
Wednesday, 31 March 2021
A Samsung A-series phone is coming with flagship-grade performance on board

Now Twitter lets you add stickers and GIFs to fleets
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Google says it's 'likely' some employees will return to the office in April
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Apple will use Tesla’s ‘megapack’ batteries at its California solar farm
Apple announced Wednesday that it’s building a big battery storage project at a Northern California solar farm it spearhead in 2015. But what the company didn’t share is that the battery packs will come from Tesla, The Verge has learned.
The newly-announced setup, which will store up to 240 megawatt-hours of energy, was approved by the Monterey County Board of Supervisors in 2020, according to documents submitted last year. It will consist of 85 Tesla lithium-ion “megapacks” and be used to help power the company’s corporate headquarters in Cupertino. Monterey County’s planning chief confirmed that Apple will use the Tesla batteries in an email to The Verge. Apple declined to comment. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Tesla...
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Amazon’s Alexa lets you control a Lamborghini’s air conditioning with just your voice
Amazon is taking a bigger step into cars today by integrating Alexa into Lamborghini’s Huracán EVO, and not just to ask questions or remotely control your home — it’s giving the assistant the ability to control settings inside the car, hands-free. The partnership was originally announced last year as part of Amazon’s push into cars, but the integration goes beyond Alexa’s usual bag of tricks.
Alexa’s integration allows users to control “climate and comfort settings including air conditioning, heater, fan speed, temperature, seat heaters, defroster and air flow direction, as well as lighting,” Lamborghini says. (It can also pull up a screen showing you the car’s torque vectoring and traction control.) Of course, Alexa also has its own...
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Twitter now lets you add stickers to Fleets
Twitter is adding stickers to its ephemeral, Snapchat Stories-like Fleets, the social media company announced on Wednesday. Stickers are available for users on both Android and iOS.
When you’re making a Fleet, you’ll be able to add stickers by tapping the smiley face icon on the bottom row of your screen. When you do, you’ll see a collection of Twitter-made animated stickers and emoji (the latter of which Twitter calls “Twemoji”). And if you search for something in the search bar at the top of the screen, Twitter will pull up GIFs sourced from Tenor and Facebook-owned Giphy.
Your Fleets just got an upgrade.
Now you can express yourself in the conversation with stickers. Add GIFs and Twemojis to a Fleet by tapping the icon, on Android...
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Ubiquiti is accused of covering up a ‘catastrophic’ data breach — and it’s not denying it
Ubiquiti, a company whose prosumer-grade routers have become synonymous with security and manageability, is being accused of covering up a “catastrophic” security breach — and after 24 hours of silence, the company has now issued a statement that doesn’t deny any of the whistleblower’s claims.
Originally, Ubiquiti emailed its customers about a supposedly minor security breach at a “third party cloud provider” on January 11th, but noted cybersecurity news site KrebsOnSecurity is reporting that the breach was actually far worse than Ubiquiti let on. A whistleblower from the company who spoke to Krebs claimed that Ubiquiti itself was breached, and that the company’s legal team prevented efforts to accurately report the dangers to customers....
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Analogue Pocket portable console delayed again, this time until October
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Huawei offsets US sanctions with dominance in China
Huawei has released its annual report and financial information for 2020, demonstrating the effect that US sanctions had on its business last year. The report shows that while revenue from North America and Europe has fallen significantly, stronger performance in China has allowed the company to record higher sales and net profit than a year ago.
Huawei doesn’t report traditional quarterly earnings, since it’s a private company with an unusual employee ownership structure. Its annual reports tend to be the best look at how it’s actually performing.
The company’s revenue for 2020 was 891.4 billion yuan (~$136 billion), a 3.8-percent increase on 2019. Net profit was up 3.2 percent to 64.6 billion yuan (~$9.86 billion). 66 percent of...
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Facebook is making it easier to turn off algorithmic ranking in your News Feed
Facebook is introducing a handful of new features that will give users greater control over their News Feed, including an easier way to turn off the feed’s algorithmic ranking and display content in the order it was posted instead.
The changes build on previous tweaks to News Feed functionality. Last October, Facebook introduced a “Favorites” tool that allows users to select up to thirty friends and pages, prioritizing their content or displaying it in a separate feed. The company also offers users the option to sort their feeds by “most recent,” but buries these options in obscure menus.
Facebook is now making these “Favorites” and “Recent” filters much more prominent, putting them right at the top of the News Feed as separate tabs...
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Nick Clegg doesn’t think Facebook is polarizing
Facebook’s VP of global affairs on the platform’s new changes, with Casey Newton
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Hyundai imagines an EV future where cars 'crab drive' sideways to park
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Spotify's new personalized mixes focus on artists, genres and decades
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WhatsApp payments get approved by Brazil's central bank
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Samsung tried (and failed) to argue that the Galaxy S7 isn’t a phone

