Dracula strikes in more new Last Voyage of the Demeter pictures. Listen to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s TMNT: Mutant Mayhem soundtrack. Warwick Davis wants to reprise his Rogue One character. Plus, get a glimpse of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ musical episode. Spoilers now!
Our first proper look at the return of Loki is here, and Tom Hiddleston’s God of Mischief has some proper chaos on his hands—familiar faces, familiar foes, fluorescent green pie, and oh, just a little thing like all of time itself coming apart at the seams, himself included.
X Corp (aka Twitter) may take legal action against one of its more outspoken critics. The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) says in a letter that X threatened a lawsuit against the anti-hate group on July 20th for allegedly making "false or misleading" claims against the social media giant and trying to scare advertisers. The Center published a research article in June asserting that X allowed explicitly racist and homophobic posts despite policies to the contrary, even days after they'd been reported.
X accused CCDH of using poor methodology, and not studying the 500 million posts on the service each day. It also maintained that the Center was taking funding from competitors or foreign governments as part of an "ulterior agenda," according to The New York Times. CCDH rejects the allegations. It notes that it never claimed to be conducting a comprehensive study, and points to its documented methodology. It adds that X never said just what was inaccurate, and that it doesn't accept any funding from companies or governments.
The researchers further maintain that X is being hypocritical for attacking supposedly limited research while simultaneously curbing the ability to conduct those studies. The platform recently instituted reading rate limits in what it says is a temporary measure to thwart excessive data scraping. The company believes some scrapers are abusing their tools to train AI models and conduct manipulation campaigns. Even Blue subscribers are capped at viewing 8,000 posts per day, making it impractical to conduct extensive research.
X has disbanded its communications team and isn't available for comment. CCDH says it "will not be bullied" and will continue publishing its research. It also intends to post the original letter, and believes a lawsuit with "frivolous" claims could prove risky.
Reports indicate that X's ad sales have plunged by half since Musk bought the company last year. The executive pinned the exodus on European and North American marketers trying to deliberately bankrupt the firm, but employees talking to the NYT maintained that advertisers were balking at the surges in hate speech and porn after Musk's acquisition. Brands like GM and Volkswagen have frozen ad spending on X, while others are believed to have scaled back their efforts.
X has been threatening legal action against others in recent weeks. It accused Microsoft of violating data use policy, and threatened to sue Meta for purportedly duping key features with Threads. The tech giant has also sued a law firm for supposedly taking excess funds during the previous management's handover to Musk.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/tZUy53SIt looks like the Mark Zuckerberg vs Elon Musk cage match isn’t happening, according to audio exclusively heard by Reuters. In the recording, the now surprisingly buff Zuckerberg told Meta employees at a company town hall he’s “not sure if it’s going to come together.”
Zuck didn’t actually say the match is off, just unlikely. For those of us excited by the prospects of billionaires punching each other in the face, let’s hold out hope. Musk hasn’t issued a response – which is odd when he responds to so much – but given Zuckerberg’s continued training in jiu jitsu (and some competition success), Musk could be relieved.
– Mat Smith
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Tor’s shadowy reputation will only end if we all use it
Indie games have entered the era of bespoke publishing
Hitting the Books: The dangerous real-world consequences of our online attention economy
Apple has promised to fix a bug in iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices that may affect Screen Time restrictions for kids. It affects the Downtime function parents use to remotely set hours when kids can't use their devices. "We are aware that some users may be experiencing an issue where Screen Time settings are unexpectedly reset," a spokesperson told the WSJ. "We take these reports very seriously and we have been, and will continue, making updates to improve the situation."
It took a decade, but Square Enix's premier massively multiplayer online role-playing game is finally coming to Xbox consoles. The developer has revealed Final Fantasy XIV will be available for Xbox Series X/S in spring 2024. An open beta is expected for patch 6.5X, and given the dates, the Xbox port should be ready in time for the new Dawntrail expansion, due next summer.
Following Samsung’s first Unpacked event in Seoul, South Korea, Cherlynn, Devindra and Senior Writer Sam Rutherford dive into all of Samsung’s news: the Galaxy Z Fold 5, Z Flip 5, Watch 6 and Tab S9. Is Samsung playing it safe this year, or is it bringing something new to the world of foldables? Also, we discuss Twitter’s rebrand to X (sigh). And talk alien balls.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/m9i1c3pApple has promised to fix a bug in iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices that may affect Screen Time restrictions for kids, The Wall Street Journal has reported. It affects a function called Downtime that allows parents to remotely set hours when kids can't use their devices.
"We are aware that some users may be experiencing an issue where Screen Time settings are unexpectedly reset," a spokesperson told the WSJ. "We take these reports very seriously and we have been, and will continue, making updates to improve the situation."
Parents checking the feature have found that scheduled times have either reverted to older settings or been removed altogether — allowing kids to use their devices at will. One user changed his passcode to be sure his kids hadn't guessed it, but found he needed to reset the feature "two or three times a week." Suffice to say, kids don't always report the issue in a timely fashion either. Around 2,300 people on an Apple discussion page on the subject said they experienced the same bug.
Apple knew about the issue before, but reported it fixed with the release of iOS 16.5 in May. However, WSJ reporters found the issue in subsequent releases and even in the iOS 17 beta.
Screen time was introduced in 2018 at Apple's developer's conference, allowing parents to remotely check their kid's Activity Report and manage their app use time. They can also set a custom amount of time per app that kids can't extend, or create a Downtime to block everything but selected software and phone calls for a set hourly range. Apple has yet to say when it will release a fix.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/yetLz6R
Corporations all around the world are getting into AI, and you can now count Hasbro among them. Earlier in the week, the publisher of tabletop games such as Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering revealed its new partnership with Xplored, the developers behind the digital board game platform Teburu.
