Posts Tagged: tech

The Morning After: The biggest tech stories of 2023

What do you do when the tech world mostly grinds to a halt at the end of December? You reheat your hot takes, force a narrative thread on a company's ups and downs and edit it all up for consumption. 

Yes, it's a little quiet at the end of the year (barring Apple Watch bans), but that won't stop TMA from finding something for me to talk to himself about. We’re looking at a few of the major stories from the last 12 months and .. some other things where I just has to say my piece. And if not on a short YouTube video that's clipped, cropped and pushed into socials, then where? On X? Pschh.

This week:

🤖💬🤖 How OpenAI's ChatGPT has changed the world in just a year

📲🔋 Apple's switch to USB-C on the iPhone 15 brings more cable confusion

🎮🎮🎮 Microsoft officially owns Activision Blizzard

And read this:

I couldn't cover all the big things in tech in one tiny video. I'd recommend taking a look at all of the big tech wins in 2023 (and all the big losses), and it's definitely worth reading through our picks of the best games of the year

Like email more than video? Subscribe right here for daily reports, direct to your inbox.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-the-biggest-tech-stories-of-2023-140022006.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

The most innovative tech products of 2023

They’re bold, unique, and sometimes wildly impractical. But the the most innovative tech products of 2023 all dared to be different.
Digital Trends

Tech YouTuber files lawsuit accusing Casetify of copying case designs

Zack Nelson of popular YouTube channel JerryRigEverythng has launched a lawsuit with dbrand accusing Casetify of copying their case designs.
Digital Trends

The iPhone’s futuristic satellite tech isn’t coming to Android any time soon

Qualcomm has killed an ambitious project that sought to bring Apple-like satellite connectivity feature to Android phones, but there’s still some hope.
Digital Trends

Hitting the Books: Beware the Tech Bro who comes bearing gifts

American entrepreneurs have long fixated on extracting the maximum economic value out of, well really, any resource they can get their hands on — from Henry Ford’s assembly line to Tony Hsieh’s Zappos Happiness Experience Form. The same is true in the public sector where some overambitious streamlining of Texas’ power grid contributed to the state’s massive 2021 winter power crisis that killed more than 700 people. In her new book, the riveting Optimal Illusions: The False Promise of Optimization, UC Berkeley applied mathematician and author, Coco Krumme, explores our historical fascination with optimization and how that pursuit has often led to unexpected and unwanted consequences in the systems we’re streamlining. 

In the excerpt below, Krumme explores the recent resurgence of interest in Universal Basic (or Guaranteed) Income and the contrasting approaches to providing UBI between tech evangelists like Sam Altman and Andrew Yang, and social workers like Aisha Nyandoro, founder of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, in how to address the difficult questions of deciding who should receive the financial support, and how much.

blue background stylized iceberg with white writing
Riverhead Books

Excerpted from Optimal Illusions: The False Promise of Optimization by Coco Krumme. Published by Riverhead Books. Copyright © 2023 by Coco Krumme. All rights reserved.


False Gods

California, they say, is where the highway ends and dreams come home to roost. When they say these things, their eyes ignite: startup riches, infinity pools, the Hollywood hills. The last thing on their minds, of course, is the town of Stockton.

Drive east from San Francisco and, if traffic cooperates, you’ll be there in an hour and a half or two, over the long span of slate‑colored bay, past the hulking loaders at Oakland’s port, skirting rich suburbs and sweltering orchards and the government labs in Livermore, the military depot in Tracy, all the way to where brackish bay waters meet the San Joaquin River, where the east‑west highways connect with Interstate 5, in a tangled web of introductions that ultimately pitches you either north toward Seattle or south to LA.

Or you might decide to stay in Stockton, spend the night. There’s a slew of motels along the interstate: La Quinta, Days Inn, Motel 6. Breakfast at Denny’s or IHOP. Stockton once had its place in the limelight as a booming gold‑rush supply point. In 2012, the city filed for bankruptcy, the largest US city until then to do so (Detroit soon bested it in 2013). First light reveals a town that’s neither particularly rich nor desperately poor, hitched taut between cosmopolitan San Francisco on one side and the agricultural central valley on the other, in the middle, indistinct, suburban, and a little sad.

This isn’t how the story was supposed to go. Optimization was supposed to be the recipe for a more perfect society. When John Stuart Mill aimed for the greater good, when Allen Gilmer struck out to map new pockets of oil, when Stan Ulam harnessed a supercomputer to tally possibilities: it was in service of doing more, and better, with less. Greater efficiency was meant to be an equilibrating force. We weren’t supposed to have big winners and even bigger losers. We weren’t supposed to have a whole sprawl of suburbs stuck in the declining middle.

We saw how overwrought optimizations can suddenly fail, and the breakdown of optimization as the default way of seeing the world can come about equally fast. What we face now is a disconnect between the continued promises of efficiency, the idea that we can optimize into perpetuity, and the reality all around: the imperfect world, the overbooked schedules, the delayed flights, the institutions in decline. And we confront the question: How can we square what optimization promised with what it’s delivered?

Sam Altman has the answer. In his mid-thirties, with the wiry, frenetic look of a college student, he’s a young man with many answers. Sam’s biography reads like a leaderboard of Silicon Valley tropes and accolades: an entrepreneur, upper‑middle‑class upbringing, prep school, Stanford Computer Science student, Stanford Computer Science dropout, where dropping out is one of the Valley’s top status symbols. In 2015, Sam was named a Forbes magazine top investor under age thirty. (That anyone bothers to make a list of investors in their teens and twenties says as much about Silicon Valley as about the nominees. Tech thrives on stories of overnight riches and the mythos of the boy genius.)

Sam is the CEO and cofounder, along with electric‑car‑and‑rocket‑ship‑magnate Elon Musk, of OpenAI, a company whose mission is “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.” He is the former president of the Valley’s top startup incubator, Y Combinator, was interim CEO of Reddit, and is currently chairman of the board of two nuclear‑energy companies, Helion and Okto. His latest venture, Worldcoin, aims to scan people’s eyeballs in exchange for cryptocurrency. As of 2022, the company had raised $ 125 million of funding from Silicon Valley investors.

But Sam doesn’t rest on, or even mention, his laurels. In conversation, he is smart, curious, and kind, and you can easily tell, through his veneer of demure agreeableness, that he’s driven as hell. By way of introduction to what he’s passionate about, Sam describes how he used a spreadsheet to determine the seven or so domains in which he could make the greatest impact, based on weighing factors such as his own skills and resources against the world’s needs. Sam readily admits he can’t read emotions well, treats most conversations as logic puzzles, and not only wants to save the world but believes the world’s salvation is well within reach.

A 2016 profile in The New Yorker sums up Sam like this: “His great weakness is his utter lack of interest in ineffective people.”

Sam has, however, taken an interest in Stockton, California.

Stockton is the site of one of the most publicized experiments in Universal Basic Income (UBI), a policy proposal that grants recipients a fixed stipend, with no qualifications and no strings attached. The promise of UBI is to give cash to those who need it most and to minimize the red tape and special interests that can muck up more complex redistribution schemes. On Sam’s spreadsheet of areas where he’d have impact, UBI made the cut, and he dedicated funding for a group of analysts to study its effects in six cities around the country. While he’s not directly involved in Stockton, he’s watching closely. The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration was initially championed by another tech wunderkind, Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes. The project gave 125 families $ 500 per month for twenty‑four months. A slew of metrics was collected in order to establish a causal relationship between the money and better outcomes.

UBI is nothing new. The concept of a guaranteed stipend has been suggested by leaders from Napoleon to Martin Luther King Jr. The contemporary American conception of UBI, however, has been around just a handful of years, marrying a utilitarian notion of societal perfectibility with a modern‑day faith in technology and experimental economics.

Indeed, economists were among the first to suggest the idea of a fixed stipend, first in the context of the developing world and now in America. Esther Duflo, a creative star in the field and Nobel Prize winner, is known for her experiments with microloans in poorer nations. She’s also unromantic about her discipline, embracing the concept of “economist as plumber.” Duflo argues that the purpose of economics is not grand theories so much as on‑the‑ground empiricism. Following her lead, the contemporary argument for UBI owes less to a framework of virtue and charity and much more to the cold language of an econ textbook. Its benefits are described in terms of optimizing resources, reducing inequality, and thereby maximizing societal payoff.

The UBI experiments under way in several cities, a handful of them funded by Sam’s organization, have data‑collection methods primed for a top‑tier academic publication. Like any good empiricist, Sam spells out his own research questions to me, and the data he’s collecting to test and analyze those hypotheses.

Several thousand miles from Sam’s Bay Area office, a different kind of program is in the works. When we speak by phone, Aisha Nyandoro bucks a little at my naive characterization of her work as UBI. “We don’t call it universal basic income,” she says. “We call it guaranteed income. It’s targeted. Invested intentionally in those discriminated against.” Aisha is the powerhouse founder of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, a program that gives a monthly stipend to single Black mothers in Jackson, Mississippi. The project grew out of her seeing the welfare system fail miserably for the very people it purported to help. “The social safety net is designed to keep families from rising up. Keep them teetering on edge. It’s punitive paternalism. The ‘safety net’ that strangles.”

Bureaucracy is dehumanizing, Aisha says, because it asks a person to “prove you’re enough” to receive even the most basic of assistance. Magnolia Mother’s Trust is unique in that it is targeted at a specific population. Aisha reels off facts. The majority of low‑income women in Jackson are also mothers. In the state of Mississippi, one in four children live in poverty, and women of color earn 61 percent of what white men make. Those inequalities affect the community as a whole. In 2021, the trust gave $ 1,000 per month to one hundred women. While she’s happy her program is gaining exposure as more people pay attention to UBI, Aisha doesn’t mince words. “I have to be very explicit in naming race as an issue,” she says.

Aisha’s goal is to grow the program and provide cash, without qualifications, to more mothers in Jackson. Magnolia Mother’s Trust was started around the same time as the Stockton project, and the nomenclature of guaranteed income has gained traction. One mother in the program writes in an article in Ms. magazine, “Now everyone is talking about guaranteed income, and it started here in Jackson.” Whether or not it all traces back to Jackson, whether the money is guaranteed and targeted or more broadly distributed, what’s undeniable is that everyone seems to be talking about UBI.

Influential figures, primarily in tech and politics, have piled on to the idea. Jack Dorsey, the billionaire founder of Twitter, with his droopy meditation eyes and guru beard, wants in. In 2020, he donated $ 15 million to experimental efforts in thirty US cities.

And perhaps the loudest bullhorn for the idea has been wielded by Andrew Yang, another product of Silicon Valley and a 2020 US presidential candidate. Yang is an earnest guy, unabashedly dorky. Numbers drive his straight‑talking policy. Blue baseball caps for his campaign are emblazoned with one short word: MATH.

UBI’s proponents see the potential to simplify the currently convoluted American welfare system, to equilibrate an uneven playing field. By decoupling basic income from employment, it could free some people up to pursue work that is meaningful.

And yet the concept, despite its many proponents, has managed to draw ire from both ends of the political spectrum. Critics on the right see UBI as an extension of the welfare state, as further interference into free markets. Left‑leaning critics bemoan its “inefficient” distribution of resources: Why should high earners get as much as those below the poverty line? Why should struggling individuals get only just enough to keep them, and the capitalist system, afloat?

Detractors on both left and right default to the same language in their critiques: that of efficiency and maximizing resources. Indeed, the language of UBI’s critics is all too similar to the language of its proponents, with its randomized control trials and its view of society as a closed economic system. In the face of a disconnect between what optimization promised and what it delivered, the proposed solution involves more optimizing.

Why is this? What if we were to evaluate something like UBI outside the language of efficiency? We might ask a few questions differently. What if we relaxed the suggestion that dollars can be transformed by some or another equation into individual or societal utility? What if we went further than that and relaxed the suggestion of measuring at all, as a means of determining the “best” policy? What if we put down our calculators for a moment and let go of the idea that politics is meant to engineer an optimal society in the first place? Would total anarchy ensue?

Such questions are difficult to ask because they don’t sound like they’re getting us anywhere. It’s much easier, and more common, to tackle the problem head‑on. Electric‑vehicle networks such as Tesla’s, billed as an alternative to the centralized oil economy, seek to optimize where charging stations are placed, how batteries are created, how software updates are sent out — and by extension, how environmental outcomes take shape. Vitamins fill the place of nutrients leached out of foods by agriculture’s maximization of yields; these vitamins promise to optimize health. Vertical urban farming also purports to solve the problems of industrial agriculture, by introducing new optimizations in how light and fertilizers are delivered to greenhouse plants, run on technology platforms developed by giants such as SAP. A breathless Forbes article explains that the result of hydroponics is that “more people can be fed, less precious natural resources are used, and the produce is healthier and more flavorful.” The article nods only briefly to downsides, such as high energy, labor, and transportation costs. It doesn’t mention that many grains don’t lend themselves easily to indoor farming, nor the limitations of synthetic fertilizers in place of natural regeneration of soil.

In working to counteract the shortcomings of optimization, have we only embedded ourselves deeper? For all the talk of decentralized digital currencies and local‑maker economies, are we in fact more connected and centralized than ever? And less free, insofar as we’re tied into platforms such as Amazon and Airbnb and Etsy? Does our lack of freedom run deeper still, by dint of the fact that fewer and fewer of us know exactly what the algorithms driving these technologies do, as more and more of us depend on them? Do these attempts to deoptimize in fact entrench the idea of optimization further?

A 1952 novel by Kurt Vonnegut highlights the temptation, and also the threat, of de-optimizing. Player Piano describes a mechanized society in which the need for human labor has mostly been eliminated. The remaining workers are those engineers and managers whose purpose is to keep the machines online. The core drama takes place at a factory hub called Ilium Works, where “Efficiency, Economy, and Quality” reign supreme. The book is prescient in anticipating some of our current angst — and powerlessness — about optimization’s reach.