Meet Google’s new app for organizing and saving important documents

Biden plans to connect every American to broadband in new infrastructure package
President Biden plans to announce a sweeping infrastructure plan Wednesday that includes $100 billion to connect every American to high-speed broadband internet over the next eight years.
Biden is scheduled to unveil his $2 trillion “American Jobs Plan” in Pittsburgh later on Wednesday. The long-awaited infrastructure and jobs package contains funding for broadband expansion, semiconductor manufacturing, and slew of other interests like public transportation and helping consumers purchase electric vehicles. On a call with reporters Tuesday, an administration official said that the package would be paid for by changes to the corporate tax rate.
Biden’s $100...
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Amazon's Deal of the Day cuts SSD and hard drive prices by up to 48 percent
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Google Meet’s free ‘unlimited’ calls will continue until June
Google will not introduce a 60 minute call limit on free Google Meet users at the end of March, the company announced in a tweet. Instead, it will now be begin on June 30th. Until then, anyone using the service’s free version will be able to host calls up to 24 hours in length, which Google refers to as “unlimited.”
This is the second time Google has pushed back the introduction of call limits since opening up the service to free users last April. A 60 minute limit had originally been due to come into effect at the end of September, but that deadline was later pushed back to March when it became clear that many of us wouldn’t be able to celebrate the holidays in person with our loved ones.
We’re continuing unlimited #GoogleMeet calls...
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Wisk will start testing its 'air taxi' implementation later this year
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Poll: Do you think the Xiaomi Mi Mix Fold is hot or not?

Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G hits India: More than just faster connectivity

Report: The Pixel Buds A could be Google’s next true wireless earbuds
Tuesday, 30 March 2021
Apple's upcoming iOS update unblocks 'Asian' as adult content
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Apple Maps adds information on COVID-19 measures at airports
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The new 'Mortal Kombat' movie has been delayed one more week
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Even LinkedIn is making a Clubhouse clone
It feels like just about every big tech company is working on a Clubhouse-like social audio feature — Twitter’s Spaces feature is rolling out now, Facebook is reportedly building one, Spotify is making one, Mark Cuban has one, even Slack is getting in the game. But now, the idea of the shared audio space, which started on Clubhouse largely as an exclusive club for tech venture capitalists and elites, has come full circle. Professional social network LinkedIn is working on an audio networking feature of its own, the company confirmed to TechCrunch.
“We’re doing some early tests to create a unique audio experience connected to your professional identity,” LinkedIn said in a statement to TechCrunch. “And, we’re looking at how we can bring...
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Apple supplier Foxconn warns that component shortages will last until 2022
The ongoing global shortage for electronic components continues, and Foxconn — which handles manufacturing for Apple, among other major tech heavyweights — has announced that it’s starting to see the impact of shortages. According to Young Liu, Foxconn’s CEO, the company won’t be able to fulfill some of its orders due to those shortages, which he expects will last until at least the second quarter of next year, Nikkei reports.
“The [supply in the] first two months of this quarter was still ok, as our clients are all very big, but we started to see changes happening this month,” Liu reportedly told investors during the company’s latest earnings call.
The impact of the shortages isn’t expected to be large, at least for now: Liu expects...
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Snapchat’s Spectacles might become true AR glasses this time — and there’s a drone
Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is planning to continue its push into hardware devices with a new pair of augmented-reality glasses and a drone, according to a report by The Information. The Spectacles will reportedly include displays so the wearer can see the AR effects without having to use their phone — a feature that was notably missing from the all the Spectacles that came before.
One of The Information’s sources says that the new Spectacles will be meant for developers and creators, rather than consumers — though you could probably argue that, at $380, the Spectacles 3 are already mostly limited to that market as well. As the article points out, though, the intention is likely to have the developers make lenses and experiences...
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Xiaomi confirms it is getting into the EV business
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Polaris and Optimus Ride are co-developing ‘fully autonomous’ low-speed shuttles
Autonomous shuttle startup Optimus Ride and power sports vehicle manufacturer Polaris are teaming up to co-develop a new lineup of vehicles that will be low-speed, electric, and self-driving.
These low-speed vehicles (LSV) will be equipped with Optimus Ride’s full stack of sensors and software to enable “fully autonomous” driving without a safety driver behind the wheel — though the vehicles will also be monitored remotely by a team of engineers who can offer suggestions to the vehicle when things go wrong.
The vehicles, which can seat six, will be deployed as a last-mile transportation service in residential communities, corporate and academic campuses, and other “localized environments,” as both a fixed-route shuttle and a more...
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PayPal will let US users pay with Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin starting today
We already knew that PayPal was planning to support cryptocurrencies as a form of payment. And now, the online payment app announced US customers can do just that with its “Checkout with Crypto” feature, rolling out today.
After rolling out the ability for US users to directly buy and sell cryptocurrency directly from their accounts last November, PayPal’s new “Checkout with Crypto” allows users to instantly convert their Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, or Bitcoin Cash to US dollars (with no additional transaction fees) that PayPal then uses to complete the transaction. If a merchant doesn’t take US dollars, PayPal also converts those dollars into local currency at standard conversion rates set by PayPal.
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The LF-Z concept shows just how far Lexus has to go in EVs
Lexus’ next generation looks a lot like what we have now
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Google is making some big upgrades to directions in Google Maps
Google is announcing a bunch of new features planned for Google Maps, including a new tool to help with indoor navigation and suggestions for eco-friendly driving routes. The features announced today aren’t rolling out all at once, though; many aren’t available just yet, and it’s unclear when some will be available in some parts of the world.
One of the biggest announcements is that Google is bringing its Live View augmented reality directions to airports, transit stations, and malls. Live View directions let you hold your phone up, point your camera at the world around you, and see arrows and icons pointing you where you need to go, and previously, they only worked outdoors.
Disappointingly, though, these indoor AR directions aren’t...
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Mercedes-Benz's EQS interior is a blend of luxury and high-tech
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IBM’s first ‘retail’ quantum computer is headed to the Cleveland Clinic
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Google Maps adds indoor AR directions and prioritizes eco-friendly routes
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Report: The average Android phone offered nearly 100GB storage in 2020

