We can now add the European Central Bank to the ranks of high-ranking crypto skeptics, with high-ranking execs going further to say that crypto shouldn’t be legitimized by any government or major financial institution.
As part of its goal to have zero-emission aircraft enter service by 2035, Airbus has announced the development of a hydrogen fuel-cell engine designed to for airplanes. Unlike Rolls-Royce's recently announced jet engine that burns hydrogen directly, it would use an electric motor just like fuel-cell cars, while emitting only H20. It could eventually be employed in commercial aircraft that could carry up to 100 passengers around 1,000 nautical miles (1,150 miles), the company said.
Airbus plans to test the engine by the middle of the decade on its A380 MSN1 aircraft, "currently being modified to carry liquid hydrogen tanks," it said. However, the technology appears to be designed for smaller, regional type aircraft that use more efficient propeller, rather than jet engines.
"Fuel cells are a potential solution to help us achieve our zero-emission ambition and we are focused on developing and testing this technology to understand if it is feasible and viable for a 2035 entry-into-service of a zero-emission aircraft," said Airbus VP for zero-emission aircraft, Glenn Llewellyn.
The company didn't provide any more details, but fuel-cells are a well-known technology for cars. They're far less efficient than battery electric vehicles (BEVs) if you count fuel production and conversion to electricity. However, they have more range, are faster to refuel and lighter — with the latter, of course, being essential for aircraft.
As mentioned, Rolls-Royce just announced the successful test of a jet engine powered by burning hydrogen directly, another possible technology for future air transport. The company converted a Rolls-Royce AE 2100-A, a regional aircraft engine used in turboprop commuter planes, to work with the novel fuel source. However, the tech could theoretically be scaled up for larger planes.
There are still some major hurdles to overcome before hydrogen could ever be used to power airplanes. It takes four times as much hydrogen as regular fuel by weight for the same range, and the fuel must be kept under pressure. And of course, hydrogen is highly explosive, so aircraft systems for storage and distribution would need to be extremely reliable and durable — again adding weight. Still, it might be the only option available for aircraft in the near future, as battery technology is still much too heavy unless used for very short flights.
When I turned 10, I was finally allowed to own a pen. At school, that was when we moved from pencils to ink, and our parents were told to get us all-new stationery. That was also the year we learned to write in cursive, because we were finally big kids and cursive writing meant we could… sign checks, I guess.
I don’t know about kids these days, but physically writing notes in pen and paper is a huge part of how I learned things and organized my thoughts. It probably had something to do with the fact that my mom trained my brother and I to use “mind maps” as study tools, too. When I start planning a trip or a big project, I instinctively reach for a notepad and a pen. That’s why writing on a tablet that mimics this experience holds so much appeal for me (and probably a lot of people around my age or older).
Though you can get a decent stylus experience on an iPad, Surface or Galaxy device, e-ink tablets typically last a lot longer and offer a more paper-like reading experience with no glare or blue light hurting your eyes. They also typically don’t come with distracting apps or notifications to interrupt your work. So when Amazon announced the Kindle Scribe would be its first e-reader that would support stylus input, I was intrigued. The Kindle series are probably the most popular e-ink readers in the US, and they could make digital note taking much more accessible to a mainstream audience.
At $340, however, the Scribe is the most expensive Kindle. For that premium, you’ll get a bigger 10.2-inch screen with the same 300ppi pixel density, a front light with 35 LEDs, an included Basic Pen and at least 16GB of storage. You can sync your notes to the Kindle app to view them without the tablet. But while e-readers never fully replaced books, the Scribe might just offer a better experience than an actual pen and notepad.
Like most Kindles, the Scribe is marvelously thin and light. At just 0.22 inches thick, this is one of the slimmest e-readers around, and I actually worried it might break when I left it in the flimsy purse I threw into an overhead compartment during my Thanksgiving flight to San Francisco. Luckily, with the case that Amazon sent along, the Scribe not only survived being tossed around with heavy suitcases, it also held up when I accidentally sat on it. (Yes, I’m a monster who’s too rough with gadgets.)
More importantly, at just 433 grams or 0.95 pounds, the Scribe was light enough for long periods of reading. It’s just a hair lighter than the M1 iPad Air, which weighs 1.02 pounds, and thanks to a generous bezel on the long side, the Scribe is easy to hold with one hand without accidentally triggering the touchscreen. Because the display rotates to all orientations, you can use this with your right or left hand.
Unlike the Oasis or some e-reader models by Kobo, the Scribe doesn’t have physical buttons for page turning. There’s just a single power button on the edge next to the USB-C charging socket. It’s also worth noting that, again, unlike the Oasis and Paperwhite models, the Scribe is not water-resistant.
