Android and uses your device’s gyroscope to move with you.

As you can see in the embedded GIF, the 360-degree background will change depending on where your phone or tablet’s positioned. So, if you move your phone left or right, your background will adjust to show different scenery. Google says users can apply “several” new 360-degree backgrounds during video calls, including one that shows a beach and another with a temple.

While the feature does look pretty cool, I can see how these backgrounds might get distracting if you’re on a call with someone who’s constantly moving their phone around. However, they’re still probably not as obnoxious as Meet’s collection of Snapchat-like filters — which currently includes one that turns you into a cat and another that puts your face on a strawberry.

Last month, Google started rolling out emoji reactions for Meet, including the heart, thumbs-up, party popper, clap, joy, astonished, thinking, cry, and thumbs-down emoji, but it still has a long way to go if it wants to catch up with Zoom’s complete library of reactions. Google’s also in the process of gradually transitioning users to the new Meet app that combines the features of Duo, and sent out its final warnings last month as it prepares to switch users over.

From retail to transport: how AI is changing every corner of the economy

Artificial intelligence has implication across the board, solving problems and raising others

AI industrial revolution puts middle-class workers under threat

The high profile race to enhance their search products has underscored the importance of artificial intelligence to Google and Microsoft – and the rest of the economy, too. Two of the world’s largest tech companies announced plans for AI-enhanced search this month, ratcheting up a tussle for supremacy in the artificial intelligence space. However, the debut of Google’s new chatbot, Bard, was scuppered when an error appeared, knocking $163bn (£137bn) off the parent company Alphabet’s share price. The stock’s plunge showed how crucial investors think AI could be to Google’s future.

However, the increasing prominence of AI has implications for every corner of the economy. From retail to transport, here’s how AI promises to usher in a wave of change across industries.

vendredi 17 février 2023

The AI industrial revolution puts middle-class workers under threat this time

In the past, leaps in technology replaced low-paid jobs with a greater number of higher-paid jobs. This time, it may be different

The machines are coming and they will eat your job. That’s been a familiar refrain down the years, stretching back to the Luddites in the early 19th century. In the past, step-changes in technology have replaced low-paid jobs with a greater number of higher-paid jobs. This time, with the arrival of artificial intelligence, there are those who think it will be different.

Politicians know that even in the best case AI will cause massive disruption to labour markets, but they are fooling themselves if they think they have years to come up with a suitable response. As the tech entrepreneur Mihir Shukla said at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos: “People keep saying AI is coming but it is already here.”

Official: Twitter will now charge for SMS two-factor authentication

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Four hours ago, Platformer’s Zoe Schiffer tweeted a scoop: Twitter would begin charging for SMS two-factor authentication.

Now, it’s official: You have to pay for the privilege of using Twitter’s worst form of authentication. In fact, if you don’t start paying for Twitter Blue ($8 a month on Android; $11 a month on iOS) or switch your account to use a far more reliable authenticator app or physical security key, Twitter will simply turn off your 2FA after March 20th.

I know which one I would choose.

Good riddance to SMS is my feeling, given how common SIM swap hacks are these days. Heck, Twitter’s own Jack Dorsey was successfully targeted by the technique four years ago. You don’t want someone to get access to your accounts by proving they are you simply because they’ve stolen your phone number.

That’s how Twitter is trying to justify this change, too, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a simpler reason: it costs money to send SMS messages, and Twitter does not have a lot of money right now. The company had been phasing out SMS even before Elon Musk took over.

Microsoft to Limit Length of Bing Chatbot Conversations

Microsoft to Limit Length of Bing Chatbot Conversations The new technology has gone down unusual, sometimes unnerving paths in lengthy conversations with some early users.

Microsoft will limit Bing chat to five replies to stop the AI from getting real weird

Illustration: The Verge

Microsoft says it’s implementing some conversation limits to its Bing AI just days after the chatbot went off the rails multiple times for users. Bing chats will now be capped at 50 questions per day and five per session after the search engine was seen insulting users, lying to them, and emotionally manipulating people.