Bandai’s Digimon franchise is deeply beloved and hit at just the right time for kids who grew up in the 90s. But it’s one of those properties whose earlier installments have been difficult to get physical releases of for one (usually rights-related) issue or another. Fortunately, things are about to change, because…
We’ve known for some time now that Saw X was on the horizon, and would return to the series’ roots of people having to escape these elaborate traps or die gruesomely. The question that’s been on folks’ minds, especially when it was revealed that Tobin Bell would return as John “Jigsaw” Kramer was, how? Since the post-…
If reality television has taught us anything, it's there's not much people won't do if offered enough money and attention. Sometimes, even just the latter. Unfortunately for the future prospects of our civilization, modern social media has focused upon those same character foibles and optimized them at a global scale, sacrifices at the altar of audience growth and engagement. In Outrage Machine, writer and technologist Tobias Rose-Stockwell, walks readers through the inner workings of these modern technologies, illustrating how they're designed to capture and keep our attention, regardless of what they have to do in order to do it. In the excerpt below, Rose-Stockwell examines the human cost of feeding the content machine through a discussion on YouTube personality Nikocado Avocado's rise to internet stardom.
Excerpted from OUTRAGE MACHINE: How Tech Amplifies Discontent, Disrupts Democracy—And What We Can Do About It by Tobias Rose-Stockwell. Copyright © 2023 by Tobias Rose-Stockwell. Reprinted with permission of Legacy Lit. All rights reserved.
Social media can seem like a game. When we open our apps and craft a post, the way we look to score points in the form of likes and followers distinctly resembles a strange new playful competition. But while it feels like a game, it is unlike any other game we might play in our spare time.
The academic C. Thi Nguyen has explained how games are different: “Actions in games are screened off, in important ways, from ordinary life. When we are playing basketball, and you block my pass, I do not take this to be a sign of your long-term hostility towards me. When we are playing at having an insult contest, we don’t take each other’s speech to be indicative of our actual attitudes or beliefs about the world.” Games happen in what the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga famously called “the magic circle”— where the players take on alternate roles, and our actions take on alternate meanings.
With social media we never exit the game. Our phones are always with us. We don’t extricate ourselves from the mechanics. And since the goal of the game designers of social media is to keep us there as long as possible, it’s an active competition with real life. With a constant type of habituated attention being pulled into the metrics, we never leave these digital spaces. In doing so, social media has colonized our world with its game mechanics.
While we are paid in the small rushes of dopamine that come from accumulating abstract numbers, metrics also translate into hard cash. Acquiring these metrics don’t just provide us with hits of emotional validation. They are transferable into economic value that is quantifiable and very real.
It’s no secret that the ability to consistently capture attention is an asset that brands will pay for. A follower is a tangible, monetizable asset worth money. If you’re trying to purchase followers, Twitter will charge you between $2 and $4 to acquire a new one using their promoted accounts feature.
If you have a significant enough following, brands will pay you to post sponsored items on their behalf. Depending on the size of your following in Instagram, for instance, these payouts can range from $75 per post (to an account with two thousand followers), up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per post (for accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers).
Between 2017 and 2021, the average cost for reaching a thousand Twitter users (the metric advertisers use is CPM, or cost per mille) was between $5 and $7. It costs that much to get a thousand eyeballs on your post. Any strategies that increase how much your content is shared also have a financial value.
Let’s now bring this economic incentive back to Billy Brady’s accounting of the engagement value of moral outrage. He found that adding a single moral or emotional word to a post on Twitter increased the viral spread of that content by 17 percent per word. All of our posts to social media exist in a marketplace for attention — they vie for the top of our followers’ feeds. Our posts are always competing against other people’s posts. If outraged posts have an advantage in this competition, they are literally worth more money.
For a brand or an individual, if you want to increase the value of a post, then including moral outrage, or linking to a larger movement that signals its moral conviction, might increase the reach of that content by at least that much. Moreover, it might actually improve the perception and brand affinity by appealing to the moral foundations of the brand’s consumers and employees, increasing sales and burnishing their reputation. This can be an inherently polarizing strategy, as a company that picks a cause to support, whose audience is morally diverse, might then alienate a sizable percentage of their customer base who disagree with that cause. But these economics can also make sense — if a company knows enough about its consumers’ and employees’ moral affiliations — it can make sure to pick a cause-sector that’s in line with its customers.
Since moral content is a reliable tool for capturing attention, it can also be used for psychographic profiling for future marketing opportunities. Many major brands do this with tremendous success — creating viral campaigns that utilize moral righteousness and outrage to gain traction and attention among core consumers who have a similar moral disposition. These campaigns also often get a secondary boost due to the proliferation of pile- ons and think pieces discussing these ad spots. Brands that moralize their products often succeed in the attention marketplace.
This basic economic incentive can help to explain how and why so many brands have begun to link themselves with online cause-related issues. While it may make strong moral sense to those decision-makers, it can make clear economic sense to the company as a whole as well. Social media provides measurable financial incentives for companies to include moral language in their quest to burnish their brands and perceptions.
But as nefarious as this sounds, moralization of content is not always the result of callous manipulation and greed. Social metrics do something else that influences our behavior in pernicious ways.
In the latter days of 2016, I wrote an article about how social media was diminishing our capacity for empathy. In the wake of that year’s presidential election, the article went hugely viral, and was shared with several million people. At the time I was working on other projects full time. When the article took off, I shifted my focus away from the consulting work I had been doing for years, and began focusing instead on writing full time. One of the by-products of that tremendous signal from this new audience is the book you’re reading right now.
A sizable new audience of strangers had given me a clear message: This was important. Do more of it. When many people we care about tell us what we should be doing, we listen.