Tesla customers say they've been double-charged for their cars
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Kia’s EV6 is a small electric car with big dreams
The first of a new wave of Kia (and Hyundai) electrics
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Kia officially debuts its EV6 AWD electric crossover
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What's on TV this week: 'Godzilla vs. Kong'
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Poll: How important is water resistance to you when buying a flagship?

Poco X3 Pro launches in India: A budget flagship for under Rs 20,000

T-Mobile is killing its own TV streaming service in favor of YouTube TV
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Monday, 29 March 2021
OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro gain new Oxygen OS 11 build with March security patch

OnePlus 8T now receiving new stable Oxygen OS 11 update

Samsung app suggests Galaxy Buds Pro successor may already be in the works

Asics Metaspeed shoes are optimized for different types of marathon runners
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Apple's repair store verification program is rolling out worldwide
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Canoo’s deal with Hyundai appears dead
The deal between Canoo and Hyundai to build electric vehicles appears to be dead, as the California EV startup is moving away from trying to sell its electric vehicle technology to other automakers.
Canoo chairman Tony Aquila shared the news Monday during an icy investor call — Canoo’s first as a publicly-traded company. Canoo’s CEO was also absent from the call, and the company announced earlier in the day that its CFO had resigned to take another job — the second major departure in recent weeks following Canoo losing its head of corporate strategy.
“These are significant surprises on the call today, and that’s not ideal,” Roth Capital analyst Craig Irwin said at one point on the call.
The deal with Hyundai was announced in February...
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Xiaomi's Mi 11 Ultra has a tiny selfie screen on the back
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Amazon is becoming the face of American inequality
Bezos has become a useful foil for Democrats
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SolarWinds hack reportedly accessed emails for key DHS officials
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A Jony Ive-designed Leica camera prototype is going up for auction
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Otterbox’s new accessories are aimed at kids and their iPads
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Apple's MacBook Air M1 returns to $950 on Amazon
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Report: Qualcomm no longer world’s biggest smartphone chipset vendor

OpenAI’s text-generating system GPT-3 is now spewing out 4.5 billion words a day
One of the biggest trends in machine learning right now is text generation. AI systems learn by absorbing billions of words scraped from the internet and generate text in response to a variety of prompts. It sounds simple, but these machines can be put to a wide array of tasks — from creating fiction, to writing bad code, to letting you chat with historical figures.
The best-known AI text-generator is OpenAI’s GPT-3, which the company recently announced is now being used in more than 300 different apps, by “tens of thousands” of developers, and producing 4.5 billion words per day. That’s a lot of robot verbiage. This may be an arbitrary milestone for OpenAI to celebrate, but it’s also a useful indicator of the growing scale, impact, and...
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Misusing Ford’s 2021 F-150 pickup generator
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Boston Dynamic's new 'Stretch' robot is designed for boxes, not backflips
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The Morning After: Peacock is reassessing 17,000 hours of WWE content
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Amazon sale cuts up to $55 off its Fire HD tablets
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A Jony Ive and Marc Newson-designed Leica prototype is headed to auction
A rare prototype of a Leica camera crafted by former Apple luminary Jony Ive and famed designer Marc Newson is being sold at auction in June. The device, which is described as being in “B+” condition, has a starting price of €100.000 (around $118,000), and the Leitz Photographica Auction house estimates that it’ll sell for between €200.000 and €250.000 (around $235,000 to $295,000).
The prototype was produced during the development of the one-off Leica M for (RED) camera, which was sold at a charity auction in 2013 for $1.8 million. While the final product’s design shared a lot of similarities with Apple’s “cheesegrater” Mac Pro, this prototype appears to have a smooth reflective finish that looks like an absolute fingerprint magnet.
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New update further improves OnePlus Nord N100’s power consumption