In many ways, the Scribe offers a better experience than actual pen and paper. I never run out of paper or ink or have to sharpen a pencil. Erasing my mistakes is effortless, I don’t have to deal with cleaning up eraser dust, and I never end up with ink or lead stains on my hands. Amazon’s palm rejection here is almost perfect, other than when I drag it across the screen, which turned the page. That didn’t happen often enough to be annoying, and I quickly learned to not move my palm when resting it on the display.
I loved the sheer smoothness of writing on the Scribe. The latency is nearly zero, and the instant I placed the nib on the screen, it left a mark. Thanks to the screen’s matte finish and responsiveness, drawing on the Scribe felt just as natural as the real thing. The Premium Pen that Amazon sent with our review unit has a shortcut button and dedicated eraser at the top. Flipping the pen over to undo mistakes felt natural, but more importantly it was just as smooth as inking. Of course, since it’s a much larger target than the stylus’ nib, the eraser isn’t as precise, but the deleted marks on the screen fade in a satisfying way.
The one thing that took away from the Scribe being a full replica of a notepad is its screen refreshing. When you erase something, it slowly fades away and when it’s just about gone, the display refreshes itself quite jarringly. It’s a small quirk, but can definitely catch you off guard.
Just like pen and paper, the Scribe is limited. You can’t edit your notes on a phone or laptop after writing them. You can view them, sure, but because Amazon syncs them to the Kindle app as image files, you can’t make changes to them. You can export them as PDFs to another device and use a third-party editor to tweak your notes, but at that point you might as well use Evernote or Samsung Notes.
Amazon’s software doesn’t offer this function though, and compared to competing note-taking apps for iOS, Android and Windows, the Scribe’s features are very rudimentary. It doesn’t even do handwriting recognition to convert your scrawl to machine-readable text, meaning it also can’t index anything you’ve jotted down so you can search your notes by keywords later.
Still, that doesn’t mean the device isn’t a delight. I loved using the Scribe as a notepad for my many lists. You can start notebooks using various backgrounds — a simple lined pattern, or checkboxes to keep track of tasks or shopping items. I spent my week or so with the Scribe organizing my holiday shopping lists, planning a family vacation, drawing tropical fruits that my friends haven’t heard of and refamiliarizing myself with writing the Japanese alphabet (hiragana). I felt more productive and organized when I had the Scribe with me, and almost lost when I needed to jot down a thought and it wasn’t by my side.
For my purposes, the Scribe was perfectly adequate. But for others who might need a more sophisticated note-taking system, Amazon’s device is seriously lacking. A biochemistry professor I spoke to who was keen on using the Scribe to annotate notes and research articles, for example, was disappointed to learn the device didn’t support colors. You can only highlight in grayscale. If you’re looking to create works of art, you won’t find a complete toolkit in Amazon’s app — just a pencil with a few thickness options or a highlighter. And unlike on an iPad, you can’t move portions of your drawings around just by dragging and dropping them with your stylus.
Creating a notebook isn’t the only way you can doodle on the Kindle Scribe, by the way. You can also take down notes when you’re reading an e-book. But it’s not like you can scribble directly onto the words of your e-books. You can use the floating toolbox to create a sticky note, then draw within a designated rectangle. When you close the sticky note, a small symbol appears over the word it was attached to, but otherwise, your scribbles are hidden. No annotating in the margins here.
Like I said, Amazon’s software is rudimentary. Still, if you think about the Scribe primarily as a blank writing pad that replaces all your loose pieces of paper as opposed to a sophisticated notes management system, then it’ll still serve a purpose.
A large component of the Scribe experience is the pen. The Premium Pen I received costs $30 more, and adds a dedicated eraser and shortcut button along the edge. Both the Basic and pricier pens snap magnetically to the edge of the Scribe and don’t need to be charged, which is nice. The stylus stays securely attached to the tablet, thanks to the strong magnets, though you can remove it without too much force. I did find the shortcut button on the Premium Pen a little too easy to accidentally trigger, since it’s placed right where my thumb or index finger would rest. I frequently had to remind myself to turn the stylus so I wouldn’t press it by mistake.
Amazon’s Premium Pen is about the same size as an Apple Pencil or Samsung’s larger S Pen for tablets and reminiscent of a real pen. Anecdotally, it actually felt more comfortable than Apple’s stylus, possibly due to a touch of malleability in its body.
It’s no surprise that the Scribe shines as an e-reader. It may be the biggest Kindle yet, but when I was reading Blackout by Erin Flanagan, words were as crisp and legible as on the smaller entry-level Kindle I’m used to. I appreciated the ability to tweak the display’s color temperature just like I would on other Kindles, and cut down on blue light near my bedtime. The front light made it possible for me to read in a dark airplane cabin, and though the Scribe was easy to see in sunlight, it did have some glare under the harsh overhead lights in our office.