Paul Proteus is the thirty‑five‑year‑old factory manager of the Ilium Works. His father served in the same capacity, and like him, Paul is one day expected to take over as leader of the National Manufacturing Council. Each role at Ilium is identified by a number, such as R‑127 or EC‑002. Paul’s job is to oversee the machines.

At the time of the book’s publication, Vonnegut was a young author disillusioned by his experiences in World War II and disheartened as an engineering manager at General Electric. Ilium Works is a not‑so‑thinly‑veiled version of GE. As the novel wears on, Paul tries to free himself, to protest that “the main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings . . . not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems.” He seeks out the elusive Ghost Shirt Society with its conspiracies to break automation, he attempts to restore an old homestead with his wife. He tries, in other words, to organize a way out of the mechanized world.

His attempts prove to be in vain. Paul fails and ends up mired in dissatisfaction. The machines take over, riots ensue, everything is destroyed. And yet, humans’ love of mechanization runs deep: once the machines are destroyed, the janitors and technicians — a class on the fringes of society — quickly scramble to build things up again. Player Piano depicts the outcome of optimization as societal collapse and the collapse of meaning, followed by the flimsy rebuilding of the automated world we know.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-optimal-illusions-coco-krumme-riverhead-books-143012184.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Hitting the Books: Meet Richard Akrwright, the world’s first tech titan

You didn’t actually believe all those founder’s myths about tech billionaires like Bezos, Jobs and Musk pulling themselves up by their bootstraps from some suburban American garage, did you? In reality, our corporate kings have been running the same playbook since the 18th century when Lancashire’s own Richard Arkwright wrote it. Arkwright is credited with developing a means of forming cotton fully into thread — technically he didn’t actually invent or design the machine, but developed the overarching system in which it could be run at scale — and spinning that success into financial fortune. Never mind the fact that his 24-hour production lines were operated by boys as young as seven pulling 13-hour shifts.   

In Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech — one of the best books I’ve read this year — LA Times tech reporter Brian Merchant lays bare the inhumane cost of capitalism wrought by the industrial revolution and celebrates the workers who stood against those first tides of automation: the Luddites. 

blockprint of two luddites beating on an old timey machine with hammers on a faux aged paper background with red block book title lettering, black author lettering
Hachette Book Group

Excerpted from Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant. Published by Hachette Book Group. Copyright © 2023 by Brian Merchant. All rights reserved.


The first tech titans were not building global information networks or commercial space rockets. They were making yarn and cloth. 

A lot of yarn, and a lot of cloth. Like our modern-day titans, they started out as entrepreneurs. But until the nineteenth century, entrepreneurship was not a cultural phenomenon. Businessmen took risks, of course, and undertook novel efforts to increase their profits. Yet there was not a popular conception of the heroic entrepreneur, of the adventuring businessman, until long after the birth of industrial capitalism. The term itself was popularized by Jean-Baptiste Say, in his 1803 work A Treatise on Political Economy. An admirer of Adam Smith’s, Say thought that The Wealth of Nations was missing an account of the individuals who bore the risk of starting new business; he called this figure the entrepreneur, translating it from the French as “adventurer” or “undertaker.” 

For a worker, aspiring to entrepreneurship was different than merely seeking upward mobility. The standard path an ambitious, skilled weaver might pursue was to graduate from apprentice to journeyman weaver, who rented a loom or worked in a shop, to owning his own loom, to becoming a master weaver and running a small shop of his own that employed other journeymen. This was customary. 

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as now in the twenty-first century, entrepreneurs saw the opportunity to use technology to disrupt longstanding customs in order to increase efficiencies, output, and personal profit. There were few opportunities for entrepreneurship without some form of automation; control of technologies of production grants its owner a chance to gain advantage or take pay or market share from others. In the past, like now, owners started small businesses at some personal financial risk, whether by taking out a loan to purchase used handlooms and rent a small factory space, or by using inherited capital to procure a steam engine and a host of power looms.

The most ambitious entrepreneurs tapped untested technologies and novel working arrangements, and the most successful irrevocably changed the structure and nature of our daily lives, setting standards that still exist today. The least successful would go bankrupt, then as now. 

In the first century of the Industrial Revolution, one entrepreneur looms above the others, and has a strong claim on the mantle of the first of what we’d call a tech titan today. Richard Arkwright was born to a middle-class tailor’s family and originally apprenticed as a barber and wigmaker. He opened a shop in the Lancashire city of Bolton in the 1760s. There, he invented a waterproof dye for the wigs that were in fashion at the time, and traveled the country collecting hair to make them. In his travels across the Midlands, he met spinners and weavers, and became familiar with the machinery they used to make cotton garments. Bolton was right in the middle of the Industrial Revolution’s cotton hub hotspot. 

Arkwright took the money he made from the wigs, plus the dowry from his second marriage, and invested it in upgraded spinning machinery. “The improvement of spinning was much in the air, and many men up and down Lancashire were working at it,” Arkwright’s biographer notes. James Hargreaves had invented the spinning jenny, a machine that automated the process of spinning cotton into a weft— halfway into yarn, basically— in 1767. Working with one of his employees, John Kay, Arkwright tweaked the designs to spin cotton entirely into yarn, using water or steam power. Without crediting Kay, Arkwright patented his water frame in 1769 and a carding engine in 1775, and attracted investment from wealthy hosiers in Nottingham to build out his operation. He built his famous water-powered factory in Cromford in 1771. 

His real innovation was not the machinery itself; several similar machines had been patented, some before his. His true innovation was creating and successfully implementing the system of modern factory work. 

“Arkwright was not the great inventor, nor the technical genius,” as the Oxford economic historian Peter Mathias explains, “but he was the first man to make the new technology of massive machinery and power source work as a system— technical, organizational, commercial— and, as a proof, created the first great personal fortune and received the accolade of a knighthood in the textile industry as an industrialist.” Richard Arkwright Jr., who inherited his business, became the richest commoner in England. 

Arkwright père was the first start‑up founder to launch a unicorn company we might say, and the first tech entrepreneur to strike it wildly rich. He did so by marrying the emergent technologies that automated the making of yarn with a relentless new work regime. His legacy is alive today in companies like Amazon, which strive to automate as much of their operations as is financially viable, and to introduce highly surveilled worker-productivity programs. 

Often called the grandfather of the factory, Arkwright did not invent the idea of organizing workers into strict shifts to produce goods with maximal efficiency. But he pursued the “manufactory” formation most ruthlessly, and most vividly demonstrated the practice could generate huge profits. Arkwright’s factory system, which was quickly and widely emulated, divided his hundreds of workers into two overlapping thirteen-hour shifts. A bell was rung twice a day, at 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. The gates would shut and work would start an hour later. If a worker was late, they sat the day out, forfeiting that day’s pay. (Employers of the era touted this practice as a positive for workers; it was a more flexible schedule, they said, since employees no longer needed to “give notice” if they couldn’t work. This reasoning is reminiscent of that offered by twenty-first-century on‑demand app companies.) For the first twenty-two years of its operation, the factory was worked around the clock, mostly by boys like Robert Blincoe, some as young as seven years old. At its peak, two-thirds of the 1,100-strong workforce were children. Richard Arkwright Jr. admitted in later testimony that they looked “extremely dissipated, and many of them had seldom more than a few hours of sleep,” though he maintained they were well paid. 

The industrialist also built on‑site housing, luring whole families from around the country to come work his frames. He gave them one week’s worth of vacation a year, “but on condition that they could not leave the village.” Today, even our most cutting-edge consumer products are still manufactured in similar conditions, in imposing factories with on‑site dormitories and strictly regimented production processes, by workers who have left home for the job. Companies like Foxconn operate factories where the regimen can be so grueling it has led to suicide epidemics among the workforce. 

The strict work schedule and a raft of rules instilled a sense of discipline among the laborers; long, miserable shifts inside the factory walls were the new standard. Previously, of course, similar work was done at home or in small shops, where shifts were not so rigid or enforced. 

Arkwright’s “main difficulty,” according to the early business theorist Andrew Ure, did not “lie so much in the invention of a proper mechanism for drawing out and twisting cotton into a continuous thread, as in [. . .] training human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work and to identify themselves with the unvarying regularity of the complex automation.” This was his legacy. “To devise and administer a successful code of factory discipline, suited to the necessities of factory diligence, was the Herculean enterprise, the noble achievement of Arkwright,” Ure continued. “It required, in fact, a man of a Napoleon nerve and ambition to subdue the refractory tempers of workpeople.” 

Ure was hardly exaggerating, as many workers did in fact view Arkwright as akin to an invading enemy. When he opened a factory in Chorley, Lancashire, in 1779, a crowd of stockingers and spinners broke in, smashed the machines, and burned the place to the ground. Arkwright did not try to open another mill in Lancashire. 

Arkwright also vigorously defended his patents in the legal system. He collected royalties on his water frame and carding engine until 1785, when the court decided that he had not actually invented the machines but had instead copied their parts from other inventors, and threw the patents out. By then, he was astronomically wealthy. Before he died, he would be worth £500,000, or around $ 425 million in today’s dollars, and his son would expand and entrench his factory empire. 

The success apparently went to his head— he was considered arrogant, even among his admirers. In fact, arrogance was a key ingredient in his success: he had what Ure described as “fortitude in the face of public opposition.” He was unyielding with critics when they pointed out, say, that he was employing hundreds of children in machine-filled rooms for thirteen hours straight. That for all his innovation, the secret sauce in his groundbreaking success was labor exploitation. 

In Arkwright, we see the DNA of those who would attain tech titanhood in the ensuing decades and centuries. Arkwright’s brashness rhymes with that of bullheaded modern tech executives who see virtue in a willingness to ignore regulations and push their workforces to extremes, or who, like Elon Musk, would gleefully wage war with perceived foes on Twitter rather than engage any criticism of how he runs his businesses. Like Steve Jobs, who famously said, “We’ve always been shameless about stealing great ideas,” Arkwright surveyed the technologies of the day, recognized what worked and could be profitable, lifted the ideas, and then put them into action with an unmatched aggression. Like Jeff Bezos, Arkwright hypercharged a new mode of factory work by finding ways to impose discipline and rigidity on his workers, and adapting them to the rhythms of the machine and the dictates of capital— not the other way around. 

We can look back at the Industrial Revolution and lament the working conditions, but popular culture still lionizes entrepreneurs cut in the mold of Arkwright, who made a choice to employ thousands of child laborers and to institute a dehumanizing system of factory work to increase revenue and lower costs. We have acclimated to the idea that such exploitation was somehow inevitable, even natural, while casting aspersions on movements like the Luddites as being technophobic for trying to stop it. We forget that working people vehemently opposed such exploitation from the beginning. 

Arkwright’s imprint feels familiar to us, in our own era where entrepreneurs loom large. So might a litany of other first-wave tech titans. Take James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine that powered countless factories in industrial England. Once he was confident in his product, much like a latter-day Bill Gates, Watts sold subscriptions for its use. With his partner, Matthew Boulton, Watts installed the engine and then collected annual payments that were structured around how much the customer would save on fuel costs compared to the previous engine. Then, like Gates, Watts would sue anyone he thought had violated his patent, effectively winning himself a monopoly on the trade. The Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank, argues that this had the effect of constraining innovation on the steam engine for thirty years. 

Or take William Horsfall or William Cartwright. These were men who were less innovative than relentless in their pursuit of disrupting a previous mode of work as they strove to monopolize a market. (The word innovation, it’s worth noting, carried negative connotations until the mid-twentieth century or so; Edmund Burke famously called the French Revolution “a revolt of innovation.”) They can perhaps be seen as precursors to the likes of Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber, the pugnacious trampler of the taxi industry. Kalanick’s business idea— that it would be convenient to hail a taxi from your smartphone— was not remarkably inventive. But he had intense levels of self-determination and pugnacity, which helped him overrun the taxi cartels and dozens of cities’ regulatory codes. His attitude was reflected in Uber’s treatment of its drivers, who, the company insists, are not employees but independent contractors, and in the endemic culture of harassment and mistreatment of the women on staff. 

These are extreme examples, perhaps. But to disrupt long-held norms for the promise of extreme rewards, entrepreneurs often pursue extreme actions. Like the mill bosses who shattered 19th-century standards by automating cloth-making, today’s start‑up founders aim to disrupt one job category after another with gig work platforms or artificial intelligence, and encourage others to follow their lead. There’s a reason Arkwright and his factories were both emulated and feared. Even two centuries later, many tech titans still are.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-blood-in-the-machine-brian-merchant-hachette-book-group-143056410.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

All the big tech layoffs of 2023

The tech industry is reeling from the combination of a rough economy, the COVID-19 pandemic and some obvious business missteps. And while that led to job cuts in 2022, the headcount reductions have unfortunately ramped up in 2023. It can be tough to keep track of these moves, so we’ve compiled all the major layoffs in one place and will continue to update this story as the situation evolves.

June

Small figurines are seen in front of displayed Spotify logo in this illustration taken February 11, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Ilustration
Dado Ruvic / reuters

Spotify layoffs

Spotify followed up its January layoff plans with word in June that it would cut 200 jobs in its podcast unit. The move is part of a more targeted approach to fostering podcasts with optimized resources for creators and shows. The company is also combining its Gimlet and Parcast production teams into a renewed Spotify Studios division.

GrubHub layoffs

GrubHub has faced intense pressure from both the economy and competitors like Uber, and that led it to lay off 15 percent of its workforce in June, or roughly 400 staff. This came just weeks after outgoing CEO Adam DeWitt officially left the food delivery service. New chief executive Howard Migdal claims the job cuts will help the company remain "competitive."