Boston Dynamics unveils Stretch: a new robot designed to move boxes in warehouses
Boston Dynamics is best known for its robot dog Spot, a machine designed to work in a range of environments, from offshore oil rigs to deep underground mines. But in recent years, the company has increasingly focused attention on the logistics space, and today is unveiling a new robot with just one application in mind: moving boxes in warehouses.
The robot is called Stretch and looks relatively dull for a Boston Dynamics creation. It’s not modeled after humans or animals, and instead aims to be as practical as possible. It has a square mobile base containing a set of wheels, a “perception mast” with cameras and other sensors, and a huge robotic arm with seven degrees of freedom and a suction pad array on the end that can grab and move...
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New update improves Samsung Galaxy S21 series’ Portrait mode

Amazon's one-day storage sale includes big savings on SanDisk's 1TB microSD card
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Google’s new mystery ‘wireless streaming device’ teased by FCC listing

Samsung’s Tab A7 Lite leaks with budget looks
Images of Samsung’s unannounced Tab A7 Lite tablet have leaked, courtesy of Evan Blass on Voice. The images show a decidedly budget-looking device, with a single rear camera and no flash. Internally the tablet is said to be running a modest MediaTek Helio P22T processor paired with 3GB of RAM and a 5,100 mAh battery.
The Tab A7 Lite is one of two “Lite” tablets Samsung is expected to launch in June, if a February leak from WalkingCat is to be believed. The other is the Galaxy Tab S7 Lite, which features a bigger 12.4-inch display compared to 8.7-inches on the A7 Lite, according to WalkingCat. GalaxyClub.nl previously reported the S7 Lite may be available with 5G or Wi-Fi-only connectivity, and that it could be powered by a Snapdragon...
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Uber adds all-electric vehicles to its list of ride options in London
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Sunday, 28 March 2021
The best upcoming PS5 games: Final Fantasy XVI, God of War: Ragnarok, and more

MIT study finds labelling errors in datasets used to test AI
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Today I learned BMW charges extra for a ‘don’t blind other people’ software update
When you typically think of luxury car features, do you envision rich leather seating and extravagant trim? Advanced cruise control and intelligent self-parking? Whatever you’re imagining, I’m betting “dim my headlights so I don’t blind other people” isn’t it.
But not only has BMW used its “High Beam Assistant” as an upsell for well over a decade, it’s also charging drivers extra to unlock the safety feature that’s already built into their cars — by buying it as an over-the-air software update.
Apparently, this has been going on for nearly two years, but Car Magazine editor Jake Groves brought it to my attention for the first time this week in this viral tweet:
For reference, this is the original pop up message I got on the system -...
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NASA's TESS spacecraft has already found 2,200 possible planets
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Garmin Body Battery: What is it and why should you care?

This Microsoft Flight Simulator mod features the cargo ship stuck in the Suez Canal
The massive cargo ship Ever Given has been stuck for nearly a week in the Suez Canal, captivating the internet and frustrating the teams responsible for dislodging it and the governments hardest hit by the shutdown of the maritime trade route.
The ship (and its trademark “Evergreen” lettering painted on the side) has become so iconic, in fact, that its become a destination within Microsoft Flight Simulator, at least for one virtual pilot who appears to have created a mod that places the grounded vessel within the virtual Earth of the game, via GeekWire.
Twitter user Mat Velloso shared a video from TikTok, originally captured and uploaded by user “donut_enforcement,” showing off the the flyby of the cargo ship to a convincing-sounding...
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Amazon's rotating Echo Show 10 is $40 off at Amazon
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Aukey Omnia 100W 4-Port PD Charger review: Embrace USB Power Delivery

New Trailers: Stowaway, Made for Love, The Suicide Squad, and more
I had to take a break from streaming Hannibal because I’m about halfway through season 3 and I don’t want it to end (also it’s just too intense for a binge watch, let’s be real). But I just watched the first episode of The Irregulars — loosely based on the Baker Street Irregulars from the Sherlock Holmes books— and so far it’s really good, especially if you are like me and appreciate seeing an established story retold from the point of view of another character (or in this case characters).
A good batch of trailers this week, with that James Gunn movie everyone’s talking about and a Netflix flick about a group of astronauts headed to Mars who — surprise!— have an extra person aboard their ship.
From the horribly beautiful mind of @...
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