Of course, thanks to the larger canvas, I could see more text on a page and didn’t have to squint. Amazon also offers Large Mode under Display Size so that those with visual impairments can read with greater ease. Other Kindle accessibility features are also available, including the VoiceView screen reader over Bluetooth audio (in English only). You can also adjust the font size, face, line spacing, margins and invert black and white.
The company also introduced a new Send to Kindle for Web tool to make it easier to transfer your personal documents from your computer to your Scribe. Basically, as an e-reader, the Scribe is everything you’ve gotten used to on a Kindle, from the excellent library of available content down to Amazon’s cumbersome interface.
This brings me to my two biggest frustrations with the Scribe, and, spoiler alert, they’re pretty minor complaints. First, I wish Amazon would update its layout to make it easier or faster to switch between notes. To go from my to-do list to my packing list, for example, I have to tap the top of the screen to invoke the navigation bar, hit the Notebooks button to view my notes, then select the list I want. That would be bothersome on a regular touchscreen, not to mention a slowly refreshing e-ink one. If Amazon let me view a carousel of my open notes by swiping from the bottom, perhaps, it might make jumping between them easier.
Secondly, the premium leather cover that Amazon sent with the Scribe folds into a stand, but it’s tricky to figure out how. Obviously you don’t have to buy this case, which is good since it costs an absurd $80. And the interface is slow, but works as expected and is perhaps as good as it gets for e-ink.
The best thing about black-and-white e-readers, though, is their longevity. Amazon says the Scribe will last up to 3 weeks if you write about half an hour a day. While I was concerned to see the battery level drop from 83 to 80 percent during one of my hiragana practice sprees, in my week with the device it’s gone down about 35 percent. I’d say if you weren’t writing continuously for hours, you’d get more out of the Scribe, but at the very least it easily should last you two and a half weeks.
As a child of the nineties, I’m enamored with the Scribe. Amazon has managed to not only replicate a pen-and-paper experience, but without the associated limitations like running out of ink. Some of my main issues with the Scribe, particularly its lack of editing tools, are possibly solvable by software updates. And indeed, when I asked Amazon about possible handwriting recognition tools in future, a representative indicated that “While we can’t comment on future roadmap features, we are always listening to customer feedback.” So maybe if we all complain loudly enough, the company will add it.
The Kindle Scribe’s biggest competition is the Remarkable Tablet, which retails for slightly more than Amazon’s device, though you can find it on sale for less nowadays. It has a slightly larger 10.3 inch screen but comes in noticeably thinner at 4.7mm (or 0.18 inches) thick. ReMarkable offers slightly better syncing and writing software than Amazon, but it pales in comparison to the Kindle as an e-reader.
Artists, designers and serious note-takers also probably want to look elsewhere for a more sophisticated drawing and annotating solution — the iPad and Apple Pencil might be your best bet. But as a combo of an e-reader that can also serve as a basic digital notepad, the Kindle Scribe is surprisingly satisfying.
It's already started. Time to recap 2022. Apple revealed that social media newcomer BeReal was one of the biggest winners in its annual App Store Awards. It won iPhone App of the Year for giving people what Apple called, “an authentic glimpse into their friend's and family's everyday lives.” If you’re unaware, BeReal users can share a selfie of themselves with a photo of their environment during a two-minute window the app randomly selects for them every day, sidestepping the production values, planning and filters that are often part of Instagram, TikTok and other apps. And in BeReal's case, the fact that rival social media apps have introduced or are testing similar features is a clear testament to the "impact" it's had. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?
In gaming, Apex Legends Mobile was the top title for iPhone, while puzzle game Moncage and card battler Inscryption won best games for the iPad and the Mac, respectively. The fantastic El Hijo also got a nod for best game for Apple TV.
– Mat Smith
The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.
Twitter’s former head of safety says the platform is less safe under Elon Musk
The second 'Super Mario Bros.' trailer reveals Donkey Kong and Rainbow Road
Overwatch 2's season two trailer teases a new game mode and the latest map
PlayStation brings its eSports tournaments to PS5 with easy-to-join events
Amazon’s Create With Alexa generates unique animated children’s stories
NASA has shared a photo taken by the Artemis I vehicle on Monday showing both Earth and the Moon in the background. Orion took the snapshot at its maximum distance from Earth of 268,563 miles. That's the farthest any human-oriented spacecraft has traveled, beating even Apollo 13's 1970 record of 248,655 miles. What a great photo.
Sony has a new project, and it’s called Mocopi, comprising six motion-tracking bands to wear on your hands, feet, back and head, with a price of 49,500 yen (about $358). Its aim is to track your body to create videos or operate avatars in real-time with metaverse apps, like VRChat. It's an ambitious product for people with a general interest in the metaverse as well as animation professionals and filmmakers – though it assumes a degree of technical knowledge. Sony says you can use existing VRM avatars and export recorded videos in the MP4 format, provided you have an up-to-date smartphone.