Embracer Group layoffs

Game publishing giant Embracer Group announced plans for layoffs in June as part of a major restructuring effort meant to cut costs. The company didn't say how many of its 17,000 employees would be effected, but expected the overhaul to continue through March. The news came soon after Embracer revealed that it lost a $ 2 billion deal with an unnamed partner despite a verbal agreement.

Sonos layoffs

Sonos has struggled to turn a profit as of late, and it's cutting costs to get back on track. The company said in June that it would lay off 7 percent of staff, or roughly 130 jobs. It also planned to offload real estate and rethink program spending. CEO Patrick Spence said there were "continued headwinds" that included shrinking sales.

Plex layoffs

Plex may be many users' go-to app for streaming both local and online media, but that hasn't helped its fortunes. The company laid off roughly 20 percent of employees in June, or 37 people. Most of the affected people are in its Personal Media unit. Plex is reportedly feeling the blow from an ad market slowdown, and is eager to cut costs and turn a profit.

May

An employee works at Shopify's headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, October 22, 2018. REUTERS/Chris Wattie
REUTERS/Chris Wattie

Shopify layoffs

Shopify's e-commerce platform played an important role at the height of the pandemic, but the Canadian company is scaling back now that the rush is over. In May, the company laid off 20 percent of its workforce and sold its logistics business to Flexport. Founder Tobi Lütke characterized the job cuts as necessary to "pay unshared attention" to Shopify's core mission, and an acknowledgment that the firm needed to be more efficient now that the "stable economic boom times" were over.

Polestar layoffs

Polestar delayed production of its first electric SUV (the Polestar 3) in May, and that had repercussions for its workforce. The Volvo spinoff brand said in May that it would cut 10 percent of its workforce to lower costs as it faced reduced manufacturing expectations and a rough economy. Volvo needed more time for software development and testing that also pushed back the EX90, Polestar said.

SoundCloud layoffs

SoundCloud followed up last year's extensive layoffs with more this May. The streaming audio service said it would shed 8 percent of its staff in a bid to become profitable in 2023. Billboard sources claim the company hopes to be profitable by the fourth quarter of the year.

April

Lyft logo is seen in this illustration taken June 27, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Dado Ruvic / reuters

Lyft layoffs

Lyft laid off 13 percent of staff in November 2022, but took further steps in April. The ridesharing company said it was laying off 1,072 workers, or about 26 percent of its headcount. It comes just weeks after an executive shuffle that replaced CEO Logan Green with former Amazon exec David Risher, who said the company needed to streamline its business and refocus on drivers and passengers. Green previously said Lyft needed to boost its spending to compete with Uber.

Dropbox layoffs

Cloud storage companies aren't immune to the current financial climate. In April, Dropbox said it would lay off 500 employees, or roughly 16 percent of its team. Co-founder Drew Houston pinned the cuts on the combination of a rough economy, a maturing business and the "urgency" to hop on the growing interest in AI. While the company is profitable, its growth is slowing and some investments are "no longer sustainable," Houston said. 

March

Roku layoffs

Roku shed 200 jobs at the end of 2022, but it wasn't done. The streaming platform creator laid off another 200 employees in March 2023. As before, the company argued that it needed to curb growing expenses and concentrate on those projects that would have the most impact. Roku has been struggling with the one-two combination of a rough economy and the end of a pandemic-fueled boom in streaming video.

Lucid Motors layoffs

If you thought luxury EV makers would be particularly susceptible to economic turmoil, you guessed correctly. Lucid Motors said in March that it would lay off 18 percent of its workforce, or about 1,300 people. The marque is still falling short of production targets, and these cuts reportedly help deal with "evolving business needs and productivity improvements." The cuts are across the board, too, and include both executives as well as contractors.

Meta (Facebook) layoffs

Meta slashed 11,000 jobs in fall 2022, but it wasn't finished. In March 2023, the company unveiled plans to lay off another 10,000 workers in a further bid to cut costs. The first layoffs affected its recruiting team, but it shrank its technology teams in late April and its business groups in late May. The Facebook owner is hoping to streamline its operations by reducing management layers and asking some leaders to take on work previously reserved for the rank and file. It may take a while before Meta's staff count grows again — it doesn't expect to lift a hiring freeze until sometime after it completes its restructuring effort in late 2023.

February

Rivian layoffs

Rivian conducted layoffs in 2022, but that wasn't enough to help the fledgling EV brand's bottom line. The company laid off another six percent of its employees in February, or about 840 workers. It's still fighting to achieve profitability, and the production shortfall from supply chain issues hasn't helped matters. CEO RJ Scaringe says the job cuts will help Rivian focus on the "highest impact" aspects of its business.

Zoom layoffs

Zoom was a staple of remote work culture at the pandemic's peak, so it's no surprise that the company is cutting back now that people are returning to offices. The video calling firm said in February it was laying off roughly 1,300 employees, or 15 percent of its personnel. As CEO Eric Yuan put it, the company didn't hire "sustainably" as it dealt with its sudden success. The layoffs are reportedly necessary to help survive a difficult economy. The management team is offering more than just apologies, too. Yuan is cutting his salary by 98 percent for the next fiscal year, while all other executives are losing 20 percent of their base salaries as well as their fiscal 2023 bonuses.

Yahoo layoffs

Engadget's parent company Yahoo isn't immune to layoffs. The internet brand said in February that it would lay off over 20 percent of its workforce throughout 2023, or more than 1,600 people. Most of those cuts, or about 1,000 positions, took place immediately. CEO Jim Lanzone didn't blame the layoffs on economic conditions, however. He instead pitched it as a restructuring of the advertising technology unit as it shed an unprofitable business in favor of a successful one. Effectively, Yahoo is bowing out of direct competition in with Google and Meta in the ad market.

Dell layoffs

The pandemic recovery and a grim economy have hit PC makers particularly hard, and Dell is feeling the pain more than most. It laid off five percent of its workforce in early February, or about 6,650 employees, after a brutal fourth quarter where computer shipments plunged an estimated 37 percent. Past cost-cutting efforts weren't enough, Dell said — the layoffs and a streamlined organization were reportedly needed to get back on track.

Deliveroo layoffs

Food delivery services flourished while COVID-19 kept people away from restaurants, and at least some are feeling the sting now that people are willing to dine out again. Deliveroo is laying off about 350 workers, or nine percent of its workforce. "Redeployments" will bring this closer to 300, according to founder Will Shu. The justification is familiar: Deliveroo hired rapidly to handle "unprecedented" pandemic-related growth, according to Shu, but reportedly has to cut costs as it deals with a troublesome economy.

DocuSign layoffs

DocuSign may be familiar to many people who've signed documents online, but that hasn't spared it from the impact of a harsh economic climate. The company said in mid-February that it was laying off 10 percent of its workforce. While it didn't disclose how many people that represented, the company had 7,461 employees at the start of 2022. Most of those losing their jobs work in DocuSign's worldwide field organization.

GitLab layoffs

You may not know GitLab, but its DevOps (development and operations) platform underpins work at tech brands like NVIDIA and T-Mobile — and shrinking business at its clients is affecting its bottom line. GitLab is laying off seven percent of employees, or roughly 114 people. Company chief Sid Sijbrandij said the problematic economy meant customers were taking a "more conservative approach" to software investment, and that his company's previous attempts to refocus spending weren't enough to counter these challenges.

GoDaddy layoffs

GoDaddy conducted layoffs early in the pandemic, when it cut over 800 workers for its retail-oriented Social platform. In February this year, however, it took broader action. The web service provider laid off eight percent of its workforce, or more than 500 people, across all divisions. Chief Aman Bhutani claimed other forms of cost-cutting hadn't been enough to help the company navigate an "uncertain" economy, and that this reflected efforts to further integrate acquisitions like Main Street Hub.

Twilio layoffs

Twilio eliminated over 800 jobs in September 2022, but it made deeper cuts as 2023 got started. The cloud communications brand laid off 17 percent of staff, or roughly 1,500 people, in mid-February. Like so many other tech firms, Twillio said that past cost reduction efforts weren't enough to endure an unforgiving environment. It also rationalized the layoffs as necessary for a streamlined organization.

January

An exterior view of building BV100, during a tour of Google's new Bay View Campus in Mountain View, California, U.S. May 16, 2022. Picture taken May 16, 2022.   REUTERS/Peter DaSilva
REUTERS/Peter DaSilva

Google (Alphabet) layoffs

Google's parent company Alphabet has been cutting costs for a while, including shutting down Stadia, but it took those efforts one step further in late January when it said it would lay off 12,000 employees. CEO Sundar Pichai wasn't shy about the reasoning: Alphabet had been hiring for a "different economic reality," and was restructuring to focus on the internet giant's most important businesses. The decision hit the company's Area 120 incubator particularly hard, with the majority of the unit's workers losing their jobs. Sub-brands like Intrinsic (robotics) and Verily (health) also shed significant portions of their workforce in the days before the mass layoffs. Waymo has conducted two rounds of layoffs that shed 209 people, or eight percent of its force.

Amazon layoffs

Amazon had already outlined layoff plans last fall, but expanded those cuts in early January when it said it would eliminate 18,000 jobs, most of them coming from retail and recruiting teams. It added another 9,000 people to the layoffs in March, and in April said over 100 gaming employees were leaving. To no one's surprise, CEO Andy Jassy blamed both an "uncertain economy" and rapid hiring in recent years. Amazon benefited tremendously from the pandemic as people shifted to online shopping, but its growth is slowing as people return to in-person stores.

Coinbase layoffs

Coinbase was one of the larger companies impacted by the crypto market's 2022 downturn, and that carried over into the new year. The cryptocurrency exchange laid off 950 people in mid-January, just months after it slashed 1,100 roles. This is one of the steepest proportionate cuts among larger tech brands — Coinbase offloaded about a fifth of its staff. Chief Brian Armstrong said his outfit needed the layoffs to shrink operating expenses and survive what he previously described as a "crypto winter," but that also meant canceling some projects that were less likely to succeed.

IBM layoffs

Layoffs sometimes stem more from corporate strategy shifts than financial hardship, and IBM provided a classic example of this in 2023. The computing pioneer axed 3,900 jobs in late January after offloading both its AI-driven Watson Health business and its infrastructure management division (now Kyndryl) in the fall. Simply put, those employees had nothing to work on as IBM pivoted toward cloud computing.

Microsoft layoffs

Microsoft started its second-largest wave of layoffs in company history when it signaled it would cut 10,000 jobs between mid-January and the end of March. Like many other tech heavyweights, it was trimming costs as customers scaled back their spending (particularly on Windows and devices) during the pandemic recovery. The reductions were especially painful for some divisions — they reportedly gutted the HoloLens and mixed reality teams, while 343 Industries is believed to be rebooting Halo development after losing dozens of workers. GitHub is cutting 10 percent of its team, or roughly 300 people.

PayPal layoffs

PayPal has been one of the healthier large tech companies, having beaten expectations in its third quarter last year. Still, it hasn't been immune to a tough economy. The online payment firm unveiled plans at the end of January to lay off 2,000 employees, or seven percent of its total worker base. CEO Dan Schulman claimed the downsizing would keep costs in check and help PayPal focus on "core strategic priorities."

Salesforce layoffs

Salesforce set the tone for 2023 when it warned it would lay off 8,000 employees, or about 10 percent of its workforce, just four days into the new year. While the cloud software brand thrived during the pandemic with rapidly growing revenue, it admitted that it hired too aggressively during the boom and couldn't maintain that staffing level while the economy was in decline.

SAP layoffs

Business software powerhouse SAP saw a steep 68 percent drop in profit at the end of 2022, and it started 2023 by laying off 2,800 staff to keep its business healthy. Unlike some big names in tech, though, SAP didn't blame excessive pandemic-era hiring for the cutback. Instead, it characterized the initiative as a "targeted restructuring" for a company that still expected accelerating growth in 2023.

Spotify layoffs

Spotify spent aggressively in recent years as it expanded its podcast empire, but it quickly put a stop to that practice as 2023 began. The streaming music service said in late January that it would lay off 6 percent of its workforce (9,800 people worked at Spotify as of the third quarter) alongside a restructuring effort that included the departure of content chief Dawn Ostroff. While there were more Premium subscribers than ever in 2022, the company also suffered steep losses — CEO Daniel Ek said he was "too ambitious" investing before the revenue existed to support it.

Wayfair layoffs

Amazon isn't the only major online retailer scaling back in 2023. Wayfair said in late January that it would lay off 1,750 team members, or 10 percent of its global headcount. About 1,200 of those were corporate staff cut in a bid to "eliminate management layers" and otherwise help the company become leaner and nimbler. Wayfair had been cutting costs since August 2022 (including 870 positions), but saw the layoffs as helping it reach break-even earnings sooner than expected.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech-layoffs-2023-152856197.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

President Biden meets with AI tech leaders in San Francisco

While lawmakers in Congress (and soon, the Senate) call for a "blue-ribbon commission" to study the potential impacts of AI on American society, President Biden on Tuesday met with leaders in the emerging field to discuss and debate the issue directly. The President met with Tristan Harris, executive director of the Center for Human Technology; Fei-Fei Li, Co-Director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute; and Jennifer Doudna, Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley, among others, at the Fairmont hotel in San Francisco.

Staying atop the growing swell of AI technology advancements in recent months and years, specifically the emergence of generative AI systems, has become a focal point for the Biden administration. Generative AI systems hold the promise to revolutionize many sectors of the economy and drastically reimagine the nature of modern office work. However, those same systems could just as likely wipe out entire professions, as the fields of digital art and journalism are now experiencing. 