This is the result of “audience capture”: how we influence, and are influenced by those who observe us. We don’t just capture an audience — we are also captured by their feedback. This is often a wonderful thing, provoking us to produce more useful and interesting works. As creators, the signal from our audience is a huge part of why we do what we do.
But it also has a dark side. The writer Gurwinder Boghal has explained the phenomena of audience capture for influencers illustrating the story of a young YouTuber named Nicholas Perry. In 2016, Perry began a You- Tube channel as a skinny vegan violinist. After a year of getting little traction online, he abandoned veganism, citing health concerns, and shifted to uploading mukbang (eating show) videos of him trying different foods for his followers. These followers began demanding more and more extreme feats of food consumption. Before long, in an attempt to appease his increasingly demanding audience, he was posting videos of himself eating whole fast-food menus in a single sitting.
He found a large audience with this new format. In terms of metrics, this new format was overwhelmingly successful. After several years of following his audience’s continued requests, he amassed millions of followers, and over a billion total views. But in the process, his online identity and physical character changed dramatically as well. Nicholas Perry became the personality Nikocado — an obese parody of himself, ballooning to more than four hundred pounds, voraciously consuming anything his audience asked him to eat. Following his audience’s desires caused him to pursue increasingly extreme feats at the expense of his mental and physical health.
Nicholas Perry, left, and Nikocado, right, after several years of building a following on YouTube. Source: Nikocado Avocado YouTube Channel.
Boghal summarizes this cross-directional influence.
When influencers are analyzing audience feedback, they often find that their more outlandish behavior receives the most attention and approval, which leads them to recalibrate their personalities according to far more extreme social cues than those they’d receive in real life. In doing this they exaggerate the more idiosyncratic facets of their personalities, becoming crude caricatures of themselves.
This need not only apply to influencers. We are signal-processing machines. We respond to the types of positive signals we receive from those who observe us. Our audiences online reflect back to us what their opinion of our behavior is, and we adapt to fit it. The metrics (likes, followers, shares, and comments) available to us now on social media allow for us to measure that feedback far more precisely than we previously could, leading to us internalizing what is “good” behavior.
As we find ourselves more and more inside of these online spaces, this influence becomes more pronounced. As Boghal notes, “We are all gaining online audiences.” Anytime we post to our followers, we are entering into a process of exchange with our viewers — one that is beholden to the same extreme engagement problems found everywhere else on social media.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/0vZdhcU
If you’re a gamer, your graphics card is likely to be one of the most expensive components in your entire rig—so you want to be sure you’re getting the most out of your investment. As with other pieces of hardware, the graphics card requires some careful care and attention over the course of its life to make sure it’s…
A24's new horror flick Talk to Me revolves around an embalmed hand that when touched, gives the other person a connection between the worlds of the dead and the living. In the film, a group of high schoolers use the thing at parties and record themselves on social media—you hold the hand, say “talk to me,” and a…
Marvel’s Secret Invasion is now over as of a few days ago, and raised several questions during its six-episode run. Most of them we’ll have to see play out in other movies or shows in the coming years (probably), but one of the most important right now is: how long has Rhodey (Don Cheadle) been a Skrull? Following the…
Mickey Mouse is one of the most famous characters in animation and Disney’s most iconic character. Throughout the decades, the character’s been kept alive in animation through numerous means, from the toddler show Mickey Mouse Funhouse to the likes of Kingdom Hearts for more older audiences.
Meta has just launched a new game for Horizon Worlds called Super Rumble, and it's unlike any other game released for the social VR application. Previously known as Titanborne in beta, Super Rumble is the the first game out of Meta's in-house studio, Ouro Interactive. It could also herald a new era for the Horizon Worlds platform, one embodied by experiences with better graphics and more complex gameplay. Vishal Shah, Meta's VP of Metaverse, called the shooter "more than just a new world" and described it as "the next generation of Horizon Worlds" to Janko Roettgers of Lowpass
Roettgers said everyone he played the beta version with "seemed awestruck by the level of fidelity the game offered." Apparently, that's because it was built using imported objects, assets and textures, which wasn't possible in the past. Shah said Meta rebuilt the VR platform's underlying technology to give it the ability to support higher-quality games and to allow developers to import assets created using third-party tools. The company has reportedly given Ouro and select partners the capability to use the import feature so they could develop new Horizon Worlds games to be released over the next six months.
Shah told Lowpass that the company's metaverse team has been working on improvements for Horizon Worlds over the past year. "As consumers come to Horizon, we want to make sure there's a bunch of compelling content that they can find on day one. We're going to seed the ecosystem, bootstrap it with stuff that we build both in-house, but also with some studios that we're working with," he said.
In addition to building an improved version of the platform, the Horizon team has also apparently been developing a mobile app. They'd reportedly finished creating one a year ago but weren't happy with the result, so they chose to build it again. Super Rumble will be one of the first titles to be available when the mobile app comes out, and Shah said it will feature cross-platform play.
A mobile app with cross-platform capabilities could help Meta reach new audiences who can't afford or aren't interested enough to get a VR headset. The company's VR business unit, Reality Labs, posted a $3.7 billion operating loss in the second quarter of 2023. In all, the division has lost $21 billion since the beginning of 2022 and had to axe some projects last year. A mobile app could make Horizon Worlds more accessible, which in turn could translate into greater revenue.