Twitter has quietly updated its transparency site to reveal it stopped enforcing its COVID-19 misinformation policy on November 23rd. The company won't suspend further users or delete content including falsehoods about the coronavirus or vaccines, but it's not clear if the company will, as part of Elon Musk's planned amnesty, restore any accounts banned for sharing misinformation.
Google is unlikely to announce the next entry in its Pixel A series until I/O 2023. That’s half a year away, but the rumor mill is already spinning. Steve Hemmerstoffer of OnLeaks fame has shared early renders of the upcoming Pixel 7a. Unsurprisingly, the images suggest the Pixel 7a will look a lot like its predecessor and Google’s other Pixel 7 devices. There aren’t many spec surprises, but it appears the next phone will get the same metallic camera trim as the more expensive models.
Exactly 50 years ago yesterday, Atari released Pong, and the early video game industry was born. Released in 1972, Atari sold more than 8,000 Pong arcade cabinets. A few years later, the home version became an instant success, with Sears selling about 150,000 units of the console you needed to play the game. If not for Pong, Nintendo would not exist, and a young Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak may not have created Apple.
A week ago, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) petitioned the Board of Supervisors for permission to deploy robots that can kill suspects under specific circumstances. Now, the board has approved the petition with a vote of 8 vs. 3 despite strong opposition from civil liberties groups. Under the new policy, robots can be used "as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent and outweigh any other force option available to the SFPD."
The city's police force has over a dozen robots at the moment, which are equipped with the capability to provide video reconnaissance and to diffuse bombs. None of them have weapons and live ammunition, the SFPD says, and there are no plans to fit them with any. However, they can now be deployed with explosives attached "to contact, incapacitate, or disorient violent, armed, or dangerous suspect," an SFPD spokesperson said. "Robots equipped in this manner would only be used in extreme circumstances to save or prevent further loss of innocent lives," they added.
As NPR notes, SF officials have to define the authorized uses of its robots and other military-grade equipment due to a California law that went into effect this year. Aaron Peskin, a Board of Supervisor member, added a line to the SFPD's original draft policy that said: "Robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person." But the SFPD amended the proposal to allow the use of robots as "a deadly force option." The board approved that version of the policy with additional amendments, stating that officials can only use robots with explosive charges after they had exhausted all alternative force or de-escalation tactics. Also, only a limited number of high-ranking officials will be able authorize the use of robots as a deadly force option.
Among all of San Francisco's supervisors, only Shamann Walton, Dean Preston and Hillary Ronen voted "no" on approving the policy. Preston called allowing the SFPD to use robots to kill people "deeply disturbing" and a "sad moment" for the city. In his full statement, he said that giving the police the power to arm remote-controlled robots will "place Black and brown people in disproportionate danger of harm or death." Meanwhile, Rafael Mandelman, who supported the use of robots as a deadly force from the beginning, defended his vote and said that the final version of the policy "lays out reasonable restrictions on the use of robots" despite "the hyperbole expressed by many who oppose" it.
Mandelman also told Fox KTVU that it would be irresponsible not to make plans to use robots in life-threatening situations. Matthew Guariglia of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told the news organization, however, that by equipping robots, "[w]e are going to lessen the burden of using deadly force from having to pull a gun and pull the trigger to a button on a remote control."
UPDATE: @sfgov supes vote 8-3 w/amendments to let @SFPD use existing robots that in extreme circumstances could be used to deliver deadly force via explosive charges, per @RafaelMandelman. @shamannwalton@DeanPreston@HillaryRonen vote no. @SFPD must evaluate & try alternatives pic.twitter.com/zYezjRlFBv
— Henry K. Lee (@henrykleeKTVU) November 30, 2022
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, says he donated equally to both Democratic and Republican politicians before his cryptocurrency platform filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, wiping out billions of dollars in customer deposits. And that fact is going to come as a real shock to right-wing political operatives…
Twitter's long-running effort to fight COVID-19 misinformation is at an end, at least for now. As Twitter users and CNNnoticed, the social media firm has quietly updated its transparency site to reveal that it stopped enforcing its COVID misinformation policy on November 23rd. It's not clear if the company will restore any accounts banned for sharing misinformation as part of Elon Musk's planned amnesty, but this indicates that the company won't suspend further users or delete content including falsehoods about the coronavirus or vaccines.
Twitter started cracking down on COVID-19 misinformation in January 2020, as the disease began spreading worldwide. The social network has since banned over 11,200 accounts, pulled over 97,600 examples of false content and "challenged" 11.7 million accounts through efforts like warning labels. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy even pointed to the company's policy as an example of how other technology platforms could fight bogus medical claims.