The White House announced a $ 140 million investment in May to establish seven new National AI Research Institutes and has begun investigating the technology's use in business. As the White House chief of staff's office told AP, top White House staff meet regularly on the subject, two to three times each week. Biden himself has reportedly met with multiple subject matter experts and technical advisors on the subject to discuss, "the importance of protecting rights and safety to ensure responsible innovation and appropriate safeguards."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/president-biden-meets-with-ai-tech-leaders-in-san-francisco-182140363.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Hitting the Books: Sputnik’s radio tech launched a revolution in bird migration research

“Birds fly South for the winter and North for the summer,” has historically proven to be only slightly less reliable a maxim than the sun always rising in the East and setting in the West. Humanity has been fascinated by the comings and goings of our avian neighbors for millennia, but the why’s and how’s of their transitory travel habits have remained largely a mystery until recent years. In Flight Paths, science author Rebecca Heisman details the fascinating history of modern bird migration research and the pioneering ornithologists that helped the field take off. In the excerpt below, Heisman recalls the efforts of Dr. Bill Cochran, a trailblazer in radio-tagging techniques, to track his airborne, and actively-transmitting, quarry across the Canadian border.        

flock of birds in flight over a blue ombre cover
HarperCollins

From Flight Paths, Copyright © 2023 By Rebecca Heisman. Reprinted here with permission of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers


Follow That Beep

Swainson’s thrush looks a bit like a small brown version of its familiar cousin the American robin. Its gray-brown back contrasts with a pale, spotted chest and pale “spectacle” markings around its eyes. These thrushes are shy birds that forage for insects in the leaf litter on the forest floor, where they blend in with the dappled light and deep shadows. Birders know them by their fluting, upward-spiraling song, which fills the woods of Canada and the northern United States with ethereal music in summer. But they don’t live there year-round; they spend the winters in Mexico and northern South America, then return north to breed.

On the morning of May 13, 1973, a Swainson’s thrush pausing on its journey from its winter home to its summer home blundered into a mist net in east-central Illinois. The researchers who gently pulled it from the net went through all the usual rituals—weighing and measuring it, clasping a numbered metal band around its leg—but they added one unusual element: a tiny radio transmitter weighing just five- thousandths of an ounce. They carefully trimmed the feathers from a small patch on the bird’s back, then used eyelash glue to cement the transmitter, mounted on a bit of cloth, in place against the bird’s skin (Generations of ornithologists have learned exactly where to find the eyelash glue at their local cosmetics store. Designed to not irritate the delicate skin of the eyelids when attaching false eyelashes, it doesn’t irritate birds’ skin, either, and wears off after weeks or months.) 

When the thrush was released, it probably shuffled its feathers a few times as it got used to its new accessory, then returned to resting and foraging in preparation for continuing its trek. At only around 3 percent of the bird’s total body weight, the transmitter wouldn’t have impeded the bird noticeably as it went about its daily routine. Then, around 8:40 that evening, after the sun had dipped far enough below the horizon that the evening light was beginning to dim, the thrush launched itself into the air, heading northwest.

It would have had no way of knowing that it was being followed. Bill Cochran — the same engineer who, a decade and a half earlier, had rigged up a tape recorder with a bicycle axle and six thousand feet of tape so that Richard Graber could record a full night of nocturnal flight calls — had been waiting nearby in a converted Chevy station wagon with a large antenna poking out of a hole in the roof. When the thrush set out into the evening sky, Cochran and a student named Charles Welling were following on the roads below.

All they could see in the deepening night was the patch of highway illuminated by their headlights, but the sound of the wavering “beep . . . beep . . . beep” of the transmitter joined them to the thrush overhead as if by an invisible thread. They would keep at it for seven madcap nights, following the thrush for more than 930 miles before losing the signal for good in rural southern Manitoba on the morning of May 20.

Along the way, they would collect data on its altitude (which varied from 210 to 6,500 feet), air and ground speed (eighteen to twenty-seven and nine to fifty-two miles per hour, respectively, with the ground speed depending on the presence of headwinds or tailwinds), distance covered each night (65 to 233 miles), and, crucially, its heading. Because they were able to stick with the bird over such a long distance, Cochran and Welling were able to track how the precise direction the bird set out in each night changed as its position changed relative to magnetic north. The gradual changes they saw in its heading were consistent with the direction of magnetic north, providing some of the first real-world evidence that migrating songbirds use some sort of internal magnetic compass as one of their tools for navigation. Today Bill Cochran is a legend among ornithologists for his pioneering work tracking radio-tagged birds on their migratory odysseys. But it wasn’t birds that first drew him into the field of radio telemetry; it was the space race.

From Sputnik to Ducks

In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite into orbit. Essentially just a metal sphere that beeped, Sputnik 1 transmitted a radio signal for three weeks before its battery died. (It burned up in the atmosphere in January 1958.) That signal could be picked up by anyone with a good radio receiver and antenna, and scientists and amateur radio enthusiasts alike tracked its progress around and around Earth.

It caused a sensation around the world — including in Illinois, where the University of Illinois radio astronomer George Swenson started following the signals of Sputnik 1 and its successors to learn more about the properties of Earth’s atmosphere. Around 1960, Swenson got permission to design a radio beacon of his own to be incorporated into a Discoverer satellite, the U.S. answer to the Sputnik program. In need of locals with experience in electrical engineering to work on the project, he recruited Bill Cochran (who still had not officially finished his engineering degree — he wouldn’t complete the last class until 1964) to assist.

Cochran, as you may recall, had spent the late 1950s working at a television station in Illinois while studying engineering on the side and spending his nights helping Richard Graber perfect his system for recording nocturnal flight calls. By 1960, no longer satisfied with flight calls alone as a means of learning about migration, Graber had procured a small radar unit and gotten Cochran a part-time job with the Illinois Natural History Survey helping operate it. But along the way, Cochran had apparently demonstrated “exceptional facility with transistor circuits,” which is what got him the job with Swenson. It was the transistor, invented in 1947, that ultimately made both the space race and wildlife telemetry possible.

The beating heart of a radio transmitter is the oscillator, usually a tiny quartz crystal. When voltage is applied to a crystal, it changes shape ever so slightly at the molecular level and then snaps back, over and over again. This produces a tiny electric signal at a specific frequency, but it needs to be amplified before being sent out into the world. Sort of like how a lever lets you turn a small motion into a bigger one, an amplifier in an electrical circuit turns a weak signal into a stronger one.

Before and during World War II, amplifying a signal required controlling the flow of electrons through a circuit using a series of vacuum-containing glass tubes. Vacuum tubes got the job done, but they were fragile, bulky, required a lot of power, and tended to blow out regularly; owners of early television sets had to be adept at replacing vacuum tubes to keep them working. In a transistor, the old-fashioned vacuum tube is replaced by a “semiconductor” material (originally germanium, and later silicon), allowing the flow of electrons to be adjusted up or down by tweaking the material’s conductivity. Lightweight, efficient, and durable, transistors quickly made vacuum tubes obsolete. Today they’re used in almost every kind of electric circuit. Several billion of them are transisting away inside the laptop I’m using to write this.

As transistors caught on in the 1950s, the U.S. Navy began to take a special interest in radio telemetry, experimenting with systems to collect and transmit real-time data on a jet pilot’s vital signs and to study the effectiveness of cold-water suits for sailors. These efforts directly inspired some of the first uses of telemetry for wildlife research. In 1957, scientists in Antarctica used the system from the cold-water suit tests to monitor the temperature of a penguin egg during incubation, while a group of researchers in Maryland borrowed some ideas from the jet pilot project and surgically implanted transmitters in woodchucks. [ed: Although harnesses, collars, and the like are also commonly used for tracking wildlife today, surgically implanting transmitters has its advantages, such as eliminating the chance that an external transmitter will impede an animal’s movements.] Their device had a range of only about twenty-five yards, but it was the first attempt to use radio telemetry to track animals’ movements. The Office of Naval Research even directly funded some of the first wildlife telemetry experiments; navy officials hoped that radio tracking “may help discover the bird’s secret of migration, which disclosure might, in turn, lead to new concepts for the development of advanced miniaturized navigation and detection systems.”

Cochran didn’t know any of this at the time. Nor did he know that the Discoverer satellites he and Swenson were building radio beacons for were, in fact, the very first U.S. spy satellites; he and Swenson knew only that the satellites’ main purpose was classified. Working with a minimal budget, a ten-pound weight limit, and almost no information about the rocket that would carry their creation, they built a device they dubbed Nora-Alice (a reference to a popular comic strip of the time) that launched in 1961. Cochran was continuing his side job with the Illinois Natural History Survey all the while, and eventually someone there suggested trying to use a radio transmitter to track a duck in flight.

“A mallard duck was sent over from the research station on the Illinois River,” Swenson later wrote in a coda to his reminiscences about the satellite project. “At our Urbana satellite-monitoring station, a tiny transistor oscillator was strapped around the bird’s breast by a metal band. The duck was disoriented from a week’s captivity, and sat calmly on the workbench while its signal was tuned in on the receiver. As it breathed quietly, the metal band periodically distorted and pulled the frequency, causing a varying beat note from the receiver.”

Swenson and Cochran recorded those distortions and variations on a chart, and when the bird was released, they found they could track its respiration and wing beats by the changes in the signal; when the bird breathed faster or beat its wings more frequently, the distortions sped up. Without even meaning to, they’d gathered some of the very first data on the physiology of birds in flight.

An Achievement of Another Kind

Bill Cochran enjoys messing with telemarketers. So, when he received a call from a phone number he didn’t recognize, he answered with a particularly facetious greeting.

“Animal shelter! We’re closed!”

“Uh . . . this is Rebecca Heisman, calling for Bill Cochran?”

“Who?”

“Is this Bill Cochran?”

“Yes, who are you?”

Once we established that he was in fact the radio telemetry legend Bill Cochran, not the animal shelter janitor he was pretending to be, and I was the writer whom he’d invited via email to give him a call, not a telemarketer, he told me he was busy but that I could call him back at the same time the next day.

Cochran was nearly ninety when we first spoke in the spring of 2021. Almost five decades had passed since his 1973 thrush-chasing odyssey, but story after story from the trek came back to him as we talked. He and Welling slept in the truck during the day when the thrush landed to rest and refuel, unwilling to risk a motel in case the bird took off again unexpectedly. While Welling drove, Cochran controlled the antenna. The base of the column that supported it extended down into the backseat of their vehicle, and he could adjust the antenna by raising, lowering, and rotating it, resembling a submarine crewman operating a periscope.

At one point, Cochran recalled, he and Welling got sick with “some kind of flu” while in Minnesota and, unable to find a doctor willing to see two eccentric out-of-towners on zero notice, just “sweated it out” and continued on. At another point during their passage through Minnesota, Welling spent a night in jail. They were pulled over by a small-town cop (Cochran described it as a speed trap but was adamant that they weren’t speeding, claiming the cop was just suspicious of the weird appearance of their tracking vehicle) but couldn’t stop for long or they would lose the bird. Welling stayed with the cop to sort things out while Cochran went on, and after the bird set down for the day, Cochran doubled back to pick him up.

“The bird got a big tailwind when it left Minnesota,” Cochran said. “We could barely keep up, we were driving over the speed limit on those empty roads — there aren’t many people in North Dakota — but we got farther and farther behind it, and finally by the time we caught up with it, it had already flown into Canada.”

Far from an official crossing point where they could legally enter Manitoba, they were forced to listen at the border as the signal faded into the distance. The next day they found a border crossing (heaven knows what the border agents made of the giant antenna on top of the truck) and miraculously picked up the signal again, only to have their vehicle start to break down. “It overheated and it wouldn’t run, so the next thing you know Charles is out there on the hood of the truck, pouring gasoline into the carburetor to keep it running,” Cochran recalled. “And every time we could find any place where there was a ditch with rainwater, we improvised something to carry water out of the ditch and pour it into the radiator. We finally managed to limp into a town to get repairs made.”

Cochran recruited a local pilot to take him up in a plane in one last attempt to relocate the radio-tagged bird and keep going, but to no avail. The chase was over. The data they had collected would be immortalized in a terse three-page scientific paper that doesn’t hint at all the adventures behind the numbers.

That 1973 journey wasn’t the first time Cochran and his colleagues had followed a radio-tagged bird cross-country, nor was it the last. After his first foray into wildlife telemetry at George Swenson’s lab, Cochran quickly became sought after by wildlife biologists throughout the region. He first worked with the Illinois Natural History Survey biologist Rexford Lord, who was looking for a more accurate way to survey the local cottontail rabbit population. Although big engineering firms such as Honeywell had already tried to build radio tracking systems that could be used with wildlife, Cochran succeeded where others had failed by literally thinking outside the box: instead of putting the transmitter components into a metal box that had to be awkwardly strapped to an animal’s back, he favored designs that were as small, simple, and compact as possible, dipping the assembly of components in plastic resin to seal them together and waterproof them. Today, as in Cochran’s time, designing a radio transmitter to be worn by an animal requires making trade-offs among a long list of factors: a longer antenna will give you a stronger signal, and a bigger battery will give you a longer-lasting tag, but both add weight. Cochran was arguably the first engineer to master this balancing act.