Shah's team has been working on other improvements for the VR platform, as well, including investing in generative AI tools for creation. The idea is to give more creators the ability to build new worlds even if they don't know how to use professional 3D tools. He didn't tell Lowpass when the mobile app or generative AI tools will be available, though, so we'll have to wait for their official announcements.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/Bo5v2VC
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s buzzy startup Worldcoin has a relatively straightforward pitch to prospective users. First, you fork over a scan of your eyeball to one of several thousand iris-scanning, basketball-sized metal computers called “Orbs.” In exchange, you’ll receive a one-of-a-kind “World ID” that could one day be…
Google and Apple enjoy taking each other on in as many different arenas as possible: mobile phones, maps, cloud storage, music streaming, photo management, note taking, smart assistants, tablets, smartwatches, calendars, web browsers, word processors, email, and more besides. In cars, we have Android Auto and Apple…
California-based Rocket Lab—the company voted most likely to compete with SpaceX—appears to be tinkering with its Neutron blueprints, as new artwork suggests.
It's now easy to show your WhatsApp friends what you're doing without putting in the effort to create a Story or a similar clip. The service is rolling out Telegram-like instant video messages that let you respond in chat with videos up to a minute long. You just have to tap and hold a button to capture footage, and you can swipe up to keep the recording going while hands-off.
Videos will automatically play on mute, so you shouldn't startle anyone until you're ready to turn on sound with a tap. Like most anything else in WhatApp, the instant messages are end-to-end encrypted to add a layer of privacy. The feature should be available to all users in the "coming weeks," the company says.
This likely won't replace Telegram Snapchat for many people. WhatsApp is still dominant in the messaging space, and driven largely by calls and texts. Even so, the feature might be appreciated if you'd rather not switch apps just to send rapid-fire videos. You can quickly share news when text or an audio message won't cut it, or simply react to a friend with something more personal than a sticker.
There's an incentive for parent company Meta to act. While WhatsApp has over 2 billion active users as of last year, Telegram is expanding quickly with an estimated 700 million active users each month. Snapchat is still growing despite fierce competition from other social platforms. Apple's iOS 17 will introduce FaceTime video voicemail to iPhone users, too. While instant video messages might not persuade users to sign up, it might keep WhatsApp fans from drifting toward the competition.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/cajOpYQ
Billy the puppet returns in a new look at Saw X. New Last Voyage of the Demeter clips herald Dracula’s awakening. Scooby Doo and Krypto the Superdog are ready to team up in a new movie. Plus, what’s next on Riverdale and Outlander. Spoilers away!
“Tor” evokes an image of the dark web; a place to hire hitmen or buy drugs that, at this point, is overrun by feds trying to catch you in the act. The reality, however, is a lot more boring than that — but it’s also more secure.
The Onion Router, now called Tor, is a privacy-focused web browser run by a nonprofit group. You can download it for free and use it to shop online or browse social media, just like you would on Chrome or Firefox or Safari, but with additional access to unlisted websites ending in .onion. This is what people think of as the “dark web,” because the sites aren’t indexed by search engines. But those sites aren’t an inherently criminal endeavor.
“This is not a hacker tool,” said Pavel Zoneff, director of strategic communications at The Tor Project. “It is a browser just as easy to use as any other browser that people are used to.”
That’s right, despite common misconceptions, Tor can be used for any internet browsing you usually do. The key difference with Tor is that the network hides your IP address and other system information for full anonymity. This may sound familiar, because it’s how a lot of people approach VPNs, but the difference is in the details.
VPNs are just encrypted tunnels hiding your traffic from one hop to another. The company behind a VPN can still access your information, sell it or pass it along to law enforcement. With Tor, there’s no link between you and your traffic, according to Jed Crandall, an associate professor at Arizona State University. Tor is built in the “higher layers” of the network and routes your traffic through separate tunnels, instead of a single encrypted tunnel. While the first tunnel may know some personal information and the last one may know the sites you visited, there is virtually nothing connecting those data points because your IP address and other identifying information are bounced from server to server into obscurity.
In simpler terms: using regular browsers directly connects you and your traffic, adding a VPN routes that information through an encrypted tunnel so that your internet service provider can’t see it and Tor scatters your identity and your search traffic until it becomes almost anonymous, and very difficult to identify.
Accessing unindexed websites adds extra perks, like secure communication. While a platform like WhatsApp offers encrypted conversations, there could be traces that the conversation happened left on the device if it’s ever investigated, according to Crandall. Tor's communication tunnels are secure and much harder to trace that the conversation ever happened.
Other use cases may include keeping the identities of sensitive populations like undocumented immigrants anonymous, trying to unionize a workplace without the company shutting it down, victims of domestic violence looking for resources without their abuser finding out or, as Crandall said, wanting to make embarrassing Google searches without related targeted ads following you around forever.
Still, with added layers of security can come some additional hiccups, like lag or longer loading times. That could be true for some users depending on what they do online, but anecdotally it's gotten a lot faster in recent years, and users have said they barely notice a difference compared to other browsers. Sameer Patil, associate professor at the School of Computing at the University of Utah, studied this by having students and staff try out Tor as their main browser. “I was personally very surprised at how many sites and things just work fine in the Tor browser. So not only did they work as intended, but they also were fast enough,” Patil said.
But even if online privacy isn’t your main concern personally, using Tor can help support industries that heavily rely on it. By using the anonymous and secure browser, you’re supporting activists, journalists and everyone else’s privacy because the more people that use it, the more secure it gets, according to Patil. If only certain sensitive groups use it, it’ll be easier to deanonymize and ultimately track down identities. When you’re one in a billion using it, that task becomes nearly impossible.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/0aRkdWjFord will take just a bit longer to reach the electric vehicle production goal it set for itself. As The Washington Post reports, Ford CEO Jim Farley now expects the automaker to be able to start producing 600,000 EV units per year sometime in 2024. The company was originally aiming to reach that production level in late 2023 with the help of lithium iron phosphate battery packs, which will help Ford cut manufacturing costs and reduce its dependence on nickel and other materials prone to shortage.