“Our data has shown that the vast majority of people find the answers they’re looking for within 5 turns and that only around 1 percent of chat conversations have 50+ messages,” says the Bing team in a blog post. If users hit the five-per-session limit, Bing will prompt them to start a new topic to avoid long back-and-forth chat sessions.

Microsoft warned earlier this week that these longer chat sessions, with 15 or more questions, could make Bing “become repetitive or be prompted / provoked to give responses that are not necessarily helpful or in line with our designed tone.” Wiping a conversation after just five questions means “the model won’t get confused,” says Microsoft.

Reports of Bing’s “unhinged” conversations emerged earlier this week, followed by The New York Times publishing an entire two-hour-plus back-and-forth with Bing, where the chatbot said it loved the author and somehow they weren’t able to sleep that night. Many smart people have failed the AI Mirror Test this week, though.

Microsoft is still working to improve Bing’s tone, but it’s not immediately clear how long these limits will last. “As we continue to get feedback, we will explore expanding the caps on chat sessions,” says Microsoft, so this appears to be a limited cap for now.

Bing’s chat function continues to see improvements on a daily basis, with technical issues being addressed and larger weekly drops of fixes to improve search and answers. Microsoft said earlier this week that it didn’t “fully envision” people using its chat interface for “social entertainment” or as a tool for more “general discovery of the world.”

Amazon’s Alexa app gets more Sonos-y with new multiroom audio controls

Amazon is making its multiroom audio platform more convenient to control with your phone. A recent update to the Alexa mobile app introduced a new capability that lets users manage and move their music between Echo devices (or groups of multiple speakers) within the app itself. (Previously, you needed to use voice commands to perform some of those actions.)

Now, it’s all doable through a menu that lets you move music to any group or Alexa device with a couple of taps — no talking necessary. In our brief time trying it so far, it’s pretty intuitive, and anyone that’s controlled music via AirPlay or Spotify Connect shouldn’t have much trouble figuring this out. Amazon’s current lineup of Echo speakers includes the standard Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Dot with Clock, Echo Studio, and optional Echo Sub subwoofer. You can play audio across Echo Show and Fire TV devices through the Alexa app as well.

A screenshot of the Alexa app’s menu for moving music across speakers and groups. — *You can quickly move music between devices and groups with the Alexa app.*

Amazon has also developed a new overview screen for the Alexa app that it calls the Active Media List. This can be accessed whenever audio is playing on your system and shows what’s playing where and lets you control multiple products from a single list. The interface will look extremely familiar to Sonos customers — so much so that the latter company might take notice.

Screenshots comparing the Active Media List in Amazon’s Alexa app and the System screen of the Sonos app. — *The new Active Media List (left) gives an overview and fast access to everything playing across your system. It looks similar to Sonos’ System tab (right).*

Sonos is locked in a patents battle with Google; a trial between the two kicks off May 8th in San Francisco. But while Sonos has previously alleged that Amazon is also violating its intellectual property, it hasn’t fired any legal salvos yet. In fact, the two companies seem to be on good terms lately, having just expanded Alexa voice support on Sonos devices to many more countries. And you can run Sonos Voice Control and Alexa side by side on the same speaker. But there are limits to this collaboration: you can’t include Sonos and Echo speakers in the same group for multiroom audio, for example.

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence recently claimed that his company’s Big Tech competitors (Amazon included) aren’t “doing anything interesting” in audio of late. Amazon has been fairly quiet in terms of new Echo speakers, yes, but this Alexa app update is a nice improvement that brings more refinement and polish to the company’s multiroom offering.

The Alexa app is a free download for both Android and iOS.

Amazon deploys fleet of self-driving robotaxis on California streets

Online retailer has been aggressively expanding into driverless technology and bought the startup Zoox

Amazon is testing a fleet of robotaxis on public roads in California, using employees as passengers, as the tech behemoth moves closer to a commercial service for the general public.