The transmitters Cochran created for Lord cost eight dollars to build, weighed a third of an ounce, and had a range of up to two miles. Attaching them to animals via collars or harnesses, Cochran and Lord used them to track the movements of skunks and raccoons as well as rabbits. Cochran didn’t initially realize the significance of what he’d achieved, but when Lord gave a presentation about their project at a 1961 mammalogy conference, he suddenly found himself inundated with job offers from biologists. Sharing his designs with anyone who asked instead of patenting them, he even let biologists stay in his spare room when they visited to learn telemetry techniques from him. When I asked him why he decided to go into a career in wildlife telemetry rather than sticking with satellites, he told me he was simply more interested in birds than in a job “with some engineering company making a big salary and designing weapons that’ll kill people.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-flight-paths-rebecca-heisman-harper-publishing-143053788.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

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Dead by Daylight’s latest killer is a tech executive with a surveillance penchant

Dead by Daylight features a roster full of memorable killers. If horror icons like Freddy Krueger and Pyramid Head aren’t your thing, you can turn to more original additions like Ji-woon, a K-pop star turned serial killer. The game’s newest killer fits in that latter mold. Adriana Imai, aka The Skull Merchant, is a wealthy tech executive who, when she’s not eliminating competition like any good monopolist, uses the skulls of her past victims to craft aerial drones to hunt her next kill. A bit on the nose? Definitely, but she looks to add something new to a game that has been around since 2016.

The Skull Merchant’s power, Eyes in the Sky, allows her to send up to four drones to scout for the survivors she’s tasked with eliminating. Once Imai finds her targets, she can use a hand claw to eliminate them. Alongside Imai, Dead by Daylight developer Behavior Interactive is adding two new survivors as part of the game’s upcoming “Tools of Torment” update. Thalita and Renato Lyra are siblings who hail from Brazil. Before they had the misfortune of being tossed into the hellscape that is Dead by Daylight's world, Thalita and Renato owned a kite-flying business that mentored kids in their local community. The two come with teamwork perks that prompt cooperative play.

Tools of Torment won’t introduce a new map, but it will come with a tweak to the game’s existing Shelter Woods arena that adds The Skull Merchant’s hunting ground. You can play the update starting on March 7th when it arrives on PC and consoles.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

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Digital Trends

Apple’s AirPods Pro fall to $200, plus the rest of the week’s best tech deals

While it’s a bit late for most tech gifts to ship in time for Christmas, there are still many deals going on for those looking to buy something nice for themselves. Apple’s AirPods Pro, for one, are down to an all-time low of $ 200, while Sony’s WF-1000XM4 earbuds are still at a low of $ 178. Several recommended gamepads from 8BitDo are on sale, as are various well-regarded OLED TVs from LG. And if you’re a PC gamer, both Steam and the Epic Games Store have kicked off sweeping holiday sales on their respective storefronts. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.

Apple AirPods Pro

Despite the unchanged design, Apple has packed an assortment of updates into the new AirPods Pro. All of the conveniences from the 2019 model are here as well, alongside additions like Adaptive Transparency, Personalized Spatial Audio and a new touch gesture in tow. There’s room to further refine the familiar formula, but Apple has given iPhone owners several reasons to upgrade.
Billy Steele/Engadget

Apple’s AirPods Pro have dropped back to $ 200 at multiple retailers, which matches the lowest price we’ve tracked and comes in about $ 30 below the pair’s usual going rate over the last few months. We gave the AirPods Pro a review score of 88 earlier this year and currently recommend them as the “best for iOS” pick in our guide to the best wireless earbuds. The sound quality and active noise cancellation (ANC) here are among the better options on the market, as is the included transparency mode. Plus, like all AirPods, they offer a host of features that make them particularly convenient to use with other Apple devices. Their call quality and six-ish hours of battery life are just average, however.

Buy AirPods Pro (2nd gen) at Amazon – $ 200

Sony WF-1000XM4

Sony totally overhauled its true wireless earbuds with a new design, more powerful noise cancellation, improved battery life and more. However, the choice to change to foam tips leads to an awkward fit that could be an issue for some people. The M4 is also more expensive than its predecessor, which wouldn’t be a big deal if fit wasn’t a concern.
Billy Steele/Engadget

If you don’t own an iPhone, the top overall pick in our best wireless earbuds guide is Sony’s WF-1000XM4, which is also on sale for $ 178, matching the lowest price we’ve seen. We gave this pair a review score of 86 last year, praising its upper-tier ANC, solid yet customizable sound quality, 8- to 10-hour battery life and array of useful bonus features. The earpieces here are on the bulkier side, so they might not fit all ear shapes comfortably, but they do isolate an impressive amount of noise even without the ANC turned on. If you’re on a tighter budget, meanwhile, Anker’s Soundcore Space A40 is another noise-canceling set we like that’s on sale for a new low of $ 60 at Target. 

Buy Sony WF-1000XM4 at Amazon – $ 178

8BitDo game controllers

8BitDo Pro 2 in gray
Kris Naudus / Engadget

8BitDo’s Pro 2 gamepad is down to $ 40, which is a $ 10 discount and tied for the best price we’ve tracked. This is a comfortable and extensively customizable wireless controller we’ve recommended in past gift guides. It doesn’t work with PlayStation and Xbox consoles, but if you need a spare gamepad for Switch, PC or mobile devices, it’s arguably a better value than Nintendo’s Switch Pro Controller. Just note that it can’t wake the Switch up from sleep mode, if you plan on using it with that console.

If you’re willing to pay more for a controller with Hall effect joysticks, which are traditionally more resistant to drift over time, or if you prefer an Xbox-style layout, 8BitDo’s Ultimate Controller is also on sale for $ 63. While that’s only $ 7 off its typical price, this is the first discount we’ve seen for the recently-launched device. For those who play lots of retro-style games, meanwhile, the company’s Sn30 Pro is like a more modern version of an old Super Nintendo pad, and it’s currently $ 10 off at $ 35.

Buy 8BitDo Pro 2 at Amazon – $ 40Buy 8BitDo Ultimate Controller at Amazon – $ 63Buy 8BitDo Sn30 Pro at Amazon – $ 35

PS5 DualSense Wireless Controller

If you need a spare gamepad for your PlayStation 5, Sony’s DualSense controller is still available for an all-time low of $ 49 at various retailers, including Amazon, GameStop, Walmart, Adorama, Target and Best Buy. The sale applies to several color finishes and comes out to a $ 20 or $ 25 discount depending on which model you choose. The DualSense itself isn’t as convenient on PCs as the 8BitDo pads above or Microsoft’s Xbox Series X/S controller (which is down to $ 40), but it still provides a comfortable shape and impressive haptic feedback for newer PlayStation games.

Buy PS5 DualSense Controller at Amazon – $ 49Buy PS5 DualSense Controller at GameStop – $ 49

Apple MacBook Air

MacBook Air (M2, 2022)
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

Apple’s latest MacBook Air is still on sale for $ 999 at B&H, matching the lowest price we’ve seen. Normally, Apple sells this version, which includes 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, for $ 1,199, though we’ve seen it fall to $ 1,049 a number of times in recent months. Either way, the M2-powered Air is the top pick in our guide to the best laptops, and we gave it a glowing review score of 96 earlier this year. As an everyday notebook, it gives little to complain about, but note that this entry-level configuration has slower storage performance than Apple’s higher-priced SKUs. Still, if you aren’t planning to do more involved work like editing high-resolution videos, this shouldn’t be a major hindrance on a day-to-day basis. Just be aware that B&H says this deal is set to end later Friday afternoon.

Buy MacBook Air M2 at B&H – $ 999

Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2

While the Surface Laptop Go 2's 12.4-inch PixelSense display doesn't have a full HD resolution, it's still pretty sharp for its size.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget

A configuration of Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Go 2 with a Core i5-1135G7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD is on sale for a new low of $ 600. That’s about $ 100 off this model’s typical street price as of late. We gave the 12.4-inch notebook a review score of 86 back in June and currently recommend it in our guide to the best affordable Windows laptops. The main appeal here is in the design, as the Surface Laptop Go 2’s slim and lightweight chassis, comfortable keyboard and bright display lend it a classier feel than most options in this price range. Its performance is quick enough for casual work, too, but don’t expect a powerhouse, and the keyboard is unfortunately devoid of backlighting.

Buy Surface Laptop Go 2 at Amazon – $ 600

Steam Winter Sale

Steam Deck review
Engadget

It’s a good time to be a PC gamer (or Steam Deck owner), as Steam and the Epic Games Store have kicked off their annual holiday sales. Both promotions are scheduled to run until January 5. There are simply too many deals for us to run down everything, but some highlights on Steam include the acclaimed action-RPG Elden Ring down to $ 42, the cutesy cat adventure Stray for $ 24, the sharply written Disco Elysium for $ 10, the VR shooter Half-Life: Alyx for $ 24 and a bundle that includes a bunch of Valve-made games for $ 7. Several other picks from our best PC games guide are also on sale.

Epic’s sale doesn’t cover as many games, but it does include a recurring coupon that takes 25 percent off any purchase you make over $ 15. This can save you a few bucks if you aren’t beholden to Steam: The PC port of 2018’s God of War, for instance, is down to $ 23 at Epic with the coupon, but only down to $ 30 at Steam. For console owners, note that PlayStation and Xbox are running holiday sales as well, though the deals there are generally ones we’ve seen several times throughout the year.

Shop Winter Sale at SteamShop Holiday Sale at Epic Games Store

LG OLED TVs

LG's C2 OLED TV.
LG

If you’re looking to upgrade your TV, a handful of LG’s well-regarded OLED sets are down to all-time lows. The 42-inch model of LG’s C2 TV, for instance, is down to $ 797 at Amazon, which is about $ 200 off its usual going rate. (If you’d rather not shop through Amazon, BuyDig is throwing in a $ 40 gift card on top of the discount.) This model can’t get as bright as the QD-OLED panel on Samsung’s S95B OLED TV, so it’s best suited in dark or moderately-lit rooms, but it still provides the deep black levels, high contrast and wide viewing angles you’d expect from a high-end OLED display. 

If you need something larger, the 65-inch LG B2 is down to $ 1,099 at Walmart (via authorized dealer Beach Camera), which is again roughly $ 200 off the price we’ve seen for most of the last couple of months. The B2 is a step down from the C2 with lesser HDR performance and a slower processor, but at this price it still offers excellent picture quality. Beyond that, the 48-inch LG A2 is back down to a low of $ 570 at Best Buy. This is the cheapest route into an LG OLED panel, but note that it’s limited to a 60Hz refresh rate and lacks HDMI 2.1 ports, reducing its appeal for gaming.

Buy LG C2 42-inch at Amazon – $ 797Buy LG B2 65-inch at Walmart – $ 1,099Buy LG A2 48-inch at Best Buy – $ 570

Apple Magic Keyboard

Apple iPad Air (2022)
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Apple’s Magic Keyboard for the iPad Air and 11-inch iPad Pro is still on sale for $ 210, which isn’t an all-time low but still $ 65 off the peripheral’s average street price in recent months. We gave the Magic Keyboard a review score of 84 back in 2020, and it still offers a comfortable typing experience, smooth trackpad and extra USB-C port to those who’d like to use their iPad more like a laptop. The main hangup is that it’s wildly expensive, but this deal lessens the burden at least somewhat.

Buy Apple Magic Keyboard 11-inch at Amazon – $ 210

Audible Premium Plus 

Igor Bonifacic/Engadget

Amazon is running a promotion that lets new subscribers get four months of Amazon’s Audible Premium Plus audiobook service for $ 5.95 per month. Normally, you’d have to pay $ 14.95 a month after a 30-day free trial. This offer has been available for the past several weeks, but we’re noting it here because it’s set to end on December 31. 

As a reminder, Premium Plus is Audible’s upper tier: In addition to granting you access to the full Audible library, it lets you keep one title from a curated selection of audiobooks each month. It’s not an essential upgrade for most, but if you’ve been thinking of giving Audible a try, this is a decent way to see if the plan works for you. Just note that your membership will be set to auto-renew by default. 

Buy Audible Premium Plus 4-month at Amazon – $ 5.95/month

Samsung Smart Monitor M8

Samsung's M8 Smart Monitor falls to a new low
Samsung

Samsung’s Smart Monitor M8 is still available for $ 400, which is an all-time low and roughly $ 180 below the 32-inch monitor’s average street price in recent months. This is a decent VA panel with a 4K resolution, but its big selling point is that it can double as a sort of tuner-less smart TV. Since it runs Samsung’s Tizen interface, it’s able to stream apps like Netflix, HBO Max and the like even when it’s not hooked up to a PC. It comes with a remote, webcam, mic and built-in speakers, and it can serve as a SmartThings hub. If you know you’ll actually use that smart TV functionality, the M8 is among the most versatile monitors you can buy, even if it’s limited to a 60Hz refresh rate and lacks local dimming.

Buy Samsung Smart Monitor M8 at Amazon – $ 400Buy Samsung Smart Monitor M8 at Samsung – $ 400

Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro

Both the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro feature bright OLED screens.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Earlier this year, we gave Google’s Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro review scores of 90 and 92, respectively, calling them the “best bargain in flagship phones” in the process. Both handsets are back on sale this week, with the 128GB Pixel 7 available from $ 499 and the Pixel 7 Pro down to $ 749 for the same amount of storage. We’ve seen these deals before, and neither marks an all-time low, but they’re still about $ 65 and $ 95 off the devices’ respective street prices over the last few months. 

Between the two, the 6.3-inch Pixel 7 gets a bit more battery life, while the 6.7-inch Pixel 7 Pro has a faster 120Hz refresh rate. Both phones, though, get you top-notch cameras, vibrant OLED displays, and a clean take on Android that’ll receive version updates through late 2025. They aren’t quite as powerful as something like Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra, but at these prices they carry strong value.