In the company's earnings report, (PDF) Farley explained that the "[t]he near-term pace of EV adoption will be a little slower than expected," but that he believes it's going to "benefit early movers like Ford." He added: "EV customers are brand loyal and we’re winning lots of them with our high-volume, first-generation products." The automaker's all-electric division did well in the second quarter of the year, with revenue from the first generation F-150 Lightning and the Mustang Mach-E vehicles increasing by 39 percent.
Ford was inundated with pre-orders for the F-150 Lightning after it was announced and had to temporarily stop taking reservations due to the demand. The company has recently slashed the vehicle's prices citing increased production capacity, though it could also be because it's looking to entice more customers who are also eyeing models by rivals like Tesla and General Motors.
Ford CFO John Lawler said "[t]he transition to EVs is happening, it just may take a little longer" and "it will be a little slower than the industry expected." The automaker was also aiming to manufacture 2 million EVs a year by 2026, but this delay affects that goal, as well. CNBC said Ford now doesn't know when it can reach that level of production, but Lawler assured that the company will still invest the same amount of money into its EV endeavors.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/gzNMpxILast year, I asked if we’d ever see an e-cargo bike “for the people,” with powerful electric assist, generous cargo capacity and an affordable price. Soon after, Mycle got in touch to say its own offering, the Mycle Cargo, was exactly the bike I was looking for. It added that the struggles I’d had with heavy loads and steep hills wouldn’t be a problem for its affordable cargo longtail. After spending the better part of three months riding this thing around, I can heartily agree that it ticks many of the boxes I was hoping for. I may not have fallen head-over-heels in love with it in the way I had hoped, or expected to, but I’m sure it could find a place in the homes of many cyclists.
Mycle is a British-built e-bike which fits into the same category as Tern’s GSD, with a step through frame and beefy longtail. Support struts and plastic panels enclose the thick rear wheel, which houses the surprisingly-powerful 250W hub motor. Now, I won’t bang this drum too much, but this thing is less than half the price of some of its competitors in the cargo longtail space. Here in the UK, a Tern GSD or Yuba’s Spicy Curry will set you back around £5,000 before you start picking optional extras. By comparison, the Cargo’s retail price is £1,999, which will get you the standard setup, including integrated front and rear lights.
The model I tested, meanwhile, had a few luxuries added on, including an LCD display which adds £150 to the price. My model also had a front basket (£89) and a caboose to enclose the rear deck to help keep my kids safe (£129). The only other mainstream e-cargo bike in this price bracket is Rad Power'sRadWagon 4, which I’m looking to test in the future to offer a good head-to-head comparison. On paper, the RadWagon has a far lower center of gravity and a bigger payload weight, but a far shorter promised range.
Every issue I could raise about the Mycle Cargo, and I have a few, can likely be answered by its price. These bikes need to be affordable to win over would-be buyers who can quite reasonably say that five grand would get you a decent second-hand car and cover a year’s running costs. And while two thousand pounds is no small investment for a lot of people right now, it may wind up saving them cash if it helps them get around without a car. You can certainly carry at least two kids on the rear deck, and can probably mount a third seat up front should you need.
Mycle Cargo measures in at 187cm (73.6in) long and 73cm (28.7in) wide, with a quoted kerb weight of around 80 pounds. Even in my fairly spacious house, it took up a lot of room, and it requires a decent amount of effort to get it up my front steps. Which is a euphemistic way of saying that if you’re in a small space, or don’t have great upper body strength, you might need to look for an alternative. I found that, the longer I rode it, the easier it became to handle, so I think my time with the bike has contributed to some minor enswolening of my arms.
The bike arrives half-assembled, and you’ll need to get a hex key to screw in the footplates, caboose, front basket and fit the handlebars. This requires a decent amount of patience, since there’s so much engineering going on that your fingers won’t have much room to maneuver. If you can, get a bike store to do the finishing off for you, especially if you’ve got chunky hands and a tendency to swear in frustration after the screw falls out three times in a row.
The bike is fitted with a wonderfully comfortable seat, and is equipped with a modest, but solid, set of components. There’s Tektro mechanical disc brakes and a 7-speed Shimano Altus set, which might provoke a sniff or two from higher-minded cycling types. Both are what I’d call modestly priced, and aside from the odd stiff gear change, neither felt out of place, with good braking even on steep hills. It’s also clear that cost savings in this area help get the overall price down without causing too much pain for the rider on a daily basis. One nitpick I do have is that the built-in double-sided kickstand is sturdy, it still feels a little weak and I wish it was a bit thicker.
Now, from here on out, we’ll be talking about my experience of riding Mycle Cargo, and I’d say that I’m a general-purpose cyclist at best. Certainly, I’m open about my deficiencies, and hope that I can offer a better perspective for would-be riders than a road-hardened professional. If you’re a novice rider looking for a cargo bike, then these are the issues you’ll probably want to be mindful of, whereas more experienced riders can probably just look at the price, what you get for that chunk of cash, and head to the Mycle website to pre-order one.
The issue with weight, for instance, is going to be harder for novices to deal with compared to people who already own more than one pair of waterproof trousers. Mycle Cargo is heavy and, in my early rides, proved to be more than I could handle in terms of its balance issues. Even with fat tyres, which are designed to improve balance, I found it very easy to lose control of this thing at lower speeds. I tried to take the kids to school in rush-hour traffic, and pushed off in a quiet moment, only to find the bike started to wobble. I tried to correct it, but in doing so nearly pitched sideways into a van coming the other way.
Fortunately, this problem did eventually go away, but it took me a lot of (solo) trial-and-error and some counterintuitive tyre-deflating before I put the kids back on it again. Once I’d got the Mycle set up the way I did, riding became a lot easier and I had some fairly glorious runs around the local area. But don’t expect to climb on this in the first hour or two and expect to be zooming around your town without a care in the world. The learning curve is there, and it is steep, and I found the damped steering – designed to prevent you making risky, aggressive turns – was a bit of a pain in my early trips.