The online retailer has been aggressively expanding into self-driving technology and bought the self-driving startup Zoox for $1.3bn in 2020. A test conducted on 11 February saw the robotaxis successfully drive between two Zoox buildings a mile apart at its headquarters in Foster City, California. It was part of the launch of a no-cost employee shuttle service that will also help the company refine its technology.

jeudi 16 février 2023

Tesla fires more than 30 workers after union drive announcement

Workers at the Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo, New York, allege employees were fired in response to a union organizing drive

Tesla workers at the Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo, New York, allege over 30 workers were fired on 14 February in response to the announcement of a union organizing drive at the 1,000-worker facility.

Ruto ally says Telegram account was hacked before Kenyan election

Strategist says he noticed ‘increased activity’, after revelations about activities of a disinformation unit

A senior strategist with close links to Kenya’s president, William Ruto, has publicly acknowledged that his Telegram account was infiltrated in the lead-up to last year’s election.

Dennis Itumbi told the Star newspaper that he had noticed “increased activity” on his Telegram last year but called it “inconsequential”.

Good for Nothing: Phone 1’s stable Android 13 release is starting to arrive

Nothing Phone 1 on a table with the screen on. — *Nothing’s moody OS is getting its first major update.* | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

As spotted by XDA-Developers, Nothing is starting to release its first major OS upgrade for its very first mobile device: Phone 1. Remember the phone that goes blink blink blink? That one. Its Android 13 skin, Nothing OS 1.5, has been in beta testing since late 2022. Now, beta testers are reporting on Reddit and Discord that the stable version has arrived in the form of Nothing OS 1.5.2.

There’s a long list of improvements in Nothing’s release notes for the beta, like a Nothing-ified weather app with the company’s signature dot-matrix UI styling. There are other expected Android 13 updates included, including a QR code scanner in the quick settings menu and privacy updates for the photo picker.

Big difference now, having our own team who previously delivered Oxygen OS together vs. an outsourced team who don't really care about the success or failure of our company. https://t.co/tsersO0WDS
— Carl Pei (@getpeid) February 16, 2023

But the single upgrade that Phone 1 owners are likely most looking forward to is improved app loading speeds: specifically, Nothing claims apps open up to 50 percent faster. That could be the result of a shift from external to in-house developers — CEO Carl Pei told Android Authority that since the Phone 1’s launch, the company staffed up its own engineering team. Switching from the externally developed codebase allowed them to make the system “smoother and more stable.”

If you’re a Phone 1 owner eager to check out the new updates but weren’t part of the beta program, it looks like you’ll have to keep waiting just a little while longer. Devices running the previous stable release don’t seem to be part of this first wave of updates — that’s the case with my review unit, too.

It’ll come not a moment too soon; Android 14 beta testing is underway.

Terra founder Do Kwon charged with fraud over its $40 billion crypto crash

Terraform Labs Co-Founder Do Kwon — Image: Getty Images

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is suing the creator of the collapsed Terra blockchain protocol for securities fraud following last year’s meltdown that sent reverberations throughout the cryptocurrency industry. According to the SEC’s complaint, Terraform Labs and its co-founder Do Kwon “perpetuated a fraudulent scheme that led to the loss of at least $40 billion of market value.”

Last September, South Korea issued a warrant for Kwon’s arrest, while Interpol reportedly issued a “red notice” for him or a call to international law enforcement agencies to “locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.” Despite Kwon insisting that he’s “not on the run,” the complaint notes that “his current address is unknown.” South Korean police reportedly traveled to Serbia in an attempt to track him down earlier this month.

Today we charged Singapore-based Terraform Labs PTE Ltd and Do Hyeong Kwon with orchestrating a multi-billion-dollar crypto asset securities fraud involving an algorithmic stablecoin and other crypto asset securities.
— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) February 16, 2023

Kwon co-founded Terraform Labs in 2018 with Daniel Shin and went on to release the cryptocurrency Luna later that year. The company launched its algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD in 2020, which was linked to Luna to help maintain its dollar peg. That’s why when TerraUSD started crashing last year, so did Luna, vaporizing the billions of dollars hopeful investors threw at the cryptocurrencies.

The SEC accuses Terraform and Kwon of misleading investors about the stability of TerraUSD, noting they failed to inform investors that the price of the coin falling below its dollar peg “would spell doom for the entire Terraform ecosystem.” Additionally, the agency claims that Kwon and Terraform falsely told their customers that Chai, the Korean electronic mobile payment app, used the Terraform blockchain to process payments.