The company has effectively disbanded its communications team and isn't available for comment. However, Musk has routinely voiced his opposition to bans and some COVID-19 safety measures. Tesla defied early pandemic lockdowns by keeping factories open despite shelter-in-place orders. Musk also insisted during an April 2020 earnings call that these lockdowns were "forcibly imprisoning people," and threatened to move Tesla's headquarters from California to Texas in response. While the entrepreneur supports vaccination, he opposes mandates and voiced support for the anti-mandate occupiers that shut down the Canadian capital city of Ottawa for weeks.
The news comes amid reports Twitter is scaling back other teams dedicated to catching toxic behavior. Bloombergsources claim Musk has gutted the team dedicated to fighting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) as part of his wide-ranging layoffs, cutting it from roughly 20 specialists to less than 10. The contacts say that the unit was already strained before, but is now "overwhelmed" despite Musk's assertion that fighting child exploitation is "priority #1." This could put Twitter in legal jeopardy as it's frequently required by law to remove CSAM — the UK's Online Safety Bill lets regulators fine companies if they don't move quickly to pull offending content.
The cutbacks may have also limited Twitter's ability to fend off bots and other fake accounts. The tech giant struggled to curb spam obscuring news of Chinese protests after Musk laid off Twitter's anti-propaganda team, for example.
China will attempt to send a new crew to its brand new Tiangong space station on Tuesday. The astronauts will spend around six months aboard the orbital outpost, preparing it for operations.
Tools like DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, which generate images based on a few lines of text, briefly set social media ablaze this year. But Amazon’s entry into the AI art world is a bit different. Create with Alexa lets children guide the creation of animated stories using a few kid-friendly prompts.
Since Create with Alexa is visual storytelling, it’s only available on Echo Show devices, not the company’s audio-only speakers. Amazon says it works whether the device is in Amazon Kids mode or not.
To create a new story, your child would begin by speaking, “Alexa, make a story,” and then following several prompts. The AI then generates an illustrated five-to-ten-line narrative — including animations, sound effects and music — built around their answers.
Amazon’s generative AI has a narrow scope at launch, with only three themes available: “space exploration”, “underwater” and “enchanted forest.” After picking one, children choose the story’s hero from options like “an astronaut named Speedy” or “an alien named Fuzzy.” Your child can then pick a color scheme and a tonal description like silly, happy or mysterious. Afterwards, they can save their stories to watch again later or share them with friends and family.
This isn’t a case of Alexa splicing together ready-made scenes. Amazon says no two AI-created stories will be the same, even if your child repeats the process with identical prompts
According to Amazon, Create With Alexa includes safeguards to ensure the feature only produces kid-friendly content. “From the get-go, we used carefully curated data sources to train AI models,” Eshan Bhatnagar, head of product for Alexa AI, said in a blog post today. “We have multiple guardrails such as content filtering and curated prompts to ensure this experience is both delightful and safe.” Additionally, Create with Alexa requires parents to enable the feature before their kids can use it.
Create With Alexa arrives in an atmosphere of uncertainty surrounding Amazon’s voice assistant. Earlier this month, the retail giant confirmed it had begun laying off employees, reportedly slashing around 10,000 jobs. Its Devices & Services division, which handles Echo Show and Alexa, reportedly bore the brunt of it. In October, Amazon also killed off Glow, its kid-focused video-calling device.
Create with Alexa is available on Echo Show devices starting today in the US. However, it’s only available in English and the United States at launch.
Logitech's Litra Glow has been a big success since it launched early this year, giving streamers an easy way to create soft and flattering illumination for their faces. It's already quite affordable at $60, but now it has dropped back to an all-time low price of $50 on Amazon.
Buy Logitech Litra Glow at Amazon - $50The Litra Glow promises to be safe on the eyes for all-day streaming, while providing a "natural, radiant look across skin tones." You also get cinematic color accuracy via Logitech's TrueSoft technology, regardless of skin tone. It's ready to use out of the box thanks to the five presets with different brightness levels and color temperatures, or you can create custom options using the G HUB software. As a bonus, any presets you create can be assigned to the G Keys on a Logitech G keyboard or mouse.
It's now on sale for $50, matching its all-time low price. You can find other soft- and ring-style lights from Elgato and others, but most from any recognizable name brand are considerably more expensive. The Litra Glow is already a great buy with Logitech's promised color accuracy, and now Amazon's discount makes it even more affordable.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
Sony has launched an interesting product called Mocopi, consisting of six motion-tracking bands worn on your hands, feet, back and head, with a price of 49,500 yen (about $358). The aim is to let you track your body to create videos or operate avatars in real time with metaverse apps like VRChat. It even offers an SDK that lets you import motion data into 3D animation apps.