Once you get past the slow-speed wobbles, however, do you find Mycle Cargo’s comfort zone, which is unleashing its vast reserves of power. Accelerate a bit, and you’ll find riding the bike is easy and comfortable, but if you only run it on flat ground, you’ll miss out on its party piece. My kids’ school is at the top of a hill that measures around 11 degrees (or more) at its gentlest point. And I’ve ridden a few 250W hub motor bikes up there with varying levels of comfort, and even a light single-seater can sometimes struggle.
This thing? With all the added weight in its frame and two kids in the back? I have never seen a bike move this fast. It shot up the hill faster than the car I was passing, and I very quickly had to dial down the assistance level to stop feeling uncomfortable. When that pedal assist kicks in after a second or so’s delay, you feel as if you’re being towed by a car. It ships with a throttle but I don’t think I was ever compelled to use it outside of trying to intentionally test it, because one full turn of the pedal and this thing moves like a rocket.
I cannot overstate how much power Mycle has managed to wring out of this motor, to the point where I’d almost want to joke that it’s really a 500W motor with the wrong label. I cannot imagine anyone riding this thing and thinking that it’ll do anything but conquer any terrain you put in front of it. If I had infinite time and money, I’d take this to France and irritate everyone doing a mountain cycle climb as I lap them while lazily pedaling my way to lunch. The downside is the lack of refinement; dial down the electric assist and you’ll very quickly feel a lurch as the motor steps down a notch.
That’s really where your money isn’t going with a bike like this – into the refinements that would see it go from a two grand bike to a five grand one. I can think of plenty of tweaks I’d like to see, including a lighter weight, lower center of gravity and better handling. But if the choice is this bike or one that’ll cost more than twice the price, I’d rather keep my cash in the bank.
You can pre-order the Mycle Cargo now, with deliveries slated for some point in August. That will come with a few tweaks, including upgraded brakes – hydraulic, rather than mechanical – and fittings for a new rear-caboose. The new model will also be able to use a new clubhouse-style weather tent to keep your kids dry on windier days, but there’s no word on how much that’ll cost you at present.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/u5ziSfA
New code released by Apple as part of its beta program hints the next version of the Mute switch on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max could become a button for quickly accessing a bevy of tools and accessibility features.
Ben Wheatley hopes The Meg 2 is his ticket to directing Godzilla some day. Saw X has its eyes on you in a creepy new poster. The Scooby gang prepares to enter the DC multiverse. Plus, what’s coming on Riverdale. Spoilers away!
GoodRx, best known for its prescription drug price comparison tool, has launched a new free offering called “Medicine Cabinet.” The tool will allow GoodRx app users to manage their prescription medications on a single platform. This comes on the heels of the news that the company is working with CVS Health to develop the Caremark Cost Saver, which could lower pharmacy out-of-pocket drug costs for shoppers.
Medicine Cabinet will automatically integrate within the GoodRx app and will feature tools like a “prescriptions dashboard” where a consumer can set up refill reminders and find the best pharmacies to pick up their medications at the lowest price. At the heart of the app are daily pill reminders that are customizable to any treatment plan that is uploaded into the app. GoodRx Chief Product Officer Mark Hull said the reminders feature is huge because 50 percent of the time, Americans are struggling to take their medications as prescribed for reasons as simple as forgetfulness or cost.
The Medicine Cabinet also includes a dashboard for GoodRx’s rewards program which offers users monetary perks like e-gift cards for staying on top of medication refills. “Nobody's integrating or rewarding people for having those healthy habits,” Hull said.
“What we've found is that the winning model for us is to marry the discounts, the value and the rewards, with the basic healthy habits and reminder stuff,” he added. GoodRx claims it can save consumers up to 80 percent off the price of prescription drugs by partnering with pharmacy benefits managers to negotiate deals on drugs. Normally, the average consumer wouldn’t otherwise have access to these discounts without middlemen like GoodRx.
The Medicine Cabinet tool has only been in development for roughly six months and will be available on iOS, but not on Android just yet.
“GoodRx was able to develop Medicine Cabinet so quickly in part due to the data it has already amassed from users and providers over the last decade.” "If a startup were doing this, it would take a long time, they don't have the data, they don't have the relationships with retailers, they don't already have the customer base," Hull said. “We already have a half a billion prescriptions in federal records from the millions of people who have been using us for the last 12 plus years.”
Hull said he actually wishes Medicine Cabinet could have come sooner. He recalls when his stepfather had a heart attack a couple of years ago. "When he came home from the hospital, he had like a dozen medications he had to manage," Hull said, remembering it as a nerve wracking time for his family and specifically his mother. "For the average person who's managing a condition with multiple medications, it's a lot of work and so we're really trying to make it simple, clear and obvious what you need to do at any given point to help manage your condition."
Down the line, Hull hopes Medicine Cabinet will be easier for older people to use, with the inclusion of features that will let a user take a photo of a medication instead of having to look it up in the database.
Still, GoodRx's history of being caught up in legal trouble related to data privacy issues is worth noting. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission fined the company for the unauthorized disclosure of customers' identifiable health information with third parties, such as Facebook and Google. “Our privacy policy applies to Medicine Cabinet, which sits within the GoodRx app. We are very transparent about what information we collect and how we use it to personalize and customize our products for consumers. Additionally, the feature is only available for users who have registered for a GoodRx account,” a representative said. The company’s recent focus on transparency and adherence to privacy policies suggest it's taking the issue seriously, though as with any telehealth company, data privacy will always be a front and center concern.