“In reality, Chai payments did not use the blockchain to process and settle payments,” the lawsuit states. “Defendants deceptively replicated Chai payments onto the Terraform blockchain in order to make it appear that they were occurring on the Terraform blockchain, when, in fact, Chai payments were made through traditional means.”

“We allege that Terraform and Do Kwon failed to provide the public with full, fair, and truthful disclosure as required for a host of crypto asset securities, most notably for LUNA and Terra USD,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler says in a statement. “We also allege that they committed fraud by repeating false and misleading statements to build trust before causing devastating losses for investors.”

‘It’s a long-term journey we’re on’: taking a ride towards self-driving cars

Nissan’s ServCity project shows how far autonomous vehicles have come and difficulties they still face

Help, Bing’s Chatbot Won’t Stop Declaring Its Love For Me

Help, Bing’s Chatbot Won’t Stop Declaring Its Love For Me A very strange conversation with the chatbot built into Microsoft’s search engine left me deeply unsettled. Even frightened.

Kevin Roose’s Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot: Full Transcript

Kevin Roose’s Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot: Full Transcript In a two-hour conversation with our columnist, Microsoft’s new chatbot said it would like to be human, had a desire to be destructive and was in love with the person it was chatting with. Here’s the transcript.

mercredi 15 février 2023

BTS now have their very own Lego set — with figures of all seven bandmembers

BTS Lego figurines arranged outside a Lego disco and donut shop. — *You, too, can recreate Jimin’s dance break.* | Image: Lego

Lego teased a collaboration with BTS earlier this month and, needless to say, the fans had questions. Would the set come with photo cards? Will Jimin play with it on a livestream? Does this mean we’ll see BTS in the next Lego Movie?

We don’t have all the answers to those questions yet (although I need an answer on the Lego Movie stat). We have, however, finally gotten our first glimpse of this highly anticipated Lego set, which (fairly accurately) replicates the set of the Dynamite music video, complete with mini-figs of the seven group members.

The set was based on a fan-submitted idea from two BTS fans and Lego builders. “I watched the music video over and over and tried to capture its essence in the LEGO bricks,” writes 20-year-old Josh Bretz, one of the creators, in Lego’s press release.

The 749-piece set includes several of the primary settings featured in the music video, including the donut shop, the record store, the basketball hoop, and that ice cream truck that’s always hanging around. The stage is also present in the back, though that replica isn’t quite as faithful. All the pieces are modular, so you can move them around.

Notably missing is Jungkook’s bedroom from the opening verse, though I understand that recreating all those posters with Legos would’ve been a whole thing and a half.

Lego figurine of Jungkook holding Lego donut outside a Lego donut shop. — *I know what you’ve been wondering. Yes, you can make Jungkook hold the donut.* *Click here for a larger image.*

Lego has captured some specific details; elements like the graffiti behind the basketball hoop, the addresses printed on the windows of the stores, and the Open sign next to the donut shop are nicely constructed. The green arrow should be angled a bit further down, but I know I’m getting into the weeds here. You also cannot recreate the plane that flies over the second chorus, but you can make Jungkook hold the donut outside the donut shop, which is consolation enough.

Suga Lego figurine beside a Lego basketball hoop. — *Suga isn’t wearing this outfit in the real shot, so it’s slightly disconcerting, but we’ll roll with it.* *Click here for a larger image.*

The company did a fairly impressive job replicating each member’s hairstyle, considering that we’re talking about...Lego hair. Jungkook’s black hair is easily distinguishable from J-Hope’s black hair, for example.

The seven figurines are dressed in the outfits that the group wears beginning at the song’s second chorus (rather than the costumes from their earlier solo shots or the pastel clothing from the beginning and end). Lego doesn’t provide multiple mini-figs for a costume change (and with a US price of $99.99, this is already not the cheapest piece of BTS merch you can buy). The figurines do have multiple expressions, at least; for example, you can make RM wink or just appear somewhat pensive, while Jungkook has both a smile and the bewildered look from his iconic donut shot.