Apparently a play on the term "mocap," (motion capture) Mocopi's six color-coded, lightweight motion sensors use "proprietary technology and a smartphone" with a dedicated app, according to Sony. "Normally, video production using motion capture requires dedicated equipment and operators," Sony wrote. "By utilizing our proprietary algorithm, 'Mocopi' realizes highly accurate motion measurement with a small number of sensors, freeing VTubers [virtual YouTubers] and creators involved in movie and animation production from time and place constraints."
On December 15th, Sony will provide a software development kit (SDK) that links the motion capture data with metaverse services, along with the real-time development platform Unity and Autodesk's animation/mocap app MotionBuilder. "This SDK expands the use of motion data for activities such as full-body tracking, thereby facilitating the development of new services in areas such as the metaverse and fitness."
In a how-to video (below), Sony shows how you can pair the sensors with the app, strap them to your body and calibrate them. From there, you can start dancing or do other movements and see the in-app avatars ape your actions. A second video showcasing some avatar animations (above) looks good, but does reveal typical motion capture issues like jitter and foot sliding.
It's an ambitious product aimed at not only people interested in the metaverse, but animation professionals and filmmakers as well. Sony notes that you can use existing VRM avatars and export recorded videos in the MP4 format, provided you have a device with iOS 15.7.1 or Android 11. Reservations are set to start in mid-December 2022 and it will go on sale in late January 2023, but there's no word yet on North American availability.
Elon Musk claims that Apple has “threatened to withhold” Twitter from its app store. According to Musk, the company “won’t tell us why” it has issues with the social network’s app. In subsequent tweets, he railed against Apple’s 30 percent “tax” on in-app purchases and claimed the App Store owner has “censored” other developers. He also said Apple “has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter.” Apple hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment. Musk also hasn’t specified if the company is holding updates to the service or threatening to remove the app from its store altogether.
Apple has strict, if often unevenly enforced, rules that govern the content in apps in its store. You might remember Parler, a “free speech” rival to Twitter, which was removed from the App Store for its lax content moderation rules. The app returned after it rolled out an AI-based moderation system.
– Mat Smith
The warning system that knows when rumbling volcanoes will blow their tops
Crypto lender BlockFi files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy amid FTX fallout
The best Cyber Monday tech deals that might still be running
Tesla is reportedly redesigning the Model 3 to cut production costs
Meta fined €265 million over Facebook data scraping in the EU
As confirmed by TechCrunch, a new feature called Message Yourself is now being rolled out globally to iOS and Android users in the next few weeks. Once you get the update, you'll be able to see yourself at the top of the contacts list when creating new messages. Once you click on that, you'll be able to send yourself notes and reminders. Until now, you could only message yourself by creating a group with just you as a member or by using the apps click to chat feature. Or open your notes app.
Earlier this year, Twitter confirmed an API vulnerability allowed the theft of 5.4 million users’ private user data, but the company said it had "no evidence" it was exploited. Now, all those accounts are exposed on a hacker forum. An additional 1.4 million Twitter profiles for suspended users were reportedly shared privately, and an even larger data dump with the data of "tens of millions" of other users may have come from the same vulnerability. If you're thinking about using two-factor authentication, now would be a good time.
Hush Outdoors and Apple have released Oceanic+, effectively giving Ultra owners a recreation-oriented dive computer. The software tracks fundamentals like depth, no-decompression time (a figure used to set duration limits for given depths) and water temperature. The app works without the touchscreen, and you can set compass headings using the action button. Developers have even cranked up the haptic feedback, so you can feel it through a wetsuit.
The Federal Trade Commission and seven states have sued Google and iHeartMedia for running allegedly "deceptive" Pixel 4 ads. Promo ads aired between 2019 and 2020 featured influencers extolling the virtues of phones they reportedly didn't own — Google didn't even supply Pixels before most of the ads were recorded. The FTC wants to bar Google and iHeartMedia from making any future misleading claims about ownership.
BeReal, the new social media app that exploded in popularity over the past few months, is one of the biggest winners for this year's Apple's App Store Awards. It won iPhone App of the Year for giving people an authentic glimpse into their friend's and family's every day lives, the tech giant said in its announcement. In all, Apple highlighted 16 apps and games for 2022 that delivered "exceptional experiences and [made] a profound cultural impact."
In BeReal's case, the fact that other social media apps had introduced or are testing features similar to what it does is a clear testament to the "impact" it's had on the space. BeReal users can share a selfie of themselves with a photo of their environment during a two-minute window that the app randomly selects for them every day. A reverse engineer found an experimental feature that's basically identical to that within Instagram back in August, while TikTok unveiled its own take on the format in September.