An investigation into Microsoft's potential antitrust practices is underway nearly three years after Slack first filed a complaint against the company. The European Commission has announced a probe into if Microsoft bundling Teams with its product suites violated EU competition rules. Slack filed its antitrust complaint in 2020, alleging that Microsoft's decision to include Teams with Microsoft 365 or Office 365 is illegal and that the company blocked some users from removing the software.
In April, Microsoft agreed to remove Teams from its Office suite in an attempt to prevent a probe, but said it was unclear how it would do so. The effort wasn't enough to avoid concerns and make a deal. In its announcement opening the investigation, the European Commission said it "is concerned that Microsoft may grant Teams a distribution advantage by not giving customers a choice on whether or not to include access to that product when they subscribe to their productivity suites and may have limited the interoperability between its productivity suites and competing offerings."
A Microsoft spokesperson responded to the news: "We respect the European Commission’s work on this case and take our own responsibilities very seriously. We will continue to cooperate with the Commission and remain committed to finding solutions that will address its concerns."
This isn't the first time Microsoft has found itself in hot water with the European Commission. In 2009, the company agreed to offer EU users different browser options instead of forcing them to use Internet Explorer in Windows. Four years later, the European Commission fined Microsoft €561 million ($625 million) after a "glitch" stopped the browser choice screen from consistently appearing. The current investigation has no decision deadline, so it might be some time before the European Commission announces Microsoft's fate.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/ZzbRFySCruelly timed for just after The Morning After newsletter yesterday, Samsung’s latest Unpacked media event was a first for the company. It’s the first time the company has launched over five devices in a single day. Ah wait, no. Was it the first time K-Pop superstars BTS helped promote Samsung’s latest smartphone? Nope, that’s been done before, too. No, this July event was the first Unpacked in the company’s native South Korea, in Seoul.
The move speaks to the confidence Samsung has about its newest smartphones, which includes its fourth-generation foldables. For me, those devices are the exciting part, even though the company is bringing back the bezel to its wearables and has made its premium tablets water resistant.
The Galaxy Z Flip 4 ($999) gets the most evolutionary treatment this year, with a far more expansive external display, new widgets and features. At this point, it has to match what we saw on Motorola’s Razr+, but it initially doesn’t seem as versatile as Moto’s take on the secondary screen. Expect our review to put those new features through their paces.
The Galaxy Z Fold 4 ($1,800, yikes), meanwhile, is slightly slimmer, slightly more powerful and a little too similar to last year’s Fold 3 at first blush. Samsung’s new Flex Hinge – said to have a more streamlined design while still boasting IPX8 water resistance – erases that jarring gap between the screen halves while decreasing its overall thickness to 13.5mm. (Note: That’s still thicker than its rival foldable, the Pixel Fold.)
I’ve corralled the other highlights from Samsung – is this the year you’ll buy a foldable?
– Mat Smith
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Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 hands-on: A larger external display holds promise
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 hands-on: Is Samsung squandering its head start?
Galaxy Z Flip 5 vs Moto Razr+: A clamshell comparison
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Meta just had its best quarter since 2021, even as it continues to lose massive amounts of money on the metaverse. In fact, the company said it expects to lose even more money on its efforts in the year to come. I mean, the company changed its name – it’s not going to give up so easily.
Reality Labs, the Meta division overseeing its virtual and augmented reality projects, lost $3.7 billion during the second quarter of 2023 and generated just $276 million in revenue, according to the company’s latest earnings report. Aside from the metaverse, it was an otherwise strong quarter for Meta, which reported $32 billion in revenue, an 11 percent increase from last year.
Amazon has teamed up with Boost Infinite, a wireless carrier owned by Dish Wireless, and has launched a storefront to make the latter's SIM kits more accessible. While Amazon sells SIM cards from a variety of providers, this is a genuine tie-up that automatically pre-qualifies Prime members for the carrier's $25-per-month postpaid wireless plan. Subscribers can purchase Boost Infinite's Unlimited $25 SIM kit from the Amazon store with a 20 percent discount. It’s not quite the free cellular service rumors we’ve heard about, but a discount is a discount…
Twitter, now X, is reportedly hardballing advertisers to increase its bottom line. Reports earlier this month suggested X’s revenue had dropped by a staggering 50 percent. The company's latest strategy, according to The Wall Street Journal, is asking brands to spend at least $1,000 per month on ads to maintain their verified status on the platform. Musk says the "moderately high" cost is a preventative measure to help reduce the number of scammers creating "millions of accounts" on the platform. Millions!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/XDBRJIESamsung has taken the wraps off its latest clamshell-style foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Z Flip 5. The new handset's biggest change is a 3.4-inch cover display that is significantly larger than the 1.9-inch outer panel on last year's Galaxy Z Flip 4. This should generally make the device more convenient when it's folded up, as there's now more space to reply to texts, check notifications, take selfies and the like. Other upgrades include a faster Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and a redesigned hinge that makes the whole package slimmer when folded.
The larger external display brings the Galaxy Z Flip 5 much more in line with the Moto Razr+, another flip-style foldable that arrived earlier this year. To assist anyone deciding between the two devices, we've laid out how the two devices compare on the spec sheet below. Raw specs can't tell the whole story, of course: Our Razr+ review found that phone's camera performance to lag behind its peers, and Samsung and Motorola are taking different approaches to how Android works on the outer display. Still, if you're thinking of dropping $1,000 on one of these devices, here's a quick look at the hardware that money will get you. For more details on the Galaxy Z Flip 5, check out our hands-on preview.