V Lego figurine winking in front of a Lego ice cream truck. — *Who can resist a wink from V?* *Click here for a larger image.*

This Lego set will be on sale in March. While you’re waiting, you can take a look at the pictures Lego has sent over, where the company has made admirable efforts to make the figurines look like they’re doing dance moves with their aerobically-limited limbs.

The Dynamite Set box. — *Click here for a larger image.*

Lego Dynamite Set box. — *Click here for a larger image.*

Lego RM in a Lego record store. — *Click here for a larger image.*

Lego J-Hope figurine in a Lego donut shop. — *Click here for a larger image.*

Seven BTS figurines on a black Lego stage. — *Click here for a larger image.*

Seven BTS member figurines arranged on a black background. — *Click here for a larger image.*

Seven BTS figurines arranged on a black background. — *Click here for a larger image.*

Seven BTS Lego figurines arranged on a black background. — *Click here for a larger image.*

‘Team Jorge’ and Cambridge Analytica meddled in Nigeria election, emails reveal

Leaked messages show failed plan to discredit Muhammadu Buhari and get Goodluck Jonathan re-elected in 2015

Four weeks before a pivotal presidential election in Nigeria, an Israeli private operative specialising in political “black ops” was preparing his trip to the country. On 17 January 2015 the man, who used the alias “Jorge”, emailed Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy he was coordinating with on a covert plan to manipulate Africa’s largest democracy.

“Friends, hi, I will be on the ground tomorrow for couple days … Who is best to meet there[?]” he asked. “Low profile as we came in on a special visa and we are watched closely (which is part of our plan :) anyway we need better understanding of the current status, improve communication and coordinate plans, we want to run by you a couple things that we might execute if the stars align. so plz, in very limited circulation, who is best to meet, and whats his/her position, and contact info.”

Apple TV will stream MLS games in 1080p

LA Galaxy v Portland Timbers - Pre-Season Friendly — Photo by Matthew Ashton - AMA / Getty Images

The Major League Soccer (MLS) season kicks off on February 25th, and if you were hoping Apple and MLS’s streaming service would give you the games in 4K, I have some bad news: the streams will top out at 1080p, according to a press release from MLS (via Engadget).

We probably shouldn’t have hoped for anything different; the Major League Baseball games on Apple TV Plus also peak at 1080p. But for the many sports fans who have been waiting for more sports games to stream at true 4K — this year’s Super Bowl, for example, was upscaled to 4K — MLS’s streaming service, MLS Season Pass, won’t be the place to see those.

That said, for soccer fans, MLS Season Pass seems like it will be a pretty good deal. You’ll be able to watch every live regular season game, playoff game, and the Leagues Cup with no blackouts. There will also be an NFL RedZone-like whip-around show called “MLS 360” to help you catch big moments without having to jump between games as well as pre- and post-game programming.

You can sign up for MLS Season Pass now in the Apple TV app ahead of the beginning of the season. The service costs $14.99 per month over the course of the season or $99 per season, and if you’re an Apple TV Plus subscriber, you can sign up at reduced rates of $12.99 per month or $79 per season.

This year will mark the first of a 10-year deal between Apple and Major League Soccer. The two won’t make that deal easy to forget, as every single club’s jersey now has an Apple TV logo.

To help recover balance, robotic exoskeletons have to be faster than human reflexes

To help recover balance, robotic exoskeletons have to be faster than human reflexes Wearable robotics promise to help older people retain their mobility and paraplegic patients regain theirs. They could help make humans stronger and faster. But, so far, they're not great at keeping people from falling.

mardi 14 février 2023

Sony’s PSVR2 teardowns reveal how the headset tracks the Sense controllers

The inside of a PSVR2 Sense controller. — Image: Sony

The PlayStation VR2 headset can track the accompanying Sense controllers thanks to a bunch of IR LEDs hidden in the orb-shaped controllers, according to new teardown videos Sony posted Tuesday evening.