Another big winner is GoodNotes 5, which was named the iPad App of the Year for taking digital notes "to the next level with best-in-class Apple Pencil support." Users can treat their iPads like any book or notebook with the app, since it allows them to jot down notes on the margin and highlight important text, among other things.
MacFamilyTree 10 won Mac App of the year for its ability to create virtually stunning family trees and giving users the capability to collaborate with relatives around the world, while ViX, the Spanish-language streaming service by TelevisaUnivision, won Apple TV App of the Year. Yet another winner is fitness tracker Gentler Streak, which took home the Apple Watch App of the Year award.
For games, Apex Legends Mobile bested all the other titles for the iPhone, while puzzle game Moncage and card battler Inscryption won best games for the iPad and the Mac, respectively. The Wild West stealth game El Hijo won best game for Apple TV for looking exceptional on a big screen. Wylde Flowers, a life sim that combines farming with magic, was named as the best Apple Arcade game. Finally, esports simulator League of Legends Esports Manager won the first China Game of the Year award.
In addition to the main winners, Apple also highlighted five apps for impacting people's lives and influencing culture. Those apps include How We Feel, which encourages users to record their emotional well-being to help them better vocalize it, and Dot's Home, a time-traveling story that puts a spotlight on systemic housing injustices. Locket Widget can help forge connections between people by letting users send live photos to their friend's and family's home screen, while Waterllama makes keeping hydrated fun. There's also Inua - A Story in Ice and Time, which takes users on an adventure rich in Inuit folklore and traditions.
Houston’s public school system will be closed again Tuesday following a power outage at a water treatment plant on Sunday that has forced the entire city to boil water before it can be used. Water officials had expressed hope that the boil water notice for the city’s 2.3 million residents would be lifted by early…
If you're looking to pick up a new tablet for the holidays, a number of slates we recommend are on sale for Cyber Monday. Most of the best discounts are holdovers from Black Friday, but that still means a range of iPads, Amazon Fire tablets and Microsoft Surface PCs are down to their lowest prices to date. To help you get a bargain, we've checked price histories, consulted our testing and rounded up the most worthwhile tablet deals of Cyber Monday below.
Apple's 10.2-inch iPad is still on sale for $270 this Cyber Monday, which comes within a dollar of the best price we've tracked and sits about $25 below the device's typical street price. The 9th-gen iPad is the top budget pick in our guide to the best tablets: It has a more dated design and less processing power than Apple's pricier models, but it remains an altogether pleasant experience for casual media consumption. We gave it a review score of 86 last year.
Buy iPad 10.2-inch at Amazon - $270The latest 11-inch iPad Pro is currently available for a new low of $739, which is $60 off Apple's MSRP. This isn't a massive discount, but it's notable given that the device only launched last month. We gave the 2022 iPad Pros a review score of 87: The iPad Air is a better value for most, but if you can afford to take a step up or need more than 64GB of storage, the 11-inch Pro gets you a faster M2 chip, better speakers and a brighter display with a faster 120 Hz refresh rate. Just don't feel the need to upgrade if you own a recent iPad Pro already.
Buy iPad Pro 11-inch at Amazon - $739Buy iPad Pro 11-inch at B&H - $739The Blue version of Apple's 10th-generation iPad is on sale for $419, which is within $6 of the lowest price we've tracked and a $30 discount for another tablet that arrived just last month. This model is a bit tougher to recommend than most iPads — it's got a newer design and chip than the 9th-gen iPad, but it costs a fair bit more, and it's saddled with a worse screen and lesser accessory support than the iPad Air. Nevertheless, if you want a larger display than the 10.2-inch iPad, can't afford the Air and don't plan on using an Apple Pencil, this is still a fine tablet. We gave it a review score of 85 in October.
Buy iPad 10.9-inch at Amazon - $419Buy iPad 10.9-inch at B&H - $419The new 12.9-inch iPad Pro, meanwhile, is currently on sale from $999. That's $100 off Apple's standard going rate and, again, the lowest price we've seen. All the perks of the new 11-inch Pro still apply here, but the larger model adds a noticeably more vibrant display thanks to its mini-LED backlighting. While it's still tough to call the 12.9-inch Pro a comfortable laptop replacement for most people, this M2 model is still a fantastic tablet if you've got money to burn and just want the largest and most powerful iPad possible.
Buy iPad Pro 12.9-inch at Amazon - $999Buy iPad Pro 12.9-inch at B&H - $999Amazon's Fire HD tablets remain worth considering if all you want is a competent slate for streaming video, browsing the web and reading ebooks for as little money as possible. The Fire HD 10 is likely the best option for most people within the lineup — and it's still on sale for $75, which matches its all-time low and rates about $50 below its average street price.