|
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 |
Motorola Razr+ |
|
|
Pricing (MSRP) |
$999.99 |
$999.99 |
|
Dimensions |
Unfolded: 165.1 x 71.9 x 6.9mm (6.5 x 2.83 x .27 inches) Folded: 85.1 x 71.9 x 15.1mm (3.35 x 2.83 x .59 inches) |
Unfolded: 170.83 x 73.95 x 6.99mm (6.73 x 2.91 x .28 inches) Folded: 88.42 x 73.95 x 15.1mm (3.48 x 2.81 x .59 inches) |
|
Weight |
187g (6.6oz) |
184.5g (6.51oz) Magenta model: 188.5g (6.65oz) |
|
Display size |
Unfolded: 6.7 inches External cover: 3.4 inches |
Unfolded: 6.9 inches External cover: 3.6 inches |
|
Display resolution |
Unfolded: 2,640 x 1,080 (426ppi) External cover: 720 x 748 (306ppi) |
Unfolded: 2,640 x 1,080 (413ppi) External cover: 1,066 x 1,056 (413ppi) |
|
Display type |
Main: Dynamic AMOLED 2X (120Hz) External cover: Super AMOLED (60Hz) |
Main: pOLED (165Hz) External cover: pOLED (144Hz) |
|
Battery |
3,700mAh |
3,800mAh |
|
Storage |
256GB, 512GB (not expandable) |
256GB (not expandable) |
|
Rear camera(s) |
Main: 12MP, f/1.8, 1.8μm Ultrawide: 12MP, f/2.2, 1.12μm |
Main: 12MP, f/1.5, 1.4μm Ultrawide: 13MP, f/2.2, 1.12μm 4K at 30/60fps, 1080p at 30/60fps video |
|
Front camera(s) |
10MP, f/2.2, 1.22μm |
32MP, f/2.4, 0.7μm 4K at 30/60fps, 1080p at 30/60fps video |
|
SoC |
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy Octa-core CPU Adreno 740 GPU |
Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 Mobile Platform Octa-core CPU Adreno 730 GPU |
|
RAM |
8GB |
8GB |
|
WiFi |
WiFi 6E |
WiFi 6E |
|
Bluetooth |
v5.3 |
v5.3 |
|
OS |
Android 13 One UI 5.1.1 |
Android 13 |
|
Colors |
Mint, Graphite, Cream, Lavender Samsung.com exclusive: Gray, Blue, Green, Yellow |
Infinite Black, Glacier Blue, Viva Magenta |
|
Other features |
IPX8 water resistance, 25W wired charging, 15W wireless charging |
IP52 water resistance, 30W wired charging, 5W wireless charging |
The latest Samsung Galaxy Unpacked brings us a lot of flash and a lot of folds. Samsung’s latest Z Fold 5 phone may look very similar to last year’s counterpart the Korean electronics giant is betting that a few tweaks to last year’s model will entice a new crowd of buyers. The phone’s next iteration features a…
It's that time of the year again. Samsung is ready to show off its next generation of foldable smartphones, but this year, we expect a barrage of Galaxy devices. Beyond hinged smartphones, rumors and leaks suggest at least one wearable and the successors to last year's Galaxy Tab S8 series. Before the show starts at a very early 4AM PT/ 7AM ET / 11AM BST tomorrow, grab a coffee and read up on everything we expect to see right here.
This year, Samsung is broadcasting its Unpacked reveal event from its home in Seoul, South Korea, and we've got Engadget's Richard Lai on the ground there to capture what goes down. I'll support him here in London, UK, where it'll be a more sensible hour for a liveblog. Any questions? Pose them to me @thatmatsmith (X/Twitter or Threads, it's all the same?).
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/BIO6Hls
Sotheby’s is selling a limited edition pair of Omega Sports Apple Computer Sneakers from the ‘90s in new condition for the exorbitant price of $50,000. The shoe was distributed at an Apple event but was never made available to the public, making it a highly coveted item.
The next Samsung Unpacked event will come alive July 26 at 7 a.m. ET/10 a.m. PT, with the company hosting a live event at its headquarters in Seoul, South Korea. At the same time, Unpacked should be livestreamed on the company’s website and YouTube channel. Based on the artwork for the event (and online rumors and…
If you've wanted to customize (or simply deface) the websites you visit, you'll now have an easy time of it. The Browser Company has released its Arc 1.0 browser for the Mac, no waitlist required. The finished version includes a few features that have popped up in recent weeks, including an optional toolbar, a site "control center" and picture-in-picture support for Google Meet video calls. The software should be leaner and faster than previous versions, too.
As before, Arc rethinks some of the fundamentals of web browsers. You can personalize the look and layout of a website using Boosts that let you change colors, replace fonts and even "zap" sections you don't want to see. While this doesn't work perfectly for every website, you can share many customizations with other users. You can use coding and scripts to create Boosts, but they don't require that know-how.
Tabs are still present. However, you primarily organize browsing around switchable virtual spaces (effectively tab groups) that help you focus on a given task, such as work or your social media catch-up. You can pin sites you use often, and there's a command bar that courts power users.
A Windows version of Arc is coming "soon," the company says. This probably won't supplant Chrome, Edge or Safari if you're a fan of those browsers. They still cover common tasks well, and the familiar interfaces may well be enough. However, Arc may be what you're looking for if you wish you could reshape the web to your liking.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/olxPRzk
Despite Elon Musk’s intentions to rebrand the bird app into a dull, bland, easily copied “X,” the billionaire tech mogul might have a few roadblocks standing in his way since every company under the sun has already called dibs on the letter. There are hundreds of companies with a trademark on “X,” and many could be…
Spotify announced on Monday that it’s raising the cost of the premium subscription in the U.S. for the first time in 12 years. It said the increased prices are in response to an evolving “market landscape,” and to give Spotify cash so it “can keep innovating,” the company said in a news release.
Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's weekly roundup of the coolest toy news around the internet. This week, Playmates ensures that the horrors persist with an update to its classic ‘90s TMNT figures, The Marvels takes flight in Lego form, Hasbro rolls out even more Transformers: The Movie goodness. Check it out!