Under the Sense controller cover, the controller itself has a ring of 14 IR LEDs and three placed elsewhere for tracking, as shown in the Sense teardown video. “These infrared lights are used by the VR headset’s tracking camera to detect the controller’s position and orientation,” Sony’s Takeshi Igarashi, who also designed the DualSense controller, explains in the video. “The LEDs have been placed in optimal locations to ensure they are accurately detected no matter what direction the controller is facing.” And the cover on the controllers is even made with a material that “transmits the infrared light emitted internally to track the movement of the controller,” he says.

The Sense teardown video also shows the five capacitive touch sensors on the controller, a look at the adaptive trigger component (which works like it does on the DualSense), and even that there are tiny PlayStation button icons embossed on the controller.

And for the headset itself, that teardown is pretty cool, too; I loved watching Takamasa Araki, the lead designer of the PSVR2 (and the first PSVR!), expertly disassemble both the front of the headset and the headband. I’d particularly recommend scrubbing to 6:07 or so, where you can see what it looks like on the inside of the headset when you turn the lens adjustment dial. Oh, and the headset’s eye tracking feature? As shown by Araki, there’s an IR LED around each lens and an IR camera that captures the light from the LED, and those work together to follow your eye’s movements. Super cool.

I really recommend you watch both the headset and the controller teardowns, they’re fascinating. However, Sony warns that you should not try the teardowns yourself, noting that taking apart your hardware will invalidate the warranty.

The PSVR2 launches on February 22nd. It looks to have a pretty good launch lineup, including a new VR mode for Resident Evil Village that Capcom and Sony just released a trailer for.

Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first

Elon Musk standing on a sheet of ice in the shape of the Twitter icon that is beginning to crack. — Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge, photo by Christian Marquardt / Getty Images

This story is based on interviews with people familiar with the events involved and supported by documents obtained by Platformer.

At 2:36 on Monday morning, James Musk sent an urgent message to Twitter engineers.

“We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform,” wrote Musk, a cousin of the Twitter CEO, tagging “@here” in Slack to ensure that anyone online would see it. “Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem. This is high urgency. If you are willing to help out please thumbs up this post.”

When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s.

Biden’s tweet, in which he said he would be supporting his wife in rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles, generated nearly 29 million impressions. Musk, who also tweeted his support for the Eagles, generated a little more than 9.1 million impressions before deleting the tweet in apparent frustration.

In the wake of those losses — the Eagles to the Kansas City Chiefs, and Musk to the president of the United States — Twitter’s CEO flew his private jet back to the Bay Area on Sunday night to demand answers from his team.

Within a day, the consequences of that meeting would reverberate around the world, as Twitter users opened the app to find that Musk’s posts overwhelmed their ranked timeline. This was no accident, Platformer can confirm: after Musk threatened to fire his remaining engineers, they built a system designed to ensure that Musk — and Musk alone — benefits from previously unheard-of promotion of his tweets to the entire user base.

In recent weeks, Musk has been obsessed with the amount of engagement his posts are receiving. Last week, Platformer broke the news that he fired one of two remaining principal engineers at the company after the engineer told him that views on his tweets are declining in part because interest in Musk has declined in general.

His deputies told the rest of the engineering team this weekend that if the engagement issue wasn’t “fixed,” they would all lose their jobs as well.

Late Sunday night, Musk addressed his team in-person. Roughly 80 people were pulled in to work on the project, which had quickly become priority number one at the company. Employees worked through the night investigating various hypotheses about why Musk’s tweets weren’t reaching as many people as he thought they should and testing out possible solutions.

One possibility, engineers said, was that Musk’s reach might have been reduced because he’d been blocked and muted by so many people in recent months. Even before the events of this weekend, Musk’s long stint as Twitter’s main character, both in the run-up to and aftermath of his $44 billion takeover of the company, had led huge numbers of people to filter him out of their feeds.

But there were also legitimate technical reasons the CEO’s tweets weren’t performing. Twitter’s system has historically promoted tweets from users whose posts perform better to both followers and non-followers in the For You Tab; Musk’s tweets should have fit that model but showed up less only about half the time that some engineers thought they should.

By Monday afternoon, “the problem” had been “fixed.” Twitter deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, meaning his posts will bypass Twitter’s filters designed to show people the best content possible. The algorithm now artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 – a constant score that ensured his tweets rank higher than anyone else’s in the feed.