Buy Pixel 7 at Amazon – $ 499Buy Pixel 7 Pro at Amazon – $ 749

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

The Internet Archive’s PalmPilot Emulation project lets you relive tech history

Fifteen years after the release of the iPhone, it’s easy to overlook the role early innovators like Palm played in popularizing the smartphone. By the time HP unceremoniously shut down the company in 2011, Palm had struggled for a few years to carve out a niche for itself among Apple and Google. But ask anyone who had a chance to use a Palm PDA in the late ‘90s or early 2000s and they’ll tell you how fondly they remember the hardware and software that made the company’s vision possible. Now, it’s easier than ever to see what made Palm OS so special back in its day.

This week, archivist Jason Scott uploaded a database of Palm OS apps to the Internet Archive. In all, there are about 560 programs to check out, including old favorites like DopeWars and SpaceTrader. Even if you don’t have any nostalgia for Palm, it’s well worth spending a few minutes with the collection to see how much – or, in some cases, little – things have changed since Palm OS was a dominant player in the market.

For instance, there’s an entire section devoted to shareware and it’s interesting to see just how much some developers thought it was appropriate to pay for their software. Want to use the full version of StockCalc? Just send $ 15 by post to DDT Investments in Plaistow, New Hampshire.

In an interview with The Verge, Scott said it took about six months to get the CloudpilotEmu emulator to work with the Internet Archive. There’s still some work to be done. Specifically, some of the more obscure apps are missing descriptions and metadata. Scott also hopes to write instructions for each program. Still, short of buying an old Palm device off of eBay, this is the best way to experience a bygone computing era. That’s because CloudpilotEmu allows you to navigate through Palm OS. You can even launch the database from your phone and there’s full support for Palm’s Graffiti handwriting recognition system. If you want to help Scott with the project, contact him on Twitter or Discord.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Senator Markey calls for an end to ‘failed Big Tech self-regulation’ following Musk letter snub

Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts is calling on Congress to pass new legislation to rein in Big Tech companies after Elon Musk ignored an information request. “Elon Musk could respond to my tweets but failed to respond to my letter by yesterday’s deadline and answer basic questions about Twitter verification,” Markey tweeted Saturday. “Congress must end the era of failed Big Tech self-regulation and pass laws that put user safety over the whims of billionaires.”

Musk had until November 25th to answer a letter the senator sent on November 11th about Twitter’s paid account verification feature. The initial rollout of the new Twitter Blue saw trolls use the service to impersonate celebrities, politicians and brands. Markey sent Musk a list of questions about the launch after The Washington Post created a “verified” account impersonating him. One day after Markey shared a copy of the letter on Twitter, Musk attacked the senator.

“Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody,” Musk tweeted. “And why does your pp have a mask!?” he added a few hours later, referring to Markey’s profile picture, which shows the policymaker wearing a face covering. The exchange prompted Markey to chastise the billionaire. “One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online,” the senator said. “Fix your companies. Or Congress will.”

As of the writing of this article, Musk has yet to respond to Markey’s latest tweet. It’s hard to say whether the senator’s call will translate to legislative action, particularly with a split between the House of Representatives and Senate. Musk did appear to answer at least one of Markey’s questions when he announced Twitter’s new verification system on Friday. The latest iteration of the program will feature manual authentication and different colored check marks for different types of users. “Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates,” he said.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Motorola’s rollable proof of concept gets shown off during Lenovo’s Tech World event

Lenovo is in the news today with its demonstration of a rollable phone during its Tech World 2022 event where the company shows off what it’s got in the works. Included in today’s demonstration is a Motorola phone with a rollable display which, unlike most other such concepts, extends its display vertically instead of horizontally. […]

Come comment on this article: Motorola’s rollable proof of concept gets shown off during Lenovo’s Tech World event

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FTC kicks off efforts to regulate data security and surveillance tech

The Federal Trade Commission is officially starting its efforts to broadly regulate data security. The agency has published an early notice of proposed rulemaking that asks the public to comment on commercial surveillance and data gathering practices, such as camera monitoring or protections for sensitive info. Officials not only want to understand the harms and benefits of technologies, but gauge interest in rules that could require stricter safeguards (such as tougher encryption) and bans on deceptive security claims.

The FTC's request for input also touches on specific issues, such as biased surveillance systems and algorithmic errors. Similarly, regulators are interested in whether or not existing data security practices hurt children.

In explaining the proposal, the FTC was concerned that enforcement by itself wasn't enough to protect consumers. The Commission can't seek civil penalties for first-time violators, for instance. In theory, new rules would encourage stronger security policies, provide more relief to hack victims and ensure a more consistent approach to cases.

On top of the comments, you'll have a chance for more direct feedback. The FTC is hosting a virtual public forum on September 8th that will give people two minutes each to share their views. The session will also include a panel discussion.

The FTC is still far from outlining rules, let alone putting them into effect. Even so, there's plenty of pressure to act. Governments at multiple levels in the US are increasingly banning or withdrawing at least some uses of surveillance tech, and there's a growing backlash against companies that either misuse personal data or are prone to data breaches. New regulations could reduce violations and otherwise ensure that data holders show more respect for your privacy.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Ford will use new battery tech to help it build 600,000 EVs per year

Ford is refining its plans to expand EV production, and it will partly lean on new battery materials to achieve those goals. The automaker now expects to hit a global production rate of 600,000 EVs per year by late 2023 thanks in part to lithium iron phosphate battery packs in some of its vehicles, starting with Mustang Mach-Es sold in North America (in 2023) and F-150 Lightnings (in early 2024). The chemistry will expand Ford's capacity, allow for "many years" of use with little range loss, cut manufacturing costs and reduce the dependence on shortage-prone materials like nickel.

At that 600,000-EV rate, nearly half (270,000) of the vehicles produced will be Mustang Mach-Es destined for China, Europe and North America. The F-150 Lightning in North America will account for 150,000 EVs, while the rest include 150,000 electric Transit vans and 30,000 units of a still-unnamed European SUV. Ford said it has secured all the yearly battery capacity it needs to make this target, and 70 percent of the capacity it needs to reach a more ambitious objective of 2 million EVs per year by late 2026.

The news comes just hours after a report that Ford may cut up to 8,000 jobs to help fund its EV plans. The brand recently split into combustion and EV divisions to help with the electric transition, and has committed to spending $ 50 billion on electrification.

Ford had floated the 600,000-EV production target before. However, the battery developments and narrower timeframe paint a clearer picture of how that growth will take place. As it stands, there's mounting pressure on the company to ramp up its manufacturing. It only built 27,140 EVs in 2021, and has a significant backlog — you can't even place a standard retail order for the 2022 Mach-E "due to high demand." To some extent, the improved scale is as much about catching up as it is preparing for an all-electric future.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

The wearable tech revolution won’t look like the Apple Watch

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Sonos’ Roam speaker is still 20 percent off, plus the rest of the week’s best tech deals

If you’re still looking for the perfect Father’s Day gift, you have a bunch of options that you can get for less right now. A rare sale on the Sonos Roam and Move speakers discounts them both by 20 percent, while a number of Apple devices are on sale, too. The Google Pixel 6 Pro smartphone is still $ 100 off, plus Solo Stove’s fire pits are up to 43 percent off. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.

Sonos Roam

Sonos Roam portable speaker
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Sonos’ portable Roam speaker remains 20 percent off and down to just over $ 143. We gave it a score of 87 for its great audio quality, compact and durable design and ability to play stereo audio when two are paired together.

Buy Sonos Roam at Amazon – $ 143Buy Sonos Roam at Sonos – $ 143

Sonos Move

The outdoor-friendly Sonos Move is also 20 percent off and down to just under $ 320. It earned a score of 80 from us for its excellent sound quality, Bluetooth connectivity, weather-resistant design and great battery life.

Buy Sonos Move at Amazon – $ 320Buy Sonos Move at Sonos – $ 320

Sonos refurbished sale

Sonos Arc
Kyle Maack/Engadget

Sonos has discounted a bunch of refurbished speakers and soundbars. You can pick up the Arc soundbar for $ 718, or $ 180 less than the cost of a new model, and the Sonos Five speaker for $ 439, or $ 110 less than a new unit. Sonos’ refurbished program tests all devices to make sure they’re as good as new and these devices come with the same one-year warranty as new products do.

Shop Sonos refurbished sale

Apple Watch Series 7

Both the 41mm and 45mm versions of the Apple Watch Series 7 are $ 70 off right now and down to record lows: $ 329 and $ 359, respectively. We gave the wearable a score of 90 for its larger display, faster charging capabilities and powerful watchOS 8 features.

Buy Apple Watch Series 7 at Amazon starting at $ 329

Apple Watch SE

The Apple Watch SE in 44mm is down to a record-low of $ 229 right now, or $ 80 off its normal price. We gave it a score of 88 for its powerful performance, comfortable design and handy watchOS features.

Buy Apple Watch SE at Amazon – $ 229

AirPods (3rd gen)

The latest AirPods are $ 30 off and down to $ 150, which is only $ 10 more than their all-time-low price. We gave the buds a score of 88 for their improved audio quality, more comfortable design and longer battery life.

Buy AirPods at Amazon – $ 150

Apple AirTags

A pack of four AirTags is down to $ 89 right now, or $ 10 off its regular price. If you have a few things you want to keep track of, this is a good opportunity to pick up a few AirTags that can help you do so. AirTags show you the location of your things in Apple’s Find My app, and if you have an iPhone that supports Precision Finding, it can lead you directly to your stuff.

Buy AirTags (4 pack) at Amazon – $ 89

Nintendo Switch Online bundle

SanDisk 128GB microSD card Nintendo Switch
SanDisk

You can still get half off a bundle that includes a 12-month membership to Nintendo Switch Online’s Family plan and a 128GB SanDisk microSD card. Nintendo’s subscription includes cloud backup for game data, online gaming and access to a bunch of NES and SNES titles, while the microSD card will let you easily add more space to your Switch.

Buy Switch Online + microSD card bundle at Amazon – $ 35

Beats Fit Pro

Beats’ latest true wireless earbuds offer all of the best features from Apple’s new AirPods in a less polarizing design.
Billy Steele/Engadget

The Beats Fit Pro earbuds are back on sale for $ 180, or $ 20 off their usual price. We gave them a score of 87 for their good sound quality, strong ANC and handy features provided by Apple’s H1 chipset.

Buy Beats Fit Pro at Amazon – $ 180

Google Nest Doorbell

A bunch of Google Nest devices are on sale for as low as $  80
Google

The battery-powered Nest Doorbell is on sale for $ 130 at Amazon right now, or nearly 30 percent off its normal price. This IoT device is easy to install since you don’t have to hardwire it, and it’ll send you alerts when someone shows up at your doorstep. You can also pick up the Nest Cam Outdoor for $ 129 or the Nest Cam Indoor for $ 80.

Buy Google Nest Cameras and Doorbells at Amazon

Google Pixel 6 Pro

The Google Pixel 6 Pro held in mid-air with its screen facing the camera.
David Imel for Engadget

Google’s Pixel 6 Pro smartphone remains $ 100 off and down to $ 799. We gave the flagship a score of 91 for its excellent cameras, lightweight design and clever voice software.

Buy Pixel 6 Pro at Amazon – $ 799

Roku Ultra

Roku Ultra 2022
Roku

The 2022 Roku Ultra is 20 percent off and down to a new low of $ 80. The updated set-top box just came out last month and it includes the new Voice Remote Pro with a rechargeable battery and a remote-finder feature, plus support for 4K, HDR10+ streaming. It’s also worth noting that the Roku Streambar remains on sale for $ 99.

Buy Roku Ultra at Amazon – $ 80Buy Roku Streambar at Amazon – $ 99

Solo Stove

You can get up to 43 percent off fire pits at Solo Stove right now.You’ll find the deepest discount on the big Yukon, which is $ 320 off and down to $ 400. We like these fire pits because they create much less smoke than their cheaper competitors and, out of the three models available, two of them are pretty portable, too.

Shop fire pits at Solo Stove

Roomba 694

iRobot’s Roomba 694 has dropped to $ 180, or $ 94 off its usual price. It earned a spot in our best affordable robot vacuums guide thanks to its good cleaning power and easy to use mobile app.

Buy Roomba 694 at Amazon – $ 180

Roomba j7+

iRobot’s Roomba j7+ is down to $ 599 at Amazon, or $ 200 off its normal price. We included the Roomba j7 in our best robot vaccums guide because it did a good job cleaning both carpeted and hard floors, plus it has good obstacle avoidance and an easy to use companion app. The j7+ adds a clean base into the mix, so the robot will automatically empty its bin into the clean base after every job.

Buy Roomba j7+ at Amazon – $ 599

Sony Days of Play sale

Sony’s Days of Play sale on Amazon discounts a bunch of PlayStation accessories, including all six PS DualSense controllers. You can pick up any of them, including the vibrantly colored ones, for $ 59, which is up to 21 percent off their normal prices.

Shop Days of Play sale at Amazon

Anova Precision Cooker

Anova
Anova

Anova’s Precision Cooker sous vide machine is down to $ 133 right now, or 39 percent off its normal price. We like its easy to use onboard controls, WiFi connectivity and 1,000 watts of power.

Buy Anova Precision Cooker at Amazon – $ 133

Sony WH-1000XM4

Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones
Billy Steele / Engadget

Sony’s WH-1000XM4 headphones are down to $ 278, which is 21 percent off its normal price. While Sony just came out with the XM5 headphones, these cans remain a good option for those that want excellent sound quality and ANC to match. Plus, you’ll save more than $ 100 compared to the XM5 if you pick up the XM4 while they’re on sale.

Buy WH-1000XM4 at Amazon – $ 278

Fitbit Father’s Day sale

Fitbit Charge 5 fitness tracker
Valentina Palladino / Engadget

Fitbit has discounted most of its wearables ahead of Father’s Day, and if you spend $ 125 or more, you’ll get $ 20 off your next purchase before the end of June. The Charge 5 tracker is down to $ 130, while the Versa 3 is on sale for $ 170 and the Sense smartwatch has fallen to $ 200.