The Fire HD 10's 10.1-inch 1080p display is bigger and sharper than what you get from Amazon's other slates, while the eight-core processor and 3GB of RAM give the tablet a bit more performance. To be clear, all Fire tablets are a marked step down from Apple's iPads in both design and speed. There's still no Google Play Store, too, and Fire OS still heavily pushes you toward Amazon's own apps. But if you're a Prime user and don't push your tablet all of the time, the Fire HD 10 is a good value at this deal price.
We'll also note that the Fire HD 10 Plus, a variant that adds an extra gigabyte of RAM (4GB total) and wireless charging support, is on sale for $105, which matches its lowest price to date. Those upgrades might be nice if you want to buy a charging dock and use the tablet like an Echo Show-style smart display, but for most, they're probably not worth the extra cost.
Buy Fire HD 10 at Amazon - $75Just about all of Amazon's other Fire tablets are on sale beyond that. We don't recommend the cheapo Fire 7, but if you want a smaller or more affordable alternative to the Fire HD 10, the 8-inch Fire HD 8 is worth a shout at $55. It's more prone to sluggishness and its display isn't as sharp, but it still lets you read Kindle books and stream Prime Video without too much frustration, and its battery lasts more than 10 hours per charge. This deal matches the latest model's lowest-ever price. Again, if you want an extra gig of RAM (3GB total) and wireless charging, the "Plus" model is also on sale for $10 more.
Buy Fire HD 8 at Amazon - $55If you're shopping for a child, meanwhile, all of Amazon's Fire Kids slates are also discounted to their respective all-time lows. These devices use the same hardware as their non-Kids counterparts, but they come with protective bumper cases, no lock screen ads, two-year warranties, a year of Amazon's Kids+ content service and a more kid-friendly UI turned on by default. (You can create a kids profile with deep parental controls on a standard Fire tablet, too, but you don't get the other perks.) The "Kids Pro" models use a slim hard plastic case built for older kids, while the base "Kids" tablets use a large rubbery case that's designed to take a beating from littler ones.
We named the Fire HD 10 Kids Pro the top option for kids in our best tablets guide. Again, the performance and app support of all Amazon tablets is lacking compared to an iPad, but if you only need something for casual entertainment — or if you just don't want to spend more than $250 on a device your kid will break in a week — these are solid alternatives.
Shop Fire Kids tablet sale at AmazonMicrosoft is taking $100 to $200 off the Intel-powered versions of its new Surface Pro 9, with prices starting at $900 for a model with a 12th-gen Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. (As usual, a keyboard costs extra.) That's still not cheap, but this is another device that only launched last month.
At this point, you probably know where you stand on the Surface Pro series — its kickstand design isn't especially comfortable to use on your lap, but it remains the standard-bearer among tablets designed to replace a laptop. While this new model isn't a major departure from the Surface Pro 8, its CPU performance is a little bit better, and it represents a nice upgrade if you're coming from a three- to five-year-old model. There's no 3.5mm jack, though.
Note that we're recommending the Intel models specifically. Microsoft sells a variant of the Surface Pro 9 that uses an ARM-based processor, but our review found that model to have too many performance and app compatibility issues for us to comfortably recommend.
Buy Surface Pro 9 at Microsoft - $900Buy Surface Pro 9 at Amazon - $984For those partial to Android, a 128GB version of Samsung's Galaxy Tab S8 is on sale for $539. We've seen this model go for only $10 or so more for much of the past two months, but this deal technically matches its all-time low. The 256GB model, meanwhile, is down to $579, which is another all-time low but a more notable $30 or so off the usual street price. If you want a bigger display, the 12.4-inch Galaxy Tab S8+ is down to $679 for 128GB of storage. That is not the lowest price we've seen, but it's still about $70 off its typical going rate. Finally, the giant 14.6-inch Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra is back at a joint-low of $900.
The Galaxy Tab S8 line is the top Android pick in our guide to the best tablets, and we gave the Galaxy Tab S8+ a review score of 85 this past March. Android is still a step behind Windows and iPadOS when it comes to productivity and general optimizing for bigger displays, but features like Samsung's Dex mode help make multitasking here more convenient than usual. All three models come with impressively thin hardware and nice displays — plus an S Pen stylus in the box — but note that the Tab S8+ and Tab S8 Ultra have OLED panels that are more vibrant than the standard Tab S8's LCD screen.
Buy Galaxy Tab S8 at Amazon - $539Buy Galaxy Tab S8+ at Amazon - $679Buy Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra at Samsung - $900Your Cyber Week Shopping Guide: Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribing to the Engadget Deals newsletter. Also, shop the top Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals on Yahoo Life. Learn about Black Friday trends on In the Know, and our car experts at Autoblog are covering must-shop Black Friday and Cyber Monday auto deals.