Internally, this is called a “power user multiplier,” although it only applies to Elon Musk, we’re told. The code also allows Musk’s account to bypass Twitter heuristics that would otherwise prevent a single account from flooding the core ranked feed, now known as “For You.”

That explains why people opening the app Monday found that Musk dominated the feed, with a dozen or more Musk tweets and replies visible to anyone who followed him and millions more who did not. Over 90 percent of Musk’s followers now see his tweets, according to one internal estimate.

Musk acknowledged his bombardment of the timeline on Tuesday afternoon, posting a version of the popular “forced to drink milk” meme in which one woman labeled “Elon’s tweets” forcibly bottle-feeds another woman labeled “Twitter” while pulling her hair back.

Some of his tweets Monday were sent while he was on calls with Twitter engineers, to test out whether the solutions they’d designed were working as well as he thought they should.

After Musk’s timeline takeover caused an uproar Monday, he seemed to suggest that the changes would be walked back, at least in part. “Please stay tuned while we make adjustments to the uh .… “algorithm,” he tweeted.

The artificial boosts applied to his account remain in place, although the factor is now lower than 1,000, we’re told. Musk’s handful of tweets Tuesday reported around 43 million impressions, which are on the high end of his recent average.

Absurd as Musk’s antics are, they do highlight a tension familiar to almost anyone who has ever used a social network: why are some posts more popular than others? Why am I seeing this thing, and not that one?

Engineers for services like TikTok and Instagram can offer partial, high-level answers to these questions. But ranking algorithms make predictions based on hundreds or thousands of signals, and deliver posts to millions of users, making it almost impossible for anyone to say with any degree of accuracy who sees what.

For better and for worse, that answer hasn’t been good enough for Musk. As Twitter’s most prominent user, with nearly 129 million followers, his posts often get 10 million or more impressions, as counted by Twitter. (There are good reasons to doubt the accuracy of these counts, but better data is not readily available.)

But Musk’s view counts still fluctuate widely. The bottle-feeding tweet got a reported 118.4 million impressions; his next one, a joke observation previously posted to Reddit and satirically attributed to Abraham Lincoln, got 49.9 million. Some of his tweets from earlier this month had fewer than 8 million.

The most obvious reason for this discrepancy is that people think some tweets are better than others. But it doesn’t have to work like that: you could also change the ranking algorithms so that they show your posts no matter what.

Terrified of losing their jobs, this is the system that Twitter engineers are now building.

“He bought the company, made a point of showcasing what he believed was broken and manipulated under previous management, then turns around and manipulates the platform to force engagement on all users to hear only his voice,” said a current employee. “I think we’re past the point of believing that he actually wants what’s best for everyone here.”

Google Fiber’s 5-gig internet service starts rolling out in three cities

Image: Google Fiber

Google Fiber is now offering 5 Gbps speeds in certain markets (via Engadget). Customers in Kansas City, West Des Moines, and the Salt Lake City metropolitan area will be the first to get the option for the speedier tier, which is rolling out now. Late last year, Google started testing limited access to Fiber’s faster 5-gig and even 8-gig packages for some customers in those same areas.

The new 5 Gbps offering will cost subscribers $125 a month and includes an optional Wi-Fi 6 router, up to two mesh extenders, and professional installation that also upgrades homes to be 10Gbps-ready.

Google Fiber’s 5 Gbps internet offers symmetrical upload and download speeds for those who work heavily in the cloud with large files and is a big upgrade from current 1- to 2.5-gigabit offerings. After staying stagnant for several years, Google is finally working to expand service to more cities and will eventually offer 8-gigabit-plus speeds.

Companies like Frontier and Optimum are starting to offer 5 Gbps service, albeit for a higher $155 per month and $180 per month price (respectively). And, of course, Comcast says it’s close to launching “10G” multi-gig service (read: 2 Gbps up and down, so far) in select markets.

A Link Between Hearing Voices and Hearing Your Own Voice

A Link Between Hearing Voices and Hearing Your Own Voice An experiment with bone-conduction headphones suggests a way for neuroscientists to better understand some hallucinations.