Shop Fitbit Father’s Day sale

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Capcom is using Stadia tech for a web-based ‘Resident Evil Village’ demo

Starting today, you can stream a free demo of Resident Evil Village from Capcom’s website, with no need for a fancy gaming PC, Xbox or PlayStation. The demo is similar to one that’s available on other platforms, which allows players to explore parts of the village and castle. This appetizer for one of last year’s biggest-selling games is powered by Immersive Stream for Games, a version of Stadia tech that Google is licensing to others.

The demo will work on just about any computer, as well as iOS and Android phones and tablets, as long as the device can handle high-definition video and you have a sturdy enough internet connection (with a download speed of at least 10Mbps). It runs on Chrome on Windows, macOS and Android. On iOS, you can try it on Safari. The resolution tops out at 1080p and there’s no HDR mode.

PlayStation DualShock 4 and Xbox One controllers are officially supported, but other peripherals might work. Alternatively, you can use touch controls on mobile or a mouse and keyboard. 

Resident Evil Village touch controls
Capcom

As with Stadia’s click-to-play trials, there’s no need to register to play the demo. It’s worth noting that you’ll be disconnected after 10 minutes of inactivity. There’s no save function, so you’ll need to restart from the beginning if you disconnect. You can play as many times as you like and there’s no time limit, unlike previous versions of the demo.

Capcom is Google’s second partner for Immersive Stream for Games. AT&T started offering its wireless customers free access to Batman: Arkham Asylum last October and Control: Ultimate Edition last month. Capcom seems more of a natural bedfellow, though.

Back in February, Insider reported that Google was looking to secure deals with Capcom, Peloton and others to build the licensing aspect of its game-streaming business. It was suggested that Capcom might use the tech to stream demos from its website, which turned out to be the case. This could even be a precursor to Capcom running its own game streaming storefront.

In other Resident Evil Village news, Capcom is bringing the game to Mac later this year. It’s also working on a version for the upcoming PlayStation VR2 headset.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

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January sales are in full swing — best tech to buy today

Discounts on a wide variety of tech products, including the Apple AirPods Pro, Apple Watch Series 7, and Google Pixel 6, are available in today’s January sales.
Wearables | Digital Trends

Waverly Labs’ new translation tech targets both consumers and businesses

Waverly Labs introduced an updated version of its on-the-ear Ambassador Interpreter, alongside a business-targeted product called Subtitle with a touchscreen.
Wearables | Digital Trends

The best wearable tech of CES 2022

Whether it was a smartwatch, a pair of smartglasses, or even a smart ring or smart mask, there was a great deal of exciting wearable tech at CES 2022.
Wearables | Digital Trends

Forget waiting! Here’s all the CES 2022 tech you can buy right now

As a tip of our hat to the tech companies that give us instant gratification, we’ve rounded up all the best CES 2022 gear that you can buy right now
Wearables | Digital Trends

The weirdest tech we spotted at CES 2022

To celebrate all the strange and wonderful things that surface at CES, we’ve rounded up a modest collection of the weirdest tech we spotted this year
Mobile | Digital Trends

The Morning After: Tech that helps with those New Year’s resolutions

Welcome to the new year. How are those resolutions coming along? (Don't worry, we can help.)

Contrary to my expectations, CES 2022 is still happening. However, the organizers have announced that the tech show will be cut short by a day, as COVID-19 cases continue to surge. It’s also kind of started early, with some big announcements from Samsung already, including putting NFTs into its TVs, and an upgraded eco TV remote that sips on your WiFi waves for energy.

Expect a week of hardware announcements, even if chances to play with and assess these new devices are a little limited without attendance in person.

-Mat Smith

Alienware's Concept Nyx is like a Plex server for your PC games

But will it appeal to anyone beyond PC gaming fanatics?

Alienware’s newest concept can be boiled down to a gaming server that runs on your home network. You could conceivably run two games at once on your television, as Engadget saw during a recent demo in NYC. Since all of the rendering and network processing is happening in your home, Nyx would also be a lower latency experience than traditional cloud gaming.

Continue reading.

This is a shiatsu hand massager for gamers

A hand warmer setting may help you get good.

TMA
Bauhutte

To help soothe their weary mitts, Japanese company Bauhutte has created a hand massager for gamers. The device works on either hand and has a 15-layer airbag for each finger and a shiatsu plate for the palm. There are two main options: a Shiatsu mode for the entire hand, and one that focuses on stretching fingers.

Continue reading.

The next AirPods Pro might support lossless audio

You might have an easier time finding your case, too.

Now that the third-generation AirPods offer some of the same features as the AirPods Pro, how will Apple’s higher-end wireless earbuds stand out? Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claims Apple is launching its second-generation Pro earbuds in the fall with support for Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio. Kuo expects the updated headphones will offer a "new form factor design" and that the new buds will supposedly include a charging case that can make sounds, much like AirTags, to help find it behind your couch cushions.

Continue reading.

Samsung’s latest remote turns router radio waves into energy

The 2022 Eco Remote has a white option to match Samsung's lifestyle TVs.

TMA
Samsung

Samsung has revamped the solar-charging remote it debuted at last year’s CES. Along with using light to top up the battery, Samsung says the latest Eco Remote can convert routers' radio waves into energy to stay fully charged. There's still a solar panel on the rear of the remote, which is also made with recycled materials. 

Continue reading.

Twitter bans Marjorie Taylor Greene's personal account

Due to repeatedly spreading COVID-19 misinformation.

Twitter has banned Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene's personal account after a fifth "strike" for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. A fifth strike means it’s a permanent ban.

In the past year, she claimed in July that COVID-19 wasn't dangerous unless you were over 65 or obese, and in August said vaccines were "failing" against the new coronavirus' Delta variant. Both statements were untrue. The posts respectively led to 12-hour and one-week suspensions. Her official account is still active as of this writing because it hasn't run afoul of Twitter's rules. Beyond that, she may have to wait around for TRUTH Social to finally launch.

Continue reading.

 

 

The biggest news stories you might have missed


The tech industry's accessibility report card for 2021

Netflix will be required to stream 20 state TV channels in Russia

Samsung's 2022 QLED TVs include the first 144Hz 4K and 8K sets

Tech that can help you stick to your New Year's resolutions

And the biggest losers in tech in 2021 are..

Samsung is putting NFTs in its smart TVs

Square Enix is investing in decentralized blockchain games

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Here’s a list of portable tech gadgets you’ll want to use every day

If you’re looking for portable tech to keep you charged up while on the go (or for some great small gift ideas), we’ve rounded up a bunch of must-have gadgets. You’ll find everything from a Tesla Coil rechargeable lighter to a folding Bluetooth keyboard.
Mobile | Digital Trends

And the biggest losers in tech in 2021 are…

It feels like forever since we all were able to look back on the last 12 months and not say “good riddance, you garbage fire hellscape of a year.” 2021 kicked off with riots at the Capitol and though things seemed to quiet down a little after, all was not well in tech.

There are companies that are obvious additions to this list, like Meta (formerly Facebook) with its repeated transgressions this year. Activision Blizzard faces multiple lawsuits and investigations over allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the workplace, revealing that despite all the growth we hoped we’d made in the last few years, the gaming industry remains toxic.

But there are other businesses that made the lives of workers and consumers miserable on a daily basis, too. And all major companies in Big Tech have to share in the blame. When we put together this roundup of the worst players in tech this year, it’s clear that we’re overdue a reckoning. Let’s hope that in the years to come, the people with the most influence learn how to treat people better.

A sign of Meta, the new name for the company formerly known as Facebook, is seen at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S. October 28, 2021. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Carlos Barria / reuters

Meta / Facebook

For the company now known as Meta, 2021 went sideways from the very beginning.

For all its talk about safeguarding the 2020 presidential election, Facebook was ill-prepared for the insurrection that followed on January 6th. The company failed to recognize the danger posed by the “Stop the Steal” movement until after a violent mob stormed the Capitol. Then COO Sheryl Sandberg downplayed the role Facebook had played in the insurrection, only to be promptly proven wrong. In the end, the events of January 6th ultimately forced the platform to do something it had studiously avoided for most of the Trump presidency: Enforce its rules for his account. (Sort of. Trump’s Facebook ban isn’t permanent.)

Elsewhere, the arrival of coronavirus vaccines only highlighted Facebook’s poor track record at combating vaccine misinformation, which surged throughout the pandemic. After years of dragging its feet, the company finally banned misleading or inaccurate vaccine content. But enough damage had already been done. The US Surgeon General said viral health misinformation was an “urgent threat” to public health. President Joe Biden went a step further: saying that Facebook was “killing people.”

This year was also the first time the Oversight Board, created so Facebook could outsource its thorny content moderation decisions, was operational. The body has pushed the social network to change some policies and has repeatedly criticized the company for a lack of transparency and ability to enforce its rules evenly.

Former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen testifies during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing entitled 'Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower' on Capitol Hill, in Washington, U.S., October 5, 2021.   Jabin Botsford/Pool via REUTERS
POOL New / reuters

Then came Frances Haugen, the former employee turned whistleblower who left the company with thousands of pages of internal research and other documents that have since become known as the “Facebook Papers.” Her disclosures paint a picture of a company that is unwilling or unable to adequately tackle some of its biggest problems, particularly outside the United States and Europe. She also revealed internal research about the effect of Instagram on teens, which was immediately seized on by lawmakers in Congress.

Amid all that, Zuckerberg announced not an overhaul of the company’s policies, nor a review of its internal research, but… a new name: Meta. It’s meant to symbolize the company’s newfound commitment to a metaverse that no one can fully explain. Will the company change its content moderation policies when it comes to the metaverse? Will it invest more in safety for non-western countries? How will it address hate speech in the metaverse? Facebook, er Meta, has yet to meaningfully address any of those questions. But if recent history is a guide, we all have a lot to worry about.

Karissa Bell

Truth Social

You’d be forgiven if, amidst the news of actual importance in 2021, you forgot about TRUTH Social — the upcoming site built by disgraced former president Donald J. Trump. Trump spent most of his presidency fear-mongering and spouting lies on Twitter and other social platforms, which finally resulted in him being banned from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and most other services of note. While Trump is wrongfully convinced that this is an unlawful witch hunt, he’s also decided to say “who needs ‘em?” and launch his own.

TRUTH was announced in October, with a limited beta planned for November before a full public launch in 2022. Immediately, dedicated internet pranksters found a test version of the site in the open and signed up for a slew of high-profile accounts (including, naturally, donaldjtrump and mikepence). (The donaldjtrump account had a profile picture of a defecating pig, for good measure.)

The test was quickly shut down, but not before it was revealed to be basically a Twitter clone running on the open-source software Mastodon. But since TRUTH Social didn’t properly cite its usage and didn’t share the source code with users, the site was in violation of Mastadon’s open-source license agreement.

TRUTH’S terms of service were also revealed, and we learned that it was essentially hoping to be protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which currently states that services like Twitter and even TRUTH aren’t responsible for what their users post. This shields companies from liability for the awful things those users might share.

We blissfully haven’t heard much about TRUTH Social since its disastrous first few days in the public spotlight; the company missed the November beta launch date and there’s no update on when the promised full launch might happen. Based on these early struggles, it’s easy to call TRUTH Social a loser of 2021 – but the citizens of the internet who didn’t have to deal with the ugly reality of a Trump-backed social network are all undoubtedly winners.

Nathan Ingraham

A woman looks at a data chip containing encryption codes for mobile and landline phones at the booth of Secusmart during the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover March 8, 2014. The German company Secusmart is known for supplying German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a secure mobile phone. The world's biggest computer and software fair will be open to the public from March 10 to 14.  REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay (GERMANY - Tags: BUSINESS TELECOMS SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY)
Wolfgang Rattay / reuters

Global chip supply

The rise in demand for PCs, gadgets and cars couldn't keep up with the slowing production in global chip supply. That's why it's still tough to find a PlayStation 5 a year after its launch, and why used car prices have gone absolutely bonkers. This is our new reality for the next few years, at least until chip suppliers can ramp up production and start spinning up new fabrication plants. Basically, be prepared to use all of your gear for a bit longer without upgrading.

Devindra Hardawar

Activision Blizzard

There are far too many stories of sexual harassment and discrimination in the video game industry. Over the past few years, reports of systemic misogyny and abuse have poured out of Riot Games, Ubisoft and many other studios large and small, and the problems date back decades.

Among all this trash, Activision Blizzard stands out as one of the worst.

Activision Blizzard was accused of fostering a culture of sexual harassment by California’s fair-employment agency in July, and multiple organizations have since launched investigations into the studio, uncovering years of mismanagement in the process. According to the California lawsuit, leaders at the studio cultivated a frat house-style environment where sexual harassment was commonplace and gender discrimination was systemic. The fair employment agency found that all of Activision Blizzard’s top leadership positions were held by white men, just 20 percent of all employees identified as women and reports of harassment were routinely ignored.

In December, an employee named Christine went public with her experience at Blizzard, saying she was inappropriately touched by male coworkers, propositioned for sex by her superiors and subjected to crude comments about her body. After reporting the abuse to management, she said she was demoted and told to “get over it.”

Irvine, CA - July 28: Several hundred Activision Blizzard employees stage a walkout which they say is in a response from company leadership to a lawsuit highlighting alleged harassment, inequality, and more within the company outside the gate at Activision Blizzard headquarters on Wednesday, July 28, 2021 in Irvine, CA. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Allen J. Schaben via Getty Images

Activision Blizzard’s response to these accusations has been tragic. Back in July, CEO Bobby Kotick sent an email to employees dismissing the California lawsuit, but he signed a female employee’s name to it. The response was roundly and loudly criticized, with employees calling it “insulting” and “abhorrent.” Kotick let Frances Townsend, one of the few women executives at Activision Blizzard, take the heat for that letter for months, losing her spot on the studio’s women’s network in the process. Publicly, Kotick called the email “tone-deaf.”

Blizzard head J. Allen Brack lost his job shortly after the lawsuit was filed, and Kotick offered a co-leadership role to Mike Ybarra and Jennifer Oneal, who became the first woman to hold a president title since the studio’s founding in 1979. Oneal left the company shortly after this promotion, reportedly because she was being paid less than Ybarra, and she felt “tokenized, marginalized and discriminated against” at the studio.

Activision Blizzard employees have walked out multiple times this year, calling for a culture shift. Major business partners, including PlayStation and Xbox, have said they’re reevaluating their relationships with the studio. Shareholders and media outlets alike are calling for Kotick to resign.

At this point, investors, employees, analysts, major gaming companies and multiple government agencies agree that Activision Blizzard is a hotbed of discrimination and sexual harassment, and it’s in urgent need of restructuring. In his 30 years as CEO of Activision Blizzard, this is the closest Kotick has come to actually being ousted from his position of power.

From that angle, it almost feels like a good year for the company. Almost.

Jessica Conditt

A large red sign saying
Miquel Benitez via Getty Images

5G

I’m so disappointed with 5G. If, like me, you’ve watched the networking standard since at least 2014, you’ll likely agree. The promises about downloading feature films in seconds were really mostly advantages of mmWave technology, which as of today still hasn’t broadly rolled out. The sub-6 network that’s more widely available today on carriers like T-Mobile and AT&T offer a barely noticeable speed boost, and the reported latency improvements it was supposed to bring haven’t been delivered in the real world.

Yes, the telecom industry did meet its target launch date of 2020 for an initial rollout of the new standard. But 5G is still too confusing for the average consumer. Any time a company says in a briefing that a new product is 5G-ready, a guaranteed follow-up question is “Does that mean sub-6 or mmWave?” And with the recent addition of mid-band spectrum to the mix, the layers of compatibility are only going to make things more tedious.

I’ve been more than forgiving in the last couple of years, but it’s been difficult to ignore the complete mess that is the state of 5G in the US today. Sure, we’ve had more pressing issues to deal with, but if consumers are going to embrace the new standards (and be convinced to spend money for the privilege of 5G on their devices), the industry needs to get its act together and either commit to a more coherent message or more consistent rollout.

Cherlynn Low

Workers and big tech 

For a long time, working at a tech giant like Google or Apple was an enviable position. But 2021 pulled back the curtain a bit on some of these companies, exposing deep-rooted issues with how employees are treated. While not everyone at these massive organizations may be dealing with sexual harassment or poor working conditions (to name just a few issues), the many employees speaking out across the industry are indicative of an underlying trend that need to be confronted by tech’s most powerful leaders.

Amazon's warehouse facility DSD8 is shown in Poway, California, U.S., September 28, 2021. Picture taken September 28, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Blake
Mike Blake / reuters

Amazon’s poor treatment of its warehouse workers is well-known, and reports persisted in 2021. At the same time, the company pushed back hard against unionization efforts in Alabama. While the union drive was defeated in a vote, a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board recently ordered a new election, effectively invalidating the results of the earlier one. The union had filed a formal objection right after the election, and while there’s no word on when a new election will take place, it’s clear that Amazon will be under intense scrutiny when it does. The same should hold if New York City Amazon workers hold a union vote; reports have indicated that could happen soon.

Apple workers also exposed issues within the company this year. In late August, a call went out for current and former employees to share stories of discrimination, harassment and retaliation that they had experienced. This led to the start of the #AppleToo website, where these stories are regularly published.

As Jess already explained in detail above, employees at Activision Blizzard spoke up about a misogynistic culture rife with sexual harassment, as well. Reports indicated male executives groped female colleagues while other employees joked about rape or ignored women for promotions. The revelations have been so damning a lawsuit was filed by California’s Department of Fair Employment, though somehow Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick still has his job.

Google isn’t free from sin, either – employees led a massive walkout back in 2018 around how it dealt with sexual harassment (among other concerns). It hasn’t dealt with things on the same scale as other companies this year, but Google’s recent decision that it wasn’t raising pay to match inflation has certainly rankled workers. These are just a few high-profile examples, but together they paint a dark picture of the environment at some of tech’s biggest corporations. Perhaps the only upside here is that these hopefully put pressure on those in charge to clean house and improve things as quickly as possible.

N.I.

Oculus

Meta didn't even give Oculus a proper funeral. Instead of a celebratory news announcement, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth pushed out a quick post to announce that the Oculus brand was being retired. What a sad fate for a company directly tied to the rise of consumer VR. (But perhaps this was the best way for Meta to separate itself from the legacy of Oculus's controversial founder Palmer Luckey.)

D.H.

A Blue Origin New Shepard rocket lifts off with a crew of six, including Laura Shepard Churchley, the daughter of the first American in space Alan Shepard, for whom the spacecraft is named, from Launch Site One in west Texas, U.S. December 11, 2021. REUTERS/Joe Skipper
Joe Skipper / reuters

Blue Origin

2021 was a massive year for the burgeoning private spacelift industry. Firsts were made, records were achieved and billions of dollars worth of government contracts were awarded. It should have been a surefire win for all three of the industry’s leading companies — SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin — but then one of them managed to repeatedly shoot itself in the proverbial landing strut more than the other two combined.

Now, that’s not to say Blue Origin didn’t enjoy its share of success this year. CEO Jeff Bezos put his money where his oversized stetson is and made a historic trip out to the Karman line along with both the oldest (at least at that point) and youngest people to ever venture into space. This past November, the company even won financial backing from NASA to help build out its bonkers Orbital Reef commercial space station design.

However, those achievements were often overshadowed by the company’s public pettiness and truculence. For example, ahead of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic making its own historic first successful flight into space this past July, Blue Origin took to Twitter to talk a little trash. This is a little rich from the company that has reportedly become a toxic workplace.

More embarrassing still was Bezos’ repeated, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to secure Blue Origin a lucrative NASA contract. See, back in April, NASA awarded SpaceX a $ 2.9 billion (yes, with a B) Artemis lunar lander contract.

Blue Origin immediately protested to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) over NASA’s “fundamentally unfair” decision against it, bringing work on the lunar program to a standstill until July, when the GAO kindly told Blue Origin to take its $ 2 billion and get out. Blue Origin did not.

Instead, the space lift company doubled down, suing NASA in open federal court, "in an attempt to remedy the flaws in the acquisition process found in NASA's Human Landing System," per a Blue Origin representative in August. The court was not at all convinced and ruled against the plaintiffs, proving SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s jab true. Blue Origin really can’t sue its way to the Moon.

Andrew Tarantola

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft finally managed to make its Edge web browser a solid competitor to Chrome, Safari and Firefox by integrating the Chromium open source framework. And then, inexplicably, it began to pile on bloat, like a predatory "buy now pay later" feature and cringey anti-Chrome warnings. All of a sudden, Edge seems more like a way to trap and commodify its users, instead of delivering a solid web experience. It's as if Microsoft made it harder to change your default browser in Windows 11 on purpose (thankfully, it's testing out a simpler method, following plenty of industry criticism).

D.H.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Today’s best tech deals: AirPods, HP gaming PC under $600, and more

If you’re still not done with Christmas shopping, here are some of today’s best tech deals, including discounts for the AirPods and HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop.
Wearables | Digital Trends

Tech gifts in stock with holiday delivery: Apple Watch, Fire HD tablet

A few of the largest retailers today are offering great deals on tech that makes for great gifting this holiday season, including the Apple Watch Series 7.
Wearables | Digital Trends

Clearview AI will get a US patent for its facial recognition tech

Clearview AI is about to get formal acknowledgment for its controversial facial recognition technology. Politicoreports Clearview has received a US Patent and Trademark Office "notice of allowance" indicating officials will approve a filing for its system, which scans faces across public internet data to find people from government lists and security camera footage. The company just has to pay administrative fees to secure the patent.

In a Politico interview, Clearview founder Hoan Ton-That claimed this was the first facial recognition patent involving "large-scale internet data." The firm sells its tool to government clients (including law enforcement) hoping to accelerate searches.

As you might imagine, there's a concern the USPTO is effectively blessing Clearview's technology and giving the company a chance to grow despite widespread objections to its technology's very existence. Critics are concerned Clearview is building image databases without targets' knowledge or permission, and multiple governments (including Australia and the UK) believe the facial recognition violates data laws. The tech could theoretically be used to stifle political dissent or, in private use, to stalk other people. That's not including worries about possible gender and race biases for facial recognition as a whole. 

Ton-That maintained Clearview has no plans to sell to anyone besides government clients, and that it was "important" to have unbiased systems. However, the patent left the door open to non-government purposes, like learning more about a dating partner or business client. Clearview is aware of the problematic path its technology might take, even if it doesn't intend to head in that direction.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Russia demands large tech companies set up local offices by 2022

Russia is getting serious with demands that foreign tech companies set up shop within its borders. Reuterssays the country's telecom regulator Roskomnadzor has called on 13 foreign and mostly American companies to launch official Russian presences by 2022 so they can comply with a law that took effect July 1st. The list includes familiar tech names like Apple, Google, Meta (Facebook), Telegram, TikTok and Twitter.

The law demands local offices for "internet companies" with over 500,000 daily users. Some of the companies already have offices, though, and it's unclear just what constitutes an official presence. Those deemed violating the law could be subject to either complete bans or limits on their ads, data gathering and money transfers.

As you might have guessed, the concern is that Russia might use the law to wield more control over those companies and their content. Russia has clashed with Apple multiple times, for instance, including a fine for allegedly abusing App Store dominance — this law might give officials more leverage. The move might also help Russia pressure companies into censoring content the government deems objectionable, such as social media posts backing the political opposition to Putin's regime.

The announcement makes a tricky situation that much more difficult. Russia is a significant market some companies can't always afford to lose but honoring the request could also mean enabling censorship and other rights abuses. Companies may soon have to make decisions that are painful regardless of the outcome.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

The Oura Ring Gen 3 is still amazing wearable tech — just wait to upgrade

The latest Oura Ring adds new sensors to the same platform as before, ensuring it remains the best smart jewelry you can buy. But should you upgrade?
Wearables | Digital Trends

Siduri Wines blends wine and tech in the ultimate sweepstakes experience

Wine tasting or drinking can be dry. Siduri Wines believes it should be more fun and exciting, so every bottle comes with a unique tech experience via AR.
Emerging Tech | Digital Trends

We have the tech to curb drunk driving, but invisible forces are holding it back

Statistically, one person dies from drunk driving every 52 minutes in the U.S. — but it doesn’t have to be that way. We have the technology to stop it.
Emerging Tech | Digital Trends

Apple Watch Series 7 teardown reveals new display tech and a slightly bigger battery

The Apple Watch Series 7 teardown by iFixit revealed some changes under the hood, including new display tech and bigger battery.
Mobile | Digital Trends

Google starts licensing Stadia tech to other companies

When Google shut down its internal Stadia game development studios earlier this year, Stadia general manager Phil Harrison said the company planned to "work with partners seeking a gaming solution all built on Stadia’s advanced technical infrastructure and platform tools." We're starting to see that strategy in action, as Google is now licensing Stadia tech to other companies.

As first reported by 9to5 Google and confirmed by IGN, AT&T is using the tech to offer wireless subscribers the chance to stream Batman: Arkham Knight (which isn't available on Stadia proper) for free. Customers can play the game for a limited time at up to 1080p through Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.

"This is being powered by the Stadia technology," an AT&T spokesperson told IGN. "For this demo AT&T created a front end experience to enable gamers to play Batman: Arkham Knight directly from their own website and the game is playable on virtually any computer or laptop."

Oddly enough, subscribers can't take advantage of this offer on a smartphone, despite it seeming like a solid opportunity for AT&T to show off its network capabilities. AT&T even offered six months of Stadia Pro access to 5G and fiber internet customers this year.

Harrison said in February that offering game streaming tech to other companies (without Stadia branding in this case) was "the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business that helps grow the industry." Although Google isn't making its own games for Stadia anymore, it has continued to add third-party games to the store.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

The future of sustainability: A look at the next evolution of environmental tech

Sustainable energy tech has come a long way in the past decade, but we’ve still got a long road ahead if we hope to slow climate change. Here’s what’s next
Emerging Tech | Digital Trends

How bikes and vacuums inspired the tech that makes Samsung’s folding phones tough

Three key members of the team at Samsung that’s responsible for the increased durability of its latest Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 smartphones talk about the project.
Android | Digital Trends

Sequent SuperCharger 2.1 Premium HR review: Infinite power, limited tech

The Sequent SuperCharger means you never charge a smartwatch again, but it comes at the expense of smart tech.
Wearables | Digital Trends

UK urges tech companies to help tackle excessive e-waste in damning report

A damning report from the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) claims the UK falls well behind other countries in managing electronic waste. Committee members also suggested major companies such as Amazon and Apple discourage recyclin…
Engadget

The best Black Friday tech deals that are already available

It’s felt like Black Friday has been upon us for the past few weeks — but now we’re actually only a couple hours from the biggest shopping day of the year. 2020 has been a different year for many reasons, but retailers have continued with a trend tha…
Engadget

Google launches #AndroidHelp hashtag for tech support on Twitter

Google will now answer your Android-related problems on Twitter, and you don't even have to slide into its DMs. The company has announced that it's now assisting users who tweet their issues with the hashtag #AndroidHelp. Google has also provided som…